'Transablism' is now a thing?!

[mackerella]

Is this the logical conclusion of self-ID? Able-bodied people who identify as disabled are complaining that they are excluded from disabled communities and disability studies

mobile.twitter.com/PankhurstEM/status/1155275175161675776

As a parent of a disabled child (and the daughter of a disabled parent!) I can't even express how angry this is making me feel. But it may peak trans another few people?

I do agree MsMaisel, diagnosis is not a straight forward process for a number of conditions. There does need to be some gatekeeping, otherwise systems will be abused, however, access to assessment and diagnosis need to be improved to ensure that people don't miss out.

I dislike the "do you identify as/do you consider yourself to be disabled" question. I answer No because that seems the 'correct' answers for me to those specific questions.

However if the question is 'might you need us to make any reasonable adjustments to accommodate any condition or disability to make things fully accessible for you' then the answer would be Yes as I am on the autistism spectrum and whilst 90% of the time I manage fine, sometimes things get too much and I need some kind of adjustment. I bloody don't identify as anything though, and I consider myself me. I believe as a pp mentioned, there are some people who are deaf and similarly don't consider themselves disabled but rather thar their first language is sign language.

I have read the thread.

I speak as the mother of a disabled child. Who died of complications arising from his condition, after some years.

Correct me if I'm wrong, anyone.

But now that queer theory is merrily fucking up the definitions of "woman" and "man" and "female" and "male"; what next, eh?

Screw up the accepted definition of "disabled", "disability"; using the language of trans?

This smells to me like "queering", again.

Seen several red flags on this thread already.

But if you queer the language, then we will never have any evidence. That is the point I am valiantly trying to make.
If we say Twaw, then there will never be evidence of men who identify as women influencing rape statistics, or public toilet assaults.
There are plenty of examples where the "identify as" language is making it impossible to discern the extent of a demographic. The Scottish transgender survey showing over 50% of trans people identifying as disabled is an example. How can we trust that statistic now? It is simply not reliable.
There are plenty of individuals identifying as disabled. Of course with individuals it is not appropriate to question their veracity (even when it's Lily Madigan) , therefore even further normalising the "identify as" paradigm.

Also I'll say it again, because I think it's relevant. There is already a sizable transabled community (currently called pension cheats or worksafe fiddlers or whatever) who would weaponise the language to assert their right to inclusion, and even assert their privilege over others.
There is the potential there.

Also I think belittling people who don't have the understanding of identity politics phrases is akin to telling uneducated or limited English speaking women to suck it up if they don't know what a cervix-haver is.

As soon as ruling authorities accept "I identify as" rather than actual reality - then we all have a problem.

Wow, I seem to have set the cat among the pigeons here!

MsMaisel I have read and absorbed what you have been saying (and I have also revised my initially ignorant idea about who these "transabled" people are following your posts - as you say, the consensus seems to be that they are mainly people with BIID). I wish that I could be as confident as you that there is no threat here but I think about how quickly the whole TWAW/self-ID debate blew up in this country and I'm not so sure. I appreciate your point of view as a disabled person, but I am also trying to advocate for my disabled DS (at least until he is old enough to advocate for himself). I hope you don't see that as failing to centre disabled people in this discussion - I'm speaking on behalf of my son because he's too young to speak for himself (although he's starting to be a great advocate for his needs - and also to notice the ways in which he's excluded from things because of thoughtlessness or poor planning - what you might call the social model of disability).

(Incidentally, my son is also VI (severely sight impaired) and autistic, Deathwish - hello fellow parent! His VI is as a result of cancer so, although I'm not disabled myself, I do feel that I've had an opportunity to observe how society treats different types of disability - childhood cancer, sensory impairment and "invisible" developmental disability. There's definitely a difference, and it seems to have more to do with how other people perceive the disability than with how it actually affects my DS. There's also a difference depending on how "tangible" and "provable" the disability is...)

Anyway, I have downloaded the paper in my OP (apologies for not linking to it directly) and am slowly reading it. If it would be useful, I can recap the author's argument and post some quotes.

I do agree with MsMaisel that it's unhelpful to conflate people with BIID (which causes severe psychiatric distress) with benefits cheats. The trans analogy would perhaps be that the former are more akin to "old school transsexuals" with BDD/GD and that the latter are like those who cynically abuse the system to exploit others (Karen White, JY, etc)

Yes society treats disabled people differently. The loudest most articulate voices that come from a place of privilege will always be more likely to be listened to.
Someone whose disability meant they would once have been permanently institutionalised, and who face a higher incidence of violence and death from the police, might be understandably ruffled that their status has been appropriated to access benefits created for them. They are also more likely to be cautious than those whose disability would not have seen them locked up and mistreated.

I wasn't trying to bring everything back to benefit cheats - quite the opposite! I was agreeing with you that it's unhelpful to lump the two cases together because benefit cheats are just that - cheats!

If you read my posts, you'll see that my son has multiple disabilities (for which we claim benefits). I am well aware how difficult it is to get such benefits and how high the burden of proof is I am also aware that the fraud rate - despite what is claimed in the Daily Mail etc - is very low, one of the lowest rates of all benefits types.

But then you argue that trans people who explicitly access benefits reserved for women are not true trans. You are gatekeeping trans, and we know that in transgender ideology we now have "acceptance without exception". This may happen in disability. The road has been prepared as you are clearly showing.

We should not be wary of discussing privileged people appropriating marginalised identities for personal gain.

On the other hand, if we are heading towards self-ID for disabilities (I'm not saying we are necessarily, or that that's what BIID is), then the logical conclusion is that it's not up to you to exclude classes of people from being disabled. That's the point! In fact, isn't that essentially the "no true Scotsman" argument that TRAs often use? I.e. that any self-declared TW who abuses that status to gain access to women is not "really" trans...

X-posted with terfsandwich, but I think we're making the same point.

Nobody's saying that disabled people don't have the right to speak for themselves.
The fact is, as mothers and carers, we have always tried to campaign, despite being totally knackered, for the rights of the profoundly disabled people in our care
It's just that with "identify as disabled" and "transabled", we have spotted the pattern, and we are advising you to be careful.

Yes, I think it is the same point. I was meaning that if you argue that disability pension cheats do not resemble Laurel Hubbard for example, then you fail to see the patterns or the logical consequences.

That would require such a massive sociocultural shift and basically ignore thousands of years of disability perception, the chance of that happening imo is nearly zero

Another salient link to transgender ideology and queer theory.

A psychologist told me that an able-bodied person who is convinced they are disabled, ie. with Munchausens, IS to all extents and purposes having that disability, because they are disabled by their own self-perception.
So there you have it, thousands of years turned on its head.