Tag: bullying

How can we help people with disabilities? For example, autistic people who see the world differently.*

iamshadow21:

* This question was posted on another social media site. What follows is my answer.

1) Treat us as people, not as less. An adult or an older child being talked to in a baby voice is not on, regardless of how their disability presents. Talk to us at age appropriate level. If we’re interested in something, get excited about it with us, rather than telling us we’re boring. Sharing our interest is our way of trying to communicate. We love a thing. We’re opening up ourselves to you. It might not be how you’re used to doing a conversation, but it is meaningful communication, and it means we want to share that excitement with you. That’s a big deal. Recognise it.

2) Our diagnosis is none of your business, unless we feel comfortable talking to you about it. It’s really none of your business if we were diagnosed as a kid, an adult, self-diagnosed, or questioning. It’s none of your business if our autism has changed its presentation as we’ve aged. It’s really none of your business if you think you know what autism looks like, and we don’t match up with your preconceptions. And please, if we’re verbal, dressed appropriately, out in public and unattended, it’s not a compliment to tell us how well we’re doing. We’re just as autistic when we’re ‘passing’ as when we really aren’t. Passing for normal is not an achievement, it’s a monumental effort that most of us feel long term health effects from if we have to do it daily. Allowing natural autistic behaviours is something a lot of us have to relearn in adulthood to manage our anxiety. An adult flapping, pacing, tapping, or playing with a stim toy isn’t being babyish or playing at autism, they’re trying to take care of themselves. Don’t stare or tut or tell us we’re embarrassing you. (Telling us our Tangle is awesome and you want one is totally okay, though.)

3) Our sex life is none of your business, unless we’re in a sexual relationship with you. Just because we’re autistic doesn’t mean we can’t consent. That said, if there’s someone being weird and intimate with us when we’re a minor and they’re in a position of authority, make sure we’re okay. Compliance based therapies heavily used with autistic children (like ABA) make autistic children very vulnerable to sexual abuse, because they teach children to do things that are uncomfortable, painful or unnatural to them to please adults for rewards.

4) Make a conscious choice to be okay with difference, be it physical, intellectual, neurological, whatever. This might be harder than it sounds. Disability can come with mobility needs, sensory needs, dietary needs and routine based needs. It might require communication devices or sign language, or a picture-based communication system, even if to you, the person ‘seems’ verbal. It’s rare for an autistic person to have no difficulties with verbal communication, and if you’ve only ever seen them happy or relaxed, you might not know they need to use their phone to communicate when they’re upset or overwhelmed. Also, non verbal autistics might have a couple of words, scripted speech, or echolalic phrases they can use when conditions are right, even though they primarily use AAC or sign. Verbal ability isn’t a fixed thing. It fluctuates. Be patient if we’re struggling. It’s more frustrating for us than for you.

5) Everyone’s disability is unique. No two autistic people are the same. Likes, dislikes, sensitivities, strengths, difficulties. An autistic person might be sensory seeking, non verbal, highly intelligent, low anxiety, highly organised. They might be highly verbal, high anxiety, low executive function, mild intellectual disability, dyslexic, supertaster. They could have any combination of interests and personality traits, and come combined with a whole array of other disabilities. Don’t think because you know one autistic person, you know every autistic person. We’re individuals.

6) Listen to us, not to Autism Speaks or ‘autism moms’. Our experience is unique to us. It cannot be fully understood by a neurotypical bystander, regardless of how close that relationship is. Read books by autistic people (there are a lot). Donate to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network or Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. Don’t light it up blue, put puzzle pieces on your car, or spread anti-vax rhetoric (which is fake science and basically hinges on the fact that a lot of people would rather have dead kids than autistic ones). Watch documentaries produced by autistic people about their experiences. Check out neurowonderful’s Youtube series Ask An Autistic.

7) Don’t assume we’re straight. Don’t assume we’re cisgender. Don’t assume we don’t understand the complexities of our multifaceted identities. Gender and sexuality variance is present in autistic people, just as it is in neurotypical people. In fact, there’s actually evidence there is a higher proportion of transgender, nonbinary and genderqueer people in the autistic community than in the genpop. Our experience of sexuality and gender is also viewed through our lens of autistic experience, and there are terms created specifically by autistic people to encapsulate this (like gendervague).

