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I think that abusive people with BPD are prone to targeting gullible people with Autism. Autism and BPD are like magnets for the most toxic possible relationships.

Disclaimer: This statement does not apply to every possible relationship where one party has BPD and the other has autism. Not all people with BPD are abusive and acting as though they all are only encourages certain people with BPD to act abusive because they feel as though they have no other choice and can just blame bad behavior on that stereotype. Also, not everyone who is autistic is gullible or vulnerable to being abused by others.

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some but not most is not. better? the post is still viciously mean and demeaning to any trans or disabled person the op doesn’t like. there is no reason to platform that kind of bullying and invalidation. it’s literally nobody’s place to say ‘well you seem too weird for me to think you really need that cane’ and the idea that it is is beyond invasive and paternalistic in a really derogatory way.

I don't know how to word my response to this, so I'm doing bullet points.

You cannot determine if anyone is faking anything based on what you see of them online.

Bullying and invalidating people because you think that they are weird or cringe or whatever is not ok.

Sometimes, people do fake things for attention.

Most people are not faking things for attention.

Of the people who do fake things for attention, there is not always ill-intent, and there usually is usually an unrelated issue that the person faking may or may not be aware of.

Online communities often mislead people (not always deliberately) into thinking that symptoms are automatically one thing when they may be something else, resulting in people doing things they maybe shouldn't.

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Actually the most pissed off I've been in months over syscourse I am about to go block all of those tags.

If you're a syscourse focused blog RB or like this or something so I can block. I'm so fucking livid.

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I'm not a liar. It rarely even occurs to me that people lie. Sometimes though there's alters that say the dumbest possible fucking things.

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Are there any official terms for "illiterate child alter that throws tantrums" and "preteen barely illiterate alter that starts arguments with people."

Because they're annoying. Also who deleted like 20 of the sideblogs?

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like the end point of the whole post is bemoaning how they can’t effectively convey to others that these people aren’t Real trans and disabled people without harming All trans and disabled people and isn’t it sad that bigots are making it harder for them to be a more specific bigot only to the people they don’t like. agreeing with that at all is… yikes. like come on they specifically list DID as one of the things causing these people to be ‘fakers’.

I don't think you read the whole post.

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the post is the one saying that all the disabled and trans people the op doesn’t like are really mentally ill and exaggerating for attention and validation and to infantilize themselves.

Oh, ok. I edited my reblog.

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there was a great study a few years that went into the whole "ppl online are bigger jerks than irl cuz theres a virtual wall and no repercussions" and the researchers were expecting to see that be the case but it turns out that people who were really angry or argumentative online were also found to just be assholes in person and people who were pretty patient and nice online were found to be patient and nice in real person as well

and it just debunked that whole cynical idea that people will naturally be mean if theres no punishment for it

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you really uncritically reblogged that transphobic ableist nightmare post where the op claimed to be able to accurately predict the motives of any random ‘tender queer’ they saw and be able to differentiate who truly deserved mobility aids etc huh. yikes.

You could at the very least tell me who you're talking about. As it stands, I have absolutely no idea who or what you're talking about.

I think that you uncritically sent this ask.

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☆ Your legs are not both the same length and running causes pain.

◇ You have ADHD.

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@internetpubby what is it like willingly having severe ptsd attacks on a regular basis, being unable to remember or maintain relationships, and constantly being lost and confused throughout life. Is it fun? Is it fun for you to have PTSD attacks so severe that you are unable to grasp your own sense of self? Does it bring you joy to be unable to interact in public reliability out of fear that the wrong alter humiliates you? Is it amusing for you to never know who you are? Is it pleasant to be wracked with guilt over your own trauma? Does it bring you glee to declare that you have a disorder that has warped your life in a manner that makes it difficult to understand how normal people function because your childhood was in a way that was not conductive to healthy relationships?

DID IS A CHOICE

OSDD IS A CHOICE

UDD IS A CHOICE

MPD IS A CHOICE

DDNOS IS A CHOICE

ANY CDD IS A CHOICE

YOU CAN TRANSITION TO HAVING OR TO NOT HAVING ANY DISORDER. FEEL FREE TO DO SO

THE FUTURE IS TRANSID AND PLURAL

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"I'm just doing a bit of analysis on something I find interesting" THAT IS WHAT DISCOURSE IS

and you can't just say "I'm not cancelling forcemasc" after saying the most horrific shit you possibly could about forcemasc and transmen.

