#disabled people are not defective

[wandering-wolf23]

Anyway, your glorious revolution means that marginalized people are going to die horribly.

[cripplepunkfag]

god i wish i could stop fuckin thinking this i feel like such a dick i KNOW people with more obvious and more serious disabilities dont "have it better" but i cant stop thinking about it i just wish i could collapse dramatically and get rushed somewhere and magically diagnosed i feel like such a fuckin drama queen because i feel awful all the time but its just like dizziness and pain do i even have the right to claim im disabled? its not like im diagnosed. its not like i know whats wrong. its not like its serious. maybe i am just fuckin faking it.

[pynkhues]

I'm really sorry you and your sister are dealing with that

(no pressure to publish this, not that there should ever be pressure to publish an ask if you don't want to, of course, but just wanted to say I hope you're doing okay)

Ah, thank you, anon, it's okay. It's been a while now (court moves slooow), but we're getting hopefully close to the end. She filed in Family Court December 2022, and we've had about five interim hearings with final trial (finally) scheduled over four days next month, so fingers crossed! But yeah, it's been A Time. He's financially and emotionally abusive against my sister, and both those things as well as medically negligent against their children (who are only six and eight and both have special needs), so it's been....rough. To say the least.

But on a lighter note, have one of my new favourite photos I took of my nephews at the jellyfish enclosure at the aquarium last month!

[ryukisgod]

It’s easier to say “I hate kids” than ‘I don’t enjoy the company of children’

The thing about people talking about how much they hate children is that I've never seen any correlation between "openly expressed loathing of children" and "support for policies that actively harm children."

In contrast, when people go out of their way to tell you how much they love children and want to protect children, it's at least a 50/50 chance that you are about to hear support for the most actively evil assault on children's rights and dignity that you can possibly imagine.

[ducksoup17]

hey now that it’s disability pride month can you please remember to include people with Down syndrome and other chromosomal defects into your activism. they’re so often left behind. I literally never see anyone spreading Down syndrome awareness that isn’t close family of someone with Down syndrome. They exist and they’re living breathing humans who deserve just as much activism as every other disabled person

[hyperlexichypatia]

As I keep shouting into the void, pathologizers love shifting discussion about material conditions into discussion about emotional states.

I rant approximately once a week about how the brain maturity myth transmuted “Young adults are too poor to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own” into “Young adults are too emotionally and neurologically immature to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own.”

I’ve also talked about the misuse of “enabling” and “trauma” and “dopamine” .

And this is a pattern – people coin terms and concepts to describe material problems, and pathologization culture shifts them to be about problems in the brain or psyche of the person experiencing them. Now we’re talking about neurochemicals, frontal lobes, and self-esteem instead of talking about wages, wealth distribution, and civil rights. Now we can say that poor, oppressed, and exploited people are suffering from a neurological/emotional defect that makes them not know what’s best for themselves, so they don’t need or deserve rights or money.

Here are some terms that have been so horribly misused by mental health culture that we’ve almost entirely forgotten that they were originally materialist critiques.

Codependency What it originally referred to: A non-addicted person being overly “helpful” to an addicted partner or relative, often out of financial desperation. For example: Making sure your alcoholic husband gets to work in the morning (even though he’s an adult who should be responsible for himself) because if he loses his job, you’ll lose your home. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/codependency-addiction-recovery.html What it’s been distorted into: Being “clingy,” being “too emotionally needy,” wanting things like affection and quality time from a partner. A way of pathologizing people, especially young women, for wanting things like love and commitment in a romantic relationship.

Compulsory Heterosexuality What it originally referred to: In the 1980 in essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493756 Adrienne Rich described compulsory heterosexuality as a set of social conditions that coerce women into heterosexual relationships and prioritize those relationships over relationships between women (both romantic and platonic). She also defines “lesbian” much more broadly than current discourse does, encompassing a wide variety of romantic and platonic relationships between women. While she does suggest that women who identify as heterosexual might be doing so out of unquestioned social norms, this is not the primary point she’s making. What it’s been distorted into: The patronizing, biphobic idea that lesbians somehow falsely believe themselves to be attracted to men. Part of the overall “Women don’t really know what they want or what’s good for them” theme of contemporary discourse.

Emotional Labor What it originally referred to: The implicit or explicit requirement that workers (especially women workers, especially workers in female-dominated “pink collar” jobs, especially tipped workers) perform emotional intimacy with customers, coworkers, and bosses above and beyond the actual job being done. Having to smile, be “friendly,” flirt, give the impression of genuine caring, politely accept harassment, etc. https://weld.la.psu.edu/what-is-emotional-labor/ What it’s been distorted into: Everything under the sun. Everything from housework (which we already had a term for), to tolerating the existence of disabled people, to just caring about friends the way friends do. The original intent of the concept was “It’s unreasonable to expect your waitress to care about your problems, because she’s not really your friend,” not “It’s unreasonable to expect your actual friends to care about your problems unless you pay them, because that’s emotional labor,” and certainly not “Disabled people shouldn’t be allowed to be visibly disabled in public, because witnessing a disabled person is emotional labor.” Anything that causes a person emotional distress, even if that emotional distress is rooted in the distress-haver’s bigotry (Many nominally progressive people who would rightfully reject the bigoted logic of “Seeing gay or interracial couples upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public” fully accept the bigoted logic of “Seeing disabled or poor people upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public”).

