#cw:ableism

[kpopwerewolf]

I try to keep swearing off my blog, but this is horrible.

I hope that redditor has a miserable day where everything goes wrong and they're exhausted and in pain for the rest of the week.

I saw this on Reddit and instantly got so pissed off. This person is ableist as shit. Advocating for the death of disabled children? That’s just sickening. This person is so fucked up.

My apologies for the cursing. This just really made me angry

[seriousflightrisk]

Can't believe I've seen people on reddit try to justify a man potentially murdering his girlfriend because she has OCD and is therefore "crazy"

[caffeinity]

I try not to make a habit of dwelling in the past, but lately it occurs to me how much better I would've done in school - and life in general - had I been allowed to transition during, or preferably even before, high school. My memories from the time are foggy and incomplete, but only because my mind was in a constantly hazy state from masking autism and acting as someone I was not. I'll never say that I felt trapped in the wrong body, because that has never been the case for me, but I do feel my mind was operating poorly in an incompatible mixture of hormones. Transition, both socially and medically, would have allowed my thoughts to breathe freely, to not be bogged down by the anxiety of being an imposter, by the immense fear of my unsupportive parents yet again catching and punishing me for not presenting as male, by the unjust responsibility forced on me to never appear as anything but cisgender and neurotypical, by the weight of impending doom as I saw no future for myself living this way. The clarity I've now felt through HRT would've allowed me then to succeed in all the AP courses I would've taken, to pursue the collegiate path I wish I'd followed, to be an adult without all these haunting memories of suicidal ideation and my few attempts to make it reality. As an adult my transition coincided with my acceptance and unmasking of my neurodivergency, and I've since had the best years of my life, feeling real, honest happiness for more than just fleeting moments. Imagine the euphoria if I could've started this journey decades sooner.

Now think of all the teens that are going through exactly what I went through and how hard their lives are being made by an unaccepting, unsupportive society. I truly feel withholding transition - and now attempting to criminalize it in many places - is immoral, forcing your autistic child to mask is immoral, trying to "fix" your autistic trans kid with physical and emotional abuse is immoral. We need to be a better society and we need to save our youth.

[joybringerjolly]

It’s okay if you can’t vote!

A friend of mine on here has expressed a fear of being a bad person due to being unable to vote. I don’t know where the idea came from but it occurred to me that they may not be the only one out there with these feelings. There is some intense peer pressure out there and it can disregard those, like them, or like my own father even, who are mentally, physically, or emotionally unable to vote for whatever reason! I know the issues out there are important, very much so, but, if you cannot vote, it is fine to not vote! It’s okay if you have anxiety over decisions, temporary or permanent physical handicaps, learning difficulties/a lack of education, a job that you’re worried will fire you if you take time to go to the polls or that you’re so exhausted from that you can’t put pen to paper or even think about what to mark on your ballot, a lack of resources, are in a bad living and/or familial/marital situation, whatever. I don’t know how difficult it is to get access to resources that would help someone with problems to vote but, considering how some people treat others around here, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that those resources are not going to be easy for a number of you to gain. That will never be your fault, okay? Please realize that and just take care of yourselves. I love you all! (platonic)

[thepringlesofblood]

yo maybe i’m slow on the uptake on this one but like wicked is really fucking ableist, right? like nessa rose’s entire character arc is that she’s bitter that she’s not abled and the whole “we deserve each other” thing with boq is 5 different flavors of yuck, plus they make the role really hard for any disabled actor to play by having her get “cured” by elphaba which is a whole other ball of wax in itself like that’s real fucked up for a musical about accepting the differences in others like what the hell that’s horrifying now that I look back on it 

[lytefoot]

Rereading chapters 1 and 2 of CoS for #harrypottersummer and #hogwartsreread, and I was going to post a bunch of quick observations, but holy s*** chapters 1 and 2 are harrowing to read closely, taking notes, in isolation. Like, stopping before we get back to the burrow? I’m shaking a little. My poor baby Harry.