Why are some ciswomen so horrible? Like goddamn this is horrendous.

just straight up mask off transandrophobia. this post was made by a cisgender woman

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Controversial opinion, but I think that if you're in the teaching field (or otherwise working with children) and you've ever tried to insist to a child that their parents love them, and everything that that child's parents do is out of love... I think you're just a really shitty person. I don't care if you have """"good intentions"""" doing stuff like that, but trying to insist to a child that their parents love them is just really toxic behavior.

If a child has parents who love them, then the child will be aware of this. If you feel the need to try and force the idea that a child is loved on the child, then that child is not being loved. At best, you are reiterating something the child should already know (pointless). At worst, you are telling that child that being abused/raped/tortured is ok because it is being done out of love, and all a parent can do is love their child (horrific).

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I'd say "some" but not "most."

Most trans and disabled people who fit the type of crusty queer or tender queer are not actually disabled and ARE in fact mentally ill.

I saw a video of someone, don’t know their gender, who with screen text was saying that they were disabled (autistic I’m assuming) and had been nonverbal for 4 weeks, use one of those electronic talking devices to communicate, had made a sensory bag filled with children’s toys, and included a video of them in a public area wearing a dog mask and a dog tale while having text that said their therapist thought they were in such a state of constant fight of flight that it had caused them not to be able to speak. And of course, cue a comment section of thousands of people tripping over themselves to have the best take on this situation and the “these are the gay and trans people with their stupid gender crap” mentality. And while some people had some really good points in other observations about this person’s behaviour, no one got it exactly right I felt, or at least no one could resist ending with some kind of self centred addition or showing they are genuinely transphobic or homophobic and just looking for an excuse to hate on trans people.

I think, the the truth is, as much as I can say without bias, that the person in the video IS trans, but these kinds of trans people ARE mentally ill, not that being mentally ill means they’re not trans, but that mental illness leads to this sort of age regressive slant to their (genuine) identity as a coping mechanism leading to make-believe fantasies like being a dog or living in a perpetual state of childhood that requires toddler toys and gummy worms to get through life as shown in the video. I appreciate trans people don’t grow up with trans adult role models, trans people aren’t taken seriously, being trans is dismissed as a mental illness or confusion, so these young people don’t have access to avenues and outlets that allow them to grow up. Meaning, they feel like if you can’t go forward to the Scary World Of Adulthood, they have to go back to the Comforting World Of Childhood where you can be anything you want. You can be crazy, expressive, colourful as a trans person, you can be binary, average, and cis looking af as a trans person, and there are mature ways a person can do either of these things, and you can do these things in a confident, self-explored way while having a mental illness, same way you can still hold down a job with depression or start a family with OCD, yes it’s harder, but these people exist all around us and still lead normal happy lives. All these things are not in direct conflict with one another.

But the problem with the trans people in the video is that they conflate aspects of their mental illness with gender expression or need for disability devices they don’t actually require: they are introgressive only in imagination, like constantly relating themselves to characters and having difficulty exactly placing their sense of self even well into adulthood, and due to trauma or mental illness, find self reflection or self-advancement that works through these things too challenging and would rather cope by using age regression to avoid confrontation. This makes their mental illness even more difficult to combat because children don’t have to deal with the stressors of life, they can play and be comfortable and never move beyond the stage of adult-childhood and attribute this to being a part of their gender or their disability, when in fact it’s mostly a symptom of their mental illness. It’s the reason why so many trans people who are disabled do it in a way people find childish and immature. It’s not that they aren’t trans or aren’t disabled, it’s that they’ve not done the proper self-exploration (yet or at all) to differentiate between their identity and mental illness, where one stops and the other begins. Obviously average cis people don’t know all this nuance and continue to spit rampant transphobia against trans people, harshly question the validity of all disability, and think all trans people are mentally ill or faking their disability, and you’ve got trans people who are also ignorant and say these kind of “fake people” are taking up space and not leaving room for Actual trans or disabled people. When in reality, people on both sides of the argument are just getting mixed up in things they don’t have the awareness levels to understand.

