#presentations of disability in different people. people with the same disabilities may have vastly different capacities for dif activity

[adhdandcomics]

i’m very sorry that society has made you feel this way about your fellow disabled people. i hope you can reflect on why you believe that other people with worse symptoms than you are bringing down this community and giving us a bad name.

(especially in the context of a vent post that is not indicative of whether or not we are “actually trying” in real life.)

i am also sorry that society makes you believe that in order for disabled people to be respected we have to consistently be working toward a nebulous goal of self improvement and overcoming of disability as to not be perceived as lazy and inconsiderate by the world.

i hope you can be kinder and more patient with yourself and your disability in the future, too.

[inkabelledesigns]

There are probably more people diagnosed with autism today than there were throughout history, but that doesn't mean we're anything new, or that we didn't exist before now. Just like people who have a variety of sexualities and gender identities have always existed, even though we didn't always have the language for it that we do now. I mean I got diagnosed when I was 7, and in the twenty years since then, a LOT has changed in how we talk about autism, and how many people will get formally diagnosed or self diagnose. The change from using individual diagnoses to the general spectrum, how most people perceive it, the fact that doctors really didn't look for it in girls because they expected boys to have it more leading to the realization that we mask differently across genders/gender identities, etc. I still remember being a little seventh grader and telling my friends from girl scouts that I was on spectrum, and their first reaction was "I'm so sorry," like it was a disease. They didn't know any better, and I don't begrudge them that, but I can't help but feel that the reaction would be very different today.

Like there's a LOT to discuss with how the way we talk about this stuff has changed. And some of it has been really good, and others not so much. All change comes with pros and cons, that's just how change goes. But the other thing to note is that autism is diverse and nuanced. You can have several people in a room who all qualify as autistic, but they can have vastly different ways that their brains work/how their symptoms present. We don't use terms like high or low functioning anymore, for good reason, but for the sake of example, I was labelled as high functioning as a child, and as a result of that, a lot of people didn't take me seriously when I had needs, especially teachers. My teachers and professors had to be fought with at every turn in order for my academic accommodations to actually be respected, because they believed I was too smart or just faking it to actually need help. In reality, I did need help, but I got so used to being denied help that I now struggle to ask for it as an adult and let myself suffer in silence. Just because someone doesn't see that you're disabled doesn't mean you aren't. My symptoms may not present the same way as some other autistics do, and it may not be what you have as the picture of autism in your mind, but it's still autism, and I am still valid.

When I was little and my parents told me about my diagnosis, the way they explained it was that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. There will be some things I'm very good at that others find hard, and there will be some things I struggle with that others find very easy. It doesn't make anyone better or lesser, it just means we all have different ways of functioning, and there's nothing wrong with that. I was never made to feel ashamed of my autism at home, and I'm forever grateful to my parents for loving me and believing in me. I think, that shaped the way I see the world a lot. I often felt bad for my classmates on the times where I was properly accommodated, since I got extra time and a separate room for tests. Even though they didn't have a 504 like me, I felt like it kind of sucked that they'd didn't get something to make the testing experience a little easier. Like, the academic world should care for all of those students and their success, and give them the highest chance of succeeding. But that's not how the world works. Instead those kids were stuck in the echo-y gym, where one cough disrupted your entire train of thought, and the chairs were so uncomfortable and squeaked too much if you leaned the wrong way, and it was just, awful. Then again, maybe it was just awful to my brain, and other people handle it better. I don't know their needs, I only know mine. But it made me more sympathetic to others when people tried to meet my needs. I got so used to going without and struggling through that sometimes, I stifle things I need for the sake of other people's comfort, which isn't healthy. I'm constantly fighting for people to be accommodated and respected in my circles, because I don't ever want someone to feel the way I felt when people didn't take my needs seriously. I want people to be able to unmask and feel listened to around me. I want my space to be kind and comfortable for lots of people, no matter how your brain works.

