Thread by @mykola

If a disabled person tells you "I can't do that right now" and your reaction is "sure you can" you may be misunderstanding something.

"I can't do it right now" can be short for "I could do it but it would cost me energy I'm not willing to spend right now", and that's _fine_.

"I can't do it right now" can also be short for "this is not a thing I am ever able to do."

It can be short for "Fuck off, you are not entitled to my limited time and energy."

It can be short for "I feel so much shame around this, please don't push because I will cave in."

It can be short for "I can totally do this but I'm self-conscious about the way I do it and absolutely can not do it in front of you."

It can mean "I don't understand what you're asking me to do, and I don't know how to get clarity."

It can mean "I am hella triggered, back off"

The point is, we all understand that consent is really important.

Not respecting the boundaries that disabled people set up -- especially invisibly disabled people -- means not trusting us to give or withhold consent for certain interactions.

The "why" isn't your business.

(Other variants of “sure you can”:

“Please? I really need the help.”

“But you just did the same thing yesterday.”

“Stop being lazy.”

*passive aggressive frustration*

“I’d do it for you!”

“It’s not that hard!”)

These are great:

https://twitter.com/SecretFoxfire/status/1418963066704760837

Here's another one!

https://twitter.com/SquizzRadical/status/1418953942277439493

Season with "My cousin is autistic and you're nothing like him" to taste.

https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1418975770488213519

A lot of people are drawing the next obvious conclusion - that really, we should be able to remove the word disabled from the above thread and it should still hold true. Boundaries are not always easy to learn, but it's worth the investment.

Listen: I've made huge mistakes with boundaries. I've bowled over peoples' boundaries because I didn't see them, I've ignored them when they felt inconvenient or I didn't understand them, I've argued with them when it was utterly inappropriate to do so.

I had to learn, slowly.

One thing I learned is that it's really hard to respect other peoples' boundaries when yours are constantly ignored. As an invisibly disabled person I internalized early on that boundaries are optional, that agency and power means ignoring boundaries. That's dangerous.

As disabled people it's important for us to be able to enforce and defend our boundaries in order to overcome a lot of the effects of being disabled in an abled world. It's sort of a rite of passage in some ways, being able to say "no" and meaning it.

Please, respect it.

(It's how this pipeline works, which is often a necessary step to healing for those of raised to feel like the world doesn't care about our needs and so we have to advocate for ourselves.)

https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1412140182753665028

One more variant on this, in my life: it's not uncommon for me to say "I'll do it later" as a way of saying "I can't do it right now."

The problem is, I don't actually mean I'll do it later. I just learned that that incantation will make people (temporarily) accept my boundary.

This really bums me out, though, because I then am failing to follow through on a thing I said I'd do, that I have no interest or ability to do. A big growth edge for me has been realizing that this "I'll do it later" no longer works for me, I think.

Anyway, stopping there but check out my soundcloud I mean pinned tweet to learn about Autism and ADHD, to read thoughts about culture and to catch a few of my better threads. Thanks for reading!