#an-autistic-with-personhood

[canisalbus]

I was just thinking about the Dog Bois dancing!!! I figured Machete would be a little awkward and embarrassed, but Vasco would be a patient and enthusiastic teacher

.

[saturniandragon]

Please answer any or all of the Skyrim ask game questions you want! I want to hear whatever you're willing to tell me!

Oh my god Emily you can't be doing this to me /j

Welp, here goes!

-

Helgen - Who was your first Skyrim character? Do you still make anything with them/play as them now?

My first Skyrim character is actually 2 different characters. If by "first" you mean the first character I made from the character creation, it would be a male Argonian named Adrastea (yes named after my dragonsona). But if by "first" you mean the first character that completed the main quest, it was a male Khajiit named Draqanar.

I talked about this in my inpiration behind my tes ocs post, so do check that out!

Riverwood - Hadvar or Ralof? Why?

Hadvar. Honestly I only chose Hadvar because in my first time playing, at the opening scene in Helgen, I was so overwhelmed by whatever the fuck was happening around me and just chose to follow the first NPC I saw in front of me, which happened to be Hadvar.

Whiterun - Do you tend to do Bleak Falls Barrow before or after meeting with Farengar?

Usually I visit BFB before going to Whiterun, by triggering Lucan Valerius' quest in Riverwood trader. Saves me some time because I don't have to go to Riverwood, go to Whiterun and go back to Riverwood again. Although, from a lore/story standpoint, I think Bethesda intended the players to go to BFB after meeting Farengar. Which I find to be more immersive.

Ivarstead - How do you feel about the Greybeards and Paarthurnax?

Cool chill old men and cool chill old dragon! I could never side with Delphine again after she tells me to kill grandpaarth. Luckily I've found a way to get around that.

I do wish Bethesda did a bit more with them though, like why can't I talk about Miraak with Arngeir or Paarthurnax? I hope there will be some mods to address that. We have voice synthesizer tools now like xVASynth and ElevenLabs, so I'm just waiting for someone to take one for the team and create a mod like that.

Morthal - Do you enjoy exploring dungeons and ruins? Why or why not?

Matter of fact, I do! Especially when it's night time, because 90% of my characters are stealth snipers. I embrace the darkness like a friend. It's even more satisfying when using mods that let me one shot kill enemies via headshots. One of my favorite shootout places is Treva's Watch, there's a stony cliff just across the river that makes perfect sniping position. I love it.

Kynesgrove - What's your favorite non-major city/town/settlement?

I don't know if I have one. Riverwood and Dragon Bridge both are nice, but I don't really feel any particular attachment to them, or any minor settlements. My favorite place has just been Whiterun since the beginning.

Markarth - If you could rewrite one questline in Skyrim, which would it be?

Dragonborn DLC. Initially I didn't have problems with it, but like I mentioned before, there's almost no connection between Miraak's story and the Greybeard's and Paarthurnax's acknowledgement. We could just settle with "Miraak was so terrible that Arngeir and Paarth don't want to talk about him" reasoning, but then so was the Dragonrend shout. And they had dialogue options about it.

Idk, it's just subpar to me after repeated playthroughs. Deep down I feel like Bethesda only made that DLC for the sake of wanting to give Morrowind fans nostalgia.

But I do have to give them credit for one thing, and that is this music:

See I've never played Morrowind before Skyrim. But when this music hits, it made me feel all fuzzy. Like "wow this is very Morrowindy." And it is, because it's original TES3: Morrowind soundtrack. I think it's a powerful moment when a music can convey a message even to those who have no prior experience. Good stuff.

Blackreach - What's your favorite enemy in the game? What's your least favorite? Why?

Favorite enemy actually I think was Harkon in the Dawnguard DLC. Really the game forces you to wield Auriel's Bow to defeat him (well, probably not, but I don't see how you can beat him otherwise, esp without Sunhallowed arrows). I'm already an experienced virtual archer before Dawnguard. Watching him disintegrate to blood red messy dust pile at the end was gratifying.