In the end...it only matters to me a little bit how much we use the word autism. Sometimes I feel it's used a bit too "meme-y" to the point where there are misunderstandings, and we're all reduced to being the butt of the joke as quirky folks rather than people with interesting brains and specific needs. Sometimes those memes are good, and sometimes they're not, like I said, there's nuance. But I think, I'm just glad we're starting to build a world where we're helping each other and trying to make things more accessible for lots of people. It's not perfect, but it's still progress. The nice thing about recognizing more autism in the world is that I now have autistic people to look up to. This is going to sound silly, but to me it's not silly: Kellen Goff over there gives me hope dammit. Kellen Goff, for those of you who don't know, is a very skilled voice actor. He's responsible for a variety of amazing roles. I know him for his work on the Five Nights at Freddy's series, which he does expertly. I will never get over Glamrock Freddy or Sun and Moon with the way he performs them (and those aren't even his only roles). Kellen is the first voice actor in the big leagues that I had seen be open about being on spectrum, and it made a world of difference. I'm a voice actor, and sometimes I worry as a creative that there is no spot for me in that world because I don't see a lot of people like me in it (or at least, at the time I didn't, now I know a lot more people that are like me there). But Kellen is in it. And everyone loves Kellen. He's witty, he's so in love with his craft and gives it his best, and he's incredibly kind whenever I hear stories from people who have interacted with him. He is desirable, he is loved. I never had a story about an autistic person who was desirable before him. Just as I never had a fictional character that I felt represented autism in a way that felt like people I know, until Twyla from G3 of Monster High happened, who, fun fact, also has an autistic VA that does an amazing job! Kayla Cromer you give me HOPE! We are out there, we can be successful, and we have so much power to do wonderful things! I didn't have that growing up. I didn't have anyone to inspire me that was known to be neurodivergent. Now I do. And there isn't a day that goes by where I'm not grateful for it. I am eternally grateful.

Things have changed a lot. More awareness for autism eventually means more acceptance. And I'm so grateful for the people who accept us and love us, no matter our brains. Because we have some truly beautiful minds in there, and we belong here just as much as anyone else. 💜 All this to say, yeah, the conversation around autism has changed a lot. And how we diagnose and how many diagnoses there are has changed a lot. But I hope that's a good thing. I hope that makes the world more understanding than it was before.

Oh yeah, so I keep forgetting about this, but I'm trying to prove something to my mom after a talk we had some time back...

Are there more autistic people today? I pointed out that autistic/neurodivergent people have ALWAYS existed, but she's like 'yeah, but there are more people getting diagnosed with autism' or something like that.

So yeah, trying to prove a point, basically.

[ficsex]

Why do you think that trans chasers and people with amputee fetishes are less likely to be exploitative than people with race fetishes or intellectual disability fetishes? Sure, white/neurotypical people can use their privilege to abuse nonwhite and intellectually disabled partners, but cis and abled partners can do the same to trans or physically disabled partners- especially if they're the main money maker or have some role in caring for their disabled partner. And likewise, like how someone could vastly prefer trans people or amputees while still seeing them as people, someone could primarily be attracted to people with different races or intellectual capabilities and be respectful.

Maybe it's rubbing me the wrong way because people with intellectual disabilities or neurodivergencies are often seen as incapable of consent (they're not- you just have to teach them, you know, like everyone) but it seems like an odd line to draw. Then again, I don't have any experience with this topic, and I'd love to hear a fuller explanation of your view.

great question! I don't have a firm answer for you!

It's certainly not a hard and fast rule - I am white, and I am not trans, and I have all of my limbs, and so I can only share experiences of my clients and friends. Individual relationships may be more or less transactional and safe/healthy than I describe here, and I welcome more nuanced takes than I could present in my philosophizing post.

I can speak quite a lot about sexuality and intellectual disabilities - that's my second career. I work as a sexual behavior specialist for adults with intellectual disabilities (I don't do ABA), and I am often called in by carers to help assess if their child / client / patient / resident is capable of giving sexual consent. (spoiler, the answer is often "yes"). Sometimes it's a question of cognitive ability, sometimes it has more to do with specialized education (I do that too - I'm working on a curriculum now for a residential school and it's SO COOL and FUN and REWARDING), and sometimes it has to do with who they're dating.

The people who want to date my clients tend to fall into one of three categories:

1) also has a diagnosed intellectual disability, has no more social power (based in cognitive ability) than my client does

2) does not have a diagnosed intellectual disability, but probably would have a diagnosis if their family/school had received services at a younger age

3) does not have an intellectual disability, and sees my client as an easily controlled romantic and/or sexual partner

It's is NOT my job to tell people with disabilities that they cannot have sex - even casual sex! it IS my job to assess their ability to consent, and to provide as much counseling, education, or structure that they need to have a rewarding relationship, whether it's sexual or not.

