One last hot take and then I’ll shut up: the reason adhd is framed first and foremost as a learning disability when it is in fact more apt to call it an emotional processing disorder is bc our society is only concerned w the ways neurological disorders impede a person’s ability to “function” aka get a job and contribute positively to capitalist society. How adhd affects interpersonal behaviors and emotional health is only relevant insofar as it relates to a person’s level of societal functioning PERIOD. There is no interest in improving our actual livelihoods
This becomes especially clear when one examines the effects of the medication they put us on. It is designed to increase our docile productivity at the detriment of pretty much everything else ranging from the mental to the physical (loss of appetite, sleep deprivation and a motley of other basic stuff becomes insufferable)
On the other side of the dressy scale there was a 7 months pregnant lawyer sitting on the floor at IAD
At O’Hare there was a lawyer who was about five minutes away from giving birth sitting there in her sweatpants with a sign that said “I’m a lawyer and I speak Hindi/Urdu”. Just her and her sign and supersized tea from McDonalds.
I’ll say it again. MOSTLY WOMEN.
Why does their being mostly women matter?
Because, statistically speaking, 64% of lawyers in the United States are men, meaning that the majority of the demographic showing up should reflect this. It is also interesting to note that only 27% of American born lawyers are female- that means that a lot of these women are likely immigrants or foreign born. We have a majority of women showing up in a field where they are a minority; women who dropped everything to help defend human rights and the country. There’s no cis-male equivalency to pregnancy, but if you fail to see the importance and stength of a woman who might feasibly go into labour at any second still standing up for what is right and good whilst the majority of politicians are cowering, then I can’t help you.
“I have been working non-stop for three
days and I have not made a penny,” [said a female lawyer who had been at a Texas airport and asked not to be quoted by name]. A friend, who is a male
immigration lawyer, went on vacation over the weekend, she said, because
he felt it wouldn’t be lucrative. “Male immigration lawyers look at
this and say ‘This is not a business opportunity for me,’” she said.