'Transablism' is now a thing?!

Sashkin I can understand why you say you do not identify as disabled but would you say you are disabled? To me, deafness is clearly a disability. If I employed you I would want to know what was needed to overcome that disability and would be keen to ensure there were sufficient adjustments. But once these were in place your disability should cease to be relevant to your employment and hopefully you would no longer ‘identify as disabled’ within that environment - but you still would be disabled. You would still need those adjustments.

I have also seen similar to what you describe with autism; the loudest activists seem to have been diagnosed as adults. Indeed I attended a meeting recently where all the autistic people speaking had been diagnosed aged over 40. Several proclaimed how it was a ‘different ability not a disability’. I have also seen them heavily criticise parents/carers or the suggestion that families need support to cope with caring for individuals with autism. Yet those families can be at breaking point, younger children having to live with relatives because they are not safe, housing getting destroyed during meltdowns, never able to leave the house, severe lack of sleep, etc.

I haven't read the whole thread but I did read some extracts from the 'scholarly' article and was left utterly bamboozled.

Lesbians and gay men fight for measures to offset the homophobia they continue to suffer. Some straight people whine 'It's not fair! They're getting special treatment, and I'm excluded from it!' In the world of the upside down, this gets portrayed as lesbians and gay men having some sort of privilege denied to straight people.

Black people fight for measures to offset the racism they continue to suffer. Some white people whine 'It's not fair! They're getting special treatment, and I'm excluded from it!' In the world of the upside down, this gets portrayed as people of colour having some sort of privilege denied to white people.

Women fight for measures to offset the sexism they continue to suffer and to help with specifically female issues. Some men whine 'It's not fair! They're getting special treatment, and I'm excluded from it!' In the world of the upside down, this gets portrayed as women having some sort of privilege denied to men.

People with disabilities fight for measures to offset the discrimination they continue to suffer and to help with specific issues related to disability. Some people with no disabilities whine 'It's not fair! They're getting special treatment, and I'm excluded from it!' In the world of the upside down, this gets portrayed as people of colour having some sort of privilege denied to people with no disabilities.

Some people have to be the centre of attention. Some people have no imagination, no empathy, can't envisage what it would be like to be different from how they are. Some people are too selfish to be able to tolerate other people having things they can't have too, even when it's obvious why they can't have them, even when to qualify for these special measures would bring with it something the selfish person wouldn't want.

And then are the liars who just want to see if they can get away with an outrageous lie.

It's a grim old world.

No wonder those of us attempting to speak up about needing plastic straws we got no support from the wider online disabled community

Unfortunately adjustments for disabilities aren’t as sexy as environmental issues and never have been.

My concern is about people with really quite minor health issues who seek to speak on behalf of all disabled people

No wonder those of us attempting to speak up about needing plastic straws we got no support from the wider online disabled community.

I’ve been thinking how to phrase this post, and thinking how to do it without using ablist phrasing - if I slip up, I apologise in advance.

As somebody with a fairly significant hearing impairment that does require adjustments but who doesn’t identify as disabled, my concern with self-ID is not about people accessing benefits - I a man well aware that the barrier to claiming is too high for that.

My concern is about people with really quite minor health issues who seek to speak on behalf of all disabled people - mostly people on Twitter, mostly people who appear, like TRAs, to have some sort of victim mentality where any disagreement on any topic (nothing to do with disability) is met with “Oh how very dare you, I’m disabled”. When the “disability” turns out to be self-diagnosed social anxiety, or in Lily Madigan’s case I think it’s mild dyslexia - yep, may well require adjustments at work, but doesn’t make you Teflon when discussing leftist politics, or standing for election.

My SIL is very prominent in Twitter as a disabled rights activist. Her disability is depression after the death of her mother. I sympathise, I have posted on here before that I had PTSD following a violent abduction, rape and attempted murder. I do not discount the impact of mental illness. But I’m not sure that having had depression in the past qualifies you to speak on behalf of all disabled people either, or take up speaking engagements, or set up an online shop selling t-shirts to “raise awareness”, where the profits go into your own back pocket.

