Throughout history, dissent and disruption has been attributed to disability in a derogatory manner ; there are countless instances of pathologization across politically disenfranchised communities rising up for justice. Black Americans have been pathologized for escaping or attempting to escape enslavement, for resisting Jim Crow discrimination, for protesting police brutality, and so on (read more in Dr. Sami Schalk’s Black Disability Politics). Queer and trans identities are pathologized, and gender-affirming care is still distributed or withheld by gatekeepers within the medical-industrial complex. Even the history of hysteria as a diagnosis inflicted upon women who rejected patriarchal standards points to disability and illness as an explanation for unexpected, unacceptable, and dissenting behavior and an excuse to cast aside the people who behave as such. Deeply rooted ableism makes all pathologized subjects disposable and as Talila “TL” Lewis explains, “You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism.” It becomes clear, then, that our liberation is bound up in one another’s. If ableism is and can be weaponized against one community, we are all in danger of being labeled “disordered” and facing disposal.
not a critique, I get why we can't. just, y'know. ugh.