Battered Wife Syndrome What it originally referred to: The all-encompassing trauma and fear of escalating violence experienced by people suffering ongoing domestic abuse, sometimes resulting in the abuse victim using necessary violence in self-defense. Because domestic abuse often escalates, often to murder, this fear is entirely rational and justified. This is the reasonable, justified belief that someone who beats you, stalks you, and threatens to kill you may actually kill you.

What it’s been distorted into: Like so many of these other items, the idea that women (in this case, women who are victims of domestic violence) don’t know what’s best for themselves. I debated including this one, because “syndrome” was a wrongful framing from the beginning – a justified and rational fear of escalating violence in a situation in which escalating violence is occurring is not a “syndrome.” But the original meaning at least partially acknowledged the material conditions of escalating violence.

I’m not saying the original meanings of these terms are ones I necessarily agree with – as a cognitive liberty absolutist, I’m unsurprisingly not that enamored of either second-wave feminism or 1970s addiction discourse. And as much as I dislike what “emotional labor” has become, I accept that “Women are unfairly expected to care about other people’s feelings more than men are” is a true statement.

What I am saying is that all of these terms originally, at least partly, took material conditions into account in their usage. Subsequent usage has entirely stripped the materialist critique and fully replaced it with emotional pathologization, specifically of women. Acknowledgement that women have their choices constrained by poverty, violence, and oppression has been replaced with the idea that women don’t know what’s best for themselves and need to be coercively “helped” for their own good. Acknowledgement that working-class women experience a gender-and-class-specific form of economic exploitation has been rebranded as yet another variation of “Disabled people are burdensome for wanting to exist.”

Over and over, materialist critiques are reframed as emotional or cognitive defects of marginalized people. The next time you hear a superficially sympathetic (but actually pathologizing) argument for “Marginalized people make bad choices because…” consider stopping and asking: “Wait, who are we to assume that this person’s choices are ‘bad’? And if they are, is there something about their material conditions that constrains their options or makes the ‘bad’ choice the best available option?”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Holy CRAP the UN Cybercrime Treaty is a nightmare

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If there's one thing I learned from all my years as an NGO delegate to UN specialized agencies, it's that UN treaties are dangerous, liable to capture by unholy alliances of authoritarian states and rapacious global capitalists.

Most of my UN work was on copyright and "paracopyright," and my track record was 2:0; I helped kill a terrible treaty (the WIPO Broadcast Treaty) and helped pass a great one (the Marrakesh Treaty on the rights of people with disabilities to access copyrighted works):

https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh/

It's been many years since I had to shave and stuff myself into a suit and tie and go to Geneva, and I don't miss it – and thankfully, I have colleagues who do that work, better than I ever did. Yesterday, I heard from one such EFF colleague, Katitza Rodriguez, about the Cybercrime Treaty, which is about to pass, and which is, to put it mildly, terrifying:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-dangerously-expands-state-surveillance-powers

Look, cybercrime is a real thing, from pig butchering to ransomware, and there's real, global harms that can be attributed to it. Cybercrime is transnational, making it hard for cops in any one jurisdiction to handle it. So there's a reason to think about formal international standards for fighting cybercrime.

But that's not what's in the Cybercrime Treaty.

Here's a quick sketch of the significant defects in the Cybercrime Treaty.

The treaty has an extremely loose definition of cybercrime, and that looseness is deliberate. In authoritarian states like China and Russia (whose delegations are the driving force behind this treaty), "cybercrime" has come to mean "anything the government disfavors, if you do it with a computer." "Cybercrime" can mean online criticism of the government, or professions of religious belief, or material supporting LGBTQ rights.

Nations that sign up to the Cybercrime Treaty will be obliged to help other nations fight "cybercrime" – however those nations define it. They'll be required to provide surveillance data – for example, by forcing online services within their borders to cough up their users' private data, or even to pressure employees to install back-doors in their systems for ongoing monitoring.

These obligations to aid in surveillance are mandatory, but much of the Cybercrime Treaty is optional. What's optional? The human rights safeguards. Member states "should" or "may" create standards for legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, and legitimate purpose. But even if they do, the treaty can oblige them to assist in surveillance orders that originate with other states that decided not to create these standards.

When that happens, the citizens of the affected states may never find out about it. There are eight articles in the treaty that establish obligations for indefinite secrecy regarding surveillance undertaken on behalf of other signatories. That means that your government may be asked to spy on you and the people you love, they may order employees of tech companies to backdoor your account and devices, and that fact will remain secret forever. Forget challenging these sneak-and-peek orders in court – you won't even know about them:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-blank-check-unchecked-surveillance-abuses

Now here's the kicker: while this treaty creates broad powers to fight things governments dislike, simply by branding them "cybercrime," it actually undermines the fight against cybercrime itself. Most cybercrime involves exploiting security defects in devices and services – think of ransomware attacks – and the Cybercrime Treaty endangers the security researchers who point out these defects, creating grave criminal liability for the people we rely on to warn us when the tech vendors we rely upon have put us at risk.

This is the granddaddy of tech free speech fights. Since the paper tape days, researchers who discovered defects in critical systems have been intimidated, threatened, sued and even imprisoned for blowing the whistle. Tech giants insist that they should have a veto over who can publish true facts about the defects in their products, and dress up this demand as concern over security. "If you tell bad guys about the mistakes we made, they will exploit those bugs and harm our users. You should tell us about those bugs, sure, but only we can decide when it's the right time for our users and customers to find out about them."

