Ableism kills

I found myself rather sad last night. Not that the feeling has gone away.

If there’s any truth to the saw of ‘the lesson replays itself until you learn it’, I can definitively say I’ve learnt my lesson.

It’s a human need to interact with others, to socialize, to be an integral part of a group. To belong, to have acceptance. https://www.universalclass.com/articles/self-help/a-brief-history-of-our-need-to-be-social.htm

But when you’re autistic or ADHD or often another form of neurodivergent, you may easily live your life without something allistics and other types of neurotypical people take for granted. Simple social acceptance. A group to belong in.

I highly doubt I’m the only autistic/ADHDer who’s lived a life like mine.

I’m late diagnosed, so in elementary school, I didn’t understand why people didn’t like me. In high-school, the bullying in school and the abuse at home just made me want to crawl into a hole and never come out again. I ended up in an abusive relationship where I was pressured into sex far too young because being in the back seat of my boyfriend’s car (whether I actually wanted to be or not, I didn’t) was safer than anywhere else I could go. It’s one of the reasons it’s imperative to talk frankly with ND kids about our differences, we’re heavily at risk of every kind of abuse.

NT = Neurotypical ND = Neurodivergent

Because we’re sadly still human. We desperately just want to feel like we belong somewhere. That some people on this cursed planet actually want us around.

The things we’re capable of doing to ourselves in the mistaken hope that we’ll eventually find acceptance is pretty awful, to be honest. Humans are social creatures and when you’re prevented from being social… it hurts and harms in so many ways.

I had a brief period of acceptance in university for around 2 years. I joined the SCA and found a lot of other weirdos like me. I had a ttrpg group. I had a coven to practice with. I had people who acted (and were) pleased to see me. I’m no longer in the SCA because of what it’s become, so that time period didn’t last long.

I lost my coven and ttrpg groups when we all graduated over the course of a few years, moved away, and I’ve never found a group to practice my faith or my enjoyment of ttrpg with again. Solitary is lonely. Several of us are still in touch, in a haphazard fashion… but me loathing Facebook makes it harder for me to stay in touch with uni friends.

2 years out of 46. That’s a pretty terrible ratio no matter how you slice it.

It’s common these days in publishing to need to be good at social media to get anywhere. Or so that’s what everyone says. After my experience being harassed off social media, excluded from groups both professional and social repeatedly, I can say I don’t think they mean the advice for people like me.

Social media gave me a voice I’d never had before. It was nice. But it’s always my ‘voice’, my ‘me’, that people end up getting sick of, complaining about, and eventually excluding me over. It’s not like I misrepresent myself. I’m out as autistic/ADHD/mentally ill everywhere online. I’m too… worn out… I guess, to try to hide everything from everyone anymore. There are things I choose not to talk about, due to stigma, but everything I share online is authentic.

I can say with complete honesty that I’ve tried so many times to make friends, to find a group of people who would give a shit if I died. I’ve finally reached the point where I accept that I can’t have that. I can’t have a thing humans need to thrive because of ableism.

Because the intense, lifelong experience and pain of loneliness is better than the painful exclusions, the bullying, the ableism… it gets to the point where we just don’t have it in us to keep trying. I don’t have it in me anymore. I’m scraped clean. This latest exclusion has been not only horrifically painful for me, but it’s also rock-bottom. I can’t do it anymore. Excluding people and freezing them out is a form of bullying, y’know. In this case, it’s a form of cyberbullying.

So many autistic and ADHD folks have similar experiences. We try, and try, and give it far too many ‘last tries’ before we just… realize, I guess, that it’s just a grossly repetitive pattern and we stop trying.

I trusted a friend that the groups they were in were largely made of decent people who were accepting of differences. I don’t blame my friend, they’re a wonderful person and perhaps those groups were accepting of them (friend is ND too). So I tried again. I thought I was accepted too. But in hindsight, I can see I was barely tolerated. Y’know, it would be super helpful to be able to read social context in the moment. But that’s one of the reasons autistic and ADHD people are disabled. Many of us can’t pick up on social clues and we often completely miss social context.

It’s not that we’re trying to be the sand in the oyster. I actually tried to be as unobtrusive as possible in that group while still having a presence there. It didn’t change the fact that people complained about the way I ‘talk’. That is so, so ableist.

