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I agree with this. I prefaced this thread with a -rant- warning. It want the indivdual experience itself that made the rxperience such a downer for me, it was simply the straw the broke my proverbial bat. It happens all the time, in one form or another im in constanty just supposed to understandit if the meant well 'd and smile. Er etat
Really?
I thought it was pretty clear he doesn’t mind an *offer *of help, but rather condescending attitudes. I mean, really? This guy is a body-builder and telling him “good job!” after he successfully transfers from his chair to another? This something he probably does multiple times per day, every day. He is not an 80+ frail old woman. The notion he would have the same needs and limitations really does indicate that the woman in the OP saw only the chair and not the person.
Personally, I usually opt for “Let me know if you need any help” and wait for the disabled person to make the request, if any.
You’ll note that the thing you rant about in your thread " only being a wheelchair" is exactly the same response you’re getting in this thread. " You’re just an angry cripple, get over it. " <pats on head>
I suppose I could say the same to you.
I fail to understand why you’re offended when people want to help you.
Most of us have no experience with people in wheelchairs. I don’t know anyone in a wheelchair.
You’re an adult with what most of us would perceive as a disability. We want to help but don’t know exactly where to draw the line. There’s really nothing more to the story. Your dental hygienist was only trying to be helpful. We’re all just human.
Peace.
I get it.
Even though people are being kind, at some point it feels patronizing and, some days, those things just add up to “WTF, could you try and SEE ME instead of projecting what you THINK I am???”
As a pretty competent and reasonably intelligent woman of middle years, I get it. I’m not wheelchair bound, not disabled in any way but there are times when if one more person insists that I need help carrying 40 lbs of bird seed out to the car, or insists that I need help backing up my trailer, or generally treats me as incompetant because of outward appearances, it’s an effort not to tear that last person to shreds.
There’s only so many times you can say, “no thanks, I got it…” with a smile, yanno?
I cant believe im replying to such unbelievable ways of see this issue. I am doing so because i feel, fear, that this is how you honestly believe my life and abilities, inabilities and needs and problems
are able to be understood by you; because yout 83 yr old grandma rolls around the house in one. 
Comparing me, my abilities, my dreams, my ambition or my aggression to anything within anyone else who clk walk is the tragedy I feel.
(3) Get all pissy when well-intentioned-but-uninformed people get on your last nerve.
But he really isn’t offended when people offer to help him. I don’t know why you keep harping on that point when it isn’t actually what he was talking about.
People often only see the disability, not the person. Yes, this is because lots of people don’t have experience with disability - though TBH it’s not like there are very few disabled people around. I’ve had someone look at me limping and not holding nto things and assume I’m eligible for a pensioner’s discount and then get very embarrassed when I reply “no, I’m 39,” and they actually look at my face (I definitely look about 39, not particularly older or younger. No grey hair and a couple of lines).
When it happens often enough it gets really wearing. It’s also fairly insulting to be compared to someone much older - I mean, nobody would like that! If you were a youngish man, like Ambivalid, would you really be able to brush off comparisons to grandparents if it happened every other week or so?
From what you say, I and others with disabilities have to consider the full possible experiences of the “helpful” people - thinking of them as someone whose only experience with disabled people might be with certain types (usually elderly) - but they are not expected to do the same for me. I have to think of them as a whole person; they do not for me.
Just ask “can I help you in any way?” rather than just assuming what help is needed and that’s that. A lot of people do get this, but more will when reminded of it.
You know it was well intentioned, and admit as much. Then you get all bent because you don’t need no stinking help! Her good intentions, not being nuanced to your delicate ego, are worthy of a petty rant!
Keep on railing against the world’s well intentioned souls, how can that work against you, right? Clearly you will never need be given ‘the benefit of the doubt’, as you don’t ever feel to offer it to another.
And, ‘I’m done with this!’, is laughably untrue! You’ll never be done with it. It’s your cross to bear and you bear it loudly, proudly like every martyr.
Someone was sincerely trying to offer you assistance. For which they have earned your disdain and petty criticism. Climb down off that cross, everyone, EVERYONE receives help and offers of assistance that are unneeded and not appreciated. Persons using such, as an opportunity to trash the other, come off as no more than attention seeking, obnoxious jerks. Whether they are able bodied or otherwise.
You don’t get a pass for being petty and ungrateful, because you’re in a chair. Few people will say as much to your face, but most everybody leaves thinking it.
This is a fine rant. I have no complaints when people blow off steam for what might appear to readers to be minor inconveniences. That’s one of the big uses of the Pit, I think. Everyone reacts differently, and everyone can feel differently.
