Day: January 10, 2018

Just reminded with those replacement headphones coming in very handy again, I have a relatively new contender here for the most ridiculous seizure trigger ever:

The noise and vibration from upstairs’ washing machine! 🙃

It is a relatively new one, and as I commented before when that blocked drain was flooding our patio, they run it at least once a day. Usually more, and at unpredictable times. Even though they do have a kid and a dog up there, I’ve had to wonder if they’re also taking in laundry or something. It’s running that often.

At first I assumed it was just the sound, but then I had it blocked out pretty well one night and still started getting muscles twitching and jumping in rhythm with the vibrations. And it kinda went from there. That effect was freaky enough with music my nervous system hated before, but geez that was a weird experience. Happened more than once since, too, with no idea of what might have been different those times.

(One day after I got up, I managed to get a fun combo of seizurey shit from that, and one of the pain meltdowns exacerbated by having to use the headphones when I was already that overloaded. Great fun.)

If I’m on this side of the house (including the heated rooms where I spend at least 90% of the time) when it’s running, usually headphones with the right music going at a sufficient volume to drown it out will head off the worst of it. But, I suspect it’s fucking me up and sapping more energy I don’t have to spare on a regular basis now Definitely staying headachy and spacy a lot more again.

It’s particularly frustrating when there’s basically nothing to be done about something like that. I mean, at least it’s not like when we had that horrible abusive asshole up there whose loud electronic crap kept scrambling my nervous system before–and I knew good and well that if anyone said a word, he’d up the ante on purpose. Just that kind of jerk.

But, you can’t really just say, “Hello, neighbors who don’t seem to particularly like us anyway. Possibly because we come across as weird. You know that new washing machine you bought a while back? Please stop using it, because it’s giving me/my spouse seizures.” đŸ€” đŸ˜©

At least it’s more manageable than the awful music situation so far, and I haven’t been waking up with a chewed-up inside of the mouth or anything so far. But, that’s still been a further quality of life hit that I could do without.

Also, I have pretty much exclusively seemed to have noticeable problems with this shit when something else has been lowering my seizure threshold enough to cause problems. (Which helped it get missed and misinterpreted over the years, yeah.) Medications, celiac deficiencies, whatever rather serious factors. I’m kind of concerned now about what else might be going on to make me more susceptible, but it probably ain’t good.

cptsdcarlosdevil:

short version tho: I agree with the criticism that liberal ideas of rights/utility/etc were defined by rich white straight men, and that this is Problematic. 

(I’d say Kant and Bentham in particular come at moral philosophy from an autistic standpoint, but clearly not one that’s grounded in a strong anti-ableist politics, and in fact they are both a very good example of how standpoint affects philosophical conclusions even if you ignore any special knowledge people get about oppression. anyway. tangent.)

I suspect if you asked the average Enlightenment-era woman, the right to not be raped would make the fundamental rights list and the right to privacy would not. and I think it is clearly true that e.g. the right to privacy has been used to protect men who hit or rape their wives, because that’s private business and the state shouldn’t interfere with it

however, I think that going “actually, no, this applies to everyone” is very powerful. there’s a reason Bentham thought sodomy should be legal. the right to privacy has also been used to overturn anti-sodomy laws, protect the medical privacy of trans and disabled people, and (most famously) to protect women’s right to contraception and abortion. even if the original theorizers of the right to privacy were thinking more about how the government should let them rape their wives, the effects of the right to privacy are clearly liberatory

in particular, free speech and the right to vote and so on are vitally important because they allow oppressed groups to speak out. liberalism has a self-correction mechanism. “being sexually harassed at work makes it hard to get your job done” was a fact we used to not know and now we know it, and I think this is actually 100% caused by liberalism working the way it should

aethelfleds:

lord-kitschener:

Wasn’t it relatively common back in the good old wheatfield days for a guy to go through multiple wives, and end up with a mixed family of kids with different mothers, because that many women were killed by childbirth/pregnancy complications?

I mean, “youngish widower looking for a second wife to take care of his motherless kids” was something of an established old timey literary trope

My great-great-great grandmother died in the early 1900’s of health problems related to having thirteen kids. She was barely cold in the ground when her husband (who was like, in his 40’s) married a nice young teenage girl to take care of the brood and then they had like 5 more children.
But the way it was told to me was that he wanted to try for more sons, because of course, since twelve of those thirteen children were girls. The good old days when you didn’t have to lock your doors and woman were disposable.