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TW Eugenics. I have said it a lot on my personal page but I will say it here as well. A lot of people keep claiming that the society during Covid is showing the worst in people but honestly that is just not the
case. The society during Covid is a direct result from the society before Covid. And ableism.
So we are going to talk about one of those elements I have seen a lot from in the Netherlands and eventually ended up being the reason the hashtag GeenDorHout and the action group was
started. The disability is a burden trope. Since most of you following are disabled yourselves, you will probably know what it is but for the eyes of the ableds: Disability is a burden is the idea that being disabled or someone who is disabled is a burden on society and the
people around them.
Most of the time people who believe this cannot see past the idea that we are more than a burden and our lives are just as important as those of ablebodied people.

We see a lot of it now during Covid but it happened before that. You see part of that happens
for instance in the Netherlands in the language around social security. There are a lot of rules of getting disability and when you do get in you get less than minimum wage. If you get unemployment instead there are a lot of rules and narrative to keep that as low as possible.
For disability the narrative is that they have rule out people faking it, for both there is the narrative that people are in it simply because they don’t want to work. So lazy faker liars is there always.
We are constantly talking about healthcare being too expensive which
includes narratives that people let themselves tested for stuff too easily as if they are pleasure testing. All those narratives around expensive healthcare turns into the narrative that what disabled people do is cost too much, and that we, instead of the big divide between rich
and poor, are too blame for any lack of financial growth in the country. The divide between rich and poor is growing in this country, with disabled people leading in those numbers but the narrative of blame is not going to the rich but in part, to us for the reason the divide
grows.
It is too complicated to go into detail about on a Twitter thread but there is a lot of that and like Covid, since nobody talks with us and everyone talks about us because debating us is an important thing to do apparently, the biases keep existing.

We have seen a lot
of that in the Netherlands. There is an othering happening I see in other countries as well which starts in language where we are not seen as high risk groups but as the vulnerable. The difference in the language means there is an element of othering. High risk groups are people
who happen to have that risk, the language of vulnerable creates a way of not looking at it beyond people’s vulnerability. It creates a difference of someone who is part of society vs people who are… not. We are not seen as important parts of a capitalist system.
The effect
of that is that because people talk about us, not with us, that people are blaming us for any measures that are taken.

From the beginning of the covid pandemic, in the country of the tolerant and accepting…….. People have been debating whether or not we should just let the
vulnerable people die. Consistently. Pretty much daily, sometimes more than once a day. I am not exaggerating, and I really wish I was. Ofcourse economics was a part of that, but we were also one of the countries that was going Herd immunity!!! In the beginning. (herd immunity is
something related to vaccines that got separated especially for this pandemic which people knew nothing about sigh…..)
A lot of that was based on the idea that high risk groups just means old people, which does not make any of it better to be honest because old people deserve
lives as well and it just means a whole population of people were not the radar, but most of it was based on us not seen as having a purpose and being anything other than vulnerable. (This is the language they use like I said earlier which is why I use it here). Part of it was
also then about just letting the virus go and segregating us from the rest of society, like we do not have connections to the rest of society. Like we do not work, are parents and so much more. Like most of us were not in isolation as much as possible anyway. Between posting this
and when I written this there has been properly so many more eugenics articles that I can not count them on one hand or two.

The way we are dealing with Covid has also been reflecting this. Although politicians will hardly ever admit that they want people die over here, a lack
of action shows the lack of importance on their part to actually do stuff that protects us. Their policy is also not aimed on protecting people but not putting too much pressure on the care system, which means they want the virus go through society but do so controlled. They
claim they don’t want us to live segregated but do nothing to make it so we don’t have to live in isolation, they are not protecting us.
And there has been failure to protect us from start to now. Which includes wrong information about masks, the failure to deliver protective
gear into carehomes and homecare, false information about the need for those in those care situations and honestly if I am going to continue I will cry. The lack of proper policy has been killing people consistently.

Because that risk has been seen as worth it. The disability
is a burden trope makes people see our death as worth it and a betterment of society.
I am pretty sure that this trope has been a leading trope in most countries policy although I can only speak from my own experience.Have you seen it in your country as well?What happened there?

