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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I get that calling white lotus lbh a sticky little 'sheep' is a canon translation and stuck in the fandom now anyway, but I do feel the intended spirit of the original word wasn't the sheeple/dumb herd animal that's more common in the western world, but instead something actually conveying sweetness, innocence, purity and youth - lamb.
Famous for being utterly adorable and following around their mothers, gambolling in sunny meadows, curly white wool shining.
And NOW we can talk about black sheep/wolf in sheep's clothing metaphors.
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every time a dentist tries to helpfully give me Basic Hygiene Tips it makes me want to give up entirely tbh. i brush twice a day and use a special mouthwash and floss every night and own a nice tongue scraper and what i get for my trouble is fillings and root canals and reminders to floss, the same thing i got in my wayward youth of sleeping all day and brushing once a week. why am i even bothering.
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Me: hm, I want something to put on the TV as background noise... Huh. Looks like YouTube is recommending something called The Last Unicorn. That's perfect, it's probably some old shitty animation that has aged poorly! I can watch it ironically!
Me, 2 hours later as the credits roll: *crying, cheering, buying the book, composing the songs*
Me, 2 weeks later: So I have compiled all of the quotes from the book that I think could make good tattoos, and also, HOW HAVE I NEVER LEARNED ABOUT HOW THE LAST UNICORN FUCKING SLAPS??? This gay-ass little fairytale fed my soul! Watered my crops! Transed my gender! Can't believe I heard of this story from youtube recommendations, of all places!!
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mom avoids dead anime mom curse because he transitions. he’s always had a complicated relationship with pregnancy because of how woefully little people are told about potential complications and aftercare, and also because of how gendered it is, so after the birth of his second child he’s finally had it and decides to transition
he joins a local community group for mothers and at first it’s played for laughs how often they fall to the dead mom curse, but soon we find out more about how society has failed mothers and people who give birth, from information being withheld, procedures being carried out without consent, lack of accommodations and maternal and paternal leave, racism…
it also turns out that becoming a man doesn’t help with this, not really, because being a pregnant trans man brings its own problems. follow along as he learns more about being a parent and a mother, and maybe even… finding love???
coming to you never because I can’t write!
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I have a folder on Pinterest called “why do they look like that” full of official one piece art where they’re just… in atrocious outfits. And I’ve been wanting to draw them so so bad so here the first of hopefully a few! Starting with the notorious nerd ass Law. I wanted to make it more him and see if it was really so bad. It’s not! He’s cute! (Click for quality cause tumblr said “No.” )
Original undercut.
He looks absolutely ridiculous, I love it.
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