@forcehumaine / forcehumaine.tumblr.com
idc anymore i think we should be a burden to each other
and yes this includes a certain degree of tolerance for emotional burden, all else being equal. my love for you, and loyalty to you, is not dependent on how easy you make it for me to love you. i don’t value you for how little trouble you cause me. i want to learn how to take you for who you are, instead of who i want you to be or who i think you should be
Sangailės Vasara (2015) dir. Alanté Kavaïté
Christophe Jacrot (French, b. 1960, Paris, France) - Faroe Islands series, Photography
Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.
Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”
Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.
Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.
Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.
Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”
Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.
Teach about us.
Oh! Oh! I got one! Meet Edward V. Roberts-
Ed Roberts was one of the founding minds behind the Independent Living movement. Roberts was born in 1939, and contracted polio at age 14, two years before the vaccine that ended the polio epidemic came out (vaccinate your kids). Polio left Roberts almost completely paralyzed, with only the use of two fingers and a few toes. At night, he had to sleep in an iron lung, and he would often rest there during the day as well. Other times of the day, he breathed by using his face and neck muscles to force air in and out of his lungs.
Despite this being the fifties, Roberts' mother insisted that her son continue schooling. Her support helped him face his fear of being stared at and ridiculed at school, going from thinking of himself as a "hopeless cripple" to seeing himself as a "star." When his high school tried to deny him his diploma because he had never completed driver's ed, Roberts and his mother fought the school and won.
This marked the beginning of his career as an activist.
Roberts had to fight the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation for support to attend college, because his counselor thought he was too severely disabled to ever work or live independently. Roberts did go to school, however, first attending the College of San Marino. He was then accepted to UC Berkeley, but when the school learned that he was disabled, they tried to backtrack. "We've tried cripples before, and it didn't work," one dean famously said. The school tried to argue the dorms couldn't accommodate his iron lung, so Roberts was instead housed in an empty wing of the school's Cowell Hospital.
Roberts' admittance paved the way for other disabled students who were also housed in the new Cowell Dorm. The group called themselves "The Rolling Quads," and together they fought and advocated for better disability support, more ramps and accessible architecture like curb cut outs, founded the first formally recognized student-led disability services program in the country, and even managed to successfully oust a rehabilitation counselor who had threatened two of the Quads with expulsion for their protests.
After graduation from his master's, he served a number of other roles- he taught political science at a number of different colleges over the years, served on the board for the Center for Independent Living, confounded the World Institute on Disability with Judith E. Heumann and Joan Leon, and continued to advocate for better disability services and infrastructure at his alma mater of UC Berkeley.
Roberts also took part in and helped organize sit ins to force the federal government to enforce section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which stated that people with disabilities should not be excluded from activities, denied the right to receive benefits, or be discriminated against, from any program that uses federal financial assistance, solely because of their disability. The sit-in occupied the offices of the Carter Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare building in San Francisco and lasted 28 days. The protestors were supported by local gay rights organizations and the Black Panthers. Roberts and other activists spoke, and their arguments were so compelling that members of the department of health joined the sit in. Reagan was forced to acknowledge and implement the policies and rules that section 504 required. This national recognition helped to pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.
Roberts died of cardiac arrest in 1995 at the age of 54, leaving behind a proud legacy of advocacy and activism. Not bad for a "hopeless cripple" whose rehab counselor thought he was too disabled to ever work.
Here is a great online course for disability history!!
“Black Panthers saved the 504 sit-in.” – Corbett O’Toole, participant in the 1977 504 protest in San Francisco
According to disability rights activist Corbett O’Toole, these advocates “showed us what being an ally could be. We would never have succeeded without them. They are a critical part of disability history and yet their story is almost never told.”
Please read up on the Black Panthers' involvement in the 504 movement, they were integral to the occupation lasting as long as it did and were INCREDIBLY ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS! They are more than a footnote in that part of disability history, and I want more people to know this part of their legacy!
Read about Bradley Lomax (and his aid and fellow organizer Chuck Johnson, who I've struggled finding sources on outside of articles on Mr. Lomax :( ) here and here! Together the two were integral in bringing Black Panther Party organizing and activism to the disability rights movement!
I wish there were more information on Mr. Johnson, as his work is dear to my heart as someone who also requires caregiving. ;3; <3 Considering how little information there even was available online for Mr. Lomax just ten years ago I am hoping we get more coverage of Mr. Johnson's contributions to this important part of disability history sooner rather than later. I do not want his activism ignored!
Do not let the full richness of our history be whitewashed! The Black Panthers kept the protestors fed, they HEAVILY publicized the protests in their paper The Black Panther and agitated on the protest and protestors behalf, and paid organizers' way to Washington to pressure the HEW secretary to actually sign the damn act. In turn, the Panthers did this because the Oakland ILC did outreach to them, and helped Mr. Lomax with transportation. This is solidarity buried under focus on the white organizers. Please please please cherish it. Keep it close to your heart, read about it, celebrate it, share it!
Obviously there were more Panthers who helped but I have already lost the first draft of this and I'm starting to fade -- here's two more detailed sources to read for more, and I highly recommend you do!
Peanuts, November 13, 1964
No. I know this is probably just a casual commiseration but I think it's a real and important question to ask and answer. If doing the stuff you're expected to do everyday is super hard, then something is probably wrong.
