Episode 2: Casual Ableism talks… with the Founder

Hi friends, and welcome to Episode Two, ‘Casual Ableism talks… with the founder’. In this episode, I’m going to be introducing myself, sharing why I started casual ableism, and also talking about a few of my ableism experiences over the years. It’s also a really exciting episode because today marks three years since casual ableism started.

We’re also celebrating a recent achievement of 10,000 followers on Instagram, which we are so thrilled about. Really hope you enjoy this episode. Let’s get started.

As always, this episode will be transcribed and available to read the blog post on our website. You can find the link in this episode description.

So today marks a very special anniversary for casual ableism. It was three years ago today, on July 31st, 2020, that I founded casual ableism. That I decided to start it and actually posted the first post. So I thought that I would do this episode to introduce myself a bit and share my story. It also is very exciting to announce that we have reached 10, 000 Instagram, which I still cannot believe. It’s incredible to think that many of you are choosing to follow us and submit your stories, and be a part of the platform and be a part of trying to end ableism and educate society about ableism.

Before recording this episode, I did a poll over on our Instagram account and asked you what you’d want to know about our founder if we did a ‘Meet the Founder’ episode. So in today’s episode I’ll be answering some of those questions.

Who is the founder?

So for those who don’t already know, my name is Laura. Hi, I am a graphic designer, disability advocate and the founder of casual ableism. I have a physical disability, which I was born with, but wasn’t diagnosed until I was eight years old. And it is a very rare strain of muscular dystrophy, which affects obviously my muscles. And I also have a slight speech impairment due to my muscular dystrophy. So if you hear me slightly stuttering over a word, then that’s why.

What is my lived experience of disability?

When talking about lived experience, my lived experience of disability is from a physical disability point of view, but also chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and I also have a lot of lived experience of dealing with the ableism and discrimination that comes with having a hidden or invisible disability, because up until a few years ago, it wasn’t always that obvious that I had a disability, so I’m very used to those comments and those experiences of when people Assume that you’re taking advantage of things because You don’t look like the stereotypical person with a disability.

How have I advocated for disability rights over the years?

Ever since I was diagnosed at age 8, I’ve always been really passionate and proud to speak out about issues that affect, not only myself, but other people within the disability community. For every bad experience I’ve had, every ableist experience, any form of discrimination I’ve faced, or lack of access to something, I’ve always wanted to use those bad experiences and turn them into a positive in some way, by using them to highlight the issues that we face, and to raise awareness, and try and make change, to make sure that those same situation or similar situation.

Over the years, I’ve used my voice and my experiences to try and make change. Whether that be through speaking on local radio, local news, um, being in newspapers, um, writing blog posts, or even being a London 2012 Olympic torchbearer. Fundraising and just speaking out in general. But it wasn’t until a few or three years ago, when I was lying in bed at night in very bad pain, thinking about some experiences of ableism and discrimination that I’d recently faced that made me want to do something a lot more. And that’s actually what inspired me or pushed me to create Casual Ableism.

What let me to create Casual Ableism?

When I started Casual Ableism, I didn’t have a grand plan of what it was going to turn out to be. And I think that’s what makes it so special of where it is today. I really started it because I was lying awake one night in pain and I was just really fussing over several different experiences of ableism that I had recently. Or not so recently faced. One in particular, which had recently happened. And I hadn’t done anything about it. I was tired of always confronting issues. I didn’t report it. I should have done, but I didn’t. And because of that I was thinking, you know, these things… And I was thinking about were so subtle and so casual that even if I had gone to somebody and reported them or tried to talk about it with the person, they wouldn’t have, they wouldn’t have even known why I was upset, or they wouldn’t have even known why it was hurtful or why it was wrong, why it was ableist and discriminatory.

And I think that was just the whole concept behind casual ableism, was that there are so many comments we face, so many experiences. So many incidents that happen basically on a daily basis, that go under the radar because they’re not necessarily defined as discrimination or even as ableism. And therefore people don’t realize that by saying these things they’re hurtful, not that they’re ableist, or that they just shouldn’t really be said to us.

And I didn’t have any intention for the account, really. When I first started it three years ago, was I wanted a place to be able to post and just share these experiences that I had, that I hadn’t necessarily told anybody about or hadn’t necessarily reported or tried to change what happened with them. I wanted it to be a place for me to just offload these things and if it reached some people, it reached some people.

