#i think this is an ableism culture thing

[anistarrose]

there's a type of tumblr funnyperson who's never posted explicit hate/exclusionism towards asexuals and other a-specs... and yet, they like to make up a guy. where the type of guy they always make up undermines any trust a-specs might've otherwise had for them. for example, a common post format is making up a hypothetical tumblr user's bio that's obviously just so cringe, according to the sensibilities of everyone reading — wherein the implied joke is how we've all seen someone in the wild who's cringe like this, right?

these posts always feel the need to slide some a-spec microlabel in there. a lot of the time, it's specifically an ace-spec microlabel plus "heteroromantic," especially if they think that the guy they're making up is trying to be a real special snowflake. to round out the "cringe," they usually pepper in at least one element from the set of: neopronouns, a namedropped mental illness, and a piece of media that's targeted at children/popular for tumblr to hate at the time.

then a zillion people reblog that post, all agreeing haha that's so cringe, and a million a-spec people (and nonbinary and autistic people) shudder — because are they the butt of the joke, to the people reblogging it? or are the people reblogging just laughing about a different element, like a comically long DNI or something, which has distracted them from noticing the fact that OP clearly associates a-spec identities with "cringe"?

if any a-spec people point this out about OP, or ask a reblogger if they support ace people, they are inevitably accused of overreacting — which is great for the aphobes, because they get a new "cringe" a-spec person to point and laugh at. it's just such a nasty cycle, and even people who wouldn't consider themselves aphobes aren't great at noticing and interrogating it.

[giantkillerjack]

Favorite part about Death Note is that Light gets the Note and IMMEDIATELY becomes a serial killer fascist with a god complex.

No build-up, no Fall From Grace, no slow corruption of a good boy gradually becoming a monster. Just-- SPEED RUN STRATS. And I love that for him.

Tbh, I think there are a lot of folks (especially boys) from my high school days who would have immediately become monsters if given the power of life and death over every person around them.

It's kind of like how when people have apparently casual ableist beliefs, and you push them to elaborate on that just a little bit, they'll often end up openly saying stuff like "well, some people are just too disabled to be worth the resources it takes to support them." - Which is... eugenics. It's just eugenics, justified by the myth of scarcity. Now these folks almost certainly won't call it eugenics, or even think of it that way. But that doesn't make it NOT a core belief of the Nazis.

In a similar way, Light seems like a nice and well-adjusted boy with strong beliefs. No harm in that.

But to paraphrase Lindsay Ellis in her analysis of the Game of Thrones ending, "Power doesn't necessarily corrupt. Power reveals." [I think she was quoting someone else when she said this. It was someone who wrote a biography on LBJ. Whatever. Lindsay said it and she's smart as hell and I recommend her videos.]

And 15 minutes into the Death Note musical, I'm already thinking about how so many beliefs "casually" held by well-adjusted, nice people immediately reveal their monstrousness when talked through to their natural conclusion.

And I wonder how many of those people, given the power of life and death over everyone around them - the power to take their ideas to their natural conclusions - would also immediately reveal how their lack of self-reflection has laid the groundwork for them to become monsters.

[talonpaw]

for the record: i very much enjoy reading critical and meta analysis of warriors, especially analyses that cover more serious topics like the series’s depiction of abusive relationships, ableism, misogyny, elements of insensitivity to and appropriation from indigenous cultures, etc.. i just get EXHAUSTED watching people engaging in bad faith discourse and harassing other fans, even though i am fortunate enough to have never experienced that sort of harassment myself

[unproduciblesmackdown]

on that note had also been thinking about the hilarious classic maneuver of taking things i go "smh always doing that weird/wrong" & instead putting it in the context of like oh i dunno my life experiences. like going "smh once again in one millisecond i noticed something was about to fall & just sort of Tensed instead of instantly going to catch it & in the next milliseconds hash out like 'oh but could i catch it. oh but now it's in progress am i too late' etc" but like well hang on. first of all the Tense Up / Brace For Impact approach can have its strengths too. second of all like why just kick myself when Of Course the vastly more frequent & relevant experiences of having to stifle reactions & tense up to Brace For Impact / Weather The Situation means that's the standard approach. sure tends to be the case that like "okay test your reflex time :)" type things when i Know It's Coming, i.e. preemptively Tense Up, i turn out quite slow. throwback to a true classic [my roommate that said my cat was performative while their cat did things out of true emotion] at my doctor's appointment at like age thirteen when the ol Knee Bonk Reflex Test would make me Tense/Seize That Knee Up and Then kick. and then afterwards my "big fan of unprompted criticisms / declarations about your internal experiences or true intentions" mom was like you were faking those reflexes. i'm like well i wasn't. she was like yes you were. consider the camera jimmed

