#this is saneism

[thisis--ableism]

I mention to a woman at the pet store that my service dog in training is for autism and schizophrenia.

"Can I tell you a secret?"

"Uh, sure..."

She leans in. "I think everyone's a little bit crazy sometimes."

Trip to store: ruined.

This is ableism and saneism.

[this-is-neuropsych-ableism]

It annoys me so much when Google suggests "Pop psychology articles" to me.

I do not fucking wanna see some bullshit like "psychopaths/narcissists are around us. How to recognise them?? Look at these [X number] traits!!!" And all of those traits are just abusive behaviour.

Stop...

This is neuropsych ableism (specifically cluster b saneism.)

[the-absent-minded-sys]

I dont know if im overthinking but this email sounds ableist

[this-is-physi-sensory-ableism]

this blog means the world to me. genuinely. i just found it but i can't believe it exists. i have always felt "too complicated" intersectionally to exist. and i come here and i see everyone else complaining too. i hope it's acceptable that i go mask off and just scream for a second, because i feel like maybe people here can relate to me even a little. because i relate back to them. this is long and poorly written, so thank you for reading it anyway if you do.

this contains ableist language, and descriptions of ableism, as well as mentions of child abuse, human trafficking and trauma. please take care. i apologize if it comes across as ableist itself, i know i have internalized a lot over my many years, and though i AM intending some of it, i mean no disparagement to anyone else.

i get called a zombie a lot, partially because i have that vacant expression that those of us dissociative/sociopathic/medicated/psychotic + schizospec/autism spec/chronic pain ETC. will know intimately. that "incorrect face" because you just don't have an expression to show, can't feign one, or are hiding / detached / too burnt out to have one. that "resting bitch face" or "sociopath eyes" or "blank slate" face.

i am also called zombie, partially because i am "slow". i move carefully. i think for a long time. because of my extreme dissociation, i often don't notice people trying to get my attention, asking me questions, talking to or about me. it takes me months to process that someone insulted me "subtly", or was flirting with me, or was trying to be sarcastic or make a joke.

but people also call me a zombie because of the way i move.

people /ALSO/ LITERALLY SAY "why is it moving like that haha ew." (HELLO ANON! I SEE YOU OUT HERE!)

people mock me for shuffling, twitching, stumbling, jerking, limping, staggering, wobbling, etc. i have fairly extensive! brain damage. i have poor motor skills. my spine is shaped like a Z. i also have a connective tissue disorder, so my joints are hideous and misshapen. (i LOVE how odd i look, my strange shapes and pointed edges, and ALL of my characters look like me, despite the constant comments about how WRONG my anatomy is. i look like Me.)

people gag at me, both seriously and as a "joke". they genuinely tell me "watching you move is nauseating" or "i feel like i could puke" or "that looks like it hurts". people ask if i am drunk or high or ASSUME i am drunk or high. even if i WAS drunk or high, shut up!

i use a wheelchair. suddenly i can walk. "well i saw you walking" you called me gimp/lame/cripple. you made hunchback-of-notre-dam jokes. zombie. drunkard. am i disabled or not? can i walk or not? am i entitled to more mobility and more comfort even if it makes me a visible target to you? i thought you were tired of watching me move? doesn't this help us both? aren't you tired of giving a shit about inconsequential existences that differ from your own?

i am tired of being seen as something that isn't alive, doesn't think, doesn't feel. i am tired of being categorized that way, because if it isn't alive, or thinking, or feeling, it doesn't have wants or needs. and as a victim of extreme abuse, i already have no wants or needs. people are reinforcing the beaten-in rhetoric of my traffickers, resolidifying decades of ingrained "you are not a person, you are an object." and they're not doing it to sexually abuse and extort a child, they're doing it because they see disabled people as subhuman creatures, but it reactivates that old wound just the same. they see me as slow, or gross, or weird, and suddenly it's justifiable to deny me basic tenets of Being just because you (vague, general) don't think disabled people have interiority. it's abuse. it would be abuse without my prior history of abuse, but i see it for what it is. you (vague, general again) enjoy abusing disabled people , or you (/V+G) enjoy abusing and need what is seen as an acceptable target.

i come online. i am desperate. human connection staves the worsening of many states of deterioration, i know this, i crave it. in spite of my lack of sociability, my body craves it like it craves water. i want to see people like me. i want friends. community. i want to belong somewhere, maybe even with someone/s. i see hate. endless arguments. who is/isn't Properly Validated as Being Correctly. who is/isn't Allowed To. who is/isn't Real. i disintegrate, slowly degrading, like a film reel rotting in the sunshine.

