One Track Minded

A disabled madwoman writing about disability, mental illness, queerness, and politics

Bipolar I with psychotic features, CPTSD/PTSD, ADHD, dyscalculia, autistic more than likely

Supportive of fat, queer, and black liberation; transfeminism, gender abolition, disability justice, anarchism, and all the other good shit

Practicing witch and Norse pagan but I'll always lowkey be a reddit atheist on the inside

COCSA, CSA, and SA victim

DMs and asks are open to any who genuinely wish to engage in good faith discussion on any disagreements

so tired of seeing "top 10 things i do to NOT be a burden on everyone in society" content all over the internet and everyone just accepts it uncritically

"accommodating yourself" doesn't exist -- that's called self care and basic survival. accommodation is what the world and your community owes you as a living breathing human with needs

capitalism rebrands society's obligation toward disabled people as an individual problem that needs to be solved by the disabled person themselves. need a ramp? fuck you, you didn't plan your travel route well enough!

these top 10 lists are always prioritizing the comfort of abled people. "top 10 tricks i use to prevent breakouts during a depressive episode" like is having a breakout not ok?

no but seriously i understand disabled people need to blend in and adapt and find ways to care for ourselves, and sharing information on how to best do that is great,

Weaponized incompetence as a concept has literally nothing to do with disability or struggling to do different tasks.

I think it's easy for fellow disabled people to hear individual people online who talk about W.I. to feel triggered by it, because many of us were told similar things growing up.

But just because someone was ableist to you in ways that mirror randoms online talking about W.I. doesn't mean the concept or the way its BROADLY being discussed is ableist.

Also,

It's ableist to assume disabled people can't/don't engage in weaponized incompetence.

And yes, sometimes disabled people might weaponize their GENUINE struggles in a way that is abusive, coercive, or manipulative.

It's certainly not common. The vast, vast, VAST majority of disabled people push themselves way too hard and have the opposite problem: we often don't communicate our struggles enough for fear of ableism.

But it's something that absolutely happens. Disabled people come in all shapes and sizes and some of us are fucking assholes. We are human.

Is making fun of men who engage in W.I. ableist?

People will make fun of these men by comparing them to children, mocking their incompetence, and shaming their inability to take care of themselves.

I agree that broadly this contributes to the stereotype of inability being linked to childlikeness. But I see this mostly from select individuals on social media venting about their own experiences. I'm not denying the harm, but it's also not what W.I. is about.

Women also deserve to be a little mean to men sometimes, I'm sorry. A marginalized abuse victim is allowed to be a little cringe and mildly problematic about making fun of their abuser, and I won't be persuaded otherwise.

Equating abusive men's tactics to disabled people's real abilities is ableist

There is absolutely something shameful and wrong about a fully capable man who cannot do laundry. This inability is not one born of genuine difficulty, it's born out of privilege and entitlement to women's labor.

Disabled people who are understandably triggered by W.I. discourse do so in part because of internalized ableism. It's because you, a disabled person, don't view your struggles as being exempt from this criticism levied at men.

I'm skeptical of those disabled people who feel "called out" by this discourse or who accuse it of ableism, because it makes me think you're either 1) not dealing with your own biases 2) are being ableist yourself or 3) you're not an ally to non-men at all.

Men of all stripes do this, including disabled men sometimes

No, I'm not saying woman or other genders are incapable of doing this, but men generally tend to be the overarching offenders due to their social power within the patriarchy and the standard for women being the domestic workers of the family.

your uncle always wanting you to sit on his lap is covert incest

your mother being weirdly invested in making sure you don't date is covert incest

your parent coming to you for emotional support after arguing with their spouse is covert incest

get off the #imworthless side of tumblr

i get it: you've given up and you don't care if it makes you feel worse

but from my experience, people usually give up when they feel unable to change the things making them sad/upset/mentally ill, and most of you think it's your fault

please understand that most of you fall into at least one, if not more, of these categories:

1. your suffering is due to chronic trauma and you're either too young or broke to leave the abusive situation you're in

2. your suffering is due to a disability of some kind that's undiagnosed or neglected by medical professionals

