Eb: This might be made clear in my follow-up post, but I don't think it's denial. I think it's a result of the attitudes that underlie devaluing Disabled people to begin with. That is, that being "less capable" and "needing help" makes someone less valuable and less worth treating well.

Stop telling disabled people they have to wait for a more accessible world. The wait has been long enough.

It’s been more than a year for some users on here. The internet has existed for literal decades. Why do you think people should have to wait for access.

What abled people don’t understand is that at some point in life we will all be disabled, whether by age or injury, temporarily or permanently. Protecting disabled people and including them makes a safer, more inclusive, and healthier society that everyone benefits from.

While this is certainly true, it also sucks that we have to keep telling people 'you will one day also need this' to get them to care about us.

Unfortunately, even resorting to self-interested motivations doesn’t seem to work as far as getting the message across.

I call this tactic "Momento Disability" and from years of observation I don't think it works and it can, in fact, backfire. Most people are aware they will someday be elderly should they live that long and they do not treat seniors better.

Denial is a very very powerful drug.

This might be made clear in my follow-up post, but I don't think it's denial. I think it's a result of the attitudes that underlie devaluing Disabled people to begin with. That is, that being "less capable" and "needing help" makes someone less valuable and less worth treating well.

Without changing a person's underlying mainstream default ableist attitudes about Disabled people, the awareness that one could join the ranks of those who are less valuable and less worth good treatment works to stimulate fear and loathing toward that group now, rather than compassion.

I think the two are connected. On the one hand eugenics socialization that puts the blame on the disabled person and frames them as lesser and deserving of their condition. On the other, denial around one’s own ability to become disabled, which you rightly point out leads to fear and projection.

I do think people have a tendency to believe that being healthy will protect them, but I also think that, to the extent they accept they will inevitably become Disabled (e.g. with age), they have been conditioned to believe that being Disabled will make them worth less than non-Disabled people.

And I just realized one way we can see this, which is what happens when people become newly Disabled. It can take /years/ of work to accept and worth through internalized ableism and hopefully come out the other side /not/ thinking they're worth less as a Disabled person than they were before.

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