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My time connecting to gender critical and detrans circles taught me a lot about the particular kinds of ableism that blind people are faced with regularly. There’s certain things that overlap with other kinds I’ve experienced and other stuff that is more specific to sensory loss.
People are really, really attached to their senses. If they are not visually impaired, they struggle to imagine what life is like when you are. They imagine that it must be a miserable way to live, unable to do anything that gives them meaning in life.
There is this gut reaction that happens, stemmed from both fear and pity. Fear of what such a loss could mean if they ever had to deal with it (though they never admit as such) and pity based on what they imagine your life is like now or will be.
When I came forward about my vision loss and its connection to going off HRT, it was horrifyingly perfect for them. Because of that fear, it meant that what they consider such a profound loss was a perfect case for prevention of all transition. Even though that wasn’t my story.
Because I wasn’t just losing my sight, I was doing so as a direct result of neglectful medical care I went through. Systems of care with no safety nets established, inadequate research, and no follow-up unless specifically requested (which I did and got pushback for eventually).
Blindness is seen as something that needs to be avoided at all costs, interrupted if the process has already begun, and a lost cause once prevention is no longer possible. None of this helps people learn how to function now. All it does is encourage denial and Imposter Syndrome.
In many people’s eyes, becoming blind means becoming helpless and useless. No one wants their kids, or their future generation, to become helpless and useless. And they don’t want to discuss how you can be independent, successful, happy, or loved despite inability to see.
But yanno what? I’m actually happier now. Even with a pandemic and basically living in two rooms. I have a full time job where I support other people on the front lines. I feel more loved than I ever have before. And this all happened after my vision loss started!
Blind and low vision folks are underestimated and undervalued, often to the point where their ability to support each other in figuring out the world again is completely forgotten about. And yet that’s what’s helped me the most. The GC crowd wanted the doctors to cure me.
Doctors can’t cure me. They haven’t even been able to find what’s going wrong. Health care supports for trans people are that shoddy, and that’s just going to get worse if we go the gatekeeping route. Also, this probably would have happened to me anyway. Just later in life.
If blind people were seen as valuable members of society, just in need of additional supports, chances are I would have had a profoundly different experience. Trans people need liberation. So do blind and low vision people. We both have worth. Let us be people.
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