Trigger Warning: Abuse, murder, restraint of disabled people, ableism.
This is not the post I planned to write for Blogging Against Disablism Day. I planned to write about medical discrimination.
But then I saw this.
I changed my mind. I had to write about this meaning of disability.
Disability meas that things which are abuse and torture when done to anyone else, anyone at all, sometimes even things that are illegal to do to convicted felons in jail, are suddenly A-OK. It means hate crimes against us, and it means that the sympathy goes to the person who committed the hate crime against us, not the victim (I can't say survivor because we often don't survive it) of the crime, and it means people often not acknowledging that this is a thing that exists.
Parents kept an autistic child in a cage, naked, and he was sitting in his own urine and feces when the authorities found him. (The parents say they do their best to keep the cage clean, but that's not what they found and it's kind of besides the point. KID IN A CAGE HERE, FOLKS.) They've been charged with child endangerment, and the kids were briefly removed from their custody, but they do apparently have them back now. Also, their case worker knew about the cage for several months before the tip went in and apparently went to her supervisor, who didn't do anything. Straightforward child abuse allowed to continue because... why?
And it's not even the first time I've heard about where an autistic child was kept in a cage. John Eckhart and Alayna Higdon kept John's autistic children in a caged room, the court was able to demonstrate that. But the jury still found them not guilty on all charges. And as per usual, all sympathy went to the parents. And there was an article about how this isn't all that rare... but it didn't remember the important part where autistic people are people, people with disabilities are people, holding the well-being of people hostage for information, acting as if insufficient information somehow excuses this sort of thing justifies the abuse and that is completely unacceptable. Even the article about how keeping autistic people isolated like this is probably more common than people realize was ableist.
Or schools build caged areas on playgrounds for autistic students. (In one case, this was after the family raised money to create an appropriate play area. And a council member said that the cage was built with good intentions. If you can build a cage with good intentions, there are bigger problems than your intentions. And if you wonder if a disabled baby should be allowed to live, with good intentions, there are bigger problems than your intentions.)
Seclusion rooms, restraint, the fact that the Judge Rotenburg Center still exists, the lists of disabled people murdered by their caregivers, most of whom got lighter sentences or none at all. And the pity goes to the abled. The sympathy goes to the abled. Not to the people who were just abused or caged or killed, the people who did the abusing, the caging, the killing. That's ableism. It's not isolated. It's widespread, it's pervasive, and it's killing us. Literally.
This is not the post I planned to write for Blogging Against Disablism Day. I planned to write about medical discrimination.
But then I saw this.
I changed my mind. I had to write about this meaning of disability.
Disability meas that things which are abuse and torture when done to anyone else, anyone at all, sometimes even things that are illegal to do to convicted felons in jail, are suddenly A-OK. It means hate crimes against us, and it means that the sympathy goes to the person who committed the hate crime against us, not the victim (I can't say survivor because we often don't survive it) of the crime, and it means people often not acknowledging that this is a thing that exists.
Parents kept an autistic child in a cage, naked, and he was sitting in his own urine and feces when the authorities found him. (The parents say they do their best to keep the cage clean, but that's not what they found and it's kind of besides the point. KID IN A CAGE HERE, FOLKS.) They've been charged with child endangerment, and the kids were briefly removed from their custody, but they do apparently have them back now. Also, their case worker knew about the cage for several months before the tip went in and apparently went to her supervisor, who didn't do anything. Straightforward child abuse allowed to continue because... why?
And it's not even the first time I've heard about where an autistic child was kept in a cage. John Eckhart and Alayna Higdon kept John's autistic children in a caged room, the court was able to demonstrate that. But the jury still found them not guilty on all charges. And as per usual, all sympathy went to the parents. And there was an article about how this isn't all that rare... but it didn't remember the important part where autistic people are people, people with disabilities are people, holding the well-being of people hostage for information, acting as if insufficient information somehow excuses this sort of thing justifies the abuse and that is completely unacceptable. Even the article about how keeping autistic people isolated like this is probably more common than people realize was ableist.
Or schools build caged areas on playgrounds for autistic students. (In one case, this was after the family raised money to create an appropriate play area. And a council member said that the cage was built with good intentions. If you can build a cage with good intentions, there are bigger problems than your intentions. And if you wonder if a disabled baby should be allowed to live, with good intentions, there are bigger problems than your intentions.)
Seclusion rooms, restraint, the fact that the Judge Rotenburg Center still exists, the lists of disabled people murdered by their caregivers, most of whom got lighter sentences or none at all. And the pity goes to the abled. The sympathy goes to the abled. Not to the people who were just abused or caged or killed, the people who did the abusing, the caging, the killing. That's ableism. It's not isolated. It's widespread, it's pervasive, and it's killing us. Literally.
I saw that today too. It made me very angry.
ReplyDeleteIt's so heartbreaking that this is even a conversation we need to be having - that these things even exit! - in the 21st century. So much is still wrong.
ReplyDelete