To think a lot of MN are ableist?

[Sweetlifeofyours]

So I wasn’t going to post but as a mum with a disabled child myself I feel like I have to get things off my chest. I have read a couple of threads over the past week or so regarding mothers who are looking for advice and support for their disabled child/children (2 that stick out to me)

I was very sad to see that there were only a few posters who actually gave support and advice to the OP’s. The rest were in my opinion, downright rude and nasty and clearly just wanted to upset the OP’s even more for whatever reason.

As a mum with a SEN child, it is incredibly difficult and I myself don’t always get the correct help and support I need so to come on here and see that other women/parents show their (somewhat) true opinions of disabled children upset me.

I am completely 100% on board that autism shouldn’t be an excuse for everything, but surely some compassion wouldn’t go amiss to a struggling parent.

One of the worst things I read was a poster saying to the OP that they should make sure their child doesn’t turn into a sex offender because he enjoys hugs. Says more to me about the poster rather than the OP and their child.

I guess my AIBU is, do you think people (maybe especially on here) should have more compassion for the disabled community or have you read threads where you agree with the majority of comments (especially where we are talking about young children)?

Don't worry, I understand and I admire your commitment to maintaining the grotesquely comic character you have created here.
Pretending to believe that taxation is some bizarre and ridiculous economic experiment that the UK has only adopted in the last few years rather than a concept which has under-pinned the vast majority of world economies for centuries is a very amusing touch, well done!
My only criticism is of the post in which you suggest putting down disabled children, as though they were animals. I assume this was a clever reference to Swift's masterful 18th century satire 'A Modest Proposal', but I wonder if it does cross the line into poor taste a little.

And how does she propose that law and order is maintained without taxation? The police, justice system and prisons are all funded via taxable. Is the suggestion that there will be no crime if people don’t have to pay any tax?

The government itself is funded through taxation. How would this work without any public funding?

Lots of people already have private health insurance in this country. What do you think BUPA and the like are for. The only thing you can't go private for nowadays is A&E. Surely not much of a leap to see how they could privatise that too.

Well I’m no NHS fangirl, but this is just not correct. Huge swathes of the country (poor areas) have no private facilities. There is no private maternity unit outside London and no private paediatrics in most of the country. One of the - many - problems with the current NHS system is that we don’t have anywhere near the amount of private facilities to properly run the kind of self-pay system we appear to be hurtling towards, nor have we regulated the health insurance market properly (or at all, really).

I would happily have used private general paediatrics to speed up DS’ diagnosis, but other than ASD/ADHD assessment, SALT and OT, there was nothing available clinically, certainly no paediatric consultant, and this is in a “naice” bit of the NW. As it was, I spent £30k of net income - which we could easily afford, but it did lead me down a “why am I paying so much tax for this shite excuse for children’s healthcare?” rabbit hole.

Don't worry, I think this poster is being satirical so the gaps in their silly suggestions are meant to demonstrate how incredibly stupid and poorly considered such proposals are.
I sincerely hope I'm right, if this poster is for real then I am very scared indeed!

Sorry, feel as if I fell into the poster’s trap here, responding as if they were serious and thus potentially making them look more ‘credible’. Apologies.

Don't worry, I fell for it too and was actually trying to reason with them before I realised they were doing a comedy bit.
It's been very amusing but I hope this poster will retire their character now as they're in danger of derailing a serious thread about ableism on MN and in wider society. I'm hoping there is a comedy section on MN that they can post on as it would be a shame for their skills in parodying appalling and completely idiotic bigots to be wasted.

Act you’re probably right, although she has been pushing the idea pretty strongly for someone who is being satirical. I’m not impressed with her derailing of a serious thread either way.

MN has been an absolute cesspit for shitty comments and ableism surrounding disabled people recently.
Many such comments would be deleted if they were made about any other sector of society, but the disabled are fair game and the powers that be leave the comments up so they can be challenged (so they say), regardless of the distress they cause people.
Some I have seen in the past few months (sorry if they upset anyone, but these have been actual comments on here) -

• a suggestion that mobility scooter users should be forced to engage in weekly walks (yes, be removed from their scooters) in the local park to "build up their fitness so they can get a job"
• disabled children be removed from their parents and placed into institutions residential care. That was a whole thread
• cars on the Motability scheme all have to be white with a logo on so the public can see they are Motability vehicles
• that the benefits for disability should be just about enough to survive on. Apparently buying steak is not allowed. If "they can afford steak, they are getting paid too much"
• any autistic poster who admits they don't work gets piled on with loads of questions and assumptions. Lots of "if you can post on MN you can get a job"
• any parent who is on PIP has either their parenting abilities questioned, or their eligibility for PIP questioned. Oh, and one I saw recently was wondering how someone can claim PIP and also manage dating and relationships
• someone asked why the anorexic DD of a poster would need benefits as "they have no food costs"
• autistic adults being told they should stay at home if they have meltdowns in public. Also being told they they should have grown out of meltdowns.
• that unless healthcare/therapy means someone can join the workforce, it is pointless and a waste of money

There are loads more but the above have stood out, and a couple are from the same MNetter.

It is depressing and relentless and the MN mods just do not care. I and others reported the thread advocating for the forcable removal of disabled children and adults from their homes and families and subsequent incarceration in large state run institutions thread you mentioned above. I was told it was merely an unusual suggestion, rather than a horrifying one and that posters could challenge the OP if they wanted. The thread remains undeleted.
I also recently reported a poster who said that disabled children were of lesser value and should be terminated or killed at birth to save the country money. Apparently these comments were just fine by the MN authorities too.
It is obvious that MN is just fine with even the most extreme hate speech aimed at disabled people, even children.

