#sorry had a long talk about autism and how it's treated and trying to separate asperger's and autism just aint gonna fix shit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mellometal · 3 years

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Hi, everyone.

I have something extremely important to talk about that is NOT fandom related. I really do hope this can reach everyone on here, especially since it's still Autism Acceptance Month.

A few quick questions for anyone who happens to see this before I dive right into this: Have you ever heard of Dhar Mann? If so, have you ever seen his videos? What do you think about them?

If you don't know who Dhar Mann is, he's a content creator whose main platforms are Instagram and YouTube. He makes these videos about various scenarios from a couple on the brink of divorce, to kids bullying one of their peers, even about Autism Spectrum Disorder. All of his videos have some kind of message at the end that really drives the point home. One of his most recent videos is about ASD, which is what I'm going to discuss today.

Personally, I think some of his videos are interesting, despite the concepts being reused and recycled over and over; however, how I feel about the video he made about ASD is the complete opposite. I'll summarize the video he made so you don't have to watch it. (If you really want to watch it to see exactly what I'm talking about, I'm not gonna stop you. Do what you need to do in order to form your own opinion.)

The video Dhar Mann made about ASD is about this boy who excludes his autistic brother from participating in activities with his friends at school. The boy bullies his autistic brother and does pretty much everything to make his brother's life Hell, even going as far as to pretend that he doesn't know his own brother. The boy "instantly regrets his decision" when their mom is called into the school to discipline her son for bullying his autistic brother. What his mother says is what REALLY upsets me. The message of this video in particular is this, WORD FOR FUCKING WORD. I wish I was kidding. But here's the message below:

How the video concludes is the boy reluctantly includes his autistic brother in every single activity, the boy sees his brother's potential, and they live happily ever after. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

As an autistic woman who works with disabled people for a living, that message Dhar Mann put in this video specifically is not only extremely ableist, but is also spreading misinformation about ASD.

News flash to all the people who still spread misinformation about ASD: Not every single autistic person is a little white boy in elementary school, nor is every single autistic person a young white man who's a Super Genius™️. (I could go on all day long about how the media stereotypes autistic characters and autistic people in general, but that's a whole other topic.) No autistic person is the same, meaning we all fall on the spectrum in different places and all that jazz. There's no "look" to autistic people either because no autistic person looks the same.

Autistic women exist.

Autistic girls exist.

Autistic nonbinary people exist.

Autistic BIPOC and AAPI exist.

Autistic people who are completely nonverbal exist.

Autistic people who are completely verbal exist.

Autistic people who are in the middle of being nonverbal and verbal exist.

Autistic people who require minimal to no support exist.

Autistic people who require moderate support exist.

Autistic people who require full support exist.

Autistic LGBT people exist. (Reason why I bring this one up is because the media almost always shows cishet autistic men and I don't see autistic LGBT representation very often, if ever.)

Autism isn't something you can "catch". People have this same mentality about ADHD and Tourette's Syndrome too, which, by the way, you can't "catch" either.

Autism doesn't "go away" when you reach adolescence or adulthood. Why? BECAUSE AUTISTIC TEENAGERS AND AUTISTIC ADULTS EXIST. Autistic kids grow into autistic teenagers, then into autistic adults.

You can't "cure" it either. Unless you can build a time machine and a device to go back in time to change how a person's brain develops, there is no cure. ABA therapy is a fucking shit show in itself that does more harm than good.

The title of the video is a real squick for me too. It's mostly because I don't particularly enjoy people using person first language (the "boy with autism" part). I've seen many other autistic people on multiple other platforms sharing that same sentiment and preferring identity first language (autistic person). There are also others who prefer using person first language and those who don't have a preference. That's all perfectly valid. Whatever you prefer people using when referring to you, or whatever you refer to yourself as, in this case, is totally valid and I love you. This goes for disabilities in general, not just Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Regarding the message in this video, here's my response to it! A quick heads-up, my response is VERY long and VERY passionate. I was VERY close to making a response video where I tear that video apart AND tear Dhar Mann a new asshole. Unfortunately, it worked me up so much that I was really struggling with what I wanted to say and I had to stop multiple times because I kept stumbling on my words. That's how angry this message made me. I'll try my best to explain whatever parts you have questions about. I put my response in the nicest way I possibly could, despite me seething with rage, wanting to go OFF on him.

(The first part of my response are the first three screenshots, and the second part are the last three screenshots.)

The first part of my response, I did forget to add that the message is offensive and disrespectful to autistic people as a whole. I apologize. My initial comment got way too long. I pretty much covered that when I told him the message is ableist. I wanted to clear that up before anyone asks about it.

The second part of my response is me opening up about my experience with being diagnosed with ASD, formerly known as As//per//ger's Syn//dro//me, at sixteen years old. I also went into how not calling ASD what it truly is (which is a disability) and calling it a "different ability" instead is extremely harmful and is treating being disabled like it's a bad thing.

By the way, saying that a disabled person is disabled isn't a bad thing. I'm disabled. It is what it is. Does it have its challenges? You bet. Does it help me with certain things? Hell yeah. I can really absorb information about my favorite bands, characters, shows, books, etc., and tell you a lot about those things. For example, I can tell you that Su can't ride a bike or read manga and she's okay with that. I can also tell you she can't tie her shoes very well, which is why her boots don't have laces and are slip-on and/or zip-up. But that doesn't mean my struggles are nonexistent or that I never struggle. I do, and it makes my life Hell at times.

The narrative that autism is a bad thing to have, every autistic person is somehow broken and they all need to be "fixed" is also super fucked up and not true. That's the narrative that I received when I was diagnosed by a therapist I had. I'm gonna be real here, I cried when I was first told that I was diagnosed with ASD. I felt like I was broken. I already felt like a total outcast. Being told about my diagnosis made me feel even more broken than I already felt. I was so ashamed of myself, despite me not doing anything wrong whatsoever, that I masked for SEVEN YEARS of my life. I masked for so long that I forgot I was even diagnosed with ASD in the first place. I wasn't taught how to really put my special interests into good use. I kinda had to figure that out on my own. I was pretty much under the assumption that me being interested in anime, cartoons, music, comics, theatre, writing, etc., to the point of obsession, was somehow weird and hurting people around me. You know, despite those things being harmless. Despite me being able to separate those things from other things that are important (like work, for example). Despite my only surviving parent, other family members, and the woman he was dating at the time completely overreacting and not bothering to see exactly what makes these things so special to me.

(By the way, having a disability does not completely make who a person is. There are a lot more things that make who a person is than that.)

It's kinda shocking that I wasn't able to come to terms with my diagnosis until this year. Considering that I masked for so long due to being ashamed of myself, plus being treated like a burden for being disabled, it's probably not very surprising. I initially thought at the time that it was the worst thing to have, as I was already struggling with enough shit back then, but came to realize it's not a bad thing. It doesn't change who I am. But I'm glad I came to terms with it finally nonetheless.

This is getting way too long, so I'm gonna wrap things up here. If you've read this far, thank you so much. I'm sorry this got so long!

If you watched the video, what are your thoughts on it? If this is your first time hearing about Dhar Mann, how do you feel about him? If you're a Dhar Mann fan, did this change your opinion on him in any way? Feel free to sound off in the comments!

Have a great day, everyone!

#mello speaks #dhar mann #autism acceptance #autism spectrum disorder #being autistic isn't a bad thing #autism isn't a different ability stop fucking saying it is #autistic community #autism self advocacy network #autistic women and non-binary people network #fuck autism speaks #i had to say this #dhar mann will live to regret his decision uwu #autism acceptance month #autism speaks does not speak for me #light it up red #light it up gold #no puzzle pieces #tw dhar mann

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thedreadvampy · 3 years

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I dunno how to articulate it but I think there’s something to be said about how like. abled/neurotypical people infantilize neurodivergent people and water their experiences down to something palatable whereas they can’t do that for physically disabled people as much so they’re just uncomfortable? This probably doesn’t make much sense but. yeah :// (obviously I’m not saying being infantilized is a good thing it’s awful and I’ve experienced it more then once)

Maybe? I think there's something to be said for the palatability of (invisible) neuroatypicality (I say invisible in the sense of like. Irl more extremely visible behaviours like twitching, constant stimming or substantially stuttered/slurred speech do make people react differently), that's a very good point, but I think I'd separate it out from infantilisation. I think people with known MH Things or neuroatypicalities are often infantilised, yes, but infantilisation is such a substantial issue for even mildly visibly physically disabled people.

I can only speak to my own experience, but I would say minimisation is the main experience I've had with both mental health/neuroatypicality and invisible physical disabilities (eg my chronic pain, my friends' epilepsy and diabetes) whereas I associate infantilisation more with visible/physical disabilities (for example, my cane use our when I or friends have been using wheelchairs). What people can ignore/minimise they will, and when they can't ignore it they'll ignore you.

like the experience of being visibly physically disabled for me (and again, for me it's very mild because other than the cane I'm pretty Abled Body Passing) has involved a lot of

people talking about me/past me to people I'm with

people trying to do things for me or take tasks off me lest I hurt my poor little self

people Trying Not To Look

pity

condescension

being talked to Very Slowly And Gently

and that experience of fairly mild visible disability hasn't been my experience of being fairly autistic and having moderate PTSD symptoms.