She certainly identifies strongly as disabled. But I think she has found a lot of online support from having that identify, and it is hard to step back from it when it is such a central part of her life now. I wouldn’t describe her as transabled, she feels very strongly that she absolutely is disabled. But I’m concerned about the blurring of the boundaries and the erasure of the voices of people whose disability has a greater impact on their life.

I know there have been similar debates about people with self-diagnosed autism, particularly well-off white men with high tech incomes who are media savvy and interview well, shaping the discourse when people with more severe ASD (non-verbal etc) can’t contribute so eloquently/from such a position of privilege.

@Deathgrip Using a wheelchair whilst being able to walk some does not make someone "transabled". Over 60% of wheelchair users use them for conditions that are not paralysis and can manage to walk some amount which may vary by the day.
Transableism is linked to devotees as well as transgenderism. It's highly offensive mockery of disabled people's pain and struggle combined with a bizarre fetishisation of that struggle. BBC did a documentary on devotees but didn't touch on when it starts turning into transabled nonsense.
As a disabled woman who uses a wheelchair, can walk a few steps and requires braces for non-working joints I get frequent disgusting DMs (on social media where I have photos of myself visible) from these people who see me as some kind of sex object. Disabled women's photos are stolen so that they can use them to create fake profiles to access groups and forums for disabled people for self gratification. Social media sites often refuse to help women whose images have been taken.

My last couple of posts were rather clumsily (and tipsily) expressed, but they were a critique of the way identity politics privileges those who shout the loudest about their marginality. Those with lived experience on the thread have more of a right to speak authoritatively about the issue. I fully agree with that. However I do not agree those people have higher status on the thread, and therefore can carte blanche accuse others of bullying and screaming, and misonterpret their comments, with impunity because they are some sort of sacred caste. We need to be able to discuss things clearly without tiptoeing on eggshells for fear you will be accused of an identity heresy or wrong think.
I mean, we have seen these things happen in forum after forum for women. To the point where people are afraid to give their opinion. Identity politics does not create democratic debate; it creates little Kings or top dogs with usually their own little clique of attack dogs (that has not happened here, but it could have).

It has been very interesting, as I said, to be exposed to the disability self-id perspective. I have seen frequent comments on various MN threads that those with invisible disabilities suffer greatly because they have the stigma of not having their disability acknowledged by wider society. I feel enormous compassion for these people.
But now having been faced with the same sort of shutting down one gets if one is gender critical, I have thought more deeply.
I think perhaps that those with invisible disabilities are not marginalised in the same way as someone who must rely on another to go to the toilet, or who faces the public stares with visible drools, who fears being shot by the police if they have another episode, who must struggle every day with a body they can't control.
Both have issues but they are distinct. For one of my latter examples to have to think about the emotional needs of someone who feels they need a diagnosis but can move independently, and therefore insist on "disability self-id", does not sit comfortably with me.
Someone who self-id's as autistic or cognitively impaired does not face the same set of struggles, the history of institutionalisation, early death, institutional violence. I imagine being told they need to centre and accommodate those who don't "pass" as disabled might set their teeth on edge.
And to refuse to discuss charlatans or pretenders because there is no "evidence" (even when there is) - I mean really, now I think the reason is because the identity politics activists want to assert their place in an already blurred, queered, co-opted definition.

Maisel I think the arguments you're having are mostly with yourself and what you're imagining is being said here. You might want to try reading the thread a little more closely.

Bigoted eh? Now who else uses that term to silence debate? 🤔

Honest to God if I had to compete for services for my severely disabled son with an able-bodied soul I'd probably lose my shit

I don't think anyone is trying to link disabled people to benefit scammers. I really can't see how that is being interpreted from what people are posting.

It's not that there is a rising trans disability lobby using the TRA arguments, but that the TRA arguments hijacked the language of the social model of disability, which pre-existed them. That doesn't mean the social model language is wrong, it means we need to be alive to it being misused (see also: "born that way" and "biological essentialism")

This may well be true. I have reservations about some of the language used in the social model even apart from comparing it to trans advocacy and did before that was a consideration.

Not that I think it was nefarious or anything like that. But I do question whether it is really a good idea to accept and promote the view that because someone doesn't "identify" as disabled, or any other term used to describe a situation in the law or for the purposes of communication, it's a good idea to find a way around using that term.

