Tag: Neurodiversity

Sadness and ableism

On By KaelenRhyIn Uncategorized

I don’t particularly want to go into extreme detail, but I’m sad today. Sad enough that even though I didn’t get to sleep until 2:30 A.M. I’m up again at 8.

I think I was born to teach, sometimes. So I’m taking my personal pain and using it as a teaching lesson about relationships. None of us are taught the skills necessary for forming, caring for, and communicating in relationships. I’ve had to learn it through therapy, because I definitely had nothing like a good role model to base anything on.

I strongly feel that Basic Communication 101 and Basic Relationship Navigation would be two very valuable additions to public school curriculums. How to not be a treacherous bull-pizzle would probably be cool, too.

Some people who called themselves my friends decided to start talking negatively behind my back.

Some folks don’t care about gossip. To me, it’s rank betrayal and pretty damned dishonorable. I don’t let many people get close to me because I’m so freaking head-shy about people doing this exact bullshit move.

If you’ve got a problem with someone, and you’re safe, obviously, you take the problem up with that person.

Running around flapping your pie hole, spreading bad information influenced heavily by personal bias is, to be frank, the act of a coward. Trying to break up friendships over your misunderstandings is a huge red-flag for a toxic, emotionally abusive person.

Some red flags to watch for in relationships.

When they set rules, often times after you “break” them.  If someone begins to set rules on where you can be, who you can hang out with, and how you’re supposed to act, changes the rules just for you, or treats you worse than everyone else, I suggest finding a way to safely escape because what they’re really doing is beginning to take away your free will.

Who you can hang out with: If someone is trying to strong arm you/your friends/anyone into not hanging with someone they feel is a friend, that’s an emotional abuse red flag. It’s shitty behavior too. No one has any right to try to dictate another person’s friendships. I can’t even begin to get into all the reasons this is toxic. Like, there’s whole dissertations written on the subject. It’s fine to express concern to a friend about someone else. It’s not okay to force the issue or bamboozle your friend because they like someone you don’t.

How you use social media: this one is tricky, it’s really freaking common for neurotypical and ablest people to insist neurodivergent and/or mentally ill people confine their speech, thoughts, reactions, selves… in a box that makes them (not the ND person) comfortable.

How you use social media: it can also manifest in a person insisting that others leave or join groups, delete things like facebook/insta/tiktok etc. Huge, huge red flags.

‍They try to isolate you from friends and family: Isolation is how an abuser thrives and they’re so subtle in how they begin to push you away from your loved ones.

  • If you ever get in an argument or fight with a friend or family member, an abuser will turn this into something bigger and try to convince you to remove that “toxic” person from your life
  • They’ll request you spend time with them rather than your other friends or family
  • Alienate you from coworkers by not allowing you to spend time outside of work with them

This is one of the scariest red flags of an abusive relationship because without your connections to the outside world, an abuser is free to treat you how they please because they’ve alienated you from everyone who could help.

Another thing abusers will do is blame you for their abusive behaviour, and tell you it was your fault.

Overly controlling behavior is a common red flag. People that try to control your movements, decisions, or beliefs are more concerned about what they want than what is best for you. 

Emotional, verbal, and mental abuse are often much harder to pick up on than physical, but all types cause trauma and can result in PTSD. No one has the right to use another as a scapegoat for their problems. Those should be dealt with constructively and fairly. Abuse is never an acceptable response to a problem.

An inability to resolve conflict: conflict-avoidant people often think they’re doing the right thing by avoiding conflict, but they aren’t. Without constructive conflict, no relationship can be healthy.

Gaslighting: this is when someone tries to convince you that your lived experience isn’t really what happened. That what they think is correct, and you’re just confused.

It’s an incredibly common abusive tactic. Victims of gaslighting often feel guilty, even if they’ve done nothing wrong. It’s a clear red flag in any relationship. You can provide proof, reasons, explanations as to why they’re wrong to a gaslighter, but they’ll still insist they’re right.

Avoidance mixed with silence is a classic passive-aggressive form of relationship toxicity, one that often gets progressively worse over time.

So what do you do about it? What is healthy, anyway? A healthy relationship involves acknowledging your needs first, and having a self-care plan in place. More importantly, you engage in that self-care.

Communication is so important. It’s at the center of every healthy relationship. And just for the ones in the back of the class? Talking with people other than the one you have a problem with (and a mediator, if needed/wanted) isn’t healthy communication. People can have no clue you have a problem with them. If you don’t communicate, they can’t even decide whether they want or can change their behavior.

Emotional regulation: Communication doesn’t work well when your emotions are in the way. There’s nothing wrong with having and expressing feelings. Feelings are always valid. What one does with those feelings can be healthy or toxic, but the existence of the emotions isn’t a bad thing. It’s just wise, for effective communication and conflict resolution, to wait until you can successfully regulate your emotions before discussion. If you’re talking negatively about someone you know, it’s probably because you’re letting your emotions control you vs dealing with them in an effective and healthy way.

Setting/violation of boundaries: We all need boundaries to protect ourselves and keep our relationships as sustainable as possible. You should clearly state your needs, boundaries, and deal-breakers with a loved one. If you haven’t done that, you’re not communicating well.

Trust: there can be no health to a relationship without trust. Once trust has been violated, it often needs to be earnt back.

And no one owes you an acceptance of your apology. Nobody is required to give you a chance to explain why you broke their trust, or even allow you back into their life.

In the personal realm, I could’ve done better at communicating my boundaries and deal-breakers. Such as, if you talk shit behind my or anyone else’s back, you’re a dishonorable fuck-weasel and I want nothing to do with you.

You don’t need to take my word for it. All the signs of emotional abuse and toxicity in relationships were found on these sites.

Warning Signs of an Abusive Relationship

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/liking-the-child-you-love/202202/3-red-flags-relationship-turning-toxic

https://www.betterup.com/blog/red-flags-in-a-relationship

I’d never considered some of the people involved friends. I’d long since consigned them to ‘friendly acquaintance I don’t want to be closer to’. The word friend has special meaning to me and because of the amount of abuse I’ve lived through, you have to earn it.

But I didn’t expect them to act in such a dishonorable manner either.

I read psychology dissertations for fun, so it’s not hard to figure the soup and nuts of it. Person X has a personal beef with me stemmed in ableism. Person X decides that *I* am evil incarnate rather than accept they’ve got some pretty severe ableism issues and dealing with those. Person X has heavy, revolting levels of bias against neurodivergent and mentally ill people. So much so that they formed an echo chamber with another in a professional setting not at all appropriate to the conversation. Person X then shit-talks behind my back instead of constructively dealing with their dislike/bias. Person X then tries to convince my friends I’m awful and make them drop me. I didn’t even know they had a problem with me.

Despite their own neurodivergency, they’re still stuck in the part of their journey where they feel that if they just try hard enough, or amuse people enough, they’ll be accepted because their neurodivergency ‘isn’t that bad’. Neurodivergent people can be really ableist too.

Something I’m starting to suspect is that the more autistics and ADHDers mask, the more burn outs we’re likely to experience.

Every time I burn out, I come back less able to do things I could before. Masking is absolutely something I’m losing ability with.

It could also be a factor of age, exhaustion, lack of fvcks left. The point being that we don’t have a lot of research about the aging autistic/ADHDer because they’re always doing studies on how to get rid of us, vs studies that would actually help us.

My hypothesis that it gets harder to mask as we age and deal with the fall-out of being an autistic or ADHDer in this world may prove accurate for many of us. It’s definitely accurate for me.

But what does that mean? If I can’t mask as easily as I once did (for whatever reason) I’m going to slip into autistic speech patterns and excited emphatic language more often. I’m going to meltdown more in places I can’t control. None of that makes me an awful person. But it does make people insisting I control and hide my autistic/ADHD traits ableist.

I’ve rambled enough, so I’ll close with this; nobody is required to like someone else. Everyone has the right to leave an unfulfilling relationship. No one has the right to abuse you or your friends.

And using abusive tactics to justify your desire to leave a relationship is all kinds of messed up. So many people need so much therapy. 🥴

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Shootings and Mental Illness.

On By KaelenRhyIn Blog, Culture, Uncategorized, Who is Kaelan?

Content warning: May 2022 Texas School Shooting

I need to state something unequivocally. Mental illness does not cause mass shootings. Period. Paragraph. End of story.

To say anything else, to imply anything else, to draw any sort of connection between the two is ableist and massively harmful.

Mental Health is a constantly evolving, improving field. Like anything else, you can find things on the internet that will say it does cause them. I will direct you first to the date of the article. Anything pre-2018 will likely have a bad case of confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.

The Massacre at Columbine in 1999 was poorly reported and based on the panicked reports of children being attacked. It affected many people in North America. 

Unfortunately, that cemented some nasty (untrue) things in the public’s mind. Things like ‘outcasts get revenge’ and ‘bullied kids become mentally ill and snap’.

Neither is true. I’m not going to revisit the wheel, but likely, everything you ‘know’ about how mental illness is, of course, related to violence is at least in part, based on that attack. Here’s the debunk. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/04/19/bullies-black-trench-coats-columbine-shootings-most-dangerous-myths/

Older articles from usually reliable sources will likely be severely flawed, at best. It’s easy to blame Mental Illness and to demonize mentally ill people, so that is what society has done. It’s what medicine has done. We aren’t that far, historically, from women being institutionalized for ‘hysteria’ after all.

Luckily, mental health care is improving, and bias is fading at a glacial rate. Newer studies have proven that the motivations for mass shootings do not have high correlation to most forms of what we term ‘mental illness.’

This article is 50 pages, on the surface, if you just skim it, it appears to support the idea that there’s a huge correlation between mental illness and violence. However, if you actually read it, you’ll find it’s saying the opposite. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318286/

“surprisingly little population-level evidence supports the notion that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than anyone else to commit gun crimes. According to Appelbaum,25 less than 3% to 5% of US crimes involve people with mental illness, and the percentages of crimes that involve guns are lower than the national average for persons not diagnosed with mental illness. Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120 000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.26“

In short, people diagnosed with mental illness are much less likely than an average person to commit any sort of violence.

Perhaps some definitions are in order. When we say something as imprecise as ‘mental illness’ we’re basically tossing the entire junk drawer of human brain issues into a basket, jumbling it around, then blaming it for everything under the sun.

You can read further about the types of disorders and conditions that fall into that basket in layman’s terms here. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-types-illness#1

I’ll detail a few that are usually the ones people have in mind when they blame mentally ill people for (insert whatever someone wants to blame us with).

Psychotic disorders: Psychotic disorders involve distorted awareness and thinking. Two of the most common symptoms of psychotic disorders are hallucinations — the experience of images or sounds that are not real, such as hearing voices — and delusions, which are false fixed beliefs that the ill person accepts as true, despite evidence to the contrary. Schizophrenia is an example of a psychotic disorder.

Personality disorders: People with personality disorders have extreme and inflexible personality traits that are distressing to the person and/or cause problems in work, school, or social relationships. In addition, the person’s patterns of thinking and behavior significantly differ from the expectations of society and are so rigid that they interfere with the person’s normal functioning. Examples include antisocial personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder,and paranoid personality disorder.

The next part is hard for a lot of people. Unless you are a psychologically trained medical professional, you have no business, and no right to be armchair diagnosing anyone with a ‘mental illness’. Least of all a domestic terrorist. 

Why? Because you’re very likely to be wrong. And that increases negative bias. It hurts people. What most people believe and think about the vast amount of mental illness is wrong. It’s based on ‘facts’ like ‘what the press reported’ and ‘my crazy granny had that’ and ‘jimmy down the pub told me about’ and ‘I read/saw/heard it in fiction so, of course, it has to be true!’

Just stop. Please.

Misrepresentation of all forms of mental illness is rife, everywhere. What you believe and think about it is extremely likely to be massively, harmfully, flawed. And trust me, your beliefs, examined or unexamined, come through in so much of what you say and write.

I ramble. I know. Back to why I felt motivated to write this.

I was in a group chatting when the Texas shooting came up, and I was going to respond in group. I want to preface the rest with saying that I’m not angry or anything. I rarely actually get angry, it takes a lot.

I’m heartbroken.

Because I felt on the verge of meltdown, I decided to turn my thoughts into a blog post so it can be useful for others wishing to learn. And hopefully, no one will feel the need to either argue with me about my accurate information or accuse me of … whatever people who reject autistics from groups think we’re doing. (I don’t actually know what that is, if I did, I’d try to stop doing it.) 

In case you don’t know me, I’m Kai. I’m an autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, disabled creator and disability advocate. I’m also a damned good writer and a great editor. I’m a life partner, a parent, a loyal friend, a traumatized and healing person, an irreverent shit, and an over educated pain in the ass. My degrees are in research oriented fields. I know how to do proper research, and how to do it well.

I’m out about some of my mental illnesses. Some I’m not because I get enough harassment just being out about being queer, autistic/adhd, and mentally ill. I’m diagnosed with chronic severe depression, high anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, C-PTSD, and bats in the belfry.

I’ve spent most of my 45 years trying to, somehow, be less autistic, less ADHD. This is impossible because my brain wiring is so different from an allistics. All I’ve ever hoped for was acceptance. It’s a basic human need, social acceptance. To date, there are 3 people I’m not related to who know most of my messy self and still love me, regardless.

I mask instead, since I can’t change my wiring. (Masking, in this usage, means having a socially acceptable persona that we pretend to be to get along in life.) I started intentionally masking my autistic traits when I was 9. So I could have friends who didn’t decide to hate me because they don’t understand me. So I could just… exist.

Masking kills autistic people, did you know that? The average age an autistic person dies is 36 years of age.

The suicide watch for parents of autistic and ADHD kids starts at 9 years old.

What do I mean by that? Wise parents start watching their autistic and ADHD kids closely for severe mental illness and suicidal attempts at the age of 9. (Technically, 9 for boys & AMABS, 11 for girls & AFABS.)

Why do we have to do that? I’ll spare you the terrifying statistics on suicide in autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, and people with other forms of neurodivergence. Mostly because I don’t want to look at them again, myself. I have young kids. You’d better believe I watch them.

That’s the point of my work. That’s why, even when I don’t want to stir the shit or when I just don’t want to talk about it… I do anyway.

Bias against neurodivergent people kills us. Mental illness is a form of neurodivergence. Autism and ADHD are too. Bias claiming autistic or mentally ill people are violent is factually untrue and it is killing us.

36 years old. That’s when most of us die. I’m past my expiration date by 9 years and goddess… it feels it. Every day grinds me down further. And that’s why I do the advocacy work I do.

It’s far, far too late for me. The world has broken me into the tiny shards of a kintsugi project, and I don’t have gold to glue myself back together. But I have children. If my advocacy work can make the world see what it’s doing to people like me, if I can help people understand… maybe the world will be kinder to future generations of autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, and otherwise neurodivergent people. My kids included.

I’m still working on taking off the mask. I still mask far more than I intend to. And I still, always, get into trouble when I slip into autistic speech patterns.

Autistic folk often get… emphatic, I guess, when we talk about things that matter to us. People can feel overwhelmed when we get going either because we’re excited or we care about the topic. Because… well, it can be a lot, I guess. 

Most of us mask everywhere, which does end up killing us; as most forms of ableism tend to kill someone.

Since we mask, we only end up overwhelming people when we slip into what I call autistic mode. I caught myself before I managed to do it today in group.

I’m not always aware enough to catch myself before I slip. Especially, if I’m excited and enjoying a topic, and think people are also geeking out with me (instead of being overwhelmed). It’s really easy for my socially inept brain to not notice that people want me to shut up… on those occasions, I pay for it. (The fact I shouldn’t have to completely hide myself in order to have some semblance of a social life, because people don’t understand autism & adhd is a whole ‘nother blog post.)

I’m obviously not excited about the shooting in Texas, but the related topic I brought up is one that’s both intensely, personally painful and the focus of much of my advocacy work.