(as a side bar: I also work as a communication coach, and tend to frequently work with clients who are in relationships comprised of two neurodivergent people, or one neurotypical person and one neurodivergent person)

tl;dr it's complicated, my post was not all-encompassing, and I love nuance and specific cases!

[leonawriter]

On Writing Fankids

Writing this because I now have two different fankids for the same pairing, in vastly different ways, and they’re very different people. So.

I don’t know how many points I’m going to make, and I don’t know how useful this is going to be, since Disclaimer: I’m not an expert on real children or medical practices, but I am trying to put effort in.

Most of this is composed of questions, because I don’t know who your fankid (or, OC-fankid) is, and the point is to make you think rather than just put ideas into your head by telling you what’s right and what’s wrong.

1 - How did they come to exist?

This is the FIRST question you should be asking when coming up with a fankid. What they look like and how cute they are is all well and good, but when you’re thinking of actually writing a story, that won’t help you.

If the parents are a cis male and cis female couple, then it’s easy to assume how they had a kid. That said, that’s not always necessarily the case, as some people may be infertile, or may simply choose to adopt. However, the answer to this becomes more complicated when fans get to wanting to give a gay couple children, as this usually means they want to give them biological children.

In the event of pairings where the parents are canonically not reproductively compatible (which includes gay, lesbian, nonbinary, and so on) there are still options, which include: a trans parent, which involves being able to write a trans person and not just overlooking how this would change their story; surrogacy, in which someone else carries the child to term for those who can’t, and the related idea of a sperm donor. 

In going into other biological options, there’s also the question of “how believable and realistic do you want this to be? how scientific? how much fantasy or sci-fi do you want here?” and if the answer is “I have fantasy and/or sci-fi in my setting” then you can use that.

That said, please don’t rule out the possibility of adoption. Adoption is the most common way for queer parents in the real world to get kids, and just because a kid isn’t biological doesn’t make them any less their parent’s child. Even/especially in a fantasy setting! And knowing if a kid was adopted, that’ll extend into how they see themself, as well as who the parent is and why they chose to adopt.

Related to that, if a kid is adopted, how aware of that are they? How were they adopted? Are they a canon character that was adopted, or an entirely new character? If they were too young to remember the adoption, how do their parents (or parent, if there was only one person adopting them) explain? If they were old enough, how do they see the person who took them in? How do they see their adopted siblings, if any exist, or any future siblings? What about any prospective additional parents, if they originally only had one, or if their parent/s is/are polyamorous? 

2 - How good are their parents at parenting?

Yes, you want your favourite pairing to be great parents, but no matter what people are going to have their own idiosyncrasies. How do the parents deal when the kid throws a tantrum? 

What if the child shows signs of being neurodivergent, are the parents any good at spotting those signs, and whether they are or not, how do they handle the difference from what they might have been expecting?

My advice here is to pay attention to the pairing in their normal canon and how they deal with situations and also how they handle children in canon, as well as then going to further sources that show what parenting is really like. Your fankid is going to be a baby, they’re going to be a screaming toddler, they’re going to have a personality and wants and they’re going to frustrate their parents a lot. If you want to put the effort in to write the family well, ask someone you know who has kids, even.

3 - What are their circumstances during their childhood?

The fun one about this is that depending on the context the child was created in, the answer can be different for children of the same pairing! 

In my case, I have Satoko and Fumiya. Satoko’s childhood (outside of her parents’ control) was traumatising, and left her as a quiet kid, despite how much she’s shown love later on. Fumiya, on the other hand, grows up in a loving environment from the start, and because of that he’s much more comfortable and confident, despite everything else that happens and so on.

This is where the child starts to develop their own personality. Think about how in the real world, children are shaped by their surroundings and the way that they grow up. Does your fankid learn that they can trust the people around them? How much attention are they given? Is that attention positive, negative, stifling? Do they feel neglected, or coddled? How easy is it for them to find food, or their favourite food? Are they surrounded by children of their own age, or mostly living around adults? Is their living situation, no matter whether their parents love them and take care of them or not, a dangerous one, and how aware of that are they?

