I hate discrimination against the disabled

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It does make me feel very angry when I hear stories of people in this day in age with asperger's, autism, and other disabilities being discriminated against, being criticised and abused by narrow-minded random members of the public, being targeted by haters in the real world and online. I wish it would stop, Why are still not always being treated equally and like everyone else. I feel I have had it happen to me. It does make my blood boil.

I don't really want to be treated like everyone else, because most other people treat each other like crap too. IMO having more grace, forgiveness, compassion, etc. for the ways that people with autism and other disabilities aren't able to be "normal" is good for everyone, because everyone will at some point have a way that they can't meet other people's desires and expectations, and then they will want grace and compassion for themselves as well.

I've been watching videos about people who have to deal with entitled parents and their kids, and there was one where a server at a steak house was deaf and apparently their disability upset the child who was maybe 8 years old but didn't know what deafness is and the mother won't explain it to her. And then the manager tells the server to apologize to them, but the server refused to apologize for being deaf. It was a disaster.

Did the mom actually think her kid was too young to understand what deaf means? Thanks to Sesame Street I'm sure I learned what it was when I was 6 or 7.

Sometimes it is not clear what "discrimination" is

"Reasonable accommodation"? "Reasonable" is vague

I take discrimination as a grain of salt now because I see it being thrown around. Like maybe someone does sexual harassment and they get called out on it and instead of apologizing for coming off that way and saying it was not their intention, they say they got discriminated just because they are autistic and they expected the person to just know they are autistic and know their intention when in fact people have no way of knowing just by looking at you. That was not discrimination because if you did that as an NT, same consequence would occur. You got treated equal, you were treated as a human. You only made a mistake and got called on it. Hey if an awkward NT did it and got called on it, they would have no excuse so they would apologize and feel bad for coming off that way.

I remember being at a Pizza Hut when I was ten and I had this grown man staring at me and nodding his head. he wouldn't take his eyes off me and it made me feel uncomfortable. I told my mom and she looked at him and could tell he was off and told me he probably doesn't notice me and said he had problems and his family was so wonderful taking him out in public. I was confused and couldn't understand why my mom didn't care so she told me again that maybe he thinks I am a tree or a plant, he probably doesn't notice me and he is just staring my direction and doesn't see me. I got out of my chair and walked behind his table and he never turned his head and he kept on staring that direction and nodding his head. My mom was right, he wasn't looking at me and nodding his head.

I think now the man might have been autistic and that was one of his stims. But I was only ten so to me he looked like a grown normal man creeping on me. Just imagine how that family would have felt if my mom couldn't tell either he was off so she complains to the management about that man harassing me and making me uncomfortable, then that family would have been confronted and the mother and father might have been very upset for their son being so misunderstood. Even if they do explain his disability and that he means no harm, they are still asked to leave or they choose to leave on their own because the confrontation upset them so much. They might cry discrimination even though someone had no way of knowing their grown son was handicapped and had no way of reading his mind to see his intention. Would it have been discrimination or just a big misunderstanding?

My mom had worked with mentally ill people and the disabled long before I was born so she knew what it looked like in people. She didn't use any labels for the man. She only said he had problems and probably doesn't notice me and the family was wonderful for taking him out and he was a lucky person to have a family that loves him and take him out.

But sad thing is people always take feelings first and don't care about intention because apparently, it's invalidating your feelings if people try to explain intention to you like "Oh this man is autistic and this is what he always does so he wasn't staring at you, this is one of his autistic repetitive behaviors he always does and he often stars straight ahead, he isn't looking at anyone directly." It sucks.

