Unfortunately I don't have the energy to put together some info for the mega this week, hopefully I can pull together something for next week though. As always, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:
"Disability" is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
I want all "it was just a prank" excuses to be invalid forever. It has ableist implications IF it is genuine, which it NEVER EVER IS, so its just reactionaries being cowards
I’ve been doing a lot of anxiety inducing stuff lately in the hope that I’ll get used to the pressure and learn to deal with it. Will let u guys know in a few weeks or months if it works or if I get burnt.
I finally got to get back to FNB this last weekend and we all hung out and talked a bit after we ran out of food(always a good sign) and I feel like a super judgey bastard because, originally, I was like "I'm probably the furthest left person here." I guess I was just going on internal biases due to where I live, but turns out, a lot of those running it are anarchists and other flavor of socialst. I was both humbled and extremely happy that I got to shoot the shit about the current political climate with handful of IRL legit socialists. I love it. I'm a bit shamed that I just assumed. But I was in the presence of people that have been at this since the 90s. Super fucking humbling.
Also we are all introverts that suffer from major social anxiety lol.
One of them that I actually met a few weeks ago at my vegan food truck place, was introducing me to her friend and threw me off because she asked me for my pronouns. Def not used to that IRL because I'm pretty male presenting but it was the first time I got to try out "he/him but sometimes they" since I've been doing some personal soul searching and think I might be demi or agender. I've always been male presenting cishet but I've also never really cared about my gender all that much and do "girly stuff" that I like. And a lot of "guy stuff" I kind of hate. I'm not really sure where I land but I'm gonna talk more with my therapist this week about it and try to figure it out. I might just be suffering from patriarchal bullshit.
Other than that I do have training officially lined up for this weekend so we might have a tiny bit of financial security coming soon. I have a job interview for that Facebook/Meta for a software position that I'm still hoping to get some study time in on. I'm not really qualified for it but I'm not gonna turn it down if they offer it to me. Not gonna keep my hope up though because I can't really afford to do that mentally anymore.
Anyway, I hope everyone's week goes great. Politics right now is a fuck so don't forget to take care of yourselves.
That’s nice. I hope to find cool people like that again.
Gender isn’t real. My theory is that when we autists reflect on the idea our bottom up processing makes it easy to experience that emptiness, whereas NTs will project their social standards and absorbed ideas as truth. Nothing is bad about not caring about your presentation and such, but if you find that the patriarchal mold has constrained you and trying other things makes you happier then that’s great too.
Good luck.
I'm basically a gender abolitionist but I hesitate to say that even in disabled spaces. I mentioned as much in one of the many weekly "I don't feel like my assigned gender" posts on /r/autism and someone got all spicy saying "here we go with patriarchy bad again" and I just didn't have the energy for it lol. They were trying to defend gender from the perspective of feminism activism, but like if the patriarchy didn't exist, social constructs like gender wouldn't exist, therefore, we wouldn't have a need for activism in the way it exists currently. Basically gender is a tool by the patriarchy to arbitrarily assign oppression to certain classes in society and now I can't paint my fingernails pink without chuds side-eyeing me lol.
But that's all to say I don't really wanna minimize our comrades who are on their own gender journeys. I just want people to be allowed to be happy as the people they are. I just think I'm sometimes kinda "girly" feeling but I donno what that means.
I think we're on the same page but I just want to gently remind you that for some people, gender is really really important. Like, critical to their survival and something they have fought upstream against society for over many years of suffering and hardship.
I'm enbie and to me, on a personal level, gender is genuinely unimportant to my own identity but when I talk about the abolition of gender I try to frame it in terms of something like abolishing enforced gender or abolishing gender norms because I don't want to unintentionally signal to anyone, least of all to certain trans comrades, that I'm coming to steal their gender from them. All I want is for gender to be optional and based on exactly how the individual feels at that particular moment; you can look how you want, you can act how you prefer, and you can be the gender(s) that you feel and none of these things have to "align" and anybody who tries to tell you that you aren't permitted to do something/that you have to do something/that you're doing it wrong can go straight to hell because unless they abolish that attitude immediately then they're gonna get their dental record abolished.
