#neuromisogyny

[hyperlexichypatia]

This survey of why parents are estranged from their adult children is such an interesting illustration of how neurobigotry functions in society and interpersonal relationships. People accuse their estranged family members of being Mad/neurodivergent, because Madness is synonymous with being at fault in a relationship. It's considered inherently Reasonable and Justified to cut ties with a Mad/neurodivergent person -- especially an untreated-by-choice Mad/neurodivergent person -- because to be Mad/neurodivergent is to be inherently wrong, inherently unreasonable, inherently burdensome, inherently the one who is not abiding by the social compact.

Or as one of my friends put it, "Mental illness exists as a sociopolitical concept of ontological wrongness."

One of the pervasively enduring aspects of neurobigotry is that people who have been abused by neurobigotry will, instead of rejecting neurobigotry, simply accept it and turn it around on their abusers. People think they're really onto something with "No, it is my abusive parents who are mentally ill and need therapy" or "No, it is the people in power who are mentally defective" or "Racism/capitalism/bigotry are the real mental illness!"

But you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. Pathologizing your parents doesn't correct the power imbalance of being pathologized by them, and using pathologization as a way to convey wrongness is still reifying pathologization and neurobigotry.

The context of family estrangement reminds me of this thought process I started about the construction of "cults." When the anti-cult movement began, it was centered on family members of people who'd joined new religious movements. The premise that people who joined religious groups their families didn't approve of were victims of "cult brainwashing" who needed to be "rescued" and "deprogrammed" (against their will, of course) was a tool of controlling families trying to deny their (usually) adult children's right to freedom of religion and general life choices. The idea that "cults" caused family estrangement was an integral aspect of the moral panic around them.

But over the decades, the stigma on "cults" has shifted. The contemporary anti-cult movement is fueled by people who grew up in abusive religious communities and chose to leave. It's applied as often to older, larger, established religious groups as it is to newer, smaller ones. While the original anti-cult movement largely centered on parents trying to control their adult children, the newer anti-cult movement largely centers on adults who've broken away from their parents' control.

Except. Except. It still uses the pathologization framework established in the 1970s. It's still a reversal -- No, it is you, the parents, the church, the authority, who are the Mentally Ill, the cult, the deviant, the ones in need of being fixed -- rather than a rejection or reframing: Actually, young people should be free to choose their own path in life.

It's not only applied in relationships between parents and children -- it's even more commonly invoked in breakups between former friends or partners. People feel the need to establish which party was Mentally Ill and Needed Therapy as a proxy for which party was At Fault in the breakup. In reality, breaking up doesn't necessarily mean either party was At Fault, but it's more socially acceptable to say "We had to break up because he's Mentally Ill and Refused To Get Help" rather than "We just didn't get along." Discussions of bad and badly-ended relationships are just constant rounds of uno reverse allegations of Madness/neurodivergence.

One of my least favorite examples is trying to "rebut" the neuromisogynistic trope of "Women are crazy" with "Men cause women to become crazy." Why are you validating "Women are crazy" by trying to "explain" it? Why are you accepting the premise that "crazy" is a bad thing? Why are you reifying the idea that being "crazy" has to be "caused" by something "bad"? If a man says "I broke up with my ex-girlfriend because she's crazy!" why validate the neuromisogyny with "No, you're crazy!" or "You must have made her crazy!" instead of challenging it with "What's wrong with being 'crazy'? What does that have to do with anything?"

If someone says "I stopped speaking to my child because they refused to seek therapy," why validate the neurobigotry with "You're the one who needs therapy!" instead of challenging it with "Why is their choice whether or not to seek therapy any of your business?"

[thechangeling]

Ok actually no I'm not done.

The fact that literally every single portrayal of autistic women that doesn't have the autism label slapped directly on it gets met with criticisms of "manic pixie dream girl" is so fucking infuriating I can't stand it. Because nts have conveniently overlooked the fact that the reason the MPDG is a bad sexist trope is not because she has autistic or other nd traits, it's because she is created to be a emotional support character for the male protagonist who has no negative personality traits or dreams and ambitions of her own. She has no flaws, no desires beyond "rescuing" the male protagonist from his life of boredom. These characters are flat caricatures of real autistic women and girls. Caricatures that give nts unrealistic expectations of us and how we'll be in relationships.

