#adhders should know better than to rag on folks for self-dx but that doesn't mean u don't see it

[serialreblogger]

oh good op has deleted this post so i am free to let loose bc

shut up shut UP about this "oooh queer people are obsessed with labelling things" "ohh neurodivergent & traumatized ppl are pathologizing Normal Behaviours" this is the exact same phenomenon as the sex-negative leftists complaining about kink in queer spaces. u guys aren't saying anything new or revolutionary, ur recycling conservative talking points and redirecting them at things you think aren't worth the effort of destigmatizing. fuck off

nobody is fucking saying "if u read books it's a sign of trauma" stop writing ur own strawmen to justify mocking the neurodivergents who grew up hiding in a corner of the library with whatever book they could get their hands on bc they were terrified of socializing and/or were ostracized past recovery. NO ONE IS SAYING "liking media is a symptom of adhd" what we're SAYING is "hey fellow adhd folks, we enjoy media in some non-neurotypical ways (& let's celebrate that instead of letting everyone else keep shaming us for it)"

look. i grew up in a world where the word "gender" was mocked for being "politically correct," where my father insisted on using the word "retard" to describe autistic kids in the classroom and thought it was an offensive insistence on Labelling Things when i was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (thought i was "pathologizing myself" when i finally decided to try the medication that saved my life).

Fuck this post, because labels have always existed. Before we named ourselves, we were named by others without our consent. before we called ourselves ace, we were called "frigid." before we called ourselves gay and trans we were called perverts and deviants, before we called ourselves "neurodivergent" we were called idiots, lunatics, broken minds and babbling monsters. The things that make us who we are are not pathologies, and the things that isolate us from The Norm are neither imaginary nor shameful. That's the whole fucking point of naming ourselves.

I am not fucking pathologizing my interests when i call them hyperfixations. I am acknowledging the nature of my ADHD brain's non-normative experience of "interest." Something doesn't have to be normal to be worth celebrating, and naming things is, for many of us, the only way we can understand them - and understanding is never something that should be suppressed.

No one is fuckin telling you to embrace whatever label. if you find yourself resonating with someone else's non-normative experience, maybe your own experience is less "default" than you expected, or maybe you just need to step back and examine why it makes you so fucking uncomfortable to resonate with someone you see as Different. God forbid you relate to someone you've spent your life thus far trying to pretend is less than human.

No one is saying "everyone who read a lot as a child is neurodivergent." What we're saying is "i, as a child, read a Lot and it was because of/connected to my own neurodivergence" - we read to escape from crappy Real Life trauma into our own minds, we read with such intensity that we were deaf to someone calling our names in our ears, and these things are connected to our experiences of neurodivergence.

No one is saying you need to label your own identity with xyz words, or any words at all. No one is saying you need to understand the labels we use as our own names. But God fucking dammit, just because you don't resonate with or understand a word doesn't make it fucking meaningless. Other people can have lives that are different from yours.

Shut up and sit down about things you don't understand. If you don't want a label, then it's not yours. Quit weighing in where you aren't welcome and start listening to the people who use it themselves, or get out. You don't have the right to talk here.

i think a lot of people have become obsessed w labelling every single thing theyve ever felt or thought and i dont know how that happened. like both in the lgbt community and with ppl who are pathologizing every single thing like “if you read books as a kid thats a sign of trauma” like… i promise you dont have to put a name to every single thing i promise not every single thing is a different sexuality or a symptom like