Making Ableism a crime

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Ableism, the discrimination against the disabled, should be a crime punishable by death.

Discuss.

Physical or verbal assault against a person's disability could be classified as a hate-crime....but death?

Discrimination is hard to prove and often needs to go to court with documentation and evidence.

Then everyone would be guilty of this crime and many people would be killed. Just because you have autism does not make you immune to being ableist yourself.

Punishable by death seems a bit extreme.

Once that law is passed prosecutors will be reluctant to prosecute because there would be
jury nullification on a massive scale. It is difficult as it is to prove intent to discriminate.

LOL i take it the punishable by death part is a joke. Some autistic people as League_Girl said are ableist themselves (discriminate against those with more severe symptoms)

Thinkinginpictures does not believe in personal responsibility in any form and is fundamentally against the death penalty.

Western justice centers on equivalence of crime and punishment. It is unnecessary and even excessive to pursue the dp for anything besides murder. Ableism, racism, sexism, etc. are little more than thoughtcrime. You don’t have to agree that they are evil, but at the same time there’s nothing you can do about these entirely mental concepts. Only when a crime is actually committed (murdering someone because, say, you hate Asians) can you actually be called upon to remedy it. But you punish actual crimes committed, not the thoughts behind the actions. Racism, misogyny, etc. don’t exist as crimes, and therefore there’s no such thing in objective reality as a hate crime. So putting ableists and racists to death is, despite how attractive it might appear to some, in reality pretty stupid.

I think the punishments for ableism should be:

A wheelchair over the foot

A cane to the head

A crutch to the head

A blow to the from an arm in a cast

Getting you foot stepped on by a foot in a cast

Why not simply cripple/maim/lobotomize them, making the offenders disabled themselves?

Well no I don't quite agree with the O.P.

Ableism should be addressed, but for sure I think penalizing it with death would be over-kill. Because what about like unintentional ableism, where the person thinks they are helping but they are just misguided on what actually helps, like I would not want a person like that to be killed for it. So yeah for sure I think right now its a bit too confusing and undefined to make specific laws for it.

Not to deny peoples experiences with ableism and such, but I think right now the better approach would be like advocacy and bringing it out into the open about what us autistics think. Because some people with abeleist views just don't really have any other frame of reference for like how autistic people or other disabled people deal with the world. So like they may legit think they are doing good without realizing some of their behavior could be harmful to the over-all disability community. So yeah I think death is for sure too harsh of a penalty because people who express ableist views are sometimes just ignorant and its not entirely their fault because not all media or like on t.v depictions are very accurate so it makes sense people could get the wrong idea.

I kind of think at this point it is just a conversation society as a whole needs to have, but I don't think like all 'ableists' are bad people, I think a lot of them are just a bit misguided and maybe haven't taken an opportunity to like listen to what the autistic experience or other disabled experiences are like from a person who actually has it. So I think sometimes it is legit like ignorance on their part, like they just don't know exactly how to think of it. I do follow just the general disability subreddit....and people in wheelchairs will say they understand some people are ignorant, but still bothers them seeing stuff of like how bad it is to be confined to a wheelchair from non disabled. Because for a lot of them having a good functional chair is a positive, like their limbs don't work so good so having that functional chair allows them to go out and do things they couldn't do if they were just at home confined to a bed. Its like to them having that chair is freedom, not a restriction. Its like people will try to say, how bad it is they have to rely on that, but from the person in the wheelchairs perspective it feels like you are dissing on something important to them, because they feel it gives the freedom to move about more and experince life rather than being stuck bedridden.e.

Like at the grocery store I saw someone that had some kind of physical disability, like they were in a chair and their limbs and stuff all twisted up looking, but he was using his chair to get groceries and had a service dog with him. But yeah like without that chair and service dog he probably could not go out to get his own groceries but with those aids he was able to. But really I guess the main take away I get from that forum is like disabled people just want to be treated normal. They don't want you to just assume they need help and grab their chair..I was actaully shocked of people complaining about that on there. Because I always thought it was common knowledge that you never touch someone's like disability aiding device unless they ask you to. So I was shocked about people in wheelchairs having to deal with strangers like touching their chair to 'help' and even sometimes just to move them out of the way . I just thought like WTF you never touch a persons wheelchair or cane or anything unless they ask you for help with it, and Idk I thought everyone knew that.

So no I would not say punish ableism with death, because first people have to learn what it even is. I mean I bet outside this forum or other places that are neurodiversity focused if you went and asked regular joe, what he thinks of ableism he may not even know what ableism is. So before we want to take it as far as having penalties for ableism people at least need to know what it even is first.

The DP for ableism, was meant as a provocation and also because I got very angry at the ableists.

I agree with Sweetleaf.

Well I think it was a good post, because this should be discussed for sure. And I get putting forward sort of an extreme of an idea just to generate conversation of the topic. Because yeah death on penalty of ableism is probably too harsh, but posting that way may have gained more attention for people to discuss the topic at hand even though you don't actually mean you support that extreme.

There should be a better term than “ableism” for those who scorn the disabled.

Because there’s nothing wrong with being “able.”

Disabled people are inevitably “able” at SOMETHING.

I am disabled mechanically, but able intellectually.

Clearer definitions of "Discrimination Against Disabled People" must be made.  For instance, let us start with a few obvious situations:

• Is it discrimination to dance with everyone except for those in wheelchairs?

• Is it discrimination to hire only sighted people to watch video monitors in a security center?

• Is it discrimination to initiate conversations with everyone except for those who can only stim and grunt?

I think the answer to each of these questions should be "No".

Last edited by Fnord on 28 Jun 2021, 8:48 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yes. Was just gonna say that the op should at least give examples.

I have never been clear myself as to just what exactly "ableism" is, and is not.

I wouldnt hire a blind person to be a limo driver. But a blind person might make a good musician, deejay, or even sculpture.

Designing a building without wheelchair ramps or handicapped accessible restrooms might be examples of "ableism".

But then that would be the opposite of other kinds of descrimination (you're supposed to ignore skin color and gender etc), because then problem is not that you are prejudiced against the handicaps of the handicapped, but that you ignore the handicaps of the handicapped.

Ableism seems to me to be a much more gray area than other forms of descrimination, because handicapped folks are by definition can be assumed to handicapped in SOME things, even if not in others- in ways that are not true of folks by race, gender, etc.

I thought of a couple more examples.  Is it discrimination to...

• ... NOT have a person with a speech impediment give a business presentation?

• ... insist that the same person give the presentation after he/she has asked to be excused from doing so?