Honest question: why don’t radical leftists agree to volunteer at group homes for disabled adults or become special education teachers?
As the fear of mass eugenics is becoming a reality in America, we can all see how the disabled (in particular, people with intellectual disabilities and neurodivergent differences) will soon be set up for mass eradication. The disabled aren’t “parasites” but full and equal human individuals who deserve respect, dignity and autonomy. They are hated in capitalism on the basis that they aren’t “useful” to the system. We also see instances where RFK is trying to wipe out autistic identities by creating a eugenicist “autism registry.”
Given this, why aren’t radical leftists dedicating most of their activism towards fighting and advocating for the disabled? Or dedicating their time and every to caring for those who are entirely dependent on the care of others to survive. Truth is we ALL need care from others. Why focus on any other issue when eugenics is the biggest evil in our world today and needs to be defeated before anything else?
I strongly believe radical leftists need to work and care for disabled people and we can start doing that by agreeing to be special Ed teachers (and thereby advocate for disabled children) or work at group homes for disabled adults. That’s a much better use of our energy and VALUES than protesting or political organizing. Eugenics is at the heart of capitalism and there’s no revolution without the disabled.
>>2340607Radical leftists are liberals, leftism = the left wing of capital from the french revolution that wanted reforms and bourgeoisie republic.
Regardless disabled people at group homes and SPEDs are not the revolutionary subject. Read Xi, let the robots take care of them.
>>2340844This
I've worked at a hospital for several years, about four. You see people die all the time, and you get used to it, which breaks you down. At the end of the day, I didn't want to talk to any human being.
>>2340607You are being ignorant in confusing the communist movement with people who act out of a sense of moralistic pity for suffering rather than recognition of the irreconcilable class interest against the capitalist class that workers have in collective solidarity to acquire the political supremacy of the proletariat and the abolition of private property.
Now I will quote a quote that describes what you seem to desire:
<2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
<A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
<To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
<We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.
<The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
<A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.
<Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
<Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
<It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.
<Karx Marx, 1848, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm >>2340979This.
Marx and Engels didn’t designate the proletariat as revolutionary because “it suffered more”. They saw proles as revolutionary because 1. It was their labour upon which society was dependent and 2. The nature of their work was collectivist, so they were already conditioned into working together for a higher goal.
It’s the same reason why the left is so invested in Palestine: it’s not because Palestinian suffering is “unique” but because the Palestinian people have proven that they’re able to fight back in a meaningful and effective way that could very well overthrow their oppressors/colonizers.
How are intellectually disabled people supposed to fight the status quo if they’re dependent on 24/7 care and can’t advocate for themselves? Plus, being a caregiver means you have very little (if any) time to engage in political activism.
I am a Teacher Aide for kids with behavioural, ESOL and Special needs. Everyone becoming me would not solve the eugenics issue or any issue. The issues for my kids are varied and heartbreaking.
My kids main issues are:
- Coming to school hungry
- Parents that wont or can't read to them at home so they have learning delays which compound when they begin conceiving of themselves as "stupid/bad/loner kids" because their learning delays distance them from their cohort
- Parents that cannot offer them safety in the home so they enter school with trauma that informs their relationship to adults.
- Lack of access to material (like shoes, school uniforms, pens, books, money to go on school trips and have out of school learning experiences)
- Lack of access to medical care, psychological care, or learning support for their specific needs. One kid who clearly has dyslexia has been allowed to languish in class unable to get anything right because she has no support for her specific neurodiversity. An ADHD kid who’s mum didn’t believe he had ADHD (because she didn’t think it existed) until last year, instead, just called him lazy and stupid such that now when he does have meds for his adhd and can focus, his self-esteem is completely shot and he wont attempt anything.
In other schools I’ve worked at, these kids would’ve had support years ago. In this school, the parents are poor and the school overloaded with the issues of poverty.
- Lack of qualified caring professionals who will stay in the job long enough to make a difference
None of this will be solved by a bunch of volunteers entering the school to help. All of this would be helped by the abolition of capitalism.
Special Education is not some job a rando can come in and do properly. You need to learn how people learn. You need to know how to speak to kids in a way that doesn’t induce their traumatic reactions. You need to know how to work with autistic students, ADHD students, OCD students, students with developmental delays and processing issues. You have to juggle all of these different systems and philosophies in your head and still be pleasant, kind, patient and most of all consistent.
We need more trained professionals and we will never have that under capitalism.
We need poverty to not be a factor in childrens upbringings, we will never have that under capitalism.
