#but you're deliberately excluding a very specific group of people

[bomberqueen17]

tone indicators

I reblogged this post without adding any commentary bc queue and not a lot of computer time lately but like okay here's the thing about tone indicators:

they're yet another in-group set of coded speech. like an inside joke, or a meme, or a conlang. if you are in a group that uses them, they're great and perfectly comprehensible.

but if you don't happen to have come from inside a group that uses them, they are exactly as exclusionary as any other heavy jargon or inside joke or acronym. I mean have you ever listened to soldiers talk? The US Army communicates in heavily jargon-ified speech, liberally laden with acronyms, so much so that it's a self-referential joke to make up obscene or deliberately-obfuscated ones to slip into official reports since the sorts of people who'd kick up a fuss about obscene language won't understand them.

It is exactly the same thing. Except that's exclusionary on purpose, and tone indicators are exclusionary in effect but tout themselves as inclusionary.

So if I, an outsider to this, am reading along, and after a sentence, there's a / and then between one and three letters, that is not enough information for me to use to look it up.

This is absolutely inaccessible if you are not alreadhy in the group that uses it.

I wouldn't mind if the people who used them were just like 'oh ha sorry jargon, i'll try to explain if it's not clear, sorry i forget you guys don't know them' just like any other inside joke or meme or whatever.

But I was in a discussion with someone on a Discord and when I was puzzled about them including these weird slash-acronyms after their statements they were like oh how nice for you that you're not neurodivergent and don't need to use these.

Uh no. The opposite actually. I'm the kind of neurodivergent that needs context. I handle being excluded from conversations very poorly. And that's where I get pissed off, that people seem to be holding these up as the new be-all end-all of Finally Solving The Problem Of Ambiguous Tones In Social Interaction. The hell you are, kids. They're just another layer, and I'd say the worst one yet, out of many many many attempts to solve this exact problem. They are fundamentally inaccessible. Don't mistake the fact that you learned them (somewhere, in some context inaccessible to me) for them actually being universal.

Considered against the many different solutions that have been offered since text-only speech was invented, tone indicators stack up as among the very least-accessible of the lot, since they contain so little context in and of themselves-- if a key is not provided then they're totally inaccessible, and are exceptionally difficult for non-native English speakers, and in general require so much memorization or cross-referencing as to be prohibitively hostile to outsiders.

And that's fine, if what your'e doing is just meant for talking to your friends. But don't come into my conversations and berate me for not having memorized whatever incomprehensible set of acronyms you've newly-decided are the new universal truth. And what drives me the most insane is how many of these acronyms someone has now decided to assign a whole new meaning to are acronyms that are well-known and already existed and are in heavy use. So if you try to look them up guess what you get! is it gonna be the newly-created version or the one that's been in use for fifty to seventy-five years??

For one, P.O.S. has had a specific meaning in written and spoken English for a really damn long time and if you call me a piece of shit in the actual language I speak I am absolutely not going to interpret your conlang as having intended something nice. (YES REALLY THEY'RE USING THAT ONE TRY TO GUESS WHAT IT MEANS. NO. NO! I know. Fuck! That's wild. Absolutely the fuck not.)

#tone indicators #accessibility #conlangs #wild shit

[countzeroor]

We need to talk about ableist language & rhetoric in social justice spaces

With the potentially upcoming ruling regarding Roe vs. Wade likely leading to increased protests, I'm seeing some ableist rhetoric coming up on Twitter and in other Social Justice spaces regarding protest actions and what needs to be done. It's not necessarily done out of deliberate malice - nobody's throwing around ableist slurs - but particularly speaking as someone who is autistic, there are things I need to say about how you say things.

First, asking for neurodiverse language isn't "tone policing" - it's asking you to be understanding and to accept that some of the people you're trying to motivate are neurodivergent, and are very used to people who aren't neurodivergent throwing them and their interests under the bus, so when you don't use neurodiverse language, we have all rights to assume the worst of you, and that you will use us to benefit your cause, and then abandon us when it's no longer convenient because that's what everyone else does. If that's not the case, you need to be proactive in demonstrating that you're not going to do that.