Least favorite is any dragon priest (Vokun, Krosis, etc). If you've had experience trying to fight dragon priests as an archer, you'll know that their hitbox is absolute dogshit. Arrows have a large tendency to just pass through them without doing damage. I've been scouring the internet trying to find a mod that fixes their hitbox but nothing has turned up yet. Nowadays I use TK Dodge RE to make the fight a bit fairer.

Throat of the World - How do you feel about "Season Unending"?

Oh God, where to start? Imperials and Stormcloaks. These two care more about the defeat of the other, more than the fate of the mortal realm. I hate it. And there's no way to make both sides like your decision either, no matter which options you choose, even the ones that you think are the fairest options.

I tend to side with the Empire. Not that that's saying much, because around 2022 I learned that both sides are equally shitty. Scylla and Charybdis situation, I suppose.

There's only one good Season Unending, this one:

Skuldafn - How do you feel about dragon priests?

Dogshit hitboxes, like I previously said. Nothing more than that.

Sovngarde - How would your Last Dragonborn celebrate after the battle with Alduin, or would they celebrate at all?

I've actually been waiting to answer this one.

My current LDB is a Khajiit named Merri'sa. She's not fighting Alduin because she's following her destiny as Dragonborn. She's fighting Alduin on a personal level; a revenge for burning down her hometown before the events of Skyrim (fanon).

But for her, there's nothing to celebrate. Because she knows that nothing can bring back her memories.

So, she opted for a quiet life in Whiterun, before finally going back home to Cyrodiil.

I'm actually in the process of writing her story from start to finish, which I will upload some day in the future, either on tumblr, AO3, Wattpad, or all of them. I plan to upload the entirety of it at once, instead of chapter by chapter. So keep an eye out!

[genderkoolaid]

i don't know what autistic person needs to hear this but they are not watching you. the entire world is not constantly waiting for you to do something weird and laugh at you behind your back. you do not need to constantly self-police whenever there's the slightest chance another person might see you. you have a right to be your autistic self in public spaces. stop fighting yourself for their sake.

[remyfire]

Yesterday my wife and metamour told me I have a very masc personality and that I’ve been that way for as long as they’ve known me, and the gender euphoria I got from that one comment was absolutely bonkers. They said, “You’re like a dude who was never socially conditioned to repress your emotions.”

Mind you, they told me this because we were playing Mario Party and there was a moment in a minigame where I realized I fucked up and was going to die and there was no stopping it. So I released the highest-pitched squeal of fear, as you do, and my metamour was so shocked that I am capable of making such a sound that he almost fell off the couch from laughing. Statistical proof that I am so so butch (guy who screams when a single bug touches him voice).

[uncanny-tranny]

Person-first language can be a perfectly fine way to address others, but if you have to do so in order to remind yourself that the people you talk about are, in fact, people, maybe it isn't the language you're using that's bad, but the way you fundamentally view the people you are talking about.

[dadbodbensisko-moved]

is it just me or is every spirk fic like:

jim: ily spock: nuh uh

[fellator]

wanted to write hugo and giuseppe meeting but ngl that would Not go well. I don't know how it'd go other than just fucking awful. groundbreaking levels of bad

[orange-coloredsky-archive]

i understand where the "coursers are just like normal people theyve just been told they dont have feelings and cant do anything without permission or being programmed to do it" sentiment comes from but i personally think its way more fun to have coursers that are, in fact, fundamentally and undeniably different in ways of cognitive functioning than humans or any other synth. but that doesnt stop them from deserving to live lives of their own. x6 doesnt have the ability to be visibly emotional and struggles to show compassion but that doesnt mean he's less of a person or incapable of autonomy. chase feels a continued urge to utilize her infiltration & stealth & tracking abilities because thats what she was Made To Do but it doesnt make her work for acadia any less real or not from a place of care.

