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Today's Document
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@autisticinseattle
For Authors | Autism in Adulthood is the home for research and scholarship on the most pressing issues affecting adults on the autism spectrum, from emerging adulthood to later life.
Call for submissions! This warms my heart! The ‘Information for Authors’ section had me shrieking with delight. Some things are changing and it’s an honour to be a part!
Learn about schizophrenia from a schizophrenic - a masterpost
I’m schizophrenic and here’s a selection of my posts about living with schizophrenia - click a link or two if you’re curious:
What is schizophrenia?
What to do when your schizophrenic friend talk about their hallucinations and delusions
8 myths about schizophrenia and why they aren’t true
What to keep in mind when dating a schizophrenic person
Why you shouldn’t correct schizophrenic people when they say “I’m schizophrenic” instead of “I have schizophrenia.”
Why fighting the stigma of schizophrenia must include fighting racism and anti blackness
Why you shouldn’t dismiss or invalidate schizophrenic people when they open up to you about their hallucinations or delusions
Why you don’t have to add “but some mentally ill people ARE violent” when mentally ill people talk about stigma and demonization
Why you actually have to talk to your schizophrenic friend about their illness if you want to know how to support them
Why you aren’t helping mentally ill people by trying to weed out fakers
Why mass shootings in the US can’t be blamed on mental illness
Why recovery doesn’t necessarily mean “becoming neurotypical”
Why armchair diagnosing killers with mental illnesses doesn’t solve anything
Why you shouldn’t force your spiritual and religious beliefs onto schizophrenic peoples experiences
Why you shouldn’t armchair diagnose shooters and other killers
What the non psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia are like
Why we need to talk about the taboo topic of being mentally ill and struggling with personal hygiene
Why you shouldn’t stigmatize schizophrenic people as violent killers
Why you shouldn’t be afraid of obviously psychotic people
Why you should respect schizophrenic people who choose not to take meds
Why you can’t pick or choose which mentally ill people to support
Why you shouldn’t call people you don’t agree with delusional
Why I don’t want to hear that “my diagnosis doesn’t define me.”
Why anti psychotic meds won’t “cure” schizophrenic people
Why we need to talk about the negative symptoms of schizophrenia
Why schizophrenic people are vulnerable to abuse
Why the stigma against depression can’t be compared to the demonization of schizophrenia
Why “we’d all be diagnosed with something if we went to a psychiatrist” is bullshit
Tropes you should stay away from if you want to write a schizophrenic character
Why “you don’t seem schizophrenic” isn’t a compliment
What having schizophrenia feels like
How schizophrenic people face a different kind of stigma than people with depression and anxiety
Why saying “if you’re aware that you’re mentally ill you’re not REALLY mentally ill” is bullshit
How to be respectful to severely mentally ill people during Halloween
Why it’s important to share positive stories about schizophrenia
Why you should let schizophrenic people talk about their psychosis
Why you shouldn’t tell your schizophrenic friend about that conspiracy theory
Why murderers can be fucked up without being mentally ill
Why are characters that we headcanon as autistic always more relatable than canon autistic characters?
*** ONLY answer this survey if you are autistic/ neuroatypical *** *** This survey takes around 2-5 minutes to complete. *** Alright autistics, we need to have a conversation. As you know, "high-functioning" vs. "low-functioning" is a dichotomy that doesn't exist in reality. It's based on how neurotypicals perceive disability, which centers around visibility and how much they are inconvenienced by it. This being said, there's a whole range (a spectrum, if you will) of patterns and behaviors associated with autism, and not everyone is the same. The generic "autism spectrum disorder" does more harm than good, in my opinion, as it contains roughly zero information. It's like saying someone has a mood disorder - there's something, but what it is is anyone's guess: is it someone with selective mutism, sensory processing disorder and high performance on academic tests? Is it someone who infodumps about their special interest and misreads situations? Is it someone with ADHD whose conversations with others rarely exceed 15 seconds and has a cognitive disability? It's important to understand the connection between these people. It's important that neurotypicals don't randomly lump some symptoms together. But do you think we could maybe create symptom clusters (call them Type A, B, etc.) that would make it easier for everyone to understand what kind of autistic a person is, without them having to list all the symptoms? Because I believe in the importance of privacy, respect and appropriate interactions. I have put together this survey to see if there are any patterns we could use.
Autistic and Neuroatypical Symptom Correlation Survey
*** ONLY answer this survey if you are autistic/ neuroatypical *** *** This survey takes around 2-5 minutes to complete, including reading these instructions ***
Alright autistics, we need to have a conversation.
As you know, “high-functioning” vs. “low-functioning” is a dichotomy that doesn’t exist in reality. It’s based on how neurotypicals perceive disability, which centers around visibility and how much they are inconvenienced by it.
This being said, there’s a whole range (a spectrum, if you will) of patterns and behaviors associated with autism, and not everyone is the same. The generic “autism spectrum disorder” does more harm than good, in my opinion, as it contains roughly zero information: is it someone with selective mutism, sensory processing disorder and high performance on academic tests? Is it someone who infodumps about their special interest and misreads social situations? Is it someone with ADHD whose conversations with others rarely exceed 15 seconds and has a cognitive disability?
It’s important to understand the connection between these people. It’s important that neurotypicals don’t randomly lump some symptoms together. But do you think we could maybe create symptom clusters (call them Type A, B, etc.) that would make it easier for everyone to understand what kind of autistic a person is, without them having to list all the symptoms? Because I believe in the importance of privacy, respect and appropriate interactions.
I have put together this survey to see if there are any patterns we could use.
Please reblog this, I want to get as much data as possible
Responses have stopped coming in (I’ve got 40 so far), so I’m sharing this again. Thanks to all who shared until now!
This is an excellent idea. And for the initial question on whether you’re autistic there’s a yes (undiagnosed) option, for any self-diagnosed autistics wondering if they can take this.
@candidlyautistic @autismserenity Perhaps you could help this reach a wider audience?
A mass demonstration is planned in the Vancouver, B.C., metro area Saturday against the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline project. Nearly 7,000 Coast Salish Water Protectors have signed up to participate.
Building in the courts and halls of Canadian government for years, conflict over the mammoth Trans Mountain tar- sands oil-pipeline expansion is expected to spill into the streets of British Columbia Saturday with massive civil disobedience demonstrations.
Indigenous leaders from along the pipeline route and the U.S. are expected to join a march and rally beginning Saturday in metro Vancouver. Nearly 7,000 Coast Salish Water Protectors — as the pipeline opponents call themselves — have signed up to participate, said Will George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, spokesman for the Protect the Inlet movement.
“We cannot stand by anymore,” George said. “It is going to be like Standing Rock,” where thousands of so-called water protectors stood against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota in 2016.
“The similarity is we are standing up to protect our water. And we are going to do this in a peaceful way,” George said. “ It is going to mark a day in history; it will be a massive mobilization.”
Continue Reading.
This is happening TOMORROW (March 10th) in Burnaby, Canada (just outside of Vancouver).