i am seen as "stolen valour", not Really Autistic - who can tell if I'm that way because i am autistic, or if it's the brain damage, or if i am stunted by my trauma. i am sociopathic, or just dissociative. i am apathetic, but logically understand empathy in a way that makes people read me as deeply unsympathetic, or hyper empathic. AND I DON'T CARE.i just want to be Allowed to BE! i don't want to be a case study or a label. i want to Be a Being with Experiences! i crave understanding and compassion! but i am told i am a disgusting example of an imperfect survivor, i am a childish autist who makes other autistic people look bad, i am the perma-drunk that speaks slowly and carefully so that i don't slur my words and get called worse. and then i get called worse anyway.

my connective tissue disorder fucked up my vascular system and my skin, but even to other disabled people, people with EDS "aren't really disabled". my spine is disintegrating because of lack of structural integrity. my body is literally falling apart. my organs are at risk to detach. we are disabled. you are not going to help by cursing someone you see as "less disabled" than you. my skull is a ticking time bomb because of the impact of EDS on my vascular system. i can see it behind my eye, that dark shadow in my brain. and even hypermobile EDS folks are my kindred, because of their own struggles. many "able bodied" people complain about overextending themselves and i am able to have conversations with them where they empathize with me due to their own hyper-mobility causing pain for them in their lives.

it destroys me to come online and see vitriolic hatred from other "cripplepunk" or "madpunk" people directed at other disabled people. you're just ableist. yes, even towards them. yes, and them too. you are closer to your neighbour with a bad back than you think, and the dualism of "abled vs disabled" is creating a mindset where you view other disabled people as "not disabled enough" and therefore "essentially abled". my "abled" neighbours are all disabled, though they themselves struggle to see it that way, BECAUSE OF SIMILAR RHETORIC THAT THEY HAVE INTERNALIZED. they all complain about things that make their life difficult that make it IMPOSSIBLE for me in my wheelchair, the cracked roads, no curb cuts, narrow stores shelves - all sorts of mild to moderate irritants for them, that they realize make it impossible for me to navigate. all because i go "hey, like me," and they LOOK at me and go "oh yeah, we aren't completely dissimilar just because you're sitting in wheels right now!" so again: you are ableist. yes, including against "that one (illness, symptom)" that you "don't think is (that bad, a disability, actually disabling)"! it's a huge spectra and we all fall in on different places. it's not a binary of yes/no, it's a buffet table of symptoms and traits.

reframe that to anything. general gender theory. intersexism. psychiatry. all of it, an argument about who [is/isn't] (what/why/how) and none of us better off for it. all of us hurting and lost. all of it pointlessly inflammatory and hostile. i am already inflammatory, my autoimmune system is already hostile towards me. i am tired. i wish to be comfortable.

and what Tom said about Sex a few days ago? MY LIFE! i enjoy the activity for physical sensation, for closeness, for excercise – but i am a personal insult for not orgasming, for behaving abnormally, for not being sexually desirable enough. i have no idea how to Be. i'm not allowed. i am hated. my genitalia is atypical, i don't cum often, which bruises egos, my sexual interests are strangely formed and disruptive, i often get triggered and behave abnormally. a partner screamed in my face that i was disgusting for "pretending to be a child", but i still don't understand what that means or what i did wrong. and i feel disgusting. i feel like i can't move through the world without Representing Evil, or Ableism, or Abuse. my body is a scar that reminds everyone of the wound.

my abusers worsened my body, my cognitive defects, my natural state of illness. they held me down in water of extreme temperatures, sometimes in and out of hot/cold, until it stopped hurting and started phantom hurting constantly instead. they put me in shoes too small, stunting my already poorly formed legs and feet. they did worse, things i don't describe to anyone anymore, because it makes seasoned psychiatrists with decades of experience vomit into their office waste bins and send me away again, too extreme, "beyond our skill sets". i vibrate with the resonance of strikes long past, and everyone is unsettled by it, and i just want it all to stop, to go away. it is already So Much to be disabled, let alone traumatized, dissociative, intersex, on and on; my self is split into reasons to Deperson me. someone may accept me for being intersex but not disabled, or disabled but not traumatized, or traumatized but not queer, or or or. i just want to Be.

i have reclaimed it/its. i have reclaimed zombie, seeing as i am one. i have taken up all the words they use for me, and then get we called ableist for describing itself as "spastic" (literally am, and have been called that for over two decades) or "delayed" (literally am, give me time to think. i wish i had a loading wheel, YOUR COMPUTER IS THINKING!) ETC. i am not Allowed to have language, it exists only punitively to shape me as Less Than, to signify to others that it is acceptable to abuse me. even Community Words that should signify me to the In Group, the in-group thinks i am abhorrent.

it doesn't matter what i do, everyone hates me and i am not allowed to exist.