secondly i was also thinking like, always been the case that when Talking, often even if in writing format, i can't really avoid mirroring the characteristics of the other person's Style / Patterns lol. was thinking about it in my Relative ease of adopting pronunciations for different language's phonemes when it's like, i guess i do have experience in Doing Voices not b/c i really often Did Voices (sometimes lol, as like, direct quotes or whatever. echoing....) but b/c like i'll just be picking up all kinds of mannerisms / tendencies / ways of speaking, including accents slightly (my default accent being disney channel) not b/c i'm messing with anyone or trying to do anything, in fact trying Not to do this is generally unsuccessfully & This Is What Happens Naturally & always has & it's like yknow what i think it might have to do with the fact that i don't think Talking in general is oh so "natural" for me / a matter of "just being myself" (things virtually never are lol) like. i think that time i had that friend in second grade where i'm like ummm i'm not sure we spoke the same language b/c i'm not sure we spoke hardly ever? but we had fun & played & amused ourselves etc til the teacher as usual went Biggest Time Sicko Mode on our "not paying attention" like nobody else's got & then didn't give a fuck abt "intervening" again when we didn't feel like we were Allowed(tm) to interact at all. & like i'm pretty sure i'd be "supposed" to feel like omg we don't talk (almost) at all?? that's SO weirrrd i remember that soooo welllll

and when i Do talk most "naturally" / "just being myself" it's all at once, wordy, and Theatrical, and even then. i did it some the other day and was Sweating, literally, less so figuratively but it does still feel demanding, and of course even when it doesn't Feel thusly, doing a Lot a lot of verbalizing can really still be draining to Taxing. and i've noticed better like yeah sometimes i'm markedly struggling to speak when i'm already extra wearied. and another thing i put into context better was like "when i'm being put tf through it why do i tend to cry through interactions. b/c i'm being a PUSSY????" like lol just on principle was like okay well who cares, i'm sure you, by which i mean i, have my reasons b/c so too would i think someone else does, like. and i remember like, i tend to Not "directly" cry of stress or sadness virtually ever. while i Do tend to be simply keeping that shit contained but Exactly When i have to try to speak? is when i happen to start crying. hmm. Hmmmm. talking Always this performance that i may often not be up for. similar to [personal visual style / Look / clothes] like my default is "basic outfit i'd want to wear every day" & my ideal is "i do not want to be perceived" & (this &) everything else is performance / drag to me, Would That that always be on my terms

another banger is my till oh so recently kicking myself like "aah [pathologization time] i'm sooo slow to be at ease / comfortable around people even when they're surely being nice, what a hassle for others" like well it can be viewed as a hassle for me but it's also like, wait, i end up having stayed uncomfortable around people who weren't being That nice by putting in That much [any effort from any Consideration] and often turn out like. ultimately not that Safe. and i look at "oh right yeah and also i sure Can be like instantly quite comfortable / at ease around people, including people i literally just met. so" &/or my not being at ease either is still way less of a deal than having to literally/figuratively sweat it while i'd feel so much more Okay avoiding detection much less interaction

[disabled-queer-culture-is]

Tw for extreme ableism and homophobia

Disabled queer culture is being dragged to church and hearing a pastor talking about how he cured a gay prostitute of homosexuality and performed an exorcism to rid a girl (who was almost certainly psychotic and/or having a meltdown) of demons and just being like

What. Huh.

And then looking around to see if anyone else is shocked by this and realizing you’re the only one who thinks what he just said was absolutely absurd.

Hello???? I don’t think you have to be gay or disabled to comprehend how disgusting that is???? But all those cishet ableds simply don’t????

