lilyevanspotter:
Stephanie Schroeder joined the U.S. Marine Corps not long after 9/11. She was a 21-year-old with an associate’s degree when she reported for boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. “I felt like it was the right thing to do,” Schroeder recalls. A year and a half later, the Marines diagnosed her with a personality disorder and deemed her psychologically unfit for the Corps.
Anna Moore enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and planned to make a career of it. Moore was a Patriot missile battery operator in Germany when she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and dismissed from the Army.
Jenny McClendon was serving as a sonar operator on a Navy destroyer when she received her personality disorder diagnosis.
These women joined different branches of the military but they share a common experience: Each received the psychiatric diagnosis and military discharge after reporting a sexual assault.
Military records show the personality disorder diagnosis is being used disproportionately on women, according to military records obtained by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic under a Freedom of Information Act request.
- In the Army, 16% of all soldiers are women, but females constitute 24% of all personality disorder discharges.
- Air Force: women make up 21% of the ranks and 35% of personality disorder discharges.
- Navy: 17% of sailors are women and 26% of personality disorder discharges
- Marines: 7% of the Corps and 14% of personality disorder discharges
The records don’t reflect how many of those women had reported sexual assault.
I know I’ve reblogged this before but I did forget that something else needed to be focused on. To dismiss the claims of sexual assault in these cases they labeled someone as ‘crazy’. This is a dangerous kind of ableism because the disturbing implication is that those military leaders don’t think disabled people can be raped or refuse to acknowledge they can. How many experiences are being erased and how many victims are being made invisible by the idea that if you’re ‘crazy’ you can’t be a real victim and you shouldn’t be believed? That is yet another element of rape culture.
Dear ableist allistics,
tide-and-wave:
yellow-eyeballs:
thebeldammightbelistening:
Fuck you and your puzzle pieces.
Fuck you and your nauseating self-pitying about the so called burdens we Autistics are to you.
Fuck you and your scientifically unfounded Claims of causation.
Fuck you and your dehumanizing infantilization.
Fuck you and your weaning over ego because you’re “aware” of Autism.
Fuck you and your vitriolic assertion of an epidemic.
Fuck you and your claims of inspiration.
Fuck you and your want of a cure.
Fuck you and your sympathy for murderers.
Fuck you and your eugenics.
Every time your talk about our apparent need to be cured and your hope of Autism being a thing of the past, you are saying that you wish we didn’t exist and that no one like us will ever exist again, you constant Whinning about what toxic burdens you see us as has created a climate in which you invariably justify our murders.
Fuck you, From an Autistic.
^ This.
(TW: Ableism, institutionalization)OKAY THIS IS ME OPENING A CAN OF WORMS
Disturbing Trend of Recruitment for Anti-Choice Violence at LifeSiteNews.com
prolongedeyecontact:
prolifehypocrisy:
clinicdefense:
I originally started working on a blog post about the presence of anti-choice sentiments in support of clinic terrorism and had the misfortune of opening up a LifeSiteNews.com article about the bombing. What I discovered in the comments section of the article is deeply troubling.
Of course, I was expecting to see plenty of comments along the lines of “What he did was wrong but, THEY KILL BABIES.” I did NOT expect to see individuals encouraging others to engage in violent acts.
Original Link: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/man-accused-of-trying-to-set-planned-parenthood-clinic-on-fire-appears-in-c/
Tip has been submitted to the FBI. This appears to be early attempts at recruitment and organizing. If you ever see this sort of talk going on in public, take a screen shot and submit report to FBI. Save screen shots if needed later.(Or submit to our blog)
How to take a Screen Shot
FBI Tip Line
Thank you so much for reporting this!
This is terrifying but not surprising in the least. People like this really believe they’re engaged in some sort of holy war. I see people like this on twitter all the time. They’re not “brave” or “noble Christians doing god’s work”, they’re terrorists plain and simple. But when it comes time to be punished for their actions they’re more than happy to go the ableist route and claim it’s an “isolated incident” committed by a “nutjob.”
tw ableism: A school bans a kid with cerebral palsy from using her walker, a mom takes action
disabledtalk:
Sign the petition here
E-mail the school officials here
A mom of a kid with cerebral palsy is gearing up to file a lawsuit against her school district, because a special education director is saying her little girl can’t use her walker. Pick your jaw up off the floor and read on.
LaKay Roberts, who’s 5, uses her walker to, er, walk. You know, as kids with CP often do. She’s been using it for three years, and attends Kings Manor Elementary School in Kingwood, near Houston. Occasionally, she also uses a wheelchair.
Her mom, Kristi Roberts, says that weeks ago the school district, New Caney ISD, told her that LaKay could no longer use her walker at school. Kristi taped a meeting with the district special education director, Gary Lemley; she uploaded part of it to YouTube. An excerpt:
Read More
Women with mental illness are often ignored when they report abuse and sexual assault. It’s all in their heads, you see. After the first couple of times, the first few attempts to tell someone what is going on, many of these women stop speaking. Because they’ve learned there’s no point. They aren’t going to be listened to and no one is going to take action, they’re going to be told that they are crazy and making things up, that they should go back to their abusers. What happens next is sometimes very ugly. Mentally ill women are severely beaten and murdered by their partners at higher rates than the general population. A lot of that abuse could be prevented by not insisting that ‘it’s all in your head’ when those women report and call for help.
sanityscraps:
goldenheartedrose:
giddygirlie:
pennynickels:
sblaufuss:
giddygirlie:
wwglee:
goldenheartedrose:
giddygirlie:
vsc:
Work in progress.