(I also think a lot of people underestimate the degree to which a lot of people are happy to accuse you of faking/making a fuss when you use mobility aids or sensory aids, like one of the most irritating forms of online ableism discourse being perky about neurodiversity is 'people keep telling me I'm making X up and should get over it and they wouldn't tell someone on a wheelchair that!' which. yes. yes they would.)

So yes you're definitely right about watering down experiences to make them more palatable. and I think that extends to some physical disabilities where you can be like 'oh yeah I know they're [hearing impaired/visually impaired/use a cane/have an invisible disorder] but I just think of them as Normal because they can Act Normal' and I think a lot of the structures around ableism are about that 'let me ignore your problem please' like. There's this vast pressure to put as much work as possible constantly into never Appearing Disabled In Any Way, whether the issue is neuro or physical or both, and one way to do that is to say 'everyone feels that way' and the other is 'you don't feel that way' and either way you're supposed to stay palatable, and to a degree I think with a lot of issues it's when you refuse to or can't put all your resources into Being Normal that you get really severely infantilisation and dehumanised as a Poor Little Disabled Thing. that doesn't mean infantilisation is limited to highly visible disability (like the palatable idea of autism is hugely infantilising for example) but. I think that infantilisation is a way of minimising what can't be ignored and so it becomes less about neurodiversity vs physical disability and more about invisible Vs visible or ignorable Vs unignorable.

The thing I think undercuts the fact that online discourse on ableism focuses around neurodiversity and IRL discourse on ableism often centres around wheelchair use and profound sensory impairment is. what's visible and what's ignorable in what space.

online, somebody's words are most of how you know them. it's much more of your first impression whether their disability affects how they think and write than how they look or move. it's really easy to forget that some of the people you talk to are physically impaired or IRL have differences that are really apparent and make people treat them differently (like large scale scarring, deformities, issues in posture or bearing, twitches and tics, etc), and because we're all taught to be uncomfortable with visibly different bodies it's easier for most of us short term to lean into that - we choose to forget that other people are disabled (which is common enough IRL, like people will see and know you're physically disabled but have to be constantly reminded that that means you Can't Do Things, like I had a friend at work who broke her leg and she had to constantly remind people every day from her wheelchair 'no I can't come to a meeting on the 4th floor because I can't climb stairs') and other people may choose not to remind us because people get so dehumanised and infantilising on sight IRL where their disabilities are much more visible that it can be nice to have control over whether and when people notice you're disabled.

but IRL, the first thing people see is your body, your speech, your bearing and your movement. Which means it's easy to ignore or downplay stuff like mental health issues, chronic pain, invisible health issues etc because it isn't immediately visually obvious. so there the balance has historically been tipped in the other direction, where we only talk about the most physically readable forms of disability. which is also not good.

yeah this is kind of long and ramble and doesn't answer your point, sorry. I woke up thinking about this and I guess I'm dumping a lot of thinking into this ask fairly arbitrarily.

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singingwordwright · 6 years

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Physical intimacy and disparate portrayals of it

This post was inspired by some discussion over on @lemonoclefox 's blog about the whole ongoing issue with the way Malec's physicality is handled. I didn't want to word-vomit all over their post, but I have been writing on the subject in recent weeks and I wanted to check in now that we've got another episode, and also because the post-ep analysis for 3x02 got really ugly in some corners of the fandom.

It made me start questioning my approach to the subject and asking myself whether I'd done enough to be positive in my breakdown of Malec, to make it clear how much GOOD I find in the Malec relationship, or do I focus too much on what needs improvement?

It's totally possible that I do; I tend to assume anyone who follows me already knows how much I love them and how wonderful I think they are, so it just goes without saying. But my words aren't only read by the people who follow me or know how I feel about Malec, and that is something I need to be more mindful of.

It's probably the same for many of us. I think there is a natural human tendency when there's a lot of something good to overlook that and focus on what needs improvement.

I also think in online communities today there is a tendency to not discuss things in good faith, to immediately assume the worst of people whose points we disagree with and to reflexively polarize farther than we might have otherwise gone. So if someone finds a flaw in something you don't, or if they express their position badly, or whatever, not only are they wholly, unequivocally wrong, but they're a terrible person for thinking that.

It's just ugly and we really should all be doing better, myself absolutely included.

This gets long from here on out, so I'm going to put it under a cut:

I’ve been mulling over and meta’ing on this issue for over a year now. My thoughts and feelings on it have evolved a number of times—as they should. And my inability to put into words the issue I’m seeing has become something of a personal hobgoblin; I haven’t been saying it right and I have a desperate need to say it right.

Part of that is because my brain tends to latch onto things mathematically, almost obsessively so. To point where I actually suspect that, had I been born 15 or 20 years later, I might have fallen somewhere on the autism spectrum. I seize hold of patterns and trends very early in their development and can’t let go of them. If I can quantify something, it feels more real, more concrete. It makes it easier for me to try to communicate what I’m seeing, because surely if I point out the pattern I’m picking up, everyone else will too, right?

Well, no. Because there’s a lot about a subject like this that can’t be quantified, and attempting to do so leaves you at risk of missing the forest for the trees. I really haven’t done myself any favors in this regard, firing off my metas without first making a concerted effort to step back from that instinct and try to look at the whole picture instead of just the patterns I was perceiving and a few examples that make them clear to me.

So I feel like I’m blindfolded and batting at a piñata. I keep swinging glancing blows at the point I’m trying to make, which concerns the work that remains to be done in the way Malec is filmed and packaged by the showrunners and whoever is behind such decisions. My gut tells me there’s an important issue here that needs addressing, or at least conscious awareness and monitoring, but I never entirely succeed in expressing it.

Breaking Down The Concepts:

(Here I go with that mathematical thinking already)

I think for the sake of clarity, there are three facets or elements of the Malec’s intimacy which need to be delineated. Because the conflating and muddying of these concepts under the umbrella term “intimacy” is what is leading to a lot of the polarized claims that are floating around, such as the idea that Malec act like roommates or don’t display any intimacy, both of which are total nonsense.

The three elements are:

Emotional intimacy

Casual intimacy (i.e. non-sexual touching, displays of physical comfort with each other)

Sexual intimacy (or the suggestion thereof)

Now, these elements of the Malec relationship are not all equal, nor should they be treated as such.

The breakdown of how much weight you put on one versus the others is, of course, a personal, subjective thing. For myself—and keeping in mind this is a TV show and the majority of the relationship development is going to and should happen in ways that can visually be demonstrated on-screen—I’d rate emotional intimacy at and non-sexual physical intimacy much higher than sexual intimacy. However, particularly because this is a new relationship, I also feel like it’s a relationship at a stage where things tend to be more weighed on the physical side than it would be for a more established relationship. There’s a reason for that, one which I will get into later.

However, YMMV

Now, I would hope we can all agree that Malec has emotional intimacy down in spades.

If you don’t agree, I’m sorry, but we’re clearly not watching the same show and maybe you should page back out of this meta.

Seriously, they’re killing that particular game, in a way that is groundbreaking for television. It’s beautiful and breathtaking and so, so very important. That’s crucial to acknowledge, because it’s getting overlooked in a lot of the more hyperbolic discourse on this subject (and conversely, some people are focusing on it to the exclusion of the other, valid issues which are being raised.)

Physical Intimacy—non-sexual vs. sexual

The issue of physical intimacy specifically is two-pronged. One half of it is about the casual, intimacy-establishing touches that one tends to see in a new relationship. The other half of it is about the handling of Malec as a sexually-involved couple.

Those aren’t the same thing, though they can and should overlap to some extent. The problem is a lot of people have been conflating those two issues. It’s easy to do, but they are separate.

So, discussions have been boiling down to arguments that basically go:

Person A: “Malec are getting short-changed, they never touch!” Person B: “Nuh-uh, they touched each other’s faces last episode! You just want to see them bone on screen!”

Both sides are right and wrong, and they’re both arguing different things. Person A is talking about sexual intimacy, Person B is talking about non-sexual physical intimacy.

There is a problem (or at least a potential one) with the way sexual intimacy is being demonstrated for Malec, particularly when compared/contrasted with other (heterosexual) couples on the show. So Person A has a valid point, it’s just getting lost in hyperbole.

Person B also has a valid point. It took a while to get there, but now the show is doing very well with regard to non-sexual moments of physical intimacy (at least as long as those moments are kept rated-G). But Person B is also engaging in that lack of good-faith thinking and missing the point Person A is trying to make because they’re too busy assuming the worst of Person A’s motives.

It’s all really messy. I’ve made that error myself a time or two, and now I’m making an effort to keep these issues more distinct in my head, and to define them clearly for the purposes of this meta.

Where it gets even messier is the overlap between the two forms of physical intimacy.

Because if, as Person A is claiming, the show is short-changing Malec in terms of sexual intimacy, the probable cause for that a homophobic inclination to regard LGBT content as more illicit by default than het content. That then can bleed over into restricting what kind of non-sexual physical intimacy they showcase.

