Day: August 2, 2017

tatterdemalionamberite:

queeranarchism:

I’m disappointed in a lot of the conversations about neuro-normativity in inter-personal interactions, mostly because of how absolutist they tend to be and how useless that is in most real life interactions.  

A lot of conversations ignore that you can’t be sure you’re not talking to another non-neurotypical person but more to the point they also overlook the fact that ‘neurotypical’ people (which I sometimes think is more a society wide enforced ideal than an a human reality anyway) can be emotionally hurt, triggered, sensory-overloaded, extremely exhausted or emotionally fragile in some other way. Neurotypical people have meltdowns and panic and moments when they are so so fragile. 

So when someone doesn’t respond well to your non-neurotypical behavior, maybe they’re a huge ableist asshole, or maybe their needs are incompatible with yours in that space, maybe your bouncing leg is pushing their sensory overload over the edge or your directness is something they are too emotionally vulnerable to deal with, or your uninterrupted talking is speeding up their panic attack, etc. Maybe their melt-down is as unavoidable as yours. 

Like, maybe it’s just me, but a lot of my bad experiences seem to come from incompatible neuro-needs, like when my partner really needs to hear that one song to calm down and I really need to not hear it to calm down, when I really need clean uncluttered spaces to relax and a friend really needs company in their own home, which is a cluttered space. Our needs clash, and the language or neuro-normativity in the ‘you are ableist, I am not’ absolutes doesn’t cover our situations well. We can’t use the language of privilege vs. oppression to handle these moments. We need tools about neuro-diversity that work from a place of mutual understanding and assume that we are both vulnerable and we are both doing the best we can.   

This is big, and I think it has something to do with why ableism is consistently one of the places where facile/performative social justice paradigms really show the flaws in their construction!

Because as long as it’s reduced to hierarchically ranking abstract forms of oppression, the idea of competing access needs is lost; the idea that different people have different trauma is lost, and neurodivergent needs wind up being dismissed as frivolous because not everyone has the same ones…

And if there’s a systemic framework of ableism in play, there, it seems like it’s something to do with the way some of us have complex requests and needs, and need complexity to be accepted as a condition of our lives.

send-me-noots:

Shoutout to the people who:

-have symptoms that aren’t visible to others

-are able to function even while in extreme pain

-hide their illness well

-who don’t “seem sick”

-who have flareups at night or other times when no one else sees

-fight a daily battle that others can’t see

-feel like they’re making too big of a deal out of their illness because “it could be worse!”

I see you out there, I feel you, you’re awesome.

That graphic with the ice cream bars also just reminded me that whenever I ended up getting dragged along to my grandmother’s weekly hair appointment when I was little, she would always stop and get me one of the Mickey Mouse bars on the way back.

I never really liked them, but I guess she thought they looked appealing for kids? I never felt like I could just say no, I’d rather have something else.

Don’t know when I last thought about that, but kind of strange.

aegipan-omnicorn:

limegum:

1970s

I remember most of these from when I was growing up (names are a little bit different, though – probably regional variations). My favorites were the Chocolate Eclair, the Cream Stix (we knew it as “Creamsicle” – it was vanilla ice cream coated in a layer of orange sherbet), and then, it was a toss up between the ice cream sandwich and the toasted almond.

I don’t remember a few of those, including the ices. There probably were some regional variations in availability too. I also don’t recall seeing the chocolate eclair/strawberry shortcake/toasted almond types until up into the ‘80s where I was. Never liked the crumb texture myself.

My faves as a little kid: ice cream sandwiches, Nutty Buddies, the little cups of ice cream with the wooden sticks, and Fudgsicles. (Not listed? Odd.) I kept getting the Mickey Mouse bars and hoping they would be better, but the texture was always offputtingly weird to me.

Source: limegum

Lawmakers unmoved by Trump threat to ax money for their insurance

soilrockslove:

fierceawakening:

politico:

President Donald Trump is threatening to ax money for lawmakers’ health insurance until they repeal Obamacare.

Senate Republicans aren’t trying to stop him.

“If that’s what he wants to do, he ought to just do it,” Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told POLITICO. But as “probably he’s learned over the last couple of weeks, threats don’t really go over particularly well. My advice would be to either do it or don’t do it.”

In a series of angry tweets, Trump has threatened to cut off the government’s share of payments for the Obamacare plans that cover lawmakers and their staffs. Those payments are similar to the share many employers pay for their employees’ benefits — including other federal workers.

But for members of Congress, the payments have been a pain because they have opened them up to accusations from conservatives that they’re getting special treatment — even a “bailout.”

Read more here

They appear to have found a few vertebrae

So the Cheeto is trying to make lawmakers less sympathetic to people who stand to lose their healthcare… by threatening to cut off their healthcare?

Wow.

Lawmakers unmoved by Trump threat to ax money for their insurance