Stephen's Untold Stories

Thank you so much to Andy Carvin for sharing this. This is a video blog done by an autistic woman who has a lot to say, despite her being diagnosed as “low functioning.”

She also has her own blog, which is very cool.

The reason that I have chosen one of the offensive terms used in the German eugenics movement against disabled people — which, for reference, predated Nazism, was heavily influenced by American ideas, and survived after World War II — is to force people to look at the sentiments that drove that movement, that came before it, and that are still prevalent worldwide today.

Ballastexistenz means about what it looks like: Ballast-existence, ballast-life. Some of the other terms that were applied to disabled people at the same time included leeren Menschenhülsen (empty human-shaped shells/husks), and lebensunwertes Leben (lives unworthy of life).