“The dullest person, after all, has gleaned from mere observation that highly intelligent parents often produce offspring so stupid that they can barely breathe. (And, much more interesting from the eugenic point of view, that the opposite is also true.)”
“At the end of the day, dipping into the attack well of body-shaming, racism, misogyny, and ableism is just lazy. When people resort to these kinds of tactics, I simply think that they have lost the ability to debate the merits and content of a position. Instead, they want to play to the bot-fueled, troll-fed, worst of who humans can be.”
Source: In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World
“Kay: ... I know she thinks if she were me she'd be better, but do you know what the problem is with being sick? It's that you're sick. People who are healthy think they know how you could get better, because when they imagine what your life is like they imagine having your sickness on top of their health. They imagine that sick people have all the resources they do and they're just not trying hard enough. But we don't. I don't. I know my sister is only trying to help me, but I can't help it. I think, You suffer for just one day the way I do. I want you to feel like this for just one day. Then you tell me how to get better.”
Source: Well
“When Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling published the piece "TERF Wars" on her blog in the summer of 2020, she specifically mentioned her fear that many transgender men are actually Autistic girls who weren't conventionally feminine, and have been influenced by transactivists on the internet into identifying out of womanhood. In presenting herself as defending disabled "girls," she argued for restricting young trans Autistic people's ability to self-identity and access necessary services and health care.
Rowling's perspective (which she shares with many gender critical folks) is deeply dehumanising to both the trans and Autistic communities.”
Source: Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
“Limits on people's capacities to conduct activities that are essential to everyday life are imposed by structural and systemic barriers. These barriers are part of a social system that regards some bodies as "normal" and some as "other", rather than considering a broad range of bodies and possibilities, for example when designing a building or piece of furniture. This relegates people with disabilities to the status of lesser citizens because of their lack of access. Disability is a byproduct of a society which is organized around only certain bodies which are defined as "normal", in laws, education, institutions, and in popular culture.”
Source: Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between
“The first fall made me stronger
Another and then the other one made me
hollow inside
The last fall will break me
But I will survive”
Source: Behind the Ghost Metropolis: Contemporary Poetry on Mental Health, Resilience, and Finding Hope
“You’re always dealing with a stereotype. There’s the superhuman trope and the vulnerable trope – the benefit scrounger, someone who takes, doesn’t offer anything to society because they’re so incapable. And if you’re trying to be the superhuman, you don’t want to look as if you’re leaning on anyone, because people will think, which one are you? It’s really hard to embody both. But the gap between the tropes is where we want to live.”
“The people who are trying to be on our side have reduced us to a mere calculation”
Source: I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir
“medical knowledges tend to express bodies in terms of what they can’t do, and media representations often value bodies in ways that overlook their uniqueness”
Source: Deleuze and Masculinity
“You can tell a lot about what a culture considers deformed by looking at its villains. They're more likely to be disabled in some way, but also more likely to be dark, old, fat, or fey.”
Source: Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology