social skills – Page 19 – Real Social Skills

Disability doesn’t make it ok to be creepy

February 5, 2015June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Content warning: This post is about sexual creepiness, sexual assault, and using disability as an excuse to violate boundaries. Proceed with caution.

A reader asked:

How do you call out a disabled person who is saying they should get to do creepy or mean things because of their disability, without being ableist yourself? I know a guy in a wheelchair who will grope and touch women when they sit down next to him, and he has done this to me. And he’ll say things like, “Come on, I’m in a wheelchair.” if you try to move or act uncomfortable. And he says because most women aren’t nice to him, he should get to know a female’s touch.

realsocialskills said:

This guy is using other people’s desire to be good people as a weapon to get away with groping women. That is not something you need to have any tolerance for whatsoever. He’s doing something awful and he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s violating people and then manipulating them into feeling like bad people for objecting. That’s a horrible thing to do.

And it seems like it’s working, given that you’re concerned that you might be wrong to tell him to stop, or that you might have to be very careful about how you do it.

This dude is groping people and telling them off for objecting. There are absolutely no circumstances under which that is an ok thing to do, and you don’t owe him a pass on it just because he’s marginalized by ableism. That’s the most important thing about this situation. It’s absolutely ok and important to insist that he knock it off.

It’s not ok to grope people. Being lonely doesn’t make it ok to grope people. Being marginalized and desexualized doesn’t make it ok to grope people. People with disabilities are often seen as non-adult and therefore nonsexual, and that’s a horrible thing to experience. That doesn’t mean that others owe them sex, and it doesn’t give them the right to grope people. The only thing that makes it ok to touch another person in a sexual way is consent.

It’s ok to insist that this dude stop groping people even if you have some ableist attitudes towards him (You probably do. Most people, including people with disabilities, have some ableist attitudes, and most people are more ableist towards people they have good reason to dislike.) You don’t have to wait to be perfectly free of all bigotry before you’re allowed to decide who you do and don’t want touching you in a sexual way.

If you want to tell this dude to stop groping people, I think the best way is to just completely refuse to engage with any of the excuses he’s making. The overriding issue here is that he’s violating people in a sexual way. It’s not ok for him to do that, and it’s not ok for him to tell people they’re wronging him by objecting. It’s better not to let him change the subject to ableism when you’re telling him to stop groping people.

I’m sorry you’re having to face this situation. He shouldn’t be acting this way.

Pride in disabled accomplishments vs inspiration porn

January 31, 2015June 10, 2021 Real Social Skills

I think sometimes people with disabilities get caught between a rock and a hard place regarding pride and inspiration porn.

When people without disabilities choose to do hard things, they usually feel proud of accomplishing them. And they usually have people in their lives who notice the hard things, and who respect them for doing them. Doing hard things is something that people generally respect.

People with disabilities are often totally excluded from that kind of respect, when the thing that’s hard is hard for reasons related to disability.

Sometimes the difficulty of being disabled is acknowledged, or at least referred to, but in a way that’s utterly devoid of respect. That can take the form of condescending and degrading praise, eg:

“Wow, you are a person with a disability in public! You’re not even in your house! You are doing a thing! That is so inspiring!”, or:
“Hello, fellow parents at the conference. This is my son. I never gave up on him, so he’s going to play the guitar badly for us. See what our special kids can accomplish if we believe in them?!”, or:
“Wow, you sure are good at driving that wheelchair that you have been using every day for the past ten years.“
“Wow, really, you’re autistic? I never would have known! I don’t see you that way at all. You even talk to people and everything.”

And then there’s the other side, where everyone just completely ignores difficult things that people with disabilities accomplish when the difficulty was disability-related, eg:

Learning, through considerable focused effort, to speak in a way that others can understand (nondisabled people are allowed to be proud of their communication skills)
Preferring to walk and putting in a lot of effort to retain the ability (nondisabled people are allowed to be proud of their ability to run)
Bearing hate and breaking into a profession that’s hostile to people with disabilities
Learning to read even though it’s cognitively difficult (nondisabled people are allowed to be proud of learning to understand something difficult)
Learning how to recognize facial expressions
Figuring out a way to do calligraphy even though your motor skills are awful (nondisabled people are allowed to be proud of mastering a difficult artistic skill)
Explaining your reality to someone who you need to understand it

When people don’t acknowledge this kind of thing, it’s degrading in a different way:

Doing things that are easy for most people can, genuinely, be a major accomplishment for us
Our struggles aren’t acknowledged very much, and almost never in respectful terms
And our disability-related accomplishments aren’t often celebrated, except when they’re being used as a way to shame nondisabled people into being less lazy or something
Having the difficult things we do go completely unacknowledged is also degrading
Disability-related accomplishments matter just as much as accomplishments not related to disability

Or, in short, these things are very different:

Being exhibited by someone else as you play the guitar badly, while that person implies the the audience that this is the height of what you will ever accomplish
Having messed up hands, deciding to try to learn to play guitar anyway, getting to the point where you can coordinate well enough to play a few songs badly, and being proud that you’ve come so far

It’s ok to be proud of doing things that are hard for you, even if they’re easy for most people. It’s not a failure of acceptance. It’s not the same as pushing yourself to be normal at all costs. Your accomplishments deserve respect.

