secretly a sapient lilac bush

Honestly I’m still figuring it out, but here are some things I think I’ve figured out so far:

- carers should not act like you are a massive inconvenience if you need help/ ask for something to be done differently

- carers are not your friend while they are at work. They can be friendly and you can be friendly back, but they aren’t your friend while at work. Again this can be tricky, and I have one carer who I’m now friends (and colleagues) with, but there are important differences. When they were still my carer there were different social rules.

-if you go to a group or event a carer should be in the background unless you’ve specified otherwise. I once went to a trans group with a cis carer who spoke (a lot) during a group discussion. This was absolutely not okay. I really struggled with this at first because it would be so rude to do this in other forms of relationships. Becoming okay with this and insistent on it has improved my life so much.

- carers don’t get a say in what you do, wear, or go unless that is part of their job (say if you need help to tell what clothes are appropriate for the weather). This is a big difference between friends and carers. If I’m going somewhere with a friend they might suggest alternatives they find more fun, a carer shouldn’t do this.

- carers should respect that they are in your home/ life. So they shouldn’t leave their stuff all over your house, even if they stay for several days at a time. They shouldn’t move things without you asking. I have a room in my house where my carers stay overnight, and a designated cupboard in the kitchen/ shelf on the fridge and I expect their things to stay in those spaces.

-not flake, especially getting meds bringing to appointments helping with forms etc

- should not act defensive when you ask for something

- should remain calm and still help you, as needed and with consent, when you are triggered

- should not take pictures of you, your home, or your pets unless you specifically ask them to (ex so you can see what's in your fridge, check a wound you can't see), and should delete those photos ASAP if taken with a device that isn't yours

- should be alert and ready to help the whole shift. SOBER.

- should be understanding and receptive when you try to communicate with them, especially around boundaries that may seem unconventional to them

- should not struggle to be on the same page as you when you try to tell them to stop or give you space (ex if you freeze up and become unresponsive, they should be trying to check in with you, not continuing to touch you...)

- should be comfortable with both complete silence and lots of chatter

- should be able to roll with your worst moods

- should not be lovebombing you (getting you random gifts frequently, constantly saying how pretty you are, calling you pet names, being overly touchy outside of what's needed for care)

- should not act cold or spurned if you don't match their energy/friendliness

- should not lecture you on how you manage your care (if you manage it), your life, what you eat, who you make friends with, how you hire people (if you hire people), etc.

- should not share "funny stories" or names of their other clients with you (if they do, this means they're sharing your private life with others too)

- should not go behind your back to ask about your disability

- should commit to memory the way you want or need things organized in your living space and stick to that, instead of what's easiest for them

short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

Theres this thing that happens with a few too many franchises, where the constant need to one-up and raise stakes makes each entry slightly more unhinged than the last. Until you reach a point where what started as a fairly simple/grounded concept has become completely ridiculous(see Dragonball, Fast and Furious).