#on ableism

and it's really frustrating because neither of them are yanderes!! at worst they're both clingy. and honestly penny and arven are like that too. all of the zero trio were terribly lonely as kids, so of course they get attached to the first person to show them any affection in what must've been years. also they're in high school, teenagers aren't exactly well known for having the best emotional intelligence or knowledge of boundaries

exactly! its a shame to see these characters that are well written being interpreted as evil/violent/creepy/whatever despite that not at all being what they’re like.

and it’s very common with younger characters especially! they’re teenagers. they’re not going to make the most perfect decisions and they’re not always going to be emotionally mature. i saw it with bede and hop before and now im seeing it with nemona and it pisses me off.

and even when they are adults or just older teens, you still get people seeing these characters who have whole arcs and backstories explaining why they might be a little overeager about having a friend that shares their interests and saying “oh yeah they’re a disgusting creep” like where did they even get that idea from?!

and then again like you said: these kids have histories of growing up under circumstances that are known to produce people who have somewhat “stunted” social skills. these people will see a character with attachment issues or a history of trauma or just being neurodivergent-coded and pull some ableist contortionist act to spin their behavior into them being a yandere.

and then it gets worse when the character isn’t white so you get racist assholes throwing their own bullshit into the mix.

the pain of it all. i’m so glad each of these studies was done in a way that would not further traumatize these Autistic people, because that would have been so easy to miss.

reading about the loneliness ratings of each group, the consistently lower ratings given to Autistic individuals who, according to the study, were generally very similar to the NT people they were evaluated beside. the fact that people perceived as women were generally rated lower than people who were perceived as men.

it just hurts. idk. makes us think about how few close friendships we have and how hard it is to keep them up…literally like one in person friend and the rest are online. how that contrasts with our perception of even our partner: who is clearly neurodivergent as well, but a man. we haven’t talked about it with him at this point and his perception of his friendships probably differs from ours. it just seems relevant and painful in this moment.

additionally, the online friends thing. seeing that generally, text-only interactions are judged more neutrally regardless of the neurotype of the people involved? no wonder most of my friends are online. and the only ones i would consider close are those who have heard my voice and probably seen me and still care to keep this friendship. weird to think about, and not something i did consciously.

But I am. Over the last two years I've been quietly learning and speaking up about disability issues. (Mostly learning and amplifying - I have a lot to untangle and a lot to learn still)

But if I can impart one thing to you - if someone tells you something is ableist, don't lash out - take a step back and learn from it. We've all been inundated with all that inspiration porn of disabled people trying to be more like ablebodied people. People in wheelchairs walking down the aisle, or walking to get their diploma. Deaf children getting Cochlear implants so they can hear the rest of their hearing family. (I have no issue with implants, but there are a lot of families who want their deaf child to be more like them - rather than the family learning to support their deaf child by learning ASL)

There's a LOT of ableism to unlearn. (Just like there's a lot of racism and sexism)

And frankly, people who label themselves as progressive aren't immune from this. I watched a bunch of leftists/progressives go in on mocking Madison Cawthorne's signature today (but I've seen it any time there are pictures of his handwriting)- which is wild, since he has given people SO much material to mock. Why should his signature be off limits? There are a lot of people who had similar spinal injuries who report that yes, they had to relearn how to write, and their writing looks pretty similar. So he doesn't have a childish signature because he's an immature bigot - it's likely because of his disability.

So if it's something related to his injury/disability, that should be off limits, right? Otherwise, you're just as bad as Trump mocking Serge Kovaleski (the disabled reporter). And I'm sure most of these people were circulating the image of Trump doing that with the text that said "This should have been the end of it."

It's been a problem I've seen. Progressives who called out Trump's habit of taking low blows that had nothing to do with critics' performance, but spending hours calling him Diaper Don, mocking everything they could "because it's what he did" - ignoring that every time, it wasn't anything that Trump would see or care about.... but every person they knew who was fat, who used incontinence products, who had balance issues - it exposed how those people really felt about those particular conditions. That they were worthy of being mocked, and the only thing saving them from it was either anonymity of the internet - or a personal connection.

I mean I haven’t actually done or said anything ableist, but you do make a point. Disabled people are definitely capable of ableism.

But it’s just ridiculous to me to be called ableist by an anon without any context whatsoever. It’s like a 3 year going “I’m not stinky, you are!” Like if you’re gonna accuse me of something, you better have proof to back it up.

it's very clear in a lot of discussion about neurodivergence and mental illness that people are only talking about depression/anxiety/adhd/sometimes autism and it's so frustrating because those aren't the only neurodivergences in the slightest but it's often treated as such in online discussions.

for instance, for one person, their personal experience with neurodivergence might cause them for cancel plans, forget tasks, have trouble with organizing things, and struggle with hygiene, and because of that they aren't able to keep friends or a steady job, but they get a lot of joy from their hyperfixations. another person might experience religious delusions, persecutory delusions, disordered speech, and a flat affect. this person might struggle with believing the government is watching them because they're the reborn messiah, and might talk about these things without being able to acknowledge that they are delusions. this person doesn't stim or have hyperfixations, but they have a girlfriend and they're happy being around her.

both of those experiences would be valid "neurodivergent experiences," despite being completely different. and if you dismiss the second person and say that their actions aren't caused by neurodivergence, that is ableism, because stimming/hyperfixations/sensory issues/depression/etc aren't the only "neurodivergent traits," and some neurodivergent people don't experience that at all.

people keep giving me cringe-pity (“🫢🥺” and “🙁🤢” at once) because i’m so behind in school due to the severity of my disorders. i wanna start half jokingly calling that ableism.

i haven’t been great in school in about 10 yrs. i got lucky (bc of the mess school was during covid) that they let me graduate high school because i was out the majority of the year in the hospital !! but hospital or not they count them as absences and 15 get ya booted from your graduating class <3 so cool that’s 2 weeks!! (/s) i got 4 yrs behind in math and failed or switched down to lower level classes in everything else due to 1 hospital visits 2 the disorder that actually affects me even when i’m not in the hospital!!! (/s) so basically i was scraping by. which honestly is a great accomplishment and i most definitely couldn’t have gotten that far without my accommodations and my lovely school counsellor who pulled some strings. now in colleg i’ve had to go very slow with classes because my health doesn’t allow for me to take the load a “traditional” student might. i’ve had to drop classes, take terms off, fully withdrawal from college at one point, and still can’t meet expectations. i can’t move back out of my parents’ place because it’s too dangerous. i feel like static in the shape of a human. it just makes me feel ashamed because i know i have so much talent and i’m so intelligent… and it just feels like that’ll never actually play out. and the people around me see that too. what a waste.