[mariatesstruther]

i was today years old when i found out some of y’all dont like ellie’s studio-shed situation. confused

[secretvampirefreak]

mom was right it IS the damn phone

[deliciousdietdrpepper]

Went off about ai sentience and robot sentience at my coworker tonight and brought up murderbot AND data AND Measure of a Man.

[inkskinned]

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

[nans-serif]

love when people just reblog with abandon

"don't mass reblog/like :/" coward. fool. somebody just went through and liked and reblogged 64 things from my blog in the span of half an hour at most. and i've never felt more alive in my life

[hyperlexichypatia]

I've seen basically two response arguments to Kennedy's slurs about autistic people being unable to pay taxes, have a job, play baseball, go on a date, write a poem, or use the toilet.

Both the responses are good and necessary, but I think they're incomplete. The two response arguments are essentially: 1. "That's not true, there are plenty of autistic people who have jobs and go on dates and play baseball," and 2. (largely in response to 1.) "Autistic people deserve acceptance and dignity even if they can't pay taxes or write poetry or use the toilet; people's value isn't determined by their abilities or productivity."

And, again, both of these responses are true and good and necessary. But what I'm not seeing people talk about enough is why Kennedy listed those specific skills, and what he's trying to imply with them. Because, see, when people are reduced to a dehumanized stereotype, "Not everyone is like that dehumanized stereotype" isn't sufficient, and neither is "Even people who are like that dehumanized stereotype deserve respect." The problem is the dehumanization. So let's look at the list of things we supposedly can't do, which Kennedy is using to conjure an image of "Inhuman Unthinking Blob."

Having a job. This is the big one. In American culture, your value, your personhood, is solely dependent on Your Job. Are you a valuable cog in the capitalist machine, or are you a cheap cog in the capitalist machine, or are you so worthless you're not even in the capitalist machine, and therefore have no reason to be alive? So it's good and necessary and important to spell out "A person doesn't have to have a job to be a person with dignity and rights." But there's a larger question out there, which is: What, exactly, constitutes "a job"? Yes, absolutely, everyone should have dignity and rights (and material needs like guaranteed housing, food, and consensual healthcare). But also, most disabled people, including ""severely"" disabled people, can and do perform productive labor benefiting their communities. It's just often labor that capitalist society doesn't classify as "a job," like caregiving, studying, or making art. It's important to say that people shouldn't need "a job" in order to deserve rights or resources. It's also important to point out that disabled people have been doing labor this whole time, just without the dignity, rights, or pay associated with "a job." In a socialist utopia where everyone had their material needs guaranteed, labor would still be done, and a lot of it would still be done by disabled people. That's important. Disabled people's contributions to society matter. And erasing that is something ableists do on purpose -- excluding the labor done by disabled people from the category of "job" is integral to excluding disabled people from the category of "productive" and thus the category "worthy of life."

Paying taxes. This is the most transparently ridiculous one, because absolutely everybody in the U.S. pays taxes. Poor people pay taxes (too much). Rich people pay taxes (nowhere near enough). Undocumented immigrants pay taxes. You buy a Snickers? It's priced $1.79 but you pay $1.92. That's a tax. You live somewhere? You're paying property taxes. You rent your home? How do you think your landlord pays their property taxes? From your rent. You're paying property taxes. You have a crappy underpaid minimum wage job? You're paying FICA. Everybody pays taxes. What Kennedy probably means to imply is "They're too poor to owe federal income taxes." Politicians love pretending that "taxes" means "federal income taxes" so they can claim to "lower taxes" while shifting the tax burden somewhere else (cf. Trump's attempt to claim that tariffs aren't taxes). And. And also. There's another subtle implication in there, that I see a lot from parents and ableists. Because of the deep intersection of ableism and classism, Kennedy is implying "They're too poor to owe federal income taxes" (therefore they're inferior) but also "They're not smart enough to do something complicated like file a tax return." When ableists talk about disabled people who "can't take care of themselves" or specifically "can't pay their bills" or "can't pay taxes," they're intentionally trying to conflate an economic state (having enough money to pay bills/taxes) with a cognitive ability (having the skills/executive function to manage money, budget, pay bills on time, or file a tax return). Kennedy probably doesn't file his own tax return either. I'm sure he has an accountant for that. Presumed-neurotypical people are allowed to do that. The world is full of rich people who lack executive function or money-management skills, whose wealth insulates them from the consequences of that, because they can either afford to just lose money, or they can afford to hire someone to handle it for them. The world is also full of poor people for whom one missed payment has ruined them. The world is also full of disabled people for whom one missed payment has gotten them declared mentally incompetent, institutionalized, or placed under guardianship -- by abled family members who probably hire an accountant to manage their own money. Again, all this is deliberate. Kennedy and other ableists/classists/eugenicsts are intentionally trying to conflate "lacks money," "lacks money management abilities/skills," and "lacks General Intelligence" as one more-or-less interchangeable phenomenon (Note: If you've read this far and haven't figured out my angle yet: There is no such thing as "General Intelligence" and the very concept is harmful).