It’s a double standard. It’s like the issue with male versus female orgasms in movies. A movie that shows (non-explicitly) a man receiving oral sex and having an orgasm might get a PG-13 rating, but a movie that shows a woman receiving oral sex and having a orgasm gets rated NC-17. The situation is the same, but for some reason it’s perceived as dirtier in the latter case.

So, if the default assumption is that a touch or situation that would be rated PG for a het couple is rated R for a queer couple, then the tendency is going to be to restrict your queer couple to touches that would be strictly rated G if they happened between a het couple. Instead of, for example, hugs and nuzzling, you get hand-holding and bro-pats. And while hand-holding and bro-pats are terrific and valid, the lack of hugs and nuzzling eventually becomes rather pointed. It’s a symptom of a problem.

So it’s not reasonable to point to the plethora of rated G touching and declare that those touches mean the show doesn’t have a problem with the way it regards and portrays queer sexuality.

But it’s also not reasonable to point to the absence of PG or PG-13 touching and claim that the lack thereof invalidates the beauty of all the rated G touching. Nor is it reasonable to claim that it means Malec act like roommates instead of a romantically-involved couple.

What’s my stake in this:

I came into this fandom from the world of LGBT-romance publishing. And back when that genre was first really getting off the ground with small presses and self-published authors releasing (lbr mostly m/m) queer romance novels, a lot of the books had content warnings for scenes of gay male sexuality. Content warnings that no one would ever have thought of slapping on the cover of a het romance novel. It was extremely glaring and made it very clear that many people considered queer sex more controversial than straight sex.

It was a convention that was challenged, rightfully so. It was challenged often and with great feeling, especially as the genre became populated less with straight women writing about gay sex because it was hot and fun, and more by queer people looking for representation and reflections of themselves.

We challenged the idea that queer sex needed warnings, as though it were dangerous or offensive, especially in books that should be normalizing the existence of queer characters and their sex lives.

So that notion, that queer sex is more illicit than straight sex, that our culture feels compelled to handle it differently, is a conversation I’m very used to having. (It’s possible maybe I’m so used to having it that I’m on alert for it even when I shouldn’t be.)

It was a conversation this fandom started having after 2x07 aired.

Another part of my interest in this issue is that I’m a storyteller; always have been, always will be. My first instinct is always going to be to analyze the way a story is being told and assess what it working and what isn’t.

I’m extremely attuned to minor immersive details (see the things I wrote above about how my brain functions.) As a storyteller, I believe those are the things that really sell something on a human level in a show about the supernatural.

*puts on my “I studied a lot of biology/A&P at one point in my checkered past” hat*

See, there’s a biological reason why new couples in the “honeymoon” phase of a relationship tend to be very touchy-feely. It’s called oxytocin, which is sometimes referred to as the “love hormone.” It’s a hormone that plays a part in emotional bonding. It causes uterine contractions in childbirth; people with uteruses are flooded with it upon giving birth. It triggers the let-down reflex when a nursing person’s milk starts flowing. It’s the reason why infants tend not to thrive when they’re not touched much. A surge of it is released when someone has an orgasm, and is theorized to be the reason why people sometimes make emotional declarations during and after sex that it turns out they don’t mean the next day.

But smaller amounts of it are released upon just about any physical contact, particularly skin-to-skin contact. A backrub. A caress. Hugging. Cuddling. Those touches tend to be really important aspects to building a new relationship. They generate the hormone that really does a lot to cement pair-bonding. (That’s not universal, of course; some people are very touch-averse and bond in other ways, but we have no evidence that Magnus and Alec have that sort of aversion, though that would be an interesting concept to explore in fanon or fic at some point.)

So the scarcity of physical intimacy beyond the most chaste and restrained of touching can (and maybe does) strain the realism or immersion of the way Malec is shown.

On a more personal, subjective note, literally the only time I can ever see my own experience with romantic relationships reflected in the way relationships are shown on television is when a couple is explored during the “honeymoon” phase, where Malec is now. I’m asexual, but not aromantic. And the one time I don’t feel largely touch-averse is during the bonding phase of a new relationship. So it’s really quite important to me, loving Malec as I do, that this aspect of their relationship resonate.

I know that the “lack of good-faith discourse” thing has us all assuming that prurience is what drives anyone’s interest in any discussion that touches upon Malec’s physicality, but that’s not really the case, at least not for me. It matters personally on multiple levels to me, and a desire to see Malec have sex isn’t even on the list.

With that out of the way, let’s move into the show itself.

The 2x07 Debacle and the questions it raised:

In the wake of 2x07, I really felt like I was the only person who was not throwing a huge fit over the lack of a sex scene. I wasn’t thrilled with the way the episode had gone, but it was another case where the fandom was losing its mind and being way too hyperbolic, enough so that I just recoiled from it, and I wanted everyone to calm the fuck down. (see also my rant about how the fandom’s reaction to 2x07 led us to a place where Cassandra Clare felt comfortable stating that Alec raped Magnus.)

The reason I wasn’t really furious about not getting a sex scene in 2x07 was because I felt like the show hadn’t really put in the legwork to establish Malec emotionally yet. As I mentioned above, I place more weight on emotional intimacy, and that was where I felt the story needed to be for them at that time.

Along with all my other guessing and hypothesizing about why things played out the way they did, I meta’ed at length about the timing of the season, and the fact that there really wasn’t a good place later in the season 2 narrative to put an episode where Malec made that decision to have sex and had that moment. Because any point in the story arc where Malec had the downtime to consider it, they were dealing with things like Magnus’s trauma in the wake of 2x12.

The whole season needed to be structured better, because 2x07 was just ham-handed. They had to address whether or not Malec were a sexually active couple before the sex question became an elephant in the room, detracting from all the other stuff that was going on in the narrative. 2x07 was the last time they would have breathing room to address the issue, but it was just so clumsily executed, and Ben Bray was so obviously a terrible director to choose for that episode because his discomfort with Malec and their sexuality couldn’t have been more obvious in the way it was filmed.

Why didn’t they just...wait until somewhere in the span of 2x16-2x18 for Malec to have sex? After all, according to my timeline, 2x18 happens around three weeks after 2x07. Less than four weeks after Malec’s first date. It would have been the perfect time in their relationship to raise the sex question, instead of rushing to squeeze it in before everything went to hell at the end of season 2a.

But then it becomes a question of where would they work in the “Alec choosing obedience to the Clave/Clave paternalism over honesty” plotline. Because that is a critically important plotline for Malec. That discussion needed to happen. And if it happened earlier in season 2, Malec perhaps wouldn’t have been well-established enough emotionally to withstand it and the break-up would have been much uglier. IDK I’d have to go through and pick apart their whole arc to figure out a good place for that issue to arise that would allow for pushing back the sex decision, but it’s not really germane right now.

My point is, imagine if in 2x07, Magnus had said he didn’t want to rush things...so they had stopped? The question of sex had been addressed, they decided to wait, and then they kept dating and took it slow.

Golly, wouldn’t that have been a lovely approach?

Anyway, after 2x07, I was willing to wait and hope, instead of immediately condemning the show for the disparate handling of straight vs. queer sexuality. There just wasn’t enough evidence at the time to declare it a problem, or so I felt.

Despite my faith, throughout season 2B, I started to get a little worried. The time for Malec to be making big displays of passion wasn’t right because of where the story was and the impact it was having on the characters emotionally.

Regardless of sexuality, however, Malec absolutely were not touching and kissing each other in a way that felt true (to me, of course, YMMV) for couple at that stage of their relationship. The scarcity of those touchy-feely, oxytocin-generating, relationship-building-block moments between Malec really kept snagging at my brain. (please refer to the “What’s My Stake In this” section above.)

Part of it is because I felt like the 2x07 conversation was still very much “on hold.” The jury was still out, and I was waiting and viewing with caution to see if my hope and faith would be validated when the show made good on the promise of Malec. I was hyper-aware of how they were being portrayed in all physical regards, both sexual and casual.

Did 2x18 Fix Anything?

Anyway, 2x18 almost supported my faith, that wait-and-hope approach I took after 2x07. But it made me even more wary in a way that I had a lot of trouble putting into words for a very long time.

2x18 concerned me because it sort of felt like checkboxes were being ticked. Like the showrunners were saying, “we’re giving the fans what they want, and once we’ve done that, our job is done and they have no reason to complain that Malec is being given short-shrift.”

And it just...really doesn’t work that way. It’s not a one-and-done thing; it’s an ongoing process. So the question became: was 2x18 the sign of a lesson learned, or was it simply throwing the people who were unhappy with 2x07 a bone so they’d shut up and go away? And were we, as a fandom, going to allow the showrunners to be complacent on their handling of this subject?

I could be totally wrong. I’m as susceptible as anyone to the tendency to assume the worst motives. It could be I have baggage lingering from fandoms where the showrunners were much less responsive to the fans, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

At what point does “viewing with caution” become “hysterical overreaction?”

The jury is still out on that, too.