When it comes to warnings about the defects in their own products, corporations have an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Time and again, we've seen corporations rationalize their way into suppressing or ignoring bug reports. Sometimes, they simply delay the warning until they've concluded a merger or secured a board vote on executive compensation.

Sometimes, they decide that a bug is really a feature – like when Facebook decided not to do anything about the fact that anyone could enumerate the full membership of any Facebook group (including, for example, members of a support group for people with cancer). This group enumeration bug was actually a part of the company's advertising targeting system, so they decided to let it stand, rather than re-engineer their surveillance advertising business.

The idea that users are safer when bugs are kept secret is called "security through obscurity" and no one believes in it – except corporate executives. As Bruce Schneier says, "Anyone can design a system that is so secure that they themselves can't break it. That doesn't mean it's secure – it just means that it's secure against people stupider than the system's designer":

The history of massive, brutal cybersecurity breaches is an unbroken string of heartbreakingly naive confidence in security through obscurity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But despite this, the idea that some bugs should be kept secret and allowed to fester has powerful champions: a public-private partnership of corporate execs, government spy agencies and cyber-arms dealers. Agencies like the NSA and CIA have huge teams toiling away to discover defects in widely used products. These defects put the populations of their home countries in grave danger, but rather than reporting them, the spy agencies hoard these defects.

The spy agencies have an official doctrine defending this reckless practice: they call it "NOBUS," which stands for "No One But Us." As in: "No one but us is smart enough to find these bugs, so we can keep them secret and use them attack our adversaries, without worrying about those adversaries using them to attack the people we are sworn to protect."

NOBUS is empirically wrong. In the 2010s, we saw a string of leaked NSA and CIA cyberweapons. One of these, "Eternalblue" was incorporated into off-the-shelf ransomware, leading to the ransomware epidemic that rages even today. You can thank the NSA's decision to hoard – rather than disclose and patch – the Eternalblue exploit for the ransoming of cities like Baltimore, hospitals up and down the country, and an oil pipeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

The leak of these cyberweapons didn't just provide raw material for the world's cybercriminals, it also provided data for researchers. A study of CIA and NSA NOBUS defects found that there was a one-in-five chance of a bug that had been hoarded by a spy agency being independently discovered by a criminal, weaponized, and released into the wild.

Not every government has the wherewithal to staff its own defect-mining operation, but that's where the private sector steps in. Cyber-arms dealers like the NSO Group find or buy security defects in widely used products and services and turn them into products – military-grade cyberweapons that are used to attack human rights groups, opposition figures, and journalists:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/breaking-the-news/#kingdom

A good Cybercrime Treaty would recognize the perverse incentives that create the coalition to keep us from knowing which products we can trust and which ones we should avoid. It would shut down companies like the NSO Group, ban spy agencies from hoarding defects, and establish an absolute defense for security researchers who reveal true facts about defects.

Instead, the Cybercrime Treaty creates new obligations on signatories to help other countries' cops and courts silence and punish security researchers who make these true disclosures, ensuring that spies and criminals will know which products aren't safe to use, but we won't (until it's too late):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/if-not-amended-states-must-reject-flawed-draft-un-cybercrime-convention

A Cybercrime Treaty is a good idea, and even this Cybercrime Treaty could be salvaged. The member-states have it in their power to accept proposed revisions that would protect human rights and security researchers, narrow the definition of "cybercrime," and mandate transparency. They could establish member states' powers to refuse illegitimate requests from other countries:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/media-briefing-eff-partners-warn-un-member-states-are-poised-approve-dangerou

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/23/expanded-spying-powers/#in-russia-crime-cybers-you

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/cybercrime-2024-2b.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[gryficowa]

You know what's fucked up? The law assumes that only Jews were the victims of fascism, which is why we now have the absurdity that if you are a fascist but also a Jew (Zionism in short), you go unpunished because you are a Jew, and those who are against you are anti-Semites

So yes, the anti-fascist law turns out to be a perfect loophole for fascists as long as they are Jews (And in Germany it's so absurd that Jews were beaten and attacked by the police for anti-Semitism, so yes, such a loophole in the law was used for this shit)

The law assumed that other victims of fascism do not exist, so they do not have to be as protected as Jews (And before anyone gets outraged, the point is that every discriminated group should be treated under the law in the same way as Jews, i.e. Queerphobia, racism , Islamophobia etc… were treated as seriously as anti-Semitism, and not treated as a "Joke") and this shows how defective our law is, unfortunately, the status quo will probably also be preserved, i.e. they will add another group and ignore the rest, and then the same loop will occur (It is a gloomy thought, but since they erase other victims of the Nazis such as Poles, LGBT+ people, Roma and people with disabilities, because they consider them less important than Jews in the fight against discrimination, then I'm sorry, but it sucks and this anti-fascist policy works shit)

So yes, the anti-fascist law has so many loopholes that it hurts, it just hurts on many levels, and the absurdity that Jews are beaten for anti-Semitism is proof of this, simply assuming that fascism is only swastikas and hating Jews is harmful on many levels, no, fascism is behavior, it is discrimination, dehumanization etc… The victims are not only Jews, and even then they were not the only ones

Zionism has exploited loopholes in the law to silence its opponents, and it's so disgusting it's nauseating