Write a poem. Again, this is deliberately ambiguous wording -- pretty much anyone can write a poem, including people who can't write or speak. Have you ever expressed an idea in which the words you used had an additional meaning on top of their literal meaning? Boom, you can write a poem. Maybe not a good one. But Kennedy didn't say that autistic people's poetry is bad -- plenty of neurotypical people's poetry is bad too, after all. There is a somewhat positive stereotype floating around that neurodivergent people are creative. We may be tragic, burdens on society, our parents' heartbreak, worthless, stupid, subhuman, but at least we're creative. Probably due to being more animal-like, "closer to nature." And neurobigots like Kennedy absolutely hate this stereotype. No matter how much dehumanization the "positive" stereotype is rooted in, we cannot have any positive attributes at all. They must never let us forget that we have no redeeming value whatsoever. We must be rendered as completely lacking in thought, feelings, expression, and creation. I'm seeing some echos of 18th century racism, too -- a common belief among 18th century white Europeans was that even if non-Europeans were superficially clever, they could produce no "higher culture," no great art or poetry or literature, because they were intrinsically a lower tier of human. This seems to be the root of Kennedy's implication -- not that autistic people "can't" write poetry (anyone can), or that autistic people are bad at writing poetry (most beginners are), but that an autistic person's creative output cannot constitute true poetry, true "high culture," because it comes from an inferior mind.

Play baseball. This is an especially slippery one, because like writing poetry, it's a learned skill with gradations of skill level, not an intrinsic ability that someone does or doesn't have. Most autistic people aren't pro-level baseball players, but neither are most allistic people. And again, Kennedy didn't say "Autistic people are bad at baseball." He said that we would never play baseball. "Has ever played or will ever play baseball" is such a ridiculously low bar that even I can meet it. Technically speaking, I can play baseball. I have played baseball, in school gym class. I know how! You sit there minding your business until it's your turn to stand up, and then someone hands you a bat, and then someone throws a ball, and you're supposed to try to hit the ball with the bat, and in theory, after you fail three times, you're supposed to be allowed to sit back down again and go back to imagining wild self-insert fanfic, but the coach gives you "extra tries" out of pity, so you have to humiliate yourself with five or six attempts instead of three. Yeah. I can play baseball. So what's Kennedy going for with this one? Baseball in the U.S. is associated with two things: American identity, and idyllic midcentury childhood. If autistic people can't participate in America's Pastime, can we really even be Americans? Do we really count as citizens? I don't think Kennedy is personally, ideologically all that committed to xenophobia himself; he's just hitched his wagon to a deeply xenophobic administration because they indulge his medical conspiracy theories. But he knows how to align his goals to the administration's. He knows that his boss is deeply committed to narrowing and restricting who counts as "an American," who's not really part of "our culture," who's not really a part of baseball and hot dogs and the Fourth of July, if you know what I mean. Okay, okay. Maybe I'm reaching with this one. But I'm definitely not reaching with the other association he's going for: Idyllic Midcentury Childhood. All kids play baseball. By which I mean, all boys play baseball. I'm not sure Kennedy knows that girls can play it too, or that he cares. The point is, baseball is part of childhood, and autistic people are never children. We don't play, we don't learn, we don't go through developmental stages, we're just forever Mindless Blobs. That's why things that would be considered cruelty if done to neurotypical children aren't cruelty when they're done to us. We're not really children. We never become adults, either -- how can we, if we don't go through childhood first? You can tell we're subhuman because we don't go through the universal experiences of Real People Life.

