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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof: :Nonbinary:"):
sus@timeloop.cafe wrote:
There’s a certain kind of article that well meaning people regularly send me about something I could try for my migraines.
They’re about a habit (listen to this specific frequency of sound!) or exercise (this extra slow yoga!) or diet (no dairy!) or supplement (moar electrolytes!) that can help migraines.
Newspapers - even mostly reliable ones - publish these articles constantly around migraine and other chronic illness. The treatments rarely have any scientific evidence supporting their use or actually have evidence showing they don’t work. Even when the article mentions this, it’s drowned out by an avalanche of positive quotes.
Do not share articles like this. Do not read articles like this. They are harmful and stigmatizing.
They are part of constructing the social norm where people with chronic illnesses are expected to try to get well forever and devote effectively infinite time, energy, and resources to the task.
It’s part of why it’s basically impossible for most people to understand that someone can stay sick and still deserve support and build a meaningful life. (You may think you don’t believe this, but consider how often you’ve shared those articles, or how all of our actual real systems in the real world treat disabled people.)
Articles like this also subtly and not so subtly do a bunch of other shitty things like
- shift blame for the illness onto the sick person
- create exhausting cycles of hope and disappointment
- privilege anecdote over lived reality/epistemic injustice (i could run a large corporation with the number of people who refuse to believe yoga and veganism didn’t cure me) and related epidemic injustice (why do you believe an advertorial over the experience of me, a real person you have known for years with the disease)
- undermine disability identity. (Some parts of illness are just physical suffering. Other parts are because you won’t give me giving accommodations. Don’t make my body the problem when the problem is you.)
- obscures the actual state of medical knowledge. (This happens a lot with the breathless and overhyped reporting on real medical advances. Like a lot of chronic illnesses seem less difficult and scary than they actually are because of the ways these articles cling to progress and overcoming narratives)