#glorified disability

[shiningstarr15]

‼️warning: the post I’m about to make has heavy topics pertaining to mental illness and disability. Please view at your own discretion‼️

I want to come on here to talk about something that I don’t feel gets talked about enough. And that is mainly thanks to social media that has advocated to the understanding of mental illness and disability to the point that it is immensely glorified. And while I would rather choose the lesser of the two evils than deal with the ableism and discrimination, I think it needs to be addressed on why glorifying it is also very problematic.

As you know by now, I am on the autism spectrum, and with this came a slew of other mental health conditions that I have suffered from for a long time such as anxiety and depression. One thing I would never want to do is beg for pity. I am still a functioning human being and do not wish to be treated as a charity case. However, I think it is important to showcase the darker side of being diagnosed with such a condition as Autism.

What you see, you may see awkward social interaction, you may see unusual movements of my arms and legs and even my whole body(stimming), you may see high emotional sensitivity, you may see aversion to loud sounds, and so forth. And these are things that, in of itself, are not inherently bad. Yes I am prone to accidental inappropriate social interaction, but there is ways of accommodating and advocating for it while still holding me accountable. Gentle approaches and positive reinforcement go such a long way. And the more people learn and accept that, the better quality of life you make for me and my community.

What you don’t see, is the struggles that come with it.

Being autistic comes with many many processing issues. Auditory, sensory, information, visual, cognitive, etc. And like the disorder itself, they all live on a spectrum and affect us all differently. One of these things that we struggle with due to this processing issue, and the one we usually get the most abuse from, is personal hygiene.

I took a shower tonight, which is something I struggle with due to the task of having to wash myself, having sensory issues such as too strong of smelling soap and the water temperature not being right, but also the transition from being wet to cold is something I hate. I hate drying myself and the water from my hair dripping down my back. I don’t like water on my face. The entire thing is an absolute hellscape.

But it needs to be done, so I got in. And I noticed that my hair felt heavier than usual. After shampoo and conditioner, I ran my fingers through my insanely thick and long locks. And.. it got stuck.

With conditioner, it was stuck.

That is how bad the tangles were. As a result of having not brushed it for weeks. Yes, weeks.

Over the course of the shower, I pulled out probably a dozen knots, all around this size..

I’m tender headed, brushing my hair hurts my neck and my arms. So I wear hats to cover it, it also helps as an impromptu noise buffer so it’s a win win in the moment. However, it just adds on to the ever growing tangles and become more and more prominent until I actually do something about it.

This is something in it of itself, I’ve grown used to.

But as I ran through the tangles, yanking out knot after knot, the hair piled in the drain.

When I looked down and saw the result, I couldn’t believe how much hair was caught in the absolute rats nest that had accumulated for weeks.

And I cried.

I still have plentiful hair, but I didn’t want to lose that much. I hadn’t even realized it had gotten so bad. As I got out I immediately noticed the lightness on my head and panicked, thinking I may have a bald spot (I don’t) bc so much was gone now..

I may be used to it, but I hate it still. Every time. But it happens over and over again, bc I hate brushing my hair.

This.. this is the true dark reality of living with Autism.

I love my hair, and me not liking to brush it does not mean I don’t care. It is a physically daunting task, it fucking HURTS, and it sucks bc I KNOW it’s not supposed to!

Everyday I wake up, the lights are too bright and I can hear every sound like a siren. It takes excess energy just to get out of bed, even more to change clothes, and if I am lucky, even more to brush my hair. I have 30 min to decide before I get to work what my support needs are today bc they change DAILY. Some days I have enormous amounts of anxiety, some days I have sensory overstimulation, some days I feel literally touch starved, some days I can’t find the right words to say, or barely want to say anything. I have to figure out what I need, what will get me through the day, what will allow me to survive. And even now, I am struggling to find my place in the workforce due to the lack of resources and currently on the verge of autistic burnout that I’m desperately trying to avoid.

