Stuff That Worries Me

I’ve decided to start a new recurring feature called "Stuff That Worries Me."

Obviously, I wouldn't bother writing about things if I didn't want people to pay attention and maybe see things my way. That said, I hope readers will take these as just things I'm thinking about, not dire warnings or bitter, angry criticisms. You could call it "Concern Trolling," but my understanding is that true Concern Trolls use "self-criticism" dishonestly, to deliberately lead astray.

My worries may well be unwarranted, nitpicky, and annoying, but they'll at least be honest ... what I am actually thinking ... and from a disability rights perspective, not some other ideology in disguise.

Here’s the first one:

Whenever I talk to non-disabled people and try to describe the things that disability bloggers blog about, it all sounds a lot less important coming out of my mouth than when we blog amongst ourselves. This reminds me that most people still don't get why "disability issues" are important. People realize they are important to us, but not IMPORTANT. Most people don’t have any strong opinions about disability issues, and can’t really imagine them being interesting to anyone outside the disability community.

On the other hand, this feeling might also indicate that some of what we blog about is, in some sense, actually trivial. That's fine for some of the things we’re passionate about. But, I worry that if we can't prioritize issues within the disability community, how can we hope to focus everyone else's attention on what's really urgent?

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