Second, be aware that disability means that our advocacy will have to take a variety of forms. Not everyone can take part in protest marches. Not everyone can phone bank. This means don't "Show-up shame" - don't use language saying people who don't take part in protests don't care, either textually or subtextually - i.e. "If you care about this issue, you need to be out in the streets and show up", with language specifically excluding voting and phone banking as examples of Showing Up (the end of Leon Thomas/Renegade Cut's latest video is an example of this). Sticking a modifier after the statement saying "If you're not able to take part in protests that's okay but," doesn't make it better. Honestly, that actually makes it worse - because it means you are aware that your language is ableist and exclusionary, and you are effectively doubling down on it (again, Leon Thomas, I'm looking at you). To make an example for me, my Autism causes me to experience auditory sensory overload, especially if I'm getting hit with various sources of auditory input that are sending different things at the same time. I can function at a convention, for example, because I can find places at the convention that are quieter spaces, or I can even make my own using headphones. I don't have that option in a protest. Now, I can mitigate this if I have a buddy who will watch my back for the whole protest - but I need to have that buddy who I trust implicitly. Further, if I shut down or get overloaded, then I am out - and you need to not shame if I, or another person on-spectrum, or another person who has hit a medical limitation has to bow out of a protest early, because they overestimated what they could handle, because a medical situation came up, whatever.

(Quick aside, there is a future blog post in the works regarding how The World Ends With You and Evangelion Twice Upon A Time talks about wearing headphones).

Also, as a quick addendum - during the start of the pandemic, advocacy groups were generally very inclusive of the immunocompromised and their caretakers when it came to the people's limitations when it comes to protests, and whether or not they could take part in protest marches - in particular avoiding language that was show-up shaming, because of the limitations those people faced. However, now the show-up shaming is back in full force, but while we have vaccines, people are still immunocompromised, and breakthrough infections are still a thing. Consequently, the return of show-up shaming from the left is frustrating because otherwise left-wing voices have generally been more supportive of continuing masking, not opening up too quickly (if at all), and so on.

Be aware that people will respond to different forms of riot damage differently. For example, I have autism. Seeing people smash up a Starbucks or a big box store, or a police station or city hall does not stress me. Same with storefronts with offices in upper stories. However, if those upper stories are residential, then that triggers an empathetic anxiety attack for me because I then put myself mentally in the position of imagining what it would feel like to have to evacuate my apartment in that situation as an autistic person. That is, having to flee my apartment, with a pet, with a whole bunch of angry people outside who I fear will assault me (for no reason than "they're angry people who set the building where I live on fire"), and afterward having a situation where all the safe spaces that I need to help me function as a human being have been taken away. In that situation, I imagine myself locking down hard, and quite possibly dying. The last time I mentally put myself in that scenario when reading about rioting where there were fires in buildings with upper story residential, I had an anxiety attack that shut me down hard, and I was no longer able to function for the rest of the day.

Now, you can say I'm borrowing trouble. You can say that's unrealistic and will never actually happen. And you're probably right. However, the chain of events that leads to me getting into my own head and going on that little trip is absolutely involuntary. I don't control when it happens, and I don't control where the trip goes. I have to ride it out. And, I'm probably not the only person with Autism who goes through this. So when this does happen to an Autisic person around you, don't get mad at them, this is a case where the response needs to be someone needs to be patient, and needs to be sensitive, because white fragility may play into some of this - depending on the ethnicity of the person in question - that isn't all of this (and depending on the ethnic makeup of your area, consider that white anti-capitalist anarchists torching businesses because their businesses without considering the ethnicity of who owns those businesses, the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood, and the possibility that the people who live in the upstairs apartments are PoC is A Bad Look).