Every time I brush my hair, there are knots. And when I brush my teeth, there is blood in the sink.

This is my reality.

I am imploring you to PLEASE consider these things when you say things about how hating autism is “internalized ableism” or glorify it to the point that it becomes a trend that everyone wants to have bc it’s “cool.” I do NOT like being autistic. It has caused me immense heartache, trauma, struggle, and being in constant survival mode. It FUCKING SUCKS.

I have accepted that I am autistic. But I do not enjoy it. It is still, in its own right, a DISABILITY. It is not something to be glorified and praised. It is not something that is “trendy” and something you WANT to have.

Wanting answers is one thing, I understand that. That’s how I got my diagnosis. But I am begging and pleading, DO NOT ASK FOR IT. If you have it, learn to accept what is and learn what you need to do in order to live your best quality of life. It is not something to be taken as a joke, it is not a “gift” and it is not a trend.

It is a disability. It is a disorder. A brain disorder. A processing disorder. And it fucking sucks.

[aggro-my-beloved]

yeah non-hetero redacted characters are cool and everything but…

autistic!david?!?

adhd!asher?

chronicpain!milo??

deaf/hoh!huxley?!

ocd!lasko???

bipolar!damien?

schizophrenic!gavin?!

it’s pride disability month for crying out loud, don’t let the inclusivity stop at sexuality!

[lunathewafflelord]

when you realize that every single character you’ve ever written and probably ever will write shows just about every sign of autism and you didn’t even write them with that in mind

[cryptid-writer]

The ada just triggered his fight or flight response

And chuuya is a flightless bird >:)

[6ebe]

trying to get a job with disabilities is so hard bc everywhere wants to say they’re ‘disability friendly employers’ but that means they’ll give you ‘reasonable accommodations’ once you’re already through the door. It’s not considered in hiring practises. like not even interviewing people with disabilities bc they don’t have an internship is such a hilarious manifestation of ableism bc like. the reason I didn’t do an internship was bc of my disability ..

[ioletia]

HMMMMMMMMMMM...

So, Tim Walz is fine. I have no issue with him, but...

People keep bringing up his kid in the context of how great a dad Walz is, which I'm to understand is the image that's being cultivated for him. I have no issue with that, but someone brought up a People article about his kid's neurodivergency; and how Walz refers to his non-verbal learning disorder and ADHD as quote unquote his "secret power." And I don't like that language.

Learning disorders aren't "powers," super, secret, or otherwise. If a person with one of these disorders wants to call it their power, sure, fine, reclaiming your existence- we stan. But, when other people do it? I don't like that narrative. It's still a disability and often requires support- support that is often very few, very far between, and miserably inadequate in America.

Also, I'm still salty over not getting the buttfucker as our VP. I really wanted to vote the thot daughter & gay son ticket. I want to see a white party at the white house, damnit!

[myersesque]

i don't often describe things as mid but i must confess there's a shop on my way home from college that sells the most mid boba i've ever tasted

[wheresernie]

Anyone got any writing prompts? I need to start writing again, even if it's bad

[renthony]

Too many leftists are still glorifying work for work's sake. Too many leftists have equated "performing labor" with "moral fortitude."

If your ideal society has no place for people who genuinely, fully, 100% do not want to work, or who can't work, your ideal society is not as ideal as you think. There has to be space for people who don't "contribute," there has to be space for people who don't fulfill some greater "purpose," there has to be space for people who cannot and will not ever be a part of the labor force.

I am a firm believer that laziness does not exist, and if someone is flat-out refusing to do something, there's a good reason for it. That reason could be disability, it could be fear, it could be a lack of education, it could be that they're confused or lost and don't fully understand what they're supposed to do, it could be that they don't have the skills, it could be that they're at their limit and need a break, it could be that the task is uninteresting or not relatable to them and they don't understand why it's necessary, it could be countless other reasons. "They're just lazy" is a cruel assumption that doesn't solve any problems or accomplish any tasks.