I was afraid that talking in group would result in another experience of ‘Kai slipped into autistic, had social doors slammed in xyr face, melted down, and had to leave the group.’

I’m rather tired of that happening, and I’m still deeply grieving the last group where a person or people made it obvious I wasn’t welcome because I can’t change that I’m autistic/ADHD.

When I’m upset, I can’t talk or respond to more than one person at once, if that. It’s a recipe for a meltdown. Hence, the manuscript/blog post.

I’m not looking for argument, debate, apologies or discussion. This isn’t an easy topic for me. I also wouldn’t be able to meet my gaze in the mirror if I didn’t say something. So.

I’ve been bullied and attacked and driven out of groups I really liked because people rarely stop to ask the intent behind an autistic’s words.

So… I just want to clarify; my only intent here is to educate. This is part of what I do in my advocacy work. It’s also incredibly painful for me, so as soon as I post this I’m getting off the net for a while. I don’t have the wherewithal to discuss this as if it’s not incredibly, personally painful, because it is.

The most recent shooting, today in Texas, is another horrific event and I’m beyond nauseated.

The very first thing many people do when another of these awful occurances happens is look around for a reason. It’s average human behavior. Because of decades of misrepresentation in media of mental illness and autism, (including by writers, which is why accuracy in any kind of representation is so important) the very first culprit people often think of is ‘it had to be someone mentally ill’ or ‘the shooter was obviously autistic or had autistic traits’.

This is almost universally untrue, because both populations are, by far, more likely to be the victim of violent crime than the perpetrator. There are plenty of studies out there about it. If you really want to read them.

Psychologically, it’s natural for humans to want there to be a reason. It’s even natural that we want the reason to be something that makes the perpetrator ‘not like me’. Few people want to believe themselves capable of buying a weapon, walking the halls of an elementary school, and then… I can’t even make myself type it. It’s so beyond horrifying.

That desire, that need, for us to believe we couldn’t do something like that, that ‘good people like me’ (tribalism) couldn’t do that… It makes mentally ill & autistic people easy targets. In the next few days, watch the news, you’ll likely see it.

The reason really does boil down to evil. The definition of evil is ‘profoundly immoral and wicked’.

There have been plenty of papers written on who a domestic terrorist is likely to be. (A cis white male without a history of mental illness or autistic traits between the ages of 16 to 30 is most likely. A cis white male without a history of mental illness or autistic traits between the ages of 45 and 60 is the second. Third is a cis male without a history of mental illness or autistic traits.) Yes, there are studies confirming this.

There are several things that play into this. Toxic masculinity is one. Radicalization is another. White nationalism, forced birthing, the list goes on and on. We want the answer and the culprit to be easy.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. That desire for an easy excuse harms people like me. It. Kills. Kids.

And it is not okay.

If anyone wants to read studies on this, the information is out there.

Mental illness has very little, if anything, to do with radicalization. To say it does is discrimination, and it’s ableist. There’s no proof. None. There’s a lot of information out there about how radicalization happens, too.

Calling for better mental health care when another terrorist shooter attacks may be well meant. We definitely need it, and I’m 100% for better mental health care everywhere. It would help so many people and massively improve society. I’ve always said everyone can use therapy.

And the connotations of shooter = we need better mental health care is painfully obvious.

Mentally ill people are not the ones doing this. While we absolutely need better mental health care, the people guilty of these atrocities aren’t the kinds who would use it.

Radicalized people often think they’re doing the right thing. Many of these acts have been racially motivated. And if the reasons are traced back, it often equals the ‘not enough white babies’ BS. Other motivations have been domestic violence and religious intolerance. None of these are mental illnesses.

It’s easy to say better mental health care would help. It would help a lot of things! Shooters would be in the vast minority. There’s plenty of studies that’ve been done on this topic, too.

The one thing I’d ask people to remember is this. Stop and think before you say anything.

Is your information on what you feel the fix is accurate? Is it fair? Does it unnecessarily demonize innocent people who don’t need more pain while they just try to survive? While we try to survive in a world that hates our very existence at worst, and barely tolerates it at best?

Every time another terrorist strikes. Every time. Someone trots out the ‘autistics did it’ or the ‘mentally ill people did it’ and that gets incredibly old, very painful, and exhausting faster than most average people can imagine.

It’s already a minefield, trying to just exist as either an autistic or mentally ill person in this world.

There isn’t a day that goes by that someone like me isn’t harmed by misperceptions or casual off-hand comments or someone harming us in another way.

Do you really need to add to it by either overtly or by connotation accusing autistic or mentally ill people of something so heinous it makes this mentally ill, autistic, ADHD person utterly nauseated? It will sicken most people like me. Autistics particularly usually have a hard wired need to help others.

So it’s particularly cruel to accuse an innocent population of people hard wired to help… with choosing to harm.

The solution to domestic terrorism isn’t in blaming it on people more likely to be the victim of violence than the perpetrator. Studies overwhelmingly support the statistics that autistic, ADHD, mentally ill, and other forms of neurodivergent people are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.

But that’s not what people believe. And it’s certainly not what they say. It will take a multi-faceted approach to solve the problem. Because the problem is so multi-faceted.

Step one has to be acknowledging where the problem actually is.

It’s not with people like me.

If you got this far, thanks for reading.

If you have the wherewithal, I’m a disabled creative and my family lives in extreme poverty. My work of words is my only income.

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A reaction to reading TO SIRI WITH LOVE from an #actuallyautistic author.

On By KaelenRhyIn Blog, Culture, Reviews, Uncategorized, Who is Kaelan?, Writing2 Comments

You know. I started reading that horrific book as a bit of a whim, thinking it wouldn’t be that bad.

I’m the autistic mom of autistic kids, my husband is autistic, we value and appreciate our children and ourselves in pretty much every particular. Are there challenges? Absolutely. But they aren’t anything that neurotypicals don’t deal with, we just deal with them differently.

Usually by communication. We use text a lot with each other, because a lot of times it’s far easier to type or sign than it is to talk.

The point isn’t how we use adaptive technology to make our lives run smoothly, the point is that we communicate.

So I honestly, to the soul of me, didn’t understand how a mother could write and publish a book that would be anything except a joyful celebration of her child’s uniqueness.

I had hoped, foolishly, I guess, that the screenshots of the book I’d seen before reading it had somehow been… not so much taken out of context, but perhaps were just… I don’t even know, overblown maybe?

I didn’t understand how a mother could think those things about her brilliant child.

And never for a moment did I think, reading about Gus, that he’s anything less than brilliant.

He’s so smart I have a feeling he’s manipulating his mom because of how she so very clearly infantilizes him and shows overweening favoritism to his twin Henry, who is also autistic.

Though obviously, neither the author nor Henry know this. Henry shows all the markers of autism, he just presents differently.

We ALL present differently. Which is part of why autism is so hard for most people to recognize when they see it, and that absolutely includes so-called professionals (most of whom are neurotypical) in the field of diagnosis.

It’s a common reaction for autistics when we are abused by ABA practices (to learn to manipulate) especially if ABA therapies are impinged upon us by parents who believe the revolting bullshit that Auti$m $peaks tends to tout.

We learn to do everything in our power to protect ourselves, because we don’t have any choice.

This author… the things she does to both of her sons. It’s utterly appalling.

I can’t, even still, after reading that atrocity… I still can’t believe that a mother could write those things about her kids!

I can’t believe she’d share such personal things about her KNOWN autistic son, without his permission.

Without his knowledge.

Medical information, daydreams about having a ‘normal’ Gus… I just…

Reading that book broke something in me. It really did. It broke a faith I had that neurotypical society didn’t really hate me and the way I’m made.

And a couple of days after reading it and posting my review, I’m still shaken by it. I’m recovering, but it’ll take a week or more to regain my emotional equilibrium.

The outpouring of love and support I’ve received from the autistic community and a large number of neurotypical people have restored my faith in most of humanity.

“Autism parents”, however? They’re on my shit-list for life.

You can read my full review here, with links to the live-tweet threads I did as I broke it down, chapter by chapter.

If you want to know about the experience of being autistic, the hashtags #actuallyautistic and #askanautistic are far better resources than pretty much anything else I can think of.

