The Disability Parking Police

You know these people. They leave notes on cars like this one or this one. They approach and confront frauds using those placards to just get better parking.  They’re doing it to help actual disabled people get the parking spot they deserve, if it wasn’t for these frauds.

Small problem: NO ONE ASKED THEM TO FUCKING TAKE ON THIS ROLE

There was no alien descending upon them to give them this mission.  There was probably no Council of Actually Disabled people gracing them with a secret badge. I’m betting good money that they probably don’t even know a person who’s disabled, never mind one who would ask them to police their parking spots.

See, as I pointed out in my previous post about disabilities, there are way too many people who are just ignorant as fuck about what disabilities are, so when they see someone with a placard leaving their car under their own power (no wheelchair, walker, cane), obviously they are a fraud.  And frauds need to be called out.  No calling the police or the manager of the store to report them or anything useful, just write a nasty little note and leave it on their car to discover.  Because writing nasty notes has always worked to make a fraud go “oh dear, I’ve been found out.  Time to return this placard.”

Like welfare and SSI, the rate of fakers taking advantage of disabled parking is low.  Low low.  Very low.  Look it the fuck up if you don’t believe me. So the likelihood of the Parking Spot Police actually catching a fraud is next to fucking impossible.  All they’re doing is spoiling a person’s day who is probably having it hard enough.  All they’re doing is trying to make themselves feel better, puff themselves up at the expense of someone who has a disability they can’t see.

All they’re doing is showing off their ignorance in the guise of trying to help “real disabled people”.

While never knowing what is going on with the so-called fraud.

People have these strange expectations of the disabled, that we much perform our disability for them to prove it.  They have to see us struggle, they have to see that walker, that wheelchair, that child who can’t hold their head up and drools a little.  They need to see it so they can feel sorry for us, feel better than us.  “But the grace of God go I” and all that shit.  So when they see someone who doesn’t “look disabled”, it angers them.  That person looks fine.  That person looks like a “normal” person. Fraud! Faker! Time to write a note and wait until they come out and demand proof (like who the fuck are you?). How can you feel sorry and superior to this person if you can’t see their brokeness?

Are you their doctor? Were you the person who signed off on allowing them that placard? No? Then, if you must patrol the disabled parking spaces, learn about invisible disabilities like EDS and fibro and Crohn’s and RA and a host of others.  Learn the difference between good days and bad days. Stop demanding that people perform their disability for your viewing pleasure.  Learn some fucking empathy.

I’ll be taking your badge, pen, and scrap paper now.  You’re off the force.

Evidence, Anecdotes, and Disability

So, I’ve been fighting for disability for about 2 years now,  I’ve applied, appealed, and am now awaiting a hearing with a judge…eventually.  I’ve got legal help, and am hopeful.

I noticed when I see posts about disability on the Facebooks and the Twitters, and almost every time some person will pop in with some anecdote about their sister’s hair stylist’s grandmom’s thrice removed who’s cheating the system and how we need to crack down on this loafers who just don’t want to work and want to live off the government teat.

*sigh*

As someone on public assistance, i hear the same shit about welfare recipients.  It’s like everyone’s cheating the government or something, trying to get something for nothing, and it’s growing and how can we sustain all of these freeloaders?

Except they’re not. Yep, right in the New York Friggin’ Times.  Read it. Skip the comments, because as usual, even in the face of fucking facts, people are really, really, invested in hanging onto their bullshit.

Part of it is that BS insistence on hanging onto crap about freeloaders.  Part of it is a terrible misunderstanding about the process of getting disability, And part of it is a general misunderstanding about disability in general.

The process is long.  Almost two years for me.  It requires so much information – good luck if you haven’t had consistent health care. It requires so much waiting and waiting and waiting and fucking waiting.  Lots of people give up after that first rejection. Even more after the rejected appeal. Your life is picked apart as complete strangers examine every part of it.  If you can’t lift 30 pounds with your chronic illness, can you lift 10?  You can’t speak on the phone without a panic attack, but how about customers face to face?

It’s hard and fuck anyone who thinks it’s just as easy as “Just find a doctor who will lie for you.”

The misunderstanding about disability is frustrating as hell.  To way too many people, to be disabled means that you lie in bed in all day, staring at the wall while others care for you until the day you die.  If you have to leave the house, and you have a disability placard, you better LOOK like a ‘cripple’. Otherwise, you’re a liar, liar, liarface fraud and we all hate you.

So you get anecdotes like “Oh, I saw that guy with a bad back on a sitting mower that one time? Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to be in his house in bed all day? Liar!”

Or “What’s that? The lady who you know has depression laughed in my presence once. That’s not how depression works! She’s obviously faking it.”

Or “Didn’t I see that person in a wheelchair yesterday? But they’re walking all their own today! Liar! Faker!”

There’s no such thing as a “good day’ when you’re disabled. There’s no such thing as “good meds” that work, but not well enough for you to hold down a job. There’s no such thing as “invisible illnesses”.  Not in the black and white world of these people.

Their ignorance is to our determent. They have no idea about the details of the subjects of their anecdotes, what exactly is wrong, what treatments have been tried.  But it’s enough to judge.  Fuck them.

And no, spare me the fucking anecdotes in my comments, kay?