I want to be able to want a cure without the disability community thinking that I have internalized ableism.
I want the disability community to realize that there are some things worth curing, and some things that should not be cured.
If you are healthy and disabled you do not need your disability cured.
You can’t actually cure a disability anyway. You cure illnesses. Not every disability is an illness.
If you are disabled and not healthy it should be okay for you to want a cure.
If you are disabled and not healthy it’s also okay to not want a cure, as long as you leave space for the people who do want one.
The disability movement needs room for people who need or want cures.
Don’t infantilize people who are ill and disabled by assuming we just have a major case of internalized ableistm. Society infantilizes us all enough as is, we don’t need more of it from the community.
I am disabled and chronically ill. I want me some cure for my illnesses. If I’m still disabled after, that’s fine.
My problem isn’t being disabled. My problem is being chronically ill.
Absolutely, I wouldn’t mind having to use my cane, being restricted or having treatments even, but if I could not feel like hell every moment of every day. If I could maybe not have to retreat into darkness and silence when my brain decides it’s time for the ‘migraine agony rave’. If I could not be at 7 on the pain scale on a good day, that would be amazing.
I accept my disability, but I would love for someone to say “You know what, we found a cure for chronic migraines, and actually we can fix your discs surgically after all! Oh and all the other weird painful things that are wrong with you? We worked out what they are and here’s a treatment.”
It’s not internalised ableism to want to not be in pain anymore.
IT’S NOT INTERNALIZED ABLEISM TO WANT TO NOT BE IN PAIN ANYMORE.
I’m here for this. There are many ways in which I still struggle with internalized ableism. I try to be inclusive and never discriminate, but of course I make mistakes. I admit them and I do my best to learn.
But my wanting to be healthy isn’t ableism against myself. I just want to be able to not be in a state of constant pain and exhaustion. That’s about suffering, not discrimination.
i would love for there to be a cure for some of my mental shit, i would like to not feel like absolute shit 24/7, i feel you
People easily mistake neurodivergent speech patterns and communication styles for run-of-the-mill pretentiousness.
I don’t want to get too specific right now, but a lot of people who are neurodivergent (namely autistic, but there’s lots of overlap) struggle with communication. To them, writing/typing may be far easier and more natural than speaking aloud, but it can still come off as unusually formal, overly precise, or more awkwardly structured than usual. Sometimes it’s interpreted as “pretentiousness” because it doesn’t have the same casual cadence many neurotypical writers may use.
This.
wait people consider this offensive?
Not offensive so much as irritating, I guess. It’s low-hanging fruit and easy to mock whenever people pick up on something “off” about you.
Other times, people assume that you employ formal language or “advanced” vocabulary because you’re trying too hard to sound intelligent or superior. What you intend to be clear and specific may be interpreted as condescension.
Ship, you just wrote about ten chapters of my life story. The flip side of this is when you take something someone else says at face value, but they meant something different than what you thought they did, and they’re like, “You knew what I meant; you’re just being pedantic.”
Oof, yeah. I can figure things out for myself and I can follow instructions, but vague/incomplete instructions throw me off tremendously… but I can’t always distinguish between someone’s neutral attempts to be informative versus a passive aggressive “hey, you stupid fuck, I bet you can’t even get the most simple directions right unless I spoonfeed you”. What is mockery, and what is establishment of a basic premise?
Knowing that other people will sometimes say things insincerely for the purpose of humiliating you, it’s easy to becomes suspicious of friendly comments. I met my friend Alexi because I responded to her compliment about my clothing with “fuck you” because it rang all my “this person is teasing you and will use your assumption of good will to hurt you” bells. Nope! She was sincere! I kept going over the interaction in my head until I decided that my initial calculations were incorrect and she was legitimately being nice to me. I found her again, apologized awkwardly, and we’ve been friends ever since. But that was face to face! There were other cues on the table, and the pressure of close proximity encouraging reconciliation. Think how often misunderstandings like that happen on the Internet.
…
*is very suddenly and unexpectedly reminded of the worst and earliest years of school*
(This is not a bad thing, despite the feeling of being punched in the chest, just. I am uncertain how to quantify what this means for me, to find that someone has been able to put into words one of the aspects of me that was targeted – my brain keeps saying caused, because I was blamed for being bullied – by the people who made my life miserable at school for five long years.)
Not to put the cart ahead of the horse because we’re in survival mode right now, but like I think in terms of a pragmatic policy shift that we should at some point take up is taking gender off of legal documentation.
I’m up for replacing it with assigned sex at birth, that would basically do the same thing for medical reasons, but would it help with those who share a unique gender identity?