 

Chickens with Pitchforks

On By KaelenRhyIn Writing12 Comments

Edit: April 19, 2021

I wrote this article in 2016, re-reading it now… it’s so obvious that I was already sick of the extreme toxicity that runs around on Twitter in the guise of… I’m not even sure what they think they’re doing.

And on June 16th, 2020 tens of thousands of people decided I needed ‘canceling’. (No one deserves the level of cruelty those self-riotous pricks sent my way, no one. I’m lucky I’m still alive. I credit that to my partner and my actual friends.)

A *lot* of people sui/cide after receiving that kind of behavior. That kind of hatred. I know the names of 5 authors who the ‘writing community’ has cyberbullied into ending their pain the only way they felt was left to them.

I know the names of 13 neurodiverse authors who have been cyberbullied off of social media; I’m one of them.

The elephant in the room of the ‘writing community’ is how depraved the level of harassment and cyberbullying really is. Y’all got issues. And being quiet in the face of that is called enabling.

The people who started it all had been stalking (what else could it be called?) me, twisting my words and actions into misrepresentations and outright lies about me for *years*. Every 6 months or so, they’d stir up trouble, probably angling to get enough people to cancel me. One doxxed me, blowing it off as unimportant. (And blowing off the 8 months of IRL and cyber harassment I and my family experiened within the 18 months they had my legal name paired with my former pseudo and libelous statements. (I had to change my name because the attacks turned it into a mental illness trigger.)

I’ll talk more about that in a different post with more details when I’ve healed/recovered enough.

Original post, edited for spelling and clarity. New commentary marked with backslashes.

Thinky thoughts, so many emotions and me, a writer, not being able to come up with a coherent way of saying them all.

Some of this emotion is likely from how shitty my day to day life is right now. I have untreated EDS/CFS/fibromyalgia (long story, not getting into it) and I’m moving house, downsizing in an unwanted move to a much smaller place and my two kids are coming down with another round of ‘public school plague’, so some of this emotion is from that.

Most of it has been boiling for a while and I’ve been too afraid to say anything because I feared judgment and dragging. // One good thing about getting cyberbullied/canceled? If anything about cancelization could be called ‘good’. I legitimately do not give a fuck about what anyone who didn’t show up for me when I truly needed them thinks about me. //

If another author can say publicly, that they won’t let down their bad ass female ancestors by being afraid. I can enby up and not be afraid to speak my truth either. I WANT THE PAIN TO STOP.

I’m not talking about my fibro pain. I’m a farm kid, raised around animals and there’s this trait I saw a lot of growing up. Ugly duckling, odd chick behavior. It’s basically where birds will, for some reason, decide to pick on a member of the flock until it dies.

The publishing community on twitter the past couple of months are acting like a bunch of chickens. Pick, pick picking at one another until the weaker bird dies. Now, I’ve written theses, I can hazard a guess about the psychology behind it, tension, stress about the election, brexit, et cetera.

You know… it’s something humans do too. It’s called bullying, maybe a bit of gaslighting.

I call it witch hunting. (I’m pagan, have been most of my life, I use the term with knowledge and respect for the fallen, ’cause y’all know what? Many of you are acting like the inquisition here.)

One thing I cannot, and will not, ever lie down for is bullying. If this post burns me bridges, or brings me grief because I’m foolish or courageous enough to point at an unpleasant truth in a group of people who ought to freaking know better? Bring it. (Seriously, I’m not spoiling for a fight like a lot of people seem to be doing these days, but I will defend myself and other people.)

To be clear, this is not brought on by any one situation, there have been nine incidences (that I’m personally aware of, pretty sure there’re more) with different people involved, with different topics addressed over the past several months. I’m plugged into a lot of communities, just because of who I am. There’ve been issues about pansexuality, religious faith, PoC, cultural (mis)representation, and tone policing to just mention a few. So I am not pointing at any ONE person or topic or incident. Though yes, why I’m saying something now is because of the reaction to the book THE CONTINENT.

Firstly: *I* have not read the book. Neither have most of you. Which kinda calls into question the omfg issues revolving around it. One well respected and well thought out person has read it and commented upon it. In a critique which, given who it was, I have to assume is accurate. I respect the person who critiqued it. I may not always agree with the methodology or opinions of this person, but the knowledge, viewpoint and critique? That I respect.

I rather hope #TheContinent isn’t that bad, but as soon as I can finish this move and regain some sense of equilibrium-I have an ARC-I’ll read it and review it. Honestly and from my perspective as an educated, marginalized, author of mixed ethnicity. //I couldn’t get into it.//

I also know the person who wrote the book is a debut author. Aren’t we supposed to be doing our utmost as writers/authors/publishing professionals to support debut authors? Even the ones who make mistakes?

I have so many thoughts and emotions about this. (I’ve been writing this most of the day when I needed to be working on my book or packing.) I’ll try for cohesion, so that when/if I’m attacked, I’ll have my receipts. You’ll note that despite me working damned hard on wording this correctly, without censure of any one person or incident that I’m Expecting To Be Attacked. That is the feeling of the writer community on twitter right now, (it wasn’t when I joined up) and that goes out in ripples to the whole of the authorial community. I want to cover a few of the tangential issues related to the topic of harassment.

Diversity: I am passionate about all forms of diversity. Always have been. I’m a staunch supporter of being who you are, all of who you are. I will always be an advocate. We are each of us human, each of us learning, growing, beautiful individuals. Do we make mistakes? We’re human, of course we do.

I’m damned worried posting this is a mistake mistake // don’t give a fuck now. // So much so I’ve had people vet it before I click publish. (I’ve never, ever done that before w/a blog post.) Thing is, I can’t respect myself if I DON’T say something. So. To the meat of it.