Info here:
More info here:
https://protecttheinlet.ca/
–
BOOST THIS!
If Americans could share this, I’d really appreciate it.
A LOT of Canadians shared just about every post about #NODAPL. This is Canada’s #NODAPL and thousands of people are going to be descending tomorrow in Vancouver in a massive Indigenous lead protest against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion which was forced through by Justin Trudeau’s government.
Also, Americans this project will effect you. Washington state shares the same water with British Columbia, and this project is going to drastically increase Super oil tanker traffic in the Haro Strait and Strait of Juan de Fuca.
If you don’t know much about this pipeline and how it will infringe on Indigenous Peoples in Canada, contribute to Climate Change and put Vancouver at a risk of a massive oil spill, I’ve included some reading below:
‘It is our Standing Rock:’ First Nations announce legal actions against feds, Kinder Morgan
Squamish Nation challenging B.C.’s approval of Kinder Morgan project in court
Justin Trudeau Clearly Doesn’t Believe In Indigenous Consent
City of Vancouver continues fight against Kinder Morgan
Standing Rock–type standoff looms in Metro Vancouver with approval of Kinder Morgan pipeline
Tsleil-Waututh blasts Kinder Morgan expansion as colonial land appropriation
Tsleil-Waututh Nation vows to stop Trans Mountain pipeline despite Trudeau government approval
PIPELINE APPROVALS MAKE CANADA’S CLIMATE TARGETS A HERCULEAN CHALLENGE
Kinder Morgan pipeline spill could cost Vancouver $1.2 billion Could increased tanker traffic tank Vancouver’s tourism industry?
Eco-tourism worth billions trumps value of Kinder Morgan project, new report argues And lots more under the #Kinder Morgan hashtag on this blog:
allthecanadianpolitics.tumblr.com/tagged/Kinder morgan
More reasons Americans should care about this:
Washington state officials ‘very concerned’ Canada’s oil pipeline spill plan lacking
Washington governor admires cap and trade, but concerned about Kinder Morgan
U.S. worried about Canada’s ability to respond to oil spills, records reveal
Final reminder, Vancouverites!
This should start in a few hours; 10 AM, March 10th, 2018. Meet at the Lake City Way Skytrain Station in Burnaby.
Many of my adult autistic friends are uncomfortable in the company of the vast majority of parents of autistic children.
That is one of the most disheartening sentences to have to write, but the truth in it is undeniable. And it’s something that we, as parents, have to change and have to change NOW.
My kid, at almost fifteen, is just as close to being 25 as she is to being 5. I cannot stomach the idea that she will feel anything less than welcome, fully included, and empowered by any group of my peers. Right now, that’s just not the case.
In advocacy circles, my autistic friends are constantly told, both implicitly and explicitly, that their voices are only relevant in describing their own experiences. Their advocacy on behalf of their community is routinely dismissed by those who assume they do not or cannot understand the needs of their more ‘severely’ disabled brethren.
But that notion - that their advocacy is limited to themselves and to others who share their own exact profile is not only flawed - it’s dangerous.
It serves as the primary mechanism by which we continuously silence the voices of those for whom we claim to fight. It sets up this bizarre paradigm in which anyone who has the ability to make themselves understood is not disabled enough to qualify as an advocate for those who have not yet found the means to do so. I beg you to really think about that.
What about someone like our dear young friend Rhema? She is one of the most impacted people I know (and I know a LOT of people). But now that she can type, she’s facing a wall of skepticism about whether or not “it’s really her” communicating. I’ve sat next to her on countless occasions while she pecked out words and I will tell you that it is absolutely, positively, 100% HER communicating HER thoughts. But I will also tell you that despite incontrovertible evidence, there are parents and “experts” who have and who will continue to challenge the provenance of her writing, thereby marginalizing and devaluing one of the most important perspectives we have available to us, not to mention Rhema‘s own agency.
And what about an adult who went to college, is an articulate and eloquent speaker, and who *appears*, for all intents and purposes to be nothing like Rhema? What right does she have to claim to be fighting for her needs too?
Come closer, friends, I need you to really hear this ..
She has every right under the sun and just as much, if not more understanding, of what it is we’re really fighting for.
Having had the privilege of getting close to a number of folks who fit that latter description, I will tell you that they often have far, far more in common with our kids than we think. But they also have a lot of years of therapy, experience, practice, learning, human development, support .. things that will make our kids look a whole lot different in twenty years than they do now too. But also? And I really need you to hear this too ..
They hide a lot. They were raised with the belief that looking indistinguishable from their neurotypical peers was the highest achievement possible. They were taught to pass. To stuff it all down. To be someone else in public. And yeah, some of them are able to do that, at least for limited periods of time, where others simply can’t. But the stuff that we see with our kids - the stuff that we think differentiates our lives from theirs - the spinning, the flapping, the meltdowns, the shutdowns, the heartbreaking self injury .. the dysregulation and sensory overloads, the anxiety, the rigidity, and the private challenges that we don’t talk about because they’re private .. well, guess what? These adults experience it too.
Because try as they may to fit into a world that doesn’t fit, time runs out on that limited window of time in a day in which they can keep it all contained.
It’s like social media. We compare our own messy, behind-the-scenes lives to friends’ artfully posed Instagram photos. And while the photos might be real, ten minutes later, I promise you the frames look a whole lot different.
But still we insist that this limited snapshot of autistic adults in our shared spaces provides an accurate - or remotely relevant - comparison to our children’s abilities and that the contrast we think we see justifies shutting them down when they say, “I get it.” It does neither. And it has so stop.
Because to force them to share their most private challenges to prove themselves “disabled enough” to be worthy of being heard is a pretty hideous dynamic for a relationship with people who say they have your best interests at heart.
Most of us, at least the nautistic* and not otherwise disabled among us, discovered this community when we learned about our children’s challenges. Autistic adults have lived their lives in this community.
They have a unique perspective as advocates, the breadth and depth of which many of us can only imagine. They speak from experience, with a long lens spanning entire lifetimes, having seen the effects of various movements, methodologies, and ideologies and they have incredibly valuable insight into what works, what doesn’t, and what may looks like it’s working while causing unintended yet irreparable damage.
The bottom line is that their voices matter. And it’s long past time to stop looking for reasons to dismiss them.
*nautistic is Brooks word for neurotypical. It is pronounced NOT-tistic.
PREACH!!!
neurotypical society: love yourself w.w
me: ok
me: -respects myself enough to know that i shouldn’t have to fit into neurotypical society standards in order to be treated as a person with their own thoughts and feelings-
neurotypical society: wait no not like that.
Hi. My full name is in this article about being autistic. I’m excited.
Pyrostremma spinosum (Giant fire salp)
“Pyrosomes, genus Pyrosoma, are free-floating colonial tunicates that live usually in the upper layers of the open ocean in warm seas, although some may be found at greater depths. Pyrosomes are cylindrical- or conical-shaped colonies made up of hundreds to thousands of individuals, known as zooids. Colonies range in size from less than one centimeter to several metres in length.