No that is the wrong direction. Like that makes my life infinitely more dangerous than the situation now.
There is no good medical reason to have gender on all of our identity documentation; there is potentially even less to put ASAB on there. My body does not (completely) work like a cis man nor a cis woman’s.
My entire point is that like as opposed to like trying to accommodate every gender and having the government control those systems, we need to deconstruct legal gender as a violent system of power and state surveillance.
Also known as an ambivert, an extroverted introvert is someone who exhibits qualities of both introversion and extroversion.
1. Their spot on the spectrum changes with their environment.
Your ambivert friend may be loud and gregarious around their family,
but quiet and thoughtful at the office. Seeing them in both situations
may feel like meeting two entirely different people.
2. Talking to strangers is fine – but don’t expect them to keep it to small talk.
Although an ambivert can hold up their end of a
conversation, talking
about the weather will not be enough to engage them. Their social energy
is
limited enough that they won’t want to waste it on meaningless chatter.
They will likely push the conversation into deeper territory or bow out
entirely.
3. They like to be alone – they don’t like to be lonely.
There is a big difference between the two. Choosing to sit at home
with a tub of ice cream and a book feels fantastic. Sitting at
home because nobody called them back feels sad and lame.
4. Getting them out of the house can be a challenge.
If you catch your friend on a highly introverted day, you may just be
better off leaving them at home. They might manage to be social, but they’ll
just be thinking about their books and their couch the whole time.
5. If they’re new, you can find them in the back of the room.
An introverted extrovert will approach new situations with cautious
excitement. If they know someone in the group, they will likely cling to
them a bit as they become comfortable. If they do not, they might waver on the
edge of the crowd, slowly getting used to the water rather than jumping
in all at once.
6. They’re selectively social.
They don’t mean to be snobs. They just have limited social energy and
prefer interacting one-on-one or in small groups. For this reason, they
can only afford to invest their social time and energy in those who they
feel truly connected to.
7. Making friends is easy. Keeping them is hard.
They like talking to people, but they value their alone-time, as well. This
can make maintaining a friendship tricky. If your ambivert friend makes
an effort to consistently invest time and energy in your friendship, be
glad. You are truly special to them.
8. Their social desires change with the breeze.
They might be desperate to hang out with you on Friday, but then not
answer your call on Saturday. They’re not mad at you. They’re just super
comfortable in bed watching films.
9. They can talk to you for hours.
If you manage to catch them in a one-on-one situation, an extroverted
introvert will just not shut up. Once their interest is engaged, there’s
no stopping them.
10. Listening is great too, though.
Sometimes they want to be a part of the action, but their social energy
levels are too low for them to contribute in a meaningful way. Listening
allows them to get to know you without burning up their social fuel. They also
know its value from their chattier moments when they are desperate for an
ear.
Btw there’s a BIG difference between a straight person saying “why can’t these characters just be friends:/ not everything has to be gay you guys”
and an aromantic person expressing a wish for more fandom spaces that don’t place unnecessary importance on romance and act like platonic love is secondary
and y’all need to stop pretending it’s the same thing and being aggressive towards aro people over it
One thing that made me happy about Rogue One is that there wasn’t a romance shoehorned in there. There were moments where they got close and looked like they might kiss, but I’m glad they didn’t. It would’ve been annoying had they did. As if the audience couldn’t watch a man and woman on screen without them romancing. In the end when the Death Star fired upon Scarif and they watched on the beach as their fate drew closer they got close, and held each other. It was nicely done though. It was out of fear, and relief that they completed their mission, even at their own expense.
So, ok, I’m gonna try and explain what its like for an asexual when they see someone that is aesthetically pleasing because too many times have I seen a person, guy or girl, and said “Whoa, they are really gorgeous!” and had people instantly come at me with snarky comments like “I thought you asexual, how can you find someone attractive if you’re asexual?”
Well, try and picture this.
You’re hiking in the mountains and crest a hill. Before you, the mountain range on the other side of the valley sprawls in either direction, fur trees pushing as high up the sides as their clinging roots will allow. Over top, the clouds are calm and fluffy with just the barest hint of pink tickling their bellies, letting you know it might be time to turn back before dark. The colors around you are rich and vibrant. The smell of pine and earth and clean air fills your nose.
It’s a beautiful sight. It takes your breath away. You don’t want to stop looking at it.
Do you want to fuck the beautiful scenery?
No, you don’t. But just because you don’t want to rub yourself against the nearest tree doesn’t mean you can’t recognize that the space around you holds something beautiful and it doesn’t change the fact that you have a very strong but very different kind of wonderment when you look at it.
Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.
Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.
Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.
Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.
I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.
Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.
But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 