8) Don’t assume we can’t have relationships, friendships, and families outside of our parents and siblings. Don’t assume we can’t be awesome parents. Don’t assume we can’t make informed choices about our bodies and procreation. Autistic people have been here as long as people have been here. I’m from a multigenerational family myself, with both male and female autistic people, stretching back at least five generations, anecdotally (further than that, highly probably, but we don’t have the information).

9) Don’t think we’d be better off dead. This is why adults and children are murdered by parents and caregivers every year without legal repercussions. Our lives have value. The next time you see a news article where a parent cries about killing their child, don’t rationalise that ‘it must be so hard’ to be taking care of us. That’s essentially saying we’re responsible for our own murder, and that it was justifiable homicide. MURDER IS MURDER. If you want to campaign for better respite and support in your area, GREAT, but don’t give parents who murder their children a free pass. Parenting is hard, but people have a choice, and we must stop allowing people who make the choice to kill to get away with murder. Whenever it happens, someone else, somewhere, thinks murder is an appropriate solution to the problem of a disabled person needing care in their life, and another irreplaceable, unique person dies.

10) We have the right to exist in public spaces. Yes, that autistic person having a meltdown might be disrupting your shopping and hurting your ears. I can guarantee their life is harder than yours right then. Have some compassion (not pity) and give them some space. We have the right to be in restaurants, in theatres, in libraries and in schools. If you think a person with a disability being in those spaces is going to have a negative effect on your children, maybe you should think about your parenting, rather than about segregation.

greenemeralds-goldenpower said: I only object to the first point’s “ If we’re interested in something, get excited about it with us, rather than telling us we’re boring.” While I think it IS rude to just tell someone they’re boring because you aren’t interested in their stuff, telling someone to fake being interested about the same thing one is still troublesome because now you are invalidating the other person’s feelings and likes. (1)

greenemeralds-goldenpower said: Not everyone is gonna like something we do, so forcing them to act as if they do seems to me as asking them to lie about this. I wouldn’t want them to act as if they absolutely adore it when they don’t. That being, said, the other extreme is also harmful: we have the right to communicate our likes, and if someone finds it boring, we shouldn’t stop talking about it forever. (2)

greenemeralds-goldenpower said: I think there needs to be a balance: not dismissing someone else’s likes but also not forcing them to act excited if they aren’t. Just to listen the other person and accept that one’s likes may not be the same as other people’s. This doesn’t make the interest less important or valid; we’re just diverse folk who like different things. Hope you understand my point. (3)

Okay, I understand what you’re saying, let me explain better what I meant.

You can be excited with someone in an honest and communal way without sharing their interest.

For example: Your friend gets a gift for their birthday. IT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED. They might scream a little. They might cry. They are probably going to thank the person who gave it to them, and then they might tell everyone watching why they love it and why it’s important to them.

Do you share the same interest in the item? Probably not. People love different things. But what you can do is open yourself up to the excitement and joy your friend is expressing. You can let yourself get carried along in that wave, and respond to their explanations with warmth and reflect the joy they’re feeling, because you love your friend and love that they love that thing.

But when autistic people try and express their joy and interest, very, very often, neurotypical people around us think it’s their job to shut us down. Roll their eyes, sigh loudly, tell us ‘NO ONE CARES!’. This happens from early childhood. A six year old might want to infodump about their favourite show. THAT’S WHAT KIDS DO. But people will smile and affirm and let a neurotypical kid talk, but firmly tell an autistic six-year-old that no one wants to hear it, and why doesn’t he talk about something everyone likes instead?

It’s a double standard that conditions autistic people to think that no one cares about them, their interests, or their feelings. It makes kids give up on social interactions, because why even try when they’re relentlessly suppressed? The thing is, a lot of these kids get to their teens and adulthood and discover fandoms and discover conventions and discover fan clubs through the internet. Suddenly, a world opens that is full of other people, NT and autistic, who are passionate about what they are. They thought they were alone. And it’s upsetting, to realise they spent so many years being scorned by those closest to them, when they weren’t that weird after all.

