Month: May 2018

penbrydd:

I remember one time I went for a psych evaluation, and the doctor was utterly sure I had severe depression and anxiety… Right up until she figured out I was multiply disabled and my answers to those questions were firmly based in reality, and statistics backed up my concerns to the point that it was a little unreasonable that I wasn’t more worried about it.

Which is to say, here’s your reminder that certain kinds of psych testing are explicitly inapplicable to physically disabled and chronically ill people, and if you have an invisible disability, it’s worth reminding your shrink.

tanfasticanna:

I have this planner with these absolutely ridiculous pages with like “motivational” quotes on them that are just these bullshit things like “Let your heart sing” and “Always believe in your dreams”

and like that’s always struck me as such meaningless bullshit, I’ve always hated those. They’ve never had that element that truly motivates me.

So, I took matters into my own hands and I made my own artsy motivational wallpapers. Enjoy.

newagewinemom:

cumaeansibyl:

rarararambles:

This.

text:

YOU ARE NOT FOR EVERYONE

The world is filled with people who, no matter what you do, will point blank not like you. But it is also filled with those who will love you fiercely. They are your people. You are not for everyone and that’s OK. Talk to the people who can hear you.

Don’t waste your precious time and gifts trying to convince them of your value, they won’t ever want what you’re selling. Don’t convince them to walk alongside you. You’ll be wasting both your time and theirs and will likely inflict unnecessary wounds, which will take precious time to heal. You are not for them and they are not for you; politely wave them on, and continue along your way. Sharing your path with someone is a sacred gift; don’t cheapen this gift by rolling yours in the wrong direction.

Keep facing your true north.

this is from “Light is the new black” by rebecca campbell!!!!!!

Source: whatshouldwecallarttherapy

chironomy:

witchfinder-major-saucepan:

practicalityinpraxis:

witchfinder-major-saucepan:

So like… what do gatekeepers… DO in the real world? Like if they’re at an LGBT+ event and a bi woman is like “Hi I’m Emily and this is my boyfriend,” do they like… confront her? When a person at a support group says “I’m asexual” do they just sit silently and stew in their own rage? Like how do you people function in the real world??

An enormous amount of gatekeepers don’t interact with local queer groups and communities at all. The younger ones don’t have access, and the older ones got black listed a long time ago for being vile.

That lack of access, for the younger ones, is why they are so easily targeted by older radfem types, and is why the age of gatekeepers is so skewed towards young people, btw. They have no way to experience actual queer communities, so they get sucked into this awful, dangerous parody of it.

That was a rhetorical question but this is a damn good answer

I’ve found this true to some extent as well. Sadly… the ones who are better at reading a room, being two-faced, and quietly stewing in their own bullshit often go on to positions of authority in the LGBTQ community where they can “lose” resumes and emails, smile and nod while a marginalized person is talking, and generally keep people out of the community through silence and control. :

you know there are like. people with autism who just DON’T have an ability to communicate. like it’s nothing like a language-speaking person in a coma. seeing y’all put autism in this little box of ‘it isn’t a disability uwu no one can be profoundly disabled solely because of autism’ is. tiring. this is personal experience, and it hurts to suggest i’m not trying hard enough to communicate when my sister is totally non-vocal, okay?

chavisory:

Wow, okay.

I know that there are autistic people who cannot, presently, communicate in a way that we know how to understand well.

I have never and will never say that autism isn’t a disability or that no one can be profoundly disabled by autism.  Never.  I do not know who you think I am, but I am not one of those people.  A perusal of my blog on the topics of autism or disability would’ve told you that.  I consider myself disabled by autism, and most of the autistic people I know do.

I know that there are completely non-speaking people.  Many of them are able to use other methods of communication, like AAC devices, letter boards, ASL, or sounds and gestures.  Some are not.

I know that there are autistic people who we have not found an effective way to communicate with yet.

The key word there is “yet.”  When I say “we can do better for non-verbal autistic people,” what I mean is that I consider us generally–the advocacy world, the research world–to be morally bound to keep looking for communication methods that could help those people and keep trying to understand what their specific obstacles are and how to work with them.

“Some people just can’t communicate” doesn’t cut it.  We have not even come close to a situation in which all non-speaking people have access to AAC if they need it (about half of non-speaking adults do not), and in which most researchers and clinicians take seriously the capacity of many non-speaking/non-verbal people to think and communicate if their specific challenges and needs can be understood and met, or autistic-reported issues that may impact communication ability like movement disorders, exposure anxiety, and auditory processing disorder.  Though oral motor apraxia is one thing that is starting to be taken seriously as a common barrier to speech in autistic people.

It’s not that you personally just aren’t trying hard enough!  But when people close to a non-speaking person have already decided, or been told and believed, “this person does not communicate,” when this is a pervasive prejudice about non-speaking and non-verbal people, that puts you at risk of not seeing genuine attempts at communication as communication.

“Totally non-vocal” does not mean non-communicative.

I don’t know if you know, but every year for the past couple of years now, a tweet chat called #AutINSAR (#AutIMFAR in 2017) has been held during INSAR, which is the biggest annual conference on current autism research, to put autistic people directly in touch with researchers to talk about research priorities and goals.  And something that always tops the list of priorities that autistic people wish research would pursue is better and more available AAC, and how best to enable people with the most intense communication challenges.

Instead of continuing to throw millions and millions of dollars at trying to make mice autistic.

That is what I mean when I say “We can do better for non-verbal autistic people.”

Not that it is going to be easy or magical or somehow we will be able to turn every non-speaking person into someone who can communicate conventionally and articulately.

But we can do better than writing off non-verbal people as “just can’t communicate,” and we need to.