I know!!!!!

It’s really shocking. The moderators are dreadful and do nothing. You’re lucky you got a reply, I just get “we'll look into it.” I don’t think half of them actually know what ableism is or maybe they do but just don’t care.

Swap disabled for anything else, and it would be swiftly deleted. I wont even name examples as it would probably be deleted and against talk guidelines.

Absolutely.

2 more which were aimed towards me/my disabled child:

Horror at the thought my incontinent child is allowed to attend mainstream primary school because it's ''disgusting'' and he clearly belongs in special school.

When I explained that even if I wanted my son to go to specialist provision, he has very little chance, no places and his needs aren't high enough etc I was told that I should go to the school every time he needs to be changed and change him myself.

and one just a few days ago who told me that if she had a disabled child and couldn't work, she'd just move to a basic house in a cheap area so she wouldn't need to claim UC. Of course, that is one of the few threads that actually got deleted due to the comments and I never got to ask her how that would work if her imaginary disabled child was a wheelchair user like my son.

I make a point of turning up on these threds to remind everyone of just how laisser faire the MN mods' approach to moderating ableism is. I doubt it makes any difference but I don't want them thinking that they are getting away with it and that their refusal to tackle extreme ableism has gone unnoticed. It's really important to keep trying to hold them to account.

Agree and the fact it’s a 50:50 split here is telling in itself.

Sadly reflects wider society, media driven to some extent, and people emboldened to express views more extremely in a way where they might hide ignorance to blatant abuse in life.

This sounds suspiciously … eugenic. Particularly when you brought ‘less intelligent’ into it. Gross. Who gets to decide the cutoff salary amount for allowable conception? I would say you could write dystopian fiction, but you seem to have issues with spelling, grammar and punctuation. IDK, you may not even meet your own standards.

Careful. MN seems to have a very low bar for deleting posts that contain disablist comments. I’ve seen them ignore reports about clear misinformation on disability benefits (we do not delete posts for containing misinformation - even though that is one of the reporting categories); and even a post using nasty language toward a disabled child was brushed off with, “posters are welcome to express strong opinions".

But the moment you question the mental fitness of someone making those disablist remarks, your comment gets removed for “personal attacks.” I wouldn’t be surprised if your post doesn’t last long for the same reason. 'Strong opinions' about disabled people are definitely a yes on here, but opinions about disabilst posters - definitely not!

It's not uncommon is it for posters with no disabled children of their own offering simplistic and pointless advice unfortunately.

Sad if that’s so. I simply couldn’t believe what I was reading though, and the irony is the person writing it seems less than educated.

The poor spelling and grammar, coupled with the extreme stupidity of their suggestions were some of the reasons I have decided this poster is engaged in satire, what clinched it for me was them ending one of their ridiculous posts with something to the effect of their ideas being so sensible that they would need to come up with a new word for sensible. That, to me, seemed a real giveaway that they were playing a comic character, just a parody of the horrible posts that proliferate on here.
I sincerely hope I'm right as, if it turns out their posts are genuine, it is chilling to think that somebody simultaneously so lacking any shred of humanity and with such low intelligence could be walking amongst us.

Yep! It’s so wrong and part of the problem. One rule for them it seems.

What I find funny (not exactly funny as such but you know what I mean) is when those posters who enjoy slagging off disabled people get it back, they don’t like it and act all surprised like the only opinions that matter are theirs. But I guess you can’t expect too much from people like them..

I promise when I made the comment I was not being funny at all.

I actually read on here constantly the resentment of some people paying for others ie all the benefit slagging off threads.

Other threads people saying they have reduced their work to avoid tax cliff edges etc

I admit I didn't put alot of thought into it and yes I'm aware of course that taxation has been around a long time but I just thought how straightforward it would be if we all just paid for ourselves. Nobody would feel resentment and we wouldn't have all these benefit slagging threads because everyone would be self funding.

The other thing that prompted me to make a yes (naive) suggestion was how utterly useless this goverment is being. Why pay for a centralised state when they are making such a cock up of things.

I also believe people would work harder, be more responsible and plan better if they had nothing to fall back on but themselves or family.

Not such a mad plan. Most people would just save their tax and NI and use it wisely.

There is such an air of frustration in the country at the moment and whether we like it or not the current taxation model is failing because the number of people working v not working makes it not viable. Also we have a huge number of people leaving so much so they are introducing an 'exit tax' to try and stop them or at least grab some of their money before they go.

I'm quite sure with some thought all services could be made privately paid for.
So a football match - the clubs have to pay for the police to keep order.

I'm a victim of crime and call the police - I pay for them to come and deal with.
Supermarket shoplifting - the supermarket pays. Yes I know there are holes and yes so much more thought would have to go into it but given that we are commenting on yet another thread (dozens a day it seems) with people venting their frustrating at getting taxed more to pay for others, sick of disabled people and their cars, all the SEN kids and outrage at what people are getting in money etc

At the moment the budget, benefits, tax outrage, not wanting to pay for others is the most common topic on Mumsnet. I mean this one is isn't it.

I just thought with the current system not working, so many people not working v working and our debt growing each month we cannot carry on the way we are.

It seems people just want to slag off the current system and worry but not consider any other possible ideas or hybrid ideas. Fair enough.

I'll just go back to moaning then like everyone else.

Do you know whether that poster has dyslexia? Isn't mocking their spelling and grammar rather ableist?

So it is ok for the disabled and their carers to be ableists, pedants and academic snobs. Got it.