The opposite of ableism

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No way no how am I a nerd, but my list of Facebook friends has more than doubled since joining a Facebook group that talks about high range IQ tests and intelligence.

I was always smart at school/uni.

And bad at sport at school. And never one of the 'popular kids' (which didn't refer to number of friends, I had as many as any popular kid, just which clique it was - the cliques were in a hierarchy*).

Then when I went to school where geeky kids got bullied, I got bullied. Never got bullied before that.

I was also always into stuff like spec fic. My dream job was professional scrabble player... I was really good at it at the time, I'd regularly get 1000+ points when playing solitaire Scrabble and 300-500 points against an opponent.

Obviously (username checks out), I also liked watching sport. But I was pretty much a stereotypical nerdy kid.

Nothing wrong with a primary school kid who prefers the library to the soft play area. Although mum pushed that more than I'd naturally prefer one to the other. Not out of pushiness just cos she's deaf in one ear and she had sensory issues herself in soft play areas.

*Tbh though we were little intellectual snobs. My friend used to refer to anyone who got A*s regularly as 'high fliers'. He was one such 'high flier'...

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Last edited by skibum on 02 Nov 2020, 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think that is quite what is happening. I think when you realize that you have a legitimate reason for having the issues, you feel a sense of relief, like it's not your fault. People feel badly about themselves when they believe that the issue is their fault, like they are somehow causing it. But when you realize that it's a medical issue or in our case, a neurological issue, you understand that you didn't cause it, so you don't have to hate yourself for it.

Or...

Sun Tzu said you should "know the enemy and know yourself". I thought it was wonderful to finally know what was working against me. I finally had a name for and a lot more information about the hidden "enemy" (though I think after more than six decades together we may have moved to a friendlier basis).

If you want a more peaceful picture, I seemed to be on a different path than everyone around me. It was nice to find out what path I was traveling.

"Focus more on ability and less on disability", is buying right into the ableist propaganda. Ableism is discrimination against people with disability. Ableist government policy is kicking more disabled people off welfare and forcing us to take any job. We need to be left alone and not punished by uncaring governments that push ableism.

The opposite of Ableism is not buying into the anti-disabled, ableist propaganda. When you or other people have a disability we need understanding and support instead of the ignorance of ableism. An ableist is unlikely to have a disability and is insensitive to the needs of people with disability.