Also reminder that historically this was a slur commonly used in medical literature for neurodivergent people.
And is still commonly used against people in "special education" and high support need neurodivergent people today.
The reason you don't hear these people talk about it is because their voices are deliberately erased from the conversation. When you speak over them saying they have been called mental cripples, you contribute to this erasure.
You may not want to hear this, but if you are neurotypical, neurodivergent with low support needs, and/or able to communicate without accommodations or AAC, you have privilege over high support needs and nonspeaking, nonverbal, and noncommunicative neurodivergent people, even if you are physically disabled.
If you're both and you have not experienced that, your experiences are not universal.
You were able to get on meds easily. You were helped with your depression. Are you white or white passing? Are you low support needs? Are you communicative and speaking?
My ADHD is more disabling than my POTS and fibro COMBINED. My executive dysfunction leaves me unable to do basic hygiene tasks and housekeeping chores!
That's without getting into the bullshit of "neurodivergence is more accepted". Sure, palatable, neurotypical-passing-adjacent autism, anxiety, and depression might be accepted... until someone can't shower for two weeks, or lashes out with aggression during an anxiety attack, or publicly has an autistic meltdown. Have you ever in your life talked to someone with high support needs?
What about mad people? Those of us with schizophrenia who refuse antipsychotics and are subject to psychiatric abuse because of it? What about those of us with DID that can't receive any diagnosis or trauma-specific therapy because everyone in our area either doesn't know anything about DID or doesn't actually believe it exists? What about those of our communities who are mad while being a person of color?
What about those of us with POCD who are automatically labeled sex offenders for our intrusive thoughts? What about those of us with ASPD and NPD who are labeled intrinsically dangerous and abusive? What about those of us that have been institutionalized and abused for being a danger to ourselves or others?
How DARE you compare neurodivergent people to cis people wanting to say tranny?! Neurodivergent people don't fucking oppress us. If physically disabled people are trans people, then neurodivergent disabled people are nonbinary - you know, no one actually believes we're trans/disabled or in many cases don't even believe we exist, but we're either predatory transmisogynistic cis-woman-adhacent afabs trying to invade trans spaces or predatory cis-man-adjacent amabs invading queer spaces.
(Oh, and btw, cistrans people exist. Even more flawed metaphor there, because some cis people are also trans and can reclaim tranny, usually because of being multigender or intersex.)
So no, it's not at all like cis people trying to use tranny, it's like trans people reclaiming tranny and them other trans people claiming it's transfem specific, which is actual discourse that I have seen (weirdly, never that it's transmasc or binary exclusive).
Some physically disabled people are more privileged than some neurodivergent people. Some neurodivergent people are more privileged than some physically disabled people. If you're only one, you're often going to be more privileged than someone who is both, but not always. Someone who is quadriplegic is less privileged than me, with about ten different mental health and up to 10 different physical health diagnoses, but I am less privileged than someone with my same diagnoses list with lower support needs.
Oppression and privilege are not simple. There's no one categorical class that can determine whether you are more or less privileged than another disabled person.
Part of the reason I started this blog was cripplepunk discourse. Because I've over and over again seen neurodivergent people with high support needs say they've been called mental cripples; over and over again seen them talked over by physically disabled people; and over and over again seen physically disabled people not only tell "abled" (their words, stop conflating abled and able-bodied, you ableists!) neurodivergent people not to interact with their posts. You assume that neurodivergence can never be physically disabling, never be visible, never cause the same symptoms as a physical disability, never be anything but an affliction of an abstract psyche separate from any physical organs, as if the brain isn't linked to literally every organ and system in the body.
As someone who is both, not only is this incredibly alienating to say that half my experiences don't matter in certain spaces, but it's blatantly untrue. If I have symptoms from both my neurodivergence and physical disabilities that are nearly INDISTINGUISHABLE from one another, a neurodivergent person without my physical disabilities could have those same symptoms and relate to physical disability posts for that reason. No, them relating is not them "talking over you" or "making it all about them".
Because neurodivergent people don't automatically have privilege over physically disabled people. Period.
Kill the fucking cop in your mind. Stop policing what slurs other people can reclaim. Just because you weren't called a mental cripple, doesn't mean no one was, and when the high support needs neurodivergent communities are BEGGING low support needs neurodivergent people to listen to them and stop speaking over and for them, you are actively contributing to the problem because of your privilege over them, because people listen to you more when you do this.
Most of all, stop telling neurodivergent people who are actively physically disabled that they can't reclaim cripple. Most of you who say that only physically disabled people can reclaim it agree that only an individual themselves can decide whether they are physically disabled enough to use it, right? That basing it on specific diagnoses or symptoms is wrong? That people should be trusted to make that call themselves?
1. If someone calls themself a cripple and IDs as physically disabled and happens to believe that cripple can be used by ND people, don't fucking call them able-bodied, you blatant ableists. I've seen DOZENS of you do this. Call people out who do this!
2. Trust people to be the arbiter of whether or not they are cripples. Don't just stop policing who is "physically disabled enough", stop policing it at all! People can be literally physically crippled by neurodivergence, and can be mentally crippled.
The other half of why I made this blog was because of ableism from (usually high support needs) neurodivergent people towards physically disabled people. That is also a problem, and one I very much intend to address on other posts. The only reason I am not here, is because it's not the main subject of this post.
Listen to the people who've been called mental cripples. Stop assuming you know everything about ableism and sanism against neurodivergent people because you have depression/anxiety/autism/ADHD with low support needs. Stop treating other disabled people like your oppressors, and stop ignoring your own privilege over other disabled people where you have it (because get this, you can have privilege over someone and not be able to oppress them! Wow!).
It's not very unitypunk of you to cause infighting over fucking slur discourse. Stop acting like a fed and actually do something to materially help the community, instead of bullying "abled" neurodivergent people you wanna act like aren't "real disabled people" on the internet.
Stop using the t/erf party line of "they're taking [word] from real [identity], can't [identity] have anything?" Your crip club isn't actually exclusive. Get over it. Maybe try coalition building with the mental crips and see what you have in common instead.
