#by stigmatising ultimately harmless traits/behaviours and calling them childish

[swordsonnet]

when talking about topics like maturity and (self-)infantilisation, it's important to remember that there will always be disabled adults for whom the "normal" benchmarks of adulthood are not attainable or even applicable at all. if you want to be an ally to disabled people, you need to support all of us, not just the ones you find palatable - and that includes people who have "childish" interests, who get very emotional about seemingly trivial things, who aren't able to be independent in the way that adults are expected to be. that doesn't mean that we "need to grow up", or that we're reverting to a childlike state to avoid our responsibilities, or whatever op-ed writers think is wrong with gen z these days. it's just the way we are, and liking plushies or struggling with certain tasks doesn't in fact make us children! disabled adults are still adults, and still deserving of dignity, regardless of whether or not we can live up to the rigid societal norms of what it means to be an adult.

#still kinda pissed off at that article thats going around atm #it made a few half-decent points but they were buried under a mountain of bullshit #if youre writing about how young adults deny themselves agency by engaging in childlike activities #and you dont acknowledge the way that disabled people are constantly infantilised by abled society just for existing #and often have limited agency to begin with because it was forcibly taken from us #and you dont even question the value of forcing a normative timeline of development onto the vast diversity of humanity #but instead uncritically use this questionable model to further contribute to the infantilisation of disabled people #by stigmatising ultimately harmless traits/behaviours and calling them childish #then you havent just missed the point - you were aiming in the opposite direction of the point from the start #disability #ableism #actually autistic #(by far not the only disability this applies to but the main one i was thinking of) #also wanna note that children should be allowed to have meaningful agency as well. if your definition of child is 'stupid and powerless' #then that's a problem in itself. but that's a whole other can of worms #even if children were treated better (and they should be!) disabled adults should still be seen as adults #because that's what we are