Sipping Dom Pérignon Through A Straw

A good passage

Why is it that as a prerequisite for our humanity to be affirmed, we as disabled people constantly find ourselves in situations where we are required to strip ourselves bare? Why are we required to overexplain, only to be underserved in turn? Uprights, a cheeky little descriptor I coined in reference to the planet’s nondisabled ambulatory population, often require us to jump through hoops to get the support we need, wanting to know everything about our medical lives but nothing about the structures that impede our ability to survive in a world not built with our lived experiences in mind. We are required to exhibit the details of how we live in our bodies – what we look like naked, how we poop, whether we drool when we speak, if we can speak at all – to prove our need for institutional care. Simply accepting us at our word isn’t enough for them. Yet the same is never required of uprights.