While I’m sure there are people too lazy to spin a fork, keep in mind people like this person who may be suffering from arthritis or a neurological disease or nerve damage or a thousand other conditions that might impair their ability to do things as simple as spin a fork to eat spaghetti.
These are used with people who can’t grip well:
This is for Parkinsons’s:
For people who can’t even bend their joints:
Here’s a product that guides your hand from your plate to your mouth
This one holds a sandwich
Like I get it. I used to see things like the fork and think “that’s fuckin’ lazy” or that product that holds a gallon and you just tip it and pour. But then I started working around the disabled and impaired and found out that these products aren’t meant for lazy people, they’re meant for people who need help.
So maybe next time you see something, instead of thinking “Wow, are people that lazy?” just be grateful that you’re able to do the things you do every day and take for granted, like being able to feed yourself and wipe your own ass because you have enough coordination and bendy joints to do it.
This isn’t specualtion either; the majority of products from commericals that we think are funny or silly are autally MEANT for hte disabled.But they are marketed towards the abled because the disabled aren’t considered a viable enough demographic on their own.
the Snuggie for example? Created for wheelchair users.
This is actually really nifty.
oh my god of course the snuggie was for wheelchair users
The fact that anyone buys these products besides disabled people drastically lowers the price of them. These would normally cost hundreds if not thousands if dollars. Because if spent time and money creating it, the company wants to get more than that back. And they can’t do that if they sell and market these primarily to disabled people for $20-$40 a piece or whatever. They’d lose money on production. If they can sell hundreds of them to everyone, they can lower the price drastically and therefore disabled people don’t die while trying to scrape up the money to buy these things and be a bit more independent.
I never considered that last part and that’s actually genius
Like yeah, a handful of people ARE that lazy.
But those are the people who use these products even though they don’t need them and thus allow the price to be lower for those who DO.
So honestly in this case good bless the lazy and those prone to gimmicks because they are invaluable to the elderly and disabled in this sense.
I honestly think that we would eliminate one of the major causes of ableism if we stopped basing people’s worth off how much revenue they generate.
This measure is worthless. Actually, it is worth less than nothing.
I used to be a programmer for a spammer. Being rather young, naive, and also desperate for some kind of income, I had no idea what “lead generation” meant and had no idea that the fact that they didn’t talk about how their nebulous product actually helped anyone was a huge red flag. I took the job, slowly learned the codebase, and it took me months to figure out what kind of practices this place actually employed.
I was asked to put in obnoxious popups, but hide the popups for traffic coming in from Google so that Google wouldn’t cut off their sponsored traffic because the site violated their standards, a few months into my time there. That was when I began to realize the kind of place I was working at. Then I was asked to create a throwaway email account to test something, and I found out what actually happened to the poor people who put their information in for Free Insurance Quotes. They were inundated with spam. I found out the company had no site of its own, just hundreds of these “Free Insurance Quotes” sites all with slightly different stock photos and slightly different forms and a “complaints” page that was very hard to find with an email that was never checked.
I was a Hardworking Taxpaying American when I worked at that job. I was, according to this capitalist logic, contributing to society and of much more value than a disabled person who supposedly is a leech on society.
I was making the world worse by working at that job. I would have been making the world better if I did absolutely nothing but stare at the wall all day rather than work that job.
Many jobs are like this. Anyone who works at an oil company is making the world worse. Anyone who works at a tobacco company is making the world worse. People in various abusive therapy industries are making the world worse. I’m sure you can name plenty of other jobs in this category. The world would be better if those jobs did not exist.
Now, I am disabled. I am chronically ill, and I cannot even work a sedentary job because having to sit up for eight hours at a time would make me have to lie in bed for days.
I am making the world much better now by replacing the invasive grasses on my front lawn with strawberries that attract native bees, by sealing my house to increase its energy efficiency, by taking care of a flock of chickens and doing my best to ensure that they have a good happy life, by replenishing the soil in the yard with compost and chicken manure, than I was at that job. And I don’t do very much – I can’t.
Equating the arbitrary numbers one accumulates for oneself to one’s actual value or contribution is a dangerous lie, and it is poisoning the planet.
This is so incredibly important. Thank you for this.
In order for disabled people to receive any sort of financial assistant for their housing, food, bills, medical supplies, etc., they cannot ever have more than $2,000 of resources to their name. Ever.
It doesn’t matter what it’s for.
You’re saving up for a new wheelchair?
For college?
To put a downpayment on a house?
Hell man, you just happen to budget for once in your life so that you can have some extra money in case something bad happens?
Your benefits immediately get cut off if you’re a cent over $2,000.
