The Technicolor Timecoat

ATTENTION!

2011-05-14T21:24:00.001-04:00

This blog is now moved to WordPress.com: A world that loved monsters.

This URL will no longer be updated. My previous posts are now imported.

okay (wall of text, but important)

2011-05-13T17:43:00.000-04:00

(cross-posted from my personal Tumblr)

since apparently not fucking over people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities is a horrifically contentious issue, I'm gonna keep it off this particular Tumblr from now on

Just... Ableist Word Profile: Intelligence

There are plenty of ways to get your point across without resorting to ableism against people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. I don't understand why so many people think it's not okay to dismiss someone's opinion as "crazy" but it's fine to call them an "idiot." It's not "there aren’t many words that aren't ableist" (A- there are, B- while it'll cut down your functional vocabulary and possibly make you sound repetitive, I don't have a choice but to sound repetitive a lot of the time because of my disabilities, and some people have it worse).

What's made me realize it's so contentious:

A thread on The Icarus Project forums
murderandmetonymy’s whole bullshit (also- part two)
Various incidents with exclusionary "anti-ableists" in "radical mental health"

And while ableism in general is considered "acceptable" by the vast majority of the "social justice" community (you re-award yourself the fucking scare quotes every time you exclude people with disabilities), the rhetoric gets really blatant in this particular area.

Just... one thing (to neurodivergent ableists):

"You're not even oppressing other axes; it's the same type of oppression. How do you even come to the idea that one kind of ableism is bad and not all the others?" — Emily

You are not a fucking special snowflake. You will never achieve your goals by distancing yourself from other people with disabilities. DISABILITY IS NOT A BAD THING.

End of rant. I will not engage with trolls or derailers or "critics" (whatever you consider yourself, I don't give a fuck) on this issue. If you go to my ask box (anonymous or not) to talk about this negatively, I will delete your message(s). Don't waste your damn time.

We Have a New Word

2011-05-10T03:04:00.001-04:00

(to solve the problems discussed in TAL9000's "We Need a New Word 2," as well as some other issues with the word "neurotypical")

The word is allism. It can also be adjectified (I don't care that that's not a word) as allistic.

Since "autism" comes from the Greek root "autos," and the antonym of that root is "allos," "allism" is the natural opposite. Emily, Nora, and I talked this out on Twitter and decided to do the same thing that was done for "cisgender."

It's not really new - there's a webpage from 2003 that uses it - but it certainly isn't in common use.

But with Fuck Yeah Autism Spectrum being fairly popular, and more awareness of the problems of the word "neurotypical," this might just be doable. So I made a post on there and hopefully it'll spread.

We'll see, I guess...

(Part 1 of ???) Schools and developmental disability and a de-facto hierarchy of disability

2011-05-08T07:41:00.002-04:00

So I word-barfed all over Amanda's YouTube.. (For reference, the comments I left - username "moviemonkeys" - are on her video "the curious incident of disabled people knowing what's really going on")

And I think this topic could make a good blog post, albeit a very personal one that touches on some stuff I'm not all that open about.

This post is likely to be rather incoherent since I wrote it during an all-nighter, which tends to make me seem.. slightly tipsy? I'm not really sure. It's quite strange.

I might do a proper version one day, but this'll do for now. Hopefully. This one is rather profanity-laden and incoherent and rambling and certainly has very bad grammar.

Actual content is below the cut:

Sooooooo! I was in the Montgomery County public school system until the beginning of fifth grade, when I was pulled out and homeschooled until that January. I have very little to say about being in public school - I learned sorta-alright, had four sorta-friends, got bullied and/or teased every day by kids I never did anything to, and all my concerns were invalidated.

Anyway, sometime in January my parents had me go to this school in Baltimore County. Which I did consent to (though oh my fuck if I knew what I was getting into I wouldn't have given it a second's thought - so it wasn't informed consent). Though admittedly my mother did a fair bit of emotional manipulation to sway me. So I guess that counts as coercion.

But yeah. It actually started out sorta not-shitty (though I'm anti-separatist schooling - "I mean, keeping the oh-so-scary kids with disabilities away from the "normal" kids is only gonna increase fear and lack of understanding and bigotry and marginalization").

