'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?

To compare that to someone with late stage MS whose medical notes have been lost, or a wheelchair user who is deemed fit for work, or someone with a congenital disorder who is undiagnosed due to NHS waiting lists, or really any person with an actual disability who can't or doesn't want to have to prove it, is horribly offensive.

I get it is offensive to compare transabled with disabled just as it is to compare Transwomen and women. But we have to be able to prove the distinction and ‘identifying as’ doesn’t allow this. Being undiagnosed does not prevent you from proving disability: indeed you can claim DLA without a diagnosis.

Medical evidence of disability is not one and the same as a diagnosis. There are many profoundly disabled children who will never receive a diagnosis but have masses of evidence of disability.

I think MsMaisel that the first effects of transableism will be showcased at the next Paralympics. I really do not think that people will be hurting themselves to be able to qualify for the meagre benefits offered.

Lots of us thought that men would not be allowed to compete against women, and then they were.

I have an undiagnosed child and no horse in this race. Unless I can id as a horse.

The whole “this could never happen” thing bothers me. I have precious few privileges as a disabled person as it is. Even they are often claimed by questionable self identifiers; people without blue badges taking parking places for instance.

To take the whole thing to the absurd level it has reached with the transgender issue would mean that “disabled” like “sex” would cease to have be a term with any meaning. And disabled people, like women, would lose services, spaces and awards.

I suppose that would save the government a lot of money.

There are already issues with perceived cheating in the paralympics. Athletes claiming that other athletes are presenting their disability as worse than it is in order to be put into a category where they will find it easier to gain success.

Why is it dangerous?

I mean, can you even imagine a situation where an athlete goes on TV and announces "I'm 100% able-bodied, there's not a single thing wrong with me, but in my heart I always felt aligned with disabled people, and I'm so proud that finally the Paralympic Committee has recognised that able-bodied people are equally valid as disabled"? No, of course not.

But right now we have men announcing that in their hearts they have always been women and they are happy to be competing in sport as women.

No, a few years ago I never would have imagined that either. But now I am much more suspicious. Many people would do anything to gain some sort of advantage for themselves.

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 mean, can you even imagine a situation where an athlete goes on TV and announces "I'm 100% able-bodied, there's not a single thing wrong with me, but in my heart I always felt aligned with disabled people, and I'm so proud that finally the Paralympic Committee has recognised that able-bodied people are equally valid as disabled"? No, of course not

Yes, the equivalent here is "My penis is female".

I do think we should ask questions about the way we've been inclined to use language like "identify as". There ay have been good reasons that people started doing it, or it may have been meant to be kind. I'm not convinced it is really useful or ads clarity. I think there are other ways we could talk about problems that don't meet medical definitions. And I think maybe it would be a good idea generally to consider whether using language you don't prefer is really something to get upset about.

I would take that article with a serious pinch of salt. It's only one person's opinion, after all, and people write all kinds of utter shite online.

Yes, I lnow how to set academic work in context: I work in academia, which is why I was able do gain institutional access to the article to read it.

This has been published in a peer-reviewed journal - it's hardly the same as kids pretending on Tumblr that they're unicorns. The author has a body of work in this area and (judging from the reference list) is not alone in writing about this. So he's not just anyone crank (which doesn't mean that his argument isn't bollocks!)

What I'm sceptical of is the existence of transabled people who are analogous to transwomen, e.g. people who freely admit that biologically they are X, but that they identify as Y, and that their self-identity means they are just as valid as Y as people who are biologically Y. I mean, transwomen don't pretend to be natal women, and despite talk about periods most don't have delusions that they are actual natal women.

The thing is, this is exactly what some of them do think, judging from what they say. Yes, some.transwomen may freely admit that they are biologically male, but their response is to claim that they are actually female, that they are somehow (in a way that has nothing to do with biology) women. This is where the whole "trapped in the wrong body" and "lady brain" narratives come in. They are really female, and if biology doesn't bear this out, then it's biology, and our definition of "woman" that must be at fault.

In directly parallel with this, there are transdisabled people who, although they admit their bodies are not disabled, feel that they are in some sense really disabled (they were born in the wrong body, they have "disabled brain" etc). It's just that biological reality doesn't bear this out, so biological reality must be altered to make it fit with internal identity. As far as I can see this is directly comparable with transgender discourse. One of the reasons that it sounds so alien, I think, is that although society has now absorbed the idea of gender as separate from sex (and this the idea that the two can be misaligned), we don't have any concept of "disabled ID" that is comparable with gender. Our understanding of disability - even mental disability, chronic pain or neurolodiversity - is still inextricably bound up with the body.

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

Agree, consider this:

Disabled people are dying in their thousands, and able-bodied people are arguing against actual disabled people (and being abusive when disabled people try to give their own opinions and experiences) that the burden of proof should be even higher, that disabled people should not even be allowed to ask for access accommodation at work, or reveal their disability socially, without medical evidence?

Is this not the same as the TRAs ‘suicide’ argument?

If no evidence is required then anyone can claim to be disabled and no one can disprove it, and that includes transabled. If ‘work’ refuses to make accommodations and it ends in court then which side wins if no evidence is required? How does the transabled individual who identifies as disabled differ from someone who identifies as disabled but with no medical evidence of this? Ultimately disabled people will lose out.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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?

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.

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")

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.