Go on a date. Okay. This one. This is the one where I get actively angry at the well-meaning, "inclusive" responses. "Just because an autistic person has high support needs and can't do XYZ doesn't mean --" no. Stop right there. There is no such thing as a disabled person who "can't" date. There is no impairment or disability that prevents someone from dating. There are people -- autistic and otherwise, disabled and otherwise -- who for whatever reason, choose not to pursue dating. Maybe they're aromantic, maybe they're loners, maybe they have religious objections, maybe dating just isn't something they're interested in. Fine. That's their choice. But there is no such thing as a disabled person who "can't" date. There is no such thing as a disability that renders people incapable of romantic relationships. There is no such fucking thing as being "too disabled" or "too severe" or "too profound" or "too high support needs" to have a romantic relationship if two or more people want one. That is not a thing that exists. That is a thing ableists made up. There is no such thing as an autistic person who "can't" go on a date. There are autistic people who aren't allowed to go on dates, because their family or caregivers control them, infantilize them, restrict their freedoms, or treat them as mindless blobs. But all disabled people (yes, all) can pursue romantic relationships. All disabled people (yes, all) deserve the human right to pursue romantic relationships if they choose to. With other disabled people. With abled people. With whomever. And yeah, dating doesn't necessarily have to be romantic or sexual, but let me be perfectly clear -- disabled people, autistic people, "high support needs" autistic people have a right to have sex, too. A multiply disabled autistic person who needs 24/7 assistance deserves the absolute, unreserved right to have wild, kinky, balls-to-the-wall, whole-chicken sex with the entire starting lineup of the Detroit Lions, if xe so chooses to, and if said Lions are on board. We should not accept the premise that there is any such thing as a disabled person who "can't" go on a date.

Use a toilet without assistance. This is the Kennedy playbook trump card, but unlike some of the other claims, this one is actually true. There's no such thing as a disabled person who "can't" date, but yes, there are in fact plenty of disabled people, including autistic people, who need help with using the toilet. So what's Kennedy going for here? He's trying to evoke two things: Disgust and infantilization. We have a visceral disgust around excretory functions. Needing to eliminate waste reminds us that we're animals made of meat, not the higher intellectual beings we pretend to be. Everyone poops. So we do it in private, we describe it with euphemisms, and if someone needs help with it, well, they're not keeping up their end of the social compact to collectively pretend we're not animals with animal bodily functions. So people who need assistance with the waste process are disgusting, subhuman, a violation of imagined purity. And of course, they're babies. Babies wear diapers. Babies need help using the toilet. So an older child or adult who needs diapers or toileting help is basically a big baby. We have entire election cycles centered on "Which candidate has incontinence issues?" as a proxy for "Which candidate is a big baby unfit to lead?" as though someone's bladder leakage has any bearing on their wisdom or policy positions. And of course, since people who need help with toileting Are Babies, we're meant to assume that they can't do any of those other things, either. They can't even use the toilet, let alone write poetry or go on a date. In reality, plenty of people who need toileting help are writing poetry and going on dates. One of the biggest misconceptions that holds disabled people back from education or, in some cases, from basic communication, is this myth of linear "developmental stages" -- that if someone isn't "smart enough" to master an "easier/earlier" skill, then they can't possibly be "smart enough" to master a completely unrelated skill that some abled person thinks of as "more advanced." This is literally the primary barrier to communication access for speech-disabled people, and the reason nonspeaking people who type to communicate are so often disbelieved -- if someone isn't "smart enough" to master a "baby skill" like talking, they can't possibly be "smart enough" to read and write! Nevermind that for many speech disabled people, reading and writing are much easier than speaking. And if someone isn't "smart enough" to use the toilet unassisted, they can't possibly learn any advanced topics at all, because they must the "mind of a baby." (The only people with the minds of babies are babies. A 50 year old with incontinence has the mind of a 50 year old.)

