la_vie_noire | (no subject)

riko writes: excuse me as i'm serious for a moment. (SPOILERS FOR SERIES LIKE HOUSE, SPN, GLEE.)

2) Persons with disabilities are not less because they have disabilities. [...] Repeat after me: Different is not less. Different is not less. Individuals with disabilities may have impairments or restrictions but that does not take away from their full personhood.

3) Persons with disabilities are not tragic, heroic martyrs. They’re people. Unfortunately, in fiction, that's rarely what they're portrayed as. Disability is often used as a narrative tool that's one step away from fridging, meant to convey a lesson, a warning, or a source of inspiration, and it's made worse because usually the message is directed at the able characters in the narrative. [...] A person's life is not a teaching moment for someone else, and pity and charity are the wrong response because, once again, different is not less.

4) The life of a person with disabilities is not tragically unfulfilled because they have a disability. This is a more contentious issue within the disability rights community, which I won't get into unless prompted because it's sort of tangential. But suffice to say that many, many, many people with disabilities do not spend their time dreaming about how grand life would be if they were just "fixed." And yet isn't that the story of just about every single character with a disability on TV at the moment? [...] Different is not less. Disability is not a problem until society makes it one. Learn these lessons, fandom and TV and society. The story of a character with a disability is not how much it sucks to have a disability and how great life is for able people. That's only what able people think it is.

5) For the love of god, just stop removing the agency of people with disabilities, okay? It's not cute or dramatic or touching when the choices of people with disabilities are removed, especially when they are removed by able people who are acting in "their best interest." [...]

6) And with all that said, disabilities are also not things to be picked up and then put down again when it stops being narratively convenient.

Able-bodied people, before crying or complaining when a previously able-bodied character becomes disabled; before saying it would be the worst thing that could happen to them, that you would hate it blahblah!! think that you are devaluating real people's lives, you are saying they are something to be dreaded. Yeah, I know it's such a shock to you that isn't the case.

That, and disabled people don't get the representation you get. So shut up.