Communication, for autistic people, begins with talking about interests. How are we meant to learn the intricacies if every attempt is rebuffed? It’s bullying under the banner of social skills, and it needs to stop. You don’t have to share the interest, just the excitement, and not be such a Mean Girl about an autistic person liking a thing. It lights them up. Let them be happy. Be happy that they’re happy. It’s part of friendship, and if you really care about them, you’ll want that for them.

Violence, Abusers, and Protest

rook-seidhr:

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

fabulousworkinprogress:

My grandfather was a generally peaceful man. He was a gardener, an EMT, a town selectman, and an all around fantastic person. He would give a friend – or a stranger – the shirt off his back if someone needed it. He also taught me some of the most important lessons I ever learned about violence, and why it needs to exist.

When I was five, my grandfather and grandmother discovered that my rear end and lower back were covered in purple striped bruises and wheals. They asked me why, and I told them that Tom, who was at that time my stepfather, had punished me. I don’t remember what he was punishing me for, but I remember the looks on their faces. 

When my mother and stepfather arrived, my grandmother took my mother into the other room. Then my grandfather took my stepfather into the hallway. He was out of my eye line, but I saw through the crack in the door on the hinge side. He slammed my stepfather against the wall so hard that the sheet rock buckled, and told him in low terms that if he ever touched me again they would never find his body. 

I absolutely believed that he would kill my stepfather, and I also believed that someone in the world thought my safety was worth killing for. 

In the next few years, he gave me a few important tips and pointers for dealing with abusers and bullies. He taught me that if someone is bringing violence to you, give it back to them as harshly as you can so they know that the only response they get is pain. He taught me that guns are used as scare tactics, and if you aren’t willing to accept responsibility for mortally wounding someone, you should never own one. He told me that if I ever had a gun aimed at me, I should accept the possibility of being shot and rush the person, or run away in a zig-zag so they couldn’t pick me off. He taught me how to break someone’s knee, how to hold a knife, and how to tell if someone is holding a gun with intent to kill. He was absolutely right, and he was one of the most peaceful people I’ve ever met. He was never, to my knowledge, violent with anyone who didn’t threaten him or his family. Even those who had, he gave chances to, like my first stepfather. 

When I was fourteen, a friend of mine was stalked by a mutual acquaintance. I was by far younger than anyone else in the social crowd; he was in his mid twenties, and the object of his “affection” was as well. Years before we had a term for “Nice Guy” bullshit, he did it all. He showed up at her house, he noted her comings and goings, he observed who she spent time with, and claimed that her niceness toward him was a sign that they were actually in a relationship.

This came to a head at a LARP event at the old NERO Ware site. He had been following her around, and felt that I was responsible for increased pressure from our mutual friends to leave her alone. He confronted me, her, and a handful of other friends in a private room and demanded that we stop saying nasty things about him. Two of our mutual friends countered and demanded that he leave the woman he was stalking alone. 

Stalker-man threw a punch. Now, he said in the aftermath that he was aiming for the man who had confronted him, but he was looking at me when he did it. He had identified me as the agent of his problems and the person who had “turned everyone against him.” His eyes were on mine when the punch landed. He hit me hard enough to knock me clean off my feet and I slammed my head into a steel bedpost on the way down.

When I shook off the stunned confusion, I saw that two of our friends had tackled him. I learned that one had immediately grabbed him, and the other had rabbit-punched him in the face. I had a black eye around one eyebrow and inner socket, and he was bleeding from his lip. 

At that time in my life, unbeknownst to anyone in the room, I was struggling with the fact that I had been molested repeatedly by someone who my mother had recently broken up with. He was gone, but I felt conflicted and worthless and in pain. I was still struggling, but I knew in that moment that I had a friend in the world who rabbit-punched a man for hitting me, and I felt a little more whole.

Later that year, I was bullied by a girl in my school. She took special joy in tormenting me during class, in attacking me in the hallways, in spreading lies and asserting things about me that were made up. She began following me to my locker, and while I watched the clock tick down, she would wait for me to open it and try to slam my hand in it. She succeeded a few times. I attempted to talk to counselors and teachers. No one did anything. Talking to them made it worse, since they turned and talked to her and she called me a “tattle” for doing it. I followed the system, and it didn’t work. 