  1. Passing. I pass damned well, it gives me privilege others descended from the same bloodlines and cultures as me don’t have. But. I’m. Still. Passing. I’m aware that I’m passing, and it absolutely kills something in me when we run into racist/neurodiverse issues in publishing, in all forms of entertainment. It’s like I’m torn in half. The part of me that is *me* from the part of me everyone else *sees*. Go ahead, look at the profile pic. Look white, don’t I? I’m not. Unless skin tone is all that matters. (Whoa now, if that isn’t a shock, I dunno what could be. Skin tone as a social control? Nah. Couldn’t happen among thinking humanoid type critters.) But, if the way I look is all that matters, well… that’s prejudicial. It kills something in me to hear another gifted writer saying they KNOW they have very little chance of traditional publication. It’s something I know very well because I feel it myself, even if the reasons are different. They’re Native, but they keep writing anyway… Then the same writer has their heart broken because of the (possibly, *I* haven’t read it. I *don’t* prejudge) racist YA book that will soon be published. To hear her pain. Lord and Lady, it’s like an emotional wound inside of me. Because she speaks about her pain, about those dark and nasty thoughts I’ve had myself… (the ones that are grateful that my kids pass too ’cause they have First Nations ancestry from both their dad and me?? Because they have African ancestors through me? Yeah, those thoughts. I don’t obey those thoughts, I won’t be a coward. I teach my kids as much as I know about all of their ancestors, but I still have the thoughts. A symptom of the world we live in.)
  2. I have not read the book, I intend to, because I cannot make an informed opinion about anything without, ya know… informing myself. It’s a thing, yeah?
  3. I pass as being neurotypical too. I’m not what most people think of when they think ‘autistic’. SPOILER, most of us aren’t. If you know 50 people, you know someone who is passing autistic. You know someone who struggles, every second of every day to understand how other ‘normal’ people work.
  4. On the other side of this fence, a good friend of mine is incredibly saddened because they know the author in question… my friend tells me they are a good person…
  5. If someone is saying, ‘This hurts.’ You don’t say, ‘that’s not the way it is, you’re viewing it wrong.’ There’s a definition for that and it’s called gaslighting.
  6. Being a good person, with good intentions does not relieve you of responsibility. If, for instance, you write YA books, you have to be concerned, always, with the kids who will be reading your work. You. Need. To. Be. Aware. Words can hurt, they can kill. We need to use ours wisely. This ALSO goes for those with influence, those who speak out and are respected for doing so. Who may feed people to their following, knowing damned well what will happen. I see you. It does not give you (no matter the color of your skin, or your ancestors or, or, or…) the right to harm or gaslight anyone. If someone says… ‘this hurts, please stop’ the ONLY answer is ‘I’m so sorry. I will listen, I will do better.’ Even if you don’t understand what you did wrong. Even if your cultural understanding isn’t aware or awake enough yet to know how badly you effed up. Someone says ‘OUCH’, you say ‘I’m sorry’. I mean, didn’t we all learn this in kindergarten?
  7. In case it needs to be said. I. AM. SAYING. OUCH. PLEASE. STOP.
  8. I’m talking to the writers, the publishing professionals, and you. Yeah. I’m looking at you, my reader. Maybe you personally haven’t done anything that I need to say ouch about. Maybe you’ve never done a blessed thing to hurt another human, but… maybe you have. Only you know.
  9. This one… I honestly can’t believe I even have to say it. I’ve worked for fortune 500s, I’ve brokered million dollar deals when I sold stuff (software if it matters) to the US gov’t. I’ve been in NOAA’s headquarters and I’ve visited Fort Knox, I’ve dined w/ the US Secretary of Energy. I’m not sharing that info to brag. I was miserable in that job; I’m sharing it for perspective. So when you read the next bit, you’ll understand exactly where I’m coming from. ANY. Other. Industry. Would be bloody, fucking, appalled by this behavior. I am NOT calling out one particular person, many people do it… I am talking about something that borders on breach of privacy. It’s not ‘quite’ there, but it’s like when you smell a campfire and then feel the flame. The issue? Sharing of private DMs/videos/emails. Don’t do it. Private correspondence is private, it’s not meant for public consumption and no, sharing it isn’t right no matter how justified you feel you are in doing so. I don’t care who you are or what your motivation is to do such a thing. Same goes with taking tweets and emails and things said out of context and using them as fuel in your own personal crusade. I’ve seen quite a bit of that lately too and I’m tired of it. There aren’t many ‘issue’ crusades that don’t apply to me too. Do you see *me* doing that? I find it extremely distasteful and unprofessional. (Most everyone else does too. Just to let you know.)
  10. Mental Health: (#ownvoices on that topic, among others) Did you know it falls into the category of being a bully to call someone out for using mental health issues as a tool? When. You. Don’t. Know. The. Person. Or. What. They. Deal. With? The person I’m thinking of didn’t say a damned word about that book. They were accused of sub-tweeting, and racism and omg… WHAT THEY SAID was, ahem (I should stop shouting, but I feel it may be warranted) don’t discount mental health issues. That person talks about their own struggles FREQUENTLY. Jaysus. I’m sick to my stomach that so much that should be bringing us together, forming bridges, is being used as tools in dividing us.
  11. You know what? You don’t get to tell someone else they aren’t struggling, no matter what the color of their skin is, the state of their brain or their lifestyle. No matter what color YOUR skin is, or the state of YOUR brain, or what lifestyle you (hopefully) enjoy. You just don’t have that right. Even if you’re marginalized, you still don’t get to say it. See Gaslighting. I’d love to call out the names and say… hey there bully! Whas’up! We meet again… it’d be sooo nice if you’d stop. I choose to not do that. I’ve been a victim of bullying my whole damned life. I know what it looks, feels and smells like. THAT was bullying. (Not the first time I’ve seen it with the particular person, and to be utterly clear, it isn’t the person who critiqued the book.) Think it might be you? Do you bully people on the internet/twitter/fb? Then lace it up and wear it, b. Bullying, even in the name of a good cause, is still bullying.
  12. Witch hunts. I made such a face just now, I really did. But damn people, what is WITH the witch hunt mentality in publishing? I’m pagan, and extremely well educated (many useless degrees on the walls, promise). I’m aspie, which means *my* brain acts a lot like a computer in the amount of information I have at hand at any one p0int. So when I use the term ‘witch hunt’ that is exactly the right term to use. One person points the finger at another person, shouting “WITCH” then without proof, without reason, without any sort of trial the ‘witch’ is run out of town, or twitter dragged, or suffers a pile on in the worst way. (There’ve been a lot of these hunts around issues relating to PoC, pansexuality, asexuality, representation, tone policing and fetishism lately, just to name a few) There are those of us on ‘both’ sides of any single one of these witch hunts who would like to speak up and say something along the lines of ‘wait a minute, that isn’t Actually What They Said or Did’ or ‘Whoa, Wait a minute, that was taken completely out of context and used in a way it wasn’t ever intended as’. You know what? WE can’t. The moment one of us (again, on either side here of any particular dispute, I’m thinking of at least 9 different instances on different topics in recent months) says a thing that disagrees with the ‘witch hunt’ mentality, we’re tarred with the same damned brush. There is no logic, there is no reason, there is no kindness. (FWIW, I’m not a kindness before ‘A Person’ believer. You see something wrong, you hurt? Call, it, out. I will support you, always.) There certainly isn’t an atmosphere of listening and learning in the writing community on twitter. Which–I can tell you as a marginalized person myself–I’d be so much happier seeing. I’d be ecstatic if people learned about me and tried to understand the things I face and have to deal with rather than them ‘getting their comeuppance’ and being feather-plucked/driven out of the community at large.
  13. You know what these recent witch hunts have done? It’s made me (passing PoC, neurodiverse, polyamorous, pagan, kinky, pansexual, chronically ill, queer, mentally ill, fat… ) the person trying to get it right in my work, (because I know what it feels like to be marginalized in so many ways) not want to share my writing. It makes me doubt every word I’ve ever written regarding a person with a darker skin than mine. Everything I’ve ever alluded to from one of the ancestral cultures I have the honor to claim. (Edit… this is a massively common feeling, since I first posted this, I can’t believe the number of people ID’ing as any form of diversity who’ve reached out to me in a positive manner about this post. It’s not just me who’s feeling this.)
  14. I have PoC characters in a lot of my writing, because I feel so strongly that everyone deserves to see themselves in fiction. I rarely, if ever, see accurate rep of me in fiction, I think everyone should have that. To see themselves reflected. I remember hearing my mom, when I was a kid, say something along the lines of ‘she wished there were a few brown girls’ in the romances she liked to read. I remember her using lemon juice to lighten her skin and hair, and praising my (then) blond hair and blue eyes. Genetic fact, you don’t tend to tan well unless you’re pretty mixed up, ethnically. Many of us know a person who is really pale, all year round who turns into a lobster if they get a hint of sunlight? Not so mixed. Someone like me, who turns red-brown in the sun… very mixed, I have Spanish, Portuguese, African, Middle Eastern, First Nations, and European ancestors. You know… I remember my mom yanking on my hair with a brush to keep it from forming locks, (which it does even more now than it did then) because it wasn’t the ‘right way’ for hair to look. I remember her yanking out *Yes, she pulled them out of my scalp, and taught me to do the same thing* the dark, spiral curled hairs that grew in among the blond. I remember how I felt when I found the proof that, um, whups the reason we don’t talk all that much about some of your grandparents is cause they were so dark. Um… WTF? I know what it feels like *to me* to read about another mixed person in fiction. (I’ve blogged about it before, I literally cried the first time I saw it. Because I finally saw me. That feeling, of seeing ME/YOU is what I want for every person on the planet who enjoys fiction. This atmosphere… it’s driving away those of us who’re trying to get it right. These recent witch hunts, man. It’s made me say… well fuck, because I pass so well, I guess I don’t have the right to write people with angular eyes and dishy teeth (I have dishy teeth… you know? For the uninformed it’s a Native/First Nations/Asian biocline trait). I’m so light skinned (when I’ve been being writer chick and staying out of the sun) how dare I even think about writing a guy with dark skin and blue eyes, or, to refer (not rep, I won’t do that) but simply refer to one of my characters as rez raised Native. (My granddad was, left the rez to marry my grandmother… but my skin is awfully damned light to be writing someone with darker skin, isn’t it?) These witch hunts… damn people. What are you trying to do with them? To bastardize The Princess Bride, I don’t think you’re doing what you think you’re doing.
    1. Are you trying to drive authors who work very freaking hard at getting it right away from writing PoC? (I excoriate myself to get it right, to not use ‘food’ terminology when describing a skin tone or eye shape, just for instance. If I mention a culture or trait, I try my damnedest to not use stereotypes and, and, and, and.)
    2. Are we as a community trying to drive other authors away from just talking about their own ancestries? From learning and asking questions? It feels like that to me today. It really does. (I’m not speaking of that book now, I have not read it, I don’t know, if you haven’t read it, neither do you.) I AM speaking of how *I* feel trying to describe my characters. Is the fact that I see and write one of my characters as a girl with angular green eyes, gold skin and black hair going to get me tarred and feathered as being an Asian/First Nations Fetishist? I’m describing someone in my family when I use those terms, I had them vet the description before I used it. They thanked me for not comparing the shape of their eyes to a nut. (dude… white people’s eyes look more like almonds than Asian/First Nations… have you actually looked?) Is the fact that I see one of my characters as a dark brown man with blue eyes going to get me accused of another form of fetishism? (It’s a gene I studied in University, how the African diaspora encountered blue eyed people around the Baltic Sea around 10k years ago. There are blue eyed black people, shocker, I know, right? Did you know there’re red haired black people too? Red haired Native/First Nations? Is it wrong to depict them?) I have freaky silver-blue, color-changing eyes (Danish biocline trait) but my skin isn’t dark… how about if I only write light skinned Danish immigrants? I’ll ignore the other half of my ancestry, as I’ve been taught to do my whole damned life… is that what’s needed and wanted here? If I refer to my rez raised Native character as red-brown (my mom’s skin color btw, and mine in the summer after even a hint of sun) is it going to get me skinned alive by someone respected in publishing? Because my profile pic is taken in winter and I’m kinda pale in it? Oh! I know! I’m cream colored in my profile pic… doughy even, maybe even porcelain… means I’m white, right? What the hell are y’all trying to do?
    3. Is the end goal here a more diverse publishing atmosphere? It’s what *I* thought we were all doing and trying for. How does picking the feathers off of a debut author contribute to that? If the book is as reviewed, wow, yeah, some learning and fixing up needs to happen, and it shouldn’t have been published that way. Twitter dragging the author/the editor/the publishing house… that’s not going to help them learn. No, it’s not *OUR* responsibility to teach or educate anyone else about our marginalization’s. It is our responsibility to act like human beings. Like higher reasoning primates and not a bunch of featherheads toting pitchforks.
    4. I highly doubt many people are reading this… my experience of my mixed up ethnicity, of all of my experienced marginalizations and the pain I feel at seeing these… witch hunts… because I’m never on just one side of them. Each one of them splits me in half, or thirds… it’s crazy. It hurts, it hurts badly. If you are reading, if you’re on either side of these conflicts… could ya’ maybe step back a bit and say… I’m listening. I will read/research/think about the issue at hand and maybe talk privately to people I trust about it… rather than grabbing a torch and pitchfork?
    5. By grabbing a torch and pitchfork, I mean piling on in support of one side or the other in ANY conflict. Public call outs… this is probably the aspie me in (I really loathe being accused of something in public. Which might clue you in to how strongly I feel about this topic, to step up and say something I’ve been feeling for a while, KNOWING I’m likely to get taken to task for it.) but, does it actually HELP anything? It sure as hell isn’t changing publishing. Only thing going to change publishing is using your money to talk with. Buy the authentically diverse books with good rep. SUPPORT authors who are diverse, in whatever fashion their diversity shows itself in. I’d give a body part for some accurate kink rep in mainstream fiction other than the few that are out there… how about an adult aspie? Asexual? Grace? Mixed ethnicity? Adult polyamory other than love triangles? How about a fat girl in a romance? A disabled romantic MC who doesn’t get a miracle cure by the end of the book? I’d love one of those. There’s some kink and poly but not a lot, can’t think of many Grace or Aspie characters in adult fiction. I swear on all I hold holy I will give whoever brings up the movie The Accountant the lecture of their life on bad representation.
    6. This entirely human/chicken habit of tearing down, witch hunting, et cetera. It’s not helping. To be clear, I’m not talking about sharing an educated opinion of a book, nor am I talking against speaking your own pain. I’m talking about personal attacks against an author/entertainer, you know… name calling, career shaming, calling into question their integrity or their intelligence, rudely rolling ones eyes (virtually) about how damned dumb this particular person HAS to be to be making that mistake… that kind of thing. Damn. Here’s a question for those of you who may feel I just insulted you. Did you see the movie THE ACCOUNTANT? RAINMAN?? Were you entertained? Chilled? Excited? Thrilled? Or were you appalled at the rep? If you didn’t answer the latter, you got some work to do.
    7. Oh… and just cause I’ve seen it and I’m annoyed by it… piling on in support of PoC, LGBTQA+ (insert marginalized individual) doesn’t absolve you of your own guilt. If you’re light skinned (I am too, it’s part of the culture we live in) you’re racist. If you’re not Asperger’s/Autistic, you’re prejudiced against us. If you’re not mixed race, you have no idea what it feels like. If you’re not polyamorous, you have no idea how much it hurts to only be able to find monogamous romance to read, even when you LOVE romance. If you’re straight, you have no idea how badly we queer people want to see ourselves in fiction. If you’re not kinky… boy… I could write a whole damned thesis, probably a couple of them, on bad representation and the damage a certain series of books has done there because of piss poor research. If you aren’t part of a/the marginalized community, the only thing you can do is LISTEN. LEARN. Attempt to make bridges instead of tearing things apart. And for fucks sake. Do. Better. Maybe a good start would be to try leaving the plucking of feathers to the ducks and chickens.