So I’m splitting this up. General observations to follow. Below the read more: cw:abuse, cw:victim blaming, cw:ableist language

I’m jumping directly to the end of chapter two, because there are two things here that have me really upset. We’ll start with this: 

“Just our nephew--very disturbed--meeting strangers upsets him, so we kept him upstairs--” (p. 20) 

This s*** is practiced. They’ve brushed away concerns about Harry before. One of the themes I see floating around tumblr is a discussion of why none of the neighbors or Harry’s primary school teachers or anybody ever noticed how the Dursleys treated Harry. Of course they did. But the Dursleys are so fricking respectable.

Look at nice Mrs. Dursley, raising that awful child her wastrel sister saddled her with when she died. Did his brains get addled in the car crash? Or maybe those awful people that poor Mrs. Dursley doesn’t like to talk about were taking drugs, that would explain why there’s something wrong with him. Look at how generous Mr. Dursley is, doing his best to provide for a child that isn’t even his. Those poor things, what a burden it must be. And oh, maybe they do lash out occasionally, but if only somebody would help them more.

Ick.

Okay, so that’s that. Here’s the other thing.

We never see any explicit physical violence against Harry from Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon. (Interestingly, back in PS/SS, we saw Uncle Vernon hit Dudley, when they were running from the letters. Clearly, Uncle Vernon is cool with the idea of hitting a child.) But we get attempts at physical violence--on p.10, Aunt Petunia swings a frying pan at Harry’s head, and he dodges. And we get threats of physical violence that Harry seems to find credible: “...promised Harry he would flay him to within an inch of his life when the masons had left...,” p.20. And then this, at the end of p.21.

He was bearing down on Harry like a great bulldog, all his teeth bared. “Well, I’ve got news for you, boy... I’m locking you up... You’re near going back to that school... ever... and if you try to magic yourself out--they’ll expel you!”

And laughing like a maniac, he dragged Harry back upstairs.

Uncle Vernon was as bad as his word. The following morning, he paid a man to it bars on Harry’s window.

Now, it’s pretty clear that we’re meant to take “as bad as his word” to refer to “locking [Harry] up” rather than “flay[ing] him within an inch of his life.” But it’s also clear that Harry wouldn’t be in the habit of dodging swung frying pans if none of them had ever connected, and in context, that’s a pretty f***ing horrifying fade to black.

[wrex-writes]

Rehab for writing injuries

You’ve heard of “making writing a habit,” and you’ve tried, but the pressure to write fills you with horrible pain and dread. You spend all your time wishing you could write but somehow never writing. The “make it a habit” approach doesn’t work for you. But you still want to write, maybe even regularly. Is there nothing you can do?

Here is an alternative approach to try. A rehab program, as it were, for writers with a psychological “writing injury” that has destroyed their desire to write and replaced it with shame, anxiety and dread.

If you have a writing injury, you probably acquired it by being cruel to yourself, by internalizing some intensely critical voice or set of rules that crushes your will to write under the boot-heel of “you should.” “You should be writing better after all the years of experience you’ve had.” “You should be writing more hours a day, you’ll never get published at this rate.” “You should write more like [Hilton Als/Jeffrey Eugenides/Octavia Butler/Terry Pratchett/etc.].” “You should write faster/more/better/etc./etc.”

You know what, though? Fuck all that. Self-abuse may have featured heavily in the cool twentieth-century writer’s lifestyle, but we are going to treat ourselves differently. Because 1) it’s nicer, and 2) frankly, it gets better results. My plan here is to help you take the radical step of caring for yourself.

1) First of all: ask yourself why you aren’t writing. 

Not with the goal of fixing the problem, but…just to understand. For a moment, dial down all of the “goddammit, why can’t I just write?” blaring in your head and be curious about yourself. Clearly, you have a reason for not writing. Humans don’t do anything for no reason. Try to discover what it is. And be compassionate; don’t reject anything you discover as “not a good enough excuse.” Your reasons are your reasons.

For me, writing was painful because I wanted it to solve all my problems. I wanted it to make me happy and whole. I hated myself and hoped writing would transform me into a totally different person. When it failed to do that, as it always did, I felt like shit.

