More importantly, it has tips to help one get past inertia. This could apply to those who are autistic or who have other forms of executive dysfunction.
There’s a rather wordy section on examples of autistic inertia, but this other part has some questions which may help guide you to doing things:
If you’re inertial, and you’re trying to figure out some ways of structuring things to make inertia less of a problem, here’s an outline of a possible way to proceed.
Think about the tasks/activities you do easily, and those you find difficult or impossible (it might help to write a list out). Are there patterns? For example:
Are you better at doing things in one setting (home, work, school, a friend’s house, etc.) than in another? If so, what is different about that setting?
Are you better at tasks which need to happen at a particular time than at tasks which need to happen just whenever?
Are you more likely to do things when you’ve already said out loud or in writing that you’d like to do them (or that you plan to do them, or something)?
What effect does pressure have on your likelihood of completing a task?
What effect do various sorts of reminders from friends and others have on your likelihood of completing a task?
Are you more likely to do tasks you’ve already practiced several times?
Are there certain things you get stuck doing (playing a particular computer game, etc.) which make it harder for you to move on to what you want to do?
Do you have an easier time with certain tasks when you’re alone, or when you’re with people?
Are there particular people you have an easier time doing stuff around? Are there particular people it is difficult or impossible to do stuff around?
Is it easier when the people are busy doing stuff of their own, or when they’re in certain frames of mind?
Is it easier to get stuff done when your day has gone certain ways (say, when you’ve exercised, or when you’ve eaten breakfast, or have gotten enough sleep, or aren’t stressed, or already accomplished something that day, or scheduled enough break time, or…)?
Does it help if your environment is clutter-free?
Does it help if there is a cue for what you’re trying to do (like the textbook, if you’re trying to study, or the stamps and envelope if you’re trying to send mail)?
Brainstorm some ideas for making some of the tasks/activities you care most about easier for you to do, possibly with help from a friend. Try them out for a week or so and see if they help. Then, brainstorm again.
Neurodivergent K wrote this post about making adaptations in her home environment to help her operate better there. She talks about making her life more accessible for herself.
While I do love that whoever made this did a good job matching actors to characters, the one issue I have is that Hogwarts is in England and what founded several centuries ago. I’m not saying that there wouldn’t have been blacks or asians in England at the time, but it’s still a historical inaccuracy to depict them as anything other than white Englishmen, since the culture of England at the time wouldn’t have had room for blacks and asians as anything other than slaves or traders.
Please don’t take this as me being racist, this is just me with a debilitating and incurable need for historical accuracy.
So let’s see. The Sorting claims it’s origins about a thousand or so years ago in it’s song, which implies the 1000s. JK Rowling described them as “medieval,“ which is about 500 to 1500, again agreeing with our 1000 date. So let’s work with that. We’ve got a pretty decent timeline to work with here.
There have been black people in Scotland since “classical times,” and black moors present in James IV’s royal court in the 1500s, plus there’s St. Deiniol in Wales in the 500s, implying black people were also in the religious court instead of all just slaves and servants. Therefore, could a strong and fearless future-Gryffindor have ancestry native to the Isles? Hmmm.
Hannibal of Carthage was definitely not white (at least not in the modern sense). As a matter of fact, many Mediterranean descended people are mixed with Central Asians, South Asians, and North Africans so… But anyway, in 1555, black men were learning to be interpreters in London to help with trading in the Ghanian region. Here’s a coat of arms with black people on it dated 1616. Also, literally how do you not know about Dido Elizabeth Belle, an aristocratic lady of Scotland from the 1700s???
The Romani migrated out what is now modern day India and Pakistan in about the 1000s, so add in that they’re wizards who can fly and all that jazz, they could’ve easily gotten there within a year or two and settled in Scotland once they learned white people weren’t treating them very kindly. There you go, that’s how a South Asian Slytherin made it to Scotland just in time to found Hogwarts.
Here’s desi people of color from the Indian subcontinent, called Lascars, who had been sailing in Europe from as early as the 1400s, possibly earlier, still fitting that there could’ve been wizards in the British Isles about a hundred or so years earlier. Art from the 1600s showing brown men in turbans. Here’s an Indian man who in the 1700s ran a successful restaurant in England and taught white people to shampoo their hair lol.
