I have long avoided phone calls. If I have to call someone else, I usually need to work myself up. And when the phone rings, I either let it go to voicemail or (much less often) answer with an anxious aggression. I have generally attributed this avoidance to PTSD: After I moved out of my…
Author: Clio
“Disabled” and Passive Language
Special interest: Our language choices can affect and even effect thoughts. This is generally known as the Weak Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. And though this generally focuses on word choice, it’s also true of grammatical choices. One example is the debate between “person first” (“person with autism”) and “identity first” (“autistic person”) language. Disabled people (persons with…
X
The first full day that I owned a driver’s license with an X for the gender and no part of my birth name on it, I went to see a band named X with a lead singer named John Doe with a ticket I had not purchased. From the time I parked to the time…
7/24
I am autistic. I have meltdowns. When I was younger, I was not diagnosed as autistic. I had an explosive temper. I had anger management problems. I was a problem. I have multiple memories over my lifetime, especially as a teen and young adult, about how my moods were making other people feel. “We are…
Neurodiverse Grieving
This week I had to euthanize one of my cats. She’d been with us for nearly 20 years; she came in as a stray that refused to leave the porch. She was stubborn until the end, but it was clear that her various physical problems, particularly a cheek infection of some sort, had overwhelmed her….
Twitter: Autism Story Time
Prompt on Twitter: “When did you first notice feeling confused by social expectations?” Reply: I don’t remember “first”, but… story time! When I was in fifth grade or so, the bully wanted to beat me up. I told him he could, but only if it was after school where nobody could watch. I told him…
Othering and Otherkin
There’s an urban legend going around that says that furry youth are demanding–and getting–litter boxes in high school bathrooms. I have yet to see any credible evidence that a single such box has been seriously demanded, let alone installed. But that doesn’t stop people from railing against these fictions. This morning I saw a photo…
Broken Systems
This morning I saw a headline that said that some 400 police officers were on site in Uvalde before an off-duty non-police-officer border guard showed up and killed the shooter. My first instinct was to sarcastically comment “That’s a lot of bad apples”, but I didn’t. Instead, my brain decided to compare the standard police…
7/21
The other day I was watching a video on Imposter Syndrome and disability. One thing that Jessica Kellgren-Fozard said (at about 5:30) that really stood out to me was that because they’ve been disabled for so long, they don’t really have a good meter for what’s it like to not be disabled. My primary physical…
FB: On automatic gender identification
Let us assume for the moment that transgender and intersex people don’t exist. Let us assume that every single human has either XX or XY chromosomes and genitals to match. This is not true, but let us assume it is. Even under this assumption, recognize that our brains are culturally programmed to identify within seconds…