#function labels

[foggyroseblood]

I don't remember who said it but whoever suggested to use "high masking" and "low masking" instead of low and high functioning i love you so much. Its the only words I feel really work for me. I was diagnosed with "high functioning autism/aspergers" which the 1st one just didnt fit me i felt bc it just isnt true and the 2nd word has nazi history so um no thanks. Lots of people use low and high support needs now but those don't work for me either. Like i would be considered low support needs i guess but I do need lots of support with daily things i definitely do not have low support needs if i take the definition litterally. I am high masking.

High masking suggets that i look like i am high functioning and okay although i am not and that's very validating

[fedorahead]

high masking is the modern equivalent of high functioning, but it still hides what's happening behind the scenes. i'm intensely high masking, and that comes with a lot of self loathing, burnout, trauma, etc. high functioning was always seen as less impacted by the autism and i'm not at all less impacted, i just don't impact others so much with it

[ariapmdeol]

hey so tumblr just added this thing (community labels) and by default ALL these category filters are set to remove anything labelled with these from your feed entirely (not just blurred).

Please remember to go into your settings and adjust them to what you prefer! if you're under 18, you won't be able to adjust them as they are set to Hide until you turn 18

this is what it looks like in settings (i have everything set to Show, the default is Hidden)

[la-esmerqlda]

I would like to thank Elon Musk for breaking the stereotype that “high functioning” autistic people are geniuses, because he’s genuinely so fucking dumb I can hardly even fathom it.

[stealingfromwoolworths]

Currently waiting for people to realise that yes, the autistic teens, kids, adults and elders who are always swarmed by aids, cannot speak, lash out, have limited speech, act “dumb”, run away into dangerous places (eg. Roads, pools ect.) when overwhelmed, are similar to the autistic stereotype or in general don’t act in a “civilised manner”

Have access to the internet

They are on tumblr

We are on tumblr

And we don’t appreciate being your punching bag, being excluded from conversations about accessibility, or used as a tool by high functioning autistics who want to say “oh look at me I’m not like the autistics who bite people or make weird sounds in public or need support, I’m just unique and have fun interests.”

We are real people and we are smarter then you think.

Edit: thanks to the people who pointed out that smart wasn’t the right word! So I’m going to add this: the opinions of me, a low functioning autistic who has the privilege to be able to write coherently and communicate my opinions and views in two different languages, holds the exact same weight as someone who cannot do any of those things and in fact sometimes it’s their opinion and views that matter more. The opinion of “smart” autistics matters just as much as the opinion of “non smart” autistics and people you would consider dumb. Lower functioning autistics who are not conventionally or, at all, “smart” are just as human, important and valuable and deserve to have their opinions taken into consideration just as much as I do writing this. You don’t loose your value as a human or as a disabled person when you aren’t smart.

[zebulontheplanet]

“I don’t like the terms high support needs and low support needs because they just remind me of functioning labels”

You realize that it’s not bad for someone to need more support then you, right? You realize that people needing more or less support than you is a thing, right? You realize that maybe we still need labels to get the point across and build community within a community, right?

You realize that the lives of higher support needs people and lower support needs people are different so they need something to connect with eachother, right?

If you don’t and still think that…then maybe you need to work on yourself.

[aroaceleovaldez]

actually one of the details that frustrates me the most from TSATS, relating to how much the book completely erases or absolutely bastardizes neurodivergence, is how Percy's cameo is characterized.

One of the consistent things aspects of Percy's relationship with the education system throughout the series is that Percy is smart, and he does try in school, but he has a learning disability. The only reason he gets bad grades is because he has a learning disability and the way the modern american education system is built is inherently at odds with that. In the first series we actually have explicit references to Percy doing better in school when he's in environments that actually accommodate for his disabilities! It's not that he's not trying, he's disabled.