Capitalism is to be fought and it can’t be fought with performative activism. I do this work because im trained for it and I am good at it. I don’t have any illusions that my work will solve any of the problems. I am doing first aid on a gaping wound. Capitalism is the stabbing machine and it doesn’t matter how better I do my job the stabbing machine will keep punting stabbing victims into my school for me to treat.
We need to shut down the stabbing machine so the Left should focus on playing politics for keeps. That means community and union power into party power into state power. No amount of volunteers in fucking group homes is gonna give us the reins of power.
>Education<"collective growth of consciousness"literally the definition of Marxism
>>2341773>by instinct, we are drawn to beauty, so beauty becomes the standard of fitness.read Marx, radlib
https://catalyst-journal.com/2017/11/bourdieu-class-theory-riley>thats why ugly people are "ugly", because they are unfit.the phrase "high brow/low brow" in aesthetics refers to eugenics ideology about low class nonwhites having the wrong skull shape
>>2340896The collective interest of the working class and the development of class consciousness depends on class struggle, where organizing can be a venue for politicization. Many of the disabled are not members of the working class, unlike the exploited victims of imperialist capitalism in the periphery, who, by fighting for their rights, will reduce the capitalist profit rate along with the struggle in solidarity for the equalization of labor rights and wages of immigrant workers with the native population, and informal precarious work that needs to be equalized with mandatory unionization with the rights of average public sector workers and compensation for all labor that was not paid for by the capitalist for the exploited workers.
If you want, I can take quotes from the political electoral programs of Marx and Engels that prove my point of what it means to fight for workers so that they unite to fight in solidarity with all workers because by abandoning one worker to greater exploitation, the wage will be affected, and not some fantasy that employment and wages are something that has scarcity that the capitalist gives willingly as if wealth were created by the capitalist.
Remembering that everything I said does not depend on feeling sorry for the suffering and you have to be willing to advance the class struggle and power for the proletarian class even if the population suffers more as punishment by the capitalist class.
>>2340607>Honest question: why don’t radical leftists agree to volunteer at group homes for disabled adults or become special education teachers?We already do that when we try to organize western communists into a coherent force.
>there’s no revolution without the disabled.This is an actually retarded statement.
>>2344622sillly fascist lenin held an undeniable prioritization of the working class and the downtrodden, consequently, he would undoubtedly favor those exhibiting an morphology reminiscent of Asperger precisely what Lenin
was fundamentally oriented towards confronting the eshtablished regime and championing sundry modalities of perception. He was all about diminishing obstacles He was all about dismantling the existing systems and fostering sundry proletariat routes of thought.
>>2342067You're not wrong, but that comic is a
garbage dialogue. Do they not understand how the Bolsheviks managed to organize a revolution?
>>2348266the /pol/ aspect is due to disabled people just being called tards ITT
is there even a system of care in your idea of communism/socialism or are you just left to die if you can't work?
You realize that we can all become disabled with old age right?
>>2348275i dont waste my time with stupid questions like what every single aspect of some hypothetical communism will look like
>are you just left to die if you can't work?listen to yourself talk, internet is the only place where these questions are even entertained for days on end
>>2348328>working class movementsif youre disabled but still working and proletarian then whats the issue. you can still participate in strikes, unions, etc. if youre wondering if disabled people are going to participate in da revolushun then get real tbh
>I think it's just to look after them even if they can't work and become part of the labor force.sure, but lets not pretend this has to do with communism
>>2348362>>2348344I'm disabled too but I teach someone with a higher level of needs piano.
You don't have to specifically care for them day to day as socialists, just don't dismiss their needs even if they can't work. This is basic stuff like food, housing etc. Ik OP is saying something different but some of y'all seem ready to throw us to the wolves lol
>>2348443you are mistaken if you believe communism is about good intentions or democracy or mass appeal
>Althusseracademics are not proletarians
>>2348447>good intentionshot air
>democracynot once did I ever advocate for bourgeois democracy
>mass appealyes the proletariat are indeed the masses
I'm starting to grasp your understanding of Marxism and it's painfully regressive. I don't think I can convince you otherwise so I'll just drop it ig
>>2340607>Given this, why aren’t radical leftists dedicating most of their activism towards fighting and advocating for the disabled? Or dedicating their time and every to caring for those who are entirely dependent on the care of others to survive. Truth is we ALL need care from others. Why focus on any other issue when eugenics is the biggest evil in our world today and needs to be defeated before anything else?I know this is all bait and all but you aren't wrong that disabled people are full and equal individuals worthy of respect, and the left should absolutely make a point of fighting for their recognition as such. That being said, you're thinking of this one-sidedly.