I didn’t complain about the many, many times I was hurt, harmed, or insulted in that group. I just did the professional thing and quietly blocked anyone I didn’t want to see.

But people didn’t have the decency to extend to me the same courtesy. Being ND is hard enough without gleeking ill-nurtured ableist coxcombs being utterly nasty. And trust me, if you’ve complained about the way any non-allistic talks/types, or if you’ve penalized one of us for it, (as long as it’s not obviously harmful IE racist, misogynistic etc.) that’s exactly what you are.

Years of supporting others, and of being as professional as I know how to be (I’ve worked fortune 500 corporate, I know how to act professionally even with people I don’t like). I extended them the same professional courtesy I’d hope people would extend to me… all of it gone in a flash with no warning. The reason given was the way I talk (communicate via text). The words used were both inaccurate (I’m an editor and that word was used incorrectly) and deeply insulting. Please understand that judging how a disabled person communicates, and complaining about it, is deeply, wretchedly ableist. I lost people I thought of as friendly acquaintances, professional contacts, and just… other weirdos who do this writing thing. I lost a place I mistakenly thought was a place where I was welcome. People I’d spoken to or read almost every day for years gone. I also lost any opportunities that being part of that group would’ve offered. And no, I can’t reach out to people in the group because I don’t know who or how many were complaining about me. I have a few guesses. Probably pretty accurate ones given my training in psychological forensics (it’s not all dead bodies, y’know). But I don’t have facts.

Those who I term ‘baby NDs’ or ‘unhatched autistics/ADHDers’ are people who may or may not know they’re ND, but who still cling to neurotypical social expectations and behaviors like some sort of ropy, gooey Turner and Hooch-esque slime trail.

I can’t blame them really, I clung to the same concepts for far too long myself. We’re raised, whether we’re NT or ND, to feel that following the social ‘norms’ will work for us.

Except it doesn’t work for autistics and ADHDers. The unhatched often (and full disclosure, I’ve been guilty of it myself… in my 20s when I didn’t know better) harm other ND people (including their own children) in their mistaken belief that if they just try hard enough, if they mask enough, if they entertain enough, if they get rid of the disabled person who talks funny… if they… if they… if they…

Trying to change the unchangeable and masking (autistic masking) has never done me an ounce of long-term good. All its done is break my heart, over and over again. I developed the habit of masking to survive. I used to be so good at masking that people didn’t believe me when I told them I’m autistic/ADHD/mentally ill.

I probably missed a good career as an actor. It’s what I did every second of every day and I paid the cost for it.

I’m not sure if it’s the fact I’ve been a SAHM for 15 years, the pandemic and the required quarantine my immunocompromised family still lives under so we don’t die, or whatever having covid did to my brain, but I can’t mask hardly at all anymore. I can manage it for brief interactions like buying groceries, but even that is just… utterly exhausting.

It’s nigh impossible for me to mask online. I have a social media persona, everyone does. I’m a little more outspoken online than I am in real life. I’ve always communicated better in writing so you’d really think it wouldn’t be an issue for me to find spaces where people like me are accepted, would you?

Except, online groups and social media have turned out to be just as cruel to me as people tend to be IRL.

Any sort of change, but especially unexpected change, is incredibly difficult for autistics. That’s got to be one of the world’s most understated facts.

I don’t know if I can even describe it. It’s similar to the feeling of overwhelm, it has some similarities to how someone feels when everything they’re comfortable with is suddenly gone.

It wrecks our routine, our reality, (routine is so, so, so necessary for many autists). That feels like your world shakes like an 8.0 earthquake and has its resulting destruction.

It’s a bit like how it feels to be gaslit, the questioning of everything you’ve done, said, experienced because obviously, you hadn’t picked up on some social thing that someone else felt was important enough to hurt someone (badly) over.

I’m not entirely sure if this thing autistics/ADHDers do when something goes wrong is innate or a trauma response from a world that makes it very clear we aren’t wanted.

But we tend to replay memories, which are often crystal clear for many of us due to how autistic memory works, trying to figure out what exactly we did wrong and when, so that we don’t do it again.

It’s an exhausting morass of circling, intrusive thoughts and please trust me when I say you don’t want to experience it. It’s certainly not a voluntary process. Things others can brush off as no big deal will often scar an autistic person for life.

