#For the sake of Cilantro's disapproval- I have removed any insults I might otherwise have used

[falloutcaldera]

Open Letter To Nukapedia

I have been informed me posting to tumblr is being assumed to be me trying to incite shit & assuming bad faith. As this was not my intention, here's the little good faith I have left:

I wrote that last message with the intention of leaving due to finding the situation unconscionable, while on a call with my disabled coauthor and friends who were equally as distressed as I was that someone like that had been not only allowed back into the server, but had been allowed to claim they had not said anything eugenicist. I then went to leave the sever only to discover it was no longer in my list - meaning I'd been banned before I could even leave. And then I had to learn the reason for my ban from a third party.

So my assumption was Not GreatTM. I was a little emotionally compromised! Let me elaborate as to why:

That user had called disabled children an 'empty resource sink' and a detriment to society in response to an ongoing conversation (one that I freely admit I had gotten frustrated with - what appeared at the time & what I am now almost certain was - sealioning - and thus been rude, and apologized for that) where I was attempting, in good faith, to explain contemporary fight for disability rights in the United states. I had previously mentioned IN SPECIFIC growing up autistic and seeing the murder of fellow autistic children being called 'mercy killings'. This user had previously in the course of this conversation specifically mentioned 'high functioning conditions' such as Asperger's being different from ones they considered debilitating.

(Its notable that this diagnosis has since folded into ASD, and with the name being considered controversial due to being named after Hans Asperger.)

This user then said that the 'mercy' of 'allowing' some people who 'could not function' to die was morally correct TO THE FACE OF A SPECED AUTISTIC PERSON WHO HAD JUST MENTIONED PEOPLE LIKE THEM BEING KILLED SPECIFICALLY.

From my perspective this is not even a fucking dog whistle, it is a whistle at best, more like a bullhorn. It is full on mask off 'actually people (who you say are like you) SHOULD die, if they cant ~contribute~'. It is directly saying people like me & my coauthor are justifiable losses. It is rhetoric which has directly killed people like me in recent memory.

It is so viscerally horrifying and evil of a rhetoric that I immediately felt their restored presence was an allowance. Even this I might have taken in good faith - except they (and the user supporting them) had Literally Stated What They Said Was Not Eugenicist. A mod Saw This, said 'drop the topic' - it is not a topic to drop, from your own commented policy after the first incident and for the safety of others, it is a instant ban situation - and moved on silently. From my perspective this was a giant red flag saying 'this is now a eugenicist bar'.

I am not exactly inclined to extend good faith when the fact is, we are currently in a wave of ableism rhetoric from the transphobic alt right especially against autistic and mentally ill people.

A former US president is well known for having mocked Serge Kovaleski's disability, and when then-12-year-old JJ Holmes protested this, he encouraged his followers to harass them, resulting in people shoving the boys wheelchair & sexually harassing his mother. Autism Speaks spokespersons talked about wanting to murder their children while they were still in the room. Dr. Phil openly platformed the attempted killer & mother of Izzy Stapleton just 10 years ago. We still face organ transplant discrimination, immigration discrimination, and we STILL to this day are being tortured in ABA 'therapy' that is based on the same attitudes that Ivar Lovaas's applied in his 'Feminine Boys Project', a series of abusive conversion tactics which led to the suicide of Kirk Murphy - a 'doctor' who once said "[autistics] are not people in the psychological sense."

That same former president was just alleged by his nephew to have said "Those people [...] The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die."

How am I SUPPOSED to assume, in this political climate, good faith from 'empty resource sink' being allowed to be defended in any capacity, as a disabled person? Or hell, just as a person with disabled friends & loved ones. As a human being.

It is not that I am extending bad faith to your platform, I do not feel safe on your platform.

My coauthor did not feel safe enough to join your platform, my girlfriend would not feel safe on your platform, my friends do not feel safe on your platform. My THERAPIST read these messages and recommended I do not ever come back to your platform! I did not post on tumblr with the intention of causing problems but of protecting fellow disabled people from harm.

I have OCD & actively avoid posting issues outside of private chats because I have severe paranoia about being part of internet pile-ons in any capacity, to the point I STILL have avoided showing any user names or profile pictures. Yet this was still such an egregious situation that I felt I would be actively allowing people to come to harm if I didn't speak up.

I am not returning to the discord. I no longer feel comfortable talking about disability or queer representation in fallout in a space where people brushed off that rhetoric, and acted like it was an overreaction to be horrified - even momentarily. I am frankly unsure if I would feel safe even if everyone who did so was banned.

If you genuinely think I am overreacting, acting in bad faith - understand this comes from TWO DECADES of seeing people like me killed by caretakers every day and then hearing THAT & seeing people defend it.

Postcomment:

Hi. This is Ren, second author of Caldera and multiply disabled young adult. I proofread and editted this post as well as being present during a lot of this situation - either from being the person Cilantro stepped back to when they recognized they were getting emotionally intense about a situation or being on call with them during the incident in question, and I want to make some things clear.

I am absolutely Furious at the way my peers and loved ones have been treated during this time. Both directly in nukapedia itself and in the, haha, fallout that has followed.

You might ask why I have not been directly involved if I feel so strongly about it, the answer is simple. My absence Was an attempt at good faith. Through Cilantro's talks on what the atmosphere was like, I learned there would almost definitely be situations that lead me to feeling defensive, stressed and frustrated- emotions I admit to struggling to process. So I made the executive decision that I did not feel I could safely belong there and stayed to the sidelines.

Cilantro has never claimed perfection- and has multiple times apologized for allowing emotional reactions to lash into conversations and stepped away. And it is infurating to see their (and several other of our peers and friends) characters attacked like this. Own up to your own failures in protecting your members, or it will not be just our trust you have lost.