birdofmay

[birdofmay]

Alright I just saw a post where someone said that low empathy actually happens when we can't relate to other people's experiences; therefore don't know how they feel.

Now, low empathy is different for everyone. But honestly, I'm low empathy because being able to relate to a situation doesn't change anything for me.

I broke my foot a while ago, it needed surgery. Terrible experience, 0/10, would not recommend. And if I see someone with a broken foot now, do you know how my emotions change? - Not at all. If I'm happy I stay happy. I'll maybe think "Oh, been there", but that's it.

If someone cries because of something I also experienced at some point, and I also cried when I experienced it, do you know what happens? My mood doesn't change at all. Maybe I'll have a sudden urge to help them because I remember how I felt myself. But if I was happy I'll stay happy, their mood doesn't affect my mood.

My mood isn't influenced "from the outside", only from within. I can see someone being mistreated and get very angry. But that's from within, that's because I don't want people to be mistreated. Not because their distress distressed me.

I'm low empathy because, even if I know exactly how you feel because I had an experience like yours myself, that situation won't have an impact on my mood and emotions.

[birdofmay]

Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

[birdofmay]

Alright, these results are really interesting!

Especially those who voted for "I know you're into women [...]", because either you got some older posts mixed up or tried to take a lucky guess. In older posts, when I wasn't sure about my orientation, I wrote that I know I'm NOT into women but don't know about the rest 😂

That also was when I said that "not knowing about the rest" could mean I'm into "everyone except women", so absolutely understandable for those voting "bi" and "only people who aren't binary male or female".

It's absolutely possible to answer this poll by reading my posts, though I get that autistics love "Uh, nuance, this doesn't mean that [thing]." I guess this is why the third option won, cautious as ever 😄

This here would be a post that answers the poll! Sorry to disappoint everyone but 9.6% of the voters 😂

Because a mutual is doing this for pride month, I'm pretty curious about how well you guys know me, so I'm doing this as well:

[birdofmay]

as a severely mentally ill 14 year old, I remember thinking “the medical system would treat me better if I was physically ill and not mentally ill” and then I coincidentally developed multiple chronic illnesses and found out that actually they dgaf even when you’re essentially bedridden

[birdofmay]

Personality test, is 80f/26c too hot for you?

[birdofmay]

In that vein... (No, the following is not about autism or ADHD)

TL;DR: Using medical terms as insults or otherwise misusing medical terms (even as a joke) leads to uninformed people thinking they have to stop saying these words and creating new words. Either because they think the old term isn't precise enough anymore or because they incorrectly think that we're insulted by the old word.

The constant appearance of new words is confusing to people who struggle to learn new words. It excludes them from participating in discussions about their own condition.

We have to be more sensitive regarding possible repercussions and stop unnecessary discourse by uninformed people.

In Germany, the official word for my disability ID card category and the assessment is "Hirnschädigung", which literally translates to brain damage/damaged brain. And that's a neutral description, nothing outdated.

But many many people have been asking if someone has brain damage whenever they wanted to insult someone who is either slow on the uptake or who just made a very strange or silly suggestion, for example. They used it as an insult all the time, sometimes jokingly, sometimes not.

This is why now a lot of people ask "Uh, can we still say that in the 21st century? Shouldn't we change "brain damage" to something nicer? Isn't that word insulting?" when actually no, it isn't. (Of course you still shouldn't use that term if someone directly tells you they don't want to be called that)

It's the same with "disabled". People used and still use "disabled" and "dumb" synonymously in Germany. So now, well-meaning politicians and even advocates create all kinds of euphemisms because they think that disabled people will be offended by the word "disabled". Because some people use it as an insult.

When I say I'm disabled in German ("behindert"), people flinch. They think I just insulted myself. But no, "behindert" is a normal medical word, it's in the name of our disability ID card. Even more, the literal translation is "severely disabled person's pass", there's a "severe" accompanying the word "disabled". They flinch even more when I say I'm severely disabled.

"Disorder" has a negative connotation because it's been used as an insult. "Disabled" has a negative connotation because it's been used as an insult. People mixed up schizophrenia and DID and now many think that "feeling schizophrenic" is a sophisticated way to say that you feel conflicted.

The pattern is always the same: People use normal medical words either as insults or in an unrelated, non-medical way, and as a result well-meaning but uninformed advocates create "nicer" sounding words because they think the original word is either outdated or offensive. Or they think "Now that everyone misuses it, we need a new word for the medical term so that there are no misunderstandings."

In both cases, "our" words were successfully co-opted and we have to learn 10 new words to know that people talk about our conditions.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees 10 new words for their condition and intuitively picks up the meaning and knows what everyone's talking about. Sometimes words are hard. Sometimes it's hard to learn all these words and then be told by some uninformed activist that we shouldn't call ourselves what we've always called ourselves.

And what kind of people sometimes struggle with learning new words? People with cognitive impairments. People with brain damage. People who had a stroke. People who survived a ruptured aneurysm.

If you hear "Please stop saying you have a stroke or an aneurysm", etc., did it ever occur to you that maybe it's not because we're offended, but because we don't want these words to get negative connotations? Whenever something gets a negative connotation, there's a possibility for it to be seen as a slur and that would lead to 10 new words to learn because uninformed activists think the original term is offensive or not precise enough.

When I say "Hey, please stop saying you have a stroke when you don't understand something", I'm not offended and I'm not saying it's ableist. I've just noticed enough patterns to be quite sure that at some point there'll be an uninformed well-meaning advocate who suggests a new word for stroke survivors because they think the old word isn't precise enough anymore.

And I don't know if there are enough stroke survivors on social media who could stop this new word and mindset from reaching other uninformed advocate spaces...

[birdofmay]

The solution to ableism isn't for me to "stop calling myself disabled", it's for everyone to stop treating "disabled" as a bad word

[birdofmay]

Just wait untill my 6 tumblr mutuals hear about this

[birdofmay]

I absolutely understand that people with certain allergies, sensory issues, ARFID, etc. have to take supplements to compensate for a lack of certain nutrients. I do that myself.

What I don't get, and that's a genuine question, is the "Take your vitamins" I read so often among adults without the above mentioned conditions. Is it really so common for the average adult, especially in the US, not to eat enough fruit and vegetables? 😳 Or does your food simply lack these things and organic stuff is too expensive? I'm really confused...

[birdofmay]

Because a mutual is doing this for pride month, I'm pretty curious about how well you guys know me, so I'm doing this as well:

[birdofmay]

people who attempt to distance autism from the less socially acceptable traits think they’re destigmatising autism when what they’re actually doing is pinning all inconveniences back on individual autistic people. which funnily enough is what I would call Bad and Unhelpful

[birdofmay]

No idea what exactly I dreamt, but right when I woke up a voice in my head yelled

"THIS FISH IS FUCKING PATRONISING ME!"

and I don't know either...

Good morning I guess 😅

[birdofmay]

Not to exclude the rest of the world, it's just that these two groups (Americans and Australians) battle for dominance 😄

Ah yes, 8am UTC+2 on a Sunday.

The time where Americans, Europeans and Australians meet each other on their dash.

[birdofmay]

Ah yes, 8am UTC+2 on a Sunday.

The time where Americans, Europeans and Australians meet each other on their dash.

[birdofmay]

Me when I for once move almost without help within the house 😂

[birdofmay]

[birdofmay]

reblog this and in the tags, write the band that comes to mind first when you think back to being 13 years old