I earned straight-A's as a nontraditional disabled minority female, and I still experienced ageism, racism, ableism. I was able to get as far as earning undergraduate degrees and doing post-bacc research work, but as I tried to prepare for grad school, the support for disabled persons weakened or was even frowned upon. I tried to share with my mentor about my issues, in hopes that I would get some great pointers, but that only turned into him and I having a falling out. So that career is now gone, despite me having post-bacc research experience.

I, too, wanted to work for a nonprofit doing research. However, the research I wanted to do was focused on community traumas and victimizations - mostly unsubstantiated or unfounded in nature. There's a lot of data from arrests (both unsubstantiated, unfounded, and substantiated) as well as from convictions (substantiated only - with caveats that some crimes were reduced to other crimes that don't speak to the victim's needs). Because victims' rights aren't as strong as defendants' rights, victims tend to pay for the rest of their lives - in terms of disabilities related to trauma and loss, and then later by things like being discriminated against for having a mental disability (such as PTSD, among other things). Childhood trauma is largely included in this, because most of the claims are unsubstantiated - meaning, that they were never involved in the child welfare system; they often report their childhood traumas as adults within a therapy session. These unsubstantiated victimizations notwithstanding, survivors still hurt, and not only do they pay for the rest of their lives, so do taxpayers because most of us survivors wind up going on disability. Then, for some horrible reason, society blames the victim and discriminates against us even further as we try to upwardly mobilize through self-rehabilitation by applying for jobs and/or colleges. More often than not, we're nontraditional at this point, meaning that we are older students and disabled students trying to enter college and earn degrees to help us get better jobs. The attitudes when asking for help, accommodations, and opportunities that other more able-bodied students get in terms of referrals to grad programs and job opportunities are tantamount to ageism and ableism combined. The professionals in power see us as risks, as the "unfit" (whenever they claim that we are "not a good fit"), as burdens to society, and almost as unworthy of any upward mobility. Some even go as far as saying we're "milking the system," when we really are struggling to get by and find purpose in our lives. It is much harder when rape culture, misogyny, ageism, ableism, nationalism, racism, and xenophobia have infiltrated all areas of life, and therefore such systemic problems affect the disabled even more. Mental disabilities, in particular, are met with even more scrutiny and disdain than those with physical disabilities.

Even disabled veterans are a protected class, but despite anti-discrimination laws, they still, too, get discriminated against.

It's really tough being disabled and judged by society.

I wished more people would investigate these things!