For the past fifteen years, disability has never been seen as anything other than a concept. A cost line on a spreadsheet. A political football. "Policy."
For a decade and a half, those tasked with providing for everyone in British society have been very loud about the fact that, whatever their Party is called, whatever side of the House of Commons they sit on, whatever their branding, they don't see disability as something that people experience. It's just an "expensive problem", a source of grievance for employers, a "barrier to productivity". Disability has never been about disabled people; it's been about employers, about "hard working tax payers", about the optics for the Party in power, and the Parties closest in the race to potentially be in power next time around.
Social media created a space where disability could be about disabled people, and, in the past year, that's slowly started to drip into the mainstream media - but those spaces were not and are not keen on disabled men being included. When men, especially white, masculine, cis-appearing men, try to talk about their experience of disability, the immediate clap back is barked out: "Women have it worse! Medical misogyny! Emotional labour and disability! Disability and the mental load!"
But disability is a mental load for the disabled person, and one we don't get to stamp our feet and demand someone else "does their share of." It's not something we get to drop off at daycare, or with extended family, and head off for some "me time." And - unlike marriage and kids - it's not a choice.
Yes, it is true that medical research historically only considered men to be acceptable subjects, and still sees more men as subjects than women - because women can't afford childcare to cover attending research consultations. Women are more likely to be in hourly-paid work, and can't afford the travel costs to major urban centres, or time off from those hourly-paid jobs.
But medical research in the very immediate contemporary era is working to try and address that lack of representation. The lack of research representation it's not addressing? The absence of disabled people in general medical research.
For a decade and a half, those tasked with providing for everyone in British society have been very loud about the fact that, whatever their Party is called, whatever side of the House of Commons they sit on, whatever their branding, they don't see disability as something that people experience. It's just an "expensive problem", a source of grievance for employers, a "barrier to productivity". Disability has never been about disabled people; it's been about employers, about "hard working tax payers", about the optics for the Party in power, and the Parties closest in the race to potentially be in power next time around.
Social media created a space where disability could be about disabled people, and, in the past year, that's slowly started to drip into the mainstream media - but those spaces were not and are not keen on disabled men being included. When men, especially white, masculine, cis-appearing men, try to talk about their experience of disability, the immediate clap back is barked out: "Women have it worse! Medical misogyny! Emotional labour and disability! Disability and the mental load!"
But disability is a mental load for the disabled person, and one we don't get to stamp our feet and demand someone else "does their share of." It's not something we get to drop off at daycare, or with extended family, and head off for some "me time." And - unlike marriage and kids - it's not a choice.
Yes, it is true that medical research historically only considered men to be acceptable subjects, and still sees more men as subjects than women - because women can't afford childcare to cover attending research consultations. Women are more likely to be in hourly-paid work, and can't afford the travel costs to major urban centres, or time off from those hourly-paid jobs.
But medical research in the very immediate contemporary era is working to try and address that lack of representation. The lack of research representation it's not addressing? The absence of disabled people in general medical research.
If we're lucky, disabled people might get accepted onto research programmes for potential cures for our specific disabilities, but we're automatically excluded from general medical practice research because...participants have to be able-bodied and mentally well. Even though able-bodied, mentally well people are the least in need of the significant payouts for research participants, and, more importantly, disabled people are having the most interaction with, and dependence on, the medical profession. A profession which...has basically never encountered our bodies, minds, and brains in neutral settings.
This negligence actually affects disabled men as much, but in different ways, as medicine's historic lack of gender representation affects women; women, being more oriented to consensus-seeking discourse, tend to default to "I need a doctor to tell me what's wrong and what to do" (in 2026, 'doctor' can be replaced with 'therapist' or 'wellness practitioner'); women look for commonly-agreed sources of knowledge, and expect those knowledge holders to simply hand them pre-packaged wisdom that is parcelled and labelled for "Western-centric cis het, child-having female experience", particularly if it brings a strong social element.
Men, in contrast, want knowledge we can explore and interrogate for ourselves, and shape to our own, very specific personal experience.
For able-bodied men, this is fine; the entire world of medical research has centred them for the majority of its existence as a field, meaning that what they want is readily available. Add to that that medicine approves of people who use insights to "create personalised healthy lifestyles" - thus avoiding having to 'take up the time' of doctors at all.