Because even if they don't know these characters are autistic, they can usually recognize the similarities between the way these characters act and the way we act. So they expect us to be their entertainers or their saviors or whatever and not actual full fledged humans with issues and symptoms of disorders that aren't always fun or cute. So then shit hits the fan.

Acting like the MPDG is just sexist and not ableist (neuromisogynistic to be specific) is bad enough. But acting like any depiction of autistic girls in media that doesn't automatically have the autism diagnosis slapped onto it is an example of a MMDG I.e. misogynistic and bad, is super fucking ableist and unfair.

And while we're at it, knock it off with the whole nlog thing. Any female character showing any signs of not fitting in with other girls or being different to "most girls" is not inherently misogynistic, and acting like it is, is super fucking ableist not to mention homophobic, transphobic etc.

Tldr: Start caring about Autistic women and girls if you claim to care about feminism and sexist tropes in media. And that means listening to us.

[the-bee-graveyard]

One of the most annoying things about neuromisogyny is that allistics always seem to view our natural personalities as fake or trying to hard, but most men or those who are read as men don't seem to get that treatment.

Like I'm getting so sick of people saying that characters that are obviously autistic coded have not like other girls energy or manic pikie dream girl energy like...... there is a reason for that!!!! Mainly because autistic girls are not like other girls! And the manic pixie dream girl stereotype is literally just the male fantasy of the idealized autistic woman.

Not to mention as I've said before the whole nlog thing was supposed to criticize girls who say misogynistic things and try to distance themselves from other girls but now it's just being used to attack girls and also honestly trans people who turn out to not be girls for not "fitting in". Like congratulations you recreated mysoginy and also transphobia!/s

It makes me so depressed because everytime this happens I get the clear message from society that I will never be the right kind of girl or women. And I internalized that so much that now my connection to womanhood is almost completely broken and I'm nonbinary. People definitely are nonbinary for all kinds of reasons that don't have to do with gender traumaTM, but that's what it was for me.

So fine. Screw womanhood. I don't want it anyway. But it just makes me so mad that autistic and autistic coded women continue to be vilified. I've even seen people criticizing Jinx for having nlog energy and that makes me wanna tear my hair out.

Idk I'm just tired. People suck.

At the end of the day it always comes down to assholes and their stereotypes. I'm sorry autistic women/women presenting people do not fit in to your idea of what a women should be like, but that's kind of the thing? About autism?

People bitch about how autistic girls don't "seem autistic", but they don't realise that this is autistic girls seeming autistic.

People need to fucking educate themselves.

[hyperlexichypatia]

One time, when I was younger, I had an unpleasant encounter with an (apparently neurotypical) older man who wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

Now, I was fine. But I was scared.

Not so much because I was afraid the man would come after me -- although given the statistics around violence against women who refuse men's advances, that would be an entirely reasonable fear -- but because I was afraid that someone would find out what had happened.

Because, you see, if someone found out that I had been assaulted, I would be a Vulnerable Young Girl.

And the thing about being a Vulnerable Young Girl is that it doesn't matter if you said "yes" or "no."

It's not necessarily that people would have sided with my assailant -- this is a different flavor of rape culture. Most people would have agreed that what my assailant did was wrong. But they would have considered it equally wrong -- maybe more wrong -- if he were my chosen, consensual boyfriend I actively wanted to be with.

Because his crime was not disregarding my "no" and violating my bodily autonomy. His crime was Taking Advantage of a Vulnerable Young Girl. Preying on a Vulnerable Young Girl. Corrupting a Vulnerable Young Girl.

If you're a Vulnerable Young Girl, you don't have the right to say "yes," which means you don't really meaningfully have the right to say "no" either. You need to be Protected, and, of course, you don't have the right to say "no" to that, either.

And, look, once again, I was fine. I'm making the specific assault sound worse than it was. That's not the point. I wouldn't mention it at all, except that The Discourse is such that if you don't disclose a relevant personal experience, you're assumed to Not Care About Real People. But I am not alone in this.

I've heard multiple instances of the specific scenario "I was assaulted in college but I didn't report it because my parents would have made me leave school." Or "I was date raped and didn't report it because then my family would have never let me go out again." Or "I'm a psychiatric survivor and if I reported being assaulted I'd be put back into treatment."

These are real things I've heard or read assault victims say.

Framing assault victims as Vulnerable Young Girls actively discourages victims from reporting assaults.

Yet the people who use this framing seem to think it's somehow necessary to get assaults taken seriously, even though it does the opposite.

Feminists largely understand this when it's in the context of purity culture. When people say, "In purity culture, it doesn't matter if you say 'yes' or 'no,' sexual assault and consensual sex are considered equally bad, and that underlying premise minimizes the actual wrongdoing of sexual assault, discourages assault victims from reporting their assaults, and allows assailants to get away with their crimes," this is understood as a problem.

But the Vulnerable Young Girls framing comes from self-identified feminists. Who think they're helping. In the name of feminism and justice. They don't understand why being framed as a Vulnerable Young Girl would make a woman reluctant to come forward, because the coercive control she would be subjected to "isn't punishment". They're seemingly baffled by why young and/or disabled women don't want to be framed as Vulnerable Young Girls, even if they've been assaulted. Especially if they've been assaulted. Why are you so offended when we say that your wishes for your own body don't matter?

And... why? Why is this framing necessary? What is the purpose? What is the benefit?

If you hear about someone committing sexual assault against a young and/or disabled woman -- without her consent, against her will, disregarding her "no" -- what, exactly, are you trying to accomplish by jumping in and saying "Even if she said yes, that's still predatory! He's still Taking Advantage of a Vulnerable Young Girl!"?

What is the purpose of saying that?

If a young and/or disabled woman chooses a sexual and/or romantic relationship that you think is "bad for her," and you proclaim "Just because she agreed to it doesn't make it okay! It's still wrong!" -- well, I vehemently disagree with you, but at least you're responding to the actual situation that exists.

But if you hear about an assault, against the victim's will, without her consent, and feel the need to denounce the counterfactual scenario in which it was a consensual encounter... what are you even trying to accomplish? Is the sole purpose just to convey to the victims (and any other assault survivors and/or young and/or disabled women in the vicinity) "I need to make it unambiguously clear that my objection to this assault has nothing to do with the violation of your bodily autonomy. I actively do not care about that."?

[hyperlexichypatia]

Hypothetical and Actual Autonomy

 Did you know that you have the power to make hypothetical scenarios pop into being faster than the most prolific of novelists could dream of?

Just say "forced medical treatment is always wrong," and people become instantly creative, coming up with convoluted scenarios in which they're absolutely sure that forced medical treatment must be necessary.

It's important to remember that these bizarre hypotheticals are always, invariably, made in bad faith. They are never genuine attempts to parse out ethical lines. They are rhetorical traps designed to imbue false "nuance" into the abolitionist position -- if you cede that involuntary treatment might be justified in whatever bizarre scenario they've dreamt up, they claim that it's therefore all just a totally hazy gray area no one has any room to judge! And if you deny that their bizarre hypothetical is justifiable grounds for forced treatment, you're proving that abolitionists are rigid and heartless monsters who don't care when "real people" (bizarre hypothetical constructs) die for our ideology! (Actual Real People suffering and dying from forced treatment are, of course, quickly dismissed as irrelevant or the products of "a few bad apples.")

Despite their transparent bad faith, some of the hypothetical arguments I've encountered most frequently are worth examining for what they reveal about their speakers' underlying beliefs about neurodivergent/Mad people.

The most common hypothetical I encounter is the person about to jump off a ledge to his death. The ledge itself is an oddly specific motif -- sometimes it's a bridge or a cliff, but it's always an imminent death by height. This is truly a bizarre hypothetical scenario to invoke as justification for forced medical treatment, because it isn't even a medical situation. There are many ways to get a desperate, possibly-suicidal person off a ledge (some of them coercive, some of them not), but none of them involve any kind of medical treatment. (Though I did recently argue with someone who claimed that the act of pulling someone off a ledge constituted "medical treatment," to which I give the honorary Mr. Fantastic Award for World's Stretchiest Reach.)

What the people invoking this scenario actually mean, of course, is that someone rescued from a ledge should then, subsequent to their rescue, be placed on some sort of forced-treatment regimen, but they're hoping to conflate that with the immediacy of an imminent life-or-death emergency.

So what does the popularity of this hypothetical argument reveal about its proponents' underlying beliefs about Mad/neurodivergent people?

