It’s April.
That means it’s “Autism Awareness Month,” a month created and sponsored by Autism Speaks.
Please, don’t support this month. Don’t wear a puzzle piece. Don’t “light it up blue.” Autism Speaks is a hate organization. Do not support them in any way.
Perhaps take this as an opportunity to promote Autism Acceptance Month, sponsored by the Autism Self-Advocacy Network. Listen to actual autistic people this month. Spread REAL knowledge about what autism is and how it affects those who have it.
Be a real ally for real people. Because we don’t want blue t shirts. We want acceptance.
Tag: ableism
Wanting to see people with disorders or disabilities being appreciated or loved or even happy is not ‘romanticizing’ their condition or precluding recovery. This does not prevent recovery, it aids it, and sometimes is the only thing that does. This is not unhealthy. This is valuing them/us and helping them/us and making them/us feel whole again. There is a difference. Please let us be appreciated and loved and happy because we deserve this, we need this.
EDIT: AND GUESS WHAT, sometimes recovery is impossible, and we still deserve to see ourselves being happy and loved and valued. We deserve all that and more, always.
a thing that will always baffle me about anti-self-dx sentiment is
diagnostic criteria aren’t kept in some Secret Vault of Psychiatry that only Worthy Medical Professionals can access with the Mystic Key of Diagnosis
the DSM is available online, and even if you don’t have access to it, you can look up any disorder on Wikipedia or Google and get diagnostic criteria for multiple associations as well as links to sites that have more information
self-dx isn’t taking an online quiz, and it isn’t describing yourself as OCD because you like to keep your room clean. it’s literally using the same diagnostic criteria medical professionals do to evaluate your own experiences and behavior.
Heya friendly reminder since it’s getting close to April
If you know someone who is autistic and love them dearly pls do NOT donate to autism speaks
If you care about autistic people at all do NOT donate to A$
If you do wanna donate tho to actually help autistic people, try ASAN (autistic self advocacy network) [autisticadvocacy.org/?theme=active]
Or Autism Women’s Network, or AASPIRE (doing actually useful research).
Hello! I am having a hard time explaining to able bodied people that it is not okay to cosplay people with disabilities. Could you link me to something that will help me better explain that this is not okay?
I don’t have any links I’m afraid, but I’m happy to talk about it as a disabled woman and a cosplayer myself.
It’s not quite as straight forward as ‘abled people cannot cosplay disabled people’, there isn’t inherently a problem with abled people cosplaying disabled characters, the problem is when the disability becomes part of the costume.
I also think this is a bigger issue in regards to physical disabilities (I am both physically and mentally disabled and I’m not trying to say that either group as privilege over the other, some issues affect one more, this is one of them), seeing able-bodied people using assistive tech as a ~prop~ really upsets me as a wheelchair user. My wheelchair is not an accessory, it is not part of a costume, it is an intrinsic part of my life, it’s something I cannot get by without and it is something that I face a lot of shit for.
When an able-bodied person uses a wheelchair like that it shows a complete lack of respect for disabled people and their experiences, disability is not something we can turn on and off when we feel like it, we don’t only get to use assistive tech when we’re trying to look good at a con, it’s really insensitive for able-bodied people to do that.
Also, if you’re hiring out the wheelchair, or you bought it from a charity store (which has happened) you’ve basically stolen that from a disabled person who needed it. I’ve been at a con where I went to hire a wheelchair out and they’d run out so I could barely do anything all day.
Cosplay should be fun for everyone, and I’m not trying to stop abled people cosplaying who they want, it’s just important to be aware of who you’re affecting when you ‘put on’ disability.
why are So Many practitioners/teachers of psychology and related fields neurotypical. you wanna talk fetishizing lets talk how many people get into psychology just because my Brain Problems are Fascinating
its funny bcs when the leading expert on bpd admitted that she has bpd other psychiatrists who are neurotypical suddenly became dedicated to discrediting her when previously they had agreed with her like thats how fuckin deep ableism goes
Her name is Marsha Linehan, the therapy program she designed for BPD is called dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) and is incredibly innovative and immensely helpful to so many people and is used to treat a variety of mental illnesses aside from BPD, and all of that is 100% accurate, other folks in the field started treating her like absolute shit after she “came out.”
