#mod rowlf explains

[yourfavehatesautismspeaks]

Coronavirus

The world right now seems to be in a very precarious situation. The SARS-COV-2 (nCOV/Covid-19) outbreak has been labelled a pandemic. The NBA has suspended its season after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the virus. As has Juventus player Daniele Rugani. Some sports games are being played without spectators whereas others have been delayed or outright cancelled. Coachella has been postponed and so has the new James Bond film. Donald Trump has issued a severely confusing travel ban or maybe not. The UK is moving past phase 1 and into phase 2 of dealing with the outbreak following an emergency COBRA meeting set to take place later today. Numerous high level officials are being tested and diagnosed. The UK’s health minister, in a shocking twist of irony, has the virus. Schools are being cancelled and millions of people are being quarantined. Stock markets are crashing, tourism is falling, airlines are failing, and we’re standing on the brink of a new world recession. And perhaps most heartbreakingly, actor Tom Hanks has also tested positive for the virus.

If you think all of that sounds scary, then I agree with you. It does sound scary. If you look at the numbers, they also look scary.

But it’s important now, more than ever, not to panic. Because panic buying is how we start accidentally buying too much toilet paper, for example. That’s not something we need. But getting hand sanitisers and toilet roll from a claw machine might be. As long as the joystick and buttons are wiped down between turns.

The reason this is happening is because there is a lot of misinformation being spread on the internet. And the media are not adhering to the oath they’ve taken to only provide people with the truth. This is not helping anyone and if anything, is only causing further spread of the virus. When I was a journalism student, I took this oath and now I’m going to give you some Coronavirus facts.

Those who are more likely to be infected with Covid-19 and suffer more severe cases are those with preexisting conditions such as diabetes, asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, HIV/AIDS, cancer, heart disease, cardiovascular disease or otherwise compromised immune systems as well as those over the age of 70. If none of this applies to you, please still be wary.

Over 80% of all reported cases are mild.

It’s important to practice good hygiene, not touch your face and wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water or a high alcohol content hand sanitiser to protect not just yourself, but your parents, grandparents and those around you with preexisting conditions.

Other ways to prevent catching or spreading the virus include coughing or sneezing into a tissue and discarding it, and coughing or sneezing into your elbow.

And an interesting fact, if you joke morbidly like me, that you have the Coronavirus when you have a cold, then you might not be lying because coronaviruses are one of a few different viruses that cause the common cold.

And now for some good Coronavirus news. It’s looking like life is ever so slowly returning to normal in China, where the virus is believed to have peaked and the number of cases is dropping off. South Korea also believe their cases of the virus has peaked. Also, after a nearly two month closure, Shanghai Disneyland is finally beginning to operate again. Just the shops and restaurants for now, but the park is likely not to be too far behind.

If we all do the right things, this could peak soon for the rest of us. But until then, it’s going to get worse before it gets better so please do not panic, but instead be wary. We at YFHA$ will still be right here.

-Mod Rowlf

(Who is reposting this because there is no need at all to mention racism in the comments, come on people)

[yourfavehatesautismspeaks]

My fellow Brits

Last night was hard. I completely understand. It’s hard to know what to say the morning after something like this. I still feel sick myself. We’ve had nine years of Tory cuts, austerity and setting us against each other.

I understand the anger. The hurt. You just want to give in, curl yourself into a ball and listen to Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved on repeat-believe me, I’ve been there and done exactly that.

People voted Tory because they were brainwashed. A lot of people who voted Tory did so believing it was in the best interest of the country. The media told them lies. The BBC. Laura Kuennsberg, the chief political editor specifically. They heard a simple sound bite ‘get Brexit done’ and it was dripped to them during debates, press conferences and what interviews Boris Johnson actually did, you know, when he wasn’t too busy hiding from Andrew Neil in a fridge or stealing reporters’ mobile phones.

So have your cry. But whatever you do, keep that flame of hope alive. That’s what a lot of Tory voters were voting for. Hope. Change. Thinking that things would get better. Some of these people may be your friends or your relatives. When they become disillusioned with what they voted for, don’t get angry. Don’t argue. Don’t say ‘you deserve what you voted for’. Instead, show them the better way. Lead them to Labour, to the SNP, to Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats.