Evangelicalism is a hell of a drug.

[aroace-number-eight]

One of my worse fears when I do rereads of the series is that I look at moments where the characters are obscenely rude and/or make offhanded comments and gestures, and they're actually not OOC moments or contradict previous establishing character traits, because the reality is that they're total assholes and we just choose to believe they're nicer than that

[torchickentacos]

UGHHHHHH take a shot every time a makeup youtuber uploads a video on their diet or on how sugar ruined their life. paragraph of complaining and criticism of diet culture under cut, ed tw but in a very anti-ed way.

like please just tell me about mascara and stuff, I do not want to be sold a program on how to have an eating disorder. I have SO many rants about this but I'll leave it at this for now: unless done in a very specific and mentally healthy way, restricting categories of food is almost always going to be your first step down a slippery slope, allergies excluded. Restricting one category leads to labeling it as bad, so you assign moral worth to food, so you start trying to 'deserve' your food, et cetera, down you go on that slope.

[jentlemahae]

-

[lovef0ols]

the main issue I have with endos is the community around them.

[gotshadowbanned-feralfungii]

Remembering that time an autistic content creator joked around with his autistic friend on twitter about being autistic and people tried to cancel him as ableist for it

[butchdykekondraki]

"sorry for being cringe on main" what else are you supposed to use a main account for??? looks around wildly,. were we not supposed to be cringe the entire time??? /j

HEHNAKLEPPP

[handweavers]

there is a specific type of politics that i find a lot among artists of colour of my generation living in the west where we talk a lot about war and empire and racism and it's a lot of like decolonization buzzwords and talking about "embodied approaches to collaboration and knowledge production" and bringing science and ecology and historic cultural practices into our art and there is this heavy emphasis on the mutual aid instagram infographics thing and it constantly feels Iike everyone around me is dancing around an understanding that is just outside of their grasp and i think its because everyone is afraid of marxism in an explicit sense, rather than just the vague defanged "leftist" sense, which isn't a coherent ideology at all nor an actual Foundation of tools through which we can seek to understand the world. the scientific method for understanding economics is dialectical materialism, and to truly understand how capitalism and colonialism and patriarchy function you need to be willing to learn materialist analysis. like to actually understand What imperialism is and how it differs from colonialism, the actual material function(s) of capitalism and Why things are the way they are, to see with clear eyes the roles of racism and homophobia and transphobia and ableism, and to write and make art about it in the way I think many people desire to, where you are not dancing around an understanding of the realities of the world but actually biting through the meat of it, you need to understand materialism, you need to understand that imperialism is not the same thing as colonialism it is the highest stage of capitalism, and really dig into that. otherwise my peers will just keep dancing in circles and saying things that not only do not reflect reality but actively benefit the systems that harm us as well as the billions of our people who do not live in the west, and all the jargon like "we are decolonizing our mindsets with multidisciplinary ecologies" or whatever will never actually like... have the impact that is desired because it's not touching the face of reality idk how else to say it. like what are we doing here lol

[mossterious]

Something really poignant about Lisa Frankenstein, to be at least, is the fact that when the creature attacks Janet, it’s not when she’s being rude to her. It’s not when she’s just saying rude things, or beoittling Lisa, or anything. It’s when Janet says that she’s going to admit Lisa.

Because the creature is from the 1830s. And even if he knows about modern culture and inventions, which he sort of seems to?, he’s still FROM the 1830s. And when Janet says the word admitted, he hears the word committed. When Janet says Serenity Manor, he knows that that means an asylum. And he knows what asylums are. They are dangerous places. They are places where you’re stripped of all autonomy. They are places where you send people away to become someone else’s problem, and they normally don’t come back. And so he attacks. He protects Lisa.

And I think that draws a really important comparison between what asylums were, and what mental care is now. Because in a lot of ways, it isn’t much better. There’s still a lot of abuse in the system. There’s still a complete lack of autonomy. There’s still so much ableism and bias within the system. And people are still sent there to get them out of other peoples ways, rather than strictly to help them. And, sure, this movie is set in the 80s, so it’s not exactly modern. I mean, the movie points out that times are different. But with Janet, it almost seems intent on pointing out of similar everything is. Sending Lisa to a psych ward. The diet culture. The “intuitive person” thing. That one line about narcissists needing to be vanquished. And all these things are still a pretty big issue now.