I think the person in the video IS disabled in the sense that they are autistic (which is classified as a mental disability) but they are not as disabled as they think or in the ways that they think. I would argue most of what they think is a disability is actually part of their mental illness, and I say this having viewed several hundred videos of people exactly like this over the years and clicking through their content to see what the hell is going on, and 100% of the time, they all follow the same patterns as each other. Whether or not a mental illness that is so acute counts as a disability is another argument entirely, but let’s say for the purpose of this that it does not as a mental illness can mostly be treated and cured and lifelong disabilities cannot be and only managed. In the video, this person used the talking device to help with their disability induced non-verbal state. No matter what is actually triggering it, they appear to be helped by it. However, I don’t think it’s helping the disability, at least not primarily. The way in which they are using their disabled devices (the talker thing) attests more to the age regression “baby no talk right now :(“ due to the mental illness than it is to some formal way to communicate in the event speech is far more difficult due to the disability, not that this person isn’t at all influenced by any effects of their disability, but that the mental illness is the prime motivator for seeking this assistance. It’s not that I think this person isn’t disabled in some way, I think they are, but they are mistaking a lot of mental illness symptoms for a disability. I think accessibility devices by these kinds of people are not always used to alleviate what they have difficultly doing but rather they are used to explore the parameters of what they have the option NOT to do, what is EASIER to do for easier’s sake, not because it’s genuinely assisting something they actually can’t do, but placating something that is difficult to do only because of the mental illnesses that they continually ignore fixing, asserting them as core pieces of their identity, treating the mental conditions as things they will have forever. I think that’s why you’ll often get people who say their disabled status AND list some of their mental illnesses or “trauma survivor” in their online bios. It’s important to distinguish that mental illnesses are not identities, and that identifying with them will often prevent people from healing beyond them. Unlike a mental illness, for many people, being disabled is a part of their identity, it’s life long, and they may regularly interact with it Forever. And Disability devices are used to make something you can’t do easier or possible during that lifetime. A cane to walk, a wheelchair to move, a hearing aid to hear, talking devices to speak, noise cancelling headphones to avoid meltdowns, subtitles to understand, prosthetics to walk or interact with the world, sensory objects to mitigate sensory overload. These things are not aimed at trying to make you a more productive member of society, (or at least they shouldn’t be) they should be used in such a way that allows you to do whatever you personally want to do, what you want to be capable of, whether that achieves something or not, whether it’s for your job, community, or just for you. And yes, there is overlap in who these devices benefit. Theoretically, anyone benefits from things disabled people benefit from because the intentions of these devices is to make life easier.

It’s not saying only disabled people are allowed to use these devices, anyone can use them. The only problem with some mentally ill people using these disabled devices arises when a person uses them in a maladaptive way, relying on them as a crutch to prohibit moving beyond their mental illness or using it to assert aspects of their core identity and in this case, sustains age regression and creates further tensions maintaining intrapersonal relationships, holding down a job, developing social skills, or treating others respectfully and equally. From a person at a public protest I heard asking the perplexed organiser to be their carer for the event because they didn’t want to be anxious to the young queer person who was holding a cane that wasn’t even touching the ground I watched rolling their eyes head held high rudely shoving past people out of an elevator who were just trying to let other people exit the elevator first, a blurred line between disability and mental illness/personality disorders causes people like the one in the video to have a skewed sense of their own capabilities and self, relying on things that, while assisting their disability, assist sustaining a mental illness. It’s not known in someone like the original video whether or not the speech device was helping autism or mental illness because they think any difficulty they face removing the device makes the disability harder, when in reality it may just be the discomfort from having something taken away that aided their comfort in the age regressive habit of not having to speak. Arguments claiming disability if you’re not actually disabled and taking away resources and services from “actual” disabled people is just some kind of red herring. The real consequence of this behaviour is that with no distinction between a disability and a mental illness, you are using a disabled identity (whether you are or not) to placate a mental illness and refusing responsibly for your actions and behaviours, attributing them to being trans or disabled, calling people transphobic or ableist when you get called out for something shitty you did or when someone suggests to you you might have a mental illness in addition to being trans or disabled. And this stubborn refusal to self reflect or let go of trauma to instead assert why you identify as an its/it xe/xir circulargender pansexual lesbian “little creature” is what pisses people off. Like yes there is nuance, yes not every instance of a person identifying this way means this, it’s just that I’m noticing it 100% of the time in people that present themselves this way. The difference is that I don’t leap to the conclusion they’re faking trans or disabled. I think you can be those and mentally ill at the same time, it’s just that mental illness needs addressing. It’s also unsurprising so many of these types are almost always white from English speaking counties but that’s another post entirely.