If the fight against fascism doesn't work because the fascist is a Jew, then you know that this anti-fascist policy is so full of loopholes that it doesn't care about fighting fascism, and it can just be exploited by fascists and people shoot themselves in the foot in this law, yes, we should fight fascism, but we should fucking teach what fascism is and how it works, not teach that only Jews are its victims, damn it

Because we have made Jews victims of anti-fascist law because they are anti-Zionists

If this is how the fight against fascism works, you know something has gone fucking wrong

Today, fascists choose easier targets (Because Jews are better protected by law, because attention, anti-Semitism is taken seriously, not as a "Joke" and that's the fucking difference) like LGBT+ people, immigrants, Muslims, black people, etc… because the law is full of loopholes and society continues to ignore the fact that this discrimination is a serious problem

It just sucks, you can be from a group that was a victim of the Nazis (I'm from Poland, specifically Kashubian, I'm aroace and I'm a person with ASD), and you will still be fascist in the eyes of the law because you are anti-Zionist, the law doesn't care about you because you are not a Jew who wants the genocide of the Palestinians and it is sick, it is simply sick

It's simply such a huge loophole in the law against fascism that now it is showing before our eyes how badly it was made and how people concluded that the victims of the Nazis were only Jews, so now that there is anti-fascist law, it only cares about Jews and so , about those who are Zionists, because they treat anti-Zionist Jews like shit (Germany, I remind you)

It's just sick, the whole law is so flawed and against the victims of fascism, even if they are not Zionist Jews, that it's insane

We would have to destroy the law and build it anew, but the question is whether this would not cause problems for future generations, because we would have to do it damn well and analyze everything, and there would probably be a fucking risk that fascism will find another loophole to its own advantage anyway

The very fact that this loophole was ignored for so many years is also terrifying, because what the Zionists did to the Palestinians from the very beginning is an indication that the law even then closed its loopholes and we are only seeing them now because we have greater access to information

The law also showed that this applies to white Jews, because Arab Jews are not taken as seriously, so don't expect anyone to care about anti-Semitism when you are not a European Jew, because you are an Arab and your being a Jew means nothing, and the law doesn't care about Arabs, so you're fucked

So yes, the loopholes in the law are most visible today and well, the very fact that they were ignored for many years is a long-term problem, and the Zionists have been taking advantage of this loophole for years to their own advantage

[candyskiez]

so, you've heard shows be recommended because they had gay characters. you don't really know what they're actually about though, and don't know if they'd be something you'd be into and are worried about spoilers. here's spoiler free plot summaries of em!

The Owl House

The Owl House starts out as a typical teenage girl goes into a fantasy realm story, but with a twist. Actions have consequences. The protagonist is a girl named Luz Noceda, who was being sent to a camp to make her behave normally by her mother after causing too much trouble at school. She ends up finding a place she's always dreamed of: a fantasy world. A world where everyone's so much weirder than she is. And she thinks, maybe if I don't belong out there, maybe people will like me here. Maybe I can be special here.

It's a story about found family, propaganda, erased history, living with disability, religious trauma, and neurodivergence. It's fundamentally a show about people who's brains work differently finding each other and making a family that treats them right. Definitely my favorite of the ones on this list. It's about people who've been oppressed being pissed about it and about finding yourself again after giving up on everyone around you for so long. It's basically a show about being a minority and trying to be understood and to understand yourself in the process. It's about growing up neurodivergent and how isolating it feels and figuring yourself out. It's about repairing broken relationships and parents who fuck up. And it's just. Such a love letter to anyone who was the weird kid in school. It's sad and heartbreaking and also so hopeful, and it's wonderful.

Content warnings: Abuse, Death, Grief, Animal Death, Suicidal thoughts, Vague suicide attempts, Depression, blink and you'll miss it s/h, body horror, religious trauma

She Ra and the Princesses Of Power

Adora was raised in the Horde since she was a baby, being fed propaganda about how cruel the princesses were. After learning how the horde actually was, though, she defects. But there's one problem. Her best friend, Catra, stays behind. Adora finds a sword that can transform her into She Ra, and might be the key to figuring out who she really is, while Catra takes her place as force captain.

It's a story about abuse, at the end of the day. Adora and Catra were stuck in a golden child and scapegoat dynamic, despite how much they care about each other. This leads to them knowing everything about each other but not understanding it. There's a fundamental disconnect between them, because both of their traumas are completely different. They have complete misconceptions about each other. Even in their initial split, they both have completely different perceptions of what's going on and why the other is upset. It's not a story about magic princesses, it's about the cycle of abuse and what makes it so complicated. Does it have flaws? Yeah. But ultimately I really really enjoy it, and when it does something right it does something RIGHT. Get through season one, it starts kids show-y but it gets very good during later s1.

Content warnings: Abuse (obviously), body horror, gaslighting (and I mean actual gaslighting, not what the Internet thinks gaslighting is), suicide, depression, flashing lights and eyestrain during the finale

Steven Universe

Steven Universe is a sins of the father story. Steven is the son of the leader of the rebel group The Crystal Gems, who's name was Rose Quartz. He navigates the confusion of being half gem and half human, as well as trying to figure out the mess of the rebellion and what his mother left behind. He's constantly in her shadow, for better or for worse.

It's a story about grief. How it impacts relationships, how it taints history, how it impacts family. It has some definite flaws, but ultimately it's about very flawed people who have lost so many people in their life trying to cope with it. Trying to handle what they lost and trying to adjust to life without them. It's about how expectations fuck a kid up and about agency and just a show about complicated relationships in general, at the end of the day. Also, it has some FANTASTIC music.