I’m still involuntarily replaying memories of when I was 4 years old, for fuck’s sake, so can you imagine what it must be like in our brains?

That “professional” group was the last group I had. Apparently, it’s a time of endings. Because I can’t make myself find new groups to repeat the process with. I’m done. Social media will take a much lower rung on my personal ladder going forward. I’ll be in my own discord group, on Twitter until the wheels come off, and one other platform I haven’t figured out yet. At least I won’t be kicked out of my own group. If you’re interested in writing, reading, editing, art, stories, mental health, autism, ADHD, or are simply another lonely ND person, my group is safe space for NDs, feel free to check it out. As I write, it’s small and not very active because it’s new, but I hope it will become more over time. https://discord.gg/cqF4zKSCwK

Over the past 2 years I’ve thought I’d found welcome… or at least mildly concussed acceptance in 3 groups. They’re all gone now. I left one voluntarily when the mods proved to be disgustingly ableist. One imploded thanks to the behavior of one of those mods and someone who acted about as unprofessional as you can get. And this last one where I was unceremoniously ejected because an ableist twatwaffle complained about the way I talk/type. Or more than one, who knows. I certainly don’t.

Please be kind to people different from you.

If you ever have a problem with someone you know is ND, put on your grownup pants and communicate the problem. I guarantee most of us are appalled when we miss a social cue. And we will miss them. Usually, our brains are literally not wired to pick up on social context well. It’s the most affected portion for me on my diagnosis papers. Social skills/awareness ranked pretty close to zero for me.

No wonder I’ve always preferred dead people to live ones. (Forensic bioanthropologist, not serial killer.) Dead people haven’t ever hurt me. I can’t say the same about living ones.

Allistics love to accuse autistics of ‘not using our words’. But from where I sit… it’s incredibly obvious that the autistics/ADHDers/mentally ill aren’t the problem here. Allistics need to communicate better.

It’s also ableism. Pure and simple. And ableism kills people. How? Most autistic people die around age 36. The leading causes of death are heart attack from the stress of living in an ableist world, and suicide, because we never fit in. No matter how hard we try.

If you enjoy my writing, we’re a family of 4 immunocompromised/autistic/ADHD folks, two are kids, any tips/help is deeply appreciated. We live far under the poverty line.

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Nuance

Twitter is a very angry place today.

It’s a nuanced issue and I have words. I’ll do my best to lay my very complicated thoughts and emotions out in a reasoned fashion.

Here’s the reason twitter is angry today. Vulture published an article that… was rather skewed in its perception. (It’s the politest way I can say that.) I knew about the person writing the article months ago, they were going around asking for interviews. Thank goodness Nicky provided screenshots so Vulture doesn’t get any more clicks than necessary. (Shared with Nicky’s permission)

https://twitter.com/nickyoflaherty/status/894600015083130880/photo/1

I don’t suppose twitter being angry again is anything new, at all.

Over the weekend, I had to block a bunch of angry people who preach the same, sad, angry speech over and over and over again with regards to aroace issues. I’m done listening.

Blogged about it here.

And today, we’re back to (re: race issues, YA book twitter and reviewing) seeing the same people performing the same ridiculous performative activism. No, I ain’t gonna link them. They’re already on my publishing blacklist anyway. You’ll see a lot of them who look/claim to be white shouting that it’s wrong to want ‘old twitter’ back.

Today’s anger is in relation to race, reviews and the above linked article.

Over the weekend it was aroace.

Before that is was neurodiversity, before that it was queerphobia, before that mental illness/psychiatric disorder and I’m seeing inklings that it’s going to be transphobia next.

The problem is so nuanced and multifaceted that I wonder if maybe I’m one of the few seeing it? I mean… I’m so intersectionally diverse it’s almost impossible to believe. I’m plugged into a lot of communities just by virtue of being who I am.

I’m queer as fuck, I’m autistic, I’m mentally ill, I’m chronically ill with a chronic pain condition, and I’m mixed-race. (Mostly First Nations, Spanish/Portuguese and Mixed white European, but I have quite a few black ancestors too.)

The problem with twitter that is ruining ‘book twitter’ and why braver people are saying they miss the old one is this: It’s the anger people.

Not about the subject matter.

It’s about what makes REAL activism, and the ‘performing for ally cookies’ sort of activism.

