More on "Trending" and Monoliths

This is still a response to The Feminist Wire being ableist and douchey, but elaborating more on some things.

The call for whatever it was treated disabled people as a monolith. Disability, according to The Feminist Wire, is one thing. A homogenous experience, or at least all related, right? No. Not in the slighted "The Disabled" do not have necessarily that much in common except dealing with this horseshit. I am multiply disabled but unquestionably able bodied. And there are folks in other parts of the disability community who think "at least our minds are fine" is an acceptable thing to say. Those are different disability experiences. The experiences of neurodivergents differ-from each other, from those with physical disabilities, from those who are able in all ways. We are not a monolith.

And my disabilities were the ones that were erased.

Usually I hate comparing oppressions, but this has happened to me in other oppressions. Every once in a while academicy people will decide to talk about the Of Color Experience. And they treat PoC as a monolith, as though our experiences are the same. They are not. My experience as a Hapa woman are not the same as those of a Latina woman or a Black woman or an Arabic woman or a monoracial Asian woman. I get glimpses of some, because I am ambiguous like woah. But these lives are all going to be different. People are going to experience racism differently. My "you'd be so hot if you dressed as *insert anime character here*" is not the same as the ways other WoC are sexualized and ironed into stereotypes-other women are assumed hypersexual or supremely submissive or what have you. They're all shitty, but they are not the same experience. The fears we learned? Are not the same. It does us a disservice to talk about WoC as though we are a monolith.

It does all diverse groups a disservice to speak about us as a monolith. Invariably you are going to fuck right up and erase people and stereotype people and be terrible. If you don't understand that there are nuances, much less what they are, you are not the person to lead the conversation.