This week, a close friend of mine who runs the Casual Ableism Instagram and Facebook page received a comment on a post from another disabled person, asking if their page was satire.

This was the original post:

I’ve been a follower of the page for some time. I admire how it helps amplify voices from within our community, allows us to highlight the problems we face in society and gives the public in general an opportunity to learn why certain behaviours are just plain wrong.

The page gets a lot of support from influential people in our community such as Sam Renke and Gem of Wheelsnoheels because it’s important, valuable and due to the sad state of the world, necessary.

I’ve often said that I enjoy movies and TV shows where the disabled characters aren’t all portrayed as pure and innocent, see this clip from the BBC show Jerk for a great example (WARNING: Crude language). The fact is we’re human, we can be all manner of things, even assholes as this commenter goes on to confirm.

I’ve chosen to omit the poster’s name and profile details, as it’s not important.

Casual Abelism replied in a polite manner, as I’ve come to expect. Explaining the purpose of the page being to highlight ableism. Only to be told well, just look…

Ableism does not exist.

‘That’s not even a real thing.’ Now that’s a bold statement, ignorant and factually inaccurate but bold. The fact is, we wish it wasn’t a thing but it damn well is.

If you have a disability and haven’t encountered ableism, I’m happy for you but I don’t expect your streak of luck to continue. We still have a long way to go before society gets rid of this very real problem.

Ableism is something many of our community will deal with. This could be bullying, hate speech, being overlooked in the work place, being excluded from events and locations many take for granted, or, as in the case of a neighbour of mine, being beaten to death for having a learning disability. This happened when I was a kid, it’s no less harrowing now. All for little more than daring to be born with a disability.

Now it’s one thing to be a keyboard warrior, but another to actively try to damage the credibility of this page – which won’t work. Ableism is real, don’t even try to pretend it isn’t.

The slight on the page was also doubled down on in their story post. See below:

‘It’s basically when someone is “racist” a.k.a “ableist towards a handicap person’ Setting aside the intersectionality of the two, it’s really not. This lack of understanding and your need to attack members of our community is shameful.

Calling people who’ve been damaged by ableist behaviour snowflakes is insulting, degrading and trivialises all we’ve had to endure.

As time passes your comments will fade, and Casual Ableism will grow in relevance, so you’ve made zero impact short of feeling like the big man for 5 minutes. Congratulations.

However, despite your terrible attitude, this community will always welcome you because that’s what we do, but for now we’ve greater battles to fight, so we won’t waste time with small fries.

When you’re ready to accept you’re part of our community, we’ll welcome you gladly.

If you don’t already, please follow Casual Ableism on Instagram and Facebook.

And if you’re in the market for something to show having MD doesn’t stop you kicking ass, please check out the Teespring Store. I’ve recently added some cool stickers 😁

Thanks for reading.

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