Content warnings: Grief, Abuse, body horror, very creepy people I don't know how to tag, heavy allegories for homophobia

Nimona

Nimona is a story about a guy who gets framed for murder. His name is Ballister Boldheart, a commoner who hoped to become a knight. It seemed everyone was waiting to watch him fail, so it was no surprise when he was the immediate target. Heavily injured and away from the man he loves, he's left alone trying to figure out a way to prove his innocence- until a strange kid comes into his life. This kids name is Nimona, and while he is intent on proving his innocence, she gave up on being anything but a villain a long time ago.

It's about deconstructing the model minority myth, trans rage, propaganda, and with a healthy dose of "FUCK the police".

Content warnings: Heavy injury, on screen suicide attempt, flashing lights

feel free to add more shows! just remember to keep the summaries as spoiler free as you can and add content warnings!

[oneshortdamnfuse]

I don't disagree with you. I made this post with the awareness that public bathrooms will be used by all kinds of people, but I am talking specifically about disabled and chronically ill people here because I am one and I frequently struggle with bathroom access.

Yes, even the way public bathrooms are designed should serve homeless people. I also believe everyone has a right to public transport, and any criticism I have for it as it exists now is not intended to see it disappear. It is to enhance it.

With that said, I am dependent on my car because the public transportation available to me where I live is not accessible to me as a chronically ill person who needs immediate access to a bathroom. It can take me a really long time to get to a bathroom if I am stuck on a bus, and then a long time to get back on a bus going to my destination.

I am not saying get rid of buses, but I'm in trouble if cities become much less accessible to cars if they don't address the bathroom issue.

I am saying there should be more public bathroom locations along bus routes, and other modes of transportation. There could be a day when I can no longer drive, and if the public transportation available to me isn't in close proximity to public bathrooms then I will simply be stuck at home like many other disabled and chronically ill people.

I am once again explaining that in order for walkable cities and public transit to work for disabled people, there also need to be more public bathrooms available in and around those areas. Not just places to sit down or rest. Bathrooms. We need accessible, clean bathrooms. With sharps bins. With multiple wheelchair accessible stalls. With an area to set down supplies needed to maintain one’s body. Even if it’s not being used to get rid of bodily waste, bathrooms are one of the few spaces disabled people have to maintain some sort of privacy when they’re in the middle of a flare up or they need to take medication or what have you. Designing a public space? Include bathrooms.

[rainbow-banana-slug]

eye strain warning

gummy 🌈🐬

[plain text: gummy 🌈rainbow emoji🐬dolphin emoji]

(^ shark emoji not blue enough)

[id: dark skinned black person with williams syndrome in decora kei fashion walk with posterior walker. person have pink hair with rainbow bangs n all sorts hair clips in hair & stickers on cheek. have many rainbow necklace include one with double yoke egg. wear blue sweater with white cloud where one sleeve is yellow horse with pink leash thing. there many pins on sweater include gummies (gummy shark, peach ring, gummy worm, gummy bear) & green crayons & others. she wear cross body green dino plushie (bag?). rainbow vertical stripe pants with rainbow n star chain. one shoe red one shoe blue. posterior walker made of different color crayons. there text around character describe her which be functionally described below. end id]

🌈🐬.

girl (complicated gender) with williams syndrome n love decora kei fashion & bright colors (she call them happy colors/excited colors)!! she has lotssss of bows n head pieces n hair clips n necklaces n bracelets n other decoration & big wardrobe with bright colored clothing! she love wear different outfits but it consistently decora kei.

she love gummy candy & named herself after them >:) blue/red gummy worm & blue gummy shark her favorites (blue gummy shark also my favorite. to look at.)

williams syndrome (also known as williams-beuren syndrome) is genetic developmental disorder micro-deletion of some of chromosome 7. for gummy, WS lead her have moderate intellectual disability (ID) & global developmental delay, level 2 autism, ADHD-c; congenital heart defects (CHD); hypotonia (low muscle tone), & loose joints.

like many people with WS, gummy very friendly & social! she love hugs & talking to people & talk lot & very physical in show affection! but also often struggle tell when other people not want be social / be social with her, be called “a lot” & “too much,” which lead her have trouble make n keep friends n make her sad—even tho WS make her extra outgoing, she also still get sad n mad n not hide it. she also struggle with danger awareness & often treat strangers like would with friend, n it been something that her support team very focused on work with her entire life because this lead her be very easily taken advantage of n be put in danger.

also like many ppl with williams syndrome, language & verbal abilities her strong suit—tho it’s relative to her moderate ID, so one shouldn’t expect she write speak communicate like average person without struggle. her words more simple, n still need many help for communication, including various form of AAC & aide person.

she has aides that pretty much 24/7 present because WS & moderate ID but working on skills so can be more independent! it something she been work very hard on entire life n she quite proud of progress.

she has many classic facial features associate with williams syndrome, like epicanthal folds at eye, upturned nose, wide mouth & small teeth, small jaw, full cheeks (badly drawn), n large ears.

70% or more people with WS have some sort cardiovascular problem, n so do gummy. she has supravalvar aortic stenosis (narrowing of aorta) which form of congenital heart defect (CHD). hers not very severe n be closely monitored.

she also have hypotonia & loose joints due to WS & uses posterior walker full time to get around. she really like her posterior walker, it shaped like many crayons :D also wear SMOs but forgot write it so oops

art fight character profile

[reblog welcome but please no repost]

[honeyciub]

I've never felt more like someone was trying to insult my intelligence than when I found out that the relationship between Jayce and Viktor was supposed to be entirely platonic and brotherly. Believe what you want, if kisses and sex are the only markers of romantic love for you, that’s okej but we simply have nothing to talk about here.

