I dunno how I feel about that one. I understand how seriously annoying/upsetting it can be to hear people's miracle cures all the time (I've had severe psoriasis since I was ~9, you would not believe some of the weird crap I've heard) but an awful lot of the alternative suggestions for addressing someone you know who is disabled who you want to help sound very awkward or contrived or ridiculous or in some cases would be worse for me than someone just saying 'you know, sleep is supposed to be good for depression!' (Like the 'how can I help you?' question suggestion. I hate that question. HATTTTTTTTTTTTTTE. It generally comes up when I'm having some kind of emotional/mental issue like with my depression or my anxiety, and my response is almost always 'if I knew how to fix this problem I WOULD HAVE FIXED IT ALREADY' or 'IF I KNEW THAT, I WOULD'VE ASKED FOR THAT
( ... )
Well, I'm coming from an expert and lived in position on stuff that I personally have experience with, but I hear about a lot of other stuff too
( ... )
Who spends all that time printing them out? Do they not have more useful things to do? This is what I always wonder. (I don't get many, but my mom tends to through her cancer support group, and the place where her doctor is has racks EVERYWHERE with various brochures and papers. Most of them are reasonable, like the last one I saw was for a talk about dealing with the emotional roller coaster of cancer, but some of them are really very strange.)
(Also, I apologise to everyone for commenting all over, I can't sleep. :( )
I try to take the 'trying to help' comments with politeness. Smiling like a barista (see userpic: that's not my face but I used to do front-of-house work and I can still do that smile).
In my opinion, it's clear that the 'trying to help' is sincere. And it's clear that these behaviours aren't about me: they're about the people who want to 'help'. Comforting themselves when faced by the horror of what's wrong in my life.
I choose the 'barista' smile because it's good manners: I was brought up to be polite and not to confront people unless there's no alternative. I choose the smile also because I want to encourage helpful behaviour. The person who's just offered me 'hope' by talking about a miracle cure, might be the same person I'm going to ask to make a cup of tea for me and carry it to my table. If I went around picking fights about 'helpful' suggestions, I'd probably end up lonely and - horror of horrors! - lacking tea.
ps There are many things about being disabled that I never expected until it happened to me. Including the burden of having to pin on my barista's smile to indulge people's feelings about my disability.
I don't always manage to pin on the smile, of course. Sometimes I lose my rag entirely and say a lot of rude words.
I think maybe the important thing is not so much to say to other people 'quit doing this' as it is to remind each other that it's okay to get frustrated/angry/upset/be rude sometimes when people do it and you just can't be all polite
( ... )
(By important thing I mean - as a community of people who deal with this hassle, maybe that's something we should focus on trying to provide for each other. Reminders that it's okay to get frustrated/peeved/ticked off even when we're socially conditioned to try to always be nice and polite and considerate.)
It's a nice article, though feministe is still run by someone who is a disablist bigot (who about a year ago told people to pester the hell out of anyone eating gluten free because they might have an "eating disorder" and when she was told that the majority of people who eat GF have conditions like Celiac and did not appreciate her encouraging this, still insisted the GF diets were a fad diet used by people with EDs), overrun by disabilist bigoted commenters/comments and generally not disabled friendly.
Most of the few decent disability related articles are from 2008/2007.
Yikes! I know the TV show "Two Broke Girls" got into trouble (online, anyway, dunno if it actually made real news outlets or anything) recently because in one of their episodes, one of the main characters, a waitress, says something to the effect of "There's no such thing as gluten-free, that just means they're anorexic."
They also like to basically excuse disabilist bigotry, despite having a rule against the use of slurs, they've been widely defended by both staff and members of the site, especially if a man or a person of color is using them.
This was the first time I'd heard "gluten free is a fad diet" crap. Hopefully it will be the last time.
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(The comment has been removed)
Who spends all that time printing them out? Do they not have more useful things to do? This is what I always wonder. (I don't get many, but my mom tends to through her cancer support group, and the place where her doctor is has racks EVERYWHERE with various brochures and papers. Most of them are reasonable, like the last one I saw was for a talk about dealing with the emotional roller coaster of cancer, but some of them are really very strange.)
(Also, I apologise to everyone for commenting all over, I can't sleep. :( )
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In my opinion, it's clear that the 'trying to help' is sincere. And it's clear that these behaviours aren't about me: they're about the people who want to 'help'. Comforting themselves when faced by the horror of what's wrong in my life.
I choose the 'barista' smile because it's good manners: I was brought up to be polite and not to confront people unless there's no alternative. I choose the smile also because I want to encourage helpful behaviour. The person who's just offered me 'hope' by talking about a miracle cure, might be the same person I'm going to ask to make a cup of tea for me and carry it to my table. If I went around picking fights about 'helpful' suggestions, I'd probably end up lonely and - horror of horrors! - lacking tea.
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I don't always manage to pin on the smile, of course. Sometimes I lose my rag entirely and say a lot of rude words.
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Most of the few decent disability related articles are from 2008/2007.
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*Headdesk*
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This was the first time I'd heard "gluten free is a fad diet" crap. Hopefully it will be the last time.
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