I ask, in the light of all that’s going down, who are you shouting for? Why are you shouting?

If it’s the YA book twitter group, you’re very likely doing it wrong, cause they’re afraid. More on that later.

Several threads shared on twitter offer VERY salient point.

We don’t have people in their own communities (ANY of the diverse communities I’m part of) coming to collect the pretenders and me-too-ists and harmful (possibly well meaning?) people. We also don’t have people in our own communities willing to collect the loud, angry, confrontational, or outright dangerous people.

I tried, with the aroace discussion recently. I ended up having to block people because they were interested only in being angry, not in actually listening or in working for change. They wanted to shout, and flail and have things EXACTLY AS THEY WANTED IT.

They weren’t interested in working for change. They were interested in shouting until *I* backed down. Because I didn’t agree with them.

I got called names, gaslighted, and ganged up on. BY PEOPLE IN (one of) MY OWN COMMUNITIES!

So I ended up blocking.

I’m older, I remember a time when I was young and fired up and thinking the only way to make my voice heard was to shout and demand things.

Change needs to happen. YES. In SO MANY areas of publishing, in book twitter, in life. Change NEEDS to happen. I need it to happen, not just for me, but for my kids. Mixed race, autistic, possibly queer, likely… after the world gets done chewing them up and spitting them out… mentally ill adults they’ll someday be… and for my grandkids too, if I have any. All of the children and grandchildren of those generations. Those are the people *I’m* fighting for. Future generations. Not me, so much as the ones who will come after me.

Seven generations. A bastardized quote, but one worthy of thought in this context.

“In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation… even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.”

The seventh generation principle comes, we believe, from The Iroquois Confederacy.

I do know it’s a very important part of my life-path. To think ahead to future generations in all that I do.

Environment, relationships, all of it.

Because THAT is who I’m fighting and educating for.

Not me.

It’s also a principle I try to follow that I need to have peace in my heart and a thick skin, so that I don’t act unwisely.

You may have heard me use the phrase “I need to sit with this”.

That usually means I’m angry, and I need to step back and away, to ‘sit with it’ until I can respond or speak in a way that won’t negatively impact others.

For reading, if you’re so inclined. Do a search for ‘seven’ and read those passages.

The Great Binding Law GAYANASHAGOWA

It’s part of why I stick on twitter, because a lot of people say they learn things from me that they don’t learn from anyone else. I have a patreon, I could confine my education to that area only like some people have done. (If you find any of my blogs or threads helpful/educational, even a dollar a month can help me so much. You’ve no idea how badly I need the help!!)

I’m not going to.

The angry atmosphere on twitter is driving people away. That is fact.

It’s not helping to educate. Shouting angrily, bullying, gaslighting, and being harmful enough to drive people away is not going to cause that badly needed change. No matter WHAT the area you personally need to have change happen in, anger is not going to get you there.

People doing the actual work are. The ones who reach out to someone (again, NO MATTER WHAT THE TOPIC IS) and say the hard thing to them…

IE: That is racist, that is bullying, that is queerphobic, that is harming other aroace people and making us afraid to talk, that is (insert harmful behavior here).

I’ve seen so many white authors dashing off a quick tweet today parroting that it’s wrong to miss old book twitter because it shuts down the conversation. (I’d really love to know if they call-in other white authors when they’re being problematic, or if they just dash off those tweets when the marginalized communities are harmed.)

But you know? It’s not wrong to miss old book twitter. I disagree with everything in me. With anyone saying it’s wrong to miss the old book twitter. That’s… not how this is supposed to work y’all.

I’m marginalized.

And YES. I miss old book twitter.

I only caught the tail end of it, because I didn’t discover twitter until Jan of 2015. I still saw a much more uplifting, educational, and supportive atmosphere then than I do now.

When the atmosphere of twitter drives people TRYING TO DO BETTER away. When it drives the marginalized youth you claim to be fighting for AWAY… Then the atmosphere is the problem. Not ‘missing old book twitter’. Missing old book twitter is not about shutting down conversation and education. It just isn’t. I don’t know why I’m one of the few people who seem to feel that way.

If people can’t make mistakes, and earnestly apologize, try to learn better and do better… what the hell is the point of trying to educate at all?

If your only point is to sic your followers on an author who didn’t know better… welp, maybe the problem is as much YOU as the author.

