As In Opposite

Forward and then a bit further.

[antisinful]

How do you even cope with feeling fundamentally unlikeable because of autism? I just want to crawl into a hole and cry

[openmindpsych]

shoutout to people who are rejected from neurodivergent communities.

medium and high support needs autistic people who often get left out of the conversation or spoken over.

people with "just" anxiety and/or depression who are treated as if their problems are lesser.

people with OCD who have intrusive thoughts about really taboo subjects (yes, even that one). people with OCD who don't hate themselves for every intrusive thought, or who have learned to be okay with their thoughts. people with OCD who genuinely worry they might be xyz type of bad person (yes, even that type). people with OCD who don't know if they violate people's DNIs because of their intrusive thoughts.

people with psychosis or any schizophrenia spectrum disorder. people who are left out of the conversation, stigmatized, shunned away as too scary to talk about or include. people whose conditions are frequently misunderstood and demonized.

people with DID, OSDD, or any other complex dissociative disorder. people whose mental illness is glamorized and idealized and misunderstood. people whose condition is deemed fake or performative, made up for attention. people whose condition is heavily debated even among the scientific community.

people with cluster B personality disorders who are treated as evil. people whose conditions are often the "exception" to others' neurodivergent positivity posts. people who can't google their condition without seeing posts about abusers, toxic people, people labeled as evil or crazy or attention seeking or manipulative, and any other demonizing language.

people with non-cluster B personality disorders who are often forgotten and left out of the conversation. people whose conditions are widely unknown or underdiscussed. people who struggle to find a community for their experiences.

anybody who is "a stereotype." people who actually do look like the image that everyone in their community tries to insist is just a stereotype. people who are not responsible for the ableism their community faces and are tired of being treated like they are.

anybody who has done things they regret because of their mental illness. people who were abusive, who were harmful, who were toxic. people who developed addictions, made mistakes, ruined their lives. people who want to do better and wish they could be treated with compassion as they try.

anybody who was wronged by the system. people who were given a stigmatizing label that marks them for the rest of their life. people who are shamed out of communities, rejected or fired from jobs, turned away from even mental health professionals who are supposed to be helpful.

anybody who is "too disabled". people whose experiences are left out of conversations where more abled people are trying to frantically prove their validity to neurotypicals. people who can't do things, people who need help, people who will never be independent.

anybody who is left out for who they are. BIPOC, physically disabled people, intersex people, religious people, and more. people who are excluded from mainstream conversations, and whose discussions about intersectionality are ignored or talked over. people who struggle to find others who are like them.

and so many more.

neurodivergence is supposed to be a welcoming community for everybody. and we have a long way to go before that will be the case. but we're working towards it, one step at a time.

[autisticghostss]

many autistic people need people use simpler words when talking to them

many autistic people need tasks broken into tiny steps to understand how do something

many autistic people need positive feedback in way that other think condescending

many autistic people childish and have childish interests

many autistic people have to always be supervised never alone because of risk of hurt self or get in dangerous situations

many autistic people have violent messy big meltdown, even in public

many autistic people struggle with speech always will maybe rest of life (non verbal, semi verbal, demi verbal etc.)

AND most of these autistic people higher support needs + level 2 & 3 autism, don’t forget or ignore us. can’t say “that not true just stereotypes” when it just symptom and sign of higher support needs higher level autism.

you want to raise awareness for lower support needs level 1 autism and yes good ok!!!! but not this way where throw HrSN level 2+3 autistic under bus.

- winnie

[ieatratsyummy]

I feel like the idea of flat affect has been so watered down for people. Flat affect doesn't just mean having a "bitchface", and it never has been just that.

How flat affect presents for me:

Limited expressions, I need to be actively thinking about making an expression to have it happen. Additionally, it often takes multiple tries to get the expression I intended. This isn't limited to positive expressions, I also struggle to make expressions conveying things like surprise.

Practicing facial expressions as a child. Being told my smile is "fake" by adults when they wanted a picture.

Having limited tone, I struggle to convey different emotions through my voice unless I am actively attempting. This presents for me mostly as, I will make a joke and people will think I am being dead serious. Multiple times I have made something I thought was very obviously a joke, and then someone will ask me later on if I was being serious.

Shocking teachers and counselors when I do show emotion, but also not showing negative emotions how people without flat affect do. I had a panic attack, and one of my counselors managed to walk right past me crying, because I had a flat expression despite being actively sobbing. The day after this another counselor pulled me to ask if I was ok, she said she was so worried hearing that I'd cried because I "never show much emotion".

I take selfies over and over, because I cannot get the "right expression", which has resulted in me giving up and just taking selfies with my resting face. Of course if I show someone a selfie I took, the conversation always is about how I am not smiling, and how weird that is.

If you have flat affect, please feel free to add your experiences in the comments/reblogs!