But disabled men aren't even considered as people with a body and lifestyle beyond our disability/ies, which means the medical profession doesn't have any insights to give to us so we can work up our own understanding and pathways.
This medical disregard applies to disabled women, too, but the space that social media creates for consensus-seeking, and the validation social media gives to women, provides a non-medicalised space where disabled women can still find the kinds of support they need.
In contrast, when men - especially those who are perceived as being white and cis - try to talk about our experiences, we're told to sit down, shut up, that we've talked too much, that everyone's sick of listening to men! - except, we're not the men who "everyone had to listen to for all of history!" We're not the men who "literally got to write history!" Disabled men, particularly, are not given the same serving of "male privilege" that able-bodied men receive. Disabled men are often only seen as men when it suits a "shut up and let the oppressed, marginalised girlies talk!" narrative; unless that narrative needs a hyperfixation, disabled men are seen as somehow femininised - not as women, but as less-than-men, as "burdens" that able-bodied women have to "manage" - yet another addition to "women's mental load and emotional labour." Whether in the medical world or in our private lives, disabled men are only ever seen as the burden other people are "forced" to "carry."
This hits disabled men particularly hard when it comes to employment - because employers already resent the fact that they have to employ anyone, much less someone who comes with "extra steps" (and extra costs). In contrast to women, men do not have the option to marry someone with a strong income. Disabled men are routinely rejected by women who "don't want to spend my life as a carer", or who can't conceive of disabled men being able to be equitable participants in a domestic relationship, meaning we strike out in the face of "Everything should be fifty fifty, because why should he get to complain about that when he'd otherwise be doing a hundred percent if he was on his own?!" - because the perception is we can't do anything, and the reality is we often can't do an exactly fifty-fifty, fully "fair" split of domestic labour. And, because we can't be fully involved in keeping a house to the showhome standards of many modern women, because we're maybe not going to be able to be doing impressive, reels-ready DIY projects "for our girl", because we are very unlikely to be bringing in that 100k+ salary, we're not really seen as any kind of option for able-bodied partners.
That leaves us often turning to other disabled people. While these relationships can be very emotionally rewarding, and certainly come with the mental space and safety that disabled people need, they often become relationships pot-holed by unmet needs, and the assumption from statutory providers that "you can look after each other, can't you?" (no, actually, we can't - that's kind of the point about both of us being disabled), meaning that formal support is just...not available.
One of the hardest things in my recent life has been coming to terms with multiple disabilities - losing my sight, chronic IBS, and chronic fatigue (likely a result of the sight loss and IBS, neither of which are especially low-drain when it comes to energy), as well as the possibility I may be experiencing the very early symptoms of Parkinsons (that's not confirmed, and, at the moment, my focus is evidence-backed supplements and physiotherapy to delay symptom progression.)
This negligence actually affects disabled men as much, but in different ways, as medicine's historic lack of gender representation affects women; women, being more oriented to consensus-seeking discourse, tend to default to "I need a doctor to tell me what's wrong and what to do" (in 2026, 'doctor' can be replaced with 'therapist' or 'wellness practitioner'); women look for commonly-agreed sources of knowledge, and expect those knowledge holders to simply hand them pre-packaged wisdom that is parcelled and labelled for "Western-centric cis het, child-having female experience", particularly if it brings a strong social element.
Men, in contrast, want knowledge we can explore and interrogate for ourselves, and shape to our own, very specific personal experience.
For able-bodied men, this is fine; the entire world of medical research has centred them for the majority of its existence as a field, meaning that what they want is readily available. Add to that that medicine approves of people who use insights to "create personalised healthy lifestyles" - thus avoiding having to 'take up the time' of doctors at all.
But disabled men aren't even considered as people with a body and lifestyle beyond our disability/ies, which means the medical profession doesn't have any insights to give to us so we can work up our own understanding and pathways.
This medical disregard applies to disabled women, too, but the space that social media creates for consensus-seeking, and the validation social media gives to women, provides a non-medicalised space where disabled women can still find the kinds of support they need.