But even if I'm wrong, and laziness is real, you can't penalize "laziness" without hitting a lot of disabled or otherwise vulnerable people in the crossfire. You cannot and will not ever create a society in which everyone is a perfect worker. There has to be a way for someone to contribute absolutely nothing to the labor force, but still be taken care of instead of left to needlessly suffer.

[rainbowgothdisaster]

apparently no one liked how the cops were treating nana but didnt know how to tell the 3 able bodied 6'0" men with guns to not laugh at the mentally ill 62 yr old who was trying to fight them

fucking hate cops.

[euniexenoblade]

Sex as an act is only ever glorified by society when said sex is cis straight white abled etc. Gay people, trans people, poc, the disabled, women, get their sex lives mocked, made illegal, banned from literature and cinema, you can literally get killed for being one of these things and expressing a sexuality. At the same time, rape is used as a punishment for existing as these things, weaponizing sex against us. This is similarly why ace people are treated like shit, abstaining from this is treated as a nasty aberration worthy of mockery and corrective rape. Things like "public" sex laws in the USA don't exist for some betterment of mankind, they existed as a way to arrest the gays having sex in a hotel room, they exist to harass the homeless who have no private spaces, they exist to harass trans people for simply existing. It's important to remember when talking about the act of sex, yes society pushes having sex as this important thing you should be doing, but only for men having sex as defined by Christian conservatives.

[blackfilmmakers]

Hello! I was wondering if it was Okay to ask for some tips on how to write a black horror antagonist respectfully? I’m a horror author and I realized that my horror villains are not very diverse, but I’m afraid of falling into stereotypes.

Things to consider when making a Black Horror Antagonist:

-Who is the protagonist in relation to this Black antagonist? Is it a White kid? A group of people with fairer skin compared to the Black antagonist? If you aim to make diverse stories, you can't just make the antagonists poc and call it a day. Society already use the narrative that Black ppl are out to terrorize White neighborhoods with malicious intent, to justify killing us. Birth of a Nation glorified the Klan so well(cinema-wise) it literally brought back the Klan. We also have this ongoing rise of anti-Haitian crimes(AntiBlackness overall) because some White woman wanted to make a meme of Haitians eating cats

-If they are a magical antagonist, is the magic they used based on Black or Brown cultures that are already demonized enough? The recent rise of anti-haitian propaganda does stem from the stereotype that Haitians practice cannibalism for their "satanic" ritualsm. Which the word, "cannibal" was a slur that refers to islanders apparently. Anyways you can have your magical Black antagonist, but if they start writing in vodun symbols and wear feather headdresses, reconsider that it's just "if it's a vague Black/Brown religion it's automatically scary"

-What is their personality like? Are they cunning and creative and clever? Or are they a simple-minded beast? In The Promised Neverland we see two caretakers(they are antagonists): Isabella and Krone. Isabella is a fair-skinned woman who is presented as intelligent and cunning with her villainy. Whereas Krone's villainy depicts her as a monstrous beast. We already have enough Black antagonists that are essentially the main villain's attack dog, with very little focus on their motivations. If you wanted to write about a monster/beast that has no intelligence you could always write that instead. But if you have a Black human being, well humans can be written in so many different ways, do use that opportunity

-Consider whether or not your Black Horror antagonists are ableist narratives. Ableism is already a problem in horror stories already. But when it comes to Black neurodivergent/disabled people, you have to be extra careful with that. Sonya Massey's disability (and aave) made those cops murder her because at the end of the day, she's a Black woman they didn't bother to hear out, and needed an excuse to shoot her. What you write as a "scary" trait for your Black antagonist, could support ableist narratives that disabilities/neurodivergency are inherently dangerous

-Colorism can be an issue here as well. Even if you do have a Black protagonist, are they someone who is lighter than the villain? Dark=/=Inherently Bad, and Light=/=Inherently Good

-Horror is all about exploring a fear (societal or individual). So this is when you have to ask yourself, what do you fear? What do you think your readers' fears are when they read about this Black villain character? You can't control your readers' perception, sure, but fiction doesn't exist in a vacuum. It can challenge societal expectations or support them. So with all the points I listed down above and whatever points I didn't say, this could all attribute to the "horrors" or the "thing you need to fear" in the story. Do your readers find the Black antagonist scary because they are a well written antagonist with proper motivations? Or are they conditioned to see Black people as scary?

