authors love to talk about ‘LGBT’ this that or the other and just completely disregard anything to do with trans people. can u imagine how lgb cis people would behave if we started talking about ‘LGBT’ shit that ONLY focused on trans issues. y’all would lose your fucking minds. If I made an article recommending LGBT books and only recommended books about straight trans people, cis lgb’s would crucify me lmao
THIS POST IS ABOUT TRANSPHOBIA. DO NOT DERAIL IT. MAKE YOUR OWN POST.
“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”
We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”
Or “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” That happened a lot, too, especially before the 19th century.
Or, backing up FURTHER
and lots of people think this very likely,
“Oh little Sionnat has obviously been taken by the fairies and they’ve left us a Changeling Child who knows too much, and asks strange questions, and uses words she shouldn’t know, and watches everything with her big dark eyes, clearly a Fairy Child and not a Human Like Us.”
The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost textbook depiction of autistic children.
To this day, “autism warrior mommies” talk about autism “stealing” their “sweet normal child” and have this idea of “getting their real baby back” which (in the face of modern science) indicates how the human psyche actually does deal with finding out their kid acts unlike what they expected.
Given this evidence, and how common we now know autism actually is, the Changeling myth is almost definitely the result of people’s confusion at the development of autistic children.
Weirdly enough, that legend is now comforting to me.
I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. I’m only a little bit autistic; I can pass for neurotypical for short periods if I work really hard at it. I have a lack of talent in social situations, and I’m prone to sensory overload or you might notice me stimming.
But here’s the thing: life is louder, brighter and more intense and confusing than it has ever been. I live on the edge of London and I rarely go into the centre of town because it’s too overwhelming. If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.
I’m not trying to romanticise the past because I know it was hard, dirty work with a constant risk of premature death. I don’t actually want to be a 16th century farmer! What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. When you make people more disabled, you start to see more people struggling, failing at school because they’re overwhelmed, freaking out at the sound of electric hand dryers and so on. And suddenly it looks like there’s millions more autistic people than existed before.
“…disability exists in the context of the environment.”
Reblog for disability commentary.
That last paragraph is absolutely important.
“How come nobody ever heard of ‘dyslexia’ until widespread literacy became a thing?”
fosters home for imaginary friends was an awful dystopia and no one talks about it at all
just a few things established in the fosters universe
imaginary friends are sentient people and everyone can see them
8 years old is considered too old to have an imaginary friend
a large amount of imaginary friends get thrown out on the street legally. At several points they talk about how they had nowhere to go and just wandered around. In Good Wilt Hunting you see a neighborhood full of imaginary friends that live on the street
this is such an issue there’s shelter(s). there’s absolutely political debates about this.
imaginary friends have rights, but not the same rights as humans (they can hold jobs and need passports and such but they can be confiscated/held as property and apparently killed without any legal issues)
babies imagine abstract, swarming friends, kids imagine normal friends, anyone older tends towards violent monsters that have to be locked up to keep them from attacking people
at one point, someone imagines a friend and eats it because they’re hungry
Every time we take my dogs collar off my mom pets his ears and repeats “you’re nakey!” in a babytalk voice
Fairly certain that’s a universal experience for all human dog owners.
My dog is told “Would you like to wear your jewelry?” And becomes excited. He then chooses which necklace he’d like. He has a few and they all have to have tags on them. I discovered this because I bought him a second collar and he refused it with a sneeze that usually is his equivalent of “fuck you”. I asked him why he didn’t like it. He did a dance. I don’t know how I figured it out, but I remember putting the new collar on him and seeing him still beg for the older one and thinking “there’s got to be a reason”. It occurred to be that he might want a little jingle. So I took an old keychain bauble and put it on his collar and he was so happy I thought he’d leap outside. The whole walk, he pranced around like a prize pig. So I realized that the collar couldn’t be a collar. It had to be a necklace. And now he has a large selection for every season, each with a set of tags that have his name and some sort of jingle decoration.
Sometimes he gets downright picky. He has one that has the Batman symbol on it and he prefers that most of the time, but recently the tags on it broke and he flat out refused to walk until I’d transferred the tags from another collar to it. But he has to choose the tags, and he happened to pick a set that were difficult to remove. But it has to be that pendant on that necklace or he’d piss himself right there in protest.
crusty white man: i idolize this misogynistic, racist male character with a violent superiority complex that was meant to be a commentary on men like me but i’m too dumb to realize that, he is just like me!
some girl with dyed hair: i idolize this quirky, alternatively dressed female character with a bubbly personality and many friends because i think she’s cute and funny, she’s just like me!
you fucking assholes: these two things are the exact same
Hey guys I know Spider Gwen has a really cool design and all but please remember she’s a middle schooler. If you sexualize her I’m gonna have to repossess your teeth.