There is something to be said for clear communication on the one hand, but on the other realising that very often a usage simply won't always reflect the feelings an individual might have and can never really reflect the breadth of experience of everyone. We can still use those words about ourselves and accept that they aren't the whole of who we are.

I do wonder who the posters are who have such a clear agenda not only in constantly trying to link disabled people with benefits scammers

Listen, I think some of the people who assess disability for benefits can be complete dicks. I have seen numerous articles where individuals who were terminal or otherwise were denied benefits and these decisions being overturned at tribunal. I agree this is completely wrong.

The other issue I have though is that if we open the dialogue to "self ID" we do open the conversation to predators. There are predators, just like in any other avenue in life and it is not "ableist" to say that. Prisons are full of people who cheat, scam, fraud, steal and rape other individuals. This is not an activist issue or a tumblrina past time to suddenly decide which words are OK or not, to say we are not susceptible to exploitation, when no one has given them the authority to speak on behalf of every disabled person. It's incredibly offensive. The resources are finite and need to be protected for people who have a disability and already struggle to get the help because of a lack of resource. I am in this boat and despite having children who have severe non-verbal autism, one with mobility issues, we are constantly fobbed off due to a lack of resource/funding for the NHS.

This is all lip service to exploitation of the most vulnerable of society. Taking resources from genuinely disabled people and trying to speak for them as individuals who will not be diagnosed disabled, is gross. I cannot imagine how it would be if white people suddenly wanted reparations for slavery of other people's black ancestors!

One thing I have noticed with activist communities is that they generate their own language that is not accepted by all the people they claim to represent.

This.

I am tired of "activists". I want statements based off science not emotive bullshit. No matter how anyone tries to dress this up, they are enabling predators to take away precious resource from disabled people and it is very wrong.

Once it is set in law that someone's personal choice of protected characteristic must be equally respected and provided for as for those who have that protected characteristic, then trans age and trans ablism are an obvious next step, because how can one inner sense of self/right to be authentic self be legally valid despite all disadvantage to others but others aren't?

This

the TRA arguments hijacked the language of the social model of disability,

This is what I think too. TRAs appropriated the Identify As, and applied it to their own situation.

They have piggybacked on already established language and precedent to force their own agenda.

And some of the fallout of that is the misunderstanding and cross purposes we see on this thread.

This has been a very interesting discussion because every talking point and argument used by the disability self-id perspective mirrors TRA. In my opinion anyway.

I think that this is correct but the wrong way round.

It's not that there is a rising trans disability lobby using the TRA arguments, but that the TRA arguments hijacked the language of the social model of disability, which pre-existed them. That doesn't mean the social model language is wrong, it means we need to be alive to it being misused (see also: "born that way" and "biological essentialism")

It seems like some people are perceiving some very discrete categories or possibilities. People with full blown mental illness, people who are really disabled in some way and need to communicate that in some settings, people who are scammers.

If we compared those to trangendered questions, they might be similar to, respectively, transexuals with sex dysphoria, biological women, and a predator who pretends to be a woman, understanding that it is false, to gain access to some kind of perceived benefit.

I think there is other groups though with regard to the gender question. One is people with a fetish. I think many of these people are not entirely scammer, and they don't have dysphoria. There is a sense in which they are "legitimate" in that they really are interested in presenting as women, but the fact that we've made it possible for them to do so in public is probably not a good boundary to have crossed. They may also be predators but they are not fakers, if that makes sense.
Then there is another group where it seems to reflect something more like a personality disorder or problems in developing a sense of identity, the desire for attention, or a way to escape a problem. Those people have also not been well served by the tendency to accept the narrative of they are "really" the sex they feel.

From what I am reading in this discussion is that people are concerned that the language that has been adopted around disability could easily enable similar kids of people with problems. Which may seem a little crazy until we see that it's happened already with sex, which also seems crazy.

And you want to make it even higher, and remove what few freedoms disabled people have.

I don't think anyone on this thread has said that, or 'screamed', and for the record I'm actually disabled myself, legally, and have done all the work adaptation fights, lived with all the employment issues and the wheelchair access stuff, so am not an able bodied person putting forward a POV I know nothing about. I understand and respect where you are coming from, but equally with respect you're seeing through only your own personal view and agenda and misinterpreting what is being discussed here because you aren't looking past your own narrative. This is looking at the potential future issues because of the trans ideology and identity politics they have created, including the manipulation of language.