And you get the people who are like “I shouldn’t have to appease other people! I should be allowed to be myself! No one knows me better than me!” right sure, but constantly acting like a toddler well into adulthood is mentally abnormal, constant maladaptive daydreaming as a creature is mentally abnormal, these are signs something in your brain isn’t working correctly and there’s no way to argue around that. Whether it’s a positive or negative or harmless effect on your current situation differs from person to person, but broadly, they tend to be things people seek help for as they often put strain on their life and relationships. But when you’ve removed yourself from taking responsibility for your mental health, you incidentally bestow that responsibility on other people and make life difficult for people who ARE trying to interact with you, you’re difficult to manage because you’ve absolved yourself of managing yourself, you’ve become a child or thing for other people to take care of lest they be called ableist or transphobic for refusing to work with you or assist you, don’t want to be friends with you, or can’t help you. People like this also are at a disadvantage to themselves because you’ve not actually fully assessed your limitations and feelings, you’ve jumped one hurdle which was just a little bit uncomfortable and gave up on the race, because if you reached the end of the track, you might’ve learned the burning exhaustive sensation after jumping hurdle 18 out of 25 made that slight discomfort at hurdle 1 look like a walk in the park. You’ve been perfectly capable of hurdle 1 this entire time, but without the perspective of hurdle 18, you think you need to commit yourself to a wheelchair or ditch PE for life. It’s not “push yourself until you collapse” as these people always think you’re advocating for to which you get called ableist and a nazi, it’s simply saying “develop a frame of reference for your limitations and feelings, don’t assume the first sign of resistance or discomfort is the ceiling, because that isn’t helpful to understand yourself.”

There is also the comment that people like this do this for attention. And I’m ngl, I think it is in the social media sense, otherwise why post it? Seeking attention is a normal human behaviour, we repeat ourselves if we don’t think someone heard us, we flag down waiters and taxis, we guide conversations to talk about subjects where we can share stories and achievements, we act a certain way if we’re feeling sad so someone might ask what’s wrong, EVERYONE does it, wanting someone to pay attention to us or respond to us is normal shit. However, I don’t think that people are being trans or disabled for attention all the time, even if they’re being flashy about it. It’s the presence of a mental illness or personality disorder on top of genuinely being trans or disabled that causes a person to use these things for attention. They just hit the social jackpot: they are genuinely trans but also constantly talking about it for attention. You can be trans AND an attention whore, you can be cis and an attention whore, they don’t negate one another. You have subjectively incredibly talented musicians who are also self centred piece of shit narcissists. Does’t mean they’re a fake musician or being a musician just for attention, but it does mean they’re an asshole and also use their music for attention. Because the people in these kinds of people in the afore mentioned video are so insulated within themselves, dwelling in online worlds of fiction, posting imaginative content where people like them often are, it becomes easier to get attention for things they were normally bullied in school for. They can strut about with a flashy cane or pretend they don’t know what they’re doing is attracting attention and also have their identity be genuine. They basically can have their cake and eat it too. It’s not being trans or being disabled that causes this, it’s the personality or mental illness of a person that does. Someone made the comment as well that these kinds of people ironically can’t order pizza over the phone to save their life despite wanting attention and that’s because it breaks the suspension of disbelief in their own imaginative state. Reality exists as the Big Scary World they avoid interacting with. They can go to the park in the dog costume because it’s in their own little world. Any negative attention they get for it can further be used to assert why they shouldn’t interact with the Big Scary World and people online will tell them being a dog in public is actually brave and expressive and You Be You, and it can keep the cycle going for this kind of behaviour which keeps them separated from reality, locked in an age regressive state. And people who take any little step out of this zone or face resistance within it or essentially meeting hurdle 1 and retreating back to the safe zone, meaning they don’t have thick skins, are easily hurt, and need safe spaces and coddling from others to feel safe, to allow the mental illness to keep going because dealing with because admitting to yourself you aren’t actually that disabled or acknowledging effort is normally required to do things and being completely devoid of discomfort is not possible is so much harder than acceptance of these things. It’s not that mental illness undermines or serves as a sign someone isn’t gay or trans or bi or disabled or non binary, but it DOES affect the way in which a person explores and displays these things and again, could serve as a crutch that prevents someone exploring themselves and their feelings and expressions on these things further. When I see someone like in the video, I can see a trans person and autistic person who might otherwise be different if they weren’t so affected by using their mental illness as a comfort tool. The problem is, they don’t know who they are without the mental illness, they don’t know what being trans or disabled looks like outside of age regression. And fearful, they continue acting this way.

And that’s why it angers people who are trans, disabled, or otherwise, because this person is unbeknownst to themselves asserting gender or disability (core aspects of a personal identity) through the lens of mental illness. It’s mistaking mental illness as part of their trans identity or part of their disabled identity. Unchecked age regression or unchecked personality disorders caused by trauma like narcissistic personality disorder or DID leads to their gender expression involving dressing like an overgrown toddler or identifying as an object or their disabled status involving using walking canes covered in stickers or using baby toys as stim toys. They don’t do these things because they are trans and disabled alone as if those things intrinsically cause these behaviours, they do these things because they’re age regressing in a maladaptive way, they’re mentally ill, and people who don’t understand this think being trans and disabled involves age regression and eating baby food or hopping around in a public park dressed like a dog. Mental illness involves these things, not being trans or disabled or gay.

