 I think it's important to have those real conversations. I think it's important to say, hey, I'm a disabled person, but I think I have a problem with disabled people. Well, hello there, my beautiful internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you for joining me here today, where we are gonna be talking about the fact that I, as a real life disabled person, have come to realize I think I have a problem with disabled people. So at the core of what we are gonna be talking about today is really taking a look at ourselves and growing and learning new things and changing even when it's uncomfortable. So with that intro, I wanna introduce you to our sponsor today, Skillshare. Skillshare is a website you've probably heard about. I've talked about it before there, one of my favorite sponsors to work with because I legitimately use this website. Sometimes every day, at least once a week to learn new skills. The majority of what I do for my job is creative, but sometimes I find it difficult to balance being creative with being productive. And so there's a course that I'm in the middle of on Skillshare right now that addresses exactly this. It's called Productivity for Creators and it is one of the many classes that you would have full access to with your Skillshare membership. Something I'm very excited to tell you is that I partnered with Skillshare to allow the first 1,000 people who clicked the link in the description to get a free trial of Skillshare Premium. After that, it's about $10 a month. Again, this is a site that I would highly recommend. I personally use it. Check it out, let me know what you think. And now back to talking about a different form of personal growth. If you are new to my channel, hi, my name is Jo. I am a below the knee amputee. This is a recent addition to my life or subtraction as of two and a half years ago. Prior to that, I always had issues. I was having surgeries and chronic pain and chronic illness issues, but none of it was necessarily visible. Like if I wanted to blend in with normal society, I could definitely do that. And since becoming very visibly different, very visibly disabled, I've gone through this process of sort of adjusting to how the world sees me. And I've been thinking, you know, I've done a decent job of that, but recently I've realized that I have extraordinary discomfort calling anything ableist. Like as I say that word right now, I want to edit it out of the video because I'm like, ew, gross. No one wants to hear about that. No one wants to talk about that. If you don't know, ableism, like many other isms, racism, sexism, classism is favoring one group of people over another. So ableism is looking at able-bodied people and sculpting the world for them more than for disabled people. You see this in work opportunities, education opportunities, access opportunities. And coming from the background where I had the ability to sort of blend in with able-bodied people, even if I wasn't technically one of them, I know how people think about disability because they spoke freely around me. I know the comments and the jokes that are made. I know the sometimes lack of care or concern that people who are not disabled have about those who are disabled. I know kind of the exclusionary mindset that can come along with that It's just easier not to care. It's easier not to make something accessible. It's easier not to have those conversations. Now I've crossed the fence over to the group of people who are seen by the rest of the world as disabled. But here's the thing. I still carry the 27 years I just spilled my tea. We all knew that was gonna happen, didn't we? I gesture way too much with my hands. I still carry those almost three decades of experience being someone who is not seen as disabled. And as I have entered into the disabled community, which is really just an umbrella term for anything that is not able-bodied, I've realized that I have an extraordinary amount of discomfort actually letting myself identify that way, actually letting myself be seen that way. There are so many things that I do and that I've done to still be seen and be treated like an able-bodied person. A lot of the content that I've created is about normalizing being an amputee and life as an amputee and educating people because I believe that's a really good thing to bring awareness and to answer people's questions to kind of lower the stigmas and all of that. But one of the things that is fueling that is not wanting to feel different. It's not wanting to not be in the in-crowd. And the in-crowd in this case is those who are able-bodied. I think I'm very palatable to people who are not disabled, to people who have no experience with disability because I speak towards it and about it as a person who has lived both sides. With that being said, I think what I haven't really stopped to examine is the fact that I still carry sort of prejudices and discomfort about disability. Like, yeah, I'm disabled, but I go way out of my way not to inconvenience people, not to make people ever uncomfortable if they am, to go out of my way to explain things, to help people to do as much as I can on my own, try new things, because I love doing that. But also there's a part of me that's making a point of being disabled won't hold me back because that's the line that's acceptable. And also it's a good thing, but it's also the only narrative that you're really allowed to exist in if you want to still be seen as part of the group. So I want to go back to my discomfort with the word ableist. As I said in that video a couple of days ago, I internally cringe and kind of shudder and feel disgust and never actually want to say the word ableism or ableist or like that was an ableist thing to do or the choices that that director made in this movie were very ableist. Like I kind of hate myself when I say those things. So why is that? It took me a minute to realize I think it's because I know when I say that I kind of temporarily forfeit my access into cool able-bodied normal society. If I'm calling out something as wrong as a member of the disabled community, speaking on my experience as a person who is disabled, I know or at least I fear that I'm no longer seen as the cool, easygoing, not difficult to deal with, totally palatable, disabled person. Like there are some accounts that I follow, some creators who are disability advocates and I read what they write and there's a part of me that goes, what are you doing? You're alienating yourself from the able-bodied people. Right? By calling this out as bad. Maybe, you know, maybe do it quieter. Maybe don't be so loud about it. And