I remembered my friend socking someone in the face when he hit me. I recalled what my grandfather had taught me, and decided that the next time she tried, I would make sure it was the last. I slammed the door into her face, then shut her head in the base of my locker, warping the aluminum so badly that my locker no longer worked. She never bothered me again. 

Violence is always a potential answer to a problem. I believe it should be a last answer – everything my grandfather taught me before his death last year had focused on that. He hadn’t built a bully or taught me to seek out violence; he taught me how to respond to it.

I’ve heard a lot of people talk recently about how, after the recent Nazi-punching incident, we are in more danger because they will escalate. That we will now see more violence and be under more threat because of it. I reject that. We are already under threat. We are already being attacked. We are being stripped of our rights, we are seeing our loved ones and our family reduced to “barely human” or equated with monsters because they are different. 

To say that we are at more risk now than we were before a Nazi got punched in the face is to claim that abusers only hurt you if you fight back. Nazis didn’t need a reason to want to hurt people whom they have already called inhuman, base, monsters, thugs, retards, worthless, damaging to the gene pool, and worthy only of being removed from the world. They were already on board. The only difference that comes from fighting back is the intimate knowledge that we will not put up with their shit.

And I’m just fine with that.

Hallelujuah, so may it be.

#violence is the last resort of the gentle #it is not the answer#but sometimes it’s the question and the answer is yes (x)

allstoriesarereal:

puddlecomic:

if you’ve been trained to to dislike yourself for enjoying anything due to years of being told you’re annoying clap your hands 👏👏👏

if I listed out every particular instance that was met with negativity enough for me to stop feeling comfortable talking about it, this comic would be like 50 panels.

[ more comics | Patreon | Tapastic ]

Okay so this is so important. Please don’t ignore this post if you think it doesn’t apply to you, because even if it doesn’t, it could be happening to someone you care about. And it may seem like nothing, it feels like it’s nothing for a while but after hearing people say just how boring or dumb something you love is… well, you start to believe it. Before you realise it you find yourself not finishing stories or sentences because there’s a voice in your head saying “shut up, no one cares” and just like that those things you used to love so much lose their spark. They no longer make you as happy as before, everything is tainted and you hate yourself for not fitting in, for not being as interesting as everyone else. Because if everyone says you aren’t then they must be right?
But no! It’s not true and you tell yourself that everytime, but it’s not enough. You have to learn to love the things you used to love again.

In my case, I’ve missed out on so many experiences because of this. I had given up trying to make people see the things I like aren’t a waste of time. But I’m slowly trying to claim them back.

So please, if someone you know ever tells you something about them or about what they like please listen to them. Even if you don’t really enjoy the thing they are telling you about, if they matter to you please listen. That simple action could mean the whole world to them.

This happens to so many people, but especially to autistic people. We are told this, often daily, by those around us, that we are boring, that our interests are boring or inappropriate or ‘too intense’. That we should be other than we are to be interesting to other people, or we’ll never be acceptable or have friends. This is done by family, friends, teachers and medical professionals ‘for our own good’, and is seen by society as benevolent, not abusive.

Guess what.

Our interests are great. They give us joy. They often enable us to have friends all over the world. They make a messed up, scary existence less horrible.

And being acceptable to neurotypical bullies just isn’t the grand prize they seem to think it is. We are wonderful just the way we are.

You may think that an autistic child won’t notice they are different than their non-autistic peers… I have not met one autistic person (myself included) who hasn’t noticed their difference early in life. For me, noticing came through being bullied at school and at home. And since I didn’t know I was autistic, I just assumed there was something wrong with me and that I deserved what I got. I learned that intrinsically, I was less than a person…

When you learn that you are less than a person, being abused becomes normalized and expected. When I was six years old, I had a meltdown in a music class due to sensory overload. The teacher’s response was to lock me in a closet for the duration of the class. It was dark. I was terrified. It was normal. I deserved it. I can only hope those aren’t the type of thoughts you want your child to have.

Reid Knight, “Parents: Don’t Hide Your Children’s Autism Diagnoses From Them,” at TPGA (via myautisticpov)