What bothers me is how often Jayce's relationship with Mel is portrayed as being in opposition to his bond with Viktor. It seems like these two significant relationships in Jayce's life can’t coexist in a healthy way. Yet, in theory, they shouldn’t conflict at all, as they represent two entirely different types of connections.

And the whole idea of “brotherly love” just doesn’t make sense. We see how Jayce behaves in such a relationship with Caitlyn—he teases her, acts silly, and annoys her while she’s working. Meanwhile, with Viktor, he’s gentler, more caring, and looks at him with tenderness. For some reason, Jayce just treats Viktor with more affection than his other friends.

He literally dies with and for Viktor. He doesn’t even need to think twice when given a choice. And it’s not like he has nothing to return to. The truth is, Jayce doesn’t really seem to want to live without Viktor.

As for Viktor, he outright admits that there’s no one else like Jayce in his life—someone who can show him that he’s not defective and doesn’t need to strive for some twisted idea of perfection. Out of all the opinions across all worlds, only his partner's matters to him. All it takes is for Jayce to openly say he admires him, and Viktor blindly trusts him. Years of torment over his disability pale in comparison to a single statement of validation from the guy who literally killed him recently.

...

And then we find out that they were basically meant to be like brothers. Was that whole setup about them being connected in every dimension and that they need each other to be happy just for this? To me, it’s absurd that two people essentially commit suicide together, it’s heavily implied that they’re soulmates, and they don’t want to live without each other, but because they don’t kiss, it all boils down to them just being “best buddies.”

Calling their relationship platonic feels like an oversimplification. Arcane is a series full of subtle signals, both in the context of its characters and their relationships. Even so, the idea that Viktor and Jayce might be more than just friends is viewed as overinterpretation by the main writer. This seems odd, especially since others working on the show don't share this opinion, and neither does most of the fandom.

[frankendykez]

what annoys me about posts on the novel frankenstein in this site (besides the blatant ableism towards victor frankenstein from people who swear they "care" about disabled people) is the amount of readers that forget that the bride, had victor truly put her to life, would in fact have the same amount of autonomy & free will as the Creature does.

i talked about this in some reblog before but really it is incredibly annoying, seeing people who claim to be feminists and advocating for the rights of women saying that oh! victor should've just not given her ovaries/not given the Creature a cock and so that would fix everything! so they shan't be able to reproduce an dmake evil moster children! just in response to this one thing in that chapter:

"one of the first results of those sympathies for which the dæmon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror."

it is true that victor worries about them reproducing, but how did they miss these lines from the first paragraph of the chapter?:

 "He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man, and hide himself in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species."

it's literally longer, reader can't have somehow accidently missed it? frankenstein thinks of her free will, that is so much more important. he worries of her consent in the matter. it is in my belief by ignoring this you are ignoring the voice of mary shelly, daughter of a world known feminist, who is against arranged maariages of which this situation very closely resembles.

even if we ignore the fact that people somehow managed to not read a significant amount of the text, why do people belive the victor owes the creature a wife? do you think men are owed wives? that women, without a say in what they want to do, must become a wife to some random man just because he wants her to?

people here woobify the creature so much that they literally act extremely ableist and anti-feminist on accident. i am not saying the creatture is pure evil and victor is pure good, i am very against black and white readings, but is this not common sense? and honestly, the way the creature speaks about the bride is gross anyways. here are two examples:

"one as deformed and horrible as myself [would not deny herself to me]" & "(…) of the same species and have the same /defects/".

is that not odd? how the creature Wants her to be miserable and ugly so she has no other choice but to be with him?

not to mention how the bride parallels elizabeth and the relationship between her and the creature would've probably parallels the relationship of alphonse and caroline frankenstein, how the creature would've (accidentally?) groomed her. but that's a whole different can of worms

i know you guys love adam and hes interesting but jesus fucking christ

[novaursa]

i've been reading through your blog and your stories are so enjoyable to read and suck you right into the world, and since the requests are open. 🏃‍♀️ the reader is coming to kingslanding, for her wedding to aemond. however, she is deaf, and he isn't sure how to connect with her, thinking perhaps if he should hate her because she's reflecting his own disability back to him. thinking if this marriage might even be punishment, but throughout their time together he one day sees her with vhagar, she's leaning against her feeling the dragon rumble, and she's smiling ... maybe you'd like to write something with that, don't care if you change things or what ending it gets, you can decide freely. thx !! 💗

The Silence

- Summary: Aemond viewed your betrothal to him as another punishment he must endure. But then he introduced you to Vhagar and saw how truly special you are.

- Paring: tyrell!reader/Aemond Targaryen

- Rating: Mild 13+

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff @alyssa-dayne @oxymakestheworldgoround

- A/N: ❤️

The sun hangs low over King’s Landing, casting shadows that stretch across the Red Keep as you arrive. The capital, bustling and vibrant, is a sharp contrast to the verdant expanse of Highgarden, your home, but you’ve been preparing for this moment. You can’t hear the raucous calls of merchants or the clamor of city life below, but you can see the way the guards at the gates watch you with curious eyes, the way servants scurry about, and the sharp looks from courtiers. All eyes are on you, the Tyrell betrothed to Prince Aemond Targaryen.