If it helped other people, if it raised awareness about them, then amazing, but it was really just, I had to get them off my chest because I’d never, never reported them or tried to do anything about them, and that was, I guess a regret of mine at the time, of, ugh, I should’ve gone to that person, I should’ve gone to someone and said this teacher did this to me or whatever. But I didn’t because I’m sure so many of you know that it’s exhausting always feeling like you’re reporting something or you’re trying to confront something. You’re always battling. And especially over something that was so, so subtle that even if I had gone and reported it to, um, my course leader, it would have been like, well, what’s this about?

Because it was just so subtle and it would never have even been registered as something that shouldn’t have happened. So I decided I’m going to create this account, and as a graphic designer, it can be a kind of design account, in terms of a design project where I create the branding for it, I make sure it’s accessible, for useful design principles, it’s just something for me. A passion project, mixing advocacy with graphic design, my two passions, and well just, I’ll just do it. I never imagined that it would turn into what it is today, and I don’t think I actually ever got around to posting the experience that I, motivated me to create the account. I never actually posted anything myself because initially I think if you scroll way back to the first post I created the, the logo I posted that with a kind of, um, description about, Ableism, Casual Ableism. And then I posted a kind of description definition of what Ableism is and what Casual Ableism is. And by posting, I think there were three posts initially, by posting those three posts so many people began to follow and comment and share their experiences. And I didn’t even post the things that I had experienced because I got so many people commenting with, oh I had this, oh I had that. And I thought, well, maybe this account should be a place where people can submit.

There are experiences of ableism, casual ableism, not so casual ableism, any form of experience that they’ve experienced that they feel is ableist or discriminatory, and maybe that’s what this platform should be. It should be a place where we can post what we’ve experienced as a way of trying to use those experiences to change the way society sees us, the way that society thinks, and try and end ableism as the main, obviously the main goal. But also just educate people, not just… Not just non disabled people, but ourselves as well, about the different types of ableism and the different ableism that different sectors of our community face. I think when I started it, I was thinking of it from my own lived experience, which was physical disability. And I’d only ever obviously experienced those forms of discrimination and ableism and exclusion. But very, very quickly, people were commenting and sharing experiences of other forms of… Chronic illness or health condition or disability that obviously I had no awareness of because my lived experience wasn’t coming from that point of view. And so for me, even just that was incredibly educational for myself to know what other people face and the other ableism that they face. And it’s not just the physical disability sector of our community that faces these things. So that was how it started and the actual name Casual Ableism just came from that, that concept, that feeling that there are so many comments and experiences that are so subtle, they’re not necessarily categorized as discrimination or ableism. They’re just subtly there, they’re just passing comments. Um, I think I just, we talked about this in the previous episode, of these different things that are different examples of what ableism is. And so because of that, I thought, oh, casual ableism is what it is, It’s casual ableism. And obviously a lot of our submissions aren’t that casual, that they’re very blatantly ableist or discriminatory. But just the idea behind it in the first place was. to have a place to be able to share these subtle experiences and try and educate people that these things exist and that even though they’re not defined as ableism or obviously discriminatory, that they actually are a form of ableism.

So the account just grew and grew and we still have so many submissions that are yet to be posted or even created into posts and it’s just incredible that with now 10, 000 followers And thousands of, um, submissions that everyone has felt some form of, um, I guess they feel people will feel seen when we see other people sharing experiences that we can relate to. And I think that’s been so amazing is for me when I created the account just kind of for myself was actually then seeing people had also experienced things that weren’t necessarily the same as I had, but they were. Still valid experiences and just to know that you’re not alone. I think that sometimes being disabled or having a health condition, you can be quite isolated from your peers, you can feel quite alone, or just like people don’t understand because they don’t experience those things first hand. No matter how supportive your friends and family are, they still don’t know what it actually feels like to have those things directed at you. So to see so many people who’ve been through the same thing, it is reassuring to know that you’re not alone. Obviously, it’s awful to read the things that people have been through. But I think it is really reassuring to know that it’s not just you specifically, these things happen to everybody and we’re all in this together, we’re all submitting our experiences and sharing these things with the aim to try and make a change and raise more awareness and hopefully end ableism at some point, but just to educate society and try and use the, you know, the negative experiences to make a change.

What was that ableist experience that pushed me to create Casual Ableism?