So in the wake of 2x20, I was honestly on high alert. Because it was just so glaring to me, the disparity between the way the Clace kisses in 2x19 and 2x20 were filmed, and the way Malec’s kiss at the end of 2x20 was filmed. The lighting, the camera angles and distance, the lingering and so forth. Clace were filmed as though the camera couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t draw the audience in enough, and Malec were filmed as though they wanted to get as far away from that moment as they could as quickly as possible.

So, I wrote a meta at the time about it and did a truly terrible job of expressing the point I was trying to make. I was using the kisses as a stand-in for the disparate handling of queer sexuality versus straight sexuality, but I got absorbed in the fact that I had the ability to visually demonstrate the point I was making. I went into super-detail-oriented, hyper-analytical mode. I thought I could illustrate my point in terms of inches of distance between bodies, in terms of camera angles used and lumens of lighting and feet of distance from the camera to the couple. I frankly lost sight of how-to-nuance. As I said before, I missed the forest for the trees and I don’t feel like I really succeeded in posing the question I was trying to pose.

The question I wanted (and failed) to ask was this:

Is Shadowhunters going to be one of those shows where the queer pairing is only perceived as “okay” (by whoever makes the decision of what is or isn’t acceptable on the show) as long as they’re the “safe” gays who don’t remind us too often or too obviously that they have icky gay sex?

In other words, were the Shadowhunters showrunners going to be like the authors and publishers that felt queer sexuality needed special warnings and careful handling in a way that straight sexuality doesn’t?

Moving into Season Three

I think there’s a tendency to get a little perplexed here with how much progress the show should have made. Some people say it’s only been 5 episodes since 2x18; therefore we don’t have enough evidence to say whether or not 2x18 is proof of a lesson learned or just a big but ultimately meaningless gesture.

They’re right; five episodes really isn’t very much and certainly a more laid-back outlook is completely valid.

But the showrunners had an entire hiatus to mull this over, and three of those five episodes were written after that hiatus. In fact, IIRC, two writing/production hiatuses passed between the airing (and resultant backlash) of 2x07 and the beginning of season three.

(see what I’m doing here? I’ve again lapsed into mathematical thinking without even intending to do so. I’m counting days and breaking things down into subjective vs. objective time passed like it’s some damn relativity exercise.)

My point is, it’s not unreasonable to say the showrunners have had enough time to internalize those lessons and if they’re not demonstrating that they’ve done so, then that’s an indication of a problem, or a potential problem.

That’s a valid approach, as well.

So, again, this is totally an issue of YMMV.

If people choose to not worry about it now, that’s great, as long as they recognize the validity of the people who do.

And if people choose to express concern about it, that’s also great as long as they don’t attempt to invalidate the things that the show is doing right and well with regard to how Malec is being portrayed.

There has been tremendous improvement on one side of the two-pronged issue of physical intimacy, I will say that. The show has gotten much better about Malec having those sort of intimate, casual touches that you see in the early stages of a new relationship. I’m rather quite satisfied on that front.

But there’s maybe not as much improvement as there could be. They’re still keeping moments of physical contact rated-G when maybe it would really be okay for them to be rated-PG. That begs the question of how much of that is being done because two men touching feels more risque by default than it would if they were a man and woman.

Honestly, in 3x03 after Maryse left, would it have been so hard for Magnus to slip his arm around Alec’s waist and give him a squeeze before wandering off the clear the table? The face caress was lovely, but the shoulder pat was sort of weak.

That’s totally nitpicky, I know. I’m using it as an example, not saying it’s something that actually bothers me. Because earlier in the episode we had that lovely bit of Magnus caressing Alec’s arm and holding his hands in front of Izzy, so I don’t care.

There’s definitely been improvement, but there’s still room for more, that’s all I’m saying.

But that’s the problem with this whole discussion, isn’t it? The second you say “X is an issue” someone will pipe up with “but Y negates that claim” and then the discussion misses the emerging trends and patterns and just becomes about one-upping whoever you disagree with on some isolated detail divorced from the issue as a whole.

An exception to a pattern does not negate the existence of the pattern.

The other half of the two-pronged issue of physical intimacy is the way Malec’s sexuality is treated and whether it’s being handled with kid gloves in a way that straight sexuality is not.

And in that regard, there are signs give me cause for concern (again, YMMV.)

Here’s an example to compare and contrast:

Clary walks into Jace’s room in her underwear; they’re both mostly naked, she straddles him and they roll around on the bed making out.

Alec walks into Magnus’s room in his underwear; they’re both mostly clothed, Alec sniffs his shampoo and they don’t even touch, even though they’re home alone together in a moment where touching would be entirely appropriate

Please note: that’s not to discount or attempt to invalidate how lovely the Malec scene we got in the episode is. It really was sweet and delightful and many wonderful things.

And there is also differing context that means that these are two very different scenes establishing two very different things; namely that Clace are in a very dangerous place in a relationship that actually lacks a lot of emotional intimacy, and Malec are in a very comfortable place in a relationship with tons of emotional intimacy.

But the point remains that there is a very clear disparity between the way the two relationships are portrayed in terms of sexual or sexually-suggestive moments.

There simply IS.

Let’s hypothesize for a moment that the context had been identical. Malec are in a good place, Clace are in a good place. Malec are enjoying a relaxed morning moment having just woken up together, getting ready for the day. Clace are doing the same.

How do you think the Clace scene would have played out in that context? I mean, really? Would they have been mostly dressed? Would they have not touched at all? Would the suggestion that they had showered together have been limited to a small smile after one character told the other that they liked taking showers?

No, of course not. If the context had been identical, Clace would have been far more sexually suggestive. They would have been mostly naked; one of them would have probably still been wet and dripping, wrapped in a towel. There would have been kisses and making out.

Now, it’s easy to look at that one example and say it doesn’t count because it’s only one example, but the problem is, there is a clear and traceable pattern of this happening. Collectively, when you take the Malec moments into consideration, the times when they are allowed to be physically demonstrative with each other (particularly moments where it would be entirely appropriate for them to be rated PG or even PG-13) are extremely limited, particularly in comparison to het moments of similar context.

This goes beyond moments of actual touching. It also goes into moments where even the suggestion that they are a sexually involved couple is entirely appropriate. With a very limited number of exceptions, those moments are conspicuously absent for Malec.

Let’s consider the Clace training scene in 3x01. There is moment when Jace thrusts his sword between her legs. Wow. That is REALLY not subtle phallic imagery there.

(The etymology of the word “vagina” is literally “sheath or scabbard.” The phallic implications of sword imagery are extremely well-established. Hell, I remember when I was in high school, doing a play where my character was supposed to hand a male character a sword and I was supposed to make it as suggestive as possible because this was the symbol of him becoming a man and when he refuses it, I was to let it swing down and droop like a penis going flaccid. This is not a new idea.)

So, raise your hand if you think Malec’s training scene would ever have such a blatant shot of one of them is actually symbolically penetrating the other. Anyone? Anyone?

And I wouldn’t want it to, because honestly that shot was really quite crass and tacky and sort of objectifying of Clary, but the fact that such a moment made it past the censors for a het couple when you know for an absolute fact that it would never have done so with a queer couple is extremely telling.

And that isn’t to say that what we do get with Malec isn’t lovely, because it very much is, it SO is, and that needs to be appreciated and valued and praised.

It also isn’t to say that I personally need or even want Malec portrayed the way Clace are; they’re unique and special and wonderful and that’s a very good thing.

It’s still early days to declare that the showrunners learned nothing from the 2x07/2x18 debacle. But I still feel like I’m in “wait and see” mode and at some point you have to decide that you’re done waiting and seeing and declare it a problem.

Regardless of where you draw that line, the fact still is that show scrubs the suggestion of sexuality from Malec’s moments the way it doesn’t with Clace’s (or with a lot of other straight pairings we’ve seen.)

This happens to the extent of short-changing Malec on casually intimate touches to some degree, as though even those may be too suggestive.

The show sanitizes Malec. As though Malec is dirty and needs sanitizing. As though even just a Malec kiss needs to be kept artificially chaste in a way that a Clace kiss wouldn’t.

The issue isn’t just how Malec is portrayed, it’s the disparity in how they’re portrayed versus how a heterosexual couple would be portrayed in a similar context.

And if this pattern continues, then yes, it’s a very. big. problem indeed.

For now, I continue to wait and see.