One last thing - as an autistic person, I plan things out a lot. Planning things out in advance so I know what I'm doing and what I can expect from other people is important to me. Even when I say "I'm winging it", my definition of "winging it" is "I actually made a plan with several possible points of divergence and places where I can cut things out of the plan." So, when I ask "Do you have a plan?", and your answer is "Don't worry about it", "You need to be flexible", or some variation on "Planning is giving in to the cop in your mind/hierarchical systems/whatever" - and I am dependant on you for my safety, whether that's for a protest, or replacing a complex system with something else, I start going through a cycle where I start stressing myself out. In that instance the thing that breaks the cycle is either me knowing what the plan is and, in turn, what I'm able to do to help (even if that thing is "sit over there/go home and we'll call you when we need you"), or putting myself in a situation where I'm no longer dependant on you for my safety. Again, I'm just one person with Autism, but other people with Autism may have similar experiences.

This all relates to the first point - at a protest, the cops generally won't have my best interests at heart. Certainly anyone on the right wing counter-protesting our protest won't either. If I can't be confident that the people around me don't either, then I'm better off not being there at all. So, if you're using language that is exclusionary of neurodivergent people or people with disabilities, and you're dismissive of the concerns of people with of disabilities, whether in the short or long term with your plans when "the community" as a concept has about as strong a track record of dealing with people with disabilities as "the police" does, you've created a situation where I - as a person with disabilities - cannot trust you and the cause you are ostensibly fighting for (say, anarchism) to be any better than the existing system (and might quite possibly be worse).

So, in conclusion, as the TL;DR: be proactive - when it comes to disability-inclusive and neurodivergent inclusive language, when it comes to being inclusive of people with disabilities in your protests (including being aware that people with disabilities are taking part in the protest and having people whose job it is to make sure that those people are safe when/if the shit hits the fan), when it comes to being inclusive of the tactics used for advocacy (including not "show-up shaming"), and make sure that whatever your group's goals are - whatever your cause is - make sure you actually have an actual plan to make sure their needs are covered while you're doing everything else (and you are including members of that community so you know what those needs actually are and we can be confident that you are going to fill them).

One last side note: If you're going, as part of your group's political aims or presentation of their goals, going to cite historical governments that you feel were slandered by capitalist propaganda, and how awesome you think they really are - also be very aware of their history regarding disability and inclusion. For example, it was the official stance of the Soviet Union that there were no people in the USSR with disabilities - just from a proportional population standpoint that's a lie, and even if you assume accounts of what happened to people with disabilities in the USSR and other Soviet bloc and communist states is all capitalist propaganda - the act of erasure itself should have raised concerns for you, so if you're going to raise past communist states as an example to be emulated, you need to talk up front of how you're going to treat the disabled and neurodivergent better - and you need have a plan or other structure in mind to reflect that.

#death mention #autism #neurodiversity #actually autistic

[eulangelo]

callout for @genderfluidlucifer

google docs

tw for transmisogyny + TERFs + emotional manipulation

Transmisogyny

Lucifer is a huge transmisogynist who will complain 24/7 about how TERFs hurt the ace community, but the moment @randomclustermissile , a trans girl (who is not an exclusionist at all) tries to point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles (in the most vague and general way possible, without pointing fingers nor calling anyone names) Lucifer will immediatly jump to block her and so they did with me (another inclusionist) and i have to suppose to everyone else who agreed with that post, even arriving to vagueing about us in private group chats to suggest that we were “sympathizing with exclusionists”. all because we dared point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles. lucifer is TME but apparently they think they’re the authority on TERFs and their talking points but actual trans women are not, according to them, since this is the stuff that they would go and spew to other people. (screenshots from @enbyoctoling​)

here’s more examples of Lucifer (again, a transmasc person) going deep in detail about how according to them, TERFs/SWERFs hate aro/ace people and are an active threat to us

1. link

[Image ID: Three screenshots of a post by Genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot is of a paragraph that reads, "Hey. So I can actually answer this. Anon your commentary about how you thought terfs would approve of sex repulsed aces is sort of it. Except...not. Basically terfs hate ace people for not wanting sex in the approved by terfs way. Terfs are actually extremely interested in [forcing] amatonormativity onto everyone. Because for as sex negative as terfs are...they don't want to actually acknowledge or change the fact that amatonormativity is at the root cause of rape culture and misogyny."

