Thread by @AlexandraErin

Some of the commentary on straw bans reads an awful lot like "Well, if your butler is too busy to wash a re-usable straw for you, that's what the underbutler is for."

GOSH DANG IT PEOPLE STOP THIS.

If you follow me for an appreciable length of time you know that I block people who send their unsolicited advice when I mention my insomnia, and you also know why.

If you don't, I'll go over the reason again.

Insomnia for me is a life-long problem. In the course of decades of dealing with it, I have done substantial research, and heard a lot of advice, and experimented to learn what works for me and what doesn't.

Every once in a while ... a great while, these days ... I learn something new, but usually from someone who has a lot of really detailed information about my specific case and my life and so has some special insight.

A rando telling me about chamomile tea is not that.

Now, this straw ban thing.

If you do not immediately understand why it's a big deal, your first response should be the same as it should be *any time* you realize you don't understand something:

Pipe down and sit on your hands.

Because you don't understand.

Here's why it's a big deal -- and full warning, I am going to BLOCK without a second thought or regret literally ANYBODY who replies to this tweet with a "but why don't they just" solution, even phrased as a question -- some people need *particular* straws to drink liquids.

I say *particular* because there are specific attributes that are necessary, such as: they must be flexible in parts but hold their shape, they must stand up to hot temperatures and prolonged use, they must not transmit temperatures, they must be safe to randomly bite down on.

Not everybody who requires a straw requires all of those attributes, and that shouldn't be taken as an exhaustive list.

Now before I go further, I'm going to point out two things:

1. Drinking liquids is not some fancy luxury affectation but a REQUIREMENT FOR BIOLOGICAL LIFE.

2. Drinking fancy luxury affectation liquids like Starbucks or what have you is part of participating in social life.

Now, reusable straws exist. Some are of materials like tempered glass or stainless steel or silicon that has many wonderful properties that make them superior in some respects to plastic disposable straws.

But that doesn't mean they'll meet everyone's needs.

And reusable straws ... need to be cleaned. If you are, for instance, immune compromised, they need to be cleaned VERY WELL. Like sterilized. And then kept in a sterile container until you stick them in your drink.

And if you've got, say, a limited range of mobility in your arm, or limited coordination in your hand, or a limited ability to exert force, or limited control, or any of a number of things that might necessitate a straw for drinking... maybe cleaning a reusable straw isn't easy.

Maybe it's not a thing you can even realistically do on your own.

My snarky tweet at the head of the thread is a reference to people who defend straw bans asserting that anybody who can't wash a reusable straw probably has an aide who can do it for them. Like, on demand. All the time. Just waiting to wash their straws.

https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/1019814308878962688

If YOU have a thing that YOU like better than reusable straws and you are happy to slightly reduce your infinitesimal personal contribution to the ocean of plastic waste in the oceans (that's mostly industrial waste, not consumer waste), by all means do it! Save the money/planet!

Whoo, boy. I haven't been thinking of myself as being overly affected by the ban but I do get hand/arm spasms, and I'm suddenly realizing how much less I spill when I can leave my drink on the table instead of holding it.

https://twitter.com/quatoria/status/1019821945527984130

I could use a reusable straw, though, without a whole lot of problems.

But I'm not everyone.

We can talk about reducing straw use, shifting it from the default, but we'd have to do it in a way straws are still readily available and not being doled out grudgingly and with stigma and with stares and questions about "Do you REALLY need that? Do you actually DESERVE it?"

And as long as we're pretending that straws of all things are the reason the oceans are more plastic than fish these days I have a hard time buying it. I mean people are already responding to this kind of pushback with "Well no one's 'rights' are more important than the planet!"

And again, straw use is not integral to my survival but if you've been reading between the lines of my summer tweets and blogging... I would probably literally be dead without air conditioning.

And if I say that people who think I'm exaggerating will say "Oh, yeah? What would you do if you were born before air conditioning? Or if you lived some place you couldn't get it?"

Die.

I would die.

That's what people with a disability that requires modern assistive or medical technology to survive would have done before/without it. Die.

Not all of us, not all at once, and not always quickly or cheaply.

But the answer in the final analysis is: we'd die.

And here's a really gross thing that you can spot a lot of if you read enough threads of people debating straw bans.

"They'd better die quickly and decrease the surplus population." == needs a Christmas miracle most of the time.

But if it's about disabled people?

If the subject is disabled people who need single use plastic items or convenience packaged food or higher than normal levels of climate control or anything else to which a moral value has been placed by environmental consumerism, a LOT more people are on board with eugenics!

Scrooge says "If the poor are going to die they'd better do it quickly and decrease the surplus population." and all the progressives know this is bad.

Moonflower Treeriver says the same thing about people who need technological assistance and a lot of the same people nod along.

Anyway. I didn't plan on staying up to rant about this. I really just wanted to make a snarky observation about how clueless and casually classist and ableist The Discourse around straw bans are.

And I have to say that I'm disappointed that the same Discourse happened *immediately* in response to it.

But I guess it's partly my fault for not having spoken up about it enough before.

I don't care how long plastic straws have been your pet issue. People who literally need them to live have been thinking about them longer than you have, deeper than you have, have tried more alternatives than you have, and know what works for them and what doesn't.

Your metal straw or your paper straw or your hard plastic straw or whatever is chamomile tea to a chronic insomaniac. They know it exists. You have no new or useful information to give to a lifetime straw user.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I'm going to mute this thread because I suspect if I don't I kind of fear what I'm going to get in my notifications, and that's just from people I follow back.

But check the hashtag #SuckItAbleism for more insight and testimonials.