Maybe writing hurts because you’ve loaded it with similarly unfair expectations. Or maybe you’re a victim of low expectations. Maybe people have told you you’re stupid or untalented or not fluent enough in the language you write in. Maybe writing has become associated with painful events in your life. Maybe you’ve just been forced to write so many times that you can no longer write without feeling like someone’s making you do it. Writing-related pain and anxiety can come from so many different places.

2) Once you have some idea of why you’re not writing…just sit with that.

Don’t go into problem-solving mode. Just nod to yourself and say, “yes, that’s a good reason. If I were me, I wouldn’t want to write either.” Have some sympathy for yourself and the pain you’re in.

3) Now…keep sitting with it. That’s it, for the moment. No clever solutions. Just sympathize. And, most importantly, grant yourself permission to not write, for a while.

It’s okay. You are good and valuable and worthy of love, even when you aren’t writing. There are still beautiful, true things inside of you.

Here’s the thing: it’s very hard for humans to do things if they don’t have permission not to do them. It’s especially hard if those things are also painful. We hate feeling trapped or compelled, and we hate having our feelings disregarded. It shuts us down in every possible way. You will feel more desire to write, therefore, if you believe you are free not to write, and if you believe it’s okay not to do what causes you pain.

(By the way: not having permission isn’t the same as knowing there will be negative consequences. “If I don’t write, I won’t make my deadline” is different from “I’m not allowed not to write, even if it hurts.” One is just awareness of cause and effect; the other is a kind of slavery.)

4) For at least a week, take an enforced vacation from writing, and from any demands that you write. During this time, you are not permitted to write or give yourself grief for not writing. 

This may or may not be reverse psychology. But it’s more than that.

Think of it as a period of convalescence. You’re keeping your weight off an injury so it can heal, and what’s broken is your desire to write. Pitilessly forcing yourself to write when it’s painful, plus the shame you feel when you don’t write, is what broke that desire. So, for a week (or a month, or a year, or however long you need) tell yourself you are taking a doctor-prescribed break from writing.

This will feel scary for some folks. You might feel like you’re giving up. You might worry that this break from writing feels too good, that your desire to write might never return. All I can say is, I’ve been there. I’ve had all those fears and feelings. And the desire to write did return. But you gotta treat it like a tiny crocus shoot and not stomp on it the second it pokes its little head up. Like so:

5) Once you feel an itch to write again—once you start to chafe against the doctor’s orders—you can write a tiny bit. Only five or ten minutes a day. 

That’s it. I’m serious: set a timer, and stop writing when the time’s up. No cheating. (Well…maybe you can take an extra minute to finish your thought, if necessary.)

Remember: these rules are not like the old rules, the ones that said, “you must write or you suck.” These rules are a form of self-care. You are not imposing a cruel, arbitrary law, you are being gentle with yourself. Not “easy” or “soft”—any Olympic athlete will tell you that hard exercise when you’ve got an injury is stupid and pointless, not tough or virtuous. If you need an excuse to take care of yourself, that’s it: if you’re injured, you can’t perform well, and aggravating the injury could take you out of the competition permanently.

For the first few days, all of the writing you do should be freewriting. Later, you can do some tiny writing exercises. Don’t jump into an old project you stalled out on. Think small and exploratory, not big and goal-oriented. And whatever you do, don’t judge the output. If you have to, don’t even read what you write. This is exercise, not performance; this is you stretching your atrophied writing muscles, not you trying to write something good. At this stage, it literally doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you generate words. (Frankly, it would be kind of weird and unfair if your writing at this point was good.)

6) After a week, you can increase your time limit if you want. But only a little! 

Spend a week limiting yourself to, say, twenty minutes a day instead of ten. When in doubt, set your limit for less than you think you’ll need. You want to end each writing session feeling like you could keep going, not like you’re crawling across the finish line.