“You’re just looking for a quick fix”

January 30, 2015June 10, 2021 Real Social Skills

If you use medication to make your life easier or better in any way, some people might object, and say “you’re just looking for a quick fix!”.

This is a mean and unhelpful thing to say.

Medication isn’t the right answer for everyone who has cognitive or mental health problems or pain or other reasons people take medication, but it can be game changing for some people. If you try medication and find that it makes your life easier, that’s a good thing, and it’s ok to be happy about it.

It’s ok to want your life to be easier. It’s ok if it turns out that there’s something that works quickly that makes things better. Using an effective strategy to make your life better isn’t being lazy; it’s being efficient.

Abuse doesn’t always go in cycles

January 28, 2015June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Content note: This post contains graphic descriptions of emotional abuse and mentions physical abuse. Proceed with caution.

Often people describe abuse as occurring primarily in cycles (including specifically with the pronouns this way):

He is effusively loving
Then, he resents her being a separate person from him
Tension builds up
He explodes and hits her
Then he’s all ~remorseful~ and swears he’ll never do it again
Then he is effusively loving again
and the cycle continues

That’s definitely a real thing. But it’s not the only pattern (and even when it is, it happens in gender configurations other than male abusers and female victims, and it’s not always between romantic partners.) There are many, many patterns of abuse and they’re not all discussed very much.

Here’s another pattern (not the only other pattern):

The abusive person will be demeaning and effusively loving at the same time
They will do something degrading and something genuinely positive simultaneously
There won’t be a discernible cyclical pattern because both parts happen at the same time
This can be very, very disorienting to the victim, who might be tricked into seeing their abuser as loving, considerate, and insightful, and themself as not living up to their abuser’s love

eg:

Daniel: I love you so much. I brought you your favorite flowers. Not everyone would be so understanding of your irrational need for flowers.
Daniel hugs Debra
Debra hugs back
Debra feels awful about herself, and feels good about Daniel

or:

Susan: Hey, the fair’s in town. Let’s go!
Susan: I made you a jacket to wear.
Bill: That’s beautiful! Thank you!
They drive to the fair, and it’s warm out, so Bill decides to leave the jacket in the car
Susan: Where’s your jacket? Don’t you know that it hurts my feelings when you reject my gifts? I just wanted to have a nice time with you.
Susan: I guess it’s not your fault. I know you’ve never been in a successful relationship before. We all have stuff to work on.
Bill then tearfully apologizes and promises to work on it.

Short version: If someone is hurting you and it doesn’t seem to be happening in cycles, you are not alone. Abuse doesn’t always happen in a cycle of overt abuse and effusive love. Sometimes abuse is more mixed and constant. Scroll up for one example of a different pattern.

Practicing awkward questions

January 27, 2015June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

When you enter certain situations, it’s likely that you will be asked awkward, painful, or intrusive questions. It’s sometimes worth preparing yourself ahead of time to deal with those questions so they have less power to derail you in the moment.

Some examples of situations in which this kind of preparation might be helpful:

Interviewing for a job in which you’re uncertain of your qualifications
Interviewing for a job when you expect to be perceived as incapable because of your age, disability, race, gender, etc
Presenting on a topic related to justice, particularly if people are likely to try to get you to ~tell your story~ instead of talking about the issue
Pitching a business idea for a new type of product
Coming out
(any number of other things)

It’s worth preparing because:

There are two problems you’re facing:
One is that it might feel horrible to be asked certain questions
The other problem is that answers to your questions will be used in a way that hurts you
It can be tempting to avoid thinking about these questions, because it hurts to anticipate them
But that can actually make the questions hurt more, and it can make it harder to protect yourself from the practical consequences of answering the questions
If you can make the thought of answering (or deflecting) the questions bearable, then they have a lot less power to hurt you, and you have a lot more power to choose how to respond

One way to prepare is to do a practice run with a friend, where they ask you the questions you’re afraid that you will be asked.

