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   Megan Lynch (she/her) (meganl@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 09-Sep-2024 09:41:51 JST Megan Lynch (she/her)

   I'm liking this podcast so far. It's not as radical as I like, but it is interesting and an opportunity for these world class athletes to talk about what parasports are like.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_xkj6tbh18 #Paralympics #Sports #Disability #Football #Soccer

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     Megan Lynch (she/her) (meganl@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 09-Sep-2024 09:41:49 JST Megan Lynch (she/her)

     in reply to

     Yet more on this... one of the athletes in another episode talked about the great effort and expense they and their program went to to train, because they'd only gotten 4th in Tokyo 2020, not a medal.

     And while I can understand being disappointed, the mountains they moved just to make their training environment more like that of hot countries just made me wonder what their society would be like if they'd put that money and effort into accessibility projects.

     Mr. Bill repeated this.
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     Megan Lynch (she/her) (meganl@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 09-Sep-2024 09:41:49 JST Megan Lynch (she/her)

     in reply to

     There's just something so weird to me about the enormous resources (of all types) that people put into games, when they quit before they start when it comes to the effort required to make things accessible and dismantle ableism.

     It possibly speaks of priorities (nationalism, individual glory over social justice) or possibly speaks to what they feel is more easily achievable...in any case, it really feels foreign to my way of thinking. And that's even with knowing how hard social change is!

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     Megan Lynch (she/her) (meganl@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 09-Sep-2024 09:41:50 JST Megan Lynch (she/her)

     in reply to

     Having listened now to 3 of these podcast episodes, with comments by 4 Paralympians, I do find it interesting how often the message is "anything is possible" when talking about the efforts disabled people can make to achieve athletic excellence, but the message is "Welp, what can you do?" when it comes to systemic change.

     It's weird to me that they see so much possibility in the struggle of individuals and seem not to see that much hope in popular struggle to dismantle #ableism. #Paralympics

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     Megan Lynch (she/her) (meganl@mas.to)'s status on Monday, 09-Sep-2024 09:41:50 JST Megan Lynch (she/her)

     in reply to

     And another one with an upbringing where their abled family just kinda ignored their access needs, which they view as a positive thing.

     I'm sure it does have some positives as far as preparing them for systemic ableism. However, it occurs to me how fortunate they are that disability activists don't have the same attitude that it's all about toughening up... if they did, they wouldn't have ADA, wouldn't have some of the accessibility in public that they've got...