[header ID: white fluffy fabric with multicolour hearts on it.] [profile picture ID: "Hikaru"s true form; a swirling mass of shapes that twist outwards, from the manga "The Summer Hikaru Died".] ☆ MSN disabled, autistic, system. wheelchair user. transsexual (he/it!), queer, aroace-spec.
-> This part above the cut is a TLDR for users who can’t do longer reading. More information is below the cut 🩶.
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TLDR: This is a side blog for @tangerine-segments. We are an autistic dissociative system. Queer + transsexual creature-thing. He/him, it/its, they/them pronouns. Physically disabled + insane. We yap a lot. All mentally ill people welcome here (provided you do not take pride in any harm you do- harm reduction & recovery where possible is good 👍). No DNI, but proudly bigoted/discriminatory blogs will get blocked 🙂↕️. Oke that’s the end of the TLDR!
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-> Below the cut here is the extra & more detailed intro… Heayyyyy….. 🗣️.
Omg heayyyy…. Hello! We are Grove. We are the dissociative system behind this account 🤭. Nice to have you here 🫰.
-> Our main blog is @tangerine-segments, which is our system account. It’s also where we have a longer list of our sub-blogs. Most of us will post on this blog at some point, but it’s unlikely we will specify who wrote what.
-> We are autistic + have comorbid neurodevelopmental disabilities. We have a lot of mental illness diagnoses + several diagnosed physical disabilities. Psychotic, dissociative, generally Strange. Brain-body does not work well!
-> Bodily an adult (+ most of us are around body-age). This is not a NSFW blog, and it is fine for under-18s and teenager-bodied systems to interact. You're all welcome here.!! We do swear in posts sometimes, and often forget to tag warnings for that. If that is an issue please block us or whatever you need to do 🙂↕️ /genuine.
-> Queer freak entity!! We exist in a transsexual body & our host(s) are transsexual men 😗. We all identify with slightly different queer identities- but overall we consider ourselves transsexual, aroace-spec + gay/mlm. Queer is the word we use most because it covers everything nicely 🙂↕️. Uninterested in “discourse” about queerness; identity-policing is not something we will do.
-> Not prosocial (as in we don’t have prosocial emotions like empathy)- but we still do our best to act kindly & behave compassionately. However we often lack the patience/ability to have a back-and-forth conversation. So we will not look at private messages or respond very much in comments. That does not mean we dislike you personally!! We just can’t manage much human interaction because autism + ASPD + the rest hahah. Fellow ASPD-ers are welcome here of course, as are all other personality-disordered & behaviour-disordered folks.
-> We need mobility aids to get about- specifically a wheelchair/powerchair. So we are visibly disabled + talk about that on here! Moderate, complex support needs. So please be patient with us 😌.
-> We struggle organising thoughts/words/feelings. We will probably mess up words or phrases even though we edit things multiple times before posting. If we say anything that you cannot understand, or we say something insensitive, please tell us directly!! We will explain and/or correct it. We want this blog to be accessible + safe for marginalised folks. But we will likely mess up sometimes. So if we reblog something that’s gross, or do an image description wrong, or forget an accessibility thing, or say something uneducated- please say!! Please work on assumption that we did not realise and did not intend harm. We welcome constructive feedback + help understanding things 💖 /serious.
-> We have a lot of difficulty processing new information, learning new topics, and have memory problems. Which means we don’t really feel able enough to speak on things we don’t have personal experiences with. So we will do our best just to share information from the folks who know more than us. If we misunderstand something please be patient, we have a brain that doesn’t work in an abled way 😵💫.
-> No DNI- but we will block any blog that promotes bigotry/discrimination and has no intent to change that. We simply do not have the energy or ability to engage.
