Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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Honestly I think a lot of people who have never made a gif for tumblr don't get that it does actually take time and effort, its not just rip it from a video and post it- you have to download the video, in my case I have a video player installed that grabs continuous caps, figure out what parts you need, you have to open those in photoshop or gimp, depending on where you got photoshop you might be paying for it every month and then on top of that is actually sizing, cropping, colouring, sharpening, adding text, etc. etc. like it is something that takes time and effort for which the only real reward is creating something that makes you happy and hopefully people reblog it with a nice or funny tag, so maybe keep that in mind the next time you think gif makers are being mean or unfair for being upset about reposts. It is its own little artform that is fairly unique to this website, and that's a big aspect of why I have always loved tumblr, if all the gifmakers stopped posting things would be a lot more boring around here.
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A few additional and random sketches of Gale. I couldn't do more this week due to that whole art theft situation (I can't thank you enough for your help with this nightmare ❤️).
(sorry for the bad quality, most of them were pencil sketches I quickly lined and colored on csp)
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new ps5 game made me watch spiderverse again and i’ve been obsessed about both for a good month now
insomniac miles version and bg only under cut!
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robin cross and kevin day parallels actually go so crazy. they both spent their formative years in a basement underground with exy-obsessed captors. they both saw exy as freedom. they both were isolated even within the foxes’ group of outcasts. they were both under andrew’s protection. it cost kevin jean to leave the nest and it cost robin another girl’s life to escape her kidnapper. robin carried her racquet with her to self-soothe and kevin restrings the net of his when he’s anxious. they’re even bird coded
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