So it is so disheartening and horrible to see Percy characterized in TSATS as just being disinterested in school, and his failing grades being made a joke about implying him ditching classes because he just doesn't care. That's the number one ableist thing ADHD/dyslexic students hear! Implying that they "just don't care" and dismissing their disabilities. It is so horrible to see that joke being made in the Percy Jackson series of all franchises. Especially when you add that on to the rest of the quite frankly ableist characterizations in TSATS and how much the book erases Nico and Will's disabilities/neurodivergence.

[astraltrickster]

I want to introduce a disability concept that I've been calling paradoxical stigma.

What is paradoxical stigma? It's the stigma against:

1) The actually disabling traits of a disability that's in the spotlight for the parts of it that are convenient to accommodate, and/or

2) The diagnosis of such a disability itself,

Due to the assumption that the spotlight renders it "destigmatized" and no longer in need of support.

As of right now, at least around this corner of the internet, the most obvious examples of this are autism and ADHD. It's become disturbingly common for people to treat those like Diet Disabilities That Don't Actually Count. It's been really interesting to watch the popular attitude about these disorders shift from "autism is either a tragedy or an excuse depending on 'severity', and ADHD is just a myth used to drug kids into complicity instead of teaching them actual skills", to "actually these are real disorders that affect people in all aspects of their lives", to "I GUESS they're real disorders but honestly EVERYONE has them can't we worry about more SERIOUS ones?" and...not in a good way.

It comes up...partially as a legitimate backlash to people with these disorders who think that invisible disability and/or neurodivergence begins and ends at their experience, and...yeah, that's a problem all right, in fact if I had a dollar for every asshole who looked at my struggles with things like keeping my space clean or not fucking up my medication doses DUE TO ADHD and went "well I have the same diagnosis and I don't have THAT problem to THAT extent, obviously you're just lazy and careless", or saw me having an AUTISTIC meltdown and called it "bullying" or worse because I get loud and insisted that I NEED to CONTROL that CHOSEN BEHAVIOR if I want to not be a Bad Person, or heard about how AUTISTIC overstimulation defense measures play into my trouble with cleaning and insisted that well THEY'RE autistic too and don't have that specific problem so this is clearly weaponized helplessness because I just don't WANT to learn to do better, I'd...probably have a lot more assistive tech. I also get really, really frustrated and upset when people use RSD to mean "if you ever criticize me that's the height of ableism, no matter how much I'm actually fucking up and hurting you" - especially since it's so often invoked as a defense against being lightly criticized for ACTUALLY harmful behavior and as much as it sucks there IS no substitute to make that more emotional-dysregulation-friendly beyond basic kindness in criticism. That attitude exists. It's bad.

And yet, theoretically, I think we could all agree that the response to that should NEVER be to reinvent the old "ugh, those aren't REAL disabilities, those are just EXCUSES that LAZY PARENTS make for kids being kids, what they need is DISCIPLINE" stereotype of the 90s-2000s, just now aimed at those same kids as adults, in ostensibly supportive spaces - or arguably worse, to revert all our understanding of support needs to the externally judged high-functioning/low-functioning dichotomy.

What really sets this apart as paradoxical stigma, rather than just garden-variety lateral ableism, is that 1) we CAN theoretically all agree that reinventing those stereotypes is a terrible response, yet many people do it anyway, and 2) these stereotypes are invoked not only because of that intracommunity misbehavior, but both within and outside of disabled spaces, because of the illusion that you can bring up those disorders and have them taken seriously because fidget toys and stim videos and weighted blankets are popular now. An event having quiet rooms, or backlash to Autism Speaks being visible outside of autistic spaces, will be taken as "proof" that autism stigma is over forever and anyone who complains about it is just a whiner who doesn't know how good they have it...even when what they're complaining about is, say, being barred from migration. Paradoxical stigma is enacted by people who think that they, alone, are standing up against someone who's throwing others under the bus to continue to progress their own limited agenda...when in fact they're speaking a very popular shitty opinion, that MANY of the people making that claim would disagree with HEAVILY once separated from the "crab bucket reflex".