The experience that actually, I guess, pushed me to start Codelabism, which I mentioned earlier, was, um, when I was at art school. And it was a very, very small group, um, during our art course, and it was always split into two separate very small group. So, one day, we were in class, there was just four of us in our, one of our modules, just sitting there working. And the other half of the class were doing a photo shoot with some products that we’d actually all designed for a different, um, course within the art school. And the products to, you know, publish it and promote it on the Instagram account of the art school. And we were just, we didn’t know what was going on at the time. We were sat there. And in comes the, the teacher, a different teacher from, from our course. She was actually the, our tutor, our course tutor. And she comes in and, bear in mind there were four of us in the class. See there, four of us. And she comes in, and we all turn around, and she goes, I need three volunteers.

Now, that in itself is a bit weird, don’t you think? That she’s asking for three. People to volunteer to help when there were four of us in the classroom, you’d think, okay, well there are four of them, one more won’t matter, let’s just all of them go. And she goes, it’s for a photo shoot up on the roof, up on the, on the top floor of the building.

And we all look at her, and she looks directly at me, and she goes, you can’t come, it’s too dangerous. And leaves. And the other people in my class, they kind of look at me and they look so embarrassed. They just don’t know what to do, they don’t know whether to, what to do, they just, they just, they can, I can see in their eyes that they know it is so wrong what she’s just done.

And they look at me, and leave because I mean, you know, what can they do? They weren’t going to speak out on my behalf. Um, they probably should have done, but anyway. And the teacher who, whose class we’re actually in, goes to her, oh, don’t leave me alone. And I’m just thinking, I am sat there, anyway, so I sit there and I’m on the brink of tears because I have just been so obviously excluded from a group event, like the whole of our course is probably about like 30 people, um, are up on the roof, they’re doing a photo shoot, the photos are going to be all over Instagram, they’re going to be used to publicise Publicizing the course, a different course, a fashion course, as well as a design course, and I’m the only one not there.

And I have been directly told that I am not to even try and go out there because it is too dangerous. I mean, if everybody, if it was that dangerous, surely nobody should be up on the roof. And it’s not like some unregulated roof. It’s obviously a properly built modern building, so it’s not that dangerous anyway.

So I’m seeing that and I’m just thinking this is just awful. What do I do? Half of me. Wanted to just, on principle, wanted to get in the lift, go up there, and just join them just to spite her, to prove a point that it wasn’t dangerous. Um, the other half of me was like, do I just leave? What do I do? I decided to keep my dignity, and I just sat there.

I tried not to cry. And then, the lesson ended, I was still on my own, probably for about half an hour. Carried on working, and went back. After the lesson ended, I went into the next class. Um, everyone had come down, they were chatting, they had a great time. Obviously, as you probably would, and went into the classroom, and this teacher comes in to get her stuff from that classroom that we were just entering, and I’m just gonna like, I’m not gonna look at her, I’m just gonna mind my business, I just don’t wanna even talk to anybody, I felt so, just violated, and so Excluded and isolated.

And it was the first time at the art school that I’d ever felt like that had been done to me before. I’d never, it was like the first time in education that I ever felt that I didn’t have to justify my disability. I didn’t have to feel different. Um, I’d never felt that at all at that art school, which has been amazing.

And then this instant happened and it just felt like, okay, here we go again. So I was unpacking my bag in this new class and she comes up to me. And she looks me dead in the eye, and she goes, You’re not upset, are you? And I just look at her and I look away. And she was like, it was too dangerous. And then she walks out.

And I’m just thinking, the fact that she even came up to me and confronted me, and almost said that I should be upset about it, it makes me think that she knew what she was doing, and she knew that it was wrong, she knew that I would be upset that I had been excluded. And I was the only person that hadn’t been, you know, up there.

And I just remember thinking, this is just, you know, what do I do? And I mean, she had, in her opinion, she had a justifiable reason not to have included me, because she said it was too dangerous. So if I’d gone and done anything about it, then she would have said, but it was too dangerous. Health and safety, insurance, that sort of thing, risk.

Um, so I thought, well, she’s going to have the last word, because she was like that. I’m just going to have to, you know, move on. Tron. You know, not let it affect me and just, just try and forget it and move on and just keep my dignity because I’m not gonna ever prove to her that it was wrong or she’s never gonna understand that what she did was discriminatory or, um, she excluded me or anything.