Eugenics is one of the great historic crimes of capitalism and fascism, but it is not the problem in itself. Eugenics is the pseudoscientific expression of an economic reality: that for the capitalist the ideal worker must be fully interchangeable with any other worker. They must be theoretically capable of performing any task and slotting in wherever the bourgeois class needs an additional laborer at a moments notice. Hence in capitalism who is and isn't "normal" is determined by how well a particular worker can meet that need, while members of the bourgeois class who would otherwise be considered "disabled" as a worker aren't recognized as such, or are only performatively so. All of this is to say that eugenics and the very concept of disability stem from capitalism and class struggle. The only way to resolve this issue is by fighting for the total annihilation of capitalism, not by limiting organizing to meeting the immediate subsistence needs of "disabled" people within the confines of capitalism. What you essentially propose with that suggestion is just a highly specific form of mutual aid, which in itself cannot be revolutionary without being attached to a wider political and military movement of the working classes.
>I strongly believe radical leftists need to work and care for disabled people and we can start doing that by agreeing to be special Ed teachers (and thereby advocate for disabled children) or work at group homes for disabled adults.You do not need to operate at a specific site of struggle in order to advocate and represent the interests of the people involved. There's nothing wrong with seeking out that line of work, it can especially be helpful in gaining a deep understanding of the successes and failures in these places so as to reorient them in a socialist way post-revolution, but absent a wider revolutionary movement and conscious organizing it is in no way forwarding revolutionary goals.
>That’s a much better use of our energy and VALUES than protesting or political organizing.You're showing your hand a little too much here. Speaking a little too much to the caricature of the "left" you have in your head rather than actually understanding what the left is talking about when it criticizes eugenics and struggles against discrimination.
>>2348852My biggest gripe with this is that the disabled exist now, desperately need help now and are at the mercy of others now. Talking about what happens to them "after the revolution" serves no purpose other than your own self righteousness.
If comrades were to be much more proactive in taking care of the disabled as things are today, we would be living up to our principles and methodologies. Caring for disabled people will condition us into changing the world so that the disabled are centered. It will also teach us the importance of patience and destroy the eugenicist notion that intellect determines value.
>>2348929lol radlibs are so fucking annoying
communism is not feelgood activism much less about 'principles'. all your posts are wack af
>will condition us into changing the world so that the disabled are centeredlol??
>It will also teach us the importance of patience and destroy the eugenicist notion that intellect determines value.lol?????????
how about you learn what makes the proletariat revolutionary first. none of the shit youre proposing is incompatible with capitalism and in fact already happens
>>2340607>>2348929>>2348945Why should communists fight to ensure that disabled, neurodivergent, drug addicts, whatever group you like are provided for under capitalism? What does this abstract declaration have to do with anything, and what does "advocating for" mean? Advocating for state policy?
>why aren’t radical leftists dedicating their time and every to caring for the disabled>eugenics is the biggest evil in our worldLOL
This thread fucking glows.The whole thread is basically OP making the same argument over and over again.
>>2348961MaoAnon is right about disability:
>>2348852I can tell you, on the other hand, are not a Marxist or a leftist, because your understanding of disability is entirely rooted in capitalist perceptions about who is or isn't "useful."
>>2348969>>2348852>Mao<Disability has nothing to do with this, idiot. Do you think there's a conspiracy to create people unemployable for physical reasons? Unemployment is a result of market forces, the market doesn't intentionally try to cripple people. Advocacy for welfare, in the first place, sets out to prove that taking care of some element of society is necessary for capital's preservation. The mental orientation around the welfare of society as a whole can result in nothing else in a society split into classes.
How is any of this shit a part of class struggle? Is asking for a disability ramp to be built part of the proletarian movement? What about asking for food stamps provision? Getting a pothole mended?
>>2348973>How is any of this shit a part of class struggle? Is asking for a disability ramp to be built part of the proletarian movement? What about asking for food stamps provision? Getting a pothole mended?By caring for the disabled we reshape society to be more centered around the disabled, which sets the conditions for a future where the category of "disability" can be abolished. Do you not understand gradualism?
And what's supposed to happen to the disabled now? It should be our responsibility as anti-capitalists and leftists to care for them.
>>2349004Idealist nonsense.
>>2349139Brocialists will say women. Women are always the one carrying the burden of disability care.
>>2350496>>2350623CRISPR will most likely cure most intellectual disabilities including level 3 autism and Down’s.
Also, enhanced prenatal testing and increased abortion access will greatly reduce the number of people born with disabilities.
>>2341573>and she said since Roe vs Wade was overturned three years ago they've seen a huge influx of babies with Down Syndrome and other very serious health issues at birth (no surprises as to why). Most people with Down's have heart, lung, or GI issues and require a lot of surgeries.I have to ask how many of these kids are going into foster care since the parents don’t have the means to raise them with all their health issues.