I get how it feels because for myself, my experience of my own gender is summed up by one big fucking meh. But I can't univeralise my own experience of being gender's distant acquaintance and I absolutely do not want to replace gender normativity with agender normativity since that's just gonna be the same shit, different texture for plenty of people, especially trans people, for whom gender really does matter. I'm coming for the normativity; I'm not coming for your gender.
but like if the patriarchy didn't exist, social constructs like gender wouldn't exist
I don't want to get into the weeds on the ontology of the social construct of gender here however one thing that's important to me is drawing upon Foucault's concept of reverse discourse, especially to do with the term queer; without cishet-normativity, the label queer would not exist. However the original discourse of the label has been subverted and it has been thoroughly reclaimed as a symbol of pride, of unity, and ultimately of power across the queer community. With this in mind, I think the reclamation of the term queer has been even more radical than it would have been if we simply managed to abolish its use from our culture.
So, for the people who are engaging in a parallel sort of reclamation of gender on a personal level, because for most/all of their upbringing they had faced a constant barrage of proscriptive gender norms from all angles, they bore down against that great and terrible dragon of gender normativity whose scales glittered with the accretion of a thousand years' of gender normative values—each scale being inscribed with a gendered "Thou shalt!"—and they managed to fucking slay that dragon with a resounding and triumphant "I am!"... I have to ask myself, are these not the people who embody the very same spirit of revolutionary reclamation that I described above?
In my opinion, if you slay that dragon then you get to do whatever you want with the dragon's spoils. You are the hero in this story; I'm not going to deny you the glory that is by rights yours.
but I just want to gently remind you that for some people, gender is really really important.
Absolutely. That's why I don't want to step on the toes of people who are in that camp. Their gender identity is as important to me as it is to them. Something that stuck out with that gender accelerationist manifesto is that just because we may strive for gender abolition, doesn't mean gender identity will go away, it just means it will not longer be a tool to be used by the ruling class(of course ideally the ruling class will be gone) in order to put us in arbitrary boxes. My genderness is gonna be completely different to the next person's genderness. I don't wanna seem like I'm coming as if I'm saying someone's else's genderness is pointless or anything. Apologies to anyone that might have read it that way.
I'm enbie and to me, on a personal level, gender is genuinely unimportant to my own identity but when I talk about the abolition of gender I try to frame it in terms of something like abolishing enforced gender or abolishing gender norms because I don't want to unintentionally signal to anyone, least of all to certain trans comrades, that I'm coming to steal their gender from them. All I want is for gender to be optional and based on exactly how the individual feels at that particular moment; you can look how you want, you can act how you prefer, and you can be the gender(s) that you feel and none of these things have to "align" and anybody who tries to tell you that you aren't permitted to do something/that you have to do something/that you're doing it wrong can go straight to hell because unless they abolish that attitude immediately then they're gonna get their dental record abolished.
Ok it does sound we are on the same page :)
because unless they abolish that attitude immediately then they're gonna get their dental record abolished.
I have Foucault on my list to read but it probably won't be for a year or 2 because of how backlogged I am but now I'm eager. And you dragon analogy is powerful. I guess at the end of the day, just because my genderness isn't that important to me(I'm probably 60% AGAB and 40% meh, for comparison) doesn't mean others' gender identity should be invalidated.
Yeah, we're on the same page. In that case, excuse my yapping.
I have Foucault on my list to read but it probably won't be for a year or 2 because of how backlogged I am but now I'm eager.
I'm conflicted about Foucault tbh. But at the end of the day his thought is very influential and there are some useful tools to add to the toolkit which his work provides so even if you don't agree with everything or you take issue with certain things, it's still very useful to read Foucault.
And you dragon analogy is powerful.
I have to confess that's really just me regurgitating Niezsche from memory and adapting it to gender normativity. I'm sure he'd hate that, which makes it all the better.
I think the Foucault thing got my galaxy brain pinging off of Niezsche so it kinda just came pouring out. Also don't read Niezsche unless you really, really have the burning desire to. There are two types of people who read Niezsche: young, mostly white, men who are edgelords that want a philosophical justification for why they are better than everyone else and dusty old philosophy academics who are sequestered away in some university office building. You aren't either of those two key demographics, thankfully.