And during that next lesson, I was just really out of it. I was really upset. And several people in my class were like, that wasn’t really okay and are you okay? Um, so I think everyone, everyone knew it was wrong, but nobody, sadly, decided to speak up and, um, stand up for me. Or say, it’s not that dangerous, surely she can come and at least just be up there with us.

And I mean, you know, you think about it, they’re up on the roof. Surely, if it was, it’s dangerous for everybody, not just me. And, I mean, it wasn’t as if, it was like a flat edge to the edge of, of onto the street, like, it was not that dangerous. And she made that decision about me, for me, without even saying, how do you feel about this, we’re all doing this, do you want to come up and join us?

It was just, a blatant, she knew what she was doing. Um, and yeah, so that was, that was that thing that just heats me up at night, even, even now, the things I could have, should have confronted it, I should have reported it, I should have tried to do something about it with the course leader or somebody, um, but I never did. And I think that was like the regret of never doing anything about it. That was really what made me think about having somewhere to post about these sort of issues. And I mean, it was subtle, but they were in the same. But it’s one of those things that, that happens and I think we’ve had also lots of submissions from people who have said similar things about activities in school or school trips where the teachers or the people who are organising these trips or activities, they see the benefit for the general population of the class or the school and if one student is left out or excluded They don’t care because it’s for the majority of the students and it shouldn’t be like that.

If they’re doing activities or organizing trips or excursions where every single child isn’t going to be able to attend or participate, they shouldn’t be going to those places. And it’s something I feel very strongly about and, as you can probably tell, and it’s one of those things that’s so subtle because they think, or they try and convince you that they’re doing it for your safety, that, oh, it’s too dangerous for you, it wouldn’t be suitable, um, as if they’re protecting you.

No, it’s ableist, it’s discriminatory, it’s exclusion, and it immediately sets you apart from your peers. And it’s not up to your peers or people around you to stick up for you. Obviously it would be great if they did and it would be lovely to just have them be allies to kind of hold people accountable for it.

But people, especially young people, they don’t feel they can do that. They’re just a teacher. And you’re always taught not to talk back to teachers, not to contradict them. And not to say anything that they might, they might think you’re being rude. So it’s very hard in those situations to actually scrap for yourself and say actually no, that’s not fair or that’s wrong or anything like that.

And I think that’s certainly in education where the teacher should be better trained to deal with different types of pupils. To make it more inclusive, that they can have empathy or just be more aware of different students, different abilities and what they can and can’t do. And just have procedure in place and they make sure that everything.

What other types of ableism have I experienced over the years?

I’m sure as many of you can relate to, I have a huge range of ableism and ableist, discriminatory experiences over the course of my lifetime, as we all have. And I think the main, obviously there are the comments people make about, you know, can I have a ride on that or can I, you know, how fast can it go, have you got a license for that in terms of, you know, a wheelchair or a mind ability tutor, but the main aspect I feel, and that to me, mainly have been around access to education, or education in general, and I guess socially also. But I think the main things have been educational, in terms of missing lots of classes when I was in school due to ill health, and finding that really frustrating because, you know, when you miss a lesson, obviously there’s a textbook.

Or there’s a worksheet. But so much in class, even without realising, is all said by the teacher, just by them rambling on about whatever, and just passing comments that they, that they make, or someone asks a question and that then imparts more knowledge on you. And that’s something that you cannot get back if you’re not there.

And it’s all very well, you come back to class and they say, well, you know, borrow someone’s notes to catch up on what’s been happening. And what we covered, but that’s only as strong as the person’s notes are. And to that there’s also the feeling of, you know, you’re asking a favour, like, can I borrow your book?

And I always remember that being such a thing to have to do, and you feel like you’re really, um, you know, you’re really kind of bothering that person, and they kind of say, well, I need it back, or whatever. But also, it’s only as strong as what they’ve written down. And I think that during… The pandemic, one of the, one of the benefits of the lasting effects that the pandemic has given us as a society is not only distance learning, but also working from home as well, but the fact that everything was made to be online so that anyone could access it from anywhere. So if that had been available when I think so, not just myself, when so many of us were actually in school to be able to have online platforms or you know, like online cloud folders where you can access files would have been so amazing to be able to to access that from home from from being ill or just be able to access that once you’re better or back at school to be able to have some resources or even recordings of lessons so they wouldn’t miss out on some vital information.