You’re led to your chambers by a lady-in-waiting who introduces herself as Taena. Her lips move quickly as she tries to make conversation, her voice lost on you. You nod and smile, following her lead, trying to hide the apprehension bubbling in your chest. The grandeur of the Red Keep feels overwhelming, each step a reminder that you’re far from home, about to marry a prince whose reputation precedes him.

Aemond, they say, is a cold, sharp-edged blade of a man, known for his intellect and ferocity. He lost his eye and gained a dragon, but not the love of the people. And now, he’s gained you—a wife he never asked for.

You haven’t met him yet. Not properly. There was the brief, formal introduction when you arrived, a stiff greeting in the throne room with his mother, Queen Alicent, and his siblings. Aemond had looked at you, his single eye icy and unreadable, his mouth a thin line of disdain. It was hard not to flinch under that gaze, to keep your chin up and meet his stare. He’d offered you his arm, and you’d taken it, the weight of his hand on yours strangely heavy, the air between you thick with unspoken words and unacknowledged fears.

He did not try to speak to you, not that day. You wondered then if he knew, if he had been told that his betrothed could not hear. Or if, perhaps, it made no difference to him. What was one more defect?

The days since have been filled with preparations for the wedding, leaving little time for you to dwell on what your life will be like here. Today, however, is different. Today, Prince Aemond has decided to spend time with you, and you sense the tension in every step as you walk beside him through the castle gardens.

His movements are clipped, precise, and there’s a hardness to him, a steel that does not bend. He speaks little, his words few and far between, his gaze never quite meeting yours. You try to follow his lips, to catch the meaning behind them, but his speech is too quick, his diction too sharp.

Frustration wells up, but you swallow it down. You’ve learned to live with silence, to read the world through other senses. He hasn’t learned to live with you yet. The thought stings more than it should.

He stops suddenly, turning to you, his eye flicking over your face as if searching for something. He gestures, a broad motion towards the distance, and you follow his hand, squinting against the sun. You can just make out the massive shape of a dragon, its wings folded, its head turned in your direction.

Vhagar.

Your breath catches in your throat. You’ve seen dragons before, from a distance, but never so close. Vhagar is ancient, her scales jaded and mottled, her presence a shadow that looms over the earth. She’s beautiful in a terrifying way, her sheer size and power awe-inspiring.

You glance at Aemond, who’s watching you intently. There’s a challenge in his gaze, a dare. He’s waiting to see you flinch, to see you tremble before the beast that even the bravest knights fear. You lift your chin, your heart pounding in your chest, and take a step forward.

Vhagar’s massive head tilts slightly, her eyes, like molten gold, narrowing as you approach. You keep your movements slow, measured, your hands out at your sides. You’ve learned that all creatures, from the smallest songbirds to the greatest dragons, respond to calm, to confidence.

You don’t know if Vhagar will understand, but you hope she will.

The ground seems to shake as you get closer, her breaths rumbling through the earth like distant thunder. You can feel the heat radiating from her scales, the sheer weight of her presence. When you’re close enough, you reach out, your fingers brushing over the rough texture of her scales. The dragon rumbles beneath your touch, the sound a deep, reverberating vibration that you can feel through your bones.

You smile, your heart soaring, and you lean in closer, resting your forehead against her side. Vhagar huffs, a sound that vibrates through your entire body, and you feel the tension that has been coiled inside you since you arrived in King’s Landing begin to loosen, to unfurl.

Aemond watches you, his expression unreadable. He had expected you to recoil, to balk at the sight of Vhagar’s sheer enormity. But you haven’t. Instead, you’ve done something he rarely sees from anyone—you’ve shown no fear, only a quiet, almost gentle strength.

His chest tightens as he observes you, your delicate form dwarfed by Vhagar’s immense bulk, your face softening into a smile as the dragon shifts, a low, contented rumble escaping her throat. He’s seen men twice your size cower before Vhagar, seen warriors blanch and turn pale. But you—this woman who cannot hear, who has been forced into a marriage with a prince who does not want her—stands before his dragon with an ease that borders on reverence.

He steps closer, his boots crunching on the gravel, and Vhagar’s eye flicks towards him. He hesitates, unsure for a moment, then reaches out to rest his hand beside yours on Vhagar’s side. You look up at him, your eyes bright, the smile still lingering on your lips.

For the first time, he’s unsure of what to say. He’s spent so long building walls around himself, using his sharp tongue and his sharper mind to keep people at bay, that he doesn’t know how to reach across the chasm that lies between you. He doesn’t know how to connect with someone who, by all rights, should be as broken as he feels.

But you aren’t broken. You’re here, standing beside his dragon, smiling up at him as if he’s something more than the scarred, half-blind prince of a family that’s falling apart.

He clears his throat, glancing away. “You’re… not afraid,” he says, his voice low. He doesn’t know if you can understand him, but he says it anyway.

You tilt your head, studying his face. Your fingers move slowly, shaping words he barely knows, but he watches intently, trying to understand. She is beautiful, you sign, the motions graceful, deliberate. She is strong.

His breath catches. He hadn’t expected that. “Yes,” he replies, his voice softer now, almost reverent. “She is.”