Each zooid is only a few millimetres in size, but is embedded in a common gelatinous tunic that joins all of the individuals. Each zooid opens both to the inside and outside of the “tube”, drawing in ocean water from the outside to its internal filtering mesh called the branchial basket, extracting the microscopic plant cells on which it feeds, and then expelling the filtered water to the inside of the cylinder of the colony. The colony is bumpy on the outside, each bump representing a single zooid, but nearly smooth, though perforated with holes for each zooid, on the inside.
Pyrosomes are planktonic, which means their movements are largely controlled by currents, tides, and waves in the oceans. On a smaller scale, however, each colony can move itself slowly by the process of jet propulsion, created by the coordinated beating of cilia in the branchial baskets of all the zooids, which also create feeding currents.
Pyrosomes are brightly bioluminescent, flashing a pale blue-green light that can be seen for many tens of metres. The name Pyrosoma comes from the Greek (pyro = “fire”, soma = “body”). Pyrosomes are closely related to salps, and are sometimes called “fire salps”.
Sailors on the ocean are occasionally treated to calm seas containing many pyrosomes, all luminescing on a dark night.” (x)
I kinda want to get into vlogging but I don’t want to show my face and I don’t want to talk
So much
I want someone to explain to me this…
How are there more than just two genders? How is it that gender is different from sex? Why would you consider gender to be a social construct? How is gender a spectrum? Why do you feel the need to disassociate gender and sex when biologist have already proved that gender and sex are the same thing?
Personally speaking, I don’t understand why anyone would want to try and push gender identity shit down other people’s throats in the most radical way possible, but it’s fucking annoying as hell. To think that you know better than what biologist have studied for years makes me question your intelligence.
Here’s some food for thought people:
XX chromosomes = Female XY chromosomes = Male
Penis = Male Vagina = Female
Testosterone = Male Estrogen + Progesterone = Female
Gender = Sex
Until you can come up with a reason as to why gender isn’t biological and why I’m a piece of shit for not believing your bullshit, then please stop trying to change around shit just because you hate to hear the opposing voice and accept the facts as they are.
This is an open response to those who believe in the multiple genders/gender spectrum bullshit.
oh boy, you’re in for a hell of a ride. and don’t worry, there will a TL;DR at the bottom of this post just in case you’re too lazy to read or are simply unwilling to have your ignorant worldview dismantled by actual concrete facts.
but first, let’s look into the social construction of the gender binary and gender itself.
the narrow-minded idea that there are only two genders has been continuously debunked by biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and doctors alike, first of all. second, gender and sex aren’t necessarily the same thing, but they are both the same in the sense that they are both social constructs made to describe natural phenomenon, not actually based in any scientific reality. much like the concept of species; it’s a model, and no model is an actuality—then it would not be a model, it would be a fact.
simply put, gender is only your sense of, and internal mental relationship to masculinity, femininity, and androgyny, which can be expressed through words, behavior, or clothes. in other words, it is simply an intimate and personal sense of self in relation to gender, gender roles, and one’s physical body. it does not actually have anything to do with biology—even less so than sex. reproductive organs are not related whatsoever with gender. sure, it’s typical for the majority of people to identify with a gender that’s associated with their genitals, but that doesn’t mean it’s normal. the majority doesn’t outweigh the minority, and isn’t any more significant than them. the majority of people are straight, but that doesn’t mean gay people are abnormal, it means they’re less common. much is the same with people whose gender does not match the gender they were assigned at birth. suggesting your gender relies solely on your genitals is also very harmful for people who are intersex. ultimately, your gender is in your head and it is mutually exclusive from your genitals or any other attribute of the physical body. there is truly no scientific, biological, or medical basis for any sort of binary system of gender, and in fact the gender binary completely contradicts the laws of natural variation.
The Yogyakarta Principles on The Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity further elaborates on the definition of gender to be “each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms.” the principle 3 of this document reads as follows: “A person of diverse sexual orientation and gender identities shall enjoy legal capacity in all aspects of life. Each person’s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is integral to their personality and is one of the most basic aspects of self-determination, dignity and freedom”.
citations from other works of literature:
• Wendy Wood, “Gender: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” (2010) - “Sociological explanations, in turn, often fail to recognize that gender beliefs are influenced by individual-level factors. For example, people differ in the extent to which they hold gender identities, or personally identify with a sex category. Although identities often reflect categories of male or female, they also may include alternatives (e.g., intersex, transgender). The specific content of gender identities can include communal or agentic personality attributes, gender-typed interests and occupations, or gendered ways of relating to others. Men and women act in gendered ways as they regulate their behavior in line with a valued gender identity. Thus, people may do gender because it enhances their self-esteem and positive feelings.” (p.g. 337)
• Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)
- “If gender is the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes, then a gender cannot be said to follow from a sex in any one way. Taken to its logical limit, the sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders. Assuming for the moment the stability of binary sex, it does not follow that the construction of ‘men’ will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that ‘women’ will interpret only female bodies. Further, even if the sexes appear to be unproblematically binary in their morphology and constitution (which will become a question), there is no reason to assume that genders ought also to remain as two. The presumption of a binary gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it. When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.” (p.g. 10)
• Gerald N. Callahan, Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes (2009)
- “We understand that gender—the ways that society molds us into proper girls or boys, men or women—is complicated. Gender depends on lots of things—upbringing, culture,the stories fed to us by television and movies, hormones, and power struggles.” (p.g. x-xi)
- “…there is a naivete about the way we ignore the fact that some people don’t fit neatly into the either-or of gender. I believe that gender is rather a continuum than an either-or proposition.” (p.g. 108)
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (2000)
- “All of which brings me back to the five sexes. I imagine a future in which our knowledge of the body has led to resistance against medical surveillance, in which medical science has been placed at the service of gender variability, and genders have multiplied beyond currently fathomable limits. Suzanne Kessler suggests that ‘gender variability can… be seen… in a new way—as an expansion of what is meant by male and female.’ Ultimately, perhaps, concepts of masculinity and femininity might overlap so completely as to render the very notion of gender difference irrelevant.” (p.g. 101)
- “Given the discrimination and violence faced by those whose cultural and physical genitals don’t match, legal protections are needed during the transition to a gender-diverse utopia. It would help to eliminate the ‘gender’ category from licenses, passports, and the like. The transgender activist Leslie Feinberg writes: ‘Sex categories should be removed from all basic identification papers—from driver’s licenses to passports—and since the right of each person to define their own sex is so basic, it should be eliminated from birth certificates as well.’ Indeed, why are physical genitals necessary for identification? Surely attributes both more visible (such as height, build, and eye color) and less visible (fingerprints and DNA profiles) would be of greater use. Transgender activists have written ‘An International Bill of Gender Rights’ that includes (among ten gender rights) ‘the right to define gender identity, the right to control and change one’s own body, the right to sexual expression and the right to form committed, loving relationships and enter into marital contracts.’” (p.g. 111)
there are no limitations on who you are, how you feel, or what identity you construct for yourself, therefore people can and do construct more gender than the two traditional ones, and all of them are valid. plus, the simple fact that some people don’t identify as one of the two binary genders is proof that there are other genders. if someone identifies are nonbinary, then nonbinary people exist. it’s that simple. even if that’s just one person, it exists in society, ergo it is.