Perspective

On By KaelenRhyIn Who is Kaelan?

I usually wait ’til something triggers a blog post, I’ve no set schedule, works for me. So, I recently shared a thing from my past with a couple of online friends. I’ll share what it was in a bit.
It brought up the odd dichotomy I have about perspective, just to clarify (since I can’t draw worth beans, really, my stick figures look drunk) I’m talking about definition 2.
My perspective seems skewed, or everyone else’s is. Not sure which, to me, the things that have occurred in my life, are just normal. Possibly even logical. Now, this may very well be a part of my Aspie nature. Remember that logic and knowledge are akin to holy to me (except math, math = bad) and that emotion takes a back seat, until it doesn’t. (Clear as mud, aren’t I?)
Ahem. Definition:

perspective

noun per·spec·tive \pər-ˈspek-tiv\

Definition of perspective

  1. 1 a : the technique or process of representing on a plane or curved surface the spatial relation of objects as they might appear to the eye; specifically : representation in a drawing or painting of parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion of depth and distanceb : a picture in perspective

  2. 2 a : the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed <places the issues in proper perspective>; also : point of viewb : the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance <trying to maintain my perspective>

  3. 3 a : a visible scene; especially : one giving a distinctive impression of distance : vistab : a mental view or prospect <to gain a broader perspective on the international scene — Current Biography>