In contrast, when men - especially those who are perceived as being white and cis - try to talk about our experiences, we're told to sit down, shut up, that we've talked too much, that everyone's sick of listening to men! - except, we're not the men who "everyone had to listen to for all of history!" We're not the men who "literally got to write history!" Disabled men, particularly, are not given the same serving of "male privilege" that able-bodied men receive. Disabled men are often only seen as men when it suits a "shut up and let the oppressed, marginalised girlies talk!" narrative; unless that narrative needs a hyperfixation, disabled men are seen as somehow femininised - not as women, but as less-than-men, as "burdens" that able-bodied women have to "manage" - yet another addition to "women's mental load and emotional labour." Whether in the medical world or in our private lives, disabled men are only ever seen as the burden other people are "forced" to "carry."
This hits disabled men particularly hard when it comes to employment - because employers already resent the fact that they have to employ anyone, much less someone who comes with "extra steps" (and extra costs). In contrast to women, men do not have the option to marry someone with a strong income. Disabled men are routinely rejected by women who "don't want to spend my life as a carer", or who can't conceive of disabled men being able to be equitable participants in a domestic relationship, meaning we strike out in the face of "Everything should be fifty fifty, because why should he get to complain about that when he'd otherwise be doing a hundred percent if he was on his own?!" - because the perception is we can't do anything, and the reality is we often can't do an exactly fifty-fifty, fully "fair" split of domestic labour. And, because we can't be fully involved in keeping a house to the showhome standards of many modern women, because we're maybe not going to be able to be doing impressive, reels-ready DIY projects "for our girl", because we are very unlikely to be bringing in that 100k+ salary, we're not really seen as any kind of option for able-bodied partners.
That leaves us often turning to other disabled people. While these relationships can be very emotionally rewarding, and certainly come with the mental space and safety that disabled people need, they often become relationships pot-holed by unmet needs, and the assumption from statutory providers that "you can look after each other, can't you?" (no, actually, we can't - that's kind of the point about both of us being disabled), meaning that formal support is just...not available.
One of the hardest things in my recent life has been coming to terms with multiple disabilities - losing my sight, chronic IBS, and chronic fatigue (likely a result of the sight loss and IBS, neither of which are especially low-drain when it comes to energy), as well as the possibility I may be experiencing the very early symptoms of Parkinsons (that's not confirmed, and, at the moment, my focus is evidence-backed supplements and physiotherapy to delay symptom progression.)
I used to work a 50hr per week job, which had a 15hr commute, and still handle chores like weekly grocery shopping, laundry, and DIY at the weekends - that was only 10yrs ago.
15yrs ago, I was working 45hrs a week, travelling 10hrs a week, and usually going out on coach trips every other weekend, whilst managing the domestic work of living completely independently, and handling several pets.
Now? I'm in paid employment that's only 3 days per week, and I'm exhausted. I need to try and build a consistent freelance income in the next 10months, because this contract ends in December, and it's no longer safe to claim welfare support as a disabled person, because every political Party in the UK believes disabled people are just lying about/exaggerating the impact of our disabilities. Fluctuating conditions are shoehorned into consistent experience, which often flattens a complex, frustrating disability with significant flares to "claimant could easily manage office-based work." (Office based work? You mean the thing that's being torn up and flung over to AI with gleeful abandon? That form of work?)
Men get yelled at to "go to fucking therapeeeeee!!!", we're mocked as "will do literally anything to avoid therapy" - yet men are still expected to provide the strongest income, men are still widely considered "lazy bums" if we "only" work part-time, men are told that "flexible work is for our female staff members"; that alone makes "just going to therapy" a significant challenge, because therapists tend to...work Monday to Friday, 9-5. The same time we're working. Then come the additional barriers disabled men face in accessing therapy; offices located on upper floors only accessible by stairs, offices not on public transport routes, or without on-site parking, online therapy that relies on turning your camera on (which can be very exclusionary for those who are bedbound, require significant carer assistance, don't have space to "tidy away" their daily life, or who have visible deformaties), and that's before we even get to disabilities which limit peoples' ability to engage in verbal communication, and the assumption that we need therapy about being disabled.
Even if you don't share my moral and ethical objections to LLMs used as "AI therapy", these have been proven unsafe, and are even less safe for disabled people. They're also...not therapists. Or intelligent. They can't respond directly to the specific, nuanced human experience they're being presented with. (That's not a reason to hate AI - that's just a limit of their design; people are insistant on misusing LLMs and generative AI, because that's how humans are - we refuse to look at how things are designed to work, and just fixate on "but this is how I want it to work, so I'm going to make it work that way!" - and then get mad that it "is basically shit!" - no, you're using it wrong, but die mad about it...)
