Part dos

of my BADD wanderings, with some more seriously excellent highlights of seriously excellent posts:

This is my usual problem. The standards and expectations I have for myself are huge and unattainable compared to the expectation I have of other people. Everyone else gets compassion and respect from me, but I haven’t figured out how to turn that on myself yet.

gets a big ditto from me, Morphine Breath

Being fat in and of itself does not impede my functionality, but it does more or less eliminate me from many people’s Good, Attractive, and Capable Person Lists. People thinking you can’t do stuff, and thus not getting the chance, often winds up materially identical to not actually being physically able to do it. Looking “healthy” is much more important in this world than actually being “healthy.”

by Meowser

i don’t mind hard work, but i hate that everyone thinks i have it easy when i’m putting every waking breath into either doing the work, or charging up to do the work.

jo/e @shivering naked

Where do I even start? Obviously she wasn't trying to diminish what I've been through, but she did. Her words took power out of my struggle by making it seem less. It isn't less, not by a long shot, but anyone hearing those words might possibly think I was whining or overstating my case. I'm not.

From Not just an annoyance

However, if the person arguing, or demanding that his civil rights be respected, or especially losing his temper, happens to have a mental health diagnosis and the other person happens to be a staff member, it is all too easy to dehumanize the mentally disabled person’s behavior and assume the “acting out” to be due to his illness. Well, maybe not so: people with psychiatric or developmental disabilities are disabled, yes, and that disability is an essential part of their being, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve lost their humanness and will take things that the healthy wouldn’t take.

Astrid makes me aware of yet another example of how those with mental illness are dehumanized. To not even have the right to your own feelings is a grave injustice.

But the thing to remember, and it's hard to remember when we're in the umpteenth "should women shave their legs?" or "it's not okay to use 'gay' as an insult" discussion, is that isms haven't just become mild annoyances to gab about on blogs. Sometimes big things happen... like not getting health insurance.

Trinity reminds us that ableism isn't just what we're talking about, but what we're living.

How to get over that sense of ‘otherness’? That feeling that certain types of people are fundamentally different? It requires some growing up. A realization that those “other” people are just ordinary people. Not a case of ‘that could be me’ but a case of ‘we are in the same boat’. Nothing special at all above and beyond the ordinary specialness of being human. And nothing less, either, than the extraordinary specialness of being human.

From the brilliantly titled Us Vs Us

I've still got plenty to get through, so there may be still another post in the making, we'll see. The # of participants certainly seems to have grown this year, and the quality of the posts is, as always, spectacular!