Japanese emissaries came to Europe as early as 1584 and observed there were already Chinese and Japanese slaves among the overwhelmingly black slaves, something blamed on Christianity, which was part of the reason why Japan vehemently became isolated from that point.
Also about East Asia, Mongolian Genghis Khan made it to about Poland-ish in the 1200s, so it’s not a far bet to say the Chinese (who were also conquered by Khan on his way to Europe) could’ve found their way to Scotland around that time or a few hundred years earlier. Along with a smart cookie who would go on to be the founder of Ravenclaw.
Native Americans, of course, have been present in Europe for a while. In the 1500s, Manteo and Wanchese arrived in London. There’s evidence the Vikings and Indigenous Americans werefriendlylongbeforewhen Columbus blah blah, and there’s even evidence of Native Americans in Holland that’s like 2000 years old. Could a kind and loyal future Hufflepuff be one of those mixed race indigenous American-Africans?
ALSO considering the fact that Binns (the history professor at Hogwarts) specifically stated that witches and wizards were being persecuted and Hogwarts was built out of sight of Muggle eyes, it’s completely possible that POC came to Scotland and built the castle happily for other magical humans to have a safe place. Since HP universe is a fantasy anyway, readthesearticlewhile you’re at it.
So yeah, I understand your implication that you don’t want to be racist or anything like that (bc being called racist is ofc so much worse than actually being ignorant), but POC were not just traders and slaves in the British Isles, they were a fuckton of other things your history books aren’t telling you (or trying to intentionally steer you away from). So me having an all-brown cast for a location in a dominantly-white place I’m sure is irking the fuck out of you, and that makes me so glad to see you confronted with that “incurable” need for historical accuracy you have.
And check out this rad blog: Racebending Harry Potter.
how come the only time people mention the enslavement of black people in Europe is when they want to deny our presence in fantasy fiction?
And that’s what it really boils down to pretty much every time.
Because someone couldn’t deal with a single photoset with characters of color in a FANTASY setting. None of the “fact checking” is really necessary, because that isn’t really the issue. Fantasy fiction isn’t something that should be subject to “proof”, but when it comes to racial diversity, it invariably is every time.
It’s my hope that with Medievalpoc, this endless quibbling about what is and is not “historically accurate” can be done away with, and Toni Morrison’s quote here can become creative people of color’s realities:
When I saw the first comment I was going “Oh, I hope medievalpoc will tackle this!”
Quick tip for those who may not know, Kamala Khan’s first name is pronounced ‘Kam-La’ as opposed to ‘Ka-Ma-La’
Might not seem like a big deal, but she’s the first (and thus far only) South Asian superhero to have her own title, and the closest thing some of us have to representation in comics, so I really hope people get her name right 🙂
Anyway, can’t wait for issue #7!
I did not know this and had totally been Doing It Wrong. I will try to remember!
put some craft glue ( can be found anywhere that sells craft supplies ) on your skin and pick it off throughout the day
if you go to a place that sells fabrics, find a fabric you like and ask for a sample, you should be able to get a little bit of that fabric free of charge instead of buying a big chunk of fabric that you don’t need (please don’t abuse this though)
One upon a time, I had a deaf friend that I learned basic ASL to be able to communicate with. Hawkeye 19 is right up my ally, so I figured I’d post this for people that want to know what’s being said in this issue.
PLEASE READ THE ISSUE WITHOUT THE TRANSLATION FIRST! Matt Fraction stated that he wanted readers to feel the sense of confusion and loss along with Clint, so read it as it is first, then go back with the translation. ASL translation is under the cut.
Some people emphatically prefer to be called people with autism. Others get very offended. Some people empathically prefer to be called autistic people. Others get very offended. There are reasons for all of that.
They have to do with the history of the intellectual and developmental disability community, the autism parent community, and the specific autistic self advocacy community.
For intellectual and developmental disability:
Most self advocates have a very strong preference for person-first language
Person-first language in this concept means “I am a PERSON, and I am not going to allow you to treat me as a disability case study, nor am I going to tolerate your diagnostic overshadowing.”
