Hey guys, I made this picture on my DeviantArt (if you’re on DA, my user is NotAPuzzlePiece).
Since I can’t find a share button on DA I should post it here too, and explain why I made is even though all it’s all pretty obvious to all of us.
Also, YamiDawn33 is a friend of mine IRL and on DA. And if you have a good caption for this send it to my inbox/messages and I’ll see if it’s okay or not here.
Content/Trigger Warning for mentions of ABA, Quiet Hands mentions, overall ableism/eugenics mentions, and me cussing like a sailor like normal, but with more passion.
And so, without further ado:
“Hey everybody (haha can I even say that?), I feel like I had to upload this for...reasons. To be specific, for some reason a lot of people are unfamiliar with the concept of ableism and what its effects are on disabled people. Be warned here, there will be lots of swearing/strong language, ranting, getting shit off of my chest, and reliving my past as my wrists shake when talk about this. I'm not sure if I should mark the art as 'mature' or not. I'm don't really know if this belongs in the "Macabre" art category: to me it's important but it's also an incredibly sensitive psychologically terrifying nightmare for me to talk about once I get into the details. Ableism: Discrimination on the basis of ability/disability. In theory this is illegal but in practice it happens in everything from housing to organ transplants and everything in between and beyond. Internalized Ableism: The way one internalizes themselves as inherently bad, broken, and depraved because of their disability despite knowing otherwise. The closest comparison I can get to is this is like internalized sexism, but with disability. I feel like this is incredibly important to talk about but because of the cure-culture that exists, disability is simply pushed to the side as an afterthought, if it even comes up in discussion at all. Able-bodied (AB): Not physically disabled in any way. Body function, height, etc. does not significantly deviate from the societal norms. Neurotypical (NT): Not mentally, intellectually, or developmentally disabled in any way. Brain function does not significantly deviate from the societal norms. And even when that happens, I can guarantee you that 99 times out of 100, it's the able-bodied neurotypical people who get to talk about disability, not the disabled person themselves. And by virtue of the AB NT not having any disability, they don't know what it's like living with one. And yet it's almost always the AB NTs who constantly speak over us, dehumanize us, and blatantly ignore our cries of agony despite the fact we are right in front of them. This goes for all issues. As an Autistic I always have this happen. It's not just Autistics. It's every disabled community. I only mention Autism because that's what I am. There are disabilities I don't have, I refuse to speak over them. Autism $peaks: Autism Speaks. The $ in "Speaks" was originally to reflect the fact they only spent 4% of their fund toward "resources" but now is meant to denote this eugenicist organization in general. Filicide: The killing of a child by their parent. Disabled people are statistically more prone to this, and violence in general (stats for Autistics: 6 times more likely to be sexually assaulted, 10 times more likely to be physically assaulted in general) When Autistic people say Autism $peaks is a hate-group, you should believe the Autistic. Not the neurotypical parent who happens to have an Autistic child. The child is Autistic, the parent is not, the Autistic will know better by virtue of being Autistic. When we say we either can only minimally our actions during meltdowns or literally can't control those actions, we literally can't. Most of us can't even remember what we said or did during meltdowns. When we say that the noise is too loud even though there are only six people in a room, you'd better believe it. If the lights are too dark or too bright, you'd better believe it. When we say our rocking and hand-flapping and tapping our feet in a certain way is our equivalent to facial expression, and it is used as much for joy as it is furiosity, I know for a fact it is because MY hand-flapping is EXTREMELY different depending on my mood. And yet the it's the neurotypicals that get listened to. A majority of them say we're broken, missing, Autism $peaks has literally made comparisons to Autism being like your kid was kidnapped, so many neurotypicals only defend stimming as a necessary evil, the use of functioning labels hurt us and yet neurotypicals continue to use them to defend shit like filicide. The lack of hand in the drawing, by the way, is on purpose. Have you heard of Quiet Hands? I've seen Autistic people go home from ABA therapy with bruised wrists and no ability to tell their parents because they won't give a rat's piss. I've heard the stories where a six-year old was flapping her hands in jot and her therapist fucking used TACKY GLUE to pin her hand to the desk and fucking HELD them there despite her SCREAMING and wanting to to stop. ABA therapy: Applied Behavioral Analysis. Non-ABA-ABA Therapy: A personal distinguishment I make between harmful therapies and non-harmful ones due to US insurance laws. True ABA therapy: A personal distinguishment I make between harmful therapies and non-harmful ones due to US insurance laws. Why do you think that true ABA therapists don't let the child's parents back in their little "offices"? I was in a fucking "behavior" school, called Hillcrest Family Services, and if I even so much as read a book under my desk I was thrown into an isolation room by a police officer, even though we were being taught turtles are cold-blooded and I knew that when I was THREE YEARS OLD. Those dickhead staff just assumed that we were incapable of doing anything at or even three grade below our grade level. And before you even FUCKING TRY TO DEFEND ABA the shut the HELL UP and sit. Your. ASS. DOWN. NOW. If all of THAT hasn't convinced you, then what does that say about you? Would you be encouraging assault and filicide if I was talking about ABA therapy for depsression? No, you wouldn't. And if you think this is all illegal, oh no you are SOOOOO fucking wrong. First off, ABA therapy is technically/legally the ONLY therapy that is insured in the US, so many non-ABA therapies decide to go under this label specifically for that and that alone. Thus my distinction between what I call non-ABA-ABA therapy and true ABA therapy has arisen. Secondly, one of the founders of true ABA therapy, Ivar Lovaas, also created gay conversion camps. Yes, you heard me right, the guy who co-founded true ABA therapy also founded gay conversion camps and yet was somehow able to defend ABA's torturous existence. ... ... ... And...if you've read through all of that I'm incredibly shocked and incredibly grateful. I don't mean to say all neurotypicals do this to us, I'm not trying to be mean or hateful or anything it's just. ... I'm aware that there are allies out there, but out of all of my interactions with neurotypicals, I've had about three people I know to be neurotypical who have been kind to me on a regular basis (somewhat shameless shoutout here to YamiDawn33 for being an awesome friend and a decent human being). I simply don't know what to do sometimes because, as you can see, the fact I have to wear a mask these days, the fact that I actually had it better than other disabled people even as I was being dragged into isolation rooms, that being a verbal Autistic and knowing non-verbal Autistics are falsely perceived to be "unintelligent" and "lesser" and yet I have the privilege to be an advocate? It makes me feel like a fraud, a fake, a sell-out. At the same time I feel equally as broken, missing, invisible, chained.... I'm not free until all of us are free and it just keeps following me and haunting me like something, like a ghost, its some inescapable leash, a cage, I don't know how to describe it, it's a lot of things. Seriously. Thanks so much for listening to this nineteen-year old sophomore university student talk about social justice and literal Hell, it means a lot to me.”