#shadowhunters #malec #meta #discourse #long post #physicality discourse

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mental-health-advice · 4 years

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Submission About Seeking Therapy

Hello! So I actually have a few things (apologies in advance, both for length— had to take out some context due to length restriction— and it kind of being all over the place)

Context: I’ve been trying to get help and my university’s counselling centre keeps rejecting me (the reason can be oversimplified into: overbooked + they think I’m “well off”), so I’ve been doing “unofficial sessions” with counsellors (for example, a walk-in pairs you randomly with the first available counsellor and is typically for something minor. Everything is confidential, but it’s unofficial and all that) as I didn’t have access to other options as I can’t drive (due to medical reasons and, due to this area, no means for transportation at the time. I can’t afford something like Uber and there’s no public transportation) and my insurance didn’t really taking any online/virtual sessions (and the places that take my insurance didn’t do video appointment). Now, due to it being summer (and the virus), I have more options (e.g., insurance now covers videos appointments, as long as they’re from a place that takes my insurance, and relatives willing to drive me places)…although my privacy not being respected (by relatives) is an issue for virtual therapy.During the “unofficial sessions”, the counsellors (multiple) suggested I bring up the possibility of having a personality disorder (+ some possible [autism] spectrum-y stuff) due to some red flags (constantly wearing a mask, inability to feel guilt, lack of compassion, sympathy and empathy, unable to read emotional cues, unconcerned for the feelings of others and inability to “determine” them and only caring for social norms, rules and obligations to avoid certain negative consequences). If I do have a personality disorder, I don’t really want to “treat” it (it has benefits), but there are a few things I would like help coping with (e.g., wearing a “mask” constantly is draining, but my personality without it doesn’t really get along with society and can cause major issues, and how to interact with people during those times I can’t “recharge” by being alone and the mask is cracking)…if that makes sense. Also, if I do have one, I can see a diagnosis/label being useful.

I also have trauma (unlikely to be classified as PTSD though; I don’t meet the DMS criteria. Also doesn’t fit CPTSD. To clarify: I’m not saying to negate it or minimise it or anything like that. I’m stating it more for context) from about 6 years of emotional and verbal abuse (with the occasional threat involving things like finances and, once I was an adult, getting kicked out as well as “minor” physical aggressions like slamming doors— never got physically hurt from it or anything like that which is part of the reason nobody did anything despite constantly trying to get help) from mother’s boyfriend and I would like to see if I can get help with it now that I’ve escaped into a healthier environment (escaped the ending of November when I was kicked out. Currently staying with grandparents). Also, occasionally, when I interact with certain people (e.g., therapists who aren’t for me), I get “negative pleasure” (not sure how to describe. Not an emotion. Interactions are just…draining. Usually they’re “neutral”; I don’t get any “positive” or “negative” from interactions…is that makes any sense?) from interactions (with everyone) for a good while of alone time to recover (last time it was one or two months)

Questions: - Any tips for privacy if I do virtual therapy when relatives don’t respect boundaries (no matter what I do/say and I’ve tried/said a lot)? (Not as important as I can wait until in-person sessions and a relative can drive me. Plus the place I plan on going to might not do video appointments) - How many sessions should I give the therapist before deciding if I need a new one/they’re “incompatible” (assuming they’re don’t say/do something that’s a flag of sorts)? - How do I cope, if needed, with the “negative pleasure” (to give the new therapist a fair chance)? - When and how should I go about bring up the different things (trauma, possible personality disorder and etc) to the therapist?

(Please tag as: ⭐︎)

Hey there!

Thank you for your submission, I hope that I’m able to give you some advice on this. It sounds as if you’ve had a time of it trying to seek out some proper professional help, but I think it’s great you’re trying despite everything that seems to be in the way for you. From your unofficial therapy sessions, it seems the therapists think there might be a diagnosis to make there. I think that if you feel comfortable, discussing this with your doctor might be a good idea. Getting a diagnosis does not mean you have to medicate anything, but having a doctor talk through with you all your options and the pros and cons of each could help you make a well informed decisions about what is best for you. And I think that’s the most important thing at the moment. I’ll just number each questions as I’m answering as you have 4 separate ones, just to make things a bit clearer for you!

1. Privacy in this time is tricky, as we’re all cooped up at home, many of us with family or partners or friends. I had to call my doctor recently, and my mum is quite nosy and would listen in if I told her and I didn’t want her to just walk in and I hadn’t told her I was calling the doctors, so I went for a walk! I used the consulting software on my phone, and walked while I video chatted. Somewhere quiet of course, but this is the great thing with it being a video call - you can do it from anywhere! If you can’t leave the house for your countries current restrictions, there are a couple of things you could potentially do. One, put some music on in your room at a reasonable volume so you can still hear, maybe some speakers next to the door, so family can’t listen in. Also, therapists are aware at the moment there are certain things people wont want to say while at home because of this reason, so there might be a a chat box where you can type things instead, or your therapist may ask you yes or no questions so you can narrow it down. They’ll have had some experience of this by now, so likely they can also talk you through how to deal with this.

2. With regards to how many sessions you give someone, it’s really like asking how long is a piece of string. I guess it depends on the nature of the sessions you’re given. When I went for counselling through my university, I only had 6 sessions. For some, weekly sessions are indefinite and are for as long as they are needed. If you have 6 weeks like I did, for me it didn’t make sense to change therapist as it was such a short amount of time I felt I wouldn’t get much from changing at any point. Honestly, there’s no definite answer to this. Try and approach your therapy sessions with as open a mind as possible - they’re trained and there to help you. If there’s a certain thing that they do that you don’t like, or something that they say which upset you in any way, try your best to be open and let them know. Generally, I wouldn’t stay for too long with someone who you don’t think is giving you any benefit or helping you deal with your issues - it does take a couple of weeks I found to get into some kind of dynamic and understand their ways of working, and if you were incompatible I would think that you’d tell sooner rather than later.

3. For dealing with this negative pleasure, I’m not sure I fully understand what you’re describing, I’m not sure if it’s the way it’s been worded but I think what I’m getting from it is that from dealing with particular people, you sometimes prefer the negative dynamic as opposed to the neutral one? And that you want to try and be as receptive as possible to new therapists? If this is wrong just follow up and let me know if I haven’t answered your question! I would again say that honesty and openness with your therapist is key - you could let them know from the start about this feeling you sometimes have, and maybe they could talk through certain things that would make you turn into this emotion so they can avoid it as best they can. Perhaps taking some time to reflect after each session and evaluating how you feel, how your therapist communicated, how you communicated, what went well and what you didn’t like (and why) could help give you a better perspective on the situation, and can also help in general process the discussions had in therapy.

4. I would say that when you are in therapy, one of the first things after a get to know you session is typically what brings you to therapy and what you want to get from it. This is a great importunity to explain from your unofficial sessions your therapists thought that there might be a personality disorder, and that you have dealt with some trauma in the past also. The first session being so open and upfront with a therapist can be uncomfortable, but it really helps lay foundations for productive sessions in the future. You of course don’t have to dive in to every detail of your trauma session one, and if you’re feeling uncomfortable about certain topics or details for the moment - communicate that! Therapist will slowly guided you toward conversations at a pace that;s good for you, and if you think it’s too fast or too much at once you can just say ‘I don’t feel ready to talk about that in detail yet.’ The therapist is there for you at the end of the day, and is there to help you talk through what it is you need to.

I hope that this has answered all your questions - sorry it’s a bit lengthy! This however is just my advice from my own experience, so feel free to take on board or ignore anything I’ve said based on how well it related to you. I hope you manage to secure yourself some therapy, and are able to work through some of your issues.

Take Care,

Hollie x

#mhahollie #advice #advice blog #mental health advice #therapy #professional diagnosis #seeing a professional #coronavirus #personality disorder #trauma #⭐︎

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autistic-science-cryptid · 6 years

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Comment Exchange about a Manipulative Autism Mom

As I promised, here is the comment exchange, which I did on the Patheos blog Roll to Disbelieve, which discusses the behavior of a particularly manipulative Autism Mom™. To sum up: The owner of that blog, Captain Cassidy, once worked in a call center, and the Autism Mom™ in this case grabbed up the fanciest TV package she could find, one she could not afford, and played the autism card (complete with the whole array of humiliating details that so any Autism Parents show without the child’s consent) to get her bills forgiven indefinitely so she could basically et these services for free. I responded talking about how this is a well-known phenomenon within the autistic community, one we really do not like, and she and I ended up in an exchange talking about how this behavior affects the kids and how annoyingly manipulative it is. This is what led me to the conclusion that this type of manipulation, while it may not be always against companies, may be driving a lot of the vocal refusal to accept the sort of advice we have to give. After all, they want to hear a pat answer that makes their child convenient - they don’t want to hear that they may need to try multiple things, accept messy parts of life, and various other things we suggest that are likely to work, but are not something you can just implement and forget.