Should you write every day? That’s up to you. Some people will find it helpful to put writing on their calendar at the same time each day. Others will be horribly stifled by that. You get to decide when and how often you write, but two things: 1) think about what you, personally, need when you make that decision, and 2) allow that decision to be flexible.

Remember, the only rule is, don’t go over your daily limit. You always have permission to write less.

And keep checking in with yourself. Remember how this program began? If something hurts, if your brain is sending you “I don’t wanna” signals, respect them. Investigate them, find out what their deal is. You might decide to (gently) encourage yourself to write in spite of them, but don’t ignore your pain. You are an athlete, and athletes listen to their bodies, especially when they’re recovering from an injury. If writing feels shitty one day, give yourself a reward for doing it. If working on a particular project ties your brain in knots, do a little freewriting to loosen up. And always be willing to take a break. You always have permission not to write.

7) Slowly increase your limit over time, but always have a limit. 

And when you’re not writing, you’re not writing. You don’t get to berate yourself for not writing. If you find yourself regularly blazing past your limit, then increase your limit, but don’t set large aspirational limits in an effort to make yourself write more. In fact, be ready to adjust your limit lower.

When it comes to mental labor, after all, more is not always better. Apparently, the average human brain can only concentrate for about 45 minutes at a time, and it only has about four or so high-quality 45-minute sessions a day in it. That’s three hours. So if you set your daily limit for more than three hours, you may be working at reduced efficiency, when you’d be better off saving up your ideas and motivation for the next day. (Plus, health and other factors may in fact give you less than 3 good hours a day. That’s okay!)

Of course, if you’re a professional writer or a student, external pressures may force you to write when your brain is tired, but my point is more about attitude: constant work is not necessarily better work. So don’t make it into a moral ideal. We tend to think that working less is morally weak or wrong, and that’s bullshit. Taking care of yourself is practical. Pushing yourself too hard will just hurt you and your writing. Also, your feelings are real and they matter. If you ignore or abuse them, you’ll be like a runner trying to run on a broken ankle.

I know I’m going to get someone who says, “if you’re a pro, sometimes you gotta ignore your feelings and just get the work done!” 

NO. 

You can, of course, choose to work in spite of any pain you’re feeling. But ignore that pain at your peril. Instead, acknowledge the pain and be compassionate. Forgive yourself if pain slows you down. You are human, so don’t hold your feet to the fire for having human limitations. Maybe a deadline is forcing you to work anyway. But make yourself a cup of hot chocolate to get you through it, literally or metaphorically. Help yourself, don’t force yourself. If you’ve had a serious writing injury, that shift in attitude will make all the difference. 

In short: treat yourself as someone whose feelings matter.

Try it out! And let me know how it goes!

Ask a question or send me feedback!

[solunderscore]

A Short Story

I wrote a story in response to a writing prompt I saw on reddit. The prompt felt like it was intentionally about an autistic person dealing with a neurotypical world to me, so that’s what I wrote.

I’m not sure how to put pictures or format in tumblr, so this’ll probs be a little jank. I’ll just copy/paste the words of the prompt here and link the reddit post. (I figured out how to format!)

Prompt:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/f98bih/wp_in_an_alternate_universe_where_human_skin/

In an alternate universe where human skin changes colour according to their emotions, you alone lack this ability. As a result, nobody really believes a single word you say. 

Story

 (CW:Ableism and Behavioral Therapy):

I stare at the carpet, pretending to myself that I can't hear while the school's color therapist speaks to my parents. Focusing on the calming yellow of kindness and on my fingers touching rhythmically, I can almost feel like they are talking about someone else.

"-ith enough training and effort, she should be able to feel and emote like a normal young woman, but her mimicking is getting in the way of this. The way that she insists on expressing herself through strange facial movements and vocalizations are habits that have to be broken if she's to fit into normal human society and not require a caretaker for the rest of her life."

Almost. It hurts to have them talk about me like this. Tears blur my vision but I can still see my hand. A bland, neutral shade of green. Devoid of any meaning beyond calm passivity. If anyone were to look at me they'd think I was having a bland day. If they were to see my eyes watering and my lips quivering they'd become a swirl of emotions. Pale blues of confusion as they started registering the strange way my face looks, followed by the disturbed shades of worry, fear, disgust, and pity forming a kaleidoscope as they realized I was colorless.