The second screenshot is a zoomed in section of the post that reads, "So yeah no I have NO idea where exclus allies are getting this idea from that terfs would even remotely care about the sexual rights of ace people. Terfs generally hate any sexualities in the LGBTQ+ acronym that aren't LGB because they can't force a gender binary onto those sexualities. At least, not as easily. That's why it's actually a massive sign of someone who doesn't call themselves a terf being a crypto terf if they use the term LGB in a positive manner. Along with the term SGA, as it is deliberately exclusive of nonbinary and not inherently SGA centric queer-aligned sexualities. /END ID]

link to the full post, these are just excerpts but the whole thing is just a very long rant about how TERFs hate ace people and so on (i think it’s worth noticing that although the actual post is kinda long, trans women are never once brought op in a conversation about TERFs issues and the only time transmisogyny is mentioned is not relevant to the conversation)

2. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is nothorses. It reads, "Because apparently I have to say it: Testosterone is not a 'violent' hormone. It doesn't make you 'more aggressive' or a worse person, it doesn't make you 'dangerous,' or 'toxic.' Transmascs do not need to be 'warned of the dangers of T.' We do not need to spend our transitions terrified that we're going to become a danger to those around us - that HRT is going to turn us into a monster.

Everyone experiences mood swings during hormonal shifts (pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, estrogen HRT, etc.) and while you might have grumpy moments or feel anger/frustration that you need to learn to handle differently, that doesn't make you a bad person.

Testosterone can change the way you access/process emotions somewhat, but if you're already thoughtful about how you handle your feelings and treat others, you're going to be fine. It's normal to lash out on occasion, by accident, then apologize and work to do better. It doesn't make you a bad person. Everyone on HRT is prone to this, and everyone experiencing hormonal changes is prone to this.

Getting HRT should be positive and affirming; you should not have to spend your entire transition terrified of becoming a monster."

The post then has a reblog by captainlordauditor that reads, "The big danger of T is that needle ouchy." /END ID]

here’s them reblogging from known transmisogynist user @nothorses (once again, the irony that a post about how testosterone is seen as the "aggressive hormone" does not mention transfem at all which are literally the main victims of this rethoric in the first place)

3. link (1), link (2)

[Image ID: Two screenshots of posts by genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot reads, "Queer exclus: We're not repackaging terf rhetoric! Saying that is transmisogynistic! Also queer exclus: Remove the plus from LGBT!" and has tags that say, "I will pay these people to grow some god damn self awareness. Imagine being this dense. Queer discourse." The post has 15 notes.

The second screenshot reads, "Honestly it is so stupid and frustrating to see ace exclus continue to deny that the ace discourse was started by terfs. Proof was given countless times. And a big name terf like galesofnovember even admitted to starting it. Those of you who demand proof but ignore all of this never wanted proof to begin with." and is tagged with, "ace discourse. The post has 38 notes. /END ID]

heres another two post of theirs conflating TERFs with ace exclusionism

4. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblogged post by furbearingbrick. The original poster is boxlizard, Lucifer's old account. The original post reads, "By the way for people still in denial about it, here's galesofnovember, a terf, admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement. She's taking credit for it. Normally if the victims of this behavior weren't ace/aro or other queer identities y'all be ready to rightfully lynch her. But since it's us, y'all just still wanna stamp your feet and go, 'Nuh uh!' instead of acknowledging facts." The part that says, "admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement" is a link to a galesofnovember post.

There is then a reblogged addition from furbearing brick that reads, "archived versions of the receipts" and has two links to the webarchive. The tags read, "Bringing this back since it's apparently still relevant. Terfism mention. Aphobia mention. Queerphobia mention. Blocklist." and has 1,455 notes. /END ID]

this is their post that ive already talked about but basically they found a 52 notes post made by a TERF in 2012 and this one person said "i dont know why i dont get to be the princess of the anti-ace-brigade" and apparently they are convinced that this means TERFs started the ace exclusionism movement and that this is one of their goals. which is insane when TERFs in real life only care about making life miserable for transfem people first and foremost.