One really good way to make the questions bearable is to have someone you trust ask you the questions you’re afraid of being asked
That can allow you to practice hearing the question and finding it bearable, and still being ok
It can also allow you to practice finding answers, and experimenting with which ones seem most effective.
If you’ve had some experience hearing those questions, answering them, and still being ok, it can make it a lot easier to answer them when the answers are immediately important

Writing down your thoughts can also help:

It might help to make a list of questions you’re afraid of being asked
And thinking through what kind of response you might want to make
Any way you can think about it ahead of time is likely to be helpful
(That said, be careful about scripting too much if you can avoid it. Words that you generate at least somewhat in the moment are often received better than memorized scripts.)

Short version: If you’re likely to be asked difficult questions, it’s worth practicing answering them. Two things that work well are having a trusted friend ask you those questions, and writing down thoughts.

When people bait you into fights about controversial issues

January 25, 2015June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

People ask me what I think about something or how I feel about something. If my answer is unpopular it makes them upset or angry. I have told people not to ask me questions if they don’t want the answer, but that doesn’t seem to be very effective. I am thinking about ignoring questions that are like that, but I don’t know how well that will work or if people will get upset because I ignore them. So at this point I am at a loss for what to do.

realsocialskills said:

I think this depends on the context. I’m assuming here that you’re talking about unpopular opinions related to social issues, religion, politics, or other things that are about deeply held values. If you’re asking a different question (eg: if people are asking you whether you like their art), this answer probably won’t be helpful. That said:

It’s not always possible to avoid offending people.

There’s a social price to be paid for having unpopular opinions. Sometimes it’s really important to people that you agree with them, and some of them will push the issue until you say something that offends them. (And, depending on the nature of the opinions, people might sometimes be justified in pushing the issue.) If you have strongly held unpopular opinions, it’s probably really important to work on keeping perspective in the face of other people’s anger.

But, not everybody is going to be hell-bent on pushing the issue, and even when they are, it’s still sometimes possible to avoid the conversation:

Sometimes the best thing is to immediately change the subject, eg:

Them: So what do you think of this controversial thing that we always fight about?
You: Let’s not go there. Did you see the game last night?

Some subject-change phrases:

“Did you see (episode of show you both like)?“
“How’s work?”
“How are your kids?“
“Do you think the weather will be good enough to go hiking this weekend?”

You can also sometimes evade the question by deflecting it to something vaguely related, eg:

Them: What do you think of subway strike?
You: The trains are all really broken down and dirty. I’m amazed that Improv Everywhere gets people to take off their pants in those trains every year.

Another possibility: expressing discomfort:

Them: So, what do you think about this controversial thing we always fight about?
You: I’m not really comfortable talking about that.
or: “That’s really personal.“
or: “That’s a bit heavier than I like to get at a party; let’s keep it lighter.”

It can also sometimes work to give them a specific warning that they’re treading into potentially offensive territory (although this can also backfire):

Them: So what do you think of this controversial thing?
You: I think my answer might offend you. Do you really want me to answer that question, or should we talk about something else?
or: “Do you really want to know the answer to that question?“

Another possibility: stating your opinion in a matter-of-fact way and refusing to fight about it:

Sometimes just stating the opinion in a straightforward way will deflect conflict
This doesn’t work with everyone, but it can be really effective with people who are trying to bait you into an emotionally laden fight
It’s sometimes possible to say what you think in a way that makes it clear what you think, and that you’re not interested in fighting about it

I’m not totally sure how to describe how to do this. But, eg:

Them: What do you think of the really popular ballot measure everyone else at this party likes?
You: Actually, I’m against it. I think it’s harmful to people with disabilities.

Sometimes that can even lead to a good conversation. Sometimes it gets them to drop the subject. Sometimes it can lead to an argument (which you might be able to refuse to continue; you don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.) It helps a lot if you can take an unapologetic tone that doesn’t sound like you think you’re saying anything objectionable.

Short version: If people try to pick fights with you on controversial issues, there are sometimes ways to deflect them. Scroll up for more details.

You are allowed to think for yourself

January 22, 2015June 10, 2021 Real Social Skills

People pointing out problems with things are not always correct.

Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re wrong.

The fact that someone is yelling at you, using social justice terms, and calling it a call out, does not in itself mean you have done something wrong. It just means that someone is angry at you, for reasons that may well be justified, and may well be completely off base, and may well be partly right and partly wrong.

Sometimes people calling you out are right, and sometimes they’re wrong.

The only way to figure out what’s true is by thinking about it. There’s no algorithm you can use to mechanically figure out who is right. You have to think for yourself, and consider using your own thoughts whether you think the things someone is telling you are true or not.