now this is a fun one; let’s move on to the social construction of “biological” sex.
even if gender was the exact same thing as sex, it still would be neither binary nor a scientific absolute. in her novel Sexing the Body, Anne Fausto-Sterling explains that there are 5 specific measures of “biological sex” according to modern medical science:
1. chromosomes (male: XY, female: XX)
2. genitalia (male: penis, female vulva and vagina)
3. gonads (male: testes, female: ovaries)
4. hormones (male: high testosterone, low estrogen, low progesterone; female: high estrogen, high progesterone, low testosterone)
5. secondary sex characteristics (male: large amounts of dark, thick, coarse body hair, noticeable facial hair, low waist to hip ratio, no noticeable breast development; female: fine, light colored body hair, no noticeable facial hair, high waist to hip ratio, noticeable breast development)
in real life, very few people actually match up with all five categories. estimates by the intersex society of north america notes the frequency and prevalence of intersex conditions, and puts the total rate of human bodies that “differ from standard male or female” at around one in 100, while anne fausto-sterling estimates that 1.7% of the population do not fall within the usual sex classifications. however, both of these estimations are somewhat outdated, so it could easily be a much higher percentage.
there are people out there with XY chromosomes, testes, a vulva, a vagina, “female” secondary sex characteristics, and “male” hormone patterns; people with XX chromosomes, testes, a penis, “male” secondary characteristics and “female” hormone patterns, and there are even people with both “male” and “female” secondary sex characteristics or hormone patterns at the same time, regardless of their genes, gonads, or genitalia. now, these people are technically intersex assuming that the two sex system is absolutely true. however, in order for the binary to even be considered real, every single person on earth must completely match up on all 5 markers of sex all the time. that’s not what happens in real life. in real life, literally tens, if not hundreds of MILLIONS of people have bodies that are contrary to the biological concept of the two sex system.
let’s look further into Fausto-Sterling’s book and consider the case of the athlete maria patiño. patiño has “female” genetalia, and she has always considered herself to be female and was considered so by others. however, she was discovered to have XY chromosomes and was barred from competing in women’s sports. patiño’s genitalia were at odds with her chromosomes and the latter were taken to determine her sex, and she successfully fought to be recognized as a female athlete, arguing that her chromosomes alone were not sufficient enough to not make her female. intersex people like patiño illustrate that our understandings of sex differ and suggest that there is no immediately obvious way to settle what sex amounts to purely biologically or scientifically. deciding what sex is involves evaluative judgements that are influenced by social factors.
the only thing in your body that has a “biological sex” in any sense is your gametes, which some people don’t even produce, which your body can easily stop producing, and which are a very minuscule part of the rest of your body. the rest of your body, including your genitals, has no “biological sex”.
citations from other works of literature:
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (2000)
- “Consider Angela Moreno’s more recent tale. In 1985, when she was twelve years old, her clitoris grew to a length of 1.5 inches. Having nothing to compare this to, she thought she was normal. But her mother noticed and with alarm hauled her off to a doctor who told her she had ovarian cancer and needed a hysterectomy. Her parents told her that no matter what, she would still be their little girl. When she awoke from surgery, however, her clitoris was gone. Not until she was twenty-three did she find out she was XY and had had testes, not ovaries. She never had cancer. Today Moreno has become an ISNA activist and credits ISNA with helping her heal psychologically from the damage done by lies and surgery.” (p.g. 84)
- “We stand now at a fork in the road. To the right we can walk toward reaffirmation of the naturalness of the number 2 and continue to develop new medical technology, including gene ‘therapy’ and new prenatal interventions to ensure the birth of only two sexes. To the left, we can hike up the hill of natural and cultural variability. Traditionally, in European and American culture we have defined two genders, each with a range of permissible behaviors; but things have begun to change. There are househusbands and women fighter pilots. There are feminine lesbians and gay men both buff and butch. [Transgender people] render the sex/gender divide virtually unintelligible.” (p.g. 101)
- “Because of their loyalty to a two-gender system, some scientists resisted the implications of new experiments that produced increasingly contradictory evidence about the uniqueness of male and female hormones. Frank, for example, puzzling at his ability to isolate female hormone from ‘the bodies of males whose masculine characteristics and ability to impregnate females is unquestioned,’ finally decided that the answer lay in contrary hormones found in the bile. Others suggested that the finding of adrenal sex hormones could ‘save’ the hypothesis of separate sex-hormonal spheres.” (p.g. 191)
- “But scientists are a diverse lot, and not everyone responded to the new results by trying to fit them into the dominant gender system. Parkes, for example, acknowledged the finding of androgen and estrogen production by the adrenal glands as ‘a final blow to any clear-cut idea of sexuality.’ Others wondered about the very concept of sex. In a review of the 1932 edition of Sex and Internal Secretions, the British endocrinologist F. A. E. Crew went even further, asking ‘Is sex imaginary?… It is the case,’ he wrote, ‘that the philosophical basis of modern sex research has always been extraordinarily poor, and it can be said that the American workers have done more than the rest of us in destroying the faith in the existence of the very thing that we attempt to analyze.’” (p.g. 191-192) {
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Sex/Gender Perplex” (2000)
- “Deciding whether to call a child a boy or a girl, then, employs social definitions of the essential components of gender. Such definitions, as Suzanne Kessler observes, are primarily cultural, rather than biological. Consider, as another example of this claim, problems caused by introducing European and American medical approaches into cultures with different systems of gender. For example, a group of physicians from Saudi Arabia recently reported on several cases of XX intersex children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), a genetically inherited malfunction of enzymes which aid in making steroid hormones. Despite having two X chromosomes, some CAH children are born with highly masculinized genitalia and are initially identified as males.” (p.g. 643)
• Judith Lorber, Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology; Gender and Society, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1993)
- “…bodies differ in many ways physiologically, but they are completely transformed by social practices to fit into the salient categories of a society, the most pervasive of which are ‘female’ and ‘male’ and ‘women’ and ‘men.’” (p.g. 569)
• Lisa Adkins, Sex in Question: French Materialist Feminism (1996)
