(no subject)

i will never understand how so many people are fierce advocates for not using mental illnesses as an insult or in a negative way but are completely fine when that happens to phobias.

i see too many people who rightfully call out people throwing around the word "narcissist" randomly as ableism be completely fine when people call bigotry "phobia" or even defend it.

i will never understand how implying that bigotry is a mental illness or mental illness makes you a bigot is somehow more okay than implying that abusiveness is a mental illness or that mental illness makes you abusive.

i will never understand how many anti-ableists frown upon calling a bad person a narcissist but don't mind calling a bad person a something-phobe. they stem from the exact same saneism.

as someone with multiple phobias and a cluster b personality disorder, it hurts to only have one part of me advocated for while the other one remains demonised even by so-called anti-ableists. i have gotten way more shit for my phobias both inside and outside disabled communities, especially because i sometimes speak up about anti-phobic saneism and People Do Not Like That. it hurts to be surrounded by hypocrisy and it hurts to know that i cannot trust a lot of anti-ableists because one day they'll turn around and use my diagnosis in such an ableist way and give me crap if i try calling them in. all because i trusted them enough to think "hey, this person actually seems to care about anti-saneism" but when i bring up phobias, everything usually goes out the window and people don't understand how equating phobias to bigotry isn't really different from equating cluster b to abusiveness.

just because saneist language is normalised doesn't make it "fine" or even worthy of a defense or abusing people speaking up. you don't get to pick and choose which saneism you don't like. you either fight all kinds of saneism or you're a saneist. "i'm anti-ableist but allying with phobic people is where i draw the line" will forever not be a weird take, especially considering the origin of using "-phobia" for bigotry.

and just to be absolutely bloody clear: calling out saneist or ableist language is not tone policing. bigotry and oppressive language are not "tone".

(no subject)

re: last post, i truly don't know how to tolerate this, but i can't avoid it either. as someone who does have real phobias, it hurts to sse my mental illness equated with hatefulness. it's easier to tolerate it from people who haven't done a lot of work unpacking their ableism, but it hurts so much from people who are basically aware of all saneist language except for this. like they know that implying that my borderline makes me inherently abusive is bad and ableist, but somehow they don't understand that implying that my phobias make me inherently hateful is also bad and ableist. like one part of me is accepted but the other continues to be demonised by "anti ableists". this especially hurts because when i was younger a lot of people picked up on my social phobia before i did and they used my phobia to demonise me as hateful. it doesn't come from nowhere. it's linked to so many people's trauma and part of the wider idea that mental illness makes us dangerous horrible people, an idea that gets people like me instititionalised. i've known people get institutionalised for having phobias because "phobias make you dangerous". the amount of conversations* i've had with people i thought were good about ableism that did fuck all is absolutely heartbreaking. but this kind of ableism is simply impossible to avoid but it's not emotionally good for me either.send help

*me trying to talk to people and then doubling down and being fucking shitty