Fingers suddenly snap inches from my face and I jump as my mother says sternly, "Mary, use your colors."

I feel ashamed of myself as tears start to fall and a quiver taints my voice when I speak, "I'm sorry." I know she's right.

[holyholyholey]

Cw:ableism, dehuminization

So people want to bring back ugly laws but for the mentally ill now

[bi-dizzee-blog]

Im like so exasperate by some people who go on anon to be hateful. But its kinda funny when they go mental at you because for some reason it makes it funny and replying with gifs makes it 10x funnier. No one is gonna take you seriously especially me unless i wanna scalp you and put you back in your place. Basically dont be a legit heteronormative 12 year old straight white girl in anon its only entertainment for me tbh

[assassinscreedconfessions]

The Guards in AC are so retarded. I mean how do they even keep their job as a guard

[strikethroughs by me -N]

[minipliny]

Far worse are those who denounce evil ways in the language of a Hercules; and after discoursing upon virtue, prepare to practise vice. "Am I to respect you, Sextus," quoth the ill-famed Varillus, "when you do as I do? How am I worse than yourself?" Let the straight-legged man laugh at the club-footed, the white man at the blackamoor: but who could endure the Gracchi railing at sedition?

Juvenal being his usual charming self in Satires II  (trans G.G. Ramsay) for further social context on the Romans and constructs of ethnicity. You also get Tacitus retailing a lot of anti-semitism in his discourse on the Jews - here's Histories 5.2-5 "The other practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting, and have entrenched themselves by their very wickedness. Wretches of the most abandoned kind who had no use for the religion of their fathers took to contributing dues and free-will offerings to swell the Jewish exchequer; and other reasons for their increasing wealth way be found in their stubborn loyalty and ready benevolence towards brother Jews. But the rest of the world they confront with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not feed or intermarry with gentiles. Though a most lascivious people, the Jews avoid sexual intercourse with women of alien race. Among themselves nothing is barred. They have introduced the practice of circumcision to show that they are different from others. Proselytes to Jewry adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despise the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism, and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable." and there's a wealth of evidence about attitudes and beliefs about "Goths", "Huns", "Scythians" and other "barbarian" peoples. Writing VERY casually...I think people tend to assume that if people from [marginalised group] succeed it's due to societal tolerance and help, whereas often it's more that people push very hard and get places despite many appalling attitudes ALSO it is just not simple or easy to generalise about attitudes across centuries, social positions, and locations...I've picked two contemporaneous elite male Roman writers in early second century AD Rome for attitudes, but they can only tell us about theirs. It's an interesting subject!!! (Also, uh, the other thing is that many northern Europeans would have looked "barbarian"/"Other" to people like Tacitus and Juvenal just as much if not in some cases more as the people they labelled "black" - tall! blond! blue-eyed! GIANT FRAMES, DRUNK UNSHORN UNCIVILISED.)

[wrex-writes]

Writing and Mental Pain

Since I started this blog, I keep having this conversation: I say something like “writing doesn’t have to be painful” and someone else says “but writing can’t be fun all the time—it’s work, and sometimes work is shitty and boring and you just gotta push through it if you want to be a serious writer!”

The disconnect, I think, happens on the word “painful.” As some of you are aware, there are different kinds and degrees of mental pain. There’s the kind I feel when I’m, say, trying to get my taxes done the night before they’re due: frustration, boredom, tiredness, a general sense of “ugh I don’t wanna.” I hate those feelings, but...I can handle them. They don’t penetrate very deep. They don’t crush me or shut me down. (Your mileage may vary, of course, as may your response to tax season.)

The “you just gotta push through it!” people seem to have this kind of pain in mind. That’s not the kind of pain I mean when I say “writing doesn’t have to be painful.” I’m referring to the soul-killing kind of pain, the kind you can’t push through without causing yourself psychic damage. The kind of pain that makes you feel like you’re losing your mind.

