Instead of plastic straws, you know what I'd like to see banned?
Grass lawns.
They're a waste of water, & people burn fossil fuels to maintain them & douse them in pesticides & herbicides which harm bees and butterflies & make it hard for disabled people like me to breathe.
If you want to help the environment, here are some ways you can do it without harming marginalised people:
Plant a vegetable garden and hand out the extra food you grow to those who need it.
Plant native wildflowers which are hardy and require little upkeep, and feed the pollinators that keep our agricultural system alive.
Plant some herbs and become your local lay healer.
So many abled people QTing this with "why not both lol" so in the interest of saving myself some time and a lot of exasperation, this is why:
If you're interested in learning more about the problems with #strawban policies, I encourage you to check out the info that's been shared on that hashtag by many disabled activists.
Also - if you've got a bit of time, I strongly recommend this piece from @mssinenomine, who is quoted in the above Upworthy article!
As the Great Interminable Straw Debate of 2018 rages on, I've noticed one assumption has received very little pushback from either side:
the idea that accessibility and sustainability are mutually conflicting.
This frames sustainability in a very narrow way - as though the ecological impact of a person's life can be measured by their reliance on single-use plastics.
So to that end, I'd like to ask my fellow disabled folks - what are some of the ways in which your disability leads you to live more sustainably than your abled peers?
I've had to make a ton of phone calls today, which has me feeling exhausted, ill and grumpy as fuck, so (for the millionth time), I'm in the mood to talk about medication access in Canada (specifically Ontario).
I take 40mg cetirizine each morning to control my MCAD symptoms. After speaking with my immunologist yesterday I am going to be taking that dose at night and adding loratidine in the mornings.
It will be a process of trial and error to work out my correct dose, but considering that I'm still really struggling with a lot of symptoms (particularly in relation to my cholinergic triggers), I'm starting out at 20mg per day.
So, I saw a thread earlier that made me kind of uncomfortable in that it felt to me as though it was perpetuating some misconceptions about neurological sleep disorders.
The thread dealt with personal experiences of medical neglect, & I don't want to invalidate that. But I also struggle with stuff like this because sleep medicine is so poorly understood - by patients, laypeople, general practitioners, and medical specialists.
So, here comes a PSA thread on a few neurological sleep disorders: