Author: Real Social Skills

Examples of it wasn’t me

Real Social Skills

Posting also in this format:

There’s this dynamic:

  • Person1 *does something that hurts Person2*
  • Person2 is hurt, and changes their behavior in some way
  • Person1 explains how they would never do something like that, it wasn’t really them, they were just upset
  • And then gets really angry at Person2 for thinking something is still wrong

For instance: 

  • Bob gets drunk and calls Joe a racial slur.
  • The next day, Bob calls Joe and tells him that he’s not the kind of person who uses racial slurs, he was just drunk.
  • Joe still thinks of Bob as someone who called him a racial slur
  • Bob gets really angry and thinks of this as Joe wronging him – after all, Bob would *never* call someone a racial slur, normally.

Or like this:

  • Debra consistently forgets to eat, and falls to pieces.
  • She often realizes that she is starving in the middle of the day, and eats her coworkers’ lunches.
  • When people find out, she says she really isn’t the kind of person who steals lunches, she was just really, really hungry.

We’re all better off when what we need is socially acceptable

Real Social Skills

One of the best things about iPads is that they make it possible to do things people with disabilities need without invoking disability stigma. Because iPads are just iPads. They’re not special technology that only Really Disabled people are allowed to use.

And that’s better. That means a lot of disabled folks can use them who were never able to use adapative technology before. Because they didn’t fall into the categories they and others read as Allowed To Use Disability Equipment.

Other things are like that too. Stimming being more popular and socially accepted would be good for us. Gatekeeping about who is allowed to do it hurts us.

Everyone should be able to type rather than speak if they want. Everyone should be able to rock and move and think.

I suspect this is true for a lot of other access issues too.

If you want to avoid making enemies, it’s important to be careful about your friends

Real Social Skills

Most personal enemies start out as friends, or apparent friends.

When you treat someone as a friend, it makes you vulnerable, because:

  • People you’re close to know things about how your mind works that they can use to manipulate you
  • Friends count on each other to actively treat one another well. If you count on someone and they aren’t actually trustworthy, you get hurt
  • Friends give each other the benefit of the doubt. If you give someone the benefit of the doubt and they don’t actually mean well, this gives them a large opening to do you harm.

It also means they know private things about you that they can use against you if they decide to be your enemy, and that people who perceive them as close to you might trust their opinion.

Sometimes you shouldn’t give people a chance to get close to you. Sometimes it’s not a good idea to allow yourself to become vulnerable in that way.

Not everyone is a good friend.

I wish I had known this sooner.

A red flag: I would never do something like that!

Real Social Skills

Note: This is a difficult post to write because it has phrases that are sometimes used by people who are blaming victims. I’m saying something else, but I’m not sure I’ve successfully expressed it.

So this is a thing that happens:

Someone does something bad while they’re angry/drunk/overloaded/sad/hungry.

And then they hurt someone doing that thing.

And then they want the person they hurt to pretend it never happened. Because the real them would never do something like that. The real them, when they’re not angry/drunk/overloaded/hungry/stressed, would never act that way.

And, the thing is… people are real all the time. People are their real selves when they’re in bad states of mind. Don’t try to separate. If you did something, you did it. Which isn’t to say that the reasons are irrelevant. They matter. But, they don’t erase anything. 

What you do when you’re drunk or overloaded or tired etc is also who you are. And the reasons matter, because they affect what the solution to the problems is, but you have to be willing to acknowledge that it was you who did it.

And, your desire not to have done the thing does not erase the harm done. And it doesn’t make you trustworthy. And it doesn’t obligate the person you did it to to trust you again.

An example of ways in which the reasons matter:

  • Jane demands that Isaac have an extended conversation with her, while looking her in the eye and holding his hands still
  • Isaac gets overloaded and starts screaming

In this case, the solution is that Jane needs to stop making unreasonable demands on Isaac, and Isaac may well not need to do anything differently at all. But it’s still the case that Isaac was a person he screamed. And trying to separate into the real Isaac and the scary guy who screamed leads nowhere good.