Maybe comrades should be the ones adopting disabled children since these children deserve to be raised by people with egalitarian worldviews?
>>2348852>>2349139What happens to the disabled people here now and the disabled people who will be born before the revolution?
Why shouldn’t leftists be the ones taking care of them?
If you have to ask that question, you are woefully naive. The "helpers" aren't there to help you.
Mostly though, people in these homes are left to their own devices, caged like animals and then told to figure out whatever is left of their life. Inmates are used as slaves, lower than slaves.
The mass eradication order is in motion. It will not be stopped. You don't take back mass drugging and poisoning and the humiliation rituals. You don't take back what was done in the 1990s. There is no future. How can there be after that? The damned do not want your "help". They want their lives back. If you cared, you would grant a completely unconditional dispensation of wealth and not suppress the defectives, their caregivers, or those genuinely interested in the general welfare when they speak publicly. It is the open conspiracy that we are not allowed to say what this has been that is the most galling and insufferable.
Soon it will be openly acknowledged that slavery is the human default and despotism is the correct political concept. You assured that in the 1990s, but you weren't going to have a world where you can say no to that. That is the truth. I will never understand the sickening mentality that takes freedom for granted, but these people have slithered everywhere and tasted their blood. Why would they ever be different? What they did in the 1990s they will do to all of you. They decide who lives and who dies, and that power is all that remains in this society.
If nothing else, the damned will be culled by selective breeding. This is what humans always have been. There has never been a period of human history without large and wholly unnecessary exterminations of the populace, carried out openly, proudly, and exultantly. No one seriously suggested that it would be any different, and the eugenists were the first to manufacture the "rights" narrative specifically to attack notions of civil and legal rights that had been established in liberal societies. The defectives have no rights and that was never the contention they made. The defectives wanted to not be attacked for bullshit that created nothing but a living Hell for all mankind, to the benefit of fucking Satanics, unless those defectives are enablers and that happens more often than you'd think.
If you really care, you would just shut up and stop saying stupid shit like this. We're going to die, most of us will self-terminate at some point to have some choice over how this ends. That's a freedom we may yet possess. There is nothing to say about the matter except the obvious, unless you want to seriously ask why humanity turned out this way. I have no qualms affirming that slavery is the condition of the human race, and you should stop lying about the matter. It is settled law AND above Law.
>>2340896Wouldn't disabled people benefit from a socialist economy coming to fruition?
This is a frankly liberal notion of pity, without truly grasping at what the real material reality is for the working class. Leads me to believe you don't experience those pressures…
As a member of the working class, I strain to find the time or the resources to do more than continue to exist, to be able to afford rent, food, etc. I wouldn't begrudge your efforts to donate time or money to helping the disabled, but honestly most actual working class people don't have the luxury of having spare time OR money especially if they dedicate any time to activism. If you have the time or money, you have quite the surplus of either that I do not have.
And perhaps that time or money could be better spent.
>>2351964Refer to
>>2351968Don't I am a member of a working class to me. If you are in favor of social murder, you are a reactionary, working class or not.
>>2348973I know OP is a troll, but it needs to be said that disability is becoming quite romanticized in leftist spaces to the point where comrades are outright glorifying intellectual disability as something "wholesome". People who say this, regardless as to what their politics are, have no fucking clue what intellectual disability actually entails and how fucking horrid it is in terms of quality of life.
I think the worst thing I've heard recently, in regards to the news of CRISPR successfully curing Down Syndrome in a fetus, was someone saying something that they would only support such a thing if it was possible to CRISPR out the physical disabilities that come with Down's but keep the intellectual disability, because the ID "makes the person whom they innately are" or some shit. I wanted to punch that person in the fucking face. Why would you ever want your child or anyone else's child to have the mind of an eternal child? It reminds me way too much of anti-vaxxers who deliberately want their kids getting measles in order to "build up natural immunity". "I want my kid to be defective and sick because I want to use my kid's disability to push an agenda."
As an RN, let me tell you: the brain is an organ just like any other and it deserves to be healthy. We already take prenatal vitamins like B12 and folate to ensure good brain development in the fetus. Delivery room nurses go out of their way to prevent brain damage at birth. Is that "eugenics" too?
>>2351968>Marx was too busy suffering from boils on his ass to write about disability while he worked on Das Kapital,People with chronic skin ailments aren't the people whom OP and the others ITT are talking about. They're specifically talking about intellectually disabled adults who need to be in assisted care homes.
>>2351989>reactionary<irony lolAll you referenced from my post is that I mentioned my class, calling me reactionary without discrediting any of the rest of my post. You'll have to forgive me, but this reeks of bourgeois moralism and an attempted co-option of Marxist language. It impresses no one but other idiots.