5.link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is yu-gay-fudo. It reads, “Just in case you happen to be unaware, some of the “radfem lite” they post to warm you up to their rhetoric, just off the top of my head:

- Ace/aro exclusionism

- Bi exclusionism or claims that bi people are “less queer” bc of “straight passive privilege”

- Saying you have to be dysphoric to identify as transInvalidating nonbinary people

- Calling queer a slur regardless of context, saying people can’t identify as queer, and saying that it can’t be reclaimed

- “Mogai hell”, “kweer”, or otherwise mocking less common labels and claiming they are “just cishets who want to feel special”

- Excluding sex workers from feminist discussions or claiming that sex work is inherently evil

- Basically anyone who thinks they can determine what other people identify as”. The tags read, "queerphobia tw. twerfs tw. no id." and has 70,727 notes. It was reblogged on March 22nd, 2021 /END ID]

another example of conflating radfems to things that, while wrong, have little to nothing to do with them because being a radfem, again, is something very specific that has all to do with transfem oppression.

Emotional manipulation

Lucifer has done nothing but block, break boundaries, spread lies and vague about people, some of which were even mutuals with them knowing they would see the posts. when confronted about it Lucifer's only answer was "just say you hate me and block me" but they actually ended up blocking everyone first, making it impossible for anyone to set some boundaries with them or even just to calmly confront them about anything.

[proof: Io(popncourse) and Lucifer had a disagreement in a shared discord server, which prompted Lucifer to vague Io in a vent post. Io confronted them, as being vagued is one of buns triggers, to which Lucifer initially agreed to delete the vent post, but then proceeded to victimize themself and immediatly blocked Io. later on, Jude(malewifedeckard) was confronted by Lucifer, then after Jude told them “I’m worried that you’ll vague me just like you did with Io” they proceeded to block Jude and vagued about him too. when Io made a post (which was not a callout, it was just bun setting buns boundaries) explaining what Lucifer did, Lucifer immediatly jumped to victimize themself, acting like they were being called out and straight-up lying, even going so far as to say that no one tried to hear them out, which is a blatant lie if you consider the aforementioned Io and Jude’s attempts at doing so, with Lucifer immediatly blocking and cutting ties with the both of them. ] 

(screenshots taken by @popncourse and @malewifedeckard)

as seen in the proof above Lucifer’s behaviour is not ok because they don’t accept any kind of confrontation and immediatly jump to blocking, and after blocking, they'd immediatly go and vague about the people who confronted them pacificly, spreading more lies and painting themself as the victim and even arriving to say “no one hears me out at all” which is simply not something you can say when you block people who are trying to hear you out in the first place.

this is by no means an invitation to go and harass them, send them hate or anything like that. i absolutely don’t want anything even remotely hateful or negative to be sent their way after this post. 

this post was only made because:

1. as an ace person who fully supports the inclusion of aspec identities in the lgbt+ community i don’t want to support an enviroment that costantly downplays transmisogynistic oppression in order to be taken seriously. there are hundreds of ways to make aspec activism without acting like we(as in TME aspecs)are the victims of a system that seeks for the annihilation of transfemenine people in real life everyday. i especially don’t want to support TME individuals who act transfem-friendly but then block any transfem who tries to speak on transmisogyny without a second thought.

2. Lucifer’s behaviour has hurt two friends of mine and i don’t want to associate with someone who actively breaks people’s boundaries without taking accountability when messing up.

3. i cannot associate with someone who spreads lies about me accusing me of sympathizing with exclusionists all while having me blocked so that i can’t see it nor defend me. they complain about people not hearing them out but they’re the very first person who does not try to hear people out, and instead jumps to spread baseless rumors. this is not someone i can nor want to associate with. 

(image descriptions provided by @malewifedeckard)

#genderfluidlucifer #transmisogyny tw #terfs tw #ask to tag #txt #long post #ok to rb