Single post

Disability

I don’t know how to complain.

Let’s start silly. As I said, I don’t use Backloggery the way it’s supposed to be used. You are supposed to put games you want to finish. But I put already finished games there.

I described my @bmo account as a rubber duck. You should explain the problem you have with it. But I put solutions there.

And I can justify both of those things. Well, sort of: I don’t want to promote, even in this small way, games I don’t know enough about. And I want to be useful.

But it goes way, way beyond that. You see, I’m disabled. I have a pension and everything. But I never talk about it. Why not? Internalized ableism? Patriarchy? Self-esteem issues? All of the above? Probably all of the above.

I have no opinion about “disabled person” vs. “person with a disability”. You can call me both.

It even goes to ridiculous places. I care about ableist language regardless of the fact that I’m disabled. I care about racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. languages without being a member of any of the groups affected by those. But I fear that my contribution would be less if I presented myself as disabled. “Of course you care about yourself!” Ridiculous, as I said.

I even justify writing this not as something about myself, but because it is still very important to raise awareness. Which is true.

Lines of red, gold, white, blue, and green in low brightness colors run diagonally across the black field.

At the end of the day, I don’t think I would ever feel comfortable complaining about everything about or around me. I would never call myself a survivor. But at least I would try to pick one or two things and be more open about it.