-In terms of how these characters speak or their motivations, that I have to advise getting several Black beta readers(that aren't just your friends) to have review your work. If your character is a disabled Black person, get a disabled Black reader. If they are Jamaican character, get a Jamaican reader. Hell, ask these readers if they even find your Black villain intimidating or compelling.

All in all, if you write about a Black character you really need to write them as you do for your White characters. The problem I think most nonblack writers have with this advice though is that they read that as "write Black characters as White(the default)". That won't work. You always have to consider a Black character's Blackness and how that interacts with the world you created

@/writingwithcolor and @/creatingblackcharacters would probably have more input

TLDR: Make the final girl a darkskinned Black woman

[asses-to-ashes]

Pedophiles don't belong in the proship community. Zoophiles don't belong in the furry community. Can we stop conflating these communities.

If you're recovering from a paraphilic disorder, great! Can't afford a psychologist but are anti-contact and anti-enabling? Also great! I wish you the best.

My problem comes from the normalization and celebration of paraphilic disorders on this site specifically under the disguise of disability or queer activism. A psychologist will NEVER, EVER recommend that you post about it or engage in an online community of enablers. Paraphilic disorders are not kink. Embracing paraphilic disorders is not disability activism.

You can be anti-contact and anti-enabling without being hateful or making assumptions about people who have a disorder, but people who run Para Blogs are not anti-enabling. The ProPara community has turned into a cesspool of enablers and legitimate pro-contact pedophiles who hide behind the fact that people have empathy for those with disorders they can't control. They've created a space where people brag about being pedophiles and celebrate attraction to children. This is the opposite of how the disorder is treated by professionals.

Stay away from fiction & communities that could cause you to relapse or backslide. Proshippers are not attracted to minors, our stories don't exist for pedophiles to displace their attraction onto.

The reasons paraphilic disorders are different from fetishes is because:

1. They include unwilling people or people who cannot consent, such as voyeurism or pedophilia

2. They cause the participant or others harm that is potentially lifelong

3. They prevent a person from functioning or adjusting in society

I'm going to address a post I saw earlier. EXTREME TW for the defense of pro-contact "big 3" paraphilias

START QUOTE --------------------

END QUOTE --------------------

Being gay harms nobody. It is an attraction between two consenting adults.

PARAPHILIC DISORDERS are not normal attraction. Comparing being a pedophile to being homosexual is not the #WOKE PEDOPHILE WIN that you think it is. It's insanely regressive and harmful.

To reiterate, you are not evil for having a paraphilic disorder.

You are not a bad person. You are a bad person for glorifying it, enabling yourself and others, fighting for your right to harm other people without consent, and engaging in an online community of pedophiles.

[ladentity]

It’s me I can’t write and struggle to tie my shoelaces.

im sick to death of the girlboss phenomenom. appreciate strugglewomen or we'll never get anything done around here

[spacerockfloater]

Every time Team Black stans talk about Rhaenyra’s bastards and the Dragon Twins as if they’re blessings upon this earth, an angel loses its wings.

Like, okay. They’re children, I’m excusing all of them up to a certain point. But they’re some of the most vicious, aggressive, cowardly, snotty brats we’ve ever seen in this franchise and pretending that they’re not is so foul.