First and foremost, that suicidal distress is always and only ameliorable by medical treatment. But also, because these immediate life-or-death scenarios aren't actually medical situations, the underlying assumption is that allowing a neurodivergent person to choose to go about life is equivalent to letting them fall to their death from a ledge. That the desire to refuse unwanted treatment is, essentially, a death wish.

This is tied closely to the belief that Mad/neurodivergent people are always and inherently "suffering" from our Madness/neurodivergence, that medical treatment brings relief from this suffering, and therefore, that the only reason Mad/neurodivergent people would choose to refuse treatment is that we must have some self-destructive, self-hating drive to make ourselves suffer. This is why, having set up the "hanging from a ledge" scenario, people who make this argument inevitably expand it to "risk of self-harm" (a category so broad it can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean). It's not actually about any immediate life-or-death risk; it's about "rescuing" us from the suffering they're convinced we're inexplicably inflicting on ourselves by existing.

Another hypothetical scenario often invoked is a pregnant person refusing medical interventions necessary to save the life of their unborn child (a commonly cited example is someone refusing a necessary c-section). I have to give this one credit for being, unlike the ledge-hanging person, an actual medical dilemma. The answer is pretty straightforward, though -- just as non-pregnant people cannot be compelled to donate blood or organs to save someone else's life, pregnant people cannot be compelled to use their bodies to save their future children's lives. However, like the other examples, this question reveals some interesting underlying assumptions about neurodivergent/Mad people.

Because pregnancy is associated with women, pathologization of pregnant people occurs at the intersection of neurobigotry and misogyny (I coined the word "neuromisogyny" for this purpose). The Crazy Woman is a specific cultural threat, and the Crazy Mother is even more so. In this hypothetical scenario, the rhetorical fetus is a proxy for the threat that Crazy Mothers allegedly pose to their children by existing while neurodivergent.

This is why "children of mentally ill mothers" is an actual literary genre. This is why the CDC classifies having a Mad/neurodivergent parent as an "adverse childhood experiences" alongside traumas like abuse, neglect, poverty, and death. And while abusive fathers can just be called "abusive," abusive mothers are usually called "mentally ill." So in popular imagination, an abusive mother and a neurodivergent/Mad mother are one and the same. A common term applied to this constructed supercategory of abusive mothers and Mad/neurodivergent mothers is "narcissistic," which is the opposite of the selflessness that Good Mothers are supposed to embody. (The same "Good Mother/ Bad Mother" dichotomy that classifies neurodivergent/Mad mothers as abusive for existing also places a lot of actual child abuse above criticism, because it's practiced by neurotypical Good Mothers.) So the hypothetical pregnancy emergency is used to fears and judgments of the Narcissistic Crazy Mother, the Inhuman Unwoman selfishly prioritizing herself over her child.

Another hypothetical example brought up in defense of forced treatment is "What about a person who is unconscious, choking, or otherwise unable to express consent?"

This, again, is an attempt to paint disability rights and medical autonomy advocates as heartless extremists who don't care about human life -- what kind of dispassionate ideologue would wait for verbal consent before giving CPR to an unconscious person?

Well... none. No advocates actually propose that. This is an entirely fictitious strawman. But as with the other examples, it reveals some underlying assumptions about neurodivergent/Mad people.

To begin with the most obvious point, unconscious people literally cannot communicate. They cannot give or refuse medical consent. The ethical basis for performing emergency, life-saving treatment on unconscious people is that we presume, absent evidence otherwise (like a signed advance directive) that, if they were awake and talking, they would choose to be saved.

Mad/neurodivergent people can and do communicate their wishes, either through speaking or another communication method. There is no need to speculate about what neurodivergent/Mad people "would" want, because they're right here, saying (or typing or signing) what they do want.

So the people making this analogy are equating the expressed, stated wishes of Mad/neurodivergent people to the unknowability of the wishes of someone unable to communicate.

Furthermore, while no one objects to administering emergency, life-saving treatment to unconscious people, taking advantage of a patient's unconsciousness to bypass consent for non-emergency, non-life-saving procedures is, in fact, unethical. As I'm writing this, the practice of performing non-consensual pelvic exams on unconscious people at some hospitals is being widely (and rightly) denounced.

So as with the "person hanging from a ledge" hypothetical, the attempt here is to impute the immediacy of a life-or-death emergency onto ordinary treatments that could absolutely wait for a person to give consent if, in fact, they are temporarily unable to. Because, again, the people making this argument equate "correcting" someone's "defective" brain chemistry to be as urgent and as necessary as reviving someone having a heart attack.

If someone tries to argue for forced medical treatment using these hypotheticals, or any other bizarre, bad-faith hypotheticals, we are not obligated to argue on their terms. We know that these strawmen are ridiculous and made in bad faith. We know that they know that. But we can see that they reveal what people really think about our brains -- that we're irrational, destructive, dangerous to children, and that our very existence constitutes some kind of crisis necessitating emergency action protocols. That is how aggressively we are dehumanized. By being aware of it, examining it, and pointing it out, we can try to challenge it.

[thechangeling]

So I got into a debate with a person in one of my classes yesterday about self diagnosis so I thought I’d share my thoughts with you.

Little background: this guy is a white autistic man who was diagnosed in his earlier years of primary school. I don’t even know how the conversation got here the class has nothing to do with any of this, but oh well.

He was arguing that self diagnosing takes away resources from people who “actually need them” and he said you should go see a doctor and get evaluated. (I argued that doctors don’t listen to anyone but white men but that point was quickly dropped in the conversation).

I was diagnosed with autism later in my life. I didn’t get access to resources at school. I almost failed classes (specifically math because I can’t read numbers). I was never offered any additional support because I wasn’t diagnosed, and part of why I wasn’t diagnosed is because my mother didn’t want me evaluated. I wasn’t getting any additional resources.

And even if people who don’t have diagnoses get resources and help. So? I’d rather people receive help they don’t need than people fail to get help when they need it.

I’m not saying faking a disability or disorder is good. I’m saying we need to stop letting that be our number one reason we won’t give resources to people who are “autistic looking” white men who fit societies idea for what an autistic person should look like and act like.

Yeah preach I am 100% with you on this one. Autistic white men don't get to speak on self diagnosis when doctors don't gaslight and dismiss them. They have probably never gone through the experience of telling a doctor about what is probably asthma and hearing your doctor tell you to just get more exercise or that it's probably allergies.

Afab people, women, and poc ESPECIALLY woc are never listened to by our doctors whether it's physical or mental. The reason why people think autism "affects" boys more than girls is because they're diagnosing boys more. Same goes for poc. Doctors think that only white boys can be autistic because in the early days of autism that's who the research was done on and that bias is reflected today.

Everytime some dumb ass white boy says shit about self diagnosis I think of all the girls and people perceived as girls that are "too sensative" or "lazy and stupid" they aren't trying hard enough apparently. We're too niave and overly anxious. Very self critical and prone to depression. The survivors of so much abuse that is made to seem like our fault. But we're not actually autistic right?/s I think about the manic pixie dream girl trop and how it clearly depicts autistic girls as a fun toy for nt men to spice up their lives, but no one wants to acknowledge that. I think about the infantilization and the fetishization.

I think about all the poc who got stereotyped as violent and dangerous from such a young age for having the same disability that white boys are coddled by adults for. I think about how Black autistic people stimming are often seen as dangerous and that often leads to police violence. I think about how most of the autistic people murded by police were POC. I think about autistic women of colour who get the worst of it because they deal with all of it. The racism and the neuromisogyny. I think about how autistic black kids are more likely to be diagnosed with conduct disorder or oppositional defiance disorder instead of autism.

I think about all of this and it makes me furious. I was lucky enough to be diagnosed at a young age because my mom had a family friend who specialized in autism and basically said, "your daughter is autistic." But I know most afab people aren't that lucky.

And I'll never understand the years spend hating yourself for just not being able to do things that your peers could and wondering why. Just like that boy will never understand. Whenever people bitch about self diagnosis and saying "just go get diagnosed" like it's so easy, they are showing their privilege.

Another thing I wanted to touch on is the idea that people who are self diagnosed are taking resources from us. It's stupid and just plain untrue. People who don't have a diagnosis don't even get accommodations most of the time. And if there isn't enough resources to go around then the problem isn't with the people self diagnosing, It's a problem with the government not putting enough money into special education!!!

It is such classic Democrat or Republican bullshit to blame other disabled people instead of blaming the system. They should be putting more money into hiring more EAs. But they would much rather have disabled people fighting amongst themselves over who "deserves it more". This is why you in my opinion can't be a leftist without caring about disability politics and vice versa. They're connected.

Anyways yeah autistic cis white men need to shut up and let us speak.