EDIT: Don’t bother reporting people criticizing others for not wearing a helmet. It’s not victim blaming, just like criticizing someone for not wearing a seatbelt isn’t victim blaming.

Wear your helmets people: Of course nobody deserves to get hit by a car but the reality is people are getting hit by cars.

  • @[email protected]
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    fedilink
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    69 months ago

    Certainly not seeing you as an ass on a rant. I do aim to do better. I said it because I didn’t consider you. The concept of you. A person of disability in this world. This instance. This conversation. The problem with the online world is that you don’t see the other person. You take impressions. “These people have similar opinions, they must be just like me…” And in my case, “just like me” is a mid 40s able bodied white man. I see words on a screen with similar views to mine, the mind doesn’t default to “dark skinned woman with paraplegia” (I have no idea who you are, just an example of who isn’t me). It doesn’t see that. Instead similar views is similar person.

    Was that a throwaway line of "dark humour " for the lowest common denominator? Probably. But it doesn’t matter because it was still hurtful.

    I know I would never have thrown it out in front of my coworker Jake. The man has cerebral palsy, but we’re both employed to unload that truck. He is my equal.

    Why does what I think or say even have to be thought about? Probably because I was raised in a home of “different is wrong” and stereotyping. Who I became as a young man and who I want to become as I get older are 2 different things that take effort.

    Thankyou for helping me with my path.