That was something I always found that I kind of ableist about the education system and about you know, being the only child in a class that had a health condition, was that I was the one that missed out just because, just because of my health. And I think so many people can relate to that as well.

Other ableist experiences around education is the access to education in terms of an architectural point of view, and I mean it’s actually discrimination, not necessarily just ableism. It’s more serious than that, it’s more obvious, but you know, when it came to looking for universities and going to university and that building not being accessible, or wanting the course I wanted to do, those were the buildings that didn’t have lifts or ramps in, so I couldn’t actually access them.

And that was always such an issue for me and it was so frustrating that most of my peers were able to decide where they wanted to go to how good the university was or what else it offered in terms of extracurriculars or social life or location in the country. And I had to rank the universities I wanted to go to by how accessible were they.

And that was always so frustrating was, was that feeling of being very isolated or very excluded from being able to have the same opportunities as everyone else, because I was really so focused on can I actually get in there, let alone is it good, are the lecturers good, and what does it offer, and you know, is it actually a good place to learn.

And, you know, even, even if it did have a lift, which have a ramp, very often accessible features or accessibility is a secondary thought or a secondary add on, you know, so the ramp is using a different door. Or, you know, the lift isn’t by the stairs, so everyone else goes up the stairs, and you have to go down a long corridor to get to the lift, so you’re, you’re, you’re kind of, it’s just designed to be isolating, and for you to have to be always going a different route, not going with everybody else, and that, I think, I find is a story, but listen, it’s something that was really, really, really disappointing for me, and I found really hard to, to accept that that was how it was, and, you know, 20, 2018, whenever it was, That that is still happening in the 21st century.

Anyone listening to this who has a invisible disability, a hidden disability or anything that, a condition that isn’t necessarily deemed a stereotypical model of disability can relate to having ableist comments or microaggressions or discrimination because they don’t look disabled, they don’t look like they have a health condition.

Whether that be from, you know, people thinking… You don’t look like you’re ill, you don’t look like you’re disabled, so therefore why are you in pain? Why are you missing school? And I’ve experienced lots of that over the years. I think when I was a lot younger, especially as a child, people think, as a child, they look fine.

So therefore, why have they parked on a blue badge place, on a disabled parking place? You know, they must have, must have stolen their grandparents. Pretty bad, they’re taking advantage of the system. And that’s something that I have a lot of experience with, and several occasions people in car parks, random strangers, have taken it upon themselves to assault us, and accuse us of being disgusting, and taking advantage, and lying, and everything. And one, one experience in particular, I was probably about 10 years old and an old man. He decided it was his right and his place to tell us how wrong we were and how disgusting we were. And we walked away from him, we went into the supermarket and he followed us. And he would not, he kept following us until he got us on our own in an aisle.

And he actually grabbed my mum’s arm and assaulted her. And it was just so horrific that… He was so sure that we were in the wrong, that we shouldn’t be using the blue badge, that we’d probably stolen it from our grandparents, or it wasn’t ours, we were borrowing it. And just that mentality, that ableist mentality, and the fact that he thought that he was okay to do that, that…He was so sure that we were wrong and that he was so sure that he was right and that we should be told that we were wrong for doing so without even giving any benefit of the doubt And that I think over the years made me feel very aware of who was looking at me when I was getting out of the car and even to this day I use a mobility scooter, and even now I think a people thinking that I have stolen Or borrowed a grandparent’s mobility scooter. It’s that internalised ableism from those experiences, so many experiences, where people have looked at us, or they’ve sworn at us through a car window, or whatever form of comment or harassment, just from parking a car. And, still to this day, even though it is far more obvious, that I’m disabled, I still feel like I have to justify the fact that I use mobility aid and the fact that I use a disabled parking place.

Especially when I was a child I had a genuine reason I could not walk far and I had really bad fatigue and I had every right to a blue badge. But people didn’t see that. They saw a child who looked fine. I think that, It’s something that people don’t talk about very much because they just assume that those things don’t happen. But they does and I think there are so many people who experience similar things. And, uh, we’ve had lots of submissions. from people who’ve had issues, situations, experiences, comments, around the, the, you know, parking in a disabled parking place with a blue badge or disabled parking badge. Which is just terrifying that so many people experience that and that there are so many people out there in the population that think it’s acceptable to make that assumption, that judgment, that somebody has to be taking advantage of it.