Additionally, I wouldn’t be surprised if these kinds of people were, unbeknownst to themselves, use being transgender like becoming a fictional character or roleplay a child identity due to trauma or just general unhappiness with themselves, and that may be why so many chronically online trans people age regress and irl trans people don’t, why you have trans people for instance that know from a very young age which gender they do or don’t identify with (even nb people) and then you get people that float on girl lite and boy lite for decades accompanied by an obsession with fictional media and characters and cartoons, to them being trans is less about being yourself, and more about being A Fictional Character while you don’t actually know who you are at your core. It’s not that these people aren’t trans, but they’re not trans in the way the term was originally referring too. Like who cares why a person changes their gender, I think it can be a decision if you want, but like I do think there are different kinds of trans people, some of them genuinely informed by mental illness, but we all have to live under the same roof. And therapists don’t pick up on this because the said mentally ill person clearly doesn’t identify with their birth gender and suffers gender dysphoria which meets criteria for transitioning. I don’t think any one trans person is more valid over another, like you do you, it ain’t none of my business and I’ll still advocate for everyone, but I do think there are trans people for which it is a part of a personality disorder, mental illness, being autistic, or literally just wanting to play pretend but Forever. The problem is there is no system and probably never will be that differentiates those with those motives from other motives because trying to do that would just make us lose our rights entirely so we HAVE to advocate for these people too. Everyone should have a right to live their life whether I agree with it or not, whether I understand it or not. But I do see now, the older I get, why you get so many conservatives saying trans disabled people are just confused and mentally ill, therefore not trans. I still think these people are trans, even though they don’t fit why I’m trans. I do just wish these kinds of people paid more attention to their mental health because it IS getting to a stage of irresponsibleness, and trans people like me are struggling to figure out how to stick up for these people when some people are so damn hard to defend. It’s getting more and more complex to explain to people online or in person or to politicians taking away our rights because it requires an extensive conversation with tomes of backstory to explain why this kind of person exists and why you shouldn’t take away their (our) rights or call them mentally ill (even though we know they are).

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When I was a child, I was hurt: on terminology creep and the use of the terms pedo/pedophilia in fandom

When I was a child, pedophile used to mean someone who was sexually attracted to specifically pre-pubescent children. My uncle is and was a pedophile who hurt a lot of kids, not just me. 

I didn't remember my abuse because I was too young, but a lot of my cousins remember theirs. Talking about that abuse with people has always been hard for us, because it often triggers other people just to hear about the experiences that we went through. People, from doctors to anyone who has known a child, understand that surviving that sort of thing at ten or younger is very different than surviving that sort of thing at sixteen, which is why the term pedophilia is important. It's an ugly thing, yes, but it's necessary for survivors to be able to talk about what happened to us. 

"Pedophilia" describes a very specific type of abuse.

Or it used to. 

At some point it started to slowly mean "anyone who has sex with someone under 18"--that was the first change. It was so slow and gradual even I could not even tell you when it happened.

But now? The last ten years or so? Oh, buddy. Forget pedophilia having a certain meaning, it can now be levied even at two adults in a relationship with as little as a five-year age gap. Or, worse (for me), the idea of minor-coding. 

Y'all do realize that adult-coding is the transverse of that, right? Minor-coding cannot be allowed to exist for this reason; men already talk about adult-coding with even 11 year olds girls looking 'old enough' once their body develops and children of color are already being treated older just because of the color of their skin.

There are real consequences to the idea of someone being minor-coded, so far beyond the harm being done to them by being infantilized. "Minor-coding" exists by propping up ideas that are exclusively and explicitly harmful.

So maybe... maybe we need to let pedophilia actually be about kids again?

That is, if kids are people you care about and want to be safe. Because right now? It's not about survivors. Right now the omnipresence and watering down of pedophile is making it harder for survivors because the thing in the spotlight is the fears of people who've haven't suffered this particular harm.

The spotlight needs to be on survivors, not spectators. Please, I am begging y'all. Survivors need this.

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Ngl its so funny whenever someone makes an anecdote or tries to make an example involving me and that hypothetical involves something that would indicate my parents were ever loving or supportive of me in any capacity with motivations other than disgust.

Its the immediate backtracking and apology. I don't even have to say anything half the time.

Sometimes I would like to have the experience of having one of my parents be proud of something I've done, but that's never going to happen.

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Here's your reminder that tumblr activism (which all of syscourse is) is not real activism. If you want to make real change in the world you gotta get out there and do things, not just post on social media.

This isn't to say every system needs to be doing it (oh god no) or that it's not important to some people (we wouldn't be here if it wasn't) but to compare it to be going out there enacting real change is more than a little insulting.