And increasingly, of course, the world, particularly the social media sphere of it, is being littered with "therapists" who used AI to pass a 2hr course...and who therefore end up being humans with LLM's inability to handle complex nuance with appropriate, personal, dynamic responses. LLMs can be forgiven for this lack; they weren't designed for it. Humans? They deserve all the blame for laziness and shystering - but, because they are overwhelmingly women, they never get that judgement. Especially not if they're white.
I have two degree qualifications - Bsc in Naturopathic Medicine, and Bsc in Nutrition and Natural Medicine - Firsts in both. I have lived experience of using naturopathy and nutrition therapy to manage a serious psychiatric condition, as well as the more recent chronic conditions I've found myself dealing with. I've also used naturopathy to support my wife in managing her chronic conditions. But, because I'm still disabled, a white man, and not typically attractive? I wasn't able to turn those strong qualifications and experience into a paying career. I've had plenty of non-profits ask me to provide free courses - as in, they didn't pay me, I couldn't charge the participants - I've had festival organisers suggest I could "run a workshop" in exchange for a "free ticket" to an event I had no personal interest in attending.
But someone who presents themselves as a Western-centric attractive, femme-aligned person, especially if they are white, can leap onto the internet with precisely zero formal qualifications, no actual lived experience, and make a successful career selling courses and doing classes, usually with the most beige, five-minutes-on-Google blindingly obvious "advice" and "wisdom" - and be loudly applauded and celebrated for their "unique insights." (Which are almost always very basic, highly bastardised cognitive behavioural therapy from 20 years ago.) These peoples' "therapy" often heavily infantilises women - the consequences of women's independently-made choices are "emotional labour" and "mental load", anything that an individual woman doesn't personally like is "a nervous system trigger", every minor inconvenience is "trauma", every miscommunication, particularly when it comes from men, is "weaponised incompetence" - basically, these women are charging women to hear that of course they can't be expected to feel happy and healthy, because they're just poor, helpless dolls, completely at the mercy of the winds and whims of all these horrible, useless men, and this economy makes it literally impossible for these poor, put-upon women to leave the men who are draining them... that's not actually a helpful way for grown adults to view themselves, but it does have the handy little result of increasing dependence from people who are already significantly primed for consensus-seeking decision making...meaning that these women who are told they're "trapped by systemic patriarchal abuse", that "the system" has basically forced them to just react to the "chaos of men" come to believe their only hope, their only respite, is the time they spend with these "coaches" and "therapists" - who, as other women, are "the only people who really understand how life is for girls/Mummas/boss babes/femmes".
15yrs ago, I was working 45hrs a week, travelling 10hrs a week, and usually going out on coach trips every other weekend, whilst managing the domestic work of living completely independently, and handling several pets.
Now? I'm in paid employment that's only 3 days per week, and I'm exhausted. I need to try and build a consistent freelance income in the next 10months, because this contract ends in December, and it's no longer safe to claim welfare support as a disabled person, because every political Party in the UK believes disabled people are just lying about/exaggerating the impact of our disabilities. Fluctuating conditions are shoehorned into consistent experience, which often flattens a complex, frustrating disability with significant flares to "claimant could easily manage office-based work." (Office based work? You mean the thing that's being torn up and flung over to AI with gleeful abandon? That form of work?)
Men get yelled at to "go to fucking therapeeeeee!!!", we're mocked as "will do literally anything to avoid therapy" - yet men are still expected to provide the strongest income, men are still widely considered "lazy bums" if we "only" work part-time, men are told that "flexible work is for our female staff members"; that alone makes "just going to therapy" a significant challenge, because therapists tend to...work Monday to Friday, 9-5. The same time we're working. Then come the additional barriers disabled men face in accessing therapy; offices located on upper floors only accessible by stairs, offices not on public transport routes, or without on-site parking, online therapy that relies on turning your camera on (which can be very exclusionary for those who are bedbound, require significant carer assistance, don't have space to "tidy away" their daily life, or who have visible deformaties), and that's before we even get to disabilities which limit peoples' ability to engage in verbal communication, and the assumption that we need therapy about being disabled.