  4. 4 : the appearance to the eye of objects in respect to their relative distance and positions

perspectival

play \pər-ˈspek-ti-vəl, ˌpər-(ˌ)spek-ˈtī-vəl\adjective

I shared, what to me, is a perfectly amusing tale of ‘how not to drink.’ Yet, my memory was met with sorrow for the events that occurred. (Yeah, this is totally ’cause I’m Aspie, isn’t it?)
By the time I turned twelve, I’d learned to drink. Yes, really, no I’m not implicating anyone, it just… was the way it was in the time and place I grew up in.
I’d been raped by someone I cared about by the time I turned 17, and I stayed in a relationship with him afterward. I didn’t even ‘know’ it was clearly rape until I’d taken a sexuality class in University, years later.
I’d also been threatened with both physical abuse and having a family member abused, and loss of where I lived if I didn’t recant something I’d accidently shared about a family member sexually abusing me.
I can almost hear the gasps, but… thing is, life and childhood just ain’t pretty for so many people.
It’s why I support, desperately, authentic YA stories (kinda wish I could write them, but… my real life YA is more suited to a memoir I think. I’d never get pubbed, I’m no where near disneyfied enough for the YA market that I’ve seen. My time and energy are limited, I’ll continue writing what I love to write. Also, to clarify, I want to get pubbed only so my stories can reach the most readers, the one’s who really need/want to read them).
The YA stories that are real? The ones that tell the hard truths, the ones that explicitly describe the terrible decisions some kids, a lot of kids, make on a day to day basis, those stories need publication, so they know they aren’t alone!
I could’ve used that, then, you know?
Anyway.
I think I was all of 24 when myself, my husband and a friend were invited to the largest Halloween party in the (Capitol) city we lived in. It was a bit of a social coup to be invited. I didn’t care so much about the social coup, so much as that we had a party that promised to be fun to attend.
My social anxiety being what it is, we arranged for a cab and started the libations while we costumed up. I’ve been a professional costumer, my work is in museums and has graced stages, I’m good, so it took a bit of time. A fun time to be sure.
Lol, yes, we were well on our way to tossed when we got into the cab to go to the party, ebulliently enthused is a good phrase.
We got to the party with our donations, booze and food, of course, as one does (and ourselves).
We mingled, we drank, and since there was a free open bar, and I admit, a hot, shirtless bartender (I’m demi, not blind) well, I figured in the dumb damned way of youth, to try stuff I hadn’t yet.
Tequila shots.
Yep.
I’ll say now, just in case you ask later where my companions were, this was in the late 90’s, we’d hung together for a while then split up and mingled where we willed. (were there orgies, yes, there were, it was a goooood party).
So, by the time the challenge for Tq shots came along, I was mostly sober and alone. (I did know many people at the party, but… I wasn’t with anyone I’d come with.)
Some random person in the group I stood with asked if anyone would do Tq shots with them.
(Even now, it’s just an experience to me).
I offered, he made it to three, I made it to four. After flirting (badly I’m sure, no one ever looks as good drunk as they think they do) with the bartender, I tried oozo, because I’d never tried that either.
Apparently, I don’t handle liquor well. Too much Native in my ancestry perhaps (I was told that by someone from a rez once, I may be completely off base and smack me with a clue-by-four if I’ve misspoken, please.)
Oh gods, Drunk, with a capital D, and not in the pretty, fun way, and all of the sudden!! We’d been shooting for maybe half an hour. Remember I started this little learning experience mostly sober… well… reasonably, I wouldn’t have driven, but I consciously made decisions knowing their likely repercussions.
lol, no, I didn’t puke but gods I had to pee in the worst way. (I may be weird in liking that the other guy puked, saw him coming out of the john as I went in… only time I’ve ever liked the ‘hail fellow well met back slap’ of ‘victory’.)
By the time I was washing up at the sink, someone in full renaissance garb needed the john, no worries. I went out onto the porch for air.
I watched some poor sap fall down the three flights of wooden stairs. (yeah, the hosts should have blocked them off, they didn’t) Guess who the next poor sap was?
Yup.
I’m lucky I didn’t break my damned neck (the doc’s words the next day, not mine). He said I was lucky I’d been drunk, apparently the muscle relaxants in booze save a lot of college kids lives) I had bruises up and down the left side of my body. Um, by that I mean the whole left side of my body was black, and they gave me tetanus shots and vit-k? I think? There were needles. (In another time and place, fun, but at the time, I had no clue as to my own mortality.)
Fuck, I still remember how badly the bruising hurt.
So, being me, after the zipper ride down the stairs, I stood up and walked around (I swear, I have more than a little ‘cat’ in me) Carlin said it best at about minute 4:43 Fucking Meow
So. I walked it off (gods, there’s a sports metaphor from my stupid ‘oh, I like sports! years) Look, I don’t judge anyone for legitimately liking sports. But dang, could we just stop shoving it down everyone’s throats? There’s a fecking large percentage of the population who’re faking enjoyment of it, ya know? (Unless there’s armor and swords/axes or MMA involved, in which case I happily throw over my own reasoning.) (Sorta like faking orgasms… regardless of gender, y’all can stop that too.)
Ahem.
So, yeah, I walked it off and hobbled my way back up those fecking stairs. A guy dressed in a sheep suit met me at the top, expressing concern for my well being.
I’m not great at reading social cues, but how many women can tell ahead of time they’re about to have an issue?
I didn’t. He’d been around the whole night (yeah, yeah, alarm bells, I was young and dumb).
He asked me what I needed, when I said my husband or my friend he led me to a room with a phone. (so I could call them, ya know? In the days before frequent cell phones?)
I won’t detail what followed, but anyone who didn’t know how to apply a gooseneck (hapkido) or (yeah, hapkido, sorry) and had the will to apply that and other methods of self defense would have been raped.
I wore bruises from that the next day too.
Nothing was broken. I suppose it says something about my life that that’s the standard by which I approach injury.
So, much disturbed, still sickdrunk (there needs to be a word for that, if you know it, enlighten me, please) I left him to his, um… writhing is good (he survived, and so deserved it) and found my husband and friend. We called a cab and went home.
Except… (you knew there was more, didn’t you?)
Yeah. For the first time in my short and varied life, I puked while drunk and in a moving car.
I’m nothing if not polite. It’s a skill you learn with an Asperger’s brain. You figure out, through trial and error, what is socially acceptable and what isn’t, ’cause let me tell you, it isn’t obvious to some of us.
I got the window down and puked out of it. On the highway. (I still regard this memory as amusing, I learned my lesson, I don’t usually drink liquor and rarely drink anything to excess.) Though I pity whatever cars were behind us.
It occurs to me that this post might lose me followers. Do I care? Nope. If you’ve never, in your entire life, done something stupid when you were young, (or old, learning isn’t a bell curve) feel free to judge (and take the stick out of your ass while you’re at it). Lol, unless it was fun putting it there, then, kink on my friend! Honestly, if you’re doing whatever with a consenting, of legal age partner? Have fun with my blessings (hope you don’t need them).
It also occurs to me to say, damn, kids, if you’re reading this, it totally isn’t worth it. I speak from experience, being raped isn’t fun (please report it, I wish I had, both the successful, and the almost) (report it here) or please, in the US and Canada, call 911 or go to a police station. (I’m not internationally traveled, I’d love to link to international resources for this, email/DM/PM) This applies to male, female and non-binary gendered. If, for whatever reason you can’t (I get it, I do) my DM’s are open, my email is public. I’m here. I can’t help, but I can listen.
The cabbie robbed me. I can’t judge all cabbie’s by that one, but she spun an entertaining (now) yarn about how she had to clean her cab of the puke.
In my drunken state, I didn’t do the math, a carwash cost about 4$ then.
So, she dropped off my friends and took me to the ATM. We had all of 40$ in our account (Still in University, we were so poor then).
She took it all and demanded more. When I told her there wasn’t any, she finally drove me home. Where I found my companions on the lawn of our apartment building. We hadn’t been gone long for such a ‘rich’ experience.
As an older woman, I desperately hope neither of my kids, nor anyone’s kids, ever experience life like this. Except. I know incredibly well how hard life can be. I know that people are as varied as the days on a calendar, and that it can be as simple as a bad day that makes a person do a bad thing. It can be a bad hour, or a bad 5 minutes. Every second, we choose.
You know? I’m still viewing this, with my perspective of age, as being a learning experience. Sure, I was ticked off the next day (I mean, who wouldn’t be?)
Did I consider reporting the guy who learned his lesson? (Hopefully about more than not to wear a sheep costume!) Yeah, I did, but I didn’t know his name, and in my drunken state, had a bad description. (Sheep costume, dark hair, Caucasian, location, that’s not really enough.) I also knew exactly how the cops were likely to respond to an accusation. (Another story, later time, maybe.)
In any case, from my perspective. I learned a deep and abiding lesson and have what *I* think of, as an amusing story. From the perspective of those I blurbed this too, well… that’s where the confusion comes in.
It’s where perspective comes in. If you’ve had a relatively easy life. (I’m obviously no judge of *easy*) then your perspective will be different than mine.
If you are any of the kids I’ve taught in inner city schools, especially if you’re POC of any variety, I bow my head in respect for what you’ve lived through, because I haven’t a blessed clue. If you’re POC at all, I bow my head, because you’ve lived through so much.
… and even now, I’m *still* fecking wondering why my sharing of something someone *asked* me to share is… off? wrong? Elicited-the-response-it-did-that-I-still-don’t-understand? Yeah. That.