Also important is the question of whether they even have both of their parents, or either of them. Maybe the situation here is complicated. Maybe they’re an orphan (sorry, parent pairing). Maybe they’re separated from their family, and they have to fend for themself. Maybe their parents are separated for any given reason. 

Any one of these things is also going to affect their mindset while growing up from being a baby through being a toddler, a pre-teen, and a teenager. If you want them to feel like a fully rounded out person, you have to think of them as such.

4 - What do they look like?

I’m well aware that this is the first thing that most people go with when creating fankids. I’m just saying that it’s not the most important thing you should be thinking of. 

Making a fankid shouldn’t be a mix-and-match game when you’re making biological kids. When you’re coming up with an adopted kid even less so. They aren’t a paper doll. Some children may look like a mix between their parents, while others will take on attributes from previous generations... although when looking at fictional characters you don’t own the IP of, assuming what genes a fankid’s grandparent might have passed on gets tricky. For this I’m focusing mostly on biological kids, but it should help for adopted as well in some parts.

One good rule of thumb here is to look at how genes actually work.

If nothing else, a simple starting idea would be to look at the general population and say “what is the most common eye colour here” and “what is the most common hair colour” and if your fankid is from that area, that’s probably the most dominant gene, over others.

When creating my own fankids mentioned above, my idea went that blue is an eye colour that tends to be dominant, and red hair tends to come through even just by making dark hair lighter. 

That said, hair and eye colour aren’t all you should be thinking about!

Other things that should be thinking about are: how tall are they? what shape are their eyes? Does the structure of their face take more after one parent than the other, no matter their eye/hair colour? Do they have any markings on their body (moles, birthmarks, etc), and if so are they shared with other family members? Are their features they share with family members who aren’t their parents (i.e, a sister, an uncle, a great-grandparent)? 

As they grow up, do they get taller or stay shorter than their parents? In terms of their body, do they become muscular, or not, and if so, why? Do they become fat, or thin? 

Does their health impact on the way that their body looks? This can mean both disability in terms of walking around with a cane, using a wheelchair, or any number of other things.

Do they change their body in any way? Do they choose to add tattoos, or is something done to them in some other way? Do they have any scars? Would they want to share those scars with other people, or would they choose to hide them away?

5 - How canon affects them, and how they affect canon.

Whether or not your fankid grows up before, during, or after canon events makes a difference. If it’s “before/during” then you’re going to have to think of the consequences of that on both them and their parents, but also everyone else. This isn’t just “add in a kid, aren’t they cute” this is an entire new character, with the capability to become a loose cannon and change canon events.

Things can change. That’s something you’ve got to think about, and accept, the moment you want to add this new character into things. Are you willing to change things, and if so, how far?

The kinds of changes can generally be divided into two categories: internal, and external.

Internal changes are the ways that the characters change mentally and emotionally in response to a child (their child, even) being present. In one of my stories, I change very little on an external level, but the focus is on the internal side of things, as the father of this child faces the idea that he might have lost his son, and how that makes him feel when going into a dangerous situation he may not come back from. Other characters might not see any difference, but the internal conflict is there.

External changes are the big ones, where the child being present - and, by extension, the child’s backstory and its knock-on effects - affect the present, and cause things to change in visible ways. This can mean anything from “the pairing’s child has wandered into a dangerous area filled with plot, and needs to be rescued” to “the plot has found the child” or even just “the parents have relationship issues to sort out, and that changes the plot.”

Things to think of here are - aside from “how old is this kid” as you might have come up with a kid that by this point is an adult as far as I know - how active is this kid? Are they happy to stay put and not affect things, or dot hey have insatiable curiosity and the need to do something? Do they stumble into the plot without being aware of it, do they go seek it out, or does it find them? How much danger does this put them in? If it does put them in danger, how do they deal with that, and how do their parents (or single parent) deal with that? If no danger at all, do they have fun, or are they stressed?

6 - Interactions with the rest of the cast.

Honestly, my main point here is, not everyone is going to react to a kid the same way. Just because they’re cute doesn’t mean everyone’s going to like them! And no, that doesn’t mean they’re evil. And sometimes, even the “evil” characters might handle kids better than some “good” characters. In fact, some “good” characters might do so badly with kids that they make them cry, and that doesn’t make them any less “good.” It just makes them bad at handling kids.

Otherwise, how does the kid fare with the other members of the cast, in general and specifically?