I don’t care if you work with autistic people or have autistic relatives, YOU DO NOT GET TO TALK OVER AUTISTIC PEOPLE. If someone autistic says something about their experiences with autism, YOU DO NOT GET TO TALK OVER THEM. If you aren’t autistic, you do not get to say ‘erm, actually, I work with autistic people and…..’ if it contradicts something an autistic person says about autism. They know what it is like from the inside, and you don’t. This goes double if you are saying “{person} can’t be autistic because….’ since that usually leads to you acting as if you are the end-all be-all arbiter of who is autistic or not, and that is not your place. You do not get to police a community to which you do not belong.
Especially re headcanons – if someone headcanons a character as autistic, you do not have the right to say ‘actually they can’t be because they don’t fit this specific and narrow view I have of autism’, and yet, PEOPLE KEEP DOING THIS OR REBLOGGING IT WITHOUT COMMENT (*glares at fytortall *) Who is it hurting if someone says they headcanon a character as autistic and it makes them feel better? You are being a pedantic jerk and hurting people, and that is NOT OKAY. Shame on you.
(sorry for the caps but powers in a bucket why do people think this is okay to do?)
apparently this needs to be said but uh abusive behavior is not excusable, even if its caused by mental illness, like
i get that it can make you manipulative or want to lash out. i really do. but you need to apologize when you are called out for it, you cant excuse it by saying youre mentally ill, you cant accuse people of ableism when theyre really just saying “hey this isnt cool you should apologize for this”
there are ableist people who assume that mentally ill people are inherently abusive. but being expected to own up to your abusive actions is not ableist. being held responsible is not ableist. you are not completely free of any and all criticism
not every mentally ill person can recover and they still deserve respect and support
ntm recovery in and of itself is an incredibly nuanced concept based on using neurotypical thought processes and behavior as the ideal, and often forcibly making neurodivergent people be this specific way so to ease the Burden on Society that we apparently are
so having recovery be someone’s primary ableism/saneism rhetoric is an indication putting of neurotypicals ease and comfort over the different specific needs of mentally ill people (anxious people and psychotic people will “recover” differently for example), whether they know it or not
forcing all mentally ill people into one homogenized form of “recovery” just reflects how much folks don’t care about our actual wellbeing and how much they just want us to Start Acting Normal
Im sick of seeing the concept of the strive to recovery as the only representation of neurodivergent communitiesreblogging again to add,
even for people who have something they would like to “recover” from, in the sense of the disorder being gone, this kind of recovery is often not possible.
I want to keep my autism. If there was some sort of thing to make me not Autistic anymore I wouldn’t take it. My “recovery” in this case is actually the process of unlearning toxic views about autism. My “recovery” is relearning how to stim in public, learning how to be as myself, my visibly disabled self, instead of the fake NT self I create in self-defense.
But my depression? I get nothing good out of it. I’d love to take a drug and wake up the next day with it gone. But that’s not possible. That’s not me being defeatist, thats reality. My genetics and my hormones are screwed up, I can take medications and go to therapy to help with the symptoms but I will always have this disorder. My “recovery” is a constant process of working through the issues that I can and finding ways to make the things I can’t change hurt less. That’s what I can do. That is recovery.
point is, “recovery” is so different for everyone. “wellbeing” is so different for everyone. and the only person who ought to be defining or making choices about them is oneself.
not every mentally ill person can recover and they still deserve respect and support
ntm recovery in and of itself is an incredibly nuanced concept based on using neurotypical thought processes and behavior as the ideal, and often forcibly making neurodivergent people be this specific way so to ease the Burden on Society that we apparently are
so having recovery be someone’s primary ableism/saneism rhetoric is an indication putting of neurotypicals ease and comfort over the different specific needs of mentally ill people (anxious people and psychotic people will “recover” differently for example), whether they know it or not
forcing all mentally ill people into one homogenized form of “recovery” just reflects how much folks don’t care about our actual wellbeing and how much they just want us to Start Acting Normal
Im sick of seeing the concept of the strive to recovery as the only representation of neurodivergent communities
This Is a Backup Blog 