This is the difference between jerk and not jerk, or asshole and not asshole, to me:
Someone is offended and extremely annoyed by some well-meaning person who is somewhat ignorant about the issue and fails to consider something (like the obvious fact that an adult, muscular male in a wheelchair will not have the same issues as a frail, elderly woman in a wheelchair)… being offended and extremely annoyed, even by a well-meaning person, doesn’t make someone a jerk or an asshole. What makes someone a jerk or an asshole is acting like a jerk or an asshole. A jerk or an asshole says “screw you lady, you don’t know a fucking thing about people with mobility issues”. Rolling one’s eyes doesn’t count, IMO. Posting a rant doesn’t count. Assholes and jerks hurt people (physically or emotionally). Posting a rant and rolling eyes doesn’t hurt people.
Maybe Ambivalid has hurt people, maybe he’s a jerk or an asshole for some other reason, but I don’t see anything in this post to indicate jerkitude or asshole-dom. Rant away.
I understand the OP’s frustration. The world is full of well meaning idiots. If after informing Ambi of her long and involved study of the care and feeding of people who use wheelchairs she realized that she had stuck her foot in her mouth then it wouldn’t be as bad, but she’s likely to tell the next person how she now has extended experience with both grandmas and dental patients based on cleaning the OPs teeth.
It was a reasonable rant, not the kind where we take pitchforks and torches and burn the witch, but certainly an expression of the kind of frustration people face everyday, and more so for this OP.
I’m sorry about this.
I put up with the same thing all the time from men who think that as a woman, I can’t open my own damn door. They rush ahead like if I get to the door and they aren’t there to open it, I’m going to walk right into it. I’m not sure what they think happens when a woman gets to a door and there is no man around.
I know there are people who like having doors opened for them - and it seems polite to me that the person who gets their first opens the door and doesn’t let it slam in the face of the person behind them. And its always nice to get the door for someone with their hands full. But there is no reason to me that we need to divide this by gender lines.
I don’t make a deal out of it - well I do, but good naturedly. Holding the door open for me, they can’t rush to the SECOND door that is usually there. So I open that with a flourish and usher them through with a smile. Once in a while I get some asshole who insists on taking THAT door from me so I can go through first. I leave and go through a different door. If they can’t get the point that there is a difference between polite and patronizing that I’m trying to good naturedly illustrate, I’m neither going to explain it, nor have them “explain” it to me.
(And I’m willing to bet that you get no end of help with doors - some of which is truly helpful - and some of which is “there is a handicapped button right there, I CAN push the button.”)
I think you missed the point. I think she’s saying that even the 83 year olds don’t like to be treated as less capable than they are (even if it’s objectively less capable than you). And unfortunately all of us will probably get to the point where people’s impulses are to treat us as children if we make it to that age. So yeah, it sounds like it sucks.
I’m a man, and people (men and women) open doors for me all the time. Somehow, I manage to not take offense.
Dangerosa just wait until you’re an old grey-haired woman. Either you are invisible (there’s a lot of that) or you’re incompetent. Or both. Some of the responders in this thread do not understand the “difference between polite and patronizing”, maybe because they’ve never been on the receiving end of patronizing. But guess what? If they live long enough they will be.
By the way, Ambivalid, I thought it was a good rant but not quite vigorous* enough to be an A. B rant? maybe.
*not enough cussing.
But he was happy for her to offer help. He even didn’t mind when she offered extra help that he didn’t need personally.
What he didn’t like was her saying she knew about people in wheelchairs because her 83-yr-old Grandmother was in one. It’s not the same thing. It’s very, very different in terms of needs and it’s also slightly insulting to compare a youngish man to an old woman.
Given that Ambivalid was really extremely clear about the cause of his rant in the OP, and that it wasn’t the offer of help that was the problem, it seems like a few posters here are seeing the disability rather than reading the post.
This is a totally understandable rant, and there’s nothing wrong with being internally frustrated by a clueless comment while being externally polite about it. And making sure to let someone know that you “get” them because you have vaguely similar experience is clueless. Not unspeakably rude, but clueless.
As far as the door thing goes, the issue isn’t someone holding the door. The issue is when a man gets upset with you because you don’t stop and wait and let them get to it first, or when he gets upset because you hold a door for him.
Add me to the list of people who think it’s a fine rant, and to the list of people who believe in doorholding turntaking.
It’s not just someone being cluelessly nice one day, it’s being cluelessly nice every single day and being patronizing to boot. Of course it’s bothersome.
That being said, health professionals do indeed treat us all like little children. “You did what I asked! Good job!”
Perhaps next time you see her, you can say, “Look, my legs don’t work, but other than that I am a fully functional man.” When you say, “fully functional,” stare hard at her and waggle your eyebrows. With any luck, she’ll be so creeped out that she’ll never again associate you with a ten-year-old boy or her 83-year-old grandma. Unless her grandma was also really creepy.