I have some Nietzsche but it's so low on my list it might as well not be there. I have Thus Spake Zarathustra and maybe some other stuff by him. I'm conflicted on reading him for the same way I am about reading Heidegger since they both have a history with fascism. I do wanna read Being and Time and Heidegger's essay on technology and those are probably first before Nietzsche for sure. But that's all lumped in with my next bout of philosophy. I have this anarchist theory kick I'm on, then revisit Marxist works, then possibly gender and queer theory(not sure what is gonna be in that yet), and I have a neurdivergent block I wanna get to some time in the future so philosophy might be after that? Lol. I need to read more.
I'm sure he'd hate that, which makes it all the better.
Also, this is praxis lol.
For Foucault, I have Disipline and Punish, recommended by a friend. And I grabbed his History of Sexuality vol 1 and 2 because it caught my interest.
·15 days agoI'm enbie so gender is genuinely unimportant
Is a minor point, but it reads (to me) like enby = gender is unimportant
An important point. I didn't mean to imply that so I've frontloaded the qualifying term and made it so it's very clear that I'm talking about my personal relationship to my own gender with:
I'm enbie and to me, on a personal level, gender is genuinely unimportant to my own identity
Does that read better?
E: There was also another sentence that I wrote poorly and that didn't notice the implications of so I've rewritten it to be very explicit about me talking only about my own experience.
Thanks for having my back!
I'm terrible with proofreading my writing lol. I try, I genuinely do try, but goddamn does my mind wander often. I swear every second comment I write on here is edited after I post it because I've made some silly mistake with spelling or grammar along the way. I'm especially bad with changing my phrasing halfway through a sentence and leaving the first half's grammar going one direction and the second half's going in a completely different direction. Good thing it's Hexbear and not an English exam.
Oh I know that. Both the editing after and the rewriting sentences (somehow always leaving an extra word in the middle of the sentence??)
Shhh, no don't - you're gonna embarrass me. I do this so, so often it's not even funny.
I meant I also do those things, if you think I meant I had seen you do them.
It's okay, I was just being silly. I wasn't really feeling embarrassed.
To be honest, I can't recall seeing a single error in any of your comments. There's probably something in there about us having a tendency to be our own worst critics.
Also I decided that enbie is a much cuter spelling so I'm using that when I refer to myself as enby.
Fascinating. I feel compelled to espouse my abolitionist views whenever someone makes it sound like they’re seeking a solid place of belonging on an arbitrary spectrum. I’m conscious of our large diversity, but sometimes I forget how many autists are libs. I’d probably end up arguing with those types, but yeah they are can be well intentioned.
To draw a parallel from my special interest: as the Buddha knows most linguistic truths are relative he does not tell everyone there is self or no self. It depends on the person what will be fruitful for their own path. He is wise and knows which relative truth will yield a more functional and productive perspective for those inquiring, and tells them such.
I read this last night and was having a hard time coming up with a worthy reply lol. I think my hesitation about being an abolitionist about anything is from pushback I've gotten online. I mentioned one time on /r/latestagecapitalism that I was a money abolitionist and people just weren't having it. Bizarre behavior from a sub that was supposed to be "ran by commies" but in the end I marked it up to libs being on there wanting a reformed government instead, and people that just haven't read any theory. I might have to be more in your face about it to others. I have close friends that are on various paths to the left that probably wouldn't bat an eye if I said I'm a gender abolitionist.
I'm mostly an armchair philosopher and it's somewhat a special interest of mine but more so with how it functions as a foundation to socialism. But I did take a side street into phenomenology and existentialism this summer. With that said, you Buddha line actually weighs quite a bit on some stuff I've been thinking about. Probably not in the Buddhist sense but I've had a really weird relationship with "the self" and I think "ego" because I mostly just feel like a thing in a human suit and I didn't realize that was a thing until I started seeing it get brought up in autism spaces online. It almost feels like there is a conflict between what I am physically and what I am mentally. I'm not spiritual or anything but I just don't know what that conflict is.
I guess this turned into more of a ramble. I'm so confused lol.
a ramble in return
Thanks for the reply anyway. I think one of the problems may be with figuring how much context other people have and how much you need to give. But, yeah, it is kinda personalized.