As a personal example, the result is that when I'm looking for assistance, I'm...hesitant to bring up those diagnoses, because I know I'm going to be written off as "obviously a high-functioning low-support needs scammer who just doesn't WANT to CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY and EARN things" - even by people who otherwise agree that people should be allowed to survive even if they truly are the living strawman lazy bum who has nothing wrong with them but just WANTS to lay around eating junk food and doing drugs all day, AND that disability deserves to be respected, isn't black-and-white, and affects everyone differently; somehow when these combine in the context of my diagnoses that have had a very sanitized version of themselves "destigmatized" on TikTok, they cancel out into blatant reactionary sentiment indistinguishable from what I'd hear from my shitty token Republican uncle.

So, that's paradoxical stigma. Feel free to use the term if you find it useful.

[theconcealedweapon]

Image Description: Text post saying "An allistic just told me that it's "offensive" to label them high/low functioning based solely on how irritating I personally find their allism. I told them only a HF allistic could even care anyways." from a Facebook group "Tone It Down Taupe".

[clownrecess]

(TW functioning labels, ableism, meltdowns, doctors, etc.)

I was diagnosed as autistic when I was 10, and I was more specifically diagnosed with "High functioning autism". The person my psychiatrist saw was me on easy days, on days when I was fully calm, on days when I could easily communicate, and had no other job than to sit and do what she told me to do.

She hadn't seen me go fully mute for months on end, she hadn't seen me fully unable to take care of my basic needs, she hadn't seen me have violent meltdowns, she hadn't seen me hit and bite myself because I couldn't identify my emotions, she hadn't seen me run into the street because I have nothing in my brain telling me not to, she hadn't seen me unable to change clothes for multiple days, she hadn't seen me only able to shower once a week, she hadn't seen me unable to properly exist in gened, she hadn't seen me have severe meltdowns over a change I liked just because I didnt expect it, she hadn't seen me put a small hole in a wall during a meltdown, she hadn't seen me as a full time AAC user, she hadn't seen me as a part time AAC user, she hadn't seen me unable to sleep without an intensely large amount of nightlights, she hadn't seen me unable to bathe myself until age 9 or 10, etc.

She saw me in a calm state, once every few months, on days when I could communicate easily and do what she asked. That is all she saw of me, her asking me questions, having me do things, and asking my mom questions.

If she saw me, and I was the way I described in front of her, my diagnosis would probably be closer to something like "moderate functioning autism".

But here's the thing, ON DIFFERENT DAYS, I FIT DIFFERENT CRITERIA FOR DIFFERENT TYPES OF AUTISM DIAGNOSES.

My ability to "Function" varies so so much, and this makes functioning labels extremely inaccurate.

Now, let's use support needs to describe me. I am a person who's support needs fluctuate from med-high. I have med-high support needs. This is accurate for me, and it is not ableist.

I wanted to talk about this to describe how functioning labels suck, and also to talk about how support needs fluctuate; and that is okay.

[neuroticboyfriend]

i am mentally ill and there is nothing morally wrong with that. none of the words for marginalized experiences are free of connection to bigotry. i am allowed to use the terms that i feel fit my experience best, because it is MY life. no one else's.

you can call yourself whatever the fuck you want, too. mentally ill. disordered. chronically ill. disabled. neurodivergent. a spoonie. crazy. insane. mad. etc. etc. you can use diagnostic labels and symptom terminology. you can call things traits instead. you can use functioning labels, support needs labels, masking labels, etc.

it is YOUR bodymind. what matters most is that your experiences are expressed in ways that are helpful to you, not whether it's what someone else would use for themself.