3. your suffering is due to a reasonable reaction to your shitty environment which is mostly things you cannot control, i.e. being poor, being discriminated against, living in an unsuitable environment, etc

this is not your fucking fault

and understanding that, REALLY understanding that, is the first step to improving your conditions

if you can't find the motivation or energy to be productive, that means you can't, at least not right now

beating yourself up will make it worse -- you must find help

yes, sometimes you have to hunker down and just get through a situation, especially as a minor

and i also don't fit the mold of an 'atheist witch' because i genuinely do believe in things, albeit with more skepticism

people sometimes say "you're so lucky!" in response to not having grown up religious, and while there is indeed a lot of purity culture i got to avoid, it also came with other problems

like, for example, having no familiarity with my intuition, no practice in developing the skills needed to form a relationship with the divine, not even body awareness or energy sensing

being bipolar with psychotic features meant that i was naturally a spiritually-minded person but with no way to healthily express it or make sense of it

as a youth i would have all manner of spiritual experiences in the forest and speak to entities and have profound moments of closeness with the divine, yet i had no other language outside of "mental illness" to describe these things

every spiritual experience i had was downplayed as just my mind playing tricks on me, just the human bias finding patterns, just a silly girl playing silly games in the forest behind her house

and i think there's a violence inherent to that, a subtle violence that denies children ownership of their subjective experiences and contests the existence of them entirely; it's a form of gaslighting

i don't think this is inherent to atheism--lots of atheists allow space for the human drive of spirituality to express itself without pathologizing or denying it

but for me, i was actively taught to ignore an entire facet of human experience on the basis that it was not rational,

Cis women who grew up in deeply misogynistic households, where the open expression of femininity was mocked and ridiculed, where they were forced into masculine behavior in order to avoid scrutiny -- we have a unique closeness to the transfem experience

When women are shut out from girlhood, we often find refuge in intellectual pursuits because it's the one way we can gain a semblance of respect from our male counterparts while also creating distance from typical expressions of masculinity

We sense that something is wrong with us, and we turn inward to find answers to what that thing is -- disabled women, autistic women, we can identify with this experience

So we study, analyze, question, and develop a deep sense of self awareness that tends to just harm us in the long run because we can't have a single thought without running it through a million subroutines

Abuse victims are called victims because it puts the onus of the act on the abuser rather than the victim

Centering what you did with that abuse, i.e. surviving, shifts the focus away from the abuser and places it on the shoulders of the victim

And what about the victims who did not survive? So many of us do not; are they victims?

Calling ourselves survivors is often a way for us to avoid contending with the humiliation of powerlessness

Transfeminism, at the end of the day, is just feminism; we do not leave our sisters and siblings behind just because we feel like our experiences disqualify us from talking about these issues

Women and femmes, and anyone affected by misogyny, have a deeply vested personal interest in trans women because what happens to them will also happen to us

Understand that victims will sometimes perpetuate harm against others as a result of grooming, coercion, and abnormal sexual development

Understand that minors who commit child-on-child SA are not at fault; their adult abusers are

Understand that victims who reenact their abuse in unhealthy ways or develop harmful sexual interests are still victims

Understand that sex aversion is not the only "valid" response to abuse; there is no invalid response to abuse

Understand that victims of CSA and incest will sometimes be imperfect, strange, morally questionable, hypersexual, or unaware of the harm they may cause

The only group of people who can more easily obtain disability status are the elderly who are disabled through common aging ailments, but who still have expenses they cannot pay otherwise. For everyone else, the process goes something like this:

1. Somehow have access to healthcare so you can get diagnosed with something in the first place, which, if you can't hold down a job, your best bet is to simply be poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, OR wait till your condition gets so bad that you end up in emergency care

2. Find a reputable lawyer who agrees to take on your case, and lawyers are incentivized to only take cases that are nearly guaranteed to win because they get paid through the back pay you receive from disability benefits being granted

3. Spend YEARS going to court hearings, which often results in courts wanting to see proof that you've tried state sponsored work programs and have failed to hold down a job despite reasonable accommodations, and be seen by a court assigned doctors whose job it is to find any reason why you can work

4. Participate in said work programs and fail, AND be seen by court assigned doctors who will find any excuse to say you're not disabled

5. Attend more court dates where the state will argue that simply having children, wearing makeup, and having hobbies means you can have a job

6. Finally, after years of fighting, assuming your lawyer didn't drop your case, assuming court doctors found you sufficiently disabled, assuming you failed at work programs, and assuming ongoing medical treatment doesn't make you capable of working, you are given disability payments

Disability checks are notoriously very, very little. You are doomed to a life of severe poverty, and if you get married, you will lose your disability payments because it is assumed your partner will be able to care for you. If you live with a parent or family member, you can also lose or get reduced benefits because it is assumed they can care for you financially.