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More from @WeAreDisabled

12 Nov
Tw racism

Oh yeah we absolutely had and still have covid related racism in the Netherlands just like a lot of countries. Punching down, for humour or not, is a favourite pastime. That song was met with a lot of controversy but also a lot of people liking it. And politicians
do a lot of Covid related racism too. From small microagressions to bigger ones. Like not wanting to acknowledge successes in covid management in Asian countries and failures in those of western and claiming it's population density or they don't know why those countries manage
covid better. Or a politician asking what we are going to do when another pandemic comes when someone Chinese decides to fry up another bat.

I know I have been talking a lot about the Netherlands, I promise I will talk about other stuff as well but when you are in isolation for
Read 4 tweets
12 Nov
TW trauma. To add into talks about mental health: Covid and trauma. I think that after this all is over, You will see a lot of trauma appearing in people related to Covid. Whether it is from how people are treated by society, near dying, of having closed ones dying, it is a lot.
I actually see it already in myself and some friends that we seem to be getting trauma responses and many in our community talk about this. The thing what bothers me is that there is no talk about this on the grand scale, and in the Netherlands the breakdown of mental health
care is still happening, so the chances that there will be room for people to deal with this is very slim.

We have this ableist saying in the Netherlands. “Just be normal, then you are crazy enough.” People responsible for trying to tear down mental health care used things like
Read 7 tweets
12 Nov
I am experiencing a Covid burnout. I don’t think it is just only about Covid but it is almost entirely Covid adjacent at least. We don’t talk enough about the effect of Covid on the mental health of high risk people stuck in this pandemnic. So I kinda want to create a thread that
will give you all room to talk about it too.

It has been rather a ride since Covid started and I was not in a good place before either especially physically. I was prepared for a lot of ableism, a lot of ableism in these areas. I was also prepared that the politicians will not
really want to protect us because disabled people are still seen as the blight on the human existence, as a burden on the economy and so on. I even was prepared for the trauma to come, but we as a society but especially high risk groups and disabled people are going to what is
Read 10 tweets
11 Nov
So I have a question about allergies! I have MCAS possibly but I also definitely have a long list of allergies I tested as being allergic for and it is rather exhausting to eat normally because of it. I can not have most pre prepared food, I am allergic to Fragrancemix 1 for
example (It is one of my many allergies) which also means that I am allergic to almost all herbs and spices. I even make my own bouillon or need to buy things that are expensive. So my question is, do you have allergies that are found in a lot of things and did you find an easy
hack to replace these things?

For instance I am allergic for vanilla and as it comes to things like baking cookies I use some date syrup to add in additional flavour. It really helps. Anyway tips will help me and maybe it helps other people with other allergies who can use some
Read 4 tweets
11 Nov
Tw racism

When I told you, the Netherlands was racist, oh I meant blatantly and openly so while calling racism that EVERYBODY KNOWS is racism as not racist.

Have you heard about the Netherlands having a children's holiday Celebration called Sinterklaas? It's on the 5th of
December and it's basically based on the same historical figure that gave Americans Santa Claus, Saint Nicolas. But ours comes with another character called Black Pete.

And Black Pete is played by white people in blackface.

And yes this is a national holiday.
After decades of fighting this, change to this character is slowly, so slowly happening but not on national level really....no political condemnation. It's individual locations getting on the programme.

This character is used to be racist to Black people. The fight against
Read 5 tweets
10 Nov
Big thread allert! I wanted to make a nice little fact thread called Disability things in the Netherlands. Some of these might apply for your country as well cause like most western countries our country is build on racism, ableism and classism but I just like to paint the
picture about our country a bit. The Netherlands seem to have this weird reputation to not have things like those I am going to mention, but it has and it need to be mentioned. I am making a start and I hope that some of my fellow Dutch disabled citizens will participate and put
in some more stuff as well!. I am especially looking for some people with experience with the horrible Participatiewet, Participation Law, to give more info if they feel up to talking about it in the comments.

Ah yes the Netherlands, where we are supposed to be made of
Read 38 tweets

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