I have been wanting to write something like this for some time, but on reading Linda Wemyss’  post on a friend’s facebook feed,  I decided to reprint this here, with her permission. I couldn’t say it any better than she so eloquently has.  Life with chronic illness and disability is hard.  But the kind of toxic discourse she describes here makes our lives even harder.  Words can cause harm, please use them wisely.  Liz HD

Minority Bashing and Exhaustion
Posted on January 2, 2018 by Linda Mad Hatter
So, I was going to say goodbye to this blog this year (or last year now I guess lol) – but I’ve been asked to transform my facebook rant below into a blog post, and it is something that won’t fit into my new blog I’m starting this year… I’ve copied it from my friends page, who copied it from my page, mostly because I love what she wrote about me and I don’t want to lose it to the FB nether… I hope you are all having a great start to this new year, and I look forward to seeing you all over at my new blog just as soon as I recover from Christmas and get my arse into gear…

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“How far we have come – NOT!!!

Not only are we stagnating, or even slipping backwards, in our treatment of black, and indigenous peoples, but we also treat other minorities in a similar fashion.

Imagine constantly seeing advertisements, and hearing people on talk shows, saying that people like you are an abomination – which is what happened when we had the marriage equality survey. Nearly half the country voted to ensure that we did not have equal rights.

Imagine constantly seeing articles and television news and current affair shows that say that you are a burden on the tax payer – which is what happens multiple times a week for poor people. Most of whom have been tax payers.

Imagine being told that you are too stupid to manage your own money and so the government takes it, and manages it for you, allowing you to only have 20% of it in cash – welcome to the Indue Card, which is being rolled out across the country.

Imagine having to hide your religion from people in case you are ridiculed, or even attacked. I rarely disclose my religion to people in real life.

Imagine having a fair whack of people tell you that you should be killed (because of your disability).

Don’t even get me started on what it’s like to be fat!!!

I want to be a good upstanding citizen who is well versed in current affairs, however every time I try, I come across these articles that say I am inferior (or much much worse). Every time I go to a family function and they bitch about people on welfare. Every time I go to the shopping centre and I overhear conversations about “those gays”, or people comment that “people like me” (i.e. disabled people), shouldn’t be out in public.

Every time I am in the world, even if it’s electronically from home, I am told that I am less than. Constantly.

Boom, you’re less than. Bang, you’re less than. Bam, you’re less than. Over and over and over. Never ending.

It is exhausting. And most days, my greatest achievement is not killing myself.”

About Linda Mad Hatter
Disability consumer and activist. Pissed off since 1995… Mad as a hatter since way before that.

Read more at:

lindamadhatter.wordpress.com