-> Okay that’s probably all for now! We have had this in drafts for months and keep forgetting about it. Posting as it is so there’s at least something pinned… Hope you enjoy our silly thoughts if you wish to stay a while 🥳. Bye!!
something i think a lot of white people don't understand is that saying racist antiblack things 'ironically' 'as a joke' 'satirically' or 'as bait' is still... just being racist. as if saying 'bait used to be believable' somehow undoes the disrespect? as if pointing out that its probably a bot or a psyop nullifies the slurs? as if informing me that its a meme/copypasta/reference means you're not at fault for repeating them? as if any of this is okay? it doesn't work like that. why is the hatred and disrespect of black people acceptable background noise for you? why do you find it funny?
i also find it equally frustrating and funny that i so often get feedback on here to the tune of “this is dangerous rhetoric and you’re litcherally going to be responsible for the deaths of a bazillion people!!!!!!!!!” for saying that suicidal people shouldn’t be sent to the torture chamber after opening up about their suicidal thoughts
i get so many kneejerk reactionary responses over talking about experiences that are just another tuesday for me. and i know that’s a product of suicide being a an extremely taboo subject but i really do wish people would have some decorum and not act like the world is going to end because some random person on tumblr.com is a little more than outspoken about the revolving door of trauma they’ve endured after listening to the blanket advice of “get professional help if you’re suicidal”
every time i make a post on here talking about suicide, whether that is a reflection on the concept of suicide itself, demanding humane treatment for suicidal people, or (gasp) talking candidly about my own suicidal thoughts, this is coming from a place of having experienced suicidality for many many MANY years and learning from that experience that i cannot “reach out for help #988” about it. reaching out for support, trusting professionals, etc inevitably ends in me strapped to a stretcher in an emergency room begging an authority figure to show me mercy. the mental health system does NOT like when you’re suicidal, not out of compassion for you and your suffering, but because you’re a liability. and when you’re suicidal nearly every day of your life for 16 years, you learn that your options are either to shut the fuck up about how bad you’re hurting or find workarounds to avoid being incarcerated again. and my workaround is to talk about it here, where i’ll maybe get 5% more compassion than i would in-person or anywhere else on the internet. but that still comes at the cost of the smartest people in the world reading my posts and demanding i shut the fuck up anyways and seek professional help, as if i haven’t tried that hundreds if not thousands of times already
the journal factory has not exploded, i actively choose to post my unfiltered thoughts on here in hopes to get some sort of compassionate feedback because i’m holding two truths at once: that mental healthcare is not a safe option for me, AND i hurt really badly every day and can’t do this alone. i need support. and that comes at the cost of people calling my thoughts dangerous to other people.
No I actually don't think empathy has a moral value and it's fucking weird that y'all assign people "good"/"bad" labels based on their ability to feel emotions. The fuck.
i feel like people still think accessibility and accommodation are favours bestowed upon others and not like a collective responsibility of everyone in society
I'd argue that pushing people to get a formal psych diagnosis that they don't want in order to make them "prove" they are actually struggling,, is actively damaging to that person's wellbeing- not "helping". Not just because you're pressuring them to do something that they don't want to do- which is controlling and paternalistic- but also because the system you're trying to get them to put themselves through is prone to harming everyone under it. If they don't need a diagnosis, they don't want one, or they feel that a diagnosis would damage their safety? Maybe don't encourage them to ignore all of that and do it anyways?
The mythical disabled person who is so disabled that everyone consistently supports and accommodates them without question is a straw man which only exists as a hypothetical for the political purpose of denying real disabled people care while still being able to argue that said care would be accessible to disabled people who "actually deserves it"
Content note: discussions of psych abuse, medical trauma, carcerality.
My experiences with psychiatry are by no means the worst, but the knock on impacts the system has had on me are significant.
I'm still fighting misdiagnoses.
I've repeatedly been labelled a hypochondriac by emergency services for physical health systems. I had to pay for private healthcare to access testing (and diagnosis- because what do you know, I had a physical disability that was disregarded as anxiety).
When I went catatonic and ended up in emergency services, the emergency services were convinced I must have tried to kill myself and that's why I couldn't move. They tested me for paracetamol overdose. What do you know, it came back negative, because they'd just projected onto me rather than listened to me and my carer when we said I hadn't taken anything. They assumed what was going on based on the psych diagnoses in my chart, and they were wrong. And I am beyond traumatised by that hospitalisation.
When I was rigid and unmoving and had to be handfed because my catatonia was so bad, and I spent hours at a time immobile and spasming, staff actively ignored me because "it's all in [his] head". Because my shit psychiatrist had offhandedly said I may have FND and that ended up in my notes too.
The reason my catatonia got as bad as it did was because my psychiatrist took me off my antipsychotics. I was already displaying symptoms of catatonia, but I wasn't diagnosed or recognised formally as psychotic. Instead they took me off the medication that was keeping me vaguely functional and watched me decline. (By "watched" I mean they say back and did nothing and ignored me).