Exchange under the cut - note that a few other people on that blog, allistic people, do agree with the sentiment that people who claim autism as their identity when they themselves are not autistic, while simultaneously denying this identity to actually autistic people, is really a disgusting thing to do. All users except Captain Cassidy and me are designated with initials:

Captain Cassidy (blog mod, also calls herself Wielder of the Banhammer) Perpetual victims tend to leave nothing to chance when it comes to fucking up their lives. It's just amazing how they manage to cover every single potential base with epic failure so that there's only one possible avenue of help--which is guaranteed to be someone who'll be hugely put out by rescuing them. It's like watching the human version of a slow-motion train wreck. Then when nobody leaps forward to save them from their own poor choices, they'll whine that "so-and-so doesn't want to work with me." Yeah, been there and done that with call center work. You could always immediately tell who those people were: they'd have tons of little credits and line-item deletions on their accounts, a balance that hadn't been current since their account started (and a fairly recent activation date at that), a constant wave of promotions and specials they probably shouldn't have gotten, and--the tip-off--a pattern of forgiven late fees, disconnection fees, and bounced check fees, each noted with some new disaster the customer had suffered that had prevented them from paying their bill on time and in full that month. They always had some ideal solution in mind, and it seemed like they would refuse every option and possibility we offered if it wasn't that solution in their head. Usually the solution involved total absolution of all fees and balances, but barring that they'd happily take a very large discretionary credit "for being such good customers" and as "compensation" for the hassle caused to them by the disconnection or whatever. If a frontline agent refused to "work with them" that time, they'd escalate as high as they could to try to get their bill credited. I was one of the people in that escalation chain, but had the good fortune to be working for a company that was cracking down HARD on those kinds of credits so I could refuse knowing upper management wouldn't give in either. These idiots would ride the carousel as long as a company would let them, then fuck off and go right along to the next provider of that service. I remember telling one that sooner or later they'd go through all the providers in their rural area and it might be a good idea to talk to someone about learning how to budget and all that because she'd hit the limit on what we could do to save her from herself. It didn't go over well with her. (She had an autistic son, she said, and she'd gotten that company's largest entertainment package on a new customer promotion about 18 months previously. The son had gotten used to watching a channel that only came with that package and would, she assured us, beat his head against a wall until he landed in the hospital if he couldn't have that channel on all the time. She hadn't actually paid a bill at all in about 16 months and now owed the company somewhere around $2000. Normally that was an impossible balance to accrue, but we'd inadvertently taught her a very dirty trick we could do in cases of extreme need: When she got disconnected every month, she'd call up and pity-party someone into taking pity on her and reactivating it, even if that meant re-aging her account to get it back online, with the assurance--never fulfilled--that she'd totally pay in full "soon." The company's fraud team had flagged her account and made it impossible for ANYBODY not on their team to reactivate her without payment in full plus three months in advance. She was used to escalating a few times, since only people at a fairly high level could re-age accounts. I was one of them, but I sure wasn't gonna do it for her. Re-aging meant to take her full balance, credit that amount to the account to bring it current, then charge it all back again. In effect, she would still owe the full balance, but now it showed as a current balance instead of a past due one. This is a TERRIBLE thing to do and it completely freaks out fraud investigators. So she escalated on me, and I sent her to a manager, who "wouldn't work with her" either, and then she landed in the fraud team's queue and I didn't hear anything past that. I didn't believe her excuse story, but it hardly mattered if I did or didn't; the only solution at that point was for her to pay what was being demanded, and that wasn't the solution she wanted to hear.)

Me You know, that woman who claimed she had an autistic son? I wouldn't be shocked if she was one of those parents that the autistic community HATES. The ones who are always pity-partying their kid's autism, talking about how their kids DESERVE an autism cure (which most autistics, including me, don't want), acting as if autism is doom-and-gloom all the time, often supporting the crap "charity" Autism Speaks, which repeats those same pity lines, videoing their child's meltdowns and posting them on the internet without their consent along with giving graphic details of hygiene and bathroom habits of their kids, also without the child's consent (including feces-smearing, which is something an autistic person I know did as a baby and grew out of, and they transitioned to making mud pies by the creek as a kid), and calling themselves "autism parents" while telling us autistic people "no, no, sweetie, you are a person with autism". Ugh, there's a lot of nerve in that last one, taking our identity for themselves while expecting us to separate ourselves from it. And then it seems possible that one of these so-called "autism parents" (who inevitably are never autistic themselves, because autistic people who are parents call themselves "autistic parents") has the gall to scam your company, to boot.    S  I just think it's obnoxious they make it all about them.   C  "Autism parent" sounds awful. It's like she thinks she's mothering the autism itself, rather than her kid.  

  Captain Cassidy, Wielder of the Banhammer  Oh yeah, that was completely this awful lady. That's exactly what she talked like. She presented herself as one step holier than the Virgin Mary and it just outraged her that my company wasn't just donating services to her because SHE was an AUTISM MOM and didn't we KNOW what she was GOING through every day... And yes, I got treated to some astonishing personal details about her son that seemed engineered to evoke the most pity and disgust in listeners. I almost told her hey gal, I've been emotionally manipulated by the best. And you ain't anywhere close to that level.   

Me  I wish more people responded to "autism mom" laments the way you do. That type of manipulation allows parents to get away with literal murder of their autistic offspring, such that if you google "parent kills kid who has autism" or something, practically every article talking about such a murder has comments sections full of people saying things about how you'd understand why those poor parents would want to murder their autistic kid if you were in their shoes, and how the lack of services makes them worry so much they had to kill their kid.  No, I'm sorry, lack of services means that you should be willing to advocate for those services, not use that an excuse to treat your kid like a rabid beast who has to be put down. And besides, if you autism parents can pull heartstrings the way so many of you do engendering sympathy for murder and waltzing right into communities of actual autistic people to shit on them and silence them, I'm sure you can use those emotional manipulation skills to aid you in advocacy work. (Not you personally, I mean those shitheads who do things ranging from what that mom did to you all the way up to actual murder). You even get things like the parents in this article (http://autistext.com/2017/03/04/autpocalypse-then-autpocalypse-now/ ) talking about how if their son's autism didn't go away, they might have to kill him, at which point the son's autism went away and the parents blamed the autism on a "cerebral milk allergy" which, as we all know here, is a bullshit disease and that of course if you discuss the possibility of killing a kid for being visibly autistic, that kid is likely to hide his autistic behaviors because his life depends on it. Duh. But of course, a little thing like reality isn't going to stop them from selling alternative medicine to treat something that, in actuality, was visibly and abusively "treated" by putting the kid in fear for his life. And it is clear from the quotes of those parents in that article that those are not the words of parents at their wit's end (which, of course, is the impression "autism parents" who murder their kids often successfully give to a lot of people when they talk about how people need to "walk in their shoes"). Those words are far too cold and calculating for that, and are simply abuser words.  

Me  So, she was most likely telling the truth about having an autistic son, and she treated him like shit. Go figure. Just like every other "autism mom" out there. They do have a habit of presenting themselves as holy figures. Really, I feel sorry for that kid.  

Captain Cassidy Wielder of the Banhammer  I'm glad to take your word on it--though sad for the son. Probably would have been a way better idea for her to contact the company in writing and just ask for the donation before signing up for anything. They might even have granted it then, who knows... But signing a contract and accepting a huge entertainment package like that, then unilaterally deciding not to pay because she felt she'd earned enough Autism Sympathy Points? Not a good plan. And offering a child a channel on a package she knows for 100% certain she can't afford to pay for monthly doesn't sound like she was thinking with portals at all.  

Me  No, she wasn't. though I bet her taking an expensive package and working it into that kid's routine would win her massive sympathy points when her kid inevitably gets upset because his routine is disrupted due to the fact he can no longer see that show. So then she can use that as yet another example of how autism ruined her life (and yes, she would say it was her life that was ruined even though her kid is the autistic one). Seriously, though. Don't incorporate shows you can't afford to keep into an autistic kid's daily routine - it's a real pain in the ass to have a routine disrupted without warning. I know that from personal experience. If your kid really likes that particular show, it would be more responsible to get DVDs of it if available, or else have it be something that you specially plan - do the latter if you can't get the DVD because that way the show falls under the category "special treat" and isn't incorporated into a daily routine. But I guess advice like that is not going to go over well with people who use their kid's autism as a way to fish for sympathy. God for-fucking-bid they do anything that will genuinely reduce their kid's difficulty rather than win them sympathy points, especially since they are also doing things that make it harder for autistic people and those parents of autistic kids who actually want to make it easier for their kids and are willing to fight on their kid's behalf rather than using autism as a vehicle to fish for sympathy.  

Captain Cassidy Wielder of the Banhammer  It definitely gave her something to keep her days busy. I got the feeling she'd done this to a lot of other companies for a lot of other services and goodies and did a lot of phone errands to keep the gravy train and sympathy brigade moving.  

Me  And strung her son along in the process with repeated, unnecessary, and jarring interruptions to his routine, rather than finding things within his interest area that he liked and that she could consistently provide (i.e. a one-time or few-time DVD purchase in lieu of scamming expensive TV packages). Seems that she cared more about getting the goodies for herself and exploiting her son's plight in order to do so, while making it worse for him, rather than making sure that both she and her son were able to have nice things she didn't need to scam people to get. And she probably saddled her son with a huge burden of guilt for getting attached to those goodies that weren't really his in the process, although it was in no way his fault that his mom brought in those things and let them be incorporated into his routine knowing damn well she might not be able to give her son consistent access to them (again, a disaster for a lot of autistic kids) rather than making them "special treats" as she should have done, while giving him things he could consistently use for his routine (like the aforementioned DVDs). Getting goodies for oneself is okay (yes, I know that parents have a lot of reason to be stressed), just get goodies you can reasonably afford, for you and your kids, and don't use your kid to bilk people out of goodies like that woman did.   

Captain Cassidy Wielder of the Banhammer  Jeez, yeah, 100% this. I'm glad you brought that up because I guess I hadn't even realized that the son might feel guilty about any attachments he formed to the TV channel in question. I see why parents like that are looked down on. That's a lot to saddle a child with, and none of it's his fault at all.  