I think the core of my special interest is more around ontology and epistemology. Dialectical materialism is the lovely center I’ve found that acts as a coherent lens for understanding most things. Buddhism has a lot in common with dialectics and I find it deepening in a way. Before I just thought Marxism let me understand the whole world broadly, but I find it is more important while I’m not actively organizing and still growing a lot as a person to examine the phenomenal nature of reality and my mind and ego tunnel. I have probably thought many hours about existentialism and phenomenology without reading a word of Husserl and only a book and some essays by Camus.
Looking into the Buddhist perspective would probably interest you, but I empathize with your experience. A long time investigating experientially, and I’ve found that my perfectionistic ideal of humanity does not exist. Humans are strange and irrational and ugly and how the hell did “I” end up one. It feels like I don’t belong in this body but I don’t have a better idea of where I belong anymore. I don’t hate the image in the mirror, but you’re telling me that’s “me?” That name I respond to is “me?” It’s so strange. There’s totally a disconnect. This body seems to limit me greatly, but it also does cool things of its own accord my mind doesn’t think possible.
So I have identified with the voice in my head for a long time, but at some point it got extra loud and stupid and I had OCD and I realized with the help of Buddhist informed stuff that I don’t have to identify with my thoughts. I understand intellectual that the self is composed of nonself elements and does not necessarily exist, but it still has felt sort of like there has been a “me” at war with all my thoughts since my black and white thinking decided thoughts are wrong.
What fascinates me is the greatly differing perspectives of other “spiritual seekers” I have seen online. They have neurotypical coherent senses of self and want to bliss out and merge with the rest of the universe. Meanwhile I’m coming in with my face dragged through the dirt of the abyss despite relatively good material circumstances. My brain says nothing’s real, it gets really mad when things change, and my stomach constantly hurts from “dissatisfaction.” Will Buddhism fix this? Do I really think I can get enlightened? Am I just suppressing the part of me that wants to criticize everything and believe nothing again? I don’t know but I think I’m less dissociated and anxious, so that’s something.
My workplace intends to enforce full return to office to improve our discipline, meaning no scheduled remote days but we might be able to get some as needed? Not clear enough.
This is probably going to destroy me, I don't know if it is some autism sensitivity but office days tire me to the extent that even with 3/5, I often feel so miserable that I take a paid leave just to not go there. I don't understand how neurotypicals do it every day, it seems impossible to me
Folks, this is it... I finally got prescribed Vyvanse after six months of just fucking around with Wellbutrin! I'm super excited and eager to see what happens!
But that's not what I'm here for right now. I've been playing with a story in my head for a very long time and I really want to start writing it. The thing is, the way I envision one of the characters includes the fact that she's hard of hearing. I want to be as respectful as possible of such a person's life experience and I want to research what everyday life is like for someone with impaired hearing. Can you folks suggest any sources for me to do some reading up on the topic? Anyone who talks about their life without hearing? Any interesting stories with a deaf/hard of hearing main character?
In my mind I like fall/winter but my mental and physical health really don't
they're genuinely my favorite seasons and yet they're so mean and leave me too bedridden to enjoy them anyways
Ablebodied peoples idea of what ableism is is so performative and out of touch
Like they'll tone police but won't wear a fucking mask
i have to go out today. i've had horrible neck pain for days but there is medication at the end of the drive if i can manage it that will help. and gotta get food n stuff too. but it's so frustrating. life is constantly like need x to do y, need to do y in order to acquire x
u receive : back problems & nerve pain
i receive : hug
publicly journaling a little
sitting here basically fighting the part of my brain that wants to scream about this dumb website. i've settled into a calm fog that i assume is just me putting off the emotions until it's appropriate to deal with them
medication ramble
i succeeded! i got my prescription. i got to the pharmacy and found my prescription had run out, but its a small town and you can usually get medical stuff sorted out the same day so i went to the doctor's surgery and the reception person promised to get it sorted before the pharmacy shut. and it turned out it worked in my favour because i went to run errands and went back and i got to the pharmacy just before it closed and it turned out the doctor had also renewed my sleeping pills that i didn't ask for
it's already helping my neck. not enough, i might take more in a bit. but i'm so glad. particularly since we're expecting another bad storm and won't be able to drive into town for several days. hopefully i'll be able to do some storm prep after resting.
