poorlifechoicesblog:

I don’t automatically feel solidarity with white men who also have developmental or psychiatric disabilities that are similar to mine.

White men with DD/MI are given so much capital to ride roughshod over disabled womens’ boundaries without reproach because they have access to white privilege combined with male-focused cultural scripts about disability that say things like “he can’t help it” and “he’s just socially awkward” and “his disability makes him act that way” (oh you have the same disability? you’re saying this is an offensive generalization? don’t care!!!11). 

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Oh hey, intersectionality, it’s a thing.

jackaldope:

here are some cool facts for you

• it has been proven time and again in study after study that there is no correlation between mental illness and violent behavior, except in that mentally ill people are more likely to have substance abuse problems and there is a correlation between substance abuse and violence. mental illness itself is not a risk factor for violent behavior
• yes that includes mental illnesses with psychotic features
• “In this study, the prevalence of violence among those with a major mental disorder who did not abuse substances was indistinguishable from their non-substance abusing neighbourhood controls. A concurrent substance abuse disorder doubled the risk of violence. Those with schizophrenia had the lowest occurrence of violence over the course of the year (14.8%), compared to those with a bipolar disorder (22.0%) or major depression (28.5%). Delusions were not associated with violence, even ‘threatcontrol override’ delusions that cause an individual to think that someone is out to harm them or that someone can control their thoughts.” (x)
• you hear that, motherfuckers
• mentally ill people - and yeah, even (especially!) those who are sick in what you think of as The Crazy Way - are not more dangerous than people without mental illnesses. it’s not ambiguous. it’s not a matter of debate
• how then do you justify using slurs that paint mentally ill people as dangerous
• how do you justify it when mentally ill people are two and half to four times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than average
• how do you justify it when mentally ill people are at an elevated risk for domestic violence and abuse
• how do you justify it when mentally ill people are almost universally the subjects of ridicule or fearmongering in popular media
• how do you justify it when mentally ill people are massively more likely to be unemployed and/or homeless than people without mental illnesses
• how do you justify it when mentally ill people are coerced and abused by the professionals who are supposed to help them
• how do you justify it when mentally ill people are afraid to seek help at all because of social stigma
• how do you justify it when these aren’t just suspicions but observable facts
• how the FUCK do you justify it

(sorry its so long, continued) do you have any advice for how to figure this stuff out? where to go? who could refer me to people? sorry if you two cant help me at all. ps i live in canada and am 18, if that is relevant

I don’t know much about Canadian specifics, but I can give you some general stuff, and followers, if you know better specifics that’s always welcome.

That said:

1) DSM criteria for autistic spectrum can be found online. Those are a good thing to check against, because that’s what they (should, theoretically) be evaluating for.

2) Politeyeti.tumblr.com has a set of criteria that is not the DSM but is very good. If you’ve been following Autistic blogs for a while, you’ve probably heard about it, but if not, do take a look.

3) There are people who think that AFAB people, women, adults who are usually capable of speech, people who graduated high school without special education, people who can go to college, etc, can not be autistic. If you want an evaluation, make sure it’s not from someone who thinks *any of those things that could be relevant to you.*

4) Some colleges may have counseling centers that can do provisional diagnoses, that’s where my paperwork comes from. (I was not diagnosed until 19 because some of the reasons in 3 and also huge swaths of my family are autistic so my mom never realized that most people don’t act autistic all the time.)

5) Institutional discrimination against autistic people is a thing. Think about whether it  is safe for you to have a formal diagnosis before you try to get one.

6) Even if your college doesn’t have the ability to get you evaluated, they might know someone who does adult evaluations. People realizing that something is up in college is a thing, but many people really won’t evaluate adults.

gruntledandhinged:

If you write an article about how the DSM is bad for removing the Aspergers because you’re not like Those Icky Autistic People then you’re a jerk.

kris-guin:

By taking away an Autistic person’s access to internet, you’re taking away their means of communication and access to a community of Autistic people where they can receive support.

girljanitor:

Like, there is this thing that happens a lot here in which “allies” swoop into a conversation between autistic people here on tumblr, OR an autistic person talking about themselves, and start screaming at them

because they’ve mistaken the conversation about ableism, making jokes about ableist people, and being rather tongue-in-cheek about the ableism we face every day
for Allistic (non-autistic) or Neurotypical people “making fun of autistic people”

BECAUSE OF COURSE AUTISTIC PEOPLE CAN’T INTERNET RIGHT?