I had an unusual experience at a museum a year ago. You need to show your admission ticket to get into a certain gallery there where they have especially valuable paintings so I happily went up to the person sitting at the door, as I always do and showed my ticket, and asked him a question to the effect of which direction did I turn to see a certain painting, but then he handed me this clipboard with a lot of zzzz writing on it that explained that he was deaf and that I should write my question to him and then handed me a tablet you write on with a stylus and gestured to me to write down my question, but I was in hurry and the question wasn't that important as I was going to be late for a meeting, so I just kind of shrugged, handed it back and started to head into the gallery, but then he ran after me and stopped me and wrote s-l-ow-l-y on the tablet: "Why were you so rude?" And he expected me to write him an answer back on the tablet. Ha ha. Also, I can touch strange pens, but this particular pen was VERY dirty. I could feel the scum on it from so many people handling it---not my imagination. The incident was so outrageous and disturbing that I mentioned it to someone in customer service who was standing there as I was leaving, and I suggested the door person was too involved and should maybe be placed at another station where he didn't feel compelled to engage people in that way, and the person I told this to acted like the deaf guy was their poor disabled emotional treasure and I was discriminating against him. Nothing of the kind. I was just in a hurry and needed to proceed into the gallery and was originally feeling complete equanimity toward this person. BAAAD experience! Plus this was enabling this particular deaf guy and encouraging him in some kind of personality disorder.

This.




"Discrimination" is by definition, wrong

However, "discrimination" is vague.

Some people use the word "discrimination" to justify things that are not justified


Likewise, "disrespect", "rude", "mean", "hurt" sound bad and wrong. But some people loudly label anything they don't like as "disrespectful"




Thus claiming the moral high road

To the OP:

Don't hate.
Educate.

A museum enabled a deaf person with some kind of personality disorder. Dysfunctional people used a dysfunctional disabled person, but they were both complicit. Like I said, on some level, he was their little pet. Sick and sad. Of course this is not always the case, but I think it happens more than people realize, especially since the people who are doing it do not realize they are doing it. Can happen with autistic people, too.

It was not so much about the deaf person labeling me as rude, but that he was facilitated to think of himself as both weak and entitled by the staff of the museum. I see some of that tendency here, too (though I will not point it out), but there is also good facilitation in what seems to me to be a more healthy direction, and the latter is to me joyful.

Bea

Not everyone is receptive to education

BeaArthur, the original poster only said that they hate the act of discrimination, not the perpetrator. There is nothing wrong with that. You can hate the act and still feel compassion for and try to educate the person. Or, like shortfatbalduglyman said, you can realize that some are a lost cause or too toxic to try and deal with.

Zinnia86, you are lucky if the only "discrimination" that you see and experience is more grace, forgiveness, compassion, etc. for the ways that people with autism and other disabilities are not able to be "normal". Many people experience the opposite: being told that they are less than other people, a burden or danger to others, should not be allowed in public or allowed to procreate...

Oh, that wasn't what I meant. Sorry if my post wasn't very clear. I am fully aware that serious discrimination against people with disabilities occurs all the time and I agree with the original poster that it sucks and is frustrating. I only meant that in my opinion, people who have more grace for people with disabilities are helping to create a world where they themselves will be able to experience grace some day when they need it. That's why we should all be compassionate and forgiving toward each other. It's idealistic, I know, but that's me

I don't understand your point. I never accused OP of hating people vs hating an act or a fact. I only meant that the energy that goes, futilely, into frustration and hate could be better spent changing the world in a better direction.

Evidently my pithy aphorism ("Don't hate. Educate.") was too pithy for some of the literal-minded people in WP. If my pithy aphorism offend thee, then pass it right over. It don't make no never-mind to me.

But on a personal note ... I'm getting kind of sick of people posting that they hate this or that or them or those.

It's unnecessarily negative. Seeing that sentiment relied upon over and over makes me want to stop participating. Which I'm sure would suit some people just fine.

The way threads can evolve on WP these days is interesting, Sometimes I don't get the nuance right away and/or tend to skip over stuff as I read too fast, so the recent messages were helpful. To the OP, if you care to share, what does being treated equally mean to you? If someone does not have a developed discriminative faculty and is making false correlations, over-generalizing, reacting out of anger, maybe, even surely, it is because they are in some way disabled, so could being angry at said people also be a form of discrimination?