That way, we can be in a position of real change the next time around. Remember, it’s happened before when Tony Blair got in. It can happen again. This is not the end of the world. The world will continue to spin and the sun will rise just as it always will. What happens now is that this government needs to be held to account. The media needs to be held to account. Wasting time arguing with your friends for not voting the same way you did is exactly what the Tories want to do to divide us. Fight them until you can’t anymore and then just keep fighting until Scotland gets independence or Keir Starmer or Becky Long Bailey (or whoever the next Labour leader is going to be) gets into Number 10.

Stay alive and remember the positives in this election; the SNP won their most seats ever, Labour still had more votes than they did under Ed Milliband, more nationalists than unionists got in in Northern Ireland, Jo Swinson lost her seat and more people voted for left wing parties than they did right wing which, unfortunately, is where the vote share went. In my constituency, a Tory won with nearly 13,000 votes. But the two left wing parties combined had over 21,000 votes. That has to count for something. There’s more of us than there are of the Tories.

Keep fighting inequality. Keep fighting for your rights. And keep fighting the Tories. I know I will. So you all just bend down, pick up any weapon you can and twat the fuckery out of them.

-Mod Rowlf.

(This can also apply to Americans and Trump. We all need to stand together. The future depends on it.)

[yourfavehatesautismspeaks]

Everyone who lives in the UK!

Tonight is your final deadline to register vote. Please do it. I don’t care who you vote for, just register to vote. Because at 23:59 (11:59 pm) on the 26th of November (tonight at time of writing) that’s the deadline. No more registering to vote.

Students, please register to vote at your university and your home constituencies, but remember you can only vote once.

Autistic people have a voice in this election. Use it.

Register to vote

Get on the electoral register so you can vote in elections and referendums.

-Mod Rowlf

[yourfavehatesautismspeaks]

just wondering in your bio thing it says that transmeds shouldn't interact, what do you mean by that term?

Transmed is short for transmedicalist. People who believe you need dysphoria to be trans and don’t believe in nonbinary identities.

We believe that dysphoria is vaguely defined and it is hard to know whether that’s what you’re experiencing unless you start to transition. You don’t need dysphoria to be trans, you just need to have a sense of ‘something feels wrong here with my gender’ but you definitely don’t need to be upset about it every second of the day, which is what transmeds claim. Like I’m sorry that’s their experience, but it’s not everybody’s and to pretend it is is blatant erasure.

They call trans people who, don’t experience dysphoria (or don’t know they experience dysphoria) ‘transtrenders’. And they have a weird belief that they’re going to take up all the hormone replacement therapy before ‘genuine trans people’ can have it. Like... more can be made. Also, HRT is prescribed to menopausal women and ageing men. Aren’t they going to take all the hormone therapy before trans people can have it?

And isn’t it better for someone to identify as trans or nonbinary and then realise that they’re actually more comfortable being cis? Because it has nothing to do with being a ‘trender’, and everything to do with the fact that exploring gender and sexuality is just something we all do as teenagers.

In short, transmeds/truscum gatekeeping being trans and believe that being trans is and should be a medical condition. No two trans peoples’ experiences are going to be the same. And being trans is not and should not be a medical condition.

Oh and cis-transmeds? They’re just transphobes.

-Mod Rowlf (who is nonbinary)

[yourfavehatesautismspeaks]

Alright folks, pull up a chair because Mod Rowlf is gonna teach y’all the history behind the word ‘Queer’.

In the 1500s, it was used to mean ‘peculiar’ and technically still does because it is actually still used in this context; ‘I feel a bit queer’, ‘snow in September? How queer’. It wasn’t used to mean ‘homosexual’ until 1894 and that first usage of it was by The Marquess of Queensbury. But it still didn’t catch on as a word to mean ‘homosexual’ until twenty years later, and even then that was by the homosexuals themselves. It wouldn’t be until forty one years after that that the dictionaries noted that ‘queer’ was slang for ‘homosexual’ and even then it didn’t note usage as derogatory.

But then it started being used in a derogatory way. Just like gay. Just like lesbian. And just like gay and lesbian, it got reclaimed. Well, partially reclaimed. So just like gay* and just like lesbian then.

How did this happen then?

