#neurotypicalism

It's such forced positivity and it's so easy to challenge

Because no, in a world where reading is so expected and necessary that nobody even thinks of it as a basic life skill anymore, you just expect it, dyslexia is not my superpowers

In a world, which is set up for the neurotypicals and doesn't account for other modes of learning, other ways of paying attention, ADHD is not my superpower

In a world, where arithmetic is considered basi, dyscalculia is not giving me special abilities

And in no way does having a disability that makes coordination difficult give me superpowers

Sure, it may not be the end of the world to have these disabilities and I maybe able to cope with them, learn to live with them, and accept them as part of my life

Sure I can feel genuinely neutral and frequently unbothered by them, when given accommodations and support

But in no way are they a superpower

Describing them as such, feels ableist, it feels like you are expecting me to not only be able to overcome them but somehow be even better because of them

And that's just not happening

I am allowed to be frustrated and annoyed when my life is made more difficult by them AND not hate being disabled

They aren't my superpower AND they aren't worth hating myself for

Because they don't make my life unbearable, they don't my life not worth living

They just make my experience of the world different, they just mean that I require support and accommodations and that's okay

I am happy to live my life accomodating for my disabilities

It trivialised and made into a joke school shootings, it took this horrifying instance and turned it into something to laugh at and it was disgusting

Second, it said that all weird kids were the problem, not these specific mass murders, not these horrendous excuses for human beings who wished death on their fellow classmates, but all weird kids, because being nice to a weird kid once could save you from being murdered

It ignored that most kids who are bullied, labelled as weird and socially ostracized, don't wish death on their fellows, let alone intend to kill them, you have made us hate ourselves far more than we could ever hate you, and you have the audacity to act like we're dangerous

You don't get to do that

You don't get to demonise an entire category of already incredibly marginalised people

You don't get to blame us for the actions of mass murders

And you don't get to say that you can protect yourself from mass shootings by being nice to the weird kids

We deserve compassion but not because you painted us as mass murderers

You don't get to shift the focus away from the genuinely violent, the actual threats to society, the ones who wish violence on others, and get a power trip from taking lives

On to the random weird kid who just wants to live, without being demonised, without being bullied, without being made to feel like everyone would be happier when they're gone, that the world would be a better place without us

Nobody deserves to feel like that

And you don't get to conflate the abuse of weird kids with the issue of school shootings

We have the same regular shitty life situations to deal with as you do. We, too, go through job losses, family and friends’ deaths, divorces and breakups, academic problems, illness, evictions, maitenence issues in our living spaces, and so many more things.

Only, on top of that, we have disabilities that make coping with these issues more difficult. They also often manufacture problems for us (such as bouts of anxiety that make working or studying impossible, or panic attacks that cause physical health problems).

We also have to deal with a society that is deliberately designed to work against us and that often seems to want to kill us. If you don’t believe me, look at how--in the US, at least--mental health coverage isn’t part of many insurance plans, and how many people want to take away what little acess to healthcare we do have. We spent an entire summer fighting the government on this very issue, often to the detriment of our health, physical and mental.

Not to mention how any act of violence immeiately gets blamed on mental illness.

More than anything, I was made to feel like a failure because of my dyslexia and dyscalculia

I was constantly told I was smart and evaluated as if I was neurotypical intelligent

But I would always struggle, I would always fail to live up to expectations because the thing about neurotypical intelligence is you are expected to be good at everything academic, maybe you excel at one thing, but you aren't really bad at anything, struggling with language or maths is never even considered for neurotypical intelligence

And there I was struggling to read, coming out as dyslexic and being hit with "but you're so smart" with varying levels of derision and confusion

Struggling with basic maths as people praised my intelligence and dismissed my grade as nothing impressive because it was what they expected of me, because they didn't see the anxiety I had over adding numbers together, they didn't see how my difficulty with numbers was covered up by my intelligence, I could do logic, I could do complicated problem solving, I couldn't tell you what 13% of 500 was without feeling anxious and freezing

People looked at my grades and they only saw someone smart, they didn't see how I struggled, they didn't see how I tried to meet expectations and fell short, because reading is exhausting and numbers make me anxious, they would dismiss my struggle because "you still did well, it's still a good grade" and it was, but it wasn't good enough

I was being compared to the neurotypical with the same predicted grades as me, the neurotypical who did better in all their exams than me, and I never met that expectation

it's better to have autism than to die of measles