And what is this 'social murder'? And what gives you the right to talk down to me, just because I'm not buying into your bullying and sticking to Marxist analysis?
Go to bluesky if you are determined to keep being a reactionary lib.
>>2342722>>2342731>>2342755>>2342934What's very telling is how the majority of people who aborted for Down's say they didn't do so because they were seeking a "perfect" child but because they were risk-adverse. I can confirm as a nurse that there are millions of little things we do as part of our job to avoid unnecessary risk, the most basic one being handwashing and masking up. Vaccines, likewise, are taken because people are risk-adverse and are smart enough to know that the potential side effects of vaccines are dwarfed by the very real effects of the illnesses that vaccines prevent.
Let me just inform everyone here that your child's health is nothing to gamble with, and risk-aversion should be necessary. Yes, there's a chance your kid with an intellectual disability could be on the "mild" end of the spectrum and learn how to read and write, but there's a much, much bigger chance that your kid with an ID will have a shit quality of life and never be more than a potato. Choose wisely.
>>2340607>”disabled identities”This is like saying poverty is an identity.
Under socialism we would use SCIENCE to eliminate mental retardation and physical disabilities like blindness and deafness to give people inflicted by these things full lives. Chinese scientists are already working on this exact thing as we speak.
It’s only in the moralistic Anglo countries that retardation and the like are seen as worth of “preserving”.
>>2353336Is it wrong I don’t blame them?
Imagine having to forego revolutionary organizing because you’re stuck taking care of this.
>>2350496>With automation and workers’ control the general population would have far more leisure time and could dedicate their time to bring care workers for the disabled. The opposite, actually. The more leisure time people have the more they refuse to take up any burdensome work.
You know how all the Scandinavian countries have notoriously high rates of abortion for Down's? For Iceland, it's over 99%. For Denmark, it's over 95%. For Finland, it's also around 95%. The reason being is, Scandinavians place a lot of value on leisure in their culture (half my family is Danish so I know Scandinavian culture quite well). Raising a medically complex child means you have zero leisure time since you're tending to your child's support needs 24/7. See what I mean?
Under socialism, where the workday would be significantly reduced and everyone would have their basic needs met, almost no one would want to go back to doing extremely gruelling labour, including taking care of severely disabled people. They would want to live their lives to the fullest without limitations since they'd no longer be chained to a soulless, low-wage job and such.
My brother has Down Syndrome. I'm 25, he's almost 18 with the mind of a small child. Non-verbal and still in diapers. Can be very aggressive and there were times when I had to help my dad stop my brother from attacking our mom. Went through a time when he was always sick and had to spend half his life in the pediatrician's office. Our parents are Evangelicals and refused to abort him after getting his prenatal diagnosis. They act like he's an absolute blessing and deny how bad his issues are even though they know the truth. Growing up with him was hell. Because of the age gap I had to spend my teen years babysitting him. I missed out on so many things because of it. When our parents get too old, I will be sending my brother to a group home like OP mentioned. My brother ruined my childhood and I will never let him ruin my adulthood.
So, to answer OP's question, no. I wouldn't like to voluntarily care for disabled people since I've already been caring for one since I was seven. To this day, my mom will call me at random and ask me to come over to babysit my brother, who's behavioral issues and health issues have gotten worse over the years. I know "anti-eugenics" has been a big trend on the left since covid, but not everyone can dedicate their time to taking care of disabled people. It takes way more than you'd expect. I, for one, can't do this anymore, and from the looks of it neither can my parents (they will never retire but insist caring for my brother is a "blessing" even when my mom is so worn out that she collapses).
>>2340607I dont volunteer at one, I work at one full time. My clients are usually deeply racist and get upset when their staff is Indian or have accents of any kind. I've been assaulted by clients, my female coworkers get sexually harassed regularly, as all of the male clients have never gotten pussy ever. You often have no recourse in the events of these confrontations, as these clients cannot be denied care and the best we can do as an organization is to shift which staff sees which client, but we don't always have that luxury. On the bright side, we're a totally unionized workplace and a subsidized non-profit organization so we get decent benefits.
No matter what happens, you will burnout in this field. It's exhausting to work with mental challenges 4-5 days a week. I've been here for 3 years and I cannot wait to get outta here and get into actual psychological practice.
>>2355264>Meanwhile, you can go on IG and TikTok and see thousands of accounts romanticizing raising little retarded kids with Down’s.Let me ask: how many of those accounts feature babies and very young children with T21 vs. how many of them feature teens and young adults with T21? That's because it's very easy to hide the extent of disability with very young children. Nobody ever asks why a disabled two-year old isn't potty trained yet or why a three-year old has meltdowns in public. Yet once these kids with T21 get older, their developmental and medical issues become a lot harder to hide and even harder to sugarcoat.