You smile again, a small, gentle thing, and turn back to Vhagar, stroking her scales with a tenderness that Aemond has never seen in anyone but his mother. And as he watches you, something shifts inside him, something deep and buried and aching. It’s not love, not yet, but it’s a start. An understanding, perhaps, that the woman standing beside him, who cannot hear his words but sees so much, might be more than he ever expected.

Might be exactly what he needs.

[no-more-rqs]

this is absolutely going to cause me to lose every single follower i have but i Do Not Care so anyways, i have something id like to say.

incest is not inherently damaging whatsoever as long as its consensual. there is zero scientific evidence that consensual incest is damaging. NONE. of course, incestuous abuse absolutely exists and is extremely damaging to the victims of it, but what i am talking about is consensual relationships between adults.

before you call me insane, here:

in an article by clare kasemset from stanford university, she states that one of the main (and only) scientific reasons that incest is illegal is that "the offspring of partners with a high level of consanguinity are more likely to have birth defects". however, this is eugenics: disabled people's children are also very likely to have children with birth defects, and anyone really could potentially have children with birth defects. this argument is simply that incestuous relationships should be illegal so that birth defects cease to exist. keep in mind, the definition of eugenics is "to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable"; in essence, make sure that the only people born are "desirable", which would include being able-bodied. kasemset goes on to explain that "the act of incestuous sexual intercourse does not cause harm". incest does not inherently cause harm. the only reasons people give for the illegalization of incestuous relationships are eugenics and the potentially offensiveness of it due to the fact that "the vast majority of people in this country have deep-seated beliefs that incest is immoral".

article source: https://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/intersect/article/download/137/35/615

in an article by maria campo redondo and gabriel andrade, they state that "incest represents a risk, but this is not reason enough to illegalize incest". this is because "other circumstances of sexual intercourse may lead to similar risks, and yet, such practices are not illegal". think of how AIDs is used to say that homosexuality should be illegal, how the possibility of miscarriage is used to say that people should only be getting pregnant at young ages, how the possibility of disabled children is used to say that disabled people shouldnt be having children: all of these are arguments that rely on nothing but "disability should be eradicated". ableism is so extremely ingrained in our society that people constantly search for the cure to every disability so that they wont have to deal with disabled people existing. i have had friends who have been told "your children will be disabled though!!!!! 😥" for being disabled just like those who are in incestuous relationships have. you should be allowed to have a child as long as you or someone else is capable of taking care of them, no matter if that child is disabled or not - a child potentially being disabled is not a morally wrong thing. as the authors of this article say, the reasons why incest is illegal "do not relate to public health and genetic risks".

article source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phil.12332

in a paper by jeff sebo, he states that "incest increases the incidence of inherited genetic diseases by about three percent". three percent. that is only three out of every hundred children born out of incestuous relationships. the argument of incest increasing disabilities is not only founded on eugenics, but founded on a very small statistic - especially compared to the fact that the probability of an autistic person have an autistic child is, on average, 3.45%. it is no different from any genetically disabled person having a child. advocating for incest to be illegal based on the possibility of disabled children is no different from advocating for disabled people to be sterilized.

he also explains that family is not dramatically different from any other relationship, and that there "are numerous important relationships in our lives—some of which are based on blood, others of which are not—and it is ridiculous to assume that our family members, whoever they may be, are necessarily our emotional centers". for many, many people, friends can even more important than family, or family can seem much more similar to friendly dynamics than typical family dynamics. the argument of families is also very often used against queer people by saying that it ruins the inherent family dynamics that are supposedly present, when in reality, families all function very differently and many people see their siblings or cousins as more like friends than how families are typically portrayed. as the author says: "no relevant moral distinction neatly separates our family relations from the other relationships in our lives".

he also explains that many people claim that incest "turn[s] out badly frequently enough to warrant a categorical ban". incestuous relationships are often abusive ones, this is very evident. however, "the outcome of our test will depend largely on how we run it". if we only ask abuse victims what their experience was (as many, many articles do), we will come to the conclusion that it is all abusive. only looking at people who were children abused by adult family members is not looking at the effects of incest, but looking at the effects of child abuse. yes, there may be a lack of scientific evidence for incest being good - but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and there are many, many person experiences from people. on top of that, "those who breach the taboo are branded as outsiders, they suffer the effects of social ostracism, and since others misinterpret this suffering as caused by the act and not the label, they are used as evidence in support of the taboo". if someone is in an incestuous relationship, they will be hated by everyone, which will lead to them being depressed and possibly suicidal - not because of the incest itself, but because of how its treated.

source (PLEASE go read this its very well-done): https://jeffsebo.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/the-ethics-of-incest1.pdf

[bonefall]

The warriors fandom for years: Isn't it fucked how ableist the writing is? And how there's like, no canon queer characters? =(

The writers, accidentally stumbling into incest:

The fandom: Lol, she's gonna have so many fucking defects. Ableism? Intersexism? Sorry never heard of her babes ♡

It sure is

interesting

the way that suddenly it is acceptable to make jokes about ickygross deformed babies when the child is a product of incest. As if the child has any control at all over the circumstances of their birth. Like it makes it OK and funny to mock someone's health and appearance if it's from something that invokes disgust.

almost like they find it funny because the child "deserved" being born this way for being produced from something vile.

It's just so obviously shitty to me it's hard to put into words. People are capable of recognizing it for ANY other disabled person but not for this. Not the minute the target is "acceptable." I thought we left shit like Dorkly's Inbred Yoshi back in the 2010s, because we realized it was fucking shitty. But no. It's still going on.