I don't love that that is my first thought and my first reaction, but also it's an honest one. From an early age, I learned how to be accepted into a group of people I did not belong to. I learned things to say and to not say. To be like the cool girl who wasn't like other girls, I hate saying that. I feel like an example that really ties back to this is the fact that I have always been really involved with male dominated things. Growing up, pretty much all my friends were guys and I learned how to like interact well with guys and like blend in because I was always like the only girl in a group of dudes. And in my early 20s, I trained in an MMA gym before women were even allowed in the UFC. So it was literally me and like 50 sweaty dudes fighting and occasionally one or two other women would be there as well. You learn the lingo and sort of the rite of passage into that community. Looking back, it wasn't like I was being anyone who I wasn't, but there were definitely pieces of myself that I censored or did not allow to exist because of the group that I needed to or wanted to or was a part of. Like even though I knew the gender inequality existed in my sport, in my gym, in the world, I wasn't gonna stand up and talk about it to anyone there. Like if the topic came off, I'd always be like real, you know, cool, I keep using the word cool but it's the only thing I can think to describe it. I'd just be very like easygoing about all of it. And like, yeah, you know, there are some places where that exists. Yeah, people talk about it, okay, you know, whatever. Like acknowledging it as a thing but making sure that people did not associate me as part of the group that was calling this out as a problem because if I did that, I would be ostracized. If I did that, I would be cutting ties with this community of people that I needed, that I wanted to be a part of. And because I was able to blend in with the dudes, with the guys, with the cool people to be cool girl amongst them, I was privy to what they said about women. Like I wasn't seen as a woman amongst them. I was just seen as like part of the group, right? So I heard all the things that they said about women. And the same thing has been true in my life with disability. Though my body is never functioned as an able body, the first 27 years of my life, I was privy to those conversations. I was able to see and hear as an insider what people said and the feelings that people honestly had towards having to accommodate for disability. Towards people speaking out that something was ableist. Like I know how some people feel and react to that. I know that it's not great. And so I think that there is a chunk of me that tries really hard to censor myself and to never say or do anything that would make able-bodied people uncomfortable. Now, I think I have said and done things that make people uncomfortable and I'm fine with that. But at my core, this is something that I am still trying to figure out a way to sift through. Like I feel like I have this entrance card to able-bodied society because I know how to fit in. And I don't ever want to be too loud or too uncomfortable or too whatever by ever saying or doing or acting in a way that's a little too disabled for people to be comfortable with. I think I have a lot of internalized feelings of ickiness about disability. I hear some things that other accounts post or disability advocates say about like, there's nothing wrong with being disabled. And I'm like, yes, that's true. And then there's a part of me that's like, no, that's not true. Of course I'd rather be able-bodied. What are you talking about, you know? And something I'm still reconciling within myself. So in the same way that I used to have an internalized sense of like shame and censoring for being a female, for ever being feminine, I do have internalized stereotypes about being disabled, about what that looks like, about that not being an okay or a good thing, but that being something that's different, about that being something that separates you from other people. So even as I run this platform, advocating for those of us who are disabled, having conversations about disability, getting comfortable with it myself, I still carry around this prejudice and discomfort with disability. Living in the culture we do right now, which tends to be a big fan of canceling people for anything, I think it actually is really important to acknowledge our own shortcomings, especially if we're going to be creators on the internet talking about issues and advocating for change. If I'm unwilling to take a look at myself and say, yeah, I actually do have some ableist thoughts and ableist tendencies. I do have discomfort with disability. If I myself am unwilling to stop and take a look at that, how am I in any kind of place to tell other people to do that for themselves, right? So this is a journey I'm actively in the process of looking at and identifying and exploring, examining for myself and seeing what thought processes and what stereotypes have been instilled in me that I can begin to deconstruct. I don't want to be scared to say, hey, what you did was ableist. It was prejudice against people who are disabled. Let's have a conversation about that, right? I want to be a part of changing that, but if I'm going to be a part of changing that, I need to be a part of changing myself first. And I'm curious if you've ever felt this way about any group that you belonged to. Do you feel yourself censoring yourself or making yourself fit into a certain mold so you're seen a certain way for whatever identity we might be talking about? I would love to hear your stories and your comments in the comment section down below. Thank you again so much to Skillshare as we're talking about learning and growing and new things. Skillshare is what I would recommend for literally anyone to try out. Please check out that link down below. It supports this channel by looking into it, but also Skillshare is something that I actively use on a weekly and sometimes daily basis to learn about new things. Their courses are fantastic. Also to my patrons over on Patreon, thank you so much for your continued amazing generous support. You are the reason that I can continue to do this. Thank you. If you're interested in what Patreon is, there's a link up on screen, also link down below. With that being said, to you, watching this video right now. Thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere else in the world. Do anything else. And you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you. And I will see you in the next video. Bye guys. 🎵Hand her from the sky🎵