Is there anyone that they like in particular? If so, why? Did that person look nice, did they give them their favourite food? Did they do something special? What did they do to become friends?

Likewise, is there anyone they dislike in particular? What did they do to deserve that? Were they mean on purpose, or did they become disliked by means of an accident or miscommunication? Is it that this person raises their voice and the kid doesn’t like raised voices, or they don’t talk loudly enough?

Depending on the situation with the child’s parents, they might prefer people who are positive toward their parents, or who are negative toward their parents. Because let’s not forget those who don’t like being compared, and those who have parents who aren’t any good. For instance, is the child’s parent a villain in their setting? Are they thought of as a villain? Are they a criminal, or on the side of the law, and regardless of which that is, does the child agree with them, and how does that affect their relationships with others who agree or disagree with that parent?

If your fankid, for example, was mistreated by a certain set of people when they were younger, then how does that relate to later on in life, or the canon cast? My Satoko’s backstory involves medical abuse, which makes her wary of doctors scientists, and things that would remind her (even subconsciously) of that setting. Two of the characters in the cast are medically trained. Her interactions with them are going to be affected by that, even if she grows to like and trust them.

In conclusion: a fan kid can be a fun five minute thing, but if you only put five minutes’ thought into their design, their backstory, and their personality, then you’re only going to get the same view of them as a sketch compared to the time it takes to fully line and colour a work of art. 

If you want to write them, or create a full comic with them, you have to ask yourself questions about who they are, and also who you want them to be. If you want them to be a fully rounded person, then you have to put the time into it. And, really, that if this kid starts acting in ways you don’t expect, but that work, just... listen to that.

[terfslying]

Terfs just found out about bodily integrity identity disorder (which has occured only a few hundred times) and comparing it to being trans (of which there are millions). Now they think someone wanting to be called by their preferred pronouns and getting a shot menopausal women get is literally the same as getting a leg amputated. At least now they understand that transgender people have neurology different from cis people, but they still deny that gender identity is innate in all other discourse

Ooof that inappropriate comparison does bring a real catch-22!

Bodily integrity identity disorder is pretty much defined by the fact that quality of life improves when the person gains the ‘disability’ that their brain expects. I quote: “Next to surgery there is no effective management strategy at present but the sheer acknowledgement of and respect for the desires of BIID individuals may decrease the huge burden of BIID on their lives.” (x)

If GDD is like BIID then surely the logical conclusion is that the only effective management strategy at present is ‘unnecessary’ surgery (which vastly increases quality of life) or at least acknowledging and respecting trans’ people?

I don’t see anyone going “BIID is like gender dysphoria so the best solution is non-affirming therapy to convince them they’re not disabled”. Why would it work the other way?

[modernidolater]

TW: Violence, dark humor, all that jazz. Go no further, angry shit, yadda.

So, yanno...i'm just gonna yell into the void about something.

When i was very young, I read a lot of encyclopedias. Most of my knowledge of the world was attributable to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which my mother kept because well, a home should have a nice, impressive looking set of books. Along with a bunch of other old books that just...really weren't the best choice for a regressive anti-technology apocalyptic fundamentalist cult, but then, as we used to joke, my mother doesn't have to make sense, she just has to make decisions.

So, I eventually started plumbing the depths to try and figure out "what the hell is wrong with my family."

While i didn't get an answer about my family in general, I did note that i seemed to be oddly suited to the definition of "psychopath," minus the whole "being a problem for society at large" thing. Asocial, low empathy, lack of guilt, inability to plan cohesively, difficulty conceptualizing consequences, near total lack of emotions except curiosity and rage, both of which are carefully stifled, aggressive tendencies...frankly, I look at my younger siblings and i can definitely assure anyone that asks that had I not been raised quite far away from society, or if I'd stayed in the cult, I would most definitely have been a problem for society.

But psychopaths are *monsters,* you see. They're so, so bad, you see. Everyone assured me, at great length, that I couldn't be that, no, no sirree. I was too nice. Too kind. I didn't punch people nearly often enough (largely because I don't like being punched outside of sex, and I like to be in charge of where I'm being punched, and even that mostly cause I'm kinda badly out together physically, but that's aside the point.)

I wasn't *hate-able.* My empathy was too high.

