Abled body people stay in the business of people with disabilities including their sex lives. It is like people with disabilities are stuck in this position that the abled body world put them in where they are helpless or need an abled body savior to help them navigate life. We put them in a mental age, childlike, so that we feel better about ourselves for making life inaccessible to them. To think someone is automatically unable to do something because of their disability is not right. We as a society need to recognize yes there are people with disabilities, but we should not automatically determine their capabilities or assume every disabled person wants our help.

The difference between a person with a disability whether it be mental or physical from an abled-body person is that when it comes to a person with a disability there is another person involved and that is the abled body “savior” who has put the person with a disability at a mental age of a child because of their disability so it is deemed that they shouldn’t be having sex. A lot of human beings are sexual creatures that including disabled people. So why do we treat them differently when it comes to their sex lives and why do we judge abled body people who have sex with disabled people and say that they are taking advantage of a consenting adult? I understand if it wasn’t consensual in that case judgment is the correct response. But because we put disabled people at a mental age society views them as people who can’t or shouldn’t be having sexual desires. Like even the in-class example where an organization surrounding disability got shut down because it was found out that the participants were having consensual sex, adults who can make their own decisions about what they want to or don’t want to do with their bodies were basically told no you can’t do that. This school is at least in my eyes a very liberal school, so why is the topic of sex especially sex between consenting people that just so happen to have disabilities such a sore topic? Have we not moved out of the age of teaching abstinence and virtue?

Sex and sexuality are always a sensitive topicss because it is frowned upon to be opened about your sex life. But when it comes to people with disabilities it isis like their sex life is always put on blast and there is a microscope on them from the abled body community. Crazy right? Imagine if it was the opposite and there was someone constantly being nosey because they think that you shouldn’t be having sex because you are an abled body person, how do you think you would feel?

Why is my pain not enough for a doctor to recognize it as such? Pain is something that is subjected to the eye, if you see it, you acknowledge it. “On that looks like it hurts.” But if it comes from within you are “dramatic,” “wasting time,” and “you need to get over it.” The pain you can’t see is most likely going to be overlooked by others, by medical professionals, and even by yourself. The chronic pain millions of people around the world are dealing with not with the help of a medical professional but on their own because their pain is not legitimate enough for a doctor’s visit is discouraging. Not only that but looking at the pain that goes untreated based off of race is disgusting and still plays off with the medical myth that people with darker skin have “thicker” skin. The racism that is rooted within our medical system has caused millions of people to die due to negligence. I commonly see on the internet a black person reaching out to a medical professional for help just for the doctor to do a whole 360 and say that the patient is “lying” or “they just want drugs.” These types of interactions with the same people that are supposed to be saving lives deter so many minorities especially black people from going to the doctors.

 From personal experience and growing up with my grandmother who lived through Jim Crow and seen the evil that society can radiate from the cracks of the foundation that was created by those who society hates, and I say hate because even though we have taken steps to achieve equality, we are still not yet equal and are still being treated like it’s the 50s. My grandmother would talk about the nasty things the doctors would do, and you could forget about chronic pain because if you can’t see it, you can’t treat it. White doctors only understanding white bodily issues because with all the experimenting they were doing on black people they, of course, forgot to include how our symptoms look different than white peoples in the medical journals. Or how black women are dropping like flies if they dare to give birth in a hospital. What is crazy is that people will treat black people (minorities) so cruel and harsh and delegitimize their pain but then wonder why they aren’t coming in for checkups or wondering why they question a vaccinee that was made by the same government that ran unethical experiments on people like them. It is a lot of distrust that is spilling over from generation to generation and if it does not get fixed then a lot of people are going to get hurt or worse.

We cannot continue to blindly support a medical system that is rooted in racism and biases because these ideologies and teachings are being just that taught to every generation of doctors that comes. People should not be hesitant or have to be afraid to come to the doctors because of skepticism in medicine because it can cost them their lives.

The other day I tried to explain to my roommate that it was a privilege to not have to work while you are in college so you can afford the next semester and she took offense to my statement because, when you point out people’s privileges that’s what happens. They start talking about all the things they have done throughout their life and all the other disadvantages they face that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, so they seem less privileged. But we forget just because you are not privileged in one area does not mean that in another area you aren’t. But she neglected to understand my point of view.