It was a mix of kids with developmental disabilities and emotional problems. There were approximately 100 students, no queers (other than myself and one ace guy),

The director is rather awful. Two reviews from the Internet:

"This is a fabulous school, with many fabulous teachers. I interned here for a year, and made many wonderful friends. I also can vouch for the committment of most of the people that work here. However, I must say, the director is a money hungry, horrible, selfish person. She definitely has an agenda that overshadows what is best for the children."
"This school has many wonderful staff members, but they are being burned out because of the self-serving decisions of the director. Classes are getting bigger each year and the individual attention previously afforded students is being diluted by the overburdened staff."

Good things:

Stim-shaming was kept to a minimum. Most of it was from the students on the upper-end of the "disability hierarchy." (seriously this shouldn't even be a "good thing" this should be fucking expected)
No restraints. (same here)
Recognized that sensory issues exist.
The faculty were actually pretty entertaining and I often engaged in conversation with my drama teacher and sometimes with my English teacher.

Bad things:

They sometimes called the cops on kids for no real reason.
They decided buying a scoreboard that they used about twice a year was more important than heating in the winter.
Going there totally ruined my social life.
All the kids were assholes. Everyone.
Trashed my self-esteem, which was already destroyed by 3rd grade. Seriously, "low self esteem" doesn't describe me properly, there's a damn reason I say "self-loathing."
Prescriptive about sensory issues.
Ruined my social life.
Infantilizing.
They tried to interfere with my life at home. And succeeded. Because my parents aren't any good at parenting.
Ableism, ableism, and more ableism.
Did I mention it ruined my social life? Yeah.

Anyway, so I went there until I graduated from high school almost a year ago. Since this has already grown quite long, I'll try to be concise. And probably fail.

BUT to continue: I think I'll keep this post to my own issues and discuss others in another part and then my own final analysis in yet another part? I dunno. ETA: I've already failed to do that. Ah well.

I was around the upper-middle in the hierarchy. Really more the middle, though most kids didn't know that I'm Autistic since revealing that would've lowered my "rank." Yes, that is fucked up. Yes, it was fucked up of me to go along with it. <snark>Oh look, I just admitted that I'm a flawed person who can do wrong. That shouldn't be surprising. But so few people actually do that.</snark>

And I don't deny that there was ableism against people with emotional issues - the word "drama" comes to mind, and while I haven't really figured if it's got ableist connotations in the world at large, it did at that school and does in my life. This one kid had panic attacks fairly frequently and she got a lot of shit from other kids and I was like "uhhhhhhhh that's supposed to be really nasty to have why are you being assholes about it" (I didn't know I get panic attacks until December or January last/this year). And I got shit in ninth grade ("cheer up emo kid!" - no literally that was said to my fucking face) for having one of the worst depressions of my life so far that spring (the other worst one would be fall 2010/winter 2010/2011 - the only depression I've had at a time of year other than spring).

But really, the students with developmental disabilities were seen as "lower" because of stimming and language difficulties. Including by some autistic kids. There was a lot of throwing around the r-slur (which in my view is directed towards people with intellectual disabilities but often thrown at autistics as well - however it is not my slur, I am not the real target*).

There are literally thousands of microaggressions I could write about, but I'd rather stick to more general descriptions of the ways in which I benefitted (not calling people on their shit so as not to jeopardize my position) and was marginalized (actually being autistic once in a while).

By tenth or eleventh grade, I started to get disgusted with what was going on around me with regards to disability - admittedly not as much as I would've liked to in retrospect - but I was becoming aware of the fuckery and that it really was fuckery. Of course, as that happened, it started changing around me to be more "subtle" (yet again, it wasn't in retrospect).

Aaaaaaand actually being autistic once in a while: I had this "friend" D from seventh to tenth grade. Who decided that it'd be fun to take advantage of me with ridiculous lies because I was in a vulnerable position and desperate to get out (nasty, lonely, soul-crushing depression in seventh grade). Honestly it's fairly similar to what Zoe wrote over at Illusion of Competence so you should just read that.