On that last note, I have spoken elsewhere and i believe here regarding my empathy. My empathy is specifically a learned skill picked up by reading Edgar Allen Poe's Auguste Dupin stories. Dupin explains his near preternatural ability to get inside people's heads by his learned skill of micro-mimicking body and facial language and then analyzing what he feels when he copies someone else. Works absolute wonders, particularly as up to that point (i was 8-9), I was using the classical technique of provoking and hurting people around me to experimentally figure out how other people worked. Admittedly, it's somewhat like recording a speech and listening to it at the lwvel of a whisper in a crowded room, but then mimicry is far less likely to get you punched, and see previous for my feelings on getting punched.

But now i had, for all intent, a system to demonstrate empathy. Thanks to my mother's abuse, I had a complete paranoid delusion aping guilt. I could check plans past others, and once I got my hands on Google at 14, I had the capacity to directly look up what the general, societal consequences of most actions were and model behaviors that achieved my ends. I further had 18 years of direct training in mind control and manipulation, thanks to my cult.

You may notice that what you just read sounds like the origin story of a serial killer. Ape people around them to avoid detection, paranoia making them scrupulous enough to not get caught, and careful study of laws to find the lines, plus a hyper manipulative persona.

Roll with me here. This continues forward.

So, i'm out and about, 2, 5, 6 years free of my cult. I have married a self avowed psychopath who actually HAS been diagnosed with antisocial disorder thanks to a teenage habit of theft and punching people. He is fairly sure I am not one, since I perform guilt and empathy fantastically, by rote at this point. I literally have days that my face hurts from faking emotions for too long, i am slowly developing agoraphobia because there are far too many people to mimic in a retail job, and my guilt subroutine is just a voice chanting in my head, "they're coming to get you, don't fuck up" 24/7 to the point that i am developing hallucinations, but yeah. It's definitely not psychopathy. At this point, that's just ASPD, and i'm just too darn social. Never that. I'm no monster, you see. I'm "nice."

About this point, I have learned to use mind control techniques to help people, carefully applying them with direct permission to help people open up and discuss problems. My near preternatural ability to get into people's heads, my ability to find information, and my absolute lack of fucks about morals (thus making me wildly nonjudgemental), makes me the go-to confidant for many of my friends. This neatly surrounds me with people that can smooth my life out, but you can't tell people you're friends with them cause the world is made of grey paste and you're deathly bored 24/7 and being allowed to pick through people's minds and help them optimize is the closest you get to not wanting to shoot yourself or others. Or that you carefully maintain contact with people so you can check and make sure you're not doing anything jail worthy. Or that a large group to mimic lets you blend in easier, and finding one that also is transgressive, but socially permissable (thanks, kink) blows off some steam.

Of course, people that don't know me find me deeply off-putting, as I am at this point rapidly learning to turn off the mimicry when not immediately interacting with people. This results in me appearing utterly emotionless, but as soon as people talk to me, bing, back on. I had also joined the kink subculture, giving my hedonistic and transgressive sides an outlet.

I'd also gone to the trouble of getting a multifaceted degree. Ostensibly, my degree is "multimedia journalism." If you aren't aware, this means I have a degree in research, interpersonal communication, public speaking, written communication, mass communication, some psychology, critical thinking, media creation and analysis. In short, I have the literal perfect degree for figuring out, communicating with, and functionally understanding people, as well as a vastly enhanced ability to locate obscure information.

Fast forward again. Three mental breakdowns, four years of therapy, poking at my gender, figuring out a lot of mental health problems, and a rotating series of diagnoses, life is...slowly improving. I've left a toxic marriage (toxic on both sides), moved to a completely new place, started over. I have sort of resigned myself to focusing on my (admittedly annoyingly complex and wide ranging) physical disabilities.

And it comes up, in talking to my partner, that his adoptive mother displayed (she's dead) quite a few signs of ASPD. And he asks curiously if there's any connection between ADHD, autism, and ASPD, mainly cause the "personality disorder" part. PD's can, with long or early exposure, sometimes be passed on, you see.

Guess what's being studied, right now? Not a connection between ASPD and ADHD. A connection between psychopathy and ADHD. Wait, but I thought psychopathy wasn't a thing, says I? I thought there was only ASPD, now?