[softcervid]

"Autism is only a disability because we live in a world where allistics don't accommodate for us" is possibly the most annoying take ever. Even if we lived in an ideal world I would still be disabled. No amount of accommodation is going to change the way my brain and body react to things. No amount of accommodation is going to change the fact I cannot live independently.

[quietafternoon]

most of the time am just living live, not really think about fact am disabled, but sometimes when do realize it hits me all at once.

like, am aware am disabled, am aware that own live is different from people my age without disability. But sometimes is just sad moment of really understanding what that mean.

so so much grief about not be able do things people my age do, so upset about every missed experience.

Going to parties, attending school and then university, going out late with friends, getting a drivers license, getting own apartment, doing job i dreamed of doing since was a little kid.

or even small things like going somewhere on own or making my favorite food or washing my hair when i want to, not having to wait until carer has time to do it for me.

all that and much more not possible.

most of the time am fine with my life, am content.

But everytime have moment where see all the things missed out on, is very very hard.

[chiropire]

A sentiment I see sometimes, mostly in the high masking level 1 LSN autistic community, is the disdain for all labels about how impaired you are, especially the autism levels and support needs.

A lot of what I see is people saying they're bad, there's no need for them and that they have no use, that they're basically functioning labels and ableist, that we shouldn't be comparing ourselves and each other, and that they somehow don't include high masking people.

None of these things are true, they ignore the fact that often these labels are self-identifiers, and honestly, I think when having discussions on terminology like autism levels and support needs, the voices of levels 2-3 and HrSN people need to be centred. We're the people who need these terms, we're the people who often depend on them to actually communicate our needs, so when people go around saying these terms are bad without having so much as an afterthought about us it is really upsetting and hurtful.

I've seen people say we don't need the terms because we can just explain the supports we need as if it was so easy to do so. Many of us have such complex needs that trying to explain them all the time isn't possible.

[autistic-answers]

I think some level 1, LSN, and high-masking people feel uncomfortable acknowledging that other people have needs higher than theirs are.

But that doesn't mean your needs are unimportant. Or that it's okay to stifle voices that you, personally, find uncomfortable to acknowledge. And yes, denying people vocabulary to describe themselves is stifling them.

Being inclusive to autistic people means being inclusive towards all of us, not just those of us who are more independent.

[cromulentenough]

It's insane that you're expected to HAVE to gender someone whenever you refer to them in the third person.

Singular they was meant to be and (and mostly still is) the way to refer to someone without gendering them! using singular they was the 'it's too hard to make a new gender neutral singular third person pronoun catch on, lets just use singular they, we already use it for unknown gender and have for ages, it's the most feasible way' compromise.

calling someone 'they' is not misgendering them, it's NOT gendering them at all. it's going 'i'm not telling you what gender this person i'm referring to is'.

maybe it's because i don't know their gender (classic use case), maybe it's because i don't want you to know (i've done this when i'm talking about cis friends to family who think men and women shouldn't be allowed to be friends), maybe i just don't think it's relevant to the conversation at hand, maybe it's because they're agender or nonbinary or their gender is complicated (the people who say 'my pronouns are they/them').

maybe it's a losing battle, and the use of singular they has shifted from all the people in the last category that we really do need to come up with a new word if we want to refer to people without bringing up people's gender in english.

But i think it's unreasonable to go 'i'm not someone in that last category, so you are never allowed to talk about me without explicitly mentioning my gender in any conversation you have with anyone ever'.

@the-grey-tribe relevant to discussions we've had before.

[hareofhrair]

You're not wrong, and I don't think most reasonable people would be upset about being referred to as they in those circumstances (you don't know their gender, you're keeping their gender anonymous ect).

But you seem to be missing the context in which "they" is often used with the express intention of misgendering. It's super common for people to use "they" for people they know for a fact are trans women, as a softer form of the way "it" pronouns are often used to dehumanize trans people. But "they" also comes packaged with a form of plausible deniability that allows them to justify the misgendering by redirecting the conversation towards whether "they" is a valid anonymous singular pronoun, and away from the fact that they knew the woman in question's pronouns and were deliberately choosing not to use them, for a reason.

I also know at least one cis lesbian who deeply dislikes being referred to with "they" pronouns, because various intersecting factors of her appearance, sexuality, and neurotype mean she is often de-gendered in a similar way as trans women.

This is the form of using "they" which people acting in good faith object to and consider misgendering. If you know someone's preferred pronouns, choosing not to use them is still misgendering, even if you're using the "neutral" de-gendered pronoun.

And unfortunately, the fact that this is such a common and hurtful thing to run into even in queer spaces, means there are going to be people who are more sensitive to it than others or who react more aggressively to protect themselves. And we need to be patient with that, even if the reaction seems unreasonable to us, because we understand that they are responding less to us than to the years of prejudiced behavior they've been exposed to before us.