Me  I figured the son might feel guilty about this because I have felt guilty about similar things outside my control (like feeling so guilty about benefitting from the use of fossil fuels that I once went through a phase of basically denying climate change and hanging on to the hope of a magical solution so that the guilt wouldn't drive me nuts, especially since I couldn't realistically check out of use of technology, and this was before renewable energy sources looked as feasible as they do today)

Exchange over.

Bet I’m not the only autistic who would feel guilty about getting attached to something that people have gotten through ill-gotten gains. I mean, sometimes we do need to apply this in a socially aware way (like when talking about white privilege) but this isn’t one of those things. And even when it is a good idea to acknowledge this, it does not mean people should have to be ashamed of getting attached to something. Recognizing problematic elements and being ashamed of getting attached to something are not the same thing. But in this case, if the son did feel guilty, his mom would probably encourage it - heck, the tricks she used to manipulate Captain Cassidy, mentioned in the first comment, are exactly the sort of thing that would feed guilt and shame in a totally destructive way - his mom is portraying the situation in a way that would make the son feel like it is all his fault he gets deeply attached to things.

Seriously, how else are you supposed to feel when your mean mom is on the phone to a company desperately saying about how you will knock your head against the wall so hard you end up in the hospital if you can’t have the show you’ve grown deeply attached to? Of course you would feel guilty and absolutely sick with yourself - you don’t leap to thinking it’s your mom’s fault and that she could have skipped the fancy package and/or gotten DVDs of the shows or a TiVo to record your shows instead if she wanted you to have the shows - both options would be 100% cleaner, and a lot more likely to be able to continue, than scamming a company out of the fanciest packages the companies offer (which companies will likely cut you off from when they find out anyway, and in this particular case it would not be a dirty trick on the part of the company to do so since the company is not breaking any promises in that case). Especially since yes, companies are unethical a lot of the time, and yes, there are a lot of things companies should not deny, but that does not mean that people should be using children to scam said company. And they shouldn’t be humiliating their kids in public like that either. Period.

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pixel-glow-blog · 7 years

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Favoritism, emotional abuse, and bitterness.

So this is going to be kind of a long, personal post. But suffice to say, I’m interested if anyone has had a similar experience to mine, or feels sort of the same emotional turmoil that I do? I just really want to know I’m not alone.

Right now, I’m feeling kind of bitter, and sad, and unhappy. You know, that feeling where your chest tightens up when you see some injustice or unfairness, and there’s nothing you can do, so you just sit there feeling both frustrated and powerless? And it all started with one thing. My parents happily told me that my stepsister, who is 5 years younger than me, just got a letter from Yale inviting her to tour the college because they’re impressed with her SAT records.

Now I’m sure we all know that twinge of envy when someone much younger than you ends up being more successful, but this goes much deeper than that. You see, she was always the favorite. She was my stepdad’s real daughter, and thus he cared about her more than he did about me. And honestly, that part never bothered me too much. At least, it didn’t for the first few years our parents were together.

Now, I’m going back to some kind of triggering memories right now, so I’m sorry if my writing seems a little jumbled or disorganized, but I really want to get this out, so I’m going to try anyway.

The trouble started when I was about 12. That was when my mental illnesses starting showing through, and since I was under a lot of stress, I was acting ‘more autistic’ (even though I was undiagnosed at the time). That was about when the abuse started. Now, I hesitate to call what I went through abuse, because my parents never physically assaulted me. There was no real “evidence”, per se, that anything was wrong. But because of the deep psychological scars it left, I’m going to call it abuse. Basically, from the time I was 12, till I was about 16, I was emotionally abused and neglected by my parents. I almost have the urge to say “Well, other people have it worse, so you can’t claim it was abuse.” That’s what people always told me when I confided in them, anyway. But I know plenty of other people have been through the same thing, and I wouldn’t ever minimize their suffering, so I won’t do it to mine.

So basically how this all started, was my mom just out of the blue took away my antidepressants, took me out of therapy, and just basically ignored the fact that I had depression for almost a year. I say this is when it started, because I had only just started treatment a few months ago. I had gotten my diagnosis of depression when I was just miserable and numb all the time, I had meltdowns often, and I wanted to die at 11 years old. I’m saying all of this so you understand that after I had no treatment, I went back to being depressed.

Most of the abuse I went through, was specifically related to, or because of, my mental illnesses and my autism. I’m not going to go too into detail about my abuse (that’s for another post, if I ever get around to making it), but I’ll give you the basics: I was yelled at or punished for showing pretty much any signs of autism (having a meltdown, expressing sensory sensitivities, trying to avoid overload, or not getting facial expressions), showing any symptoms of depression (being yelled at or punished for not being able to get out of bed, not being able to do my chores, being slow at understanding things or responding, self harming (the only one that’s really understandable), or expressing that I was unhappy at all. I just want to make it clear that most of the things I was abused for were not things I could control. Now I was a teenager, and there were times that I actually got into trouble for legitimate reasons. But most of the time, I was punished for things I didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

The neglect showed through in other ways. Like most families, we were pretty tight on money, but I call it neglect because I was never considered a priority. For example, being autistic, I can only tolerate certain foods, (and my list of foods I could eat was even shorter back then). About 80% of the time, my parents would go out of their way to NOT bring back anything I could eat. The only way they got food for me, was if I agreed to go grocery shopping with them (which was sensory hell) and basically begged them throughout the store to get at least 1 or 2 things for me. It was bad enough to the point where I would only eat maybe 2 or 3 meals a week, and even then they were usually things that had me gagging or crying because I hated them so much (on the inside of course. I would be punished if I dared to gag or cry in front of people). When I needed things, like clothes or school supplies, I rarely got them. I was stuck in a catch 22 where if I only told my parents about it once, they would often forget I had asked. But if I asked them more than once, I was yelled at for “nagging” them. I remember one instance in particular where I needed clothes for school, because almost everything I owned I had either outgrown or had holes in it. I was told we didn’t have the money for it. LATER THAT SAME WEEK, my dad buys a membership to Farrel’s (you know, that workout place) that costs $300 dollars. I’ll never forget the feeling of absolute betrayal. The knowledge that even after bills, even after food, even after all the necessities, when I specifically put in a request, my actual needs were considered less important than his vanity. He lost 15 pounds. I’ll remember that till the day I die, and I hate it.

Now, to describe how he treated his daughter. She was his princess. I used to (and still do, sometimes) call her “Her Highness”, because that’s how he treated her. If she wanted anything, anything, she got it. She needed 1 pair of shoes? He’d buy her two. She lost her coat he bought her a week ago? He’d buy her another one, just as expensive as the last. He bought her as many school supplies as she could need, every year. I remember 1 year he bought her 3 separate pairs of glasses. Because she kept losing them. If she was coming over that weekend, the house had to be spotless. Instead of eating the cheap food WE were stuck with, we always had either fresh ingredients, or we’d eat out. It got to the point when I could reliably count on eating like a normal person on the weekends she’d come over, because he would never in his wildest dreams think of forcing her to eat the same stuff I did. She got piano lessons, violin lessons, tae kwon do lessons, she went to an expensive summer camp nearly every summer, and she always went. Even if that meant pulling money from what was supposed to go towards our bills, she always got what she wanted. Fancy dresses, new books, all the supplies she could need for her hobbies.

And the emotional treatment was even more of a gap. If I brought home a report card with all A’s and one D, all my parents would do is berate me for the one bad grade, and threaten me that it had better be higher next time. If she brought home a report card with all A’s and one D, she got $20 for every A. I’m not even exaggerating, that LITERALLY happened. I was called basically every name in the book “Lazy, stupid, ungrateful, not trying, condescending, a fucking bitch, crazy, a bad person, faking, a burden, impossible.” When I asked for help with my depression, I was told that it was all in my head, that I was making it seem worse than it was, that I could get over it anytime I wanted. When I talked about things I was struggling with in school, I was told that it was obvious, that I was stupid for not getting it, that I just wasn’t trying hard enough. When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life, I was told “You’ll never be able to do that. We can’t afford to send you to college. Scholarships won’t help you. You won’t be able to make it through.” I was basically told that I was inherently a bad person. That I would never be able to achieve anything because I was bad. And even if I tried my hardest, I would never be able to be any better than I was. And when I did succeed? When I got good grades, when I was able to fight through my depression to do my chores, when I actually did something I felt proud of? Silence. Well, most of the time. Sometimes I got criticized for it not being good enough, “You can do better. You didn’t even try!” Eventually, I pretty much gave up trying to impress them, or earn their love and respect, because I knew it was never going to happen. I gave up a lot of my dreams, because either they didn’t approve, or they convinced me I wouldn’t be any good at it anyway.

Which brings me back to my stepsister. You see, we both had basically the same grades in school, before I dropped out. We were both really smart, we both were the highest in our respective classes. Intellectually, we were both equal. We both had the same potential. But she had more resources than I did. She was encouraged and praised and accepted. She had everything she needed to be at her best, and everything she wanted to keep her happy and focused. She never had to go through the abuse I did, the kind that beats you down every day until you feel like you’re a worthless speck of nothing. She didn’t have two parents who picked apart and exaggerated every flaw or mistake until she felt like she would never be able to do anything. She never had to go to school with the kind of hunger that only comes from not having eaten for several days. She didn’t go to school wearing clothes that had holes in them causing her to get made fun of by all her peers.