Even if you don't share my moral and ethical objections to LLMs used as "AI therapy", these have been proven unsafe, and are even less safe for disabled people. They're also...not therapists. Or intelligent. They can't respond directly to the specific, nuanced human experience they're being presented with. (That's not a reason to hate AI - that's just a limit of their design; people are insistant on misusing LLMs and generative AI, because that's how humans are - we refuse to look at how things are designed to work, and just fixate on "but this is how I want it to work, so I'm going to make it work that way!" - and then get mad that it "is basically shit!" - no, you're using it wrong, but die mad about it...)
And increasingly, of course, the world, particularly the social media sphere of it, is being littered with "therapists" who used AI to pass a 2hr course...and who therefore end up being humans with LLM's inability to handle complex nuance with appropriate, personal, dynamic responses. LLMs can be forgiven for this lack; they weren't designed for it. Humans? They deserve all the blame for laziness and shystering - but, because they are overwhelmingly women, they never get that judgement. Especially not if they're white.
I have two degree qualifications - Bsc in Naturopathic Medicine, and Bsc in Nutrition and Natural Medicine - Firsts in both. I have lived experience of using naturopathy and nutrition therapy to manage a serious psychiatric condition, as well as the more recent chronic conditions I've found myself dealing with. I've also used naturopathy to support my wife in managing her chronic conditions. But, because I'm still disabled, a white man, and not typically attractive? I wasn't able to turn those strong qualifications and experience into a paying career. I've had plenty of non-profits ask me to provide free courses - as in, they didn't pay me, I couldn't charge the participants - I've had festival organisers suggest I could "run a workshop" in exchange for a "free ticket" to an event I had no personal interest in attending.
But someone who presents themselves as a Western-centric attractive, femme-aligned person, especially if they are white, can leap onto the internet with precisely zero formal qualifications, no actual lived experience, and make a successful career selling courses and doing classes, usually with the most beige, five-minutes-on-Google blindingly obvious "advice" and "wisdom" - and be loudly applauded and celebrated for their "unique insights." (Which are almost always very basic, highly bastardised cognitive behavioural therapy from 20 years ago.) These peoples' "therapy" often heavily infantilises women - the consequences of women's independently-made choices are "emotional labour" and "mental load", anything that an individual woman doesn't personally like is "a nervous system trigger", every minor inconvenience is "trauma", every miscommunication, particularly when it comes from men, is "weaponised incompetence" - basically, these women are charging women to hear that of course they can't be expected to feel happy and healthy, because they're just poor, helpless dolls, completely at the mercy of the winds and whims of all these horrible, useless men, and this economy makes it literally impossible for these poor, put-upon women to leave the men who are draining them... that's not actually a helpful way for grown adults to view themselves, but it does have the handy little result of increasing dependence from people who are already significantly primed for consensus-seeking decision making...meaning that these women who are told they're "trapped by systemic patriarchal abuse", that "the system" has basically forced them to just react to the "chaos of men" come to believe their only hope, their only respite, is the time they spend with these "coaches" and "therapists" - who, as other women, are "the only people who really understand how life is for girls/Mummas/boss babes/femmes".
This is not only deeply toxic for the women who are paying out to basically enter a control dynamic, but it reinforces the barriers that prevent many men from believing therapy is something relevant for men, and causes men who are considering therapy to be put off by how femme-centric it skews, especially online, and the impression that "I'm just going to be told I'm the problem, that everything is my fault for being a man, so what's the point?" Which, of course, means women keep being faced with unhealed men who have never engaged in any level of introspection...which means women believe that "all men" are "just like that"...which means they continue to accept those men as domestic partners...which causes them more problems...which sees them seeking therapy from the same online clout "coaches" and "counsellors"... which results in those bare-minimum "coaches" and "counsellors" raking in the cash.
This isn't about "how hard it is to be a man". I'm not here to argue about "which gender has it worse" - disability takes you outside of gender, to a significant degree. Life is hard for human beings - the only thing that really makes it easier is money. The more money you have, the easier your life will be; it's why so many people living in poverty idolise people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, it's why the vote for politicians who talk about "ending the welfare state", even when those people rely on welfare payments - because, when you have no money, and no access to money, you have blinding clarity on just how much easier a very large amount of money would make your life. People who aren't "fuck off rich", but are "comfortable" already have an easy enough life; they have the normal irritations and inconveniences of life, not actual hardships; they therefore genuinely don't see how much better their lives would be with more money.