I was severely and chronically suicidal for years and was never offered proper supports. My choices were medications that didn't properly work on me, badly run group CBT, or wait until I got so unwell that I had to be hospitalised.
And so so much more. I had a really uncomfortable relationship with my primary MH worker, especially where incidences where I opened up were made into more sexual conversations than I intended. The lines felt very blurry for me as a result. He treated me very badly at times and treated me as needlessly aggressive and vindictive, rather than someone highly traumatised with lacking prosocial emotions as a result. A lot of victim blamey bullshit. Etc etc.
As a result of all this, I am highly avoidant of healthcare services. I see a private psych as infrequently as possible just so I can access the right medication (which has taken years of tweaking to perfect the cocktail). I'm terrified of MH workers. I can't see them in a positive light, no matter how sweet they may be on an individual level. I'm angry. And rightfully so. I want nothing more than to see psych wards burnt down and the people I met inside let free. I have the weight of the psych ward walls carried with me. I cannot forget the stories I've heard and seen.
And this is not an uncommon sort of story from a mad psych survivor/(ex) patient. The service I was under routinely and continually let down its patients in life threatening and fatal ways. And that was the *norm*, not an outlier. Psychiatry is an unscientific, carceral and abusive system. Mad people deserve so much better. We deserve access to all the care we need, without the paternalism and cruelty and surveillance and so much more horror.
i think it was kind of a major failing to frame the self diagnosis issue around whether it's "valid" or not rather than the fact that unless an official diagnosis is necessary for you to access actually beneficial pharmaceuticals/treatment, accomodations or disability benefits, you should actively avoid on-paper diagnosis for your basic safety and access to care
I don't like it when people are trying to (even sympathetically) explain why teenagers can sometimes have emotional volatility as "well they're just biologically stupid and angry and bad because of their hormones and underdeveloped brain" with no mention to be found of the fact they're also still trapped in an incredibly oppressive environment 24/7.
working 12+ hour days for school without pay or the right to "switch jobs" to something better, often working a real job on top of that, still the legal property of their parents, can't even dye their own hair or use their own name or have a door to their own room in many many cases. yeah I would be at the end of my rope too, especially when dealing with the adults in my life who are enacting and/or facilitating the abuse! it feels pretty glaring to ignore this dynamic when talking about the strained emotional capacity of teenagers. did you forget? what it was like to not have the right to your own life yet? to be hurt 24/7? and then to have your (extremely reasonable!!!) emotional reactions dismissed as pure hysteria?
purely anecdotally, I'm also not convinced that teenagers are "biologically" more prone to volatility in a meaningfully distinct way tbh. thinking back to the people I knew as a teen vs the people I've known in adulthood, in both demographics there have been people prone to lashing out, and people who were completely stoic, and the differences between the two groups have always seemed to be split not along age or hormonal makeup but along life experiences and who had better support structures. (but again this is anecdotal, and somewhat besides the point. because even if there is a non-pseudoscience biologically provable difference in teenagers' brains that make them universally moodier across the board, perhaps they could better manage their own moods if they weren't being crazy abused as an entire class with no legal ability to escape.)
not to drive the implicit point home too hard but I also can't think of literally any other instances where it's been good or helpful to say "[class of people] are all universally bad and stupid because of their small brains and crazy hormones". so idk why we think saying it about teenagers is the one exception to the rule. even if you're tacking on a "so this is why we have to be nice to them. because they can't help having small dumb brains." who does this rhetoric help?
"But what am I supposed to do for a person in a serious mental health crisis if I'm not supposed to involve the authorities?" You could offer to help them clean or do the dishes or do their laundry. Keep them company. Listen without judgment. Do some grocery shopping, maybe make them a nice meal. Check in on them. Offer distractions. Just show them you're there and that you care in whatever ways are accessible to you and relevant to them. If in doubt, ask and respect the answer. Hell, even just leaving them the fuck alone would be far more helpful than calling the cops on them! But people love to imagine a false dichotomy where you either send someone to the psych ward or don't do anything, when there are lots of ways to offer support to people in distress which doesn't include denying them autonomy
having free control over our endrocrine systems and the ability to change our genitals is currently inextricably tied to trans rights, and for good reason, but frankly i don't think it even needs to be. it should just be a matter of bodily autonomy, and that should be universal. if a cis dude wants tits and a pussy i think that would be fine. if cis women want a dick or nothing at all that should be allowed i think. people shouldn't need to be transgender to be allowed to change their bodies. free the nipple, enlarge the nipple, remove the nipple. whatever the fuck you want. i dont know if there's a term for this belief but i hold it very strongly. everybody biohack yourselves NOW
i am once again making a silly little zine abt covid safety but this time it is very unserious and not educational at all so if ur new here and dont know what the Heck i am on about. here's a place to start!