After he transferred to a different school, a new "friend" A came along. Who I did tell that I was autistic. And who promptly took it upon herself to be a total asshole. Long story short- some gaslighting, a lot of passive-aggressiveness, acting like I was an embarrassment to her, invalidation, acting like I was a nuisance whenever I called, and actually more. I dunno, that's too recent to really talk about still. Every argument that resulted when I actually got the nerves to call her on her shit ended in me being "wrong" (I was right but she wasn't gonna let me know that! OH no!) or a fauxpology.

Anyway, I hung out with her from tenth to twelfth grade. Didn't do much of anything shitty, other than being disabled in a different way than she is. (also I hung out with her less than a dozen times over 3 calendar years - she was always "too busy" or made some other convenient excuse and would never let me doubt my own worthlessness for a fucking second)

Uhmmmm I think this might be the end of this section. Actually I may not continue this as another part. I seem to have run out of steam. I guess this might give some idea as to certain Things though?

I apologize for being all rambly and incoherent.

*Just as the transmisogyny this one kid threw at me repeatedly in ninth and tenth grade wasn't actually targeted at me. I mean, for all I know, he might have seriously thought I was trans, and god forbid an actual trans* person ends up having to deal with his bullshit although if they do I hope they punch him in the face oh dear this is getting off topic now end of footnote.

Why I Can't Go Vegan

2011-05-06T17:40:00.002-04:00

(TMI and "You're Not Gonna Like This" alert)

I'm Autistic. I have sensory issues. Many vegetables trigger my gag reflex, or are only edible (not just likable but EDIBLE) when cooked in a very specific, time-consuming, and hard-to-achieve way.
I currently live with my parents, who would sooner let me starve than adapt to a change in my diet. Already the majority of the food they buy triggers my gag reflex (sensory issues) and/or makes me sick (I have physiological food sensitivities that go anywhere from giving me bad cramps to epic diarrhea).
I have lack-of-energy issues, ADHD, and depression, so most of the time, I can't make a meal from scratch. Even pasta can be too much.
I can't dumpster-dive because of my bacteria phobia. No, I can't "get over it," and people who say that are ableist fucks. "Exposure therapy" gives me panic attacks, thanks.
Lack-of-energy issues also mean I can't dumpster dive!
There are also no good dumpsters in the area. This is OLNEY for fuck's sake.
Even if someone else dumpster-dived for me (oh wait there's NOBODY TO DO THAT), I wouldn't be able to eat the food knowing where it came from. And if that were kept from me - instant, total, possibly irrecoverable loss of trust.

And even if/when I get into a decent living situation, it's still gonna be unworkable.

Phobias are not bigotry, and I wish you'd stop saying they are

2011-05-05T01:30:00.000-04:00

I lied, this isn't a real post. Now that I'm making my Tumblr more of a "chill" place, and keeping my activist stuff on there limited to neurodiversity work on Fuck Yeah Autism Spectrum and STFU Curebies, I do intend to post more here. And hopefully get back to zines.

But anyway, as the title indicates, as a person with multiple phobias, I take issue with words like "homophobia," "transphobia," "psychophobia" (which bigotry against people with phobias would fall under, amusingly enough), "fatphobia," and "queerphobia" (which is more inclusive than "homophobia" but still just as ableist).

Emily says it better than I ever could on her blog, so I'll just send you there: Why you shouldn't conflate bigotry and phobia.

"Fun Facts" About Autism

2011-04-09T01:37:00.000-04:00

Julia over at theskinofourteeth on Tumblr has been writing some of my favorite (Tumblr) posts this month (as it is, after all, Autism "Awareness" Month - or rather, that time of the year that Autism Speaks and some other self-righteous non-autistics - most of them neurotypical† - chooses to spread more hate and ignorance than usual*).

So anyway, linked here for your reading pleasure, are the installments:

†"Neurotypical" does not just mean "non-autistic," and to deny that would be kinda douchey. The word is messed up in itself, but still (there's more to the busted-ness than that in my opinion, but that's the best summary I've found).
*Yes, I am grouchy. Deal with it.