#It's a horrible mix of my confusing gender and my autism

[ask-artsy-oncie]

Person, specifically cis person with pronouns that match their gender, giving their name and pronouns and then looking at you expectedly: intimidating, terrifying, a demand to out yourself if you dare not pass, and an unspoken demand to ensure that your pronouns are binary and/or single-set, as in, the same format they gave you theirs in.

"What are your pronouns?": inviting, sincere, direct with no hidden meanings, spoken with clear intent to respect you, no ulterior demand for said pronouns to fit into a specific format, and an automatic acceptance of the fact that your pronouns might not match your appearance.

[magicaltriofromthedreamworld]

Hey this is my first time requesting anything so here we go. Could you do a poly rottmnt turtles with a gender neutral reader who has autism? (Hope you got some water today bro, have a good day)

OH MY GOSH YOUR MY FIRST REQUEST

i dont know much about autism but i do know that sometimes they go mute, have meltdown, stim, have sensory issues, have trouble with their emotions, have hyperfixations or stuff they really like

(also in this you will have a hyperfixation on turtles because yes)

(and i hope you have a wonderful day and get you something to eat! im drinking my pink lemonade drink mix while writing this)

POLY TURTLES X AUTISTIC!GN!READER(part 1?)

-you were always labeled weird by other people.

-always obsessing over turtles, stating facts you learned and some of your favorites which were a alligator snapping turtle, softshell turtle, red eared slider turtle, and a ornate box turtle

you ran down the street, hearing the horrible names that people were calling you. you ran as fast as you could down the ally way.

you stayed there for hours, crying your eyes out as you hugged Mr. turtle, a plush you had bought yourself recently from your first paycheck.

you heard rustling from beside you

"-and remember the time I portaled you guys to tahiti?" the random person said before stopping his speech, hearing your soft cries from the ally way

"hello? are you alright?" the big one said

you froze suddenly at the sight of these people, scared of what they might do.

"hey...we arent going to hurt you, okay?" the big one said again as he outstretched his hand

you nod in reply and take his hand, going to turn on the flashlight to see who was being so nice to you before they start to panic

"dont turn on the flashlight please!" they said

"why not?" you asked confused

"we definitely arent mutant turtles or something. just humans in alien costume!" it sounded like the other tallest one was being sarcastic at that but had a tint of nervousness in his speech

"please?" you asked, looking up at whoever was in front of you

thats when those turtles realized it was love at first sight at that moment by hearing your voice

you heard a popping sound, looking over it seemed like it was... a shell?

"is that a turtle?! i love turtles, did you know that an alligator snapping turtle is the largest species of freshwater turtle?"

you started to rant on and on about turtles as you walked over to the shell, looking around it.

"i think this is an ornate box turtle! but whys its shell so big?" you exclaimed

"dont be afraid..." the shell spoke before popping out, making itself known

"your a mutant?...thats so cool!" you said

"whats your guys' names? im Y/N!" you held mr turtle in one hand as you held out your hand for them to shake. they took your hand, shaking it

"why arent you afraid? also, im Mikey!" he said as he shook your hand

"because they probably love turtles?" the 2nd tallest said "also, im donatello but you can call me donnie, and im a softshell" he stated

the other one spoke up "im leo! a red eared slider!" her pushed the other out of the way and shook your hand before kissing the back of it

your face turned red as he did this

"You should be at home. It's getting kind of late" raph said

(Time skip) they walk you home and you go to sleep after saying goodbye, waiting until you can see them again

[serinemolecule]

Not to harp on the obvious, but the discussion feels hollow without it: the only reason some people - not all, maybe not most, but definitely some - push for "equality" and "inclusiveness" and etc. in tech is because it's seen as a desirable and powerful position. No one's been belly-aching about it back when it was fashionable to tell nerds to stop being fat and ugly and what a bunch of losers they are. It's only up for discussion now that there's something to be gained from it. It's hypocrisy.

(context: a lot of women-in-tech discourse)

I mean, I was belly-aching about it.

I like to say I was a feminist until I met other feminists. I definitely saw plenty of things nerds could be doing better for equality. But then the first time I met other feminists, they were harassing nerds and writing long essays about how nerds were even worse than average men (which still seems to me like an absolutely insane position).

That was... a really big crisis of faith there. I spent years reading feminist literature, trying to understand their point. And the crazy thing was, a lot of the principles and concepts do appeal to me. But then the way they’d apply it, talking about how privileged nerds were, or just using it as an excuse to be assholes to people, that’s always seemed wrong to me.

My approach at the time was just to try to understand it better in private, and never talk about it in public. This lasted until I read the SSC essays on social justice which I entirely agreed on, then I joined Tumblr to hit on Scott, and since then I started getting more comfortable with writing out my thoughts, but also the really bad SJ of the early 2010s just mostly faded away from the spaces I’m in. I still hear insane stories from other places (like the New York Times! wtf!) but it no longer feels like a crisis afflicting my own community, so I never wrote anything out.