-“One of the most important developments in early 1990s’ anglophone feminist theory is seen to be the destabilisation of the apparent orthodoxy regarding the relationship between sex and gender. It is no longer assumed that sex is a ‘natural’ or ‘biological’ category, with gender a social or cultural construction somehow imposed on top of it. ‘Sex’ is increasingly recognised as a sociohistorical product, rather than a fixed, transhistorical, or taken-for-granted category.” (p.g. 15)
- “… that the division of society into two sexes is the product, and not the cause, of oppression; that ‘sex’ is a political category and there would be no ‘sex’ without oppression; and that heterosexuality is of central importance in defining the sexes as natural, different and complementary.” (p.g. 16)
• Maria Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender” (2008)
- “Despite [countless] anthropological and medical studies to the contrary, society presumes an unambiguous binary sex paradigm in which all individuals can be classified neatly as male or female.” (p.g. 6)
• Sarah Richardson, “Sexing the X: How the X Became the ‘Female Chromosome’” (2012)
- “…the human X chromosome carries a large collection of male sperm genes.” (p.g. 909)
- “Currently, there is a broad popular, scientific, and medical conception of the X chromosome as the mediator of the differences between males and females, as the carrier of female-specific traits, or otherwise as a substrate of femaleness… associations between the X and femaleness are the accumulated product of contingent historical and material processes and events, and they are inflected by beliefs rooted in gender ideology.” (p.g. 927)
• Gerald N. Callahan, Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes (2009)
- “In truth, humans come in an amazing number of forms, because human development, including human sexual development, is not an either/or proposition. Instead, between “either” and “or” there is an entire spectrum of possibilities. Some people come into this world with a vagina and testes. Others begin their lives as girls but at puberty become boys. Though we’ve been told that Y chromosomes make boys, there are women in this world with Y chromosomes, and there are men without Y chromosomes. Beyond that, there are people who have only a single unpaired X chromosome. There are also people who are XXY, XXXY, or XXXXY…There are babies born with XYY, XXX, or any of a dozen or more other known variations involving X or Y chromosomes. We humans are a diverse lot.” (p.g. xi-xii)
- “Nondisjunction can happen with any chromosome, including the sex chromosomes X and Y. A single sperm or egg may end up with two, three, or more X chromosomes, and a single sperm may hold more than one Y chromosome. In truth, sperm and eggs come in variety packs. If that alone isn’t enough to derail the simple XX/XY, female/male idea, a mystery known as anaphase lag can also cause developing sperm or ova to lose an X or a Y chromosome along the way. And even after fertilization, sex chromosomes can be lost or gained. And even among men with the normal 46,XY karyotype, the size of the Y chromosome can vary. That means that my Y chromosome might be three times the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Y chromosome. Here certainly, quantity matters; perhaps size does as well. The end product is a panoply of possible sexes by any definition, an array of human beings as grand and as varietal as the fragrances of flowers: 45,X; 47,XXX; 48,XXXX; 49,XXXXX; 47,XYY; 47,XXY; 48,XXXY; 49,XXXXY; and 49,XXXYY.” (p.g. 62)
- “Intersex people are not a few freakish, unfortunate outliers. They are instead the most complete demonstration of our humanity… We, as a society, are very hard on people who don’t fit out preconceptions, especially our preconceptions about sex. What intersex people have shown us is the truth about all of us. There are infinite chemical and cellular pathways to becoming human. […] Sex isn’t a switch we can easily flip between two poles. Between those two imaginary poles lies an infinite number of possibilities.” (p.g. 163)
• Anonymous Author, “The Problematic Ideology of Natural Sex” (2016)
- “Around the world, over the past four or five hundred years, people have been cajoled, threatened, forcibly re-educated, beaten, imprisoned, locked in mental hospitals, put in the stocks, publicly humiliated, mutilated, and burnt at the stake for violating one or more of the precepts of ‘Natural [Biological] Sex.’ That’s the sure sign of enforced ideology, not a true natural law…”
- “If we truly believe in science, in a rational world where we look objectively at what is, rather than impose our beliefs onto reality, then we need to reject the Ideology of Natural Sex. We need to see the reality of the sex spectrum and stop framing intersexuality as a rare disorder that somehow violates natural law. We need to understand that different societies have divided the sex spectrum up into different numbers of social sexes, and that binary sex is no more or less arbitrary than trinary or quartic sex systems…”
• Courtney Adison, “Human Sex is Not Simply Male or Female. So What?” (2016)
- “It is no surprise, then, that the sex binary is so firmly rooted in Euro-American thought, along with many others (think body and mind, nature and culture). It underpins and naturalises gendered divisions of labour through, for example, the notion of women as the weaker sex. Language mirrors the distinction between male and female, as in the way we talk about the sexes as ‘opposite’, and throughout life we are encouraged to think in binary terms about this central aspect of our existence.”
- “While these gendered binaries play out in social life in reasonably clear ways, they also seep into places conventionally seen as immune to bias. For example, they permeate sex science. In her paper ‘The Egg and the Sperm’ (1991), the anthropologist Emily Martin reported on the ‘scientific fairy tale’ of reproductive biology… scientific knowledge is produced in culturally patterned ways and, for Euro-American scientists, gendered assumptions make up a large part of this patterning.”
- “In Gender Trouble (1990), the feminist theorist Judith Butler argues that the insistence on sex as a natural category is itself evidence of its very unnaturalness. While the notion of gender as constructed (through interaction, socialisation and so on) was gaining some acceptance at this time, Butler’s point was that sex as well as gender was being culturally produced all along. It comes as no surprise to those familiar with Butler, Martin and the likes, that recent scientific findings suggest that sex is in fact non-binary. Attempts to cling to the binary view of sex now look like stubborn resistance to a changing paradigm. In her survey paper ‘Sex Redefined’ (2015) in Nature, Claire Ainsworth identified numerous cases supporting the biological claim that sex is far from binary, and is best seen as a spectrum. The most remarkable example was that of a 70-year-old father of four who went into the operating room for routine surgery only for his surgeon to discover that he had a womb.”
- “Looking to other times and to other cultures, we are reminded that sex is to some degree produced through the assumptions we make about each other and our bodies. Modern science is moving towards consensus on sex as a spectrum rather than a simple male/female binary, and it is time to start casting around for new ways of thinking about this fundamental aspect of what we are. Historical and anthropological studies provide a rich resource for re-imagining sex, reminding us that the sex spectrum itself is rooted in Euro-Western views of the person and body, and inviting critical engagement with our most basic biological assumptions.”
• Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex (1992)
- “For quite different reasons, Catharine MacKinnon argues explicitly that gender is the division of men and women caused ‘by the social requirements of heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission’; sex-which comes to the same thing-is social relations ‘organized so that men may dominate and women must submit.’ ‘Science’, Ruth Bleier argues, mistakenly views ‘gender attributions as natural categories for which biological explanations are appropriate and even necessary.’ Thus some of the so called sex differences in biological and sociological research turn out to be gender differences after all, and the distinction between nature and culture collapses as the former folds into the latter.” (p.g. 13)
- “There are two explanations for how the two modem sexes as we imagine them were, and continue to be, invented: one is epistemological and the other is, broadly speaking, political.” (p.g. 151)
• Asia Friedman, Blind to Sameness: Sexpectations and the Social Construction of Male and Female Bodies (2013)
- “Thomas Laqueur argues that in the past, specifically prior to the 19th Century, male and female bodies were seen very differently than they are today. They were perceived as more similar than different, and instead of two sexes, there were just two variations of one sex. Laqueur further demonstrates that the shift in perception to seeing the sexes as two categorically different things was not the result of gaining more scientific knowledge, since many of the relevant discoveries were actually made after the fact… So the question for Laqueur is, if it was not due to advances in specific scientific knowledge of sex differences, what was responsible for that shift from seeing one to seeing two sexes? And his answer is essentially cultural change. He argues that sex or the body is the epiphenomenon, while gender, what we would normally take to be the cultural category, is what is primary. Marian Lowe makes a similar point when she argues that ‘if race, sex, and class were not politically and economically significant categories it is likely that no one would care very much about biological differences between members of these groups. To pay attention to the study of sex differences would be rather peculiar in a society where their political importance was small.’” (p.g. 45-46)
- “Further, regarding chromosomes, keep in mind that XX and XY are 50% the same, and the egg and the sperm actually have the same sex chromosomes every time both contribute an “X” to make a female. Sarah Richardson offers a much more scientifically precise version of the same fundamental argument in her critique of recent accounts claiming significant genetic variation between males and females. “Sex differences in the genome are very, very small: of 20,000 to 30,000 genes, marked sex differences are evident in perhaps half a dozen genes on the X and Y chromosome, and, it is hypothesized, a smattering of differently expressed genes across the autosomes… In DNA sequence and structure, sex differences are localized to the X and Y chromosomes. Males and females share 99.9 percent sequence identity on the 22 autosome pairs and the X, and the handful of genes on the Y are highly specific to male testes development. Thinking of males and females as having different genomes exaggerates the amount of difference between them, giving the impression that there are systematic and even law-like differences distributed across the genomes of males and females, and playing into a traditional gender-ideological view of sex differences.” (Richardson, Forthcoming: 8-9) The essential point is this: Males and females are much more genetically similar than different.” (p.g. 206)
“biological sex” is just as biased, unscientific, and subjective as the concept of gender is, and to base sex or gender on chromosomes or genitals or some other arbitrary feature is to ignore and marginalize the truth. there are millions of people who have different genitalia, lack them all together, or are intersex, people with differing karyotypes (i.e. XXY, XXX, XYY, X, etc) or chimerism (a body where some cells are of one karyotype and others are of another), and there are people with all kinds of genetic/epigenetic/biological conditions. these are all normal, natural variations of the human body that aren’t inherently connected to each other. to say sex or gender is defined by any of these features is erasive, intersexist, transphobic, and entirely contrary to what actual biologists and geneticists have been saying for decades.
just because you cannot handle your societally constructed worldview surrounding sex, gender, and genetics being smashed by sociology & biology itself doesn’t mean, additionally, that you have the right to make other people feel unsafe and uncomfortable just because you don’t like having your viewpoint being dismantled. don’t act as if you somehow know everything about sex and gender just because you took 10th grade biology and ate up some oversimplified explanations. the complexities of human behavior & the diversity of sex and reproduction in life can’t be completely covered in a simple high school biology class. shocker!
not to mention, the idea of a gender binary is a very, very recent concept solely rooted in colonialism and racism, not science.
in fact, the idea of third and nonbinary genders is as old as human civilization. (the list below is a very VERY brief history of nonbinarism):
§ 2000 BCE: in mesopotamian mythology, among the earliest written records, there are references to types of people who are neither men nor women. in a sumerian creation myth found on a stone tablet from the 2000 bce, the goddess ninmah fashions a being “with no male organ and no female organ”, for whom enki finds a position in society: “to stand before the king".
§ 1800 BCE: inscribed pottery shards from the middle kingdom of egypt, found near ancient thebes, list three human genders: tai (male), sḫt (“sekhet”) and hmt (female).
§ 385-380 BCE: aristophanes, a comic playwright, tells a story of creation in which “original human nature” includes a third sex. this sex “was a distinct kind, with a bodily shape and a name of its own, constituted by the union of the male and the female: but now only the word ‘androgynous’ is preserved.”
§ 77 BCE: genucius, a roman slave is denied inheritance on the grounds, according to art historian lynn roller, of being “neither a man nor a woman.” he is “not even allowed to plead his own case, lest the court be polluted by his obscene presence and corrupt voice.”
§ 1871: british administrators pass the criminal tribes act in india, effectively outlawing the country’s hijras—a community that includes intersex people, trans people, and even cross-dressers. celebrated in sacred indian texts, hijras had long been part of south asian cultures, but colonial authorities viewed them as violating the social order.
§ 1970: mexians in oaxaca state establish vela de las intrepidas (vigil of the intrepids), a festival celebrating ambiguous gender identities. the zapotec culture embraces a third-gender population called muxes. muxes trace back to pre-columbian times, when there were “cross-dressing aztec priests and mayan gods who were male and female at the same time”.
§ 2014: india’s supreme court recognizes the right of people, including hijras, to identify as third-gender. the court states, “it is the right of every human being to choose their gender.”
this binary gender system of ours is comparatively very new, and has been forced upon the rest of the world by white europeans in destructive and violent invasion, genocide, and complete appropriation and destruction of the original cultures of each land. really, it is the binary system that is unnatural. multiple genders have always existed in this world. and despite the best attempt of european colonialists, they continue to exist today, indicating that it is part of human nature to not fit in a neat binary and instead have multiple genders. even within the united states, multiple native american tribes have a system that includes up to six distinct gender categories.
multiple countries and cultures around the world have either three or more genders officially recognized, or no genders recognized at all (here’s a more interactive and informational map). plus, there are also many completely gender-neutral languages, where gendered pronouns and/or gendered categories don’t exist whatsoever.