In my defense, my girlfriend is an Autism teacher and this is for her.
To anyone/everyone who was knocking VSC, lemme say this: Shut up.
1) everyone is entitled to their opinions but your entitlement to HAVE an opinion doesn’t mean that you HAVE to use it venomously.
2) some people have a sense of humor, some don’t. If your panties are crammed up your crack about this - guess which one you are?
3) If you find this offensive, donate $1 to autism research or something. If you don’t, go buy something from VSC.
I love this. And all of the people that I know who have been touched by autism in some way — whether themselves, their family, their students, friends, or teachers — would find this hilarious. And true.
As far as I’m aware, all those enumerating how wrong this is are actually autistic, and don’t think that autism fucks everything up. If the op didn’t want criticism, they should not have put this in the autism tag. Allistics (non-autistics) need to not try and speak for us, to marginalize us.
Giddygirlie has so much bigotry and hate in her heart i don’t even know what to say.
I’M A HATEFUL BIGOT BECAUSE I SAID THAT PEOPLE DON’T NEED TO BE MEAN! HUZZAH! I CAN SKIP THANKSGIVING BECAUSE I AM THANKFUL FOR THE INTERNET.
Now THAT is hilarious. I’ve seen so much hate in that comment thread directed towards VSC and giddygirlie that it’s ridiculous. Looks like someone is out of touch with reality. Click the “notes” button and see who hates whom.
As a former special ed teacher, I think this is hilarious. However, my students were “special” special ed, low functioning and emotionally unstable so maybe that’s why I relate to this. Also, it was one of the best jobs I ever had. I loved my kids.
I grew up around very “special” special people and in my experience, the families were mostly of the “roll with the punches” variety because, seriously, what else are you going to do? If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry - so embrace it and have fun with your life. That’s why I think most people would find this funny - or at the very least not be foaming at the mouth - because you HAVE to have a certain amount of levity.
It seems that a lot of the hateful comments on this thread are mostly from people with autism themselves. Probably because they don’t want to think of themselves as a burden to anyone else - a reason that someone else might need a joke here and there. I get that. But that doesn’t make me a bigot for finding humor in it.
Actually, yes, yes it does make you a bigot.
… What the hell is wrong with people? Yes, dumbass, that makes you a bigot. Finding humor in the plight of an entire marginalized group of people does make you a bigot.
Naturally I’m reblogging for the commentary that actually calls this out for the bigoted crap it is x.x Humor is not a shield to hide behind, and laughing at the perceived inferiority of another group does in fact make you a bigot yeah :\
[Trigger warning: rape, abuse, ableism] Just thought I’d share this.
sanityscraps:
Statistics about sexual abuse among people with disabilities are horrifying.
- Among adults who are developmentally disabled, as many as 83% of the females and 32% of the males are the victims of sexual assault.
- 15,000 to 19,000 people with developmental disabilities are raped each year in the United States.
- 49% of people with developmental disabilities who are victims of sexual violence will experience 10 or more abusive incidents.
- In one study, 40% of women with physical disabilities reported being sexually assaulted.
- For individuals with psychiatric disabilities, the rate of violent criminal victimization including sexual assault was 2 times greater than in the general population (8.2% vs. 3.1%)
- 15.2% of children who are sexually abused have disabilities.
- Males with disabilities are twice as likely than males without disabilities to be sexually abused in their lifetime.
- 38% of women with disabilities who have been married experienced sexual violence by their partner.
- It has been estimated that 83% of women with a disability will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
- Only 3% of sexual abuse cases involving people with develo[p]mental disabilities are ever reported.
- 1 in 5 female and 1 in 6 male psychiatric inpatients reported abuse involving genital contact, which was often recurrent.
- 45% of female psychiatric outpatients reported being sexually abused during childhood. Respondents who had been abused in childhood had higher levels of depressive and psychotic symptoms and higher rates of sexual victimization in adulthood than those who had not been abused.
- Lifetime risk for violent victimization was so high for homeless women with severe mental illness (97%) as to amount to normative experiences for this population.
- 88 to 98% of sexual abusers are male and are known by the victim/survivor who has disabilities.
- 33% of abusers [are] acquaintances, 33% are natural or foster family members, and 25% are caregivers or service providers.
[Source]
Many of the ableist words which reference “inferior intelligence” are actually used in settings when people want to say that someone is being thoughtless, reckless, irresponsible, or rude. So, those are all good words to use as alternatives to “idiot.” One of the things about exploring ableist language is that it forces us to think about the actual meaning of a sentence; when you find yourself wanting to refer to someone as an “idiot” or something as “idiotic,” pause and think about the meaning of what you are trying to say.
“Idiot” is also used in rhetoric to talk about someone who is uninformed about an issue or someone who is unaware of the complexities of a topic. In this sense, a value judgment is being made about someone’s intelligence on the basis of the fact that this person is not familiar with the fine and nuanced details of everything on Earth. It’s worth noting that we all came into this world with no knowledge of anything, and that all of us were uninformed about topics we now consider ourselves knowledgeable about at some point. In this case, rather than using “idiot,” a better word choice might simply be “uninformed.”
Can we STOP using ableist slurs to describe the GOP douchebags?
sanityscraps:
nattycattynat:
‘Cause seriously, you’re no better than the GOP if you have to resort to slurs to describe them.