You know, and they’ve clearly got a blue badge in the windscreen. It’s not even like we haven’t put it up. It’s actually there in the windscreen.

How do I identify and what does being disabled mean to me?

Identity and how people identify is a huge topic and everyone has very different experiences and opinions about how they identify, whether they want to identify as disabled or not and whether they want to disclose disability or not .And for me personally, I’ve always been very proud to say that I’m disabled and to be disabled I think that it makes me who I am as a person, and it’s very fair to say that I don’t know who I would be, how my personality would be, who I’d be as a person without my disability.

I feel like it’s shaped who I am and even Um, before I was diagnosed, I had eight years of my life without knowing that I had a disability. I knew I was different. I knew that something wasn’t right, that I couldn’t run. I couldn’t keep up with my peers. I kept falling over. I knew I was different. I didn’t know why.

And so I think for me, actually being diagnosed as traumatic and as much as it flipped my world upside down, it gave me a reason of, yes, I cannot run because I have muscle dystrophy. I can’t. I can’t do this because I have MD, I can’t do stairs very easily because of this, I get tired really easily, I’m always ill because of it.

I think that often a diagnosis, as bad as it can be, to say that you have a problem, a condition, something that’s lifelong and curable, it just does give you that, that reason of why you’re like that, why it’s happening, why your body is that way, and I think socially, and In SART in general, to be able to have that reason and have that this is what I have, not to justify or make excuses or validate anything, but it just is often easier to say that this is why it’s happening and this is what it is.

And so for me, I am proud to be disabled and it is, makes me who I am today. And I think that obviously there are moments when you have your own self doubt, you have your own issues with dealing with disability when, you know, life changes, different stages of your life. Disability means different things and it progresses in ways that obviously you have to take time to adjust to and to deal with.

But I think overall I’m very proud to be disabled and I’m very… proud to be able to use my experiences and my voice to try and give back and try and use those things to try and make change and to be a trailblazer for everyone in the community and to try and do my bit and be a part of something amazing through casual ableism and just being a part of the community in general.

I’ve met some really amazing people and made friends through that and just having that. Understanding with somebody that they know what it’s like. Even if it’s not the same health condition, or the same disability, or the same symptoms, you still know what each other are feeling, and you know what it’s like, and you can understand each other.

And that’s really important, and it goes beyond making friends, it goes beyond anyone that you interact with personally, it’s more a general aspect of people on TV, representation in the media, influences with disabilities or visual differences. It’s so important, and I think that this community is a very, very special one. It’s great to be a part of it, and I’m thankful to Casual Ableism because it’s made me able to meet a whole new range of people and be a part of discussions with interesting people that I’ve never have come across if it wasn’t for the platform.

What does this account mean to me?

This account really wouldn’t be what it is today without every single person who has submitted an experience to casual ableism and has shared that vulnerable part of their experience with, with everybody, whether that’s been by being anonymous or by being tagged and sharing their identity. And I think that it’s not until you look, scroll down the post and you see the quantity of experiences, the variety of experiences that people have. have had to face that you realise what a huge problem ableism is and how it affects so many people in so many different ways and how severe it can be. It’s not just casual. There are so many really severe instances of blatant discrimination. And I think that’s when you look at it as a general and even there are so many things we haven’t yet posted. I think that that many people have experienced some form of ableism, even the people who haven’t submitted, who are just following, they have still experienced some form of ableism, at least once in their lives, as have we all. And that’s when you think this is something that really needs to be brought attention to, awareness brought to it, and we need to try and end it.

Do I think we will be able to end ableism?

We’re never going to end ableism immediately. We’re never going to end it this year. But if we can at least, with every post, at least change one person’s mind, at least broaden someone’s horizons with just one post, and try and educate one person per post, eventually that will make a huge difference.

And just changing the mindset of society, and educating the next generation not to repeat the mistakes that the old generation have done.

So if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for listening to Episode 2, Casual Ableism Talks with The Founder. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, I hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know a bit more about me, who I am, and what motivated me to start casual ableism in the first place.

I never wanted this account to be about me. I wanted to take a bit of a back seat with it and just make it about everybody, about the community in general, and about everyone as an individual. And so that’s why it’s been a while until I’ve decided to introduce myself. And I thought that this would be a good opportunity, considering celebrating the three years and 10, 000 followers.

So thank you for listening and talk soon. Bye!