Look, I get that life isn’t an even playing field. I have a developmental disability, and she doesn’t. I have several mental illnesses, and she doesn’t. Our lives would never have been perfectly equal. But much of her success is directly tied to my lack of it. So many of the things she got, she didn’t just get, she got them because they were directly taken away from me. They money that should have gone towards food for me went to violin lessons for her. The money the should have gone to clothes for me, went to expensive clothes (that she didn’t need) for her. The money that could have been used so I could practice my art, which I’ve always wanted to do, went to horseback riding lessons for her.

So much of the success she’s had in life is directly tied to everything I didn’t get. And it hurts. There’s the pain of realizing something’s been taken from you, something you can’t ever get back. There’s the guilt that comes from realizing you should be able to be happy for your little sister’s success, and instead you’re a bitter mess. And there’s the injustice of having it not be your fault. If I had spent my teen years drinking and partying, and I had thrown away my own future, I would be fine. I would write that one off under “oops” and move on. But I can’t. The future I could have had was stolen by parents who didn’t care about me, and basically did everything they could to make me feel like garbage. And there’s the frustration of not being able to talk about it. I can’t tell her I’m not happy for her because my parents screwed me over to make sure she succeeded because then SHE’D be guilty, and I don’t want to put her through that. My parent’s have made a commitment to doing better, and I’d no longer classify them as abusive, but I’m not allowed to bring up anything they did. Anytime I try it’s “Why are you bringing up the past?” “It’s different now.” “Just let it go.” They’re willing to treat me better, as long as I don’t get any closure.

It’s just not fair. It’s not fair how two people who you trust and rely on can just decide to ruin your mental health, and leave you with psychological scars that will last a lifetime. And then they get to move on while you’re stuck holding the bill. I’m still dealing with the consequences of those 4-5 years, and they get to just pretend they never happened.

And now I’m the terrible person who hears their little sister got an invitation to Yale, who’s dreams are starting to come true, and can only think “Fuck you.”

#actuallyautistic #emotional abuse #parental abuse #depression #autism #bitterness #personal

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maddiviner · 7 years

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The Way the Magical Community Treats Mental Illness

Hello everyone. I hope you’re having a good day today. This is just something I had to get off my chest, and it may not be very coherent, but I hope it’s readable and informative as far as my personal perspective goes.

Many articles, usually of an extreme clickbaity variety, attempt to draw a connection between mental illness and magick. I’m not speaking here of pseudo-Christian scaremongering about demonic possession, either. Rather, I’m talking about articles written by magicians and witches themselves on this subject, which try to argue that being mentally ill is actually a kind of magical gift. If you’ve not seen any of these articles, I’ll link just a couple here.

There’s Mental Illness: Are We Drugging our Prophets and Healers? by Vironika Tugaleva, which makes the charming (oh so charming, ahem,) argument that it’s perfectly acceptable for someone to be lost to suicide if they’re remembered by history for their “contributions.”

Without a doubt, the article outright assumes that such contributions would’ve been impossible had the person been medicated, flying in the face of the experiences most people have with these drugs.

“Perhaps the drugs would have prevented some suicides, though even that is questionable (as you’ll find on your search—some medications have been linked to suicide and homicide). But suppose they had. Then we’d have extended their lifetimes, while they would have faded into the background, known by few, remembered by no one.”

There’s also the article that inspired this, called What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital, which claims outright that mental illness is caused by spirits:

“On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see. “They were causing the crisis in these people,” he says. It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients’ pain in the process. “The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people. They were really fierce about that. The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling,” he said. He couldn’t stay in that environment and had to leave…”

These are fun articles to share (I’m sure) if you’re a middle-aged soccer mom who’s never lost anyone to suicide or had any loved ones struggle with the horror of psychoses, but they don’t really give an accurate picture of mental illness as most humans experience it, which is perhaps why the second article was deleted from the server that originally hosted it (I’m honestly not sure).

I think outside of the gentle five-second-attention-span clickbait-y “Hmm, makes you think!” world of these articles, anyone suggesting suicide or suffering is a-okay if it leads to “being remembered” would come across as downright callous and lacking in empathy to the point where the word “evil” might actually get thrown around.

This thread, and the accompanying images, does a good job at emphasizing why this perspective is nonsense and actually quite harmful. Beyond that, one thing that the thread doesn’t address (I might comment with it in there later) is this peculiar notion that “we” or “them” or, well, somebody (it’s left undefined) is out there drugging people and forcing them to suppress their awesome powers with those evil medications.

Anyone who’s ever sought help for a mental health crisis knows this is bullshit. There aren’t gangs of psychiatrists roaming the streets ready to cart off anyone who acts different. It quite frankly, doesn’t work that way. Acting different or “quirky” isn’t a mental illness, and...

In most developed countries, including the United States, there’s actually a massive shortage in psychiatric and psychological healthcare professionals and it can be very difficult for people, particularly those at an economic disadvantage, to even see one for triage. Even those with a standing diagnosis find it difficult in many areas to get any treatment at all, be it medication or therapy.

And those who do seek treatment are seeking treatment. We know something’s not right, so we end up in a doctor’s office looking for a solution. If we’re given medication, we don’t abdicate our autonomy or personhood when we take it anymore than you do when you get a flu vaccine or take an antibiotic.

The Mindset Created in our Community

Most, perhaps even the majority, will never have either a severe mental illness nor experience a loved one’s brush with the same. I’m a little iffy on the numbers as far as that, but we can probably agree a good percentage of people aren’t going to have to deal with it. And they’re the sort who share articles like that, which circulate through the magical community like some sort of plague of ridiculousness.

This creates a situation where magicians and witches are hearing from all sorts of people on otherwise-reputable sites telling them that mental illness does not exist, psychiatry is out to get them, what passes for mental illness is actually high-octane magick, and that psychiatric meds will kill you or at very least make you not yourself.

It creates a mindset where anyone who does interact positively with psychiatric establishments or actually researches it enough to know what it’s really like is maligned as simply not magical or “enlightened.” Yeah, we’re left with a situation where some in the community would consider blaming things on demonic possession to be more enlightened than actually trying to get at the root causes of things.

This manifests in a variety of ways. Here on Tumblr, most witches know about this and you rarely see this kind of thing spread on here, but on sites like Facebook and in real-world interaction, it can show up, and have some pretty marked and unsettling effects. I myself have taken psychiatric meds for roughly as long as I’ve practiced witchcraft, with my involvement in the Craft beginning only a few short months after I began receiving treatment and achieved a modicum of stability. Since then, I’ve heard all kinds of things from other witches who found out I took the meds, including...

I’ve been told I’m “basically lobotomized.” I’ve been told that, since the “meds control my mind,” I can only follow the “globalist agenda.” (What even?) I’ve been told that if I’ve taken them this long, it goes without saying that my “soul is dead,” and “beyond retrieval.” I’ve been told as well, of course, that I’m a sorry excuse for a witch, because a real witch would’ve just “done a banishing” and not needed meds.

This, all in all, contributes to a sort of mental health crisis in the witchcraft and magical community where a lot of people are probably dealing with their own issues alone, not seeking treatment because they’re both afraid of what other witches would think, and worried because of all the misinformation.

That’s not even counting those who’ve got loved ones trying desperately to pass off their illness as a special gift, either. I’ve been involved in conversations where that was definitely happening, and once saw a local practitioner in the area where I used to live try desperately to convince her son that he had “an entity” and the voices telling him to hurt himself were just part of his “gift.”

I guess my message to people regarding this is to think before you share something. If it’s an article that fits and validates your (magical or otherwise) worldview, that still doesn’t make it factually accurate, and you can and should do research (and just put some thought into things) before you share articles that might contribute to mindsets such as this.

It’d be a beautiful world to live in if people like me were, in fact, actually “healing shamans” awakening or whatever, but we don’t live in that world. Just because something sounds good, and sounds magical, doesn’t make it true.

The “sounds magical; must be true/good/etc!” problem is bigger than the scope of this article, but it’s a reoccurring problem I’ve seen in many forums and areas online. I’ve actually seen situations where incredibly unscientific and fake-ish articles were shared, and any rebuttals ignored, just because the original article made the world sound like a more magical place.

A good example of this: a few weeks ago I was in a spiritual community and someone posted about how autism isn’t real and it’s all just an attempt to straitjacket the “indigo children.” I shared a rebuttal suggesting this perspective wasn’t exactly healthy, and was immediately told that, since it was a spiritual forum, my response was uncalled for, as it referenced science, which “dims the light of spirituality.”

I guess at the heart of this, and most similar problems in the community, is the notion that the two must be separate or cannot complement and inform each other.

#magick #witchcraft #occult #witch #chaos magick #mental illness #suicide #medication #hospitalization #institutionalization #schizophrenia #mental health #wellness

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