Lucerys is a hypocritical twat that bullied the boy he grew up with because he didn’t have a dragon, but then he’s totally okay hanging out with Rhaena who doesn’t have one either. And then he pulls out a knife and blinds Aemond for no fucking reason, after his gang attacked him first, and faces zero consequences for his actions. He eventually grows up to become an even worse person by literally laughing in his cousin’s face, whom he disabled. And then he tries to boss lord Borros around by telling him that he’s obligated to ally with Rhaenyra even if there isn’t anything in him for it.

Jacaerys is also very two faced for the exact same reasons as Lucerys, with the addition of having anger management issues. Like, remember how he beats the living shit out of his little brother when they’re training at the beach, kicks him to the ground and grabs him by the throat because he is upset their uncles are better warriors than them? That’s the good future king you’re all talking about? He is already obsessed with the idea of becoming king, to the point that his own mother has to remind him that she’s actually alive and well and he would have to wait a good fucking while before his dreams come true. That’s actually so sick on his behalf. Not to mention that he very likely married Sara Snow, betraying his fiancée, in order to gain the Starks’ help, which is very dishonourable. At least Lucerys told Borros he’s betrothed and refused to marry one of his daughters to get his support, I’ll give him that.

Baela is a deranged evil girl who was ready to throw hands on sight, too. And have we forgotten that she becomes a drunkard and whoremonger who spends her money gambling in the rat pits, the places where children fight one another in King’s Landing, once she grows up, or is it wrong only when Aegon II does it?

Rhaena is an aggressive coward who seems more preoccupied with the acquisition of a dragon than her mother’s death. She didn’t have the guts to go and claim Vhagar, but she feels powerful enough to confront Aemond when she has three people backing her up.

Finally, even without taking all of their problematic traits into account, these people are so severely uninteresting and unimpressive. Lucerys does not convince Borros to side with his mother and drops dead like a fly. Joffrey gets shrugged off by Syrax and plummets to his demise. Jacaerys is immediately killed during his embarrassing attempt to fight the Triarchy, not to mention that he was the reason his youngest half siblings were captured and nearly killed because he had the brilliant idea of sending them away. Baela loses the only dragon fight she was ever part of to Aegon II and Sunfyre who were very injured by a previous fight already! And Rhaena is just… there. Doing nothing. Never avenging her husband’s death, eventually marrying a Hightower. Yikes.

Are there much more ill behaved children in ASOIAF? Yeah, for sure, but we actually acknowledge that children like Aegon II and Joffrey Baratheon are pieces of shit. But if we could like, stop glorifying these four mediocre and borderline malicious kids solely because some of you feel the need to ride the dicks of everyone who is part of Rhaenyra’s crew, that would be great. They might be children, but they’re children with shady, putting it mildly, personalities, wielding new-clear weapons of mass destruction who actively participated in a war, especially Jacaerys and Baela. They sure were victims of the world they were raised in, but they were aggressors as well. And like, this is the ASOIAF universe, nearly all of our protagonists are children. We can’t constantly apply modern day morals and coddle them forever because “OMG, they are just babies!”, unless we are ready to apply the same logic on the Targtowers, who were basically the same age as Rhaenyra and Daemon’s children.

[genericpuff]

i find it funny that one of rachel’s drawings of herself in the afterword that just went up is just fully persephone. is that something she does a lot?

Alright so I've been making it a general rule for myself to like, not harp on Rachel in any way outside of LO as much because frankly the horse is dead now and there's not much left to say outside of what can be analyzed in hindsight. I think despite everything I have to say about her and her work, she still deserves to get away from this nonsense and I don't wanna spend eternity hovering over her shoulder.

But the afterword was posted within the LO series and is clearly meant for readers of LO in the functioning of being an afterword so let's just call it fair game LOL

I will say, on the whole, it does feel very honest and sentimental and I can respect Rachel for taking the time to write out and illustrate her afterword in a way that was personal to both her and her fans. I can understand why she went at it from the angle that she did and I'm not gonna fault her for that.