HERE IS A PICTURE-PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT.

Autistic people are already having to police our every word, thought, facial expression, and gesture all day every day in order to avoid an ableist world actually physically destroying us

BUT WE NEED TO LET OFF SOME FUCKING STEAM SOMETIMES

AND MAKING JOKES OR USING LANGUAGE THAT HAS BEEN USED AGAINST US, LANGUAGE THAT LEADS QUITE DIRECTLY TO OUR DEATHS, AS A WAY TO TRY AND REASSERT CONTROL OVER THESE WORDS, SLURS, AND BLATANT FALSEHOODS IS OUR PREROGATIVE.

SO PLEASE LOOK AT A PERSON’S BLOG OR THEIR ABOUT PAGE BEFORE JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS AND MAKING ASSUMPTIONS THAT ARE MORE ABLEIST THAN THE “ABLEISM” YOU’RE SUPPOSEDLY CALLING OUT

OKAY

sheresists:

Language is never neutral. 

youneedacat:

thedearlydepart:

Really? OK. Racism, sexism, bit ableism?! Maybe you guys ate just oversensitive. Maybe, I don’t know though

Yeah I just almost died because of ableism but I’m just over sensitive yeah.

Then there’s the lung damage I have, because of ableism.

And the fact I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve almost died because of ableism. Lost count.

And I’ve been locked up because of ableism.

And I’ve been beaten up because of ableism.

And I’ve been treated like I don’t even exist because of ableism.

I’m disabled (in many different ways), lesbian, poor, nongendered, and fat. I’ve experienced oppression for all of these things. And while it’s hard to tease apart what is what? Ableism has been the worst. By far. Different people experiencing several forms of oppression will have different answers as to which has been worst for them and some can’t answer at all, but for me ableism has been the worst, and that means it’s definitely real because the rest are no picnic.

Ableism is the thing that ensures that practically nobody I meet considers me a real person. Not the way they are real people. It’s also the thing that ensures this even happens among communities that supposedly care about racism, sexism, classism, transphobia, homophobia, fatphobia, etc. (Never mind that ableism is actually a thread that ties every single one of those kinds of oppression together. They rarely notice that.)

And the absolute worst of it is being considered oversensitive while disabled people are out there dying in huge numbers due to ableism. While disabled people are being put into facilities just for them and this is considered okay, even though those facilities are linked to all sorts of problems including high mortality rates and crushing dehumanization that leads people to suicide. While disabled people are being abused and neglected in every possible way. While disability is used as an excuse to continue every form of oppression besides ableism as well, and people who are oppressed in other ways simply try to divorce themselves from disability rather than recognize what is happening.

But ableism doesn’t matter, because we are just oversensitive.

I am sick to death of being considered an add on to discussions of oppression. When ableism is the worst thing I face. The thing that has tried to kill me over and over, the thing that ensures that if someone murdered me in cold blood they could probably get away with it in any country anywhere (statistics are on my side), the thing where many parents of disabled children have tried to create laws allowing them to kill us against our will, the thing where when we are killed everyone sympathizes with the killers, the thing that ensures that I could be locked away in a facility against my will and nobody would give a crap because that’s just how things are, the thing that makes people consider me an empty shell who isn’t really there, the thing that makes people see my life as a half life that doesn’t matter as much as their lives, the thing that has resulted in my experience of every possible type of abuse, the thing that gets people like me still in mainstream scientific papers compared to nonhuman animals in a very pejorative way, the thing that makes honored professors argue that people like me shouldn’t qualify for full personhood legally or ethically, should I go on or is this enough?

Not to mention the thing that is used constantly to defend racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and every other form of bigotry and oppression. Every single one is tied in with ableism. Heavily. It’s interwoven through the depths of all of them.

The thing that makes people ignore all the above and call us oversensitive if we come up with a word for it.

Yeah.

Breathing causes autism. We all breathe, whether mechanically or unaided.

Wow.