This is why I strongly judge people who choose to keep a pregnancy where there's a prenatal diagnosis, even a "grey" one like T21. They are no better than anti-vaxxers or "natural cure" advocates in that they are willingly gambling with their child-to-be's health.
Imagine this scenario: you're at a festival where there's a shady salesman peddling toxic chocolate. He has 100 chocolate bars. Fifty of those bars will kill you if you eat them (representing the 50% of T21 pregnancies that miscarry naturally). 30 of those bars will give you extremely bad diarrhea (representing the 60% of babies with T21 who need heart surgery and other interventions immediately following birth). 18 of those bars will give you a really bad stomach ache, with the final two bars being close to perfectly fine. When the shady salesguy approaches you and offers to sell you a bar, you tell him you looked up on the internet that his chocolate is toxic and you won't be having one. In response, he says: "WELL AKSHUALLY any chocolate can carry food-borne illness. If you won't eat my chocolate you shouldn't be eating ANY chocolate!"
No seriously, would you eat the chocolate this guy gives you, if you knew there was only a 2% chance the bar you'd eat would be okay, and a 98% chance that the bar you eat would either kill you or cause you a lot of pain? That's the reality people facing a prenatal diagnosis of T21 face. They're not looking for a "perfect baby" but looking to avoid unnecessary risk.
>>2355997Prenatal testing and CRISPR should be mandatory under socialism. Mandatory.
It’s pretty obvious no one wants a disabled child except Christfags.
>>2360419I don't care how much autism impairs someone. If you're entitled, arrogant, cruel, lazy, rude, or make my life harder in any way, I will proudly tell you to fuck off.
Care for the disabled is placed on women 99% of the time, and so many of us are gaslit into thinking we have to allow disabled people to treat us like shit because "that's just the way they are, they can't help it!". If the disabled (including autistics) are so precious, why don't the men help them?
>>2360447I assumed autism influences every single little aspect of someone's behaviour, no?
Ever consider autism and patriarchy are equally to blame?
>>2360459Autistic men have patriarchal attitudes. Their autism makes it harder for them to be self-aware and realize their behaviours hurt others, namely women in this case.
Not to mention, why do autistic men explicitly come to women when they need help, rather than other men? Why do they expect us to care for them, especially since autism allegedly gives you a "strong sense of justice"?
>>2360453You're basing your worldview off of assumptions? Interesting. And no, not particularly. It seems as though a decent analogy would be the difference between liberals and conservatives. They both ultimately enjoy the status quo, but conservatives won't pretend to be nice about protecting it.
It's quite funny that I'm having to explain this here, but patriarchy (along with white supremacy and the class system) is replicated by our state and civil institutions. The moment a child is born, they are gendered. They replicate behaviours they observe growing up; if they see men taking advantage of women all the time, that's what they'll grow up to do. There's another huge factor here, which is trauma. Anyone that's gone through childhood trauma is likely to come out of it with psychological damage of some kind, and autistic people are no different. They may not be as good at hiding it, but it comes from the same place. Lastly, money is a huge factor. The Venn diagram of kids in special schools and kids from disadvantaged areas is almost a circle. The ones who do have well-off, supportive families tend to do far better at school and in life in general.
>>2360470Why would a woman want to be with a man who has an 85% chance of being unable to find employment, and on top of that expects her to do all the cooking and cleaning for him because he's too low on spoons to do it himself?
Being the girlfriend of an autistic man seems like an incredibly labour intensive job since you have to work both inside and outside the home so he can stay alive.
>>2360484Actually, it does. If we're talking pure numbers, then heart surgery costs what it costs; in a country without free healthcare, paying for treatment will be harder if you're not well off. But what about everyday care? Poverty puts a lot of stress on families. Having a child with high care needs puts even more stress on families. A rich couple could pay for nannies and carers, or have their child stay at a nice private residential school for children with special needs; these opportunities are not available to the poor. You end up with divorce, which is a very unsettling time for a child, and then the burden of care is forced onto one person. Parents of SEND kids often have mental health problems that are exacerbated by the stress of caring for said children. This, in turn, affects the child's mental health, which affects their ability to focus in school and can make them exhibit challenging behaviour. You be surprised at how common anxiety and depression are in special needs children.
All of this can be alleviated if you have money and a good support network. Not erased, but the effects lessened.