Anyone who relates to this too hard, I'd recommend looking up spoon theory and starting to make a record of how you feel and your experiences that you can bring up with some kind of health professional. Chances are if doing laundry feels like climbing everest, it's because you're disabled in some way. Whether that disability is some invisible chronic illness or depression or ADHD or burnout, *something* is wrong.
Almost all disabilities have some form of treatment or accommodation that can make your life easier. If you can get a diagnosis, you might also be eligible for official accommodations and benefits. Social security sucks ass and is almost impossible to access but like, it's not the only thing out there set up to help disabled folks and usually local organizations are gonna be better anyway.
Plenty of people reblogging this probably already know they're disabled in some way but if even 1 person sees this and can learn something important about themselves then it's worth saying.
TLDR: people who aren't disabled don't find acts of daily living extremely hard. Maybe look into that and see if you can get help making your life less hard.
Sincerely, a multiply disabled person.
This is super important okay. Like, I used to try to ask my conservative family/church/etc. for help, and they’d just be all, “suck it up; life is hard for everyone; quit being such a baby”... and then I went to, like, actual experts, and they were basically like, “um, wow, you’re clearly super depressed and suicidal; you should actually be proud of yourself for still being alive!” And I’m still trying to unlearn the former and accept the latter, even after all this time. And I’m so mad that I’ve wasted so much time just trying to “push through it” instead of getting help I clearly need(ed), and that’s still a thing I struggle with.
Please, please seek real help if you need it. Like, I understand that there are shitty doctors and shitty therapists and whatnot, but it’s so worth expending what effort you can to find good ones who can help. If you have mentally ill friends -- which, if you’re reading this in the first place, you almost certainly do -- they might be able to point you in the right direction.
[ID: a screenshot from the Too Afraid to Ask reddit that reads: "How do people just so stuff? Is life not incredibly hard for everyone?" /end ID]
I have a friend with insane ADD and we have this same conversation sometimes
She can't actually even define laziness (which is weird) but she thought she was just lazy, life was that hard for everyone, and that everyone else was just being more responsible at managing it. I told her laziness feels good once and she blue screened.
Like if you can't define laziness, you've probably been convinced it's something that it's not. Probably something nebulous and hard to describe. Like, idk, an unknown disorder.
In case you're one such person, laziness feels great. It's not stressful. It's like the opposite of stressful. If you're being stressed and lazy at the same time you've managed to do it wrong somehow. The only struggle in being lazy is wanting the tv remote and being to darn comfortable to want to move. (But you get it anyways, because it's not an inability to get the remote. You were just cozy.)
Think of it like a cat sitting near a warm heater or a hamster so relaxed it "melts". If there were danger, or if the animal were hungry, it would get up. It probably doesn't want to get up because it's comfortable but it will. If the hamster is actually genuinely hungry but it can't get up and it's just laying there stressed and starving, you would take your animal to the vet because it has a problem.
That’s how it was for me growing up, too. I seriously thought everyone was constantly exhausted, confused, and in pain like I was and I was just really, really bad at dealing with it, didn’t want to try hard enough, and was just lazy.
Additional gentle reminder that the regular amount of unidentifiable/unexpected pain is none. The normal amount of unidentifiable/unexpected pain is none.
Sore the next day after a workout? Makes sense.
Sore for the next week after a workout? Not normal.
Barked your shin on a low coffee table and have an ache/bruise? Expected.
Gently brushed past the doorframe and your arm feels like it's on fire? Not normal.
Joint pain in your teens/20's is not normal. Heart problems in your teens/20's are not normal. Continual (AKA chronic!) fatigue despite diet/sleep schedule is not normal.
If you cannot point to an event or series of events that caused the discomfort/pain you are experiencing ("I fell off my bike", "I walked 3 miles", "I slept poorly", "I haven't been getting all the nutrients I need"), it's probably not normal! And it is okay to want that discomfort/pain to stop, even if it's mild! Most people are not going through their daily lives consistently uncomfortable or in pain.
You deserve to be comfortable and to have things be easy. Whether that looks like readjusting your life and expectations or getting professional help (medical/mental/other), you deserve it. I promise.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Text ID:
I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.
@lgbtqcreators creator meme: [5/8] lgbtq+ celebs "I had to free my own mind of what, at that time, what I felt like masculine adrogynous energy looks like. I was living in my own binary, and I was like there's no way that I can be androgynous with bigger boobs now. How I feel inside is the thing that I needed to work through." — JANELLE MONÁE
for doodle requests - lestat 😼
FUCK no...... CLAUDIA ❗️❗️❗️
(31 july 2023) new 99pi podcast interview with rebecca leber, the journalist who wrote the two articles linked above
Some of you straight up hate masculine women and gnc women and I wish you'd just say that with your full chest instead of pretending women are oppressed for being feminine when in reality feminine behavior is expected and women are policed by men and each other if they don't present femininely enough. Femininity is looked down upon esp in men but that's bc it's associated and tied to women. Not bc women are oppressed for being feminine
A couple of pieces I’ve done this year (Available on inprint!)
Jacob Anderson as Louis De Point Du Lac - Interview with the Vampire (2022)