There’s just a lot of comparison. ESPECIALLY a lot of comparison when it comes to disability and madness in these three distinct time periods. And like, it’s obvious that mental health was used as a weapon against people, and especially WOMEN, in the 1830s. But Lisa Frankenstein highlights that in the 80s, it was still a weapon! And that psych ward programs still poses a threat. Theres a comparison between how Janet and Lisa’s dad erase Lisa’s grief and say that she’s “acting out” compared to female hysteria of the creature’s time. There’s also the creature’s reaction to being physically disabled vs Lisa’s, with Patch and everything, but that honestly is another post entirely.

I just think that the discussion of mental health in this film is really important and, frankly, really well done. Especially especially especially through the lens that Lisa is a girl. And Lisa Frankenstein is a movie about GIRLHOOD. And so the movie took the extra step to talk about the denial of women’s feelings and specifically grief, and the pathologization of them. When women feel in a way outside of a norm, they’re wrong. They’re crazy. They’re dangerous. And idk I just think it’s done really well and the comparisons are all right there.

And this is all in a movie based on Frankenstein. This is all about a character based on Victor Frankenstein. The MAD scientist. So I feel like it all fits together incredibly well.

[jirairot]

Sorry to bring this up again but can we make one thing clear: You cannot "wear jirai".

Jirai kei is a subculture and whilst there are specific styles and brands commonly associated with it, those styles aren't "jirai". Jirai stems from and primarily surrounds culture around mental illness, homelessness and self-destructive/explosive behaviour, which is why it translates to landmine.

I think it's also important to remember within the western community that a lot of it is directly related to the culture around mental health, suicide and self harm within Japan itself and not just as a whole.

The reason jirais are called jirai is due to explosive outbursts and outwardly/visibly being mentally ill. It's something that stemmed from a culture of ableism and a lack of understanding/care regarding mental health that is a lot more severe in Japan than I think a lot of people realise. It's a derogatory term.

The styles associated with people who would be considered jirai are a lot more varied than is often represented within the western community - understandably considering most don't have a way to see the evolution of the subculture in japan itself.

If you want to wear one of the styles associated with jirai such as girly kei, do it, but please stop trying to rebrand/"reform" jirai.

Yes, there are specific looks that kind of visually solidify you as a landmine within the subculture, however there is no set "jirai look/style".

This isn't me actively trying to "call out" anyone, and I may have not correctly worded/explained some things because I'm sleep deprived as fuck but yeah

[identitty-dickruption]

see. the interesting thing to me is that the Bible tends to depict disability in four different ways:

disability as the result of sin (e.g. Deuteronomy 5:9)

disability as curable via the profession of faith (e.g. Matthew 9:20)

disabled people as a method for the abled to demonstrate faith (e.g. John 9)

disability as a metaphor for human defect (e.g. Matthew 23)

and none of these things are any less common when you think about disability in popular culture in the year of our lord 2024!! by the way!!

disability as the result of immoral choices (think about popular conceptions of diabetes, for example)

if someone is still disabled, it is because they haven't tried hard enough to seek a cure ("have you tried yoga?")

if an abled person helps a disabled person, they are thought of as a saint. when disabled people have our autonomy removed, this is seen as a moral good

many literary depictions of disability only use disability as a metaphor, and not as. y'know. an actual disability (this is common with depictions of blindness)

anyway. I'm a Christian and I definitely don't think Christianity is inherently ableist. but I do think there is a lot of ableism in the church. and that definitely makes a fuckton of sense when you look at our source text. but I think this is an interesting example of Cultural Christianity. even those who don't believe in sin DO believe that disability is the result of sin. or at least, they act like they believe that to be the case

this post is a mess but 👍 this is vaguely what I've been working on today

[disabled-queer-culture-is]

Disabled culture is going to see a doctor about a new medical scare and being able to predict exactly what they’re going to suggest, because it’s the exact same thing every doctor tells you for everything