[punkitt-is-here]

how do you go about getting DEI training? i wanna work in counseling w other queer ppl at some point in the future, and DEI training seems like it'd be vital to doing smth like that

It was part of my job to do some of it, actually, and I know some college classes actually count as it. I took a class on Race and Power that really opened my eyes to intersectionality with oppressed groups! If you get the chance and you're in college, even a community one, I guarantee there's probably at least SOME classes that'll cover most of the ground you're looking for. I would specifically advocate for classes that discuss things like race and power, because understanding how race intersects with other things like gender, sexuality, culture, and presentation is IMO vital to understand the big picture of how we're all affected. I think a lot of the time we can get hung up in viewing things like queer rights, racial inequity, and class as completely separate entities or isolated issues, but in reality they're all super connected and understanding those connections is going to let you understand basically everything surrounding it as well.

[bucky-barnes-diaries]

I really hope more people will become vocal of how the Community Labels are doing nothing but killing interactions (which we’re already low from before) for content creators here on Tumblr 🙃

In theory? Yes the labels seems like a fantastic idea! It gives creators more freedom to post and express themselves however they want!

But in practice? The function is absolutely awful! As soon as a post gets a Community Label slapped on it, it’s basically dead! Shadowbanned! Censored! Nonexistent! This is most likely (I think?) due to not many people actually knowing that this function even exists so the content that they usually would enjoy is now completely hidden from them because the function was launched with the Mature Content being turned on for everyone automatically.

And the worst part of this function! PEOPLE CAN SUGGEST A COMMUNITY LABEL ON A POST! OTHER USERS! Not just Tumblr. This is going to get abused to bits (and definitely already is) by people that maybe just don’t like a creator so they want to see their content crash and burn.

I really hope Tumblr reconsiders this new function and make some HEAVY changes to it or just remove it altogether, because I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more people leave and quit this site because the content they put their heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears into dies within a few hours…

@staff @support @engineering @changes

[entropy-sea-system]

General psa to not just go for natural supplements claiming to boost testosterone or estrogen without looking into whats in it and what the ingredients actually do, because a lot of them will just boost LH and increase the more predominant hormone in your body or depend on what gonads you have. Im not sure how it would vary for different intersex conditions but unless its a drug that actually increases estrogen or testosterone or progesterone etc. (or is straight up the hormone) for anyone with any organs, its not going to give you your desired result.

Do research into what a drug or supplement does before taking it. Chances are, some boost hormones depending on the organs in your body and are not inherently masculinising or feminising(whichever effect preferred), and may have other unrelated effects on the body. I feel like people often ignore that herbal supplements can cause harm too, if taken improperly or with no knowledge of what they do to the body.

[unfunnystandup]

i LOOOOOOVE having adhd unironically it’s so fucking cool and punk to have 30 thoughts in one second and so many ideas and so much creativity and i can tell u anything about the jfk assassination or 90s sketch comedy or the making of grand theft auto 4 radio shows. neurodivergence is beautiful.

[alphashley14]

I attempted to ask my parents if I could go to therapy last night because I suspect that I may have undiagnosed ADHD.

My Dad scoffed, as if annoyed, and said “If anyone has difficulty doing anything nowadays it’s because of some mental something or other.”

- Says the man who I’ve suspected for years to be an undiagnosed autistic or other sort of neurodivergent. (Not that I’d ever say that aloud because God forbid.)

And I was so stunned and hurt that I all of my points/arguments left my brain.

Just- imagine being so close yet so far away from the POINT.

And my Mom was hardly any better. She shut me down by saying how “everyone struggles to focus on things they’re not interested in,” and “Well that’s part of your Asperger’s!”

… This is exactly why I’ve grown to HATE being a so-called “high functioning” autistic person. Any time I bring up wanting to go to therapy for unrelated issues it gets either brushed off or forgotten about because I’m “high functioning” and I don’t externalize my mental health symptoms like my sibling does (and therefore it isn’t an embarrassment or inconvenience) so it isn’t an issue and I must be fine.

Maybe I should just explode. Drink. Smoke something. Scream. Break some shit. Let my grades drop. THEN could I get some therapy? (Not that I would ever actually do any of that but sometimes I feel like that’s what it would take for my parents to take me seriously when I say I’m not ok.)

-Anyway. Just figured if anywhere would have people who understand this experience, it would be on Tumblr.