Tumble DC 25: Transableism
Learning how to be respectful of the transgendered community and everyone in it was one of the first things I started learning on Tumblr (which isn’t to say I’m perfect now, or finished learning, just that it was a large area of personal ignorance at the time).
I learned that it was disrespectful…
Presented without comment.
There’s a difference between taking up the appearance of something and living with something.The difference, what distinguishes between legit body dysmorphia and being an asshole, is what happens when you’re all alone and no one can see you. If you pretend to be a paraplegic but stand up to take a shower in the privacy of your bathroom, you’re an asshole.
It’s actually not all that difficult a concept, as anyone with a disability can tell you. Comparing it to transgendering is bullshit, because the crux of transgendering is that gender is a social construct and a way of presentation. Disability is not a way of presentation. It is a condition. Someone with BIIP? That’s a condition as well, albeit of a different category. Someone who only appears disabled and can step out of that presentation whenever they want to? That’s someone who is disrespectful and dismissive of every truly disabled person who lives with their condition unwillingly.
To not recognize this, to think that all ‘opinions’ (so to speak) deserve equal consideration, is really, really fucking ignorant. A disrespectful way of presenting oneself deserves no consideration, whether the presentation is appropriating race-specific artifacts or ability-specific hardware.
Is it a coincidence that this is apparantly only a thing with unencumbered White folk? Why are they not using their energies to help the less fortunate, and instead so desperate to encumber themselves through falsity? No, I don’t have to respect someone who is shitting on me.
How can you tell that people who identify as transabled don’t have body dysphoria? Your opening statement assumes that the transabled don’t live with body dysphoria- if you made that assumption about transgendered individuals and gender dysphoria, there is no question it would be insulting.
Why are you, a person without body dysphoria, the one defining what is or is not ‘real’ dysphoria? How did you come by that information, what is it based off of? Transabled people, from what I have read, tell us that they experience body dysphoria. What right do you have to tell them they don’t experience that after all?
Where have I stated that all opinions are equal and deserving of equal respect? It is a belief I don’t hold, and one that is very easy to attack.
Finally, the question, “why are they not using their energies to help the less fortunate, and instead so desperate to encumber themselves through falsity?” is extremely insulting. Would you ask someone with gender dysphoria that same question?