Ah, but for you see, the DSM is a load of horseshit. And i have heard that from multiple communities with different relations to it, and from multiple therapists, psychiatrists, professors...as a general rule, when the people who use it, the people it's used on, and the people who teach it all agree that a document is manure, I get a touch distrustful. I get more so when current studies use umbrella terms disavowed by a document known for being reductivist and that has been noted as having a great number of entries that were manipulated deliberately to make them as narrow and unusable as possible.

So anyway.

Turns out that while no, ADHD and Autism don't make you a psychopath, there's a distinct overlap. Empathy issues are a possiblity in all three, though both ADHD and autism can create *hyper*empathy. Inability to navigate social constructs is another point of overlap.

But really, it's the serotonin deficiency that hurls it across the line for me. And the genetic factors. Can psychopathy result from environment? Yeah, seems so. But there does seem to be a genetic and neurochemical component. Which is...curious for a disorder presented as purely a traumatic abreaction that creates dangerous amorals.

I then looked it up. And wouldn't you know, psychopathy is only pathologized as ASPD/APD, and DPD? The former is the sort of psychopathy that is characterized by violent amd criminal antisocial behavior, and the other an inability to understand and perform social mores at all. But this is the DSM, so these are of course diagnosed by problems caused for others as a first line.

Violation of societal norms, lack of emotions other than rage, aggression...it's almost like the same people that named a serotonin and function deficiency Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to enshrine the disorder only by those aspects that make neurotypical people uncomfortable rather than seeking to help the neurodivergent person, the same people that invented torturous behavioral correction therapies to "fix" the neurodivergent person? Those strike me as people that might possibly have looked a serotonin deficiency that causes rage, limited emotions, impulsivity, difficulty conceptualizing consequence, and potentially a hell of a lot of other fun side shit and decided to call that "Doesn't get along with others well" disorder.

What really kicks it in the teeth for me, however, is that psychopathy used to mean more than "a social pariah." You see, Theodore Millon, the guy that wrote the book on personality disorders, noted between 5 and 10 subtypes. Do you know what they are?

Nomadic

(including schizoid and avoidant features)

Drifters; roamers, vagrants; adventurer, itinerant vagabonds, tramps, wanderers; they typically adapt easily in difficult situations, shrewd and impulsive. Mood centers in doom and invincibility

Malevolent

(including sadistic and paranoid features)

Belligerent, mordant, rancorous, vicious, sadistic, malignant, brutal, resentful; anticipates betrayal and punishment; desires revenge; truculent, callous, fearless; guiltless; many dangerous criminals, including serial killers.

Covetous

(including negativistic features) Rapacious, begrudging, discontentedly yearning; hostile and domineering; envious, avaricious; pleasures more in taking than in having.

Risk-taking

(including histrionic features) Dauntless, venturesome, intrepid, bold, audacious, daring; reckless, foolhardy, heedless; unfazed by hazard; pursues perilous ventures.

Reputation-defending 

(including narcissistic features) Needs to be thought of as infallible, unbreakable, indomitable, formidable, inviolable; intransigent when status is questioned; overreactive to slights.

(It should be noted: the features listed above are simply what each presentation is most likely to display if disordered. A reputation-defender may not display narcissm, a risk taker may not be histrionic. A malevolent [what a terribly judgy name...] could be negativistic, or avoidant, or histrionic. And so on.)

Now, ya may be going, "wait, hold up, narcissism is on there! We still have that! Schizoid is on there, we have that! Sadism, paranoia, we got all those things!"

Flash quiz: do you know what a personality disorder is? It's a series of learned behaviors that require moderation and unlearning.

Why yes, they did spin multiple neurotypes off into diagnoses that require behavioral therapy to "fix." Why on earth would you think they wouldn't? They're still trying to use reparative therapy on auties. Hell, near as I can figure, histrionic got spun into Borderline Personality disorder. You know what the therapy for that is? DBT, aka, "it IS your fault and you SHOULD feel bad."

Beyond knowing there used to be different flavors, did you know that there is about a millionty scare articles about how psychopaths are everywhere? Guess why.

What do you get when someone has an absolute need to see what's on the other side of the hill and no real fucks to give about how you get there? You get scientists, explorers, people utterly driven to find out. Think about how many of our science and exploration heros are noted as deeply weird and off-kilter. We have whole stereotypes about this. There are books and articles devoted to the transgressive personas and behaviors of famous scientists and explorers.

