Category: Uncategorized

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.

Power is not evidence example: restraint in schools

Real Social Skills

https://todaynews.today.com/_news/2013/02/06/16873189-school-staff-duct-taped-girl-with-down-syndrome-to-her-shoes

Staff members in a school held down a young girl with Downs Syndrome and forcibly taped her shoes to her feet with large amounts of duct tape. 

That’s all we know, from the story.

The fact that strong adults decided to do this isn’t evidence of anything else. In particular it’s not evidence that:

  • She was especially disruptive, or:
  • She was doing something urgently dangerous, or:
  • The teachers were overwhelmed, or:
  • This was a last resort done only after gentle options were exhausted, or:
  • She is exceptionally difficult to care for, or:
  • She doesn’t belong in the class she is in, or:
  • Her disability made the problem hard to solve, or:
  • Anything remotely like that

But, a good percentage of the people reading and commenting on stories like this seem to be assuming that, if this happened, there’s a good reason it happened, and that the reason had something to do with the child and her disability. This is the assumption even of a good percentage of people who think the staff were wrong to do this to her.

It is hard not to make that assumption. It’s really ingrained.

But power is not evidence, it is not a reasonable assumption to make. And it is important to bear that in mind.

Methods for making words come out

Real Social Skills

Some things that work for some people who sometimes have trouble making words:

Typing

  • Sometimes text-based communication works better
  • Sometimes using email or instant messaging or text messaging will make you able to use words when you couldn’t do so with your voice
  • When that doesn’t work, sometimes typing random nonsense or quotes or something can get you into a mode in which you have more words to use

Speech

  • Sometimes if you can say any word or phrase, it makes other words start working
  • For instance, saying lines from a book or TV
  • Or, frustratingly, sometimes explaining inability to speak makes it easier to speak
  • If it’s a particular word you can’t find, describing the thing can work

Sounds:

  • Sometimes making sounds that aren’t words works as expressive communication
  • Sometimes making sounds can make words come after

Moving

  • Sometimes waving hands can help make words come out
  • Or making gestures of other sorts, like pointing at things

Something about body language

Real Social Skills

It’s very common for atypical people to be told that they have no body language, whether or not this is actually true.

If you:

  • Have an atypical body, or:
  • Move in unusual ways, or:
  • Have an atypical face, or:
  • Speak oddly

Lots of people will tell you that:

  • You have no body language, or:
  • You have no tones of voice, or:
  • You’re impossible to read, or:
  • You have a flat affect, or:
  • You have no facial expressions

This can be for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not you have these things. For instance:

  • People who find your body uncomfortable, and try to avoid looking, tend not to pick up on body language
  • Likewise with faces – someone who isn’t looking at your face because they don’t want to see its odd shape, may well think you have no facial expressions because they aren’t seeing them
  • If you move unusually, you may have body language that many people aren’t familiar with. This doesn’t mean you don’t have any. It means their social skills are lacking.
  • For instance, they may not realize that rocking and hand flapping are often forms of expressive body language.
  • They may be assuming that people like you don’t have body language etc, and therefore actively ignoring yours because it doesn’t have a place in their worldview.

It may be true that you don’t have body language, tones of voice, facial expressions, or whatever. But it may not be, and it’s very common for people to get this wrong.

Not everything is your problem

Real Social Skills

When someone is abusing you:

  • It’s ok not to care why they’re doing it
  • Their circumstances aren’t your problem
  • Neither is their childhood
  • Neither is the possibility that they’re playing out abuse patterns they learned as an abuse victim

These are larger social issues. It’s important that some people work to address them.

But not you. Not with regard to your own abuser. You don’t have to wait for huge social problems to be solved to be allowed to demand that a specific person stop abusing you.

It’s ok, and advisable, to focus on protecting yourself.

Don’t assume marginalized people are safe

Real Social Skills

Sometimes people who are marginalized assume that other marginalized people are safe by definition. This is really dangerous, and it sets people up for a lot of gaslighting. We need to make sure not to encourage this in activist and otherwise pro-human spaces.

For example, some people do things their stereotypes say they’re incapable of doing:

  • Some women are sexual abusers
  • Some autistic people are manipulative bullies
And also, sometimes people do bad things that are (wrongly) stereotypical of their group. For instance:
  • Some gay people are sexual predators
  • Some members of minority faiths are destructive fundamentalists.
Some people in marginalized groups do stereotypical or anti-stereotypical bad things, and when this happens, it’s important for activist and other pro-human groups to acknowledge it and not tolerate it.

If you know someone else is in a marginalized group, that’s all you know about them. Don’t assume that they know what it’s like to be mistreated, and are thus safe and trustworthy and would never harm another person. *Especially* when their actions have shown otherwise.

A practical example: Assume that baby talk is unwelcome

Real Social Skills

People who express opinions on that matter almost universally say that they don’t like being addressed in cutesy baby talk voices.

Despite this, many people talk to non-verbal adults in baby talk voices, on the assumption that it’s ok because they’re low functioning, or have a young mental age, or something. 

This is bad. Being unable to say no does not imply consent. And if someone can’t say no (or has been taught not to), it’s important to be especially careful to avoid doing things to them that they are likely to dislike. 

Since you know that most adults dislike baby talk, you shouldn’t use baby talk voices with adults. Especially if they are adults who can’t talk or who usually aren’t listened to.

Edited to add: Except adults who like baby talk and have made it clear that they prefer it in some contexts. People are allowed to have unusual preferences.