People are real all the time. Good interaction depends on interacting with the person who is really there, which means acknowledging that they’re real even when they do bad things. And that you’re real even when you do bad things.

Skype

Real Social Skills

Some people prefer to type. Some people prefer to speak.

Skype is a platform that makes it very easy to have a conversation in which both people can use the mode of communication they prefer.

Video and audio being on doesn’t mean that both people have to speak. It just means that speaking is available as an option.

Don’t hang your identity on being counter-cultural.

Real Social Skills

It’s better when good things become mainstream.

If something is good and right, it’s best when everyone knows this and it’s not substantially controversial.

Opposing things hurts. 

There is a lot that is horribly wrong with the world, and a lot of fights that have to be fought. There are many lives in the balance (and other things). But the point isn’t the fight, and it’s not being outside the mainstream.

The point is the values and the people.

Serve your values, and your people. Fighting is a means. It is necessary. But it is not an end in itself. And you can serve your values and people best by looking for ways to serve them – and when that is fighting, to fight, and when that is building, to build.

When people make the fighting an end in itself, bad things happen.

Socially acceptable stuffed animals

Real Social Skills

Stuffed animals are awesome. It can be very nice to have them around. For some reason, this tends not to be considered socially acceptable for adults.

I’ve discovered recently that there is a partial exception to this. Stuffed animals are sometimes accepted in schools and workplaces if they can be perceived as mascot-like.

A way to get a stuffed animal to be perceived as mascot-like is to give it a name thematically related to the school or work environment you want to take it to. It is especially helpful if it is a pun name.

For instance, in a library, a stuffed animal is more likely to be accepted if it is named Dewey. Or if it is a stuffed worm named Book. 

This doesn’t always work, but it does sometimes.

About using stim toys

Real Social Skills

Using stim toys can make a lot of things possible, for instance:

  • listening to a lecture
  • understanding what’s going on and not getting overloaded
  •  tolerating noisy environments
  • avoiding picking at your skin or pulling out hair
  • keeping calm while talking to people

The problem is, stim toys often annoy people. Sometimes this is because they are biased against people who look weird, but sometimes it’s because they create sensory distractions.

For instance, some people are bothered by repetitive sounds, and that can make stim toys that make noise problematic, and some people are easily distracted by movement. Some things that can sometimes help:

  • Use quieter toys. Ball chains can work in similar ways to buckyballs, without making as much noise.
  • Buckyballs are quieter if you make and unmake the tube rather than squishing them.
  • Not everyone is equally noise-sensetive. It can be helpful to consistently sit in the same seat, and make sure that seat is at a significant distance from people who are bothered by the noises
  • It can be helpful to sit out of sight of people who are bothered by repetitive motion
  • If you can sometimes get by with less intrusive toys, but sometimes need the stronger stuff, don’t try to decide in the morning which to bring. Bring both, and keep the stronger toy available as a backup. Having the more effective toy consistently available makes it easier to function, and also increases the extent to which the less-disruptive toy is useable.

“The last bigotry”

Real Social Skills

People often say things like this:

  • x is the last socially acceptable form of bigotry
  • y is the only form of prejudice that people who like to think of themselves as liberal are still proud of
  • No one would think that was ok if it happened to group z!

Here is a short list of things people often claim are the last socially accepted forms of bigotry:

  • fat hate
  • cissexism
  • ableism
  • mental illness stigma
  • bias against members of minority faiths
  • bias against atheists
  • ageism
  • homopobia

Given that these are all common, none of them can possibly be the last socially accepted form of bigotry. Saying that one of them in particular is the last suggests that the others don’t really count. Saying that only one form of bigotry suggests to people who experience other forms that you either don’t think they exist, or you don’t think that what happens to them matters.

(And also, it suggests that things such as racism and sexism have disappeared even though they are in fact alive and well).

The fact is, there are a lot of forms of bigotry. You probably don’t know about all of them, because they can be invisible when you aren’t personally harmed by them or close to someone who is personally harmed by them.

It pays to be aware of the fact that there are a lot of forms of bigotry and hate. Remember this when you write – don’t claim things that are particularly important to you are the last kind of issue that exists.