And, even worse, you usually end up having to pay back every dollar the government gave you that month.
So say you get $400. If they find out you’re twenty dollars over the resource limit, you have to give them all $400 back and you undergo an investigation of your funds to see if you will continue getting money.
“What if I spend the money that day?”
Doesn’t matter. In fact, from what I can tell, people who do this are actually put under investigation for fraud.
And yes, this system literally kills people.
Remember when “Guardians of the Galaxy” came out? one of Rocket Racoon’s creators, Bill Mantlo, suffered an accident in 1992 and has irreparable brain damage.
before the movie came out, Marvel gave him an exclusive preview screening. SOme people were upset because they felt if Marvel was really wanted to thank mantlo, they should have donated money to Mantlo’s family.
Bill Mantlo’s brother had to come out and explain: If Marvel gave them monetary aid, Bill Mantlo would lose his financial assistance.
That’s so utterly depressing.
disgusting
I have friends on welfare who won’t pick up a penny in the street because they’d risk the welfare they struggled to get for 10 years.
oh look another fucked up thing in this world. let’s just add it to the list. number 63858b
My brother has been on California State SSI for autism for the last 10 years, and he absolutely has to (no joke, HAS TO) spend all 720 bucks of his SSI every month, because if he puts it in the bank he risks losing his SSI altogether.
Sometimes, at the end of the month, he has no idea what to do with his money because the whole month went by and he still has 400-ish bucks in his account, and he fucking panics because he doesn’t want to get anywhere near 2,000.
And here’s the funnest part of the story!
One day he did a huge commission on Second Life and wound up earning 1500 bucks off of it, and he told the guy to donate it 500 bucks at a time over 3 months. The guy didn’t want to, and just donated all 1500, which put my brother at 2,036 bucks.
The state IMMEDIATELY (I’m talking less than an hour) called him up to tell him over the phone that they were canceling his SSI, because they noticed he had gone over the 2,000 buck threshold. He had to tell them that someone had made a charitable donation to him and that this was not a common occurrence in any way shape or form, and upon not believing him, my mother had to call to talk to them as his legal caretaker and say basically the same thing until they called off the cancellation of his SSI money.
He also had to cancel his renter’s assistance because it put him to 1,062 a month, so if he went 30 days without spending any money they’d cancel his SSI altogether. Like, none of us in the family have any fucking clue why that regulation is in place and it’s the stupidest shit in human history.
Please, legal side of Tumblr, tell me what positive reasoning this law has?
It’s not just money, though. Things you own can count against your resource limit as well provided that they’re not exempt and provided that they’re worth money.
Also, the rules about what is and is not exempt from being counted against your resource limit are incredibly vague and deliberately open to interpretation. Even things that are normally exempted like clothing or furniture could be deemed non-exempt if a capricious bureaucrat decides that it’s actually worth too much money and thus counts as an ‘investment.’
As someone who receives SSI this causes me a huge amount of stress.
This is so unbelievably fucked up
don’t couples have to divorce sometimes because their combined income disqualifies them from assistance?
Conservatives: be more frugal and save money instead of asking to get paid more
Also conservatives: if you save money you’re a sneaky thief and a fraud
I honestly think that we would eliminate one of the major causes of ableism if we stopped basing people’s worth off how much revenue they generate.
This measure is worthless. Actually, it is worth less than nothing.
I used to be a programmer for a spammer. Being rather young, naive, and also desperate for some kind of income, I had no idea what “lead generation” meant and had no idea that the fact that they didn’t talk about how their nebulous product actually helped anyone was a huge red flag. I took the job, slowly learned the codebase, and it took me months to figure out what kind of practices this place actually employed.
I was asked to put in obnoxious popups, but hide the popups for traffic coming in from Google so that Google wouldn’t cut off their sponsored traffic because the site violated their standards, a few months into my time there. That was when I began to realize the kind of place I was working at. Then I was asked to create a throwaway email account to test something, and I found out what actually happened to the poor people who put their information in for Free Insurance Quotes. They were inundated with spam. I found out the company had no site of its own, just hundreds of these “Free Insurance Quotes” sites all with slightly different stock photos and slightly different forms and a “complaints” page that was very hard to find with an email that was never checked.
I was a Hardworking Taxpaying American when I worked at that job. I was, according to this capitalist logic, contributing to society and of much more value than a disabled person who supposedly is a leech on society.
I was making the world worse by working at that job. I would have been making the world better if I did absolutely nothing but stare at the wall all day rather than work that job.
Many jobs are like this. Anyone who works at an oil company is making the world worse. Anyone who works at a tobacco company is making the world worse. People in various abusive therapy industries are making the world worse. I’m sure you can name plenty of other jobs in this category. The world would be better if those jobs did not exist.