Well, in the late 1980s, a group of gay people got super angry at the AIDS crisis and the homophobia it was causing (thanks Reagan!) and they called themselves Queer Nation. They handed out leafets at Pride called ‘Queers Read This’ that detailed that they were going to reclaim the word queer. And I’ll admit I had to Google this bit, but their exact words in this leaflet were;

‘Do we really have to use that word? It’s trouble. Every gay person has his or her own take on it. For some it means strange and eccentric and kind of mysterious. That’s okay, we like that. But some girls and boys don’t. They think they’re more normal than Strange. And for others ‘queer’ conjures up these awful memories of adolescent suffering. Queer. It’s forcibly bittersweet and quaint at best. Weakening and painful at worst. Couldn’t we just use ‘gay’ instead? It’s a much brighter word and isn’t it synonymous with ‘happy’? When will you militants grow up and get over the novelty of being different?

Why Queer?

Well yes, ‘gay’ is great. It has its place. But when lots of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning, they feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer. Using ‘queer’ is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world. It’s a way of telling ourselves we don’t have to be witty and charming people who keep our lives discreet and marginalised in the straight world. We use queer as gay men loving lesbians and lesbians loving being queer. Queer, unlike GAY doesn’t mean MALE. And when spoken to other gays and lesbians it’s a way of suggesting we close ranks and forget (temporarily) our individual differences because we face a more insidious common enemy. Yes QUEER can be a rough word, but it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can steal from the homophobe’s hands and use against him.’

(Here’s the source)

This is the same group that chanted ‘We’re here! We’re Queer! Get used to it!’ and ‘Two! Four! Six! Eight! Do you know your kids are straight?’

That was back in 1990. But reclaimation actually started in the 1980s by queer people of colour. So the word queer was actually being used to describe the LGBT community before the letters LGBT were given to the community. Oh and incidentally the letter Q stands for ‘queer’.

The word ‘queer’ has been used in academia, in such subjects as ‘queer arts’, ‘queer studies’, ‘queer history’, ‘queer theory’ and others. It appeared in titles of mainstream TV shows in the 00s, Queer as Folk, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and its Netflix reboot, Queer Eye.

Queer migration is the term used for LGBT people escaping persecution and discrimination due to their orientation or gender.

So why might someone identify as queer? Well...

Reclaimation. They want to reclaim the word that was used to hurt them or they want to use it as it has largely been reclaimed.

They don’t want to tell someone they’re bisexual or lesbian or genderfluid, but they want to say they’re part of the LGBT community so it’s just easier to say they’re queer. Or it’s nobody’s business how they identify.

They might fall under more than one identity. It’s a lot easier to say ‘I’m queer’ than it is to say ‘I’m a nonbinary transgender homoromantic asexual who presents as female’.

Queer is literally easier to say and write than LGBTTQQIAPP2SCNBAGNC and all the other letters that get added on all the time. I’m still not sure of all the letters tbh. Granted, it’s usually just LGBT, LGBT+ or LGBTQIA at a push, but still. I’m not sure how to feel about QUILTBAG or MOGAI. But Queer is inclusive.

They just want to identify as queer because literally why not?

So why is Mod Rowlf writing this, which has nothing to do with autism or Autism Speaks? Well, because we’ve had some recent hate on our Pride Month posts and our use of ‘Queerphobe’ and a suggestion to call it ‘homophobia’ instead of ‘queerphobia’.

Why did we use the term ‘queerphobia?’

Because we used 30 different Pride Flags and biphobia is different to aphobia which is different to transphobia which is different to panphobia which is different to enbyphobia which are all different to homophobia. Nobody within the LGBT community faces the same challenges. An abled rich black gay man would face different challenges to an autistic working class Asian lesbian and they would face different challenges than a straight white homeless transgender amputee. Sure classism, racism and ableism come into play, but that’s the idea. Everyone’s different and you can’t label all these people’s struggles as ‘homophobia’. It’s disingenuous and harmful.

Nobody’s saying that anyone has to be okay with ‘queer’, but seriously just accept that people use ‘queer’ as an identity to describe themselves and respect their identity rather than policing it because ‘I don’t like’. You don’t think we get enough of that from outside the community, we don’t need it happening from within either.

*if you think gay still isn’t used as a slur, then you’re ignoring all the uses of ‘oh that’s so gay!’ and if you don’t see it, then go into any popular YouTube video and look in the comments section.