The disconnect occurs, of course, because not everybody has felt this kind of mental pain. If you have, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, or if you weren’t aware that writing can cause it: well, it’s a thing. For some folks, writing can be really. fucking. hard. Trust me.

I think people are just amazed that anyone who experiences that kind of pain while writing would ever want to write. And, look, I’m amazed too. When I told my friends I was going to graduate school, they were like “are you...sure that’s a good idea?” Cuz they remembered what I used to go through to write ten pages in college. Well, I’ve repaired my relationship to writing over time. But it took a lot of effort and support from other people. And the first thing I had to do was stop listening to well-intentioned folks saying “you just gotta sit down and do it!” 

[wrex-writes]

Writing Tips and Ableism

This post, Thoughts on Morning Pages, talks about something I want to emphasize on this blog:

You can always modify any tips, tricks or exercises here to meet your needs. And if you see ways to adjust a process tip or exercise to work better for some people, let me know.

The post above talks about Julia Cameron’s concept of Morning Pages: as a way to build a regular writing habit, you start every day with three handwritten pages of freewriting. But the blogger points out that three pages is a lot. It might be a prohibitive amount for some people. For the blogger, one page worked better. Folks with certain disabilities might need to waive the handwritten requirement too. That is all okay.

Most of the big writing advice/instruction books out there assume an able-bodied, neurotypical audience. This would be sort of okay if they didn’t also emphasize self-discipline and imply that you’re taking the easy way out if you don’t follow their instructions to the letter. That’s why I’ll do my best on this blog to show how exercises can be modified. And I totally reject that disciplinary, tough-love tone taken by many of your big writing gurus. We are hard enough on ourselves already.

I might need your help with this, though. So please drop me a line if you see opportunities for tailoring tips and exercises to folks with disabilities, neurological differences, limited time/energy, etc.

[wrex-writes]

Process Poll 1: What does writing feel like?

Last week we posed a question about the writing process for anyone to answer: what does writing feel like for you?

Almost everyone who answered gave two answers: what writing feels like when it’s going well, and what it feels like when it's not.

Most people described the “going well” scenario as a kind of flow state. Here’s what one anon said:

writing is a horrible beast of a process until I fall into hole in the page and find flow. And then it's a struggle to stay there, in the moment, writing what I see. It's momentary escape, ever brief.

And here’s @incognitajones:

When it’s going well, for me writing feels almost like doing a puzzle, or one of those conspiracy-theory “crazy walls” covered in a web of string; I fill in blanks and see connections between things I wrote earlier that now make perfect sense. Or I make intuitive leaps ahead and realize that because a character thinks A and feels B, they’re going to do E or even F.

Then, she goes on, there’s the flip side:

When it’s not going well, writing is like building a wall out of cinderblocks: dull, dry, dusty work to create something monotonous. Boring even as you’re doing it. And you’ll probably end up tearing it all down anyways in order to replace it with something that’s actually functional or better-looking.

@astropixie says something similar:

Yeah when it flows I feel much the same–more like I’m reading my story than writing it, and I enjoy that and sink into it.

But when it doesn’t flow, when I get stuck on something, holy shit. I shut down. Each word is pain.

The exact nature and duration of this flow state seems to vary wildly. For some folks, it’s ephemeral and they have to work hard to get it back. Other folks can apparently can spend weeks in a state of flow. I reported that writing feels like religious ecstasy 1% of the time, and like appendicitis the other 99%. Some people agreed, but gave very different ratios.

A handful of people didn’t mention flow at all. Here's @agent-nemesis:

90% of the time, I find fanfic writing cathartic. I work in a job where anything and everything is scrutinised, both by myself and others, and to be able to just write whatever gratuitous thing I want is bliss.

So, writing as total freedom. Of course, freedom can be oppressive: when there’s infinite possibility, how do you choose? Whether the freedom of writing feels good or bad to you may depend in part on what you spend the rest of your time doing, and also on why you write, among other things.