id:
slide 1:
a photo of the front cover of a black & white printed zine held up in front of a quilt in the background. top text of the zine cover reads: "reasons I love wearing my mask in public" with bottom text in parentheses: "besides the on-fire garbage can that is public health these days." a cartoon drawing of Maria, a pale genderfluid person with a buzzcut and glasses, is winking and doing a peace sign. she is wearing a boat-style mask with a star mask chain and crayon earrings.
slide 2:
top text: "1: I haven't had a man tell me to smile in 6 years." Below is a drawing of Maria walking down the sidewalk wearing a black mask, a cat cropped t-shirt, patched jeans, & star earrings. They are carrying a Mitski tote bag and look unbothered with their eyes closed as a man who looks a lot like the distracted boyfriend meme holds up a finger as if he was about to speak, but just looks confused as his speech bubble reads "..." Bottom text: "I simply cannot go back."
slide 3:
Top text: "2: I don't have to make facial expressions." Below Maria is waving and wearing a polo shirt, blank face emoji earrings, & an apron that says "JOB" with a name tag attached. Maria stares blankly behind her mask. Bottom text: "autism wins!"
slide 4:
Top text: "3: I can sing to myself on walks without being spotted by traffic." Below is Maria strolling down the sidewalk with cars in the background, wearing a mask, a baseball cap, and a Phantom of the Opera t-shirt. Maria has a speech bubble of floaty text singing "aangel of muuusic" with music notes floating around.
slide 5:
Top text: "4: mask chains!" below is a boat-style mask with a mask chain made of letter beads that spell "yippee." Bottom text: "another layer of accessory-maxxing."
slide 6:
Top text: "5: adds to my aura of being the mysterious and unknowable coworker." Below Maria stands in their job apron with a black mask & mushroom earrings surrounded by question marks. Text around Maria reads "what do they look like??" "we are literally on the clock!!" "wouldn't you like to know weatherboy!!"
slide 7:
Top text: "6: nobody knows I'm eating fruit snacks." Below is Maria with her mask on wearing strawberry earrings looking nonchalant as text points to her saying "maria acting normal." In the bottom left corner we see through the mask like an x-ray showing Maria chewing as she holds a scooby-doo gummy. Text pointing to this drawing reads "the REAL maria."
slide 8:
Back cover of the zine shows Maria shrugging wearing a striped shirt, overalls with a heart patch on the front, and worm earrings. Top text: "of course none of these things are more important than keeping you & your community safe from preventable illnesses but if for some wild reason you don't care about that. this is everything the government doesn't want you to know!!" Below is the instagram logo and Maria's handle: @maria.therese.art
Not to mention leftists who take direct action are substantially likely to be disabled via state violence. Be that through incarceration, brutality at protests, mental trauma from harassment and targeted abuse, physical injury from going up against fascists (cops or otherwise)...
That's not even factoring in border violence, racist policing strategies (the police's whole schtick), the fight with state disability benefits, the current pandemic(s), psychiatric oppression, medical system discrimination (and the medical industrial complex in general).... Like. If you are (further) disabled by the state, that does tend to make you anti-state.
i love my black trans siblings, i love my indigenous trans siblings, i love my latine trans siblings, i love my arab trans siblings, i love my asian trans siblings, i love all of my trans siblings of color. yall are so important to our community <3
I really wish it was common knowledge that powerchair features like tilt in space, reclining backrests and elevating leg rests are medically necessary features rather than luxuries. Or failing that for people to just not comment on it when they see a mobility aid with a feature that they aren’t familiar with.
It would be great if I could reposition, relieve pressure and pain and help my body tolerate being out of bed without someone feeling the need to make a comment about how “it’s not bedtime yet” or “I wish I could relax like that whenever I wanted”