citations from other works of literature:
• Maria Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial /Modern Gender System” (2007)
- “Lugones introduces a systemic understanding of gender constituted by colonial/modernity in terms of multiple relations of power… gender itself is a colonial introduction, a violent introduction consistently and contemporarily used to destroy peopks, cosmologies, and communities as the building ground of the ‘civilized’ West.” (p.g. 186)
- “As global, Eurocentered capitalism was constituted through colonization, gender differentials were introduced where there were none. Oyeronkk Oyewhmi has shown us that the oppressive gender system that was imposed on Yoruba society did a lot more than transform the organization of reproduction… many Native American tribes were matriarchal, recognized more than two genders, recognized ‘third’ gendering and homosexuality positively, and understood gender in egalitarian terms rather than in the terms of subordination that Eurocentered capitalism imposed on them. Gunn’s work has enabled us to see that the scope of the gender differentials was much more encompassing and it did not rest on biology.” (p.g. 196)
• Gerald N. Callahan, Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the Myth of Two Sexes (2009)
- “Our history suggests that we haven’t always imagined that humans come in only two sexes, and that things far removed from what we might call facts have played major roles in determining our thoughts about sex. Even today, several human societies believe in more than two sexes.” (p.g. xi)
• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (2000)
- “Were we in Europe and America to move to a multiple sex and gender role system (as it seems we might be doing), we would not be cultural pioneers. Several Native American cultures, for example, define a third gender, which may include people whom we would label as homosexual, transsexual, or intersexual but also people we would label as male or female. Anthropologists have described other groups, such as the Hijras of India, that contain individuals whom we in the West would label intersexes, transsexuals, effeminate men, and eunuchs. As with the varied Native American categories, the Hijras vary in their origins and gender characteristics. Anthropologists debate about how to interpret Native American gender systems. What is important, however, is that the existence of other systems suggests that ours is not inevitable.” (p.g. 108-109)
• Phoenix Singer, “Colonialism, Two-Spirit Identity, and the Logics of White Supremacy”
- “Colonialism as practiced by Western culture is used to erase traditional non-binary roles of gender orientation and systems of sexuality, i.e. the Two-Spirit. Identifying as Two-Spirit becomes not just a traditional way of expressing Indigenous beliefs of gender orientation and sexuality but a political identity in resistance of colonialism. Through the use of inherently violent, assimilative measures, these traditions of the Two-Spirit in Indigenous societies are lost in many of our communities and are replaced by the Western gender binary and spectrum of sexual orientation. As this paper will show, this plays into the colonialist logic of white supremacy and how it relates to the Indigenous body, colonizing Two-Spirit identity.” (p.g. 1)
- “When Europeans came to Turtle Island, much of their culture, their ideals, their beliefs and institutions came with them through the continued centuries of settler-colonialism. Building their own nation upon this land, they were able to more permanently construct and impose their culture upon others. The Western colonization of the Americas brought forth many institutions which sought to erase and displace Indigenous cultural traditions and beliefs. Through the use of violence, forced assimilation, demonization of Indigenous beliefs and then appropriation of Indigenous culture, the subjugation of Native sexuality and gender roles have continued unquestioned in the minds of the settler and of our own people. It can be said and will be shown, that the Western binary is a system of oppression and repression and is actively a form of institutional violence against the Two-Spirit. This is all connected to the idea of white supremacy and domination over Indigenous bodies and beliefs, of colonization of our very selves. Thus an analysis of colonization and white supremacy is not complete without an approach towards Two-Spirit identity in our own communities.” (p.g. 1-2)
- “Before the colonization of this land, there were as many as six traditional gender orientation roles among numerous tribes. However, due to boarding schools erasing these traditions […] the Christianized related the existence of the Two-Spirit as sin… The Western Gender Binary is thus superimposed upon all cultures and their histories seen through the gaze of not only male dominance but a male/female paradigm that does not account for the existence of third, fourth, fifth and even more varieties of non-male/female expressions and identities. […] The Western Gender Binary does not see the Two-Spirit, the Western Gender Binary only sees a Man acting in ‘Unmanly’ ways or a Woman acting in ‘Unwomanly’ ways… The influence of Western culture on the erasure of Indigenous “queer” and Two-Spirit peoples has created a system of sexual assault, homophobia and transphobia used against our peoples, entangled with the history of colonialism. As part of the settler mentality, we can see these actions as colonial violence against the Two-Spirit and are also the results of genocide. To reiterate previous statements, the Western gender binary is a form of superimposed and universalized colonialism upon Indigenous bodies and minds.” (p.g. 5-6)
• Anonymous Author, “The Problematic Ideology of Natural Sex” (2016)
- “…we have ignorance of the long and violent history of the imposition of the Ideology of Natural Sex under European colonialism. The genius behind framing an ideology as ‘natural’ is that its history erases itself. Why would anyone study the history of something natural and eternal? We don’t study the history of covalent bonds in chemistry or cumulus clouds in meteorology. And so we don’t study the spread of European binary sex ideology under colonialism. If you do, you’ll find that all over the world before European colonialism there were societies recognizing three, four, or more sexes and allowing people to move between them—but that’s a subject for another post. Suffice it to say that societies were violently restructured under European colonialism in many ways, and one of those was the stamping out of nonbinary gender categories and stigmatization of those occupying them as perverts.”
to say that nonbinary genders don’t exist would not only be scientifically incorrect and historically inaccurate, but it would be to say that the cultural traditions of these people are invalid, and only the white european standard of gender, which was forced onto indigenous people via genocide and forced assimilation, is “correct”. trying to enforce western concepts of gender on other cultures is an act of blatant racism and imperialism, and presumes that one group somehow knows more about the human condition, which is, on all levels, factually as well as historically and ethnically wrong.
TL;DR:
neither gender nor biological sex is innate, binary, or a scientific reality in any way, shape, or form, and the vast majority of biologists, scientists, doctors, psychologists, historians and anthropologists have been debunking these ignorant claims for decades and proving that both of these concepts are socially constructed. since gender as completely subjective, nonbinary genders have existed since the dawn of human civilization, even dating back to mesopotamia, the VERY FIRST human society, at that. there are many countries today where there are officially more than two genders recognized, and there are multiple languages that are entirely gender-neutral. the gender binary itself is an entirely european theory based on a complete lack of understanding of science, and was only recently forced on the world via colonialism, violence, and genocide. saying that nonbinary genders aren’t real is an act of transphobia, racism, and imperialism, and is the same as saying that thousands of cultures around the world, millions of personal experiences, and entire societal structures throughout history are not real, which makes no sense. it is part of human nature and basic natural variation to not fit into oversimplified binary categories.
but you know, curse those special snowflakes, or whatever.
this is an updated version of my original response. please reblog this edited version of my post instead if you’ve already reblogged the previous/original version.
I LOVE THIS AND I LOVE YOU
heeeyy look what i found -💐
As a society, we need to stop assuming that everyone enjoys drinking alcohol.
Lmao @ people who think I’m ridiculous for this post. I’m defensive because alcoholism is a huge issue. Everywhere in the world. Not to mention, I know it’s hard for some of you fucks to believe because of how widely accepted alcohol is, but there are a HUGE amount of people who have personal issues with alcohol. Either being recovering or previous alcoholics themselves, having a close personal tie with someone who abused alcohol, growing up in an unstable alcoholic household, having DEEPLY EMBEDDED family or spouse issues ALL because of alcohol. FUCK OFF with your me being so offended bullshit. Just assume people are sober till you find out on **their** terms they aren’t. Don’t expect that everyone likes to drink. Just like you wouldn’t expect that everyone likes to smoke cannabis, why would you do it with alcohol? (That’s rhetorical, it’s obviously because basically everyone assumes the entire world enjoys drinking). It’s not hard. Don’t offer people drinks unless you know they drink. BYE.
My favorite response when I tell people im straight edge is “what? You’ll never drink ever? Not one drink? I don’t believe you.” And they’ll laugh And I’ll look them straight in their fucking eye and tell them both my parents, and my aunt are recovering alcoholics. The rest of my family? Has never tried, nor ever got the chance to recover from their addiction. It’s by some miracle my mother is alive right now because she drank so much her liver stopped working. She was in a coma for two weeks. The doctors almost gave up on her. My dad was an abusive drunk and then turned to hard drugs and that certainly didn’t help anything. My 3 younger sisters and I were almost put into foster care because of the both of them. I was only about 14 at the time. Making my youngest sister, 7. And because of all of this my family went bankrupt and we were almost homeless. All because of drinking :)
That usually shuts them up real fucking fast but, I shouldn’t have to explain that to anyone. I shouldn’t have to defend my (perfectly healthy!) choices!
