thatdiabolicalfeminist:

There’s this ableist idea that the default is for people to have zero disabilities
and mental illnesses. That’s why there’s a concept of there being
“too many diagnoses” – because people totally assume there’s like, a Perfectly
Normal Human to begin with and that that idealized body has zero brain
issues or disabilities.

And that’s so wrong. That’s just as wrong
as assuming non-intersex, cishet middle-class white guys are the
Perfectly Normal Human of which everyone else is an imperfect copy.

We’re not made from a mould. We have endless variations
and they aren’t divergence from some Perfectly Normal Copy,
they’re literally the way life functions. There is no perfect copy. There are only variations, some of which have the privilege of being normalized.

But privileged people
see themselves as the default, and “too many differences” can seem “made up” to them, because they’re not used to relating to people who are different. Unfortunately we mentally ill/disabled
people absorb this idea too and it’s really hard to unlearn it when
we’re stuck in a society that’s constantly reinforcing it.

We
have to be gentle with ourselves and with each other and work on
normalizing variations like mental illnesses, disabilities, etc., so the
focus can be on meeting the needs of people who have them instead of
just surviving ableism.