Now, I am disabled. I am chronically ill, and I cannot even work a sedentary job because having to sit up for eight hours at a time would make me have to lie in bed for days.
I am making the world much better now by replacing the invasive grasses on my front lawn with strawberries that attract native bees, by sealing my house to increase its energy efficiency, by taking care of a flock of chickens and doing my best to ensure that they have a good happy life, by replenishing the soil in the yard with compost and chicken manure, than I was at that job. And I don’t do very much – I can’t.
Equating the arbitrary numbers one accumulates for oneself to one’s actual value or contribution is a dangerous lie, and it is poisoning the planet.
This is so incredibly important. Thank you for this.
laws about minimum wage should apply to disabled people
laws about minimum wage should apply to incarcerated people
everyone deserves a fair living wage for their labor
wait, they don’t???
Not even close. Disabled folks can be paid as little as $1 an hour in some cases at whats called “subminimum wage.” Prisoners are sometimes forced to work without pay at all.
Hi, I am an attorney in the disability field. Many disabled folks make well under $1 an hour in what are called “sheltered workshops”. There are only three states right now that require people with disabilities to be paid at least minimum wage, and they are Alaska, New Hampshire, and Maryland. Goodwill is a major offender, but there are many, many others.
Just for once I’d like to tell the gate agents and flight attendants that my folding wheelchair is going into the onboard closet and not have them tell me there’s “no room”. Bitch that’s a wheelchair closet, not a “your bags” closet. Move your damn bags where they belong.
Ok, so according to my friendly aviation expert, this is a Big Fucking Deal. In fact, if an airline argues with you about putting your wheelchair in the wheelchair closet or even suggests there may not be room, unless there is already anotherpassenger’swheelchair in that closet, they have violatedfederallaw.
CFR Title 14, Chapter II, Subchapter D, Part 382, Subpart E, Section 382.67, Subsection (e)
“As a carrier, you must never request or suggest that a passenger not stow his or her wheelchair in the cabin to accommodate other passengers (e.g., informing a passenger that stowing his or her wheelchair in the cabin will require other passengers to be removed from the flight), or for any other non-safety related reason (e.g., that it is easier for the carrier if the wheelchair is stowed in the cargo compartment).”
This is hugely important because it means that if this happens to you, you should report their asses to the DOT. Why? Because these statistics are published every year for every airline, and the airline gets a huge ass fine for every violation. If we want to see change, we need to make airlines literally pay every time they treat us this way.
@annieelainey you should share this with your followers! This is important info!!
To my mutuals on wheels, print out the law before you fly and whip it out at the gate if they don’t accomodate your wheels.
Thanks a lot for posting this, bro! Flying while crippled is already difficult enough without people pulling this kind of shit. Also, make sure that if there is a piece of your wheelchair or something important missing off of it, that you make a big fucking deal out of it! I’ve had pieces fall off of my wheelchair and nearly lost a decoration I had on it that meant a lot to me because people were careless with my chair. Don’t let them mistreat your wheelchair.
Non-wheelchair folks:
Now that you know, speak up.
You never know when you’re going to see someone who needs an ally.
I was actually looking for this post the other day for someone who was worried about flying with their chair. I can’t remember your username, but here! this is the thing I was talking about!
Wow! This is the most incredible site! If you’re disabled and trying to figure out (in the U.S.) disability, food stamps, section 8, other benefits, accessibility resources (wheelchairs, etc.), affordability of everyday stuff (phones, cars), etc. this is THE site! I wish I’d found this years ago. I hope lots of people get to see this.
I pity her daughter for the misfortune of being born to this piece of absolute shit.
okay but you should really read the full response to this though:
I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around this letter. I encourage you to reread it and to ask yourself that time-honored question, “Do I sound like a villain in a Reese Witherspoon movie?” You are, presumably, sympathetic to your own situation and are invested in making sure that you come across as reasonable and as caring as possible, and yet you have written a letter indicting yourself at every turn. This girl is “like a daughter” to you, and yet you want to shove her to the side of your other daughter’s wedding just because she walks with a limp. Your daughter’s wedding will be perfect with Katie as a full and honored member of the bridal party. A limp is not a fly in the ointment; it’s a part of Katie’s life. It is not only wrong to have asked your daughter to consider excluding her best friend over this—it is ableist, and cruel, and it speaks to a massive failure of empathy, compassion, and grace on your part. You must and should apologize to your daughter immediately, and I encourage you to profoundly reconsider the orientation of your heart.
wupacing 