Trans ablism is a thing. This is not referring to people who may be falsely claiming disability benefits, or those with a form of body dysmorphia who for example want a healthy limb amputated. It refers specifically to an able bodied group who are exploiting the disability and inclusion narrative to practice a role playing fetish. See (easily googlable): the man with the diaper fetish at Vancouver University, who sent pictures of himself in his nappies to his professors and tried to get the onsite nurse to change his nappies under the terms of disability support; the man who had carers going in bathing him and providing full personal care under the guise of him having significant learning difficulties who turned out to be a perfectly neurotypical man with a fetish; and try looking at the 'Spoonies' on Tumblr who enjoy role playing having a chronic illness/chronic fatigue as part of their identity. Those are some of the most well known cases, there are others well recorded in the news.

This is happening. In the same way some fetishists are exploiting provision originally made for the very small population of transsexual people living with life long severe body dysphoria, and this has been extended and managed to the point women's spaces are being removed and the word 'woman' and 'lesbian' has been redefined.

The language 'identify as' has been co opted by identity politics, and its meaning exploited beyond its initial purpose and meaning. In a society providing resources for the vulnerable there has to be a basis of reality and provable fact. Not to make the lives of those vulnerable harder, but in this new world of identity cosplay to protect them and their interests from a culture that may seek to use and exploit and devalue those resources and the language in which those vulnerable people need to express themselves for their own selfish and frequently sexual ends. In the way already being done to women. People living with a reality they cannot opt out of, disadvantaged and struggling with the system because of that reality, should not be competing for those resources with others who like to role play those disadvantages from a far more privileged and powerful position. Does that make sense?

Equally trans age is also a thing, and as I said earlier, this is about looking ahead. Thinking of unintended consequences. Thinking about how a society funds and provides for its most vulnerable when those resources are expensive and scarce and already have to be fought for by a population often least able to fight. Once it is set in law that someone's personal choice of protected characteristic must be equally respected and provided for as for those who have that protected characteristic, then trans age and trans ablism are an obvious next step, because how can one inner sense of self/right to be authentic self be legally valid despite all disadvantage to others but others aren't?

For example, earlier I was accused of being sarcastic. I was told that was interpreted as me being bullying.
Well actually, I was being sincere when I said I didn't realise the conversation was with pro self-id supporters. But I've always struggled to communicate and have been told all my life I don't approach things conventionally. I'm not normal. So I'm the one who feels bullied actually, by those who deftly use the fashionable, in-crowd language. I'm the one who feels belittled.

There, see what I did there?

The lovely JY claims to have no feeling in their lower body and to need a nobility scooter. Yet recent video evidence from a journalist shows them able to walk perfectly well. Is this not a case of transabled?

They are not disabled and may or not actually believe they are but want others to believe they are.

I'll edit one word

They are not female and may or not actually believe they are but want others to believe they are.

Transabled, transwoman dellusional or a scammer, who knows.

I've always thought of myself as being undiagnosed autistic, so that means, I suppose, I can claim the right to amplify my voice alongside all who identify as disabled people

I have aspergers.

I find the wording really difficult.

If someone asks me if I have a disability - Yes. I do. ASC is a disability.

Do I consider myself to have a disabilty? - Sometimes. Sometimes it's not an issue at all. Some aspects of it I love and wouldn't give up.

Do I identify as having a disability? - No.

So, depending on how they ask the question, will depend on how I answer it.

I couldn't answer yes to the question "do you identify as..." because it would be in an incorrect answer to the question and I have no way of knowing whether they want to know if I actually have a disability/condition or whether I identify as having one.

Words mean something.

Totally agree. This idea that "if you identify as disabled, you have legitimacy" will always benefit the most class privileged, articulate people. We've seen it in all areas where identity politics has been deployed.
People like my partner, who without daily medical intervention would likely not be able to live independently in the community, are being used as a human shield by those who do not face such risks.

I completely understand that British society does not diagnose or support disabled people sufficiently, but I can't help wondering if Helen Keller or Anne Macdonald would be in the dock like Miranda Yardley was, for questioning those who claim marginalisation alongside them.