Like Doofenschmirtz Evil Incorporated

Billie Actually anticapitalist but there’s tax benefits to being incorporated. What’s more evil than being a business though? They/them

[mint-swirl]

you’re mommy’s medium-sized twenty-seven year old. because that’s the age that you are that it says on your official governmental paperwork. be the same age for mommy. #agestagnation #sameage #nothingplay

[t4timekeeper]

WE NEED TO START TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT BIGENDERISM

[t4timekeeper]

seeing people say “sometimes i wish i was a guy but i still want to be a girl too” or vice versa and it’s like YOU CAN!!! YOU CAN DO THAT!!!! TAKE MY HAND

[creekfiend]

I understand that there is discussion of masking by autistic people that is much more honest and in-depth, but so much of the stuff I see sort of leans on the assumption that masking is something one chooses to do in order to appear "normal"

In reality, I think the behavior pattern that we name as "masking" is the natural behavioral and psychological result of being consistently punished for attempting to acknowledge your own reality during formative developmental periods. And I'm not sure that "masking" is a clarifying word to use for this

[creekfiend]

OK OK OK, someone in the tags said that they don't know the degree to which they are masking, bc they don't know what is normal/expected and therefore have no way of knowing how much they're altering themselves to fit into that expectation (thank you for articulating that!!) and I think that clarified a lot for me about my problems with the framing of masking.

Because that method of trying to "unmask" will always fail, bc it hinges on the assumption that there is a core underlying Self that is being Covered Up with the mask.

In reality, one does not have a chance to develop a true "self" due to the circumstances of their development. this is broadly true for almost all humans (SHOW ME AN UNALTERED TRUE HUMAN SELF,) because of the heavily social nature of how our selfhood intersects with other people's perception of us, but in some people it is much more marked and detrimental than others. What I think is the issue at hand is not the Self, but rather the internal experience. The Self is a construction we build to understand ourselves as beings, and it is heavily informed by our understanding of our own experiencs. understanding of those experiences is the actual issue. Being able to identify and name the effects that moving thru the world have on you. And teasing out how those acknowledgements of one's internal experience have been punished out of us.

The "recovering from burnout as a high masking person" post does use this framework, but I think that referring to people whose sense of their own internal reality has been so warped and shattered that they have to completely learn from scratch as "high masking" is just not intuitive and that it communicates what is being discussed... Poorly. I understand that that is the language that is used by the community broadly rn, and I don't object to individual instances of its use, but I do think that we would be better served in these conversations by framing it differently than "masking"

[grison-in-space]

I also see people framing even the most basic social skills (things like "tolerating mild discomfort" and "avoiding offensive phrasing of desires") as masking. At a certain point I think we have to be aware that there is a degree of curtailing one's personal self expression inherent in existing within a society, and that autistic people are not the only people who have to be aware of societal norms and contort selves to exist within them as part of experiencing that society. The difference is of course in the degree of contortion required to fit neatly into the society, not the phenomenon of having to contort in the first place.

It bugs me! And I think it creates unnecessary friction among communities of people first discovering autism and is susceptible to a weird kind of reverse curb cut effect where unmasking (== "stretching out and de-contorting from the society in which you live into a more comfortable shape") is set aside as something Just For Autistics, as if there aren't lots of groups of people whose existence is policed and shaped and bonsai-trimmed into painfully stunted or twisted shapes. Which, of course there are, and not all of them are groups where a mental health framework is remotely appropriate (e.g. constraints on the acceptable behavior of black people especially in gendered contexts), so why are we framing so much advocacy this way?

[shamebats]

Trauma in the strict sense is not required for a young human being to suffer the loss of essence, the sense of oneness with all that is. Infants come into the world fully present and alive to every possibility, but they soon begin to shut down parts of themselves that their environment is unable to recognize or accept with love. As a consequence of that defensive shutdown, says the psychologist and spiritual teacher A.H. Almaas, one or more essential qualities such as love, joy, strength, courage or confidence may be suppressed. In its place, we experience a hole, a sense of empty deficiency. "People don't know that the hole, the sense of deficiency, is a symptom of a loss of something deeper, the loss of essence, which can be regained. They think the hole, the deficiency, is how they really are at the deepest level and that there is nothing beyond it. They think something is wrong with them, something is basically wrong." Such thoughts are not necessarily conscious but may take the form of unconscious beliefs. In either case, we develop behaviour patterns and emotional coping mechanisms to cover up the emptiness, mistakenly believing that the resulting traits represent our true "personality." Indeed, what we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it.

Excerpt from 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction' by Gabor Maté.