 Preparing myself the night before to wake up at 6am, and going to sleep early while she is still out with friends until midnight hours. Don’t get me started with the after-work hustle, friends getting upset with you because “you don’t ever hang out with us” are the same friends who only have school to worry about because the only time you have when you aren’t in class or doing the homework you are at work. The constant exhaustion and feeling of emptiness when you get off and try to wind down, just to have to prepare for your next days at work. The actual work is less exhausting that the “consequences” of working. The worry about if you got enough hours to pay off the school before the semester ends, but also have to save up for the following semester. The worry about if you are going to be dropped by your friend group because you are constantly socially unavailable and when you are you have no energy because you just got off of work. The worry about if you are going to be written up because you were having a bad day so you were emotionless during your shift heavily relies on customer service.

Working while you are in school is so mentally and physically draining to the point where you miss classes sometimes because you can’t get out of bed, which later affects your attendance score and you’ve missed a lesson. On top of that, it is very easy to fall behind on schoolwork. You pick a shift over an assignment because the 1 hour you have between the end of your shift and when the assignment is due “is enough time.” Constantly turning in sloppy work or half-finished work or even not being able to do the work at all. Having to email professors that you might be late to their class or not show up because your shift ends 15 minutes before class starts because you worked in between class periods since every cent on your paycheck counts.

So, when my roommate told me that not having to work during school wasn’t a privilege it kind of hurt because she sees firsthand how my work schedule is constantly fighting with my school schedule. How I don’t get out of bed on Sundays until well into the afternoon because I don’t have work that day but go to bed early because I have work the next. She sees the mental and physical exhaustion but still asked if I want to go out when my answer is always no, but then she complains that I’m never around. But she is the same person who expects me to buy the food, soap, trash bags, dish detergent, regular detergent, cleaning supplies, etc. because she doesn’t have a job not only that, but she offers up the stuff I buy to others in our hall i.e., cooking oil, pans, eggs, detergent, feminine products, etc. when she didn’t pay for it. I don’t mind sharing but she shares like it’s hers to give away. I also do most of the cleaning when I get off. I feel like someone’s wife and going “home” is when my second shift begins.

History of kings and queens, prosperous lands, and successful societies at peace. Riches from gold and silver to the richness in the soil that makes the fruits of labor even sweeter. History that was wanted by the fairest of skin. From prosperous lands to slaving over the white man’s lands the darkest of us have been turned into the outcasts of society. White skin is the standard while darker skin is considered a curse from God for our sins. But is it really a curse? Or is the true curse being “blessed with white skin “because no one on this earth has made life more difficult for black people than white society and because white is the societal standard black people are pushing and fighting over the approval of the white man. We change our hair to look like them, even going as far to bleach our skin, we speak differently to not come off as ghetto or too ethnic, we change our demeanor to not come off as the aggressor of an attack against us but yet we are still the villain of our own suffering. They sit back and watch as we destroy each other because of a problem they created.

Now see the world through our eyes. Did your parents have “the talk” with you? Not the talk about the birds and the bees, but thee talk. The talk about how you should act when being pulled over by a cop or being talked down to by an aggressive white person. The talk about how you can’t do what your white friends are doing or can’t be out past the streetlights because you live in a sundown town. The talk about how you are guilty until proven innocent in eyes of the law. That talk? The history that is engraved in our skin is deeper and filled with triumph, our veins pierce with gold but we have long since been whipped, beaten, and bled out of that motherland and placed onto a new land, long years of harsh slavery to be followed up by ongoing years of discrimination and violence and with all of that white society still tends to have it rain bullets in our already gaping wounds. The white man’s Constitutional Amendments say that we have the right to free speech, but is it really free speech when you are being beaten and killed for expressing your frustration over how this society treats you? We were told that we were no longer slaves because the white man’s constitution said so, so they made prisons for us, but at least it’s not slavery, right? And the reason I call it the white man’s Constitution is because it controls us. We are nothing unless the white man says we are something, we were slaves until the white man told us we weren’t. we were segregated and lynched until the white man-made that illegal. The info structure of our society has been written by white men for the benefit of white men and white women. We are not free until the white man tells us we are free and even then, we are not truly free. They are told to be afraid of us “aggressive, violent, suspicious dark character” but black people are tough that we should be afraid of because the power of a white person is as powerful as a nuke, destroying families, homes, and countries.