If you’re called out for doing something wrong, (gods, I feel like a broken record here) you say “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m listening.” Then you sit the fuck down and you listen!

Then you try to do better with what you hopefully know.

I do notice who says they’re sorry and tries to do better, and who doesn’t. So does everyone else.

There’ve been threads (If you go to my twitter you can see which ones I retweeted, I’m not really a journalist, but considering the flagrant abuse of journalists that spawned these posts, I’m not going to link without permission. Sadly, I’m too afraid to ask for that permission of the two people I’d most like to link.)

I’ve also been bullied and harassed (through DMs, my blog contact form, and my email). I’ve had people lie to me, or subtly threaten to out my legal name and my husband’s and kids names as well if I don’t do what they want me to do. (To be clear, I don’t use my legal name cause it’s my dead name, so having it show up in an email hurt me. I don’t even use it in real life unless it’s on legal paperwork where I have to.) THIS name is my ‘real’ name. This is the real me.

Here is a thread I did for helping people consider if they’re being a bully or no.

Now, that vulture article that stirred up the hurt and rage on twitter today? It’s about the YA book community, and race, and attacking reviewers. I do suggest you read it in full and draw your own conclusions about it.

I’ll say something here I’ve been afraid to say elsewhere: I’m SO GLAD I don’t write YA. It’s not really in my skill set and I’m so grateful for that. I don’t even want to dip a toe in that shark infested lake.

I’ve got a partially finished YA memoir. I’ll never likely finish it because the very idea of swimming in the blood-chummed waters of YA twitter make me never want to consider it.

That has nothing to do with the young adults themselves. It has everything to do with adults and scary, noisy, angry saviors who purport to be defending and protecting the very people they supposedly write for.

Young adults are some of the most awesome people I’m privileged to know. They are much better people, by and large, than I was at their ages. The thing that keeps me from writing YA? (Aside from my lack of skill at it) Is that it’s not the Young Adult Voices who get listened to.

Nope. Not even close. It’s self-appointed ‘saviors’ of young adults (again, doesn’t matter the marginalization, I’ve seen it over and over again through many different diverse communities). They’re ANGRY saviors too.

Thought experiment from sociology classes:

  1. The last time someone yelled in your face, did you *actually* hear the point they were trying to make?
  2. If someone bullied you, did you learn from them? Or did you try to get away?
  3. If someone has bullied or yelled at you more than once, will you EVER actually listen to them or their point?

No? Hunh. Imagine that.

Young Adults by and large (I follow quite a few now,  after a particular dust up where they came out in droves to shout down an angry savior. I’m following teens and young adults because I’M LISTENING TO THEM.) They are afraid to speak up on twitter because of the outraged adults.

The ones doing the harm here, it’s not the young adults. It’s the angry saviors and their hangers-on claiming (again, no matter which marginalized community we’re talking about) to be ‘protecting’ the ‘helpless young adults’.

Now, I don’t know about you? But I HATED to be talked over by adults when I was a young adult.

Seems to me, mourning old twitter isn’t about wanting the conversation to die so much as wanting a safe place for conversations and reviews to be shared. I want people on twitter to sit with it until they know their facts and their emotions well before they take to twitter and rant.

I want it to be a safe place for teens and young adults to share their thoughts and experiences without getting shouted down. I want it to remain a place where people can (if they choose to provide the free education) continue to share educational threads.  Where reviews can be shared. Where a well-thought out call-out can happen and where the one called out thinks and listens about the issue, then apologizes.

That’s what I want from book twitter.

But then, maybe I’m just too old, depressed and sad about seeing something that used to be really good going down the drain because of a few, angry saviors with huge followings.

Don’t, maybe… be that person who sees someone shouting about something (even if they’re shouting for a good cause, a needed change) and become a me-too-ist. There aren’t any ally cookies. There really aren’t.

There’s a distinct difference between educational threads, shared experiences and the angry saviorism. If you can’t recognize it… maybe think about that.

If you’re NOT doing the work to call-in problematical angry saviors AS WELL AS the problematic people who may be well meaning and who might make mistakes (again, no matter the marginalization) maybe just STFU and leave the work to those of us who do.

Consider this a call out to the angry saviors and the me-too-ists.

You’re not part of the solution. You’re part of the problem.

 

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