What do you get when someone is belligerent, paranoid, truculent, violent, fearless? Snipers. Literally. The army has openly stated they like psychopaths quite a lot. Someone that can look at a map of human lives and commit calculus with the phrase "acceptable losses" makes a damn fine general, wouldn't you say? Hunters, too. Make a good king? Or bounty hunter. Or, if we're going to be honest, a martial artist. Hell, think of all the ways our society accepts violence in real terms and symbolically. Management. Video gamer. Espionage. Actuary. Pest control. There are THOUSANDS of of societal uses for people like this.

Covetous? Well, banks are openly quite loving towards psychopaths. CEOs are indicated here. Businessmen. Fandoms with collection as a function have any number of anecdotes of individuals who have an intense drive to get more. "Focused on the chase, rather than the victory, to the exclusion of all else" is considered a positive, laudable personality trait. To put it in other terms, "can't stop, won't stop, never done." Sports players, yes? Football, rugby, hockey...

Risk takers are the real standouts, in terms of societal love. Doctors. Firemen. EMT's. Skydivers. Extreme sports players. Equipment testers. The list goes on. Society loves risk taking psychopaths. Hell, look at the diagnostic criterion up there: it's mostly traits with high positive connotations.

Reputation defending? Politics. Law. Advertising. Acting. Writing. Religion. Leadership of any kind.

I'm not talking out my ass here. All those fields have been noted as friendly towards, attractive to, and having a high representation of people who fit the behavioral model of psychopath.

But only if they're useful. Like literally every other non-normative neurotype.

Society loves ADHD and autistic people when they're displaying savant abilities or when they can mask well enough to use their sensory and cognitive differences to societal ends.

And if they're a problem for people around them, that's treated. The underlying difficulties? The societal structures that punish and harm them? The pain of adapting their entire neurobiome to do all the work of interfacing with different neurotypes while being driven to harness anything useful and discard the rest of their brain? No, we don't treat that. That's just the price of doing business. "Pull yourself up and don't be a problem."

And here's the problem, in plain terms: psychopaths who learn to cope, to mask, to adapt like I did are never diagnosed. I have spent most of my life fairly concerned about the fact that I seem not to have emotions or compunction, that i am always consciously working to figure out and connect to people around me on the most basic level, that I am constantly working to keep an active model of social norms going at all times. And I don't mean "shake hands, eye contact." I mean I have the same mental conversation regarding "don't shoot that person" and "use a turn signal." All prosocial behaviors, all social behaviors period, are a struggle to understand.

The funny thing is, it also makes antisocial behaviors difficult. Shooting someone seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Regardless of whether I care about getting caught or not, shooting somone will interrupt my day.

Not shooting them also seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Yes, it'd be a pain in the ass to shoot them, but then again, if I do it correctly, I only have to do it once.

But again, "correctly" is a wildly unfixed variable, and the whole question won't come up if I always ensure I fail the "do i currently have a firearm" step. And I don't. Ever.

That's how my brain works. Y'all go on about moral and ethical and legal reasons. That's an exhausting conscious mental conversation to have every other day, so my shortcut is:

"Should I shoot them? Oh, right, I don't have a gun. Guess not. Should I get one? No, cause I might shoot someone, and that'd be a pain in the ass. Welp, no shooting people."

And so it goes. I don't understand any social norms. Good or bad. I have all the problematic issues still, mind you. Environmental factors. I mimic and I was raised in an apocalypse cult in Oklahoma. I spend a lot of brain space sorting between prosocial behaviors and the violent antisocial behaviors I was taught were prosocial.

Because, you see, I can't really understand the prosocial behaviors, but I can see they work. And antisocial behaviors don't, really. Have i impulsively pocketed something? Couple times. Even got away with. Can't steal a house, though. And theft gets boring, for me.

Ok, except piracy. I may quite enjoy piracy.

Cooperation with a larger whole can and does yield benefits. Forcing myself to sit through mind numbing gratification delays does seem to yield results that are beneficial, though I really try to keep that one to a minimum. I refuse to be bored if I can help it. Making nice talky sounds gets me shit faster than making angry talky sounds.

Possibly this is a result if being raised manipulative. No idea. Kinda don't care.

Point is, I'm one of the psychopaths that, while not immediately useful, is also not actively a problem. So no