The belief that someone might be faking it means they don’t deserve help is one of the greatest social ills put upon us as a society.
Let me explain:
With every charity there will be at least 5% of people (more or less depending) that look like they don’t deserve to benefit from the charity due to their clothes, phone, ability to walk, looking cis or het, looking white or any outwards sign of privilege that they might seem to show.
In actuality, about 0.01% of these people either do not qualify for the charity in question or actually have the privilege that they look like they have.
An example:
You are at a food bank. Mrs. White come up in a shiny Escalade with 4 kids all piled in the back. She comes in to get food for her, her husband, and her 4 kids. Immediately after they leave, you hear one of the other volunteers criticizing the fact that these “obviously well off individuals” are coming in for food.
In reality: Mrs. White’s husband was in a car accident that cost him his ability to walk for long periods of time, the car, and his ability to work. The insurance company paid for the escalade (a dream car of the husband’s) and disability allows them to keep the house, but Mrs. White is barely able to work part time to take care of her husband and the kids. They rely on the donations at the food bank to get by.
Another example:
You see a pair of people walking in the pride parade that look cis and het and are being affectionate at Pride. You hear someone snarl about invaders.
In reality: They are both trans or Bi and this is their first Pride being out.
Another example:
A person on the internet talks about their experience with Autism and how it means they have a hard time working. They’re self-diagnosed.They’ve gotten jeering comments about how they’re faking it and making it hard for real Auties.
In Reality: They’re autistic but can’t afford a professional diagnosis because they have a hard time working and they showed atypical traits as a kid.
I could go on and on.
I’ve heard it all. From just about anyone. But mostly? Mostly I hear it from people who think that if you don’t fit the stereotype you don’t deserve help. That you must be in the very lowest place you can be before you get help. But that’s simply not how it should be.
We should reach kids before they’re on the verge of death, someone before they’re on the street, a person before they’re grasping at the end of their rope. And if we were able to do this, maybe more people would feel comfortable asking before they had no other option than to beg for the scraps that society can leave them.
Society’s greatest illness isn’t those who fake need, but those who think that that tiny bit of people who don’t need the help asking for it is worth forsaking everyone else who does.
I think I would like this better if the ‘group picture’ contained the first two figures. Yes, there are autism stereotypes, but the implication by their exclusion is that these two do not exist in our multifaceted community, when the reality is, they are just as much a part of us as any other. So yes, portray diversely, but don’t leave those autistics who fit the stereotypes out in the cold. I’ve seen this kind of gatekeeping in queer communities, too, often to exclude people who fit the stereotypes about queer people too closely. The moment we tell people they’re letting us down just for existing and living as their true selves, the more we define a rigid idea as to what it means to be autistic, and become hypocrites. We should never make an autistic feel they have to change their movements, their dress, their special interests, stimming behaviours, or speech because they are overrepresented. Don’t make that autistic person feel shame because of who they are. That’s what neurotypicals do to us every day.
So, for the autistics who wear headphones, who love trains, who are ‘little professors’ with encyclopaedic knowledge of baseball stats or vacuum cleaners or planes, who are maths prodigies or synaethetes or have eidetic memories or are savants – YOU ARE WELCOME. YOU BELONG. YOU ARE JUST AS AUTISTIC AS ANY OF US. WE LOVE YOU.
Lmfao what the fuck are you on?? Q*eer was originally used to refer to trans and sga people BY CISHETS to refer to us as abnormal and wrong. It’s a fucking slur. If you choose to use a slur as your only personal identifier then yes, your identity is a God damn slur. This is so disrespectful to every lgbt person with trauma surrounding that word, and you’re the one who’s being ahistorical. Asshole.
I’m on education that came from somewhere other than tumblr, my dude.
We’ve been calling ourselves queer since before WWII. It was not originally used “by cishets”. It was used by us. To describe us. Interchangeably with gay, which was used by all genders.
Ten years before you were born, Queer Nation was fighting for rights you now enjoy, marching in the streets. Queer Nation was founded by members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), an organization for AIDS advocacy, because we were literally dying in the streets. Which is where die-ins came from, by the way – during the AIDS crisis when hospitals wouldn’t touch us with a ten foot pole, people protested by literally dying in a place inconvenient for the powers that be.
Whoever “taught” you that queer is a slur and always has been lied to you.
We’re still here, we’re still queer, go educate yourself.
If you can’t give me sources on q*eer being used by lgbt people BEFORE they reclaimed it from cishets using it as a slur i really don’t care what you have to say
Wow sorry about your inability to use google. If the internet is too hard, you could try picking up a book at your local library!!!! Like, how about My Queer War by James Lord or
Kids, learn your own queer history. Our identity was our word first.
must be nice to be 17 and know absolutely everything about queer history ever
@kinasty As a seventeen queer-questioning kid I was mad at the world and society and ready to burn shit down out of ignorance, too. We can’t blame children for parroting the ignorance and bigotry of people they should be able to look up to as elders of our community but who are instead are crafting a TERF agenda and deliberately using children as mouthpieces and soldiers to keep their hands clean. We CAN choose to educate. The moment we resort to ‘kids today’ bullshit we sound like every other adult that we despised when we were that age. Yes, cite sources for our history and correct assumptions, but don’t act like a tool about it just because age and education have given you that wisdom. Look back in twenty years and you’re going to be thinking, ‘shit, I was such a smug little asshole at thirty, smacking down actual children looking for meaning and culture and identity on that hellhole website’. Be a guide, not a gatekeeper.
knitting in the dark 