If someone tells you they don’t drink, it’s for a fucking reason. Don’t be a dick. Casual alcoholism is a huge fucking problem in the world and its scary that most people can’t see it.
Also, some people just… don’t like drinking. There are people out there who just genuinely do not enjoy drinking alcohol. They don’t like the taste, they don’t like being impaired, and they have no desire to try to force themselves into enjoying it just because someone else thinks it’s “weird”.
There are all kinds of reasons that someone might not choose to drink, and all of those reasons are valid. There’s nothing wrong with it, it doesn’t mean they “can’t have fun”, and I guarantee you they’re not judging you for drinking. And if they are? It’s definitely not as much as they’re being judged for not drinking.
Don’t try to force people to drink. Don’t assume everyone likes to drink. And if someone says they don’t drink? Don’t force them to explain why just to get you to stop hounding them.
There are plenty of reasons to avoid booze and the particulars of someone’s reasons are none of your business. Nobody deserves to catch crap because they don’t imbibe.
Not to mention there are multiple religions that don’t drink, as well as a number of people who don’t for medical reasons (either because they are intolerant to alcohol or are taking a medication which makes them unable to).And here’s the thing, whatever someone’s reason for not drinking? It is absolutely none of your business.
an essential part of self-care is setting boundaries. learn to say no
when you're autistic but you still wanna be cool online
- when ur reblogging a post about your special interest and ur trying to decide whether or not infodumping and screaming in all caps in the tags would be annoying
- “am i close enough with this person to use u instead of you? do i even need to wait? can i use “u” with strangers??”
- “you’ll have to forgive me for this…” no that sounds way too formal what’s the Normal way to phrase it?
-“is this a situation where proper grammar and spelling is necessary?”
- “i’m feeling an emotion ?? what do people do when they feel an emotion? swear??? yeah i can do that what’s the right swear word to use in this context?”
- when you’re re-reading a post before you post it and find words like “therefore” and u gotta rewrite the whole thing
- when your grammar is both too formal and too casual and ur not sure if what u said was phrased awkwardly
- when you run out of words to say so you respond to everything with ‘aaaaaa’
- “was that a nice thing to say???? did that seem blunt or rude? how do i tell?? i don’t want them to think i hate them. best to be overly positive just to be sure”
- typin how you talk in real life…… so there are fuckin ellipses everywhere……… cause you pause a lot. and then you feel weird about it.
- “is this person being rude or am i misinterpreting it? best to just not respond at all”
[TWEET: You can help the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ stop uranium mining in the Black Hills. Contact info and what we need.]
when you're autistic but you still wanna be cool online
- when ur reblogging a post about your special interest and ur trying to decide whether or not infodumping and screaming in all caps in the tags would be annoying
- “am i close enough with this person to use u instead of you? do i even need to wait? can i use “u” with strangers??”
- “you’ll have to forgive me for this…” no that sounds way too formal what’s the Normal way to phrase it?
-“is this a situation where proper grammar and spelling is necessary?”
- “i’m feeling an emotion ?? what do people do when they feel an emotion? swear??? yeah i can do that what’s the right swear word to use in this context?”
- when you’re re-reading a post before you post it and find words like “therefore” and u gotta rewrite the whole thing
- when your grammar is both too formal and too casual and ur not sure if what u said was phrased awkwardly
- when you run out of words to say so you respond to everything with ‘aaaaaa’
- “was that a nice thing to say???? did that seem blunt or rude? how do i tell?? i don’t want them to think i hate them. best to be overly positive just to be sure”
- typin how you talk in real life…… so there are fuckin ellipses everywhere……… cause you pause a lot. and then you feel weird about it.
- “is this person being rude or am i misinterpreting it? best to just not respond at all”
On emotional authenticity and masking as an autistic person
Originally posted as a thread on Mastodon, starting here.
~
This thing happens that I attribute to being autistic and having poor cognitive empathy.
When someone tells me something, I know that I am expected to express an emotion in reaction. But I also know from experience that some of my emotional reactions are inappropriate.
NTs seem expert at knowing which of their emotional reactions are appropriate, so they can effortlessly express the appropriate emotions and suppress the inappropriate ones.
It’s unsafe for me to react authentically to anyone.
And it’s not like there’s an easy rule! If someone tells me they’re moving house, I’m meant to express sadness that they’re going, but a hope that the move is positive for them and will be good. But the degrees of each are meant to reflect the depth of our relationship and how I feel about that person. It’s a balancing act. I have to formulate all of these consciously, while also judging which will be considered inappropriate, in real time. It’s exhausting.
Because I’m autistic, my first reaction to something you say will never be an authentic emotional experience, and this makes me feel very sad. Everything you see of me will be from the other side of a wall, no matter how well we know each other. If I love you and care about you but I don’t feel safe to immediately express anything with you without fear of judgement or hurting your feelings accidentally, chances are I will always be unable to express my emotions authentically with you in real-time. This means we’ll never get a deep level of emotional intimacy in our relationship, which hurts a lot.
This is why autistic spaces like Autscape (UK) can be so powerful. When a space is by and for autistic people, the majority of people are autistic; there is an understanding that immediate emotional reactions might not reflect the full range of an emotional response to a situation, and might be a bit odd! You learn to understand that your first impression of someone’s emotional reaction to something won’t be the whole story, and it is important to wait & let someone continue to process and express.
This is also why a lot of autistic people come across as robotic - we lack a sense that others have, and have to compensate with conscious thought. That sense is cognitive empathy. It’s similar to how the physical movements of someone with poor proprioception will come across as robotic. We have to process everything consciously, where most people do everything intuitively and automatically, like breathing.
Imagine if you had to consciously process every breath. It would seem stilted and robotic. You wouldn’t be able to fully concentrate on anything else. Imagine how exhausting and disabling that would be!
So when an autistic person has enough energy and understanding to know that our emotional responses are sometimes inappropriate and get us unto trouble, but we don’t have the spoons to formulate an appropriate emotional response in real-time, we might respond to pretty much everything without emotion. And that’s when we seem robotic and lacking emotional affect, fitting the autistic stereotype. Our emotional response might come a few moments later, or a few minutes later, or a few days, weeks…
My ideal situation is to express authentically anyway, and deal with the fallout as best I can. I am happier and calmer. But it’s sort of swings and roundabouts - I don’t really save any energy because the energy that is no longer used on real-time processing and masking is displaced to emergency fallout repair as I flail to reassure or save a relationship when a NT person is very upset by something I’ve said. I can only express authentically in real-time if I (very quickly, at the beginning) assess the situation and my energy levels, and find that I have enough energy to patch things up afterwards if I say or do something wrong.
But masking/being a robot is exhausting too. Whether I am masking or expressing authentically, I can misjudge how long a situation will continue for. When this happens I run out of steam and crash before the end, so I either become a zombie or have to leave abruptly!
There’s a lot of gumph in the media right now about autistic people and processing time/speed, but I don’t think I think slowly. I think maybe my processing power is occupied by compensating for the lack of senses that NTs have.