[bauliya]

ever since i got access to american library cards thanks to tumblr user anneemay (pbuh) 2 weeks ago ive lost even the 3% sympathy i had for americans crying ofc we’re stupid and illiterate our schools suck!!! because you assholes have had FREE ACCESS to THOUSANDS of books and audiobooks and classic films this ENTIRE TIME you’ve been blaming your schools for your elected ignorance!!! from my home in India I’ve listened to eight audiobooks and watched half of cronenberg’s oevre and I’m watching nosferatu (1922) today and I can’t even go to a library in person and you people have had these things your entire life yet you come on tumblr at 18 19 20 and say you don’t know who james baldwin is and if you expect me to you’re classist and 18 year old Americans are too stupid to know bombing foreign countries kills people so it’s okay if they choose to do that rather than work at McDonald’s and of course I have no idea what stocks are or what colonialism is and MCU is the height of cinema and it’s feminist to wear makeup like. my god. you people are going to go through the rest of your life being incoherently stupid and it’s not because you’re poor and it’s not because your schools suck but its because you’re so ensconced in your American privilege that you will never be forced to confront the realities of life and you can go on living your Disney adult fantasies because you’ve destroyed your innate human curiosity and potential at the altar of hyper consumption.

[bauliya]

….somehow I don’t think it’s harder to get library access to quality libraries from a poor state in the US than it is from INDIA in ASIA across an OCEAN where I am currently

[relevant-catnik]

Because internet access is also significantly more expensive in the US than India, so no, it is not automatically easy for impoverished Americans to access those resources, particularly impoverished minors.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Have you never encountered the concept of purchasing power?

When you convert the cost of ANYTHING in another country to the equivalent dollar amount and it comes down to an amonut that an American might consider comically low it doesn't mean people over there are are living life on easy mode and enjoying a ridiculously low cost of living, it means that you're not accounting for the differences in purchasing power between the two currencies and the fact that the currency of most global south countries is so devalued compared to the US dollar that even tiny dollar amounts like $5 or $10 are worth A LOT of money in a lot of these countries.

Like yeah... 1GB of mobile data in India costs $0.26. But before you go "wow they have it so easy" like your tags imply. Consider the fact that the minimum wage for a day of full-time employment in India is 178 INR, which comes down to $2.08 USD.

So yeah... when converted to dollars, someone in India pays one fraction of what an American pays for 1GB of mobile data. Whoop dee doo. This completely counteracted by the fact that a minimum wage worker in India is paid for an entire day of full-time employment LESS THAN ONE THIRD of what a minimum wage worker in the US is paid in AN HOUR, which is exactly why you can't make these comparisons by simply converting things to the equivalent dollar amount and leave it at that. Because it's not that things are cheaper in India, it's that due to unequal economic power dynamics between countries, a dollar is LITERALLY worth a lot more for someone India (and for that matter in pretty much every country in Latin America, Africa and Asia) than it is for someone in the US.

And frankly, the fact that Americans can go their entire life without ever needing to be aware of this while people in the global south HAVE to know this shit in order to navigate the world is another example of exactly what OP is talking about.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Inb4 some yank mf tries to rebuke with something like "but you wouldn't get it, a lot of jobs in the US get away with paying less than minimum wage 🥺" or some shit.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I know I'm beating a dead horse but this response really is like a category 7 yankee event. Like you see a post about how annoying the self-victimizing attitude that americans assume about their own ignorance and lack of curiosity about the world (despite the fact that their access to information puts them in an incredibly privileged position compared to most of the global community) is, and your response is to self-victimize about how the person from a third-world country is the one speaking from a place of privilege of assumedly cheap and widely available internet access and thus "punching down" at impoverished americans, and your proof is some graphs that completely misrepresent reality by directly converting prices to american currency without making any attempt to account for the economic conditions of the countries listed (and specifically the fact that the amount of US dollars that in the U.S. is considered literal pocket change often represents several entire days of minimum wage labor when converted to the currency of most third-world countries).

Yanks are impossible to satirize sometimes.

[garrettwrites]

Also, might I add that there's plenty of scientific and academic papers available online. For free. In some websites you get 100 papers per account, or x amount per day, but free nonetheless. I abused those during university (and I'm not from the USA, I'm Portuguese). You can check the papers' sources for more refs and books on your subjects of choice. And before you moan about the language being too difficult, you can work your way up towards more academic language by reading papers geared towards teenagers or the general public. English is not my native tongue, nor the one I'm fluent in when it comes to academic language, yet I manage to do it just fine.

It is so easy to get information nowadays. Fuck, if you don't know where to start, check the listed sources on wikipedia articles and go from there, I'm sure those resources will be available online or *gasp* at the library.

It's okay for you not to have learned X in school and, afterwards, never having felt the need to pursue the knowledge. But if you want to be ignorant, don't blame your access to resources. People in the USA have it so fucking easy compared to everyone else, starting with the fact most shit in the world is already translated to english.

