Major social media sites such as Facebook, Reddit, and the like have a plethora of pages for service dogs and emotional support animals, most are very generalized but some focus on smaller aspects of the subject. One thing that I almost always notice is the toxicity that occurs within almost every SD page. I have always wondered how or why this happens. No, this is not my first day on the internet, I do understand overall internet vitriol. Keyboard warriors with no real worry about retaliation for their statement or being proven wrong as they simply scroll past. But this should be different.
As an overall group of disabled individuals, it would seem to me that cohesion would be easy. We all have endured hardships and faced discrimination throughout our lives, should that by itself bind us together? Even if we do not understand what someone else's disability is we should be able to connect simply by understanding what we have had to go through and how difficult it was. My wife is bipolar I have combat-related PTSD, neither of us fully understands what the other is going through but we support one another through our troubled times without question. I also understand that this is how married couples should be, but honestly shouldn't we all especially within the disabled community?
I can name off several groups of like-minded people that have rallied around one another and become major pressure groups within our government and have been able to push their agendas. No, I am not naming the ones that come to mind or if I agree with them.
But, why do we not see any of that within our community? It seems that we tend to be so much more self-absorbed in our own problems and much less tolerant of others' views within our own community. How hard is it for us to take in the larger picture instead of focusing in on our own tunnel vision or making sure our view is the only view others are allowed to see? And I will admit that I can be that way at times, but I strive to take into account how other people may see something, that's why I enjoy talking with people that I do not see eye to eye with. I want to be able to understand how or why they view things the way they do.So why are we at one another's throat, just because we don't agree with what another says? Unless the person is knowingly or unknowingly giving out false information, in which case how hard is it to nicely let the person know that the information is not correct and give them the reason it is wrong? Spitting and hissing does no one any good. All of us have room to learn something new. It is up to the other person to accept that information and weigh it. How blasted hard is it to be nice?
We are in this together!