On Diversity

On By KaelenRhyIn Writing

So, here’s the thing.

I write romance, of a particular stripe, and though I’ve always been a writer, it’s pretty much always been the same type of work from me. Diverse, Kinky, Polyamorous.

Diversity isn’t just about one topic. There’re a lot of words being bandied about these days, in publishing, people saying they want diversity from writers. There’s a push for #ownvoices manuscripts. I’m grateful that there is some change, small though it is.

Thing I’m seeing, though? It’s not enough. It’s not diversity if you only start accepting monogamous same-sex romances. That leaves the rest of us out in the cold, crying for books to read. Those of us who are polyamorous, kinky, pansexual, our brothers and sisters and friends who use different words and pronouns to self-identify. How about a genderqueer or genderfluid MC in mainstream adult fiction? (I think I’m just getting old, but I’m so sick of reading about romantic monogamy… it’s not my thing, I’d like to read about my thing… ) What about an aroace MC? Grace? I can keep going…

Neurodiverse, haven’t seen it yet from traditional publishing, (it’s more prevalent in YA. Unfortunately, I don’t read YA, so… I’m left wanting books that rep me in that regard as well).

How about mixed ethnicity? This one is a little easier to find, I say that because I HAVE seen it. Once. Nalini Singh has mixed ethnicities in her books, and there was a person very like me in her books. It was the first time I’d ever seen that part of myself in fiction. I cried, literally, I had to wipe tears away to see that part of me in a traditionally published book.

It’s not only about accepting books with POC characters. The writers have to be POC too.

I’m such a mutt of ethnicities, which, yes, technically makes me passing POC, but I won’t write about the experience of living life in a darker skin, because I haven’t done it. (Yes, before you ask, I do write many characters who are POC in my futuristic or fantasy worlds. My characters show up fully formed for me, it’s the way it works in my head. But the experience of living life as POC in this world, that I won’t write because I respect those who have to live it in our messed up society and I want their stories, their words).

I’m not saying that writers shouldn’t listen to their muses, (world would be an awfully boring place if we didn’t have interesting stories to tell), but could we get a few stories by POC writers as well as those that aren’t? Could we get a few authors who are neurodiverse telling their own stories so that we can be repped in fiction too? I can name two mainstream polyamorous characters/series in traditionally published fiction. (I have a few more potentials on my TBR list, but I’ve personally read two series with poly characters). Pansexual? Haven’t seen it. (A note, my TBR list is taller than I am, and I’ve been able to add a few more books that purportedly rep diversity, I’ll review them when I get there.)

There is still so much pain and frustration, diverse people crying out for books that rep them (me included in many areas). Yet… where are our books? Is it just talk?

I hear the cries of others, I feel the pain myself. What is it going to take before we’re heard?

 

 

On Rejection: From an Aspie Writer

On By KaelenRhyIn Writing

I’m pretty open about having Aspergers. I’m so grateful that agents are asking more and more for #ownvoices writers to submit their work.

Yet, because they’re asking for our writing, it might help if they knew how someone neurodiverse might think about rejections. *Not an expert, and not everyone is out, so if there are aspie/autie agents hi! I’m only speaking for ‘me’.

Now… no one likes rejection. We human beings are social creatures and having someone tell you they don’t want your work hurts all of us. It’s part of the business, though, and anyone who wants to write for publication, especially traditional pub needs to accept that. I do, it’s part of the life of a writer. Hell… some of the most famous writers ever have received the most rejections. (Go here, you’ll see) so the concept of rejection doesn’t bother me, 98% of the rejections I receive don’t phase me. It’s the 2% I’m addressing. Those where someone has specifically requested more of my work after reading a query or a couple of pages.

Rejection. If you want to write for pub vs fanfic (which I love and have written myself) or to write for yourself, get used to it. You’ll feel rejected over self-pub by lack of sales too, so it’s not just for Trad.pub you’re going to run into it. This isn’t even touching on the concept of poor reviews or trolls bitching about what you write. (I get trolled a lot because I’m out about who I am, all of who I am).

Yet, I want to say something on rejection, especially for an aspie. Now, this may not apply to everyone with Aspergers, I only speak from my *own* experience. Victimized in school by bullies, I’m well versed in rejection. I’ve worked professionally in sales, I have a thick skin. I can take it, and I’ll continue to do so. I know the business of publishing as much as any ‘outsider’ ever can.

It can still throw me for a freaking loop, and here’s why.

I write so much into my stories and hell, not many people seem to like me in person, so I don’t expect a whole lot of people to like my writing… except, of course, I hope they do!

I’m aspie, and one way this makes a difference in my life is that I have a driving obsession to know WHY. About everything… why that bird looks the way it does at my feeder, why X, Y, or Z. (and the other 23 letters!)

So, rejections from agents and publishers bother me, like… a lot. The ones on query letters only are the least bothersome for me. Next step, queries with pages… those make me wonder what exactly the person didn’t like about my work. But for both of those I can brush them aside and not worry about it. The ones that are the hardest are those where an agent/publisher has specifically requested more of my work. If they tell me why they eventually said no, it makes such a huge difference to me.

‘Cause if they do…

I can slot it into a pigeonhole of ‘this is why’ it didn’t work there. That information would be invaluable to me (even if I didn’t agree with it, or if I didn’t like it,(and I’ve gotten both) I’d still have that information to use in future endeavors).

Without that little bit of information, it hurts more and niggles more than it probably does to a neurotypical person. (I’m not NT, I don’t know what it feels like to someone who is, I may be completely off base). I do know that in general, autistic individuals have fathomless wells of emotion. Even if it doesn’t look like we’re bothered or feeling something, trust me, we are. Yes, I know how busy agents must be, I know how hard it would be to write a sentence to each rejection. It would be so nice if they could, though, no, I don’t expect it. No, it isn’t going to stop me, but it may throw me for a day or two. I received one recently that almost made me stop writing, that’s how hard it was to receive. That’s my honesty.

I can’t NOT research something, it’s not in me. I can dive down the rabbit-hole so fast and hard in the blink of an eye, then spend hours there (wherever there is). It’s a trait of how Aspergers makes a difference in my life.

So, of course, I researched the industry of publishing before dipping a toe in. I know it’s the rarity to even get a rejection letter much less a reason for the rejection. Still, for me, personally, it’s like a burning itch I can’t scratch. An itch to know (and from history, that itch will never, ever, ever go away). To understand. ‘Cause trust me, I rarely understand other people, (waves from aspie-land) this obsession with how people work and why they do what they do is in part a self-defense mechanism for me.

Rejection sucks, it’s part of this business and I do collect rejections (I’m shooting for wallpaper, because at least then I know I’m trying) yet… if any agents or publishers read this… if at all possible on partials, if it’s something you’ve requested more pages on, please tell the writer WHY it doesn’t work for you, especially if you know they’re neurodiverse “It’s not for me.” Really isn’t enough. I don’t need a repetition of something you’ve already told me, for things important to me my recall is epic. (You should totally play me in geek trivial pursuit!) I do, rather desperately, need a reason why.

In a publishing industry where #ownvoices are being asked to submit their work, agents need to know how it works for us, and I know enough aspies/auties to hazard a guess that rejection probably bothers many of us as much as it does me. I can’t believe it would take more than a minute to give that bit of info to someone who you’ve already spent an hour or more on reading their work. A reason, even if it’s only a list can make such a difference in the emotions of ND people like me. Something like this would help so much. Now… on to the next rejection. 😀

  1. Didn’t resonate
  2. No market
  3. Too long
  4. Whatever reasons