And if YOU are an american who actually goes out and does research and uses libraries and online archives... I'm sorry you get called elitist for using free resources. My best wishes to you. Hope you manage to get your friends to join in and spread the word.

[pjharvey]

im american and i knew that like in kindergarten so i think some of you are just stupid sorry

[decadent-hag]

"US curriculums don't talk about-" ok? And? Are you guys not absorbing literally any information from the outside world? Tv, movies, books, people talking around you? Hello????

[athena-cat-wizard-official]

I'm sorry do people need to be taught that other countries have metropolitan cities in school or is that information you can kinda infer from like. existing in real life

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Absurd that people will just say shit like this with their whole chest. If I had somehow gotten through life to age 21 believing that my country had cities but my silly primitive sepia-toned neighbours didn't then when contrary information came up I'd keep my mouth shut and head right to wikipedia. I'd take that misconception to the fucking grave.

[darkenedyeastextract]

For USAmericans who care to listen; the issue here is not that you were never taught or exposed to facts about the world but rather that ignorance is used as a shield for criticism. This is considered a dick move as you're basically saying you know you're ignorant, you're saying you don't want to learn.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

If you're older than fifteen and not currently trapped in or recently escaped from a very overbearing cult then "I wasn't taught that at school" isn't an excuse for beliefs that reveal that you fundamentally don't think of other places as real or important. "It wouldn't occur to me to put 'USA' on my address for international shipping because I just expect everyone in other countries to know where my state is even though I don't know theirs" "I just assumed that other countries on my continent wouldn't have cities for some reason" "naturally I just assume that having states is a US thing and other countries either don't have them or they don't mean anything, other places don't have regional differences like we do, we're so varied and everywhere else is a Country Of Hats" THIS IS A YOU PROBLEM. We all have shitty education systems, yours isn't special. We all have racist governments and nationalist propoganda machines, yours isn't special. Your American exceptionalism isn't suddenly cute and humble if you try to make it about your country being extra bad instead of extra good. You just learned you made a stupid assumption due to inherent racist or nationalist or whatever beliefs? Now you have better information. Maybe think QUIETLY TO YOURSELF about what other dumb assumptions you have because of that and spend some time on wikipedia or watching foreign movies or something instead of crying to the internet that it's your fourth grade teacher's fault for not making you memorise a list of foreign cities.

We all believe dumb shit and don't know anything. You think I know anything about your states? I don't. When people from non-English-speaking countries started buying my books online I couldn't understand the address formats to post them; I had to learn. I don't automatically know which countries in the world are larger than mine, I look up the info if I need it. Sometimes I say make a bad assumption and dumb shit and people are like "Derin what you said is wrong actually" and tell me otherwise and then I learn that. This is not an issue of having information. Everyone can be wrong about stuff, but your "uphill in the snow both ways" ranting about how nobody should expect better from you because Your Uniquely Bad Culture And Schooling is at fault for every problem is getting old.

[thedragonrabbit]

Y'all don't seem to understand that, for a lot of Americans, the first time they experience truly global thinking is University. That's why Universities are so dangerous to certain political factions. It's not rocket science, but education is IMPORTANT and not all educations are created the same. I would encourage you to try to understand that an alarming % of the USA is illiterate or has a very low level of education. That's not necessarily their fault. Be kind. Understand that the world SUCKS and some people need a little help seeing that the world is this huge, complicated, interconnected machine that runs BETTER with kindness.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

What Americans leaving comments like this think they sound like:

What they actually sound like:

[buttonsgoblin]

It is true that, since this is such a widespread phenomenon among USAmericans, there has to be some non-individual factor that causes it. But that isn’t the education system not teaching that other countries have real people in them, it’s the degree to which American exceptionalism is ingrained in US culture— and I suspect that “progressive” USAmericans often can’t recognize that this isn’t just an education system problem because they don’t want to admit that they could have actual deeply rooted biases, and would rather just imagine that this isn’t all a simple educational blind spot. If that’s all it was, then you would just look it up and move on.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

You're not wrong but think more than that the answer is a little bit simpler: Americans, as citizens of the world's foremost cultural and economic hegemon, have no material incentive to learn about the rest of the world. They simply don't *need* to. Everywhere else in the world you kinda need to have a baseline level of knowledge about the USA and other first-world countries, but in the USA you don't need to have a baseline level of knowledge about anywhere else in the world, so most people never learn it.

Which honestly by itself would be fine with me, can't blame them for responding to the material incentives present in their society.

But what I *can* and *do* blame them for on a cultural level is that, when confronted with this fact, the vast majority of americans construct this weird narrative wherein lacking that baseline level of knowledge about the world is a sign of them being uniquely disadvantaged (worse educated, more propagandized, more overworked and underpaid, more unable to travel, more affected my a culture that discourages learning and intellectual curiosity) compared to the rest of the world, instead of facing the reality that it's a sign of them being uniquely privileged in the sense that they can get through their entire life without *needing* to know any of this stuff.