>>2360470There are real sociological reasons as to why misogyny in autistic men is a lot worse than it is in NT men. Most autistic men were coddled as children because their autistic symptoms were a lot more noticeable even if they weren't formally diagnosed until later. The ones who were diagnosed as kids were usually allowed to misbehave on the basis of "he can't help it, he's autistic" combined with the usual "boys will be boys". The ones who were late diagnosed were still never corrected on their behaviour.
You also have to consider that autistic people generally communicate better with other autistic people than they do with neurotypicals, so autistic men are far more likely to be in relationships with autistic women. Autistic women have their own support needs to deal with and now find themselves having to cater to their autistic boyfriends' support needs, sometimes at the cost of their own. Then you have to add in the fact that two autistic parents have an almost guaranteed chance of having an autistic child. What if the child is non-verbal, intellectually disabled, and has high support needs? The autistic father will usually leave since he can't handle this kid and doesn't think he should have to stick around, leaving the autistic women with a severely autistic child she can't raise on her own. Why would any woman choose that, especially a woman who is autistic herself?
>>2360527I'm pretty sure men would rather be 24/7 political activists than glued to a kid who's basically a potato with a face.
Care work is for the girls.
>>2360518I can't answer the last question, because I'm not a woman. It's also not really an issue I want to discuss, because it's a moot point. Women do get into relationships with autistic men; that's life. I'm also not suggesting that women should be made to get into relationships with ASD men. At this point, we're almost getting into "cis men shouldn't be forced to get into relationships with trans women!" territory, which I'd rather not get into.
Ultimately I still think you're basing your worldview on a lot of assumptions and putting a ton of weight on the people in your hypotheticals being autistic. As if NT men don't up and leave women to deal with the kids all the time? As if NT women don't already have the same problems as everyone else (capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, as I keep on pointing out). ASD is just another thing on top of all of these other things.
I'd also like to see some sources for these real sociological reasons, if you'd be so kind.
>>2360506>>2360507>>2360524I get that it's trendy to say "disability isn't the problem, society is!". But the disabled people I know IRL and follow on social media have pretty much given up on trying to change society, because they see no point. Austerity measures are happening in nearly every social democratic country in the West. In response, you see the rise of the far-right. Socialists who would help disabled people aren't powerful enough to counter-act the far-right influence. Mutual aid groups run by anarchists certainly aren't going to provide enough to make up for lost benefits. In the US, Trump is only going to get worse and there's a very strong chance a successor to Trump will win in 2028. Everyone wants to say "ORGANIZE ORGANIZE ORGANIZE" but what does that do? It's the leftist version of "THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS" at this point.
There is no tangible political program to help disabled people, which again is why all the disabled people I know are focusing on petty shit instead.
>>2360537Try talking to autistic women who have had to put up with autistic men and you'll see exactly what I mean. So many stories of abuse. So many will say they prefer to date NT men because NT men see them as more than just substitute mothers.
I don't know why you're so big on defending autistic men if you yourself admit they hold patriarchal views.
>>2360538> Everyone wants to say "ORGANIZE ORGANIZE ORGANIZE" but what does that do? It's the leftist version of "THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS" at this point.That, and "organize" usually means hold parades disguised as protests.
We saw a wave of those things last year to stop the genocide in Palestine and they didn't do shit.
>>2360539I believe that everyone holds patriarchal views, because patriarchy is replicated by our state and civil institutions and at home, by both men and women. I don't really know what to say to that last part.
Could you point me towards some of these women, or did you just assume that the majority of people wrldwide hold your beliefs? How would I approach this topic of conversation, anyway? This is kind of a weird thing to talk to someone about. Do I just head to the nearest Con and start interviewing all the catgirls?
>>2360561>>2360573can you post footage of this event
askin for a friend btw
>>2360506>>2360524Speaking as a nurse, you are DANGEROUSLY downplaying the severity of T21 if you think capitalism is the only reason people with T21 suffer. The vast majority of T21 cases are NOT a mild intellectual disability that can be overcome with "love and support" and a few highly treatable medical conditions that can be easily fixed with really good healthcare.
I understand why an American would believe universal healthcare fixes everything. Don't get me wrong, I live and work under a universal healthcare system (Canada) and I love the fact the patients I see don't have to deal with medical debt and can see a doctor for free any time they need to. But universal healthcare isn't a clear fix-all. Doctors and nurses aren't magicians who instantly cure whomever pays us the most. There are certain ailments that will always be extremely hard to deal with even in a system that gives you the best healthcare imaginable for free.