Autism is a developmental disability. There is a highly visible and destructive community of parents who consider themselves to be afflicted with their child’s autism. There is an autistic self advocacy community that developed in part specifically due to the need to counteract the harm being done by autism parents. The language someone prefers will often depend on which of these facts seems most important at a given time.
Regarding developmental disability.
Folks who are primarily involved in the IDD self advocacy community usually prefer to be called people with autism
This is for the same reasons people with any sort of developmental disability usually prefer person first language
In that context, “person with autism” means “I am a PERSON, and you are not going to treat me like an autistic specimen.”
Regarding the destructive autism parent community:
This parent community pushes the agenda of parents who believe that their child’s autism is a horrible tragedy that befell their parents and family
They call themselves the autism community, but they consistently refuse to include or listen to autistic self advocates (especially adult self advocates). They only care about neurotypical parent perspectives (and only from parents who think autism is horrifying)
They promote things like intense behavioral therapy for young children, institutionalization, group homes, sheltered workshops and genetic research aimed at developing prenatal testing. They do not listen to autistic self advocates who object to these things.
They don’t care about the priorities of autistic self advocates. They do not do any work on issues such as self-directed adult services, enforcing the Olmstead mandate to provide services in the community rather than institutions, or research into skills for listening to people whose communication is atypical
These parents have an emphatic preference for person first language. They say “people with autism.”
What they mean by this is “Autism is NOT a part of who my child is, it’s an evil brain slug attached to their head, and I want to remove it at all costs.”
There is also an autistic self advocacy community. It developed in significant part to counteract the harm done by the autism parent community:
A lot of the agenda of the autistic self advocacy community is the same as the IDD community and pursued in cooperation with the IDD community
But there is also a lot of work that’s specifically about countering the harm that has been done by the autism parent community
Much of the worst harm done by the parent community comes from the cultural consensus that autism is like an evil brain slug, and that any amount of brutality is a good thing if it might mean that the slug shrinks or dies
For this reason, participants in the autistic self advocacy community generally have a very strong objection to person first language
They call themselves autistic or Autistic.
In this context, “autistic person” means “Autism is part of who I am. I’m ok. Stop trying to get me to hate myself. You do not need to remove autism to make me into a full person. We are already people. Stop physically and emotionally mutilating people in the name of treatment.”
Neither set of self advocates are wrong. Both positions are legitimate and important to be aware of. In order to know what someone means by their language choices, you have to consider the context.
I always wonder who came up with the whole “person-first” thing with disability, because it feels like it would have been a non-disabled person. I hate the implication that my disability has to be removed from me, and separated from my identity, to make me okay.
Actually, it was people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who started it. Here is the history as given by The Arc:
On January 8, 1974, the People First movement began in Salem, Oregon, with the purpose of organizing a convention where people with developmental disabilities could speak for themselves and share ideas, friendship and information. In the course of planning the convention, the small group of planners decided they needed a name for themselves. A number of suggestions had been made when someone said, “I’m tired of being called retarded – we are people first.”
many self-advocacy groups of people with ID/DD are still built around a “people first” ideology, and that language is a conscious effort among them to resist dehumanization. of course, non-disabled people are given to using person-first language in dehumanizing ways — what else is new. they can pretty much figure out how to make ANY language dehumanizing.
but it’s important in cross-disability efforts to remember that person-first language is the product of people who were fed up with not being treated like people. and it’s still very important to many self-advocates with ID/DD.
of course, the Blind, Deaf and Autistic communities (for three) are staunchly opposed to person-first language because of the way nondisabled people have used it against us. (i don’t mean to say that everyone in these communities agrees, only that it’s the official position of the NFB, ASAN, the NAD, etc.)
so we all need to remember that different people prefer different language because non-disabled society has chosen a variety of ways to linguistically scorn us. either person first or ‘identity-first’ language can be used in a bad way. and either can be used in a good way. it really depends.
I made another reference sheet because I’m just tired of digging up standard sizing for stuff. No more searching for the frequent made stuff. You can get the pdf here. http://www.stringtoathing.com/printables.html
knitting in the dark 