[localcryptideli]

Okay I am going to be mean for a second.

"But you see! America is so illiterate! We cannot help ourselves, we are just illiterate, it's a huge issue! You would never understand!"

Oh, cry me a fucking river

Straight for Wikipedia: World map of countries shaded according to the literacy rate for all people aged 15 and over.

Please note where the US is on the list.

And now look at the rest of the world, where people somehow don't react to being corrected online by claiming that the reason they never assumed other countries have cities is because they have such huge rates of illiteracy that the rest of the world could never understand their struggle.

My grandma has only four years of primary school and SOMEHOW she knows other countries have cities. It's nearly as if formal education is not the only possible source of information.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

A symptom of this I often see is that a great many Americans also feel the need to highlight to the entire world around them when something they encounter is Other, or outside of their wheelhouse, and this applies even to the most mundane of things. I have two examples of this:

First, back in 2020, a lost walrus visited the Welsh town of Tenby for many weeks and menaced its lifeboats by sleeping on the slipway. I wrote a lengthy post about this, and included the fact that the good folks of West Wales named the walrus Wally, after the children's book franchise Where's Wally.

I was inundated with Americans reacting with everything from astonishment to derision that the character is not called Waldo outside of America. It was constant. Everything from "Wait you guys call him Wally??? Not Waldo???" all the way to "Are you guys fucking stupid his name is Waldo omg"

Which is very interesting, because Where's Wally is a British franchise. He was called 'Wally' first. His name was translated into over 30 other languages, including Charlie and Jonas, depending on region. Nonetheless, I did not get one single solitary note about the name from anyone else; it was exclusively Americans, unable to keep their amazement to themselves, unable to not highlight and point out that SOMETHING IS DIFFERENT FROM US.

Second, I once wrote a post in which I, a speaker of British English, used the word 'gaol' - the BE spelling of 'jail'. Again, I was flooded with comments, asks, messages, etc from Americans who simply could not fathom why I had done so. Four of them very literally sent me asks that asked why I had done it (I mean this literally - "Why did you spell jail like that?" was word for word one of the asks), so unable were they to work out on their own that spellings differ between dialects. I responded to one, saying that I was baffled by it, and suggesting that maybe the polite thing would be to google these sorts of things for yourself rather than requesting to have your hand held through the process of learning that other places have different words and spellings than you're used to. I said I did understand, but that this was something I myself fetched up against all the time with American media, and had since I was a child - but I simply used context clues to work out meaning, or google when I couldn't, because I get that American English is a different language.

And then two things happened: the first was that a non-trivial number of Americans lost their entire shit at the very suggestion that there was anything at all rude about this (again, I really don't know what answer they wanted to that beyond "Because that's how it's spelled in my language", information readily available with a single google search), and the second was that I was then inundated with non-Americans sharing stories of how they love writing fanfic but they had to start doing it in American English because when they used their own, they would get flooded with comments from Americans trying to 'correct' them, and it just wasn't worth the hassle.

And it's ultimately a 'dominant culture' sickness, I think. When everything is constantly catering to your understandings and cultural expectations, anything outside of it feels Other, and Must Be Commented Upon. I'm Welsh, and I find absolutely any mention of anything Welsh around most English people gets the same reaction; they absolutely have to comment on the Thing They Think Is Weird. Just last week I was discussing a fieldtrip for my students with an English colleague of mine, and I said I was taking them to the Bannau Brycheiniog. He didn't interrupt, to his credit; but he got the stupid grin that I knew meant he was going to comment. He waited until I finished asking for his risk assessment input, and then rather than answering, his first response was "The Bah Bah Bluh Bluh?"

If I'd said an Anglicised or English name, he'd have just continued the conversation. But he didn't recognise the name Bannau Brycheiniog. So We Must All Flag Up That It's Weird.

And that's dialled up to 11 for a great many Americans.

(Though not all, by a long shot. I do want to stress that. In both examples I've given, I had far more Americans who agreed with me than not. But it is a common behaviour, unfortunately.)

[mekanikaltrifle]

I had this very experience with the infamous 'housecoat poll', where I used two UK English variant names for a particular garment worn within the house, often when feeling lazy or in pyjamas, or after a bath. It was meant for like at max 10 people, most of whom would be using UK English. And it blew up. Many non USAmericans responded with their own local version of the name, and that was cool! Canadians even responded pretty politely, which was nice. But the yanks. Most responses from them were anything from the smarmy warrior cats meme, to acting like anything other than 'robe' or 'bathrobe' was illiteracy, to outright mockery. One or two folks even (probably-jokingly) claimed they wanted to 'beat the British out of OP', i.e me. Now, if they had any idea, they'd know that calling a Scottish person British or English is very likely to be at least a faux-pas, if not generally offensive by itself, but the aggression and threatening attitudes genuinely got upsetting. Ended up getting hatemail over it, too. The worst bit about it all is that if you respond with a 'don't talk to me like this', you're likely to be met with the same aggression that they'd been dishing out for no good reason in the tags. It could have been avoided by simply googling the words 'dressing gown' or 'housecoat' and finding out they're just words from a different version of English than that of the majority.

