Reply #140: I have been discriminated against because of my disability too [View All]

[tkulesa]

I think it rarely gets talked about because there are so few of us who can talk about it safely.

So many people with disabilities are dependent on social workers, agencies, charities, doctors and bureaucrats of all kinds that we quickly learn that having an opinion will be used against us.

I have had doctors become hostile because they asked a social or political question and I gave an opinion they didn't like. In two cases, they then stopped taking my medical issues seriously and suggested that it was all in my head.

Doctor who says "it's all in your head" should be taken out and shot.

Back in college there was the imfamous "Office of Services for the Handicapped." The people in that office treated students with disabilities like imbeciles. It was almost assumed that students with disabilities only graduate because of social promotion. And it was taken for granted that most of us would never have careers anyway so why get into a professional degree program? They took horrible liberties pushing people into certain programs (Social Word being the big one) as if we can't work in professional fields with everyone else.

I remember a friend of mind, Kevin, who had 2 undergraduate degrees being evaluated by a bureaucrat with an associates degree who told him that he was only qualified to work on an assembly line in a sheltered workshop. There was no effort to help him get any real career guidance or assistance. It was just assumed that he was useless and had to get used to it.

The worst thing that could happen to you was to be labeled a troublemaker. And this could be for something as simple as requesting a locker on campus because you can't easily carry books. (I kid you not.) Any request could become an issue just because you dared to ask for something. Then you were guaranteed to have a hell of a time getting any of the help that was supposed to be mandated. Everything became a fight.

So college is just another environment were people with disabilities learn that you have to agree with what the non-disabled bureaucrats say or else. Be docile and agreeable, or else.

People who don't have disabilities will never understand the level of dependence can can be forced down your throat, or the pressure that can be put on you to conform to every social worker and administrator's views of who you should be.

So is it any wonder that discrimination against people with disabilities doesn't get discussed?