Hello, I was scrolling through your old posts and I found that argument you had with psych0s1sm1t0s1s. This is probably kinda weird because it was so long ago, but my brain just would not leave me alone until I did this.
I understand your disinterest in dictating how other people talk about their disorder and appealing to neurotypicals who have/will dehumanize you, and treat you and other pwASPD as less than simply having a disorder they didn’t ask to have. I also agree that people have the right to get better or get worse and express/encourage either of those desires online. It is their blog, after all. Nobody is obligated to destigmatize their disorder for neurotypicals if they don’t want to.
However, the people that psych0s1sm1t0s1s is referring to chose to attempt distigmatizing their disorder. How can they say that’s what they want while blaming the harm they caused to another person on their ASPD–which absolves themselves of agency of accountability–then say that ASPD abuse doesn’t exist, and their disorder doesn’t make anyone inherently abusive? That is hypocritical and inconsistent with their goal, and I don’t think they are defending or sucking up to neurotypicals for pointing this out. I understand their frustration with and need to vent about the people who do this.
You are correct that psych0s1sm1t0s1s cannot make them stop (again, it is their blog), and this behavior will likely continue. If the spread of misinformation is what psych0s1sm1t0s1s is worried about, I think neurotypicals who genuinely want to learn about and destigmatize ASPD for themselves should be responsible for considering that some information they find about ASPD may be biased or incorrect, especially if they are looking at people’s personal blogs on Tumblr. It’s up to them to filter out misinformation, which is what they should already be doing if they’re truly approaching this in good faith.
i barely remember the person you are speaking of lol and i cba to scroll but i understand the point you are trying to make. this will be long but i wanted to explain myself clearly.
an explanation is not the same as an excuse. this is something so many morons on the internet get wrong, they blur the lines so heavily as to make a point. explaining that aspd consists of a lack of concern for societal norms is not the same as using the illness to justify behaviour. i dont consider it an excuse to acknowledge a clinical fact or understand why you acted in some way. saying that "aspd abuse doesnt exist," does not mean that people with aspd are not capable of abuse, it just means that being abusive is not a symptom of a personality disorder. thats it.
another thing i will say is that an aspd acting "correctly" or conforming does not mean that neurotypicals will have the capacity to see them as anything aside from their disorder and that is because respectability politics do not work on stigma. you can be kind, constantly go out of your way for people, and it does not matter because they will never see your behaviour as genuine once they find out about your disorder. it is a cognitive bias and all of your actions will be labelled as manipulative. so when youre set up to fail in this way, and you know you cannot escape it, what is the point of carefully curating the way you exist online (or anywhere)? for destigmatization that will never truly come? neurotypicals will always expect you to highlight your recovery to prove how you are working towards becoming exactly like them. the symptoms that come with aspd makes it so we will never be respected in a society that is always on the lookout for warmth and connection. if we perfectly mask all of the time but have one, singular slip up, neurotypicals will use that moment to justify their prejudice. they are already trained to see you as a dangerous individual so your negative actions, even if small, will explode back in your face no matter what. if neurotypicals treat us that way, how much blame can we really be responsible for just because we didnt explain the disorder correctly on an online space? we dont owe anyone that.
expecting other aspds to act in the way you deem acceptable only creates a divide in the community. because the heavily masked, or "healed," ones are seen as being worthy of basic human decency while the apathetic ones are giving the rest of the community a bad name. but it is a losing game, even for the "good ones." their respect for you goes out the window the second that you stop confirming. i took it as "sucking up to neurotypicals" because respect from neurotypicals should never be a prize to be won. it is a baseline. they were centering a neurotypical experience by worrying about how different aspds behave online. how is an aspd's right to vent or exist less important than maintaining a good, educational environment? catering to them at the expense of your own community is weird and i still stand by what i said. i dont appreciate when neurotypical standards are enforced on people who are literally just randoms existing on the internet. we all have the right to speak about our experiences, no matter how unpalatable they are.
alas, as you said, destigmatization should not be the job of the person experiencing said stigma. true destigmatization comes from the people around them being able to handle nuance and unlearn their biases. that being said, it should not be any aspd's responsibility to run an educational blog. i have found that the people who are advocating for destigmatization are very rarely the same ones who are using it as an excuse for harm. nobody should lose their right to destigmatization just because another person on the internet with their same illness was behaving in a way that was hypocritical. i think its important to highlight /all/ parts of a disorder. listening to several different perspectives is real education. not just the ones that feel safe.