But there's also something that feels deeply... disingenuous about her approach right from the starting gun. I will say, before I continue, that I'm well aware I am biased towards Rachel as a creator, and I fully acknowledge that I could very well be reading too much into things. This is just my opinion, take it with mountains of salt.

I can get looking back on your own childhood, your past self, whatever, and going "see! it all got better!" because sure! For a lot of creators like Rachel, it must be wild to look back on where they came from and there's a lot of sentimentality on expressing that through an afterword like this where she reflects on where she came from. Though she STILL didn't acknowledge her other comics outside of LO, I can understand if she wants to leave those skeletons in the closet.

But I feel like her drawing herself as a child who's being given an Eisner by her adult self and all that just feels like some gross attempt to disarm any criticism of her because "don't make fun of me, I'm just a sad lonely baby girl!"

She's not a child. Child Rachel didn't grossly misappropriate Greek myth into their own self-indulged vanity project. Child Rachel didn't claim herself a folklorist of a culture's works only to bastardize them completely. Child Rachel didn't create a hostile environment within her fanbase by bullying anyone who she perceived as a threat, sneaking into critical spaces to try and cause trouble, and writing her own clapbacks into her comic. Child Rachel didn't claim to be challenging misogyny and purity culture only to reinforce misogyny and purity culture through her own self-insert baby-virgin-gets-rescued-by-rich-tycoon power fantasy that regularly glorified abuse towards women and the lower class.

30-almost-40-year-old Rachel did though.

At best it comes across as really cringe sentimentality from a Greek-weeb (heh, greeboo) and goes to show how much Rachel inserted herself into Greek myth without ever absorbing its messages or cultural contexts, it was all about her and her feelings as a sad New Zealand girl with dyslexia who thought Persephone's story was about another sad girl being rescued from her "horrible childhood".

At worst it's an active attempt to play on people's heartstrings by drawing herself as a child who people will naturally not want to criticize. I don't want to assume she's doing it intentionally, I really don't want to leave her afterword on a bad foot, as I can definitely understand as both a creator and a person who struggled with learning disabilities in their own childhood how and why she wants to pay homage to her past and where she came from... but let's just say, as someone who's also gotten way too "lost in the sauce" concerning personal self-reflective projects, I think there's a lot to say about how this confirms that Rachel made LO entirely for herself, about herself, without any actual intention to respect the original myths, because she never truly separated them from herself when she was a child. And, in my humble opinion as someone who has Been There with the self-insert OC's and self-reflective angsty plotlines, I can fully attest to the fact that that's not fucking healthy. Even with personal projects, you NEED to learn to get your head out of the sauce, you NEED to learn to objectively separate yourself from the narrative so the story doesn't fall apart under your own hubris and ego, you NEED to learn to draw a line if you want to have any sort of identity as a human being outside of what you make for people. And that's with just normal original stories, this was a story based on Greek myth which doesn't belong to her.

And this goes for a lot of the things she's said and done in the past, so much of her own "sources" even are tethered to things that she read / watched in her childhood and only vaguely remembers, as if she never mentally left her childhood at all, which just... if the point was to highlight her past and the traumas she went through and how they contributed to her present, an Eisner isn't going to validate those experiences. And drawing attention to her past through the lens of her childhood self absolutely 100% does not absolve her of the negative effect her work has had on the modern Greek myth zeitgeist nor the things she's said and done as a 38 year old woman who should absolutely know better.

The community she entered and took from will forever remain changed by her influence and taking, in many ways not for the better. She has the privilege of walking away and never having to think about it again, with all the awards and accolades that were bought for her, the bravado that she built around being a "folklorist" with zero credentials, and the platform she was given over many other creators struggling to even be heard.

That "place" she claims to have now was built entirely on inserting herself into another culture's works and doing nothing but taking, taking, taking, while offering nothing in return but vanity and lip service. That "place" was paid for and brought to you by Webtoons.