Hi friends, I’m looking for recommendations of articles or stories about gratitude shaming, specifically the ways in which it is used against disabled people. It seems this is a tool very commonly wielded against us when we advocate for ourselves.
Have you read or listened to anything interesting lately on this topic?
#DisabilityJustice #CripTax #CripLit #DisabilityStudies #CriticalDisabilityStudies #Psychology
Here’s what I’ve been able to find so far:
a general article about gratitude shaming. How it works, who experiences it, and suggestions of better alternatives for communicating without gratitude shaming:
https://www.voxmentalhealth.com/blogs/weaponizing-gratitude-why-gratitude-shaming-is-not-support
Being told to “just be grateful” while you’re hurting isn’t support—it’s dismissal. Learn how VOX Mental Health offers trauma-informed psychotherapy with Barrie Ontario therapists who hold space for your full emotional truth.
Here’s a short explainer from Disability Rights Florida:
When Thank You Isn’t Enough
"The real risk is that gratitude, while important, can also serve as a barrier to justice. It can let institutions and leaders off the hook. When people are too busy thanking each other for helping, it becomes easier for those in power to avoid the real work of fixing broken systems. Acts of individual kindness are celebrated, while the underlying problems remain unchanged."
https://disabilityrightsflorida.org/blog/entry/when_thank_you_isnt_enough
I also found this article interesting:
"Gratitude can act as emotional camouflage… Anger, grief, frustration—signals that something is wrong—are nudged aside. We are told to “look on the bright side,” even when the side that demands closer scrutiny is dark. Gratitude, in this sense, becomes a velvet handcuff"
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gratitude-social-control
I would love to see what others can find!
We are evil if we are not abjectly grateful every day, that the ableds have permitted us to survive
@ContraindiKate I don’t have an article to send but I have a friend who lives in public housing in Concord, New Hampshire (USA) with her autistic son and her elderly mother.
They’re trying to tell her that she has to give her landlord a photocopy of her son‘s direct express card, which is like a debit card his Social Security benefits are deposited to.
When she balked because she doesn’t think they need more than the last four digits on that card they told her she should be grateful for the rental assistance and threatened to charge her market rent if she doesn’t comply.
And because all the Housing Authority offices are so busy she has been trying to get confirmation that this is actually required for weeks and nobody will call her back.
Imagine if your landlord said you needed to give them a photocopy of the front and back of your debit card? That would be ridiculous, but because she gets subsidized Housing apparently she’s ungrateful and needs to shut up and just do it.
@ContraindiKate also I have MECFS and I have been on disability since 2016. Since then I have had two different medical providers get annoyed with me that I seek help with symptoms. The first one was before I got diagnosed a nurse at my PCPs office actually yelled at me “You have a chronic illness, you will always feel unwell!” That was literally the first time since it took me down in 2012 that anyone suggested I had a chronic illness.
Then my PCP after my diagnosis caught himself before he completed this sentence but he said “Aren’t you collecting disability?” And I said yes so he said “Well then what more . . . “ I assume he was going to say “what more do you want”. So when he stopped talking I said “Well I want to be able to use more than an hour or two a day.”
I get that I should be grateful that I have some income, but I used to have a whole life so it would be great if I could have more than a couple hours a day. And if I can’t and I’m stuck in bed it would be great if I didn’t feel like complete ass the whole time.
He’s actually a really good doctor I think he was having a bad day and was a little frustrated he couldn’t help and he has since then.
ContraindiKate
NilaJones
Maggie Maybe