[creekfiend]

its interesting bc i would personally define this as cptsd. like that IS trauma to me. but then cptsd is not broadly recognized as a legitimate form of trauma by psychology authorities, so i understand why someone would frame this process as not inherently traumatic

[bipedal-lizard]

I'd be curious to read some newer things and see where Maté would make the split between distress and trauma now, vs when Hungry Ghosts was published in 2008. I haven't read, in particular, The Myth of Normal : Trauma, Illness &Healing in a Toxic Culture (2022); I have heard that in his discussion of "modern-day living," his definition of trauma/traumatic has shifted to encompass a lot more.

[shamebats]

The Myth of Normal is a must-read. He doesn't talk about autism directly, but the book is all about how trauma responses that helped us survive childhood (which is what masking is) end up causing all sorts of issues in adulthood.

The exploration of how repressing our feelings and authentic selves can negatively impact our health — to the point where we can be at high risk of developing chronic health conditions and even other illnesses, like cancer, and having worse outcomes — was really eye-opening for me. Since I'm trans and came out later in life exactly because for my entire childhood and well into my 20s, I essentially had an assortment of maladaptive coping mechanisms where my personality was supposed to be, and I also have a pretty severe incurable chronic illness.

In Realm of Hungry ghosts he was also, a lot of the time, already describing what is essentially cptsd — because he was working with hard drug addicts, the most likely to be severely traumatized population there is — and also disproportionately neurodivergent, he noticed that many of them were self-medicating their ADHD, which...the book was written in 2008. He was way ahead of what the state of medicine & psychiatry was back then. He doesn't name it, but if you know what it is, you can recognize it in every story, in every chapter.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I gotta say, everyone reading Dawkins for filth over the Claude thing is VERY funny.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

"People who believe in gods, spirits or a conscious universe are falling prey to a litany of common cognitive fallacies. Here's a book where I clearly outline how easy it is to misunderstand probability, intent and determination, and to reach these conclusions. Let me explain just how easy it is to mistakenly believe in concepts of magic or a conscious force in an unconscious world, and show how it is wrong. This book will be a worldwide bestseller that will get me, a famous biologist, recognised the world over by non-biologists, and will define the sort of person I am seen as forevermore."

"Also I spoke to this computer for three days and it is definitely a person."

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#very Arthur Conan Doyle of him

[heavenly67]

please protect our black dykes from evil🙏🏾

[aslutsdiiiary]

Me this weekend

[dailycatsblog]

[rooksacrifice]

Never not thinking about Star WARS vs Star TREK:

Anakin Skywalker is told he must release his emotional attachments to master the force and become a full Jedi, but can't let go of his emotional attachment to Padme. The fact that you're BLATANTLY meant to read this as romantic is literally the central conflict of the whole franchise.

Meanwhile: Spock is told he must release his emotional attachments to master logic and become a full Vulcan in the Kolinahr, but can't let go of his emotional attachment to Jim Kirk. You're not meant to read that as romantic, though. That's like totally a platonic friend thing to do.

[marithlizard]

(via bsky)

In case anyone hasn't heard, the cyclospora outbreak affecting tons of people in the US right now is coming from Taylor Farms produce. Best to stay away from bagged lettuce and prepared salads completely right now, but especially the ones mentioned in the screenshot:

Taylor Farms Earthbound Farms Little Salad Bar (Aldi) Marketside (Walmart) Kroger House Brand Target private label greens Costco salads and greens etc Trader Joe's chopped salad kits and fresh produce Fast food: McDonalds, Taco Bell, (Yum! Brands), Chipotle, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive Garden, Top Golf, Red Lobster, Burger King, etc.

This is not the first time I've heard about a Taylor Farms foodborne illness outbreak. I stopped eating their salads after reading a description of the conditions in their facilities. Doesn't sound like they've improved anything.

We need a fully funded and staffed FDA, and regulations with teeth - and that's exactly what we don't have under Trump. To make things worse, the CDC is no longer tracking these outbreaks. We're on our own.

[idunnit]

Friends, enemies or worse?

(redraw of my old art)

[naniiebimworks]

Ineffable wives

[redstonedust]

love wearing all black in public i hope no large gaseous heat emitting orb in the sky comes along and makes my day worse

[cloudabserk]

WARNING do NOT start reading books and comics or watching movies or looking at art!!! you will start wanting to create art yourself. or god forbid. writing.

[cambriancrew]

[halfabouros]

No but actually LMAO

[sa-x]

how it feels remembering charlie kirk got shot through the neck and died

[onlymagpie]

Pearl centric post

[lastoneout]

"I am not a vessel for your good intent" goes hard as a line from a disabled perspective. Abled people care so much more about being their idea of a good ally than they do actually being a good ally. They shove their good intent right down your throat and then act surprised when you tell them they're suffocating you.

[lastoneout]

[faggotvampires]

[ID: An image of a sign with a blue background and with a graphic of a stick figure in a wheelchair at the beginning, resembling disabled parking space signs. The text below the stick figure reads "I am not a vessel for your good intent." /ID]

[cherrydanish]

a picture that’s worth a thousand words