16 People With Disability Reveal The Most Bonkers Things People Have Said To Their Face This Disability Pride Month
We’re coming to the end of Disability Pride Month, which feels like a good time to remind people to stop saying wildly inappropriate things to the disabled people in their life.
So we asked readers to share the most bonkers thing anyone has ever said to them about their disability and the replies were frankly diabolical and batshit. Some of y’all need to start overthinking everything you say like the rest of us, okay!?
Here’s what our readers have heard:
“Honestly my parents got the worst shit said to them when I was a baby. My dad’s colleague tried to sell his wife’s MLM ‘special water’ by saying it would cure me.”
– Lola
“My parents got told they ‘hadn’t prayed enough’ and that’s why I was born with these conditions.”
– Nina
“A middle aged man said I was ‘too young’ to have had heart surgery. I was born with a heart defect.”
– Maya
“My ex told me to just ‘eat a steak’ when I was talking about my non-iron deficiency anaemia.”
– Tahlia
“Someone saw my hidden disabilities pin and said what’s your hidden talent?”
– Jade
“Not said, but I’ve had strangers physically move me in my wheelchair out of the way, like I’m an object.”
– Sienna
“You speak too well to have a hearing impairment. I’m not sure it’s true.”
– Grace
“That they’d rather die than look like me .”
– Amelia
“Are you sure you aren’t just depressed?”
– Harper
“You look fine.”
– Evie
“If you were just fitter.”
– Mia
“You just need to try harder.”
– Charlotte
“My dad asked ‘oh so you actually have epilepsy?’ about five years after I was diagnosed.”
– Ruby
“When I asked for accommodations with office lighting in the [redacted] office and they said no xx”
– Mackenzie
“Someone I was seeing told me to go back home to my abusive family because I was disabled :)”
– Isla
“I teach a class of special students, when I come home to you, it’s like I never left work.”
– Benny
There are approximately 5.5 million Australians who live with disability, that’s 21.4 per cent of the population. Disability Pride Month is celebrated every July to honour disabled identity, break down ableism and demand full inclusion and equal rights for all Australians with disability.
And as we should!
The responses to this call-out make it clear that too many people still think it’s fine to say the first strange, cruel or intrusive thing that pops into their heads. So let’s all agree to take a second before we speak and stop being massive dickheads, please and thank you!