So. To sum up: Kennedy is intentionally evoking the concept of autistic people as The Abject Unthinking, and neither "Plenty of autistic people can do those things he says we can't do" nor "Disabled people deserve respect and dignity even if they can't do those things" fully addresses the dehumanization he's trying to conjure. Maybe I'm just jaded, too, about calls for "respect and dignity" for disabled people that don't challenge the concept of The Abject Unthinking. I see behavioral therapists, institution staff, and parents pursuing adult guardianship talking about "respect and dignity." I see articles about how to restrain and forcibly drug people with "respect and dignity." Ableists literally murder disabled people in cold blood in the name of "respect and dignity." I don't know what "respect and dignity" means to these people, but it's sure not synonymous with "bodily autonomy" or "civil rights." By this point, I consider "respect and dignity" about as meaningful as "thoughts and prayers." All disabled people can, and deserve the right to, express themselves. All disabled people can, and deserve the right to, make their own decisions about their own bodies. All disabled people can, and deserve the right to, participate in their communities. All disabled people can, and deserve the right to, pursue relationships with other people of their choice.

[genderoutlaws]

my best friend is a licensed therapist that typically works with elementary/middle school kids and has told me so much about how they hate aba. what shocked me the most is that people who work in aba only need a bachelor’s degree and like two weeks of training and then theyre good to go! no crisis training or anything. they’re allowed to enter children’s homes and interact with them. like literally ANYONE could become aba “certified” and work around children. it’s disturbing to say the least.

its so disturbing, its a profession designed for people who get off on abusing disabled children and its usually even worse with white practitioners wielding their power over kids of color. i've seen people who use tablets to communicate have buttons like "no / stop / all done" removed or hidden by ABA practitioners because they "over use them" during their obedience training sessions, or physically assaulted for stimming, or just talked about like they're animals. like dystopian shit denying autistics any semblance of personhood or autonomy, or happiness even.

[harbingrs]

^ and it's a good example of the kind of therapy speak/therapy doctrine that often amounts to just straight gaslighting patients about things that happen to them in real life, or that they can reasonably expect to happen on real life. Because predicting predictable consequences can be reframed as an irrational thought distortion as soon as you're deemed "mentally ill".

Not to mention the punishing and stigmatisation of figurative language when used by someone deemed Mentally Ill. Because (as noted) when an adult is worried about being "in trouble", that's shorthand for whatever real-world consequences they're talking about (maybe disappointing someone whose opinion matters to you, or getting on bad footing with a landlord who can act punitively later down the track, or just having someone snap at you, which is unpleasant to experience.)

But therapists (and laypeople) jump straight to "of course you can't be /in trouble/ as a grown-up you silly irrational broken-brain person" and its so disingenuous

every so often I think about that one tweet that was shared around on here that says something like "you can't get in trouble with other adults as an adult". and I know it was probably in a context of "be yourself! don't listen to your social anxiety!" but even within that context. I don't think it helps people to send around a message that's that out of touch with reality

ever had a job? you can get in trouble with your boss (they can fire you). ever rented? you can get in trouble with your landlord (they can evict you). ever existed in public spaces? you can get in trouble with the police. you can get in trouble with the government, with your psychologist, your doctor, etc etc etc. these people all have power over the large majority of adults (and even more so for marginalised adults)

sure, maybe the power differentials that exist between two adults are not identical to the power differentials that exist between an adult and a child. and sure, maybe some people exaggerate in their minds exactly how much harm will come to them for the crime of Wearing Bright Colours To A Friend Date or something. but you don't solve social anxiety by lying to people about what the Real World is like