Some people communicate better by typing than they do with their voices.
Some people need to do both at different times, or even within the same conversation.
Maybe you’re like that. Maybe you could say more things if you used your hands and a keyboard rather than your voice sometimes.
You almost certainly know people who could communicate better if they didn’t always have to speak.
Knowing that this is a thing is important. So is being a safe person for other people to type to if they should.
April is a brutal month.
There’s a lot of hate directed at autistic people, during April.
The same people who bullied us in high school, have Awareness events in college. They think they’re better than us. They put on rallies and events telling the world how awful it is that we exist.
At the same time they lament our existence, they ignore our presence and voices. They don’t really understand that autistic people are real. They just wish that we weren’t.
And, during April, it seems like everyone is in on it. Even people you otherwise like. Even people you thought better of. It’s everywhere. You can’t get away from it. It’s scary and humiliating, and it can be overwhelming.
It isn’t actually everyone, though. Not everyone hates you for being disabled. Not everyone wants to erase you. Some people understand. You are not alone. And it helps to remember that.
Even the hate only goes down to a certain point. It’s possible not to believe them. It’s possible to create space for yourself that that they can’t touch. Keeping that in mind helps, too.
And you’re already real. You’re already worthwhile. The people who think you need a cure to be a person are wrong. You are a person. The people trying to convince you otherwise are being horrible.
You are not alone. Try to keep that in mind as much as you can, and reach out to the people who can support you.
gramireus asked:
Hi! I hope this hasn’t been asked before, and that I’m asking this right, but I was looking for an alternative word for something. I know the word “fronting” isn’t supposed to be used for this, so what word would you use to describe pretending to be neurotypical or not mentally ill?
Mostly I’ve seen people call that “passing”.
As in “Joe learned how to fake NT body language, so he passes for NT a lot of the time.”
Or, “I can’t usually pass, but I can do it for an hour or two when applying for jobs”.
It’s called “covering” if you admit to being other-than-NT, but still do everything you would do in order to appear NT if you were trying to pass.
There are situations in which people intentionally or culpably provoke others beyond endurance, and then blame them when they react.
And something people who do this often say is that people have to take responsibility for their actions. Which is true, but it’s also more complicated than that.
See this post on Ballastexistenz:
My new case manager was a young woman. She was organized and efficient. And within a month or so, she completely turned my life around. I could finally rest, because I no longer had to keep a constant lookout for things going wrong.And my reputation changed. Suddenly they considered me reasonable, polite, and civil.
They acted as if I was the one who had changed. But I wasn’t. What changed was my situation. It’s hard to be nice — hell, literally fatal to be nice — when it’s your life on the line, when there’s a different crisis or three every week.Yet that’s exactly the position a lot of agencies force disabled people into. They don’t provide adequate case management, and the outcome becomes our fault. We are forced to fight for basic necessities. When we do fight, they take that as evidence that we are capable of keeping track of our own needs without any extra assistance. We become not their problem.
So – while, people are real all the time, and whatever people do, they’re the one who did it – sometimes the solution to problems involves changing what *other* people are doing. And that piece is also important.
Posting also in this format:
There’s this dynamic:
For instance:
Or like this:
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.
Most personal enemies start out as friends, or apparent friends.
When you treat someone as a friend, it makes you vulnerable, because:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.