greenie_breizh | On the Disability Rights Movement

Through an NPR report that a friend recommended, I started reading

chaoticidealism's journal, and I suggest you all do the same. In my own time I've focused more on the type of marginalization that non-whiteness, non-heterosexuality and femininity/femaleness bring onto people, but obviously marginalization isn't limited to these particular experiences. Disability studies is an entire big field that I've only been able to dip into briefly, but which I find fascinating because it speaks to me on the same level as the stuff that I'm more familiar with.

The experience of oppression at the hand of a dominant group has much potential for enabling people with different experiences to connect and empathize with each other (that doesn't mean equating the experience of being black with the experience of being gay, but rather it means recognizing the different forms that systemic oppression can take). I love to be reminded of that by reading thoughtful, non-essentialist reflections from someone else who's been thinking about this sort of stuff.

I particular enjoyed this post entitled "Joining the Disability Rights Movement", on the place of the neurodiversity community (which includes people with autism) within the larger disability rights movement.

As a sidenote, I love when people in the majority group get labeled, the way that Lisa is using the word 'neurotypical' to describe people who aren't part of the neurodiversity community. It feels weird, but it's an important experience to have when you're part of the dominant group and thus are most likely not used to being labeled constantly (including by people who barely know you). I think we have a lot to gain from being able to recognize the parts of us which enable us to access certain types of privilege.

EDIT: From a new post of

chaoticidealism, not the one I was mentioning, but it sums up the argument wonderfully:

But sometimes, I see people who say, "I'm high-functioning. I'm not like those low-functioning people over there." And then they advocate for the rights of high-functioning people only, by whatever arbitrary standard they're using today to define "high-functioning", because at some level down deep, they're still trying to justify their existence. They feel like they've got to say, "I'm valuable because I can do X, Y, and Z", and distance themselves as much as possible from "disability". They don't realize that the solution is to challenge the disability stereotype that they're taking for granted. And they don't realize that it's valid to say, "I'm valuable," no strings attached, with disability or no disability completely irrelevant.