Throughout this process, you often have to sustain ongoing medical care to show that medical treatments do not make you able to work. You also have to continue living through your disabled condition while also attending court, going to doctors visits, doing work programs, and organizing a case alongside a lawyer. It is a full-time job. I don't think I need to explain how fucked it is that the government requires you to WORK to prove that you cannot work.

Because getting married is grounds for losing disability benefits, this is why disabled advocates have long said that we don't really have marriage equality in this country. The fact that disabled people having children is seen as grounds for losing disability benefits, we have long said that this system is actively doing eugenics by shutting out disabled people from procreating.

Transfeminists will say the most uncontroversial shit like "did you know that transfems face unique marginalization?" and people will dogpile the comments asking why they're forgetting trans men

But also we're naive if we don't also recognize that there are in fact transfeminists who seem to have a hate boner for trans men, in the same way a lot of women in general are kinda man-hatey

But I'd like to remind everyone that women responding to men with relatively benign man-hatey sentiment is not a form of oppression; it is a natural byproduct of patriarchy and systemic violence against women

Pointing out that yes, male privilege, like all privilege, is a fluid thing that can apply to many people at many different times in their life shouldn't be a controversial topic of discussion

from a mentally ill person

cptsd and the research on it is way more useful for abuse survivors to learn, as opposed to "classic" ptsd

99% of your struggles with life are environmental, not personal moral failure or an inability to work hard; it's your job to tailor your environment to make it easier for you

exchanging one addiction for another is a valid harm reduction strategy and don't let anyone tell you otherwise

the men who hang around because they wanna fuck you, the "friends" who only hit you up when they need something, the people who are stuck balls deep into their mental illness and are incapable of supporting others -- these people are not your friends and you have to keep them at arm's length

put up sticky notes around your house that remind you of what your symptoms are when you're depressed/triggered/manic/psychotic so you'll get better at identifying when you're spiraling

psych meds aren't the spooky scary things people make it out to be, but you will likely have to try a lot of meds before you find the ones that work

it's also okay if you don't wanna take antipsychotics because of the severe side effects, and if you try them, you can always change your mind

you need a weekly social obligation, doesn't matter what it is -- you can go to AA meetings even if you're not an alcoholic, you can sit in on a church service even if you're not religious, you can attend a city council meeting and be bored out of your mind; but SOMETHING where you can just simply be around people once a week, and you don't even have to talk

look for facebook groups specific to your area and make a post saying that you're wanting to make new friends and what your interests are (you need real life friends, not just online ones)

journaling is great and all, but are you just gonna feel like shit when you forget to journal for a month? talking to yourself out loud is a better way to process things with low commitment

therapy is good, but it's only good when you have a therapist you can trust and connect with

under 18s who are covered by their parents insurance can seek out medical care without their consent or approval

panic attacks can be helped with intense sensory input, like a hot or cold shower, stretches, etc

music music music music!!!! 🎵

if you don't drink enough water, get a water filter pitcher and a metal water bottle so it doesn't taste like shit and keep it by your bed 24/7

melatonin is your best friend

ashwaghanda is a supplement shown to be very effective for stress and anxiety

vitamin D supplements, also your best friend (take twice the normal dose, it won't hurt you)

therapy is very similar to going to a diviner or seer to get insight into your life and struggles, like everything is ultimately filtered through the subjective opinions and biases of the clinician

i'm not discounting the evidence based practices, like for example, we KNOW for a fact that validating people's gender and sexuality objectively leads to better mental health outcomes

and there is something to be said about the requirements of education and credentials and all the other systems that help reign in the practice from being too subjective -- education is good, science is good, and minimizing biases is good

but the headass nature of psychology as a field, the kind of underlying insecurity of psychologists that they aren't the same as medical doctors or biologists, even though they often do real research and science -- its built on the assumption that spirituality is somehow primitive or bad

there is a reason why psychological concepts have been so insanely influential on new age spirituality and occultism; things like psychoanalysis and jungian archetypes fit in seamlessly with symbolic and spiritual thought

psychology is the western world's attempts to bring back the diviner, bring back the seer, bring back the folk healers that colonialism and christianity demonized and decimated; it's an attempt to bring back a role that all societies have had since time immemorial

therapy is very good actually, but it struggles with the same cultural emptiness that other bureaucratic and medical institutions suffer from; it has this artifice of objectivity that makes it really hard for people to seek it out or see it's broader purpose