so thanks for your blog. it feels good. i feel at home somewhat. my heart aches with the weight of it all. i am grateful to everyone who has shared so far. thank you all. i'm sorry this was so heavily. i have been weighed down by the need to cry, but i struggle to do so. this helps. a lot. i have been teetering on the brink and finding this just now helped. i need to talk, but i don't know anyone. and i don't know how to. and it hurts. badly.

so if you're like me, if you feel disconnected from everyone and everything, if you're so angry and full of hate that it makes you "difficult", if people refuse your interiority, if people call you ugly words. i see you. and i believe you, okay? and i love you. you don't know me but i promise i love you anyway. it sounds trite from an anonymous stranger but i see myself as the big brother to the world (similar to Public Universal Friend) and your big brother loves you, despite his own short comings, and because of your own.

and i need you to know that if you are externalizing your hatred onto other people, you are first & foremost telling yourself that it isn't okay to be that way. you are hurting yourself. you are denying yourself the right to Just Be as you are. that mindset will only make you hate yourself more. and i know that it's hard to let go of what other people have reinforced, that you, or anyone else, is Lesser Than for any reason. but you're not. you're not Lesser Than for your skin, your eyes, your teeth, your brain, your weight, your height, your soul, your multitudes, your limbs, your wants, or your lack thereof. nobody else is either. we all just Are. it's neutral to Be. actions are harmful, but can be perpetuated by anyone, because there is no Type Of being that Inherently Is. we all just Are. it's neutral. you're neutral. the way you are is just the way you are. so is everyone else. you need to accept yourself, and them, because there isn't a way forward that can coexist with dissecting people into parts to praise or discard. thanks for reading & please drink some water.

[PT: this contains ableist language, and descriptions of ableism, as well as mentions of child abuse, human trafficking and trauma. please take care. i apologize if it comes across as ableist itself, i know i have internalized a lot over my many years, and though i AM intending some of it, i mean no disparagement to anyone else.]

This is physisensory ableism and neuropsych ableism.

You deserve better than the way you are treated.

[thisis--ableism]

“youre ableist; cluster B discrimination isnt real, theyre inherently a priviledge class. I suggest eat lead abuse apologist”

Real genuine dm I got. I have no idea how someone comes to this conclusion

What the.... wow. This is ableism and this is Cluster B Saneism. @this-is-cluster-b-saneism

[this-is-neuropsych-ableism]

i dont know how to explain this without sounding like an asshole

i have factitious disorder/munchausen syndrome. which. understandably makes a lot of people uncomfortable. its a condition that people attach Big Evil to because, wow, lying and hurting oneself for attention=selfish asshole-ness. its not their fault. media tells people that.

but fuck, i wish i could take about the ableism i receive for this condition without being told “well if you weren’t Evil Bad Selfish Person you wouldn’t do this!”

honey!!! its a fucking trauma response!!! i developed this because i was a scared little kid who couldnt get help from my parents and teachers unless i was literally sick/hurt. call me evil, and youre calling that little kid evil too.

for example, i suffered permanent damage from something i had done to myself at a very, very dark time in my life for attention. but i cant complain about pain, or enter disability spaces with honesty, without multiple people saying im a poser and bad person.

i fucking get it!! but thats the point!! im sick in the head!!

sorry. sorry. im just pissed off.

This is neuropsych ableism.

People with factitious disorder don't deserve ableism. They are not evil or selfish - they are mentally ill and deserve kindness.

People should not be excused for being ableist towards you. Your disorder is no less valid than any other.

[this-is-neuropsych-ableism]

Neuropsych ableism: a schizophrenic person who advocates for literally any political movement will inevitably be used as a gotcha to prove that this political movement is nonsensical. "A schizophrenic right-winger? Fork found in the kitchen". "A schizophrenic transgender person? Of course you would be, you're delusional". And when you shut up so you don't make your political movement look bad and focus on enjoying life instead, people call you a "bluey adult" and complain about how childish and irresponsible you are.

This is neuropsych ableism, specifically anti-schizospec.

(Also, there's nothing wrong with enjoying shows created to cater towards children, and it is ableist, ageist, and infantilizing of people to constantly use it as an insult!)

[thisis--ableism]

If only people replace their judgemental with sympathy, instead if saying "that's crazy" or "he's insane", we can say "that sounds so scary" or "I have no idea what he's going through" two seconds is all it takes to replay a sentence before you say it, if you are just autopilot and saying filler words at least consider the implications of certain words.

Neurotypicals always berate us for "not reading into things" but they just blindly repeat the same bigoted phrases rather than trying to make an actual human connection. They focus so much on invisible implication or exaggerations that's they don't even realise they are talking about real humans who have to live too.

This is saneism, which is a subtype of ableism. I agree — the world could definitely be more kind.