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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you know i think it would be absolutely hilarious if after some time Percy would get so fed up by Mr. D never calling him by his actual name so Percy would just decide to do the exact same thing to him and start calling him anything but Mr. D/Dionysus
like mr. D would be like "Hey Peter Johnson" and Percy would turn around and with a straight face be like " yes, Dave?" and everyone else is just watching horrified like wtf Percy? do you want to be turned into a cockroach????
or Percy would be talking with someone and be like " Derek told me-"
" who..?"
"you know our camp director? god of wine and all that?"
"......you mean mr. D./Dionysus "
"yeah Dylan...so anyways he told me-"
and then it would become this thing between Percy and Mr. D where they would always try to come up with the most stupid and outrageous wrong names to annoy each other as much as they possibly can
everyone is horrified at Percy and just waiting for Dionysus to smite him but Percy and Mr. D are secretely having a fucking blast
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A Catfish??
All of the bat children are horrified when they found out the boy Damian has been talking online, someone they were expecting to be a 5’3 twig. Someone who Damian has been crushing on for years turned out to be a 6’3 muscle-bound fucker that makes Jason look small.
They are even more horrified when they realized they never gave Damian the internet talk and for some reason Bruce is not reacting like this is something of concern and what the fuck-?!
The reason Bruce is not freaking out like the rest of his kids is quite simple.
He can see the last of the baby fat clinging to Danny’s face, he notices how even though Danny is a walking tank of a being, he still glances at the doorways like they could not be trusted.
Like he wasn’t used to his height.
No Bruce is not concerned, because all signs and research just points to one fact.
Danny Fenton has came into a Fenton-sized growth spurt.
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My guys. the fact that so many of you are reblogging my post about Justice Thomas's desire to overturn Lawrence with exclamations of "how???" and with such lack of knowledge of our past is really disconcerting.
Gay sex was illegal federally in the United States until 2003 (when Lawrence was ruled on). Before Lawrence many MANY states had "Sodomy Laws" that prohibited gay sex within the state itself and criminalized homosexuality, often using targeting words like "pervert" to describe gay men much the way conservatives talk of "grooming" today. In fact prior to 1962 homosexual sex, as well as certain types of consensual sex acts between differently gendered couples, was a felony with the cost being lengthy jail time and/or hard labor. As of April 2022 14 states have STILL not repealed their sodomy laws. Keep that in mind.
In this last week of Pride month i am BEGGING you. LEARN SOME LGBTQ+ History. The history of your rights, your lack of rights, how recent it all is, how unstable your rights are RIGHT NOW. So many of what should now be our elders were killed during the AIDS Crisis. It is now up to you to learn these things yourself.
Wikipedia Article on LGBT History in the United States
LGBTQ Rights Timeline in America
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noah kahan really said growing up in a small, bitter hometown is about the rage and the hatred that's been sung about many times before but it's also about love and devotion and the 'all three of us were drowning and we didn't know how to save each other but there was an understanding that we were all drowning together' of it all and knowing people so intimately yet not being able to help anyone and he's morally grey at best in a lot of his songs and objectively the bad guy in others and that's just how it is and it's about substance abuse and normalised crime and teen suicide and country roads and failed exams and leaving and being left and love and hate and love and hate and love and
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