60% of babies with Down's have severe heart issues. That isn't a small number. Those babies require open heart surgery immediately following birth, which is a long process to recover from. Many will spend their first 2-3 months in the NICU; think about how stressful that must be for the parents even if the parents have the money to take time off work. About 5-10% of babies with T21 don't survive their first year, and there's no way of determining survival chances. Hell, there are little kids with T21 who require feeding tubes for a lengthy amount of time. Again, free healthcare or having money as an American can provide that but it can't prevent it from happening in the first place. Then you have all the issues with intellectual development, the fact most people with T21 have very severe intellectual disabilities and require a lifetime of care. Again, nannies can provide temporary relief but the parents/family will ultimately have to deal and make hard decisions about what to do with their disabled child and what needs to be done. These aren't easy choices to make. Then, again, there are all the health issues. Children with T21 have a very high chance of developing childhood leukemia (I've seen statistics that it's anywhere from 1/7 to 1/15). Dealing with cancer and subsequent treatment puts a tremendous stress on the child and the family, especially if the child is too intellectually disabled to understand what's going on. Then there are things like lung, thyroid, and kidney issues which are extremely common in kids with T21. Many kids with T21 end up hospitalized for lung-related issues (about 50% of hospitalized adults with Down's go in for lung issues). Hell, the other day I read a story about a little girl with T21 in my own province (Ontario) who needed a liver transplant (her parents were taking her to the US to get one because the Canadian hospitals didn't want to deal with the family's bullshit, apparently). T21 also wrecks immune systems. People with Down's are highly susceptible to dying from shit like covid or the flu.
NONE of these things are small. All of them will put pressure on any family, even one that can afford to temporarily place their disabled child in the care of others. After all, special ed schools and nannies aren't forever, and at some point your disabled child will outgrow day programs and nannies and need to be placed in a group home permanently. But what happens when the number of caregivers is scarce? Judging by the responses ITT, it's pretty fucking obvious most people would prefer to not be caregivers for the disabled. And to reiterate what I've previously said, speaking as someone of a Danish ethnic background I can confirm that the main reason why the Scandinavian countries abort for Down's at a rate of 95-99% is largely because we value leisure above anything else. We don't want to offset our leisure time by taking care of medically-complex children if we don't have to. And hilariously, the Scandinavian countries (including Finland) all have some of the best healthcare systems in the world, and have some of the best disability care in the world, and yet people still choose to abort for T21 at an astonishingly high rate. Does it not occur to you that under communism people would be MORE reluctant to care for the severely disabled, simply because communism would grant them so much leisure time that they'd rather not take up the burden?
The reason I feel so passionate about this topic isn't just because I'm a nurse, but because my bestie works as a pediatric nurse in the US and has seen the number of babies with T21 explode since Roe vs. Wade was overturned. She told me so many of these babies are sick beyond belief, guaranteed to have a shit quality of life when they're older even if the parents can afford to give them outstanding care. Are you honestly going to gaslight those parents by telling them: YOUR CHILD IS PERFECT, JUST BLAME THE SYSTEM when they have little ability to care for those children?
>>2360840>Why do Americans believe universal healthcare fixes nearly everything? Doctors and nurses can only do so much.It's entirely due to the disparities in American healthcare.
Americans suffer so much due to their healthcare system that they truly believe those of us who are healthcare workers cure people based on how many coins we're given, like they think the rich "never get sick". Our head-of-state King Charles is currently undergoing cancer treatment. Of fucking course he's getting the best treatment on earth, but is it guaranteed to save him? No, because even the most elite doctors can't cure illnesses that don't have a cure. At some point, even the best of treatments don't work if the illness is too severe.
Or, look at Selena Gomez. She's a billionaire porky scumfuck. Yet, she suffers from lupus which has completely destroyed her face and body. Lupus is highly treatable and usually amounts to a really painful annoyance and a few days in bed per month. Yet Selena the billionaire has lupus so turbo it required her to get a kidney transplant. If billionaires have access to "secret cures" like r/conspiracy tells me, why is Selena still an absolute mess from her illness? Why hasn't her turbo-lupus been cured? Certainly, a billionaire would never ever be that sick, right?
>>2362053One other thing that a lot of "anti-eugenics" advocates like to conveniently leave out is that life expectancy for people with profound/severe disabilities like T21 or high needs autism is on average notoriously low. It used to be that T21 was considered a "childhood disorder" because most people with T21 would die sometime in their early 20s. Now life expectancy for T21 is around 45. Level 3 or high needs autism is actually worse, with life expectancy being around 35. That's because most people with high needs autism die from seizures, health issues that they can't articulate to a doctor so they go untreated, and things like accidents. Most high needs autistics have no real sense of danger so they will run into oncoming traffic or run into bodies of water and drown (drowning is the top cause of death for high needs autistics IIRC).
Even if these people are able to make it to their late 30s or early 40s, death around that time is usually very painful for them.
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