Never be the person that comes out of a handicap stall to see a girl in a wheelchair waiting on you….especially if every other stall is open.
With hate,
The sick girl in the wheelchair who sat outside the handicap stall for 10 minutes waiting on a hospital staff member to stop doing her hair in the handicap stall mirror.P.s yes, I purposely sit right there to make you feel bad…because you should.
While able-bodied people do use those stalls, so too do those with invisible illnesses for several reasons. I had this happen to me and I had been sitting in the stall crying barely able to walk and in some of the worst pain I’ve ever been in. I came out to get a lecture. She didn’t even care that my makeup had run all over my face and I had clearly been crying. I tried to explain about how the school’s bathrooms are so old and my legs couldn’t handle the very limited space the normal stalls offered that day, how just wearing clothes hurt. I tried to explain I’d been sick all my life, that I was on chemo, that I wanted to die I was in so much pain all the time. She just rolled her eyes and waited until I washed my hands, watching me with hate as I left the bathroom. When I got home, I seriously debated killing myself. I was failing medications. I was missing so much grad school. I was being ostracized by fellow students and ill people alike. I was living, a part of both worlds but not accepted by either. Later that week, I began the worst flare up of my entire life. I barely slept. I was covered in rash from head to toe and neither nakedness nor clothing was comfortable. I barely saw my now-fiance, the one person who can help me feel better, because I thought he would judge me too. I didn’t want him to see me that sick. I didn’t want him to leave me like I wanted to leave myself.
I am 25 now and though this happened a few years ago it haunts me still.
I’m sorry you had to wait so long for the bathroom. You could’ve said something. The woman I encountered could’ve said something. If the woman you encountered was doing her hair, her makeup, then she is wrong. I’ve encountered the same people when I need to use the handicapped or more accessible stalls myself - people who think those stalls exist for holding their purses while they do their hair in the mirror across the way instead of for people to actually go to the bathroom. It’s incredibly frustrating. I understand I have the luxury of being able to manage in a smaller stall sometimes, and people in wheelchairs don’t. But every time I get upset at things like this, I try to remember how unfairly I was judged, how someone else with an illness decided to yell at me instead of using compassion and noticing how loud my cries were in that stall, how smeared my makeup was. I don’t expect any person to be okay with waiting like that and I would’ve been upset too. But it’s not okay to judge people based on their appearances alone.
Handicaps aren’t always as visible as a wheelchair or a cane. I wish others could see the looks I get when I have to use my handicapped parking placard or when I give in to use my cane. I’ve had cops call me out. I’ve gotten stares from old ladies and Vietnam vets. They don’t even have to say what they’re thinking because their faces show - “She’s not handicapped. She’s using her father/grandfather/mother/great-grandmother’s placard illegally. She’s too young to have issues of this magnitude.” They don’t realize how hard it was for me to get the blue hanger, how many years I had to wait, how many years I thought about how I wasn’t bad enough to need it, how I still use it sparingly even in flare-ups. They don’t know how autoimmune arthritis types like Still’s disease can kill, let alone about the physical pain and deformity it has already caused me in 20 years. They don’t know I’ve been sick since I was 5, never remembering being normal or not being in pain.
No one understands what it is like to be ill when people think you look fine.
where is the fucking warning that says “this is irreversible”
My spouse mentioned tiny Lego pieces and their irreversible sticking powers in their wedding vows to me. ^_^
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How some Yemeni parents warn their children, according to activist Farea al-Muslimi testifying on the use of drones. (via The Washington Post) If feel like there are to many people that think this is humorous. The fact is, while American parents get the luxury of saying, “I’m going to tell Santa Clause.” Yemeni parents (and many like them) are so steeped in real life daily deaths that they don’t have the luxury of make believe. It seems that there are also plenty of people who think holding threats of death over your child to get them to sleep is “Going to far.” Well, to you I say, fuck you. The VERY sad fact is, the fear of Santa taking away your presents and the fear of being killed are completely equal threats in the lives of each perspective child. THAT is what you should be thinking is “Going to far.” But no… bad parents and stuff. (via racismschool) |
He asked me, “Well, what if you found out that the trans woman you were attracted to still had a penis?”
I laughed and replied that I am attracted to people, not disembodied body parts. And I would be a selfish, ignorant, and unsatisfying lover if I believed that my partner’s genitals existed primarily for my pleasure rather than her own.
All that you ever need to know about genitals is that they are made up of flesh, blood, and millions of tiny, restless nerve endings- anything else that you read into them is mere hallucination, a product of your own overactive imagination.
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“Whipping Girl” by Julia Serano, Love Rant (via pavelchekovbodypillow) (via boyqueen) |
Guy: What’s your preferred pronoun?
My friend: They/them/their, please!
Guy: So the sentence would have to be rearranged, and you prefer being plural?
My friend: I mean I’m still one person. I’d rather fuck with grammar than constantly be referred to as the wrong gender.
I’d rather fuck…
I’d rather fuck with grammar than constantly be referred to as the wrong gender.