Part of it’s that my community is the rats, now. SJWs may still exist here, but they don’t have a social power to turn us against each other. Whatever effect Topher’s tweet had on the rest of the world, it means he’s no longer welcome among rats anymore. We dismiss them with equanimity using the ancient proverb, “Haters gonna hate”.

Anyway, I suppose now’s as good a time as any for me to talk about what I think about feminist theory.

I get the impression that Scott is embarrassed by his old posts on gender politics, but I still endorse every word. Even the words people like to criticize the most, I endorse as an angry expression of “Why don’t you care about how many people your ideology is hurting?” That said:

Privilege theory – I remember encountering privilege theory and thinking “yes, this totally fits the model that normies are privileged and nerds are marginalized”, until I got to the part where they started talking about how privileged nerds were. I think the theory is still pretty good, and of course the practice about writing privilege checklists and using it to silence people is incredibly fucked up.

Patriarchy theory – Fortunately, no one talks about patriarchy theory anymore. It came from the radfems and it always seemed horrible to me. It's uncontroversially true that ruling class is mostly male, but patriarchy theory seems to just equivocate between that and insane conspiracy theories.

For example, “culture is built for the benefit of men at the expense of women” requires you to just dismiss everything that hurts men and helps women, to excuse that fashion policing is nearly solely perpetuated by other women, and even if it’s true, the fact that it is perpetuated by everyone means pointing the finger at a specific group will not help fix the problem. Did Kamala Harris exercise “girl power” when she kept black prisoners in jail past their release date? 

Cultural appropriation – The usual steelman I hear for this is “it sucks when white people take your culture for themselves, and yet still call it cringe when you practice your own culture” – but the only objectionable part is the latter! Stop objecting to the former part! There’s nothing wrong with culture mixing and it is in fact one of the most beautiful things in the world!

Part of it’s that I’m a first-gen immigrant, and cultural appropriation attitudes often come from insecurities second-gen immigrants have. Cultural appropriation just means I’m now an expert on your new culture and you’re not allowed to stop me from infodumping on it.

The other steelman is “misusing religious artifacts is bad” and I think to the extent that it’s bad, it’s bad whether you’re doing it to your own culture or to other cultures.

In general I think Halloween was, among other things, a great celebration of diversity that did not need to be cancelled, and I don’t think any costume was offensive to the majority of any culture.

Intersectionality – This word confused me for so long. People kept explaining it as “black women often have problems specific to their group that neither women’s groups nor black groups themselves are equipped to fight” which just seemed obviously true and didn’t seem like we needed a word for it.

Over the years, I’ve seen it be used as a reminder of “don’t forget how your activism affects other marginalized groups”, so it’s probably a useful concept to keep around.

Microaggressions – I think being oblivious to microaggressions is an autism thing, but I still think it’s insane to make them a political issue. Sure, you can vent about them, but acting like they’re on par with actual aggressions just seems like a losing cause.

On second thought, I don’t think I have a problem with making them a political issue in general. I think the whole tactic of SJWs being a hateful harassment mob makes the microaggressions thing just come off as especially petty.

I also think there’s a lot of competing access needs here. I actually really like infodumping about what kind of Asian I am to anyone willing to listen, and I think acting like the question is the root of all evil is really unfair, especially since literally everyone who’s ever asked has been happy to learn about the finer points about Chinese ethnic groups.

Isms as prejudice + power – People have mostly stopped discoursing about this, which is good. Language policing always seemed bad to me.

Objectification – SSC says everything I feel on the topic: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/17/my-objections-to-objectification/

The last time this came up in Discord, people said that objectification is more than the straw-man being criticized in this article, that it’s about people being entitled to your body or whatever. But I think the article does address that: “This is obviously a legitimate complaint. It’s just not a complaint about objectification.”

I got exposed to objectification as a criticism of hot girls in video games. And I just can’t see hot girls in video games as a bad thing.

Rape culture – [cw rape] This is an incredibly sensitive subject so I’m going to give you some time to stop reading here.

Our culture has a serious problem with rape. I think it’s important to understand that it’s usually committed by friends and family, that it’s depressingly common and has nearly definitely happened to people you know, that it’s usually committed by people who don’t think of what they’re doing as rape, and that all the discourse on it is really fucked up.

I also think that calling this “rape culture” entirely misses the point. I’m sympathetic that SSC doesn’t understand it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/19/i-do-not-understand-rape-culture/

Our problem isn’t that we glorify rape. Our problem is that we consider it a special kind of evil so bad that of course no normal person would ever do it, and this makes it easy to rationalize that whatever this normal person did couldn’t have been rape, which causes huge harms.

I don’t have answers, but I think it’s incredibly clear that calling it “rape culture” doesn’t help.

In general, I don’t think feminist activism on the topic of rape goes in the right direction. The smug “consent is like tea” video has the exact same problem. People don’t need to hear more “normal people would never rape” messaging.