[bigcheesevik]

important to keep in mind that the US is a highly diverse country with huge regional and income inequalities as well as a large proportion of people that go to non-standardised educational institutions (religious schools and (largely unregulated) homeschooling), which means while there's a lot of Americans that are pretty well off, there's tons that are well below the poverty line and also receiving a poor education (or even an actively incorrect one)

There's also the fact that these things usually get expressed online in mostly English-speaking spaces (hence predominantly american with an expectation of other people being american), and the people that tend to leave obnoxious comments are...well, the type of people to leave obnoxious comments. It's not a hugely representative sample of USAmericans as a whole, i feel.

You don't tend to find people from other non-English speaking countries being dicks about geography or whatever because they're much less likely to be on English-speaking spaces? Because they're way less likely to be able to speak English?

Also feel like shaming people for being honest about their deficiencies and ignorances is counterproductive. It's GOOD to be honest about what you're wrong about, and it's good to be nice to people who are honest about what they're wrong about because that means they can learn better

[belladoes]

Do you. Do you genuinely think the rest of the world is not hugely diverse? That there are no big income inequalities in other countries? That there are no extremely religious groups and schools in other countries? That no other countries have a lot of people living under minimum wages?

People from other countries do in fact also communicate online in English speaking spaces. Because that's the way to interact with both people from your own county and people from other countries. Because English is seen as the international language. When people are lamenting abt shit online, big chance theyll do it in English so there's a bigger chance people will understand them. "Way less likely to speak English" I cannot even begin to comprehend how stupid this statement is. Do you think people in other countries just. Don't get taught English? Even though it's the main international language? Do you think every English-speaking person online is from the USA??

(Also, the USA isn't the only country that has English as it's main language? Did you genuinely forget about ENGLAND, the whole British isles, Australia, New Zealand)

We got a bingo

[vigilantsycamore]

Literally anyone ever: There's a problem with USAmericans being ignorant of other countries and considering themselves both more normal and more special than everywhere else

USAmericans: Ok but you need to keep in mind that this is because America is a real country, unlike all of those other places

[ijinhit]

This is what we mean when we say that USAmericans are privileged simply by being USAmerican. You can afford to be ignorant about the rest of the world. You can even be so incurious about the rest of the world to the point of disrespect.

Keep in mind that this thread isn’t asking for USAmericans to know the intricate histories of every country on the planet, or to speak every language that exists. We’re talking about having a baseline level of curiosity for basic things, like whether other countries have metropolitan cities or different words/spellings for things.

[w0nderland42]

i get that americans love their cultural imperialism, but it really does piss me off that june is “international” pride month just because something happened in the united states.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

anyway, happy pride, americans. i’m truly sorry that most of you don’t see the negative impact your nation’s culture has on the rest of the world. and to the rest of the world reading this, try searching for your own country and culture’s queer history, don’t accept the american narratives as your own. we deserve our own histories divorced from the cultural hegemony of the USA.

[queeranarchism]

#why not make a post focused on your own countries pride rather than it being in the shadow of the U.S.’s holiday shit #like as an american i agree with you #it doesn’t have to be international #i’m not exactly the one who decided that but #y’know? like it’s just more constructive to teach abt your own pride and history than to just rag on the problem #who gives af abt the problem #what’s the fucking solution?

What you're not getting here is that cultural imperialism is a massive issue that is far bigger than 'knowing your own queer history'.

A world in which everyone is familiar with most topics from an American perspective, but not from any other perspective, is a world in which trans people have to express their transness in an American way in order to fit DSM diagnosis criteria and get healthcare.

It's a world in which sexually marginalized communities have to identify as LGBT - regardless of whether that fits their own concepts of sexual and gender diversity - in order to get funding for HIV prevention and treatment.

It's a world in an American academic who presents themselves as an expert on 'Africa' is more likely to be believed and have their opinions turned into policy, than any actual on-the-ground experts who understand the specific context of specific countries in Afrika.

It's a world in which sympathizing with the victims of bombings or disasters is intuitive and automatic when the victim is an American girl-next-door sorority applepie valedictorian AnneMae McDonald, but not when they're called Fatemeh and live in Iran.

Knowing your own history doesn't help with any of that because these problems are about the power imbalance that cultural imperialism creates.

Cultural imperalism creates access to being understood when you name your experiences. Cultural imperialism creates access to empathy. Cultural imperialism creates access to being seen as human, and to your life being seen as worthy of protection.

It's a big deal and it's kind of worth making posts about.

[antisinful]

Prevs tags hit the nail on the head

[miss-wizard]

DO NOT LET SOCIAL MEDIA TURN YOU INTO AN AMERICAN

[coleblackblood]

As an American: Seriously, please don’t

[miss-wizard]

ok well i don't

[alatismeni-theitsa]

"Americanization" is a real phenomenon, and how non-Americans should be cautious of it is taught in different countries at school. It's taught in Greece and people from other countries told me their elementary or middle school teachers (using the American grades, to make it make sense to the majority on the site) talked to them about it.

It's common sense here, except for USians, so I'll analyze it a bit more for the dominant demographic here. In a globalized setting, the most dominant culture affects the others and sets the trends. The way our language works, how we think, our levels of politeness and intimacy, and our levels of respect. (flash news, they are going down 😂)

I don't want to imply that there is nothing good in the US. There are plenty of positives in the country. It's just that for the rest of the cultures online it's a constant daily fight to not forget our roots, with the degree US media and brands have permeated our lives. In Greece at least we watch more US American media than Greek media nowadays, and many of our shows are rip-offs of USian ones, with little adaptation to Greek reality and culture.

And to demonstrate the amount of this exposure, a 22-year-old Greek asked me the other day "if something happens we call 911, right?" This might have literally cost them their life, in a dangerous situation! Because all the movies and songs they consumed (not an unusual thing for the Greek youth) were what they knew. And I found a similar comment in this comment thread.

[kingwren]

Lots of Americans in the notes failing to understand this post. It's not about not liking the US. It's not about you feeling ashamed or guilty for being American. It's not about you.

It's about American media drowning out native language media all over the world, and workplaces requiring the English language in your repertoire more and more. It's about proper translations and foreign language dubbing of films disappearing because "everyone speaks/should speak English anyway." All of this is leading to the deterioration of native speaker groups of languages worldwide.

In my country, Dutch language courses can't find enough people who want to study the language, while English language courses are overflowing with people who want to study the language. There is even widespread distaste for the Dutch language for being crude or sounding rough or what have you. That's our native language!!! That is our culture in its purest form!!! That is knowledge we inherit from our parents as they did from theirs!!! That is how we learned fairytales and folk stories and myths!!! That is the language that shapes our communication and our way of thinking!!! To hate your native language is to hate yourself at the deepest level.

And yet it's so normalised. Droves of foreigners living in the Netherlands will never learn a word of Dutch, because "everyone speaks English anyway." We are the world's leaders in non-native understanding of English, but it comes at a cost. A grave cost we will continue to pay.

If you're looking to support your non-American friends in any way that is not performatively shouting "I hate being an American" into the void, first of all, unlearn that hatred of yourself and your culture. You are of no help self-flagellating, and there is a difference between holding your country accountable for its issues, and denying yourself your culture because your country is doing and has done bad things.

(I am not going to get into arguments about whether or not US American culture exists. It does, and if you think differently you are welcome to change your mind.)

Secondly, learn about other countries. Learn a bit of Chinese. Take an interest in the Italian political system. Ask your friends about their countries' folklore. Watch documentaries about art from Nigeria. Absorb information that is not fed to you by American media.

And thirdly, quit expecting your non-American friends to communicate in a way that appeals to you. The French and Dutch will always seem rude to you because our way of communicating is far more direct than the way you communicate. People from other cultures may seem vague to you because their way of communicating is far more indirect, and you're not used to that either. Quit being frustrated when you don't get what we mean exactly. Quit assuming we mean the absolute worst thing you could imagine just because you didn't get what we meant the first time. Ask us to explain if you need us to, and learn to accept that we are different from you.

We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.

[onedivinemisfit]

We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.

[revcleo]

Also like people who say "just leave tumblr if you don't want to see american stuff" it's fucking everywhere it's not just online, it's offline too, our politicians keep trying to copy the USA, your tarrifs bankrupted small sellers all over Europe, your proxy wars and ability to just stop wars with a phone call also influence us, in south america Venezuela is currently risking being bombed to distract people from the fact that your president is a paedophile.

Emerican Johnson once had a good video (which I can't find any more) about how he moved from being a capitalist into a socialist, which involved leaving the USA and then realising that people outside of the USA can't choose to ignore politics from the USA because of how much it affects everyone.

There's a good video by Jack Saint on cultural cringe, and how even unintentionally when there's a culture which is considered modern (like it fills the cinemas) it can make your own culture seem boring and shitty meaning you go towards the other culture and abandon your own history and sometimes even language. Like an interesting example of this is how 'white walls' are considered cool in Indian social media because of how there's so many people from the USA who have just plain white walls for their videos, rather than traditional Indian house designs. Especially because IKEA is expensive and out of reach for most people in India, so having a plain painted white wall with IKEA furniture is actually a status symbol!

There's been so many times I've tried to get through to a bunch of people from the US the sheer amount of stuff we can't avoid. But I think the indoctrination which people in the USA do go through has been made quite clear in some of the recent videos from Evan Edinger, where he can point out where the absolute nonsense he's recieved in his comments is mentally from, as he grew up in the USA but once he lived in another country he realised all the wool which had been pulled over his eyes.

Many people from the USA when confronted with the truth seem even unable to unwilling to actually listen to people from outside the USA. They just get angry and combative. Like arguments like "We have problems inside too!" Like yeah of course you do, we know, we can show you paths to help. "Why are you attacking us, there's lots of POC in the USA" do you think there's only white people outside of the usa? do you think there's only white people even in Europe or something? Very racist argument to make. "I'm not listening to an X" if the place someone comes from means you won't listen to them, never mind the xenophobia it just makes you look like a child if you say an argument is based on who someone is rather than what it says.

[sliceoftheskye]

I remember sitting in a call with a few people in @ayeforscotland server as we watched the 2025 US election results coming in and verbalising my feelings on it which summed up as

"I cannot wait for the time that I (a Scottish Person) no longer need to know how many Electoral college votes Georgia gets."

When America sneezes the rest of us catch a cold.

[diracpointless]

Increasingly in online spaces it's not just that the majority of the content is from the US. Or that other countries bend their language to be understood by the US (High School, two thirty, etc).

It's that even when we talk about something that is ours, using our terms, and our tags, some US asshole* will come into the comments assuming we are talking about US business and getting mad when we are not.

Like this wonderful exchange

And this one

*Not that every USian is an asshole, but it's always a US asshole

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

Bite-sized bell hooks book club: how we talk about oppression.

By @ cultivatingboldspaces (she/her).

[otiksimr]

I remember back in my compulsory education they taught us to use the keyboard like this but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single person type like this ever.

[otiksimr]

this is probably a good post to have a poll huh.

Were you...

Taught how to touch type. Does touch type *(or similar position).

Taught how to touch type. Doesn't touch type.

Not touch how to touch type. Does touch type *(or similar position).

Not touch how to touch type. Doesn't touch type.

Voting ended onApr 6

the *(Or similar position)s is for people that follow the general format except for maybe one finger or a few keys. (I.e you follow this formatting aside from the pinky finger keys, use any finger for spacebar, etc etc).

[depsidase]

[beawitchinglyme]

It's not hard. Really, it isn't.

Just look at HEMA. Using my sport as an example, HEMA attracts a lot of white supremacist chuds. So what does my club do to alienate them? We state our values up front, and we live those values. Every single one of us.

When I joined the beginner's class, the coach walks in front of all the new students and says, "HEMA stands for Historical European Martial Arts. Some people mistake 'European' to mean 'better than everyone else'. If you believe that, there is the door. In this club we respect people's identities and pronouns, if you cannot do that, there is the door. "

Even if the chuds stick around after that, eventually they do leave. Why? Because we make all of our values explicitly known through our interactions with each other in the club, and we shut their bullshit down whenever they try something. The fact that so many of us are queer, or trans, or just real as fuck allies alone does it sometimes. That we don't tolerate any amount of fuckery and if somebody says a racist or homophobic or misogynistic "joke", they get shut down by the bearded white cis men who they incorrectly assume will have a laugh with them. And then those dumb racist sexist fucks leave. And never come back.

We don't have to kick them out. We will take their money as membership fees until they either change their mind and grow as a human being and become an actual respectable human being, or until they cower and leave. They always self-select for us.

And that's how you fucking do it.

[wolfer-aid]

Guys, I came today asking you to help even a little in contributing to bringing some tents initially to start a school for children in Gaza. I am the first person who lacks education, so I would really like to help them start this wonderful job. Please help as you can

[wolfer-aid]

I missed school a lot. Please help us and help the children of Gaza to get educated even with simple tools Donate to them from here. Please, you are the hope.

[wolfer-aid]

As for the security of your funds you will donate, the owners of this initiative or campaign will be verified by gofandme So I really want you to donate, I'll be the first to learn. And I'll tell you the first thing about it, so you can see, I love you so much.

Donate to Help the children of Gaza get a safe and free education., organized by Asma Yunis

The Coastal Initiative in Gaza urgently needs your support to laun… Asma Yunis needs your support for Help the children of Gaza get a safe a

[wolf-aid]

Come on guys, share this and donate now, don't be afraid, this will help the children of Gaza and you will see in the future I promise you please donate donate Now

[loveridden1999]

when james baldwin "you think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read" & "love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up" & "it took many years of vomiting up all the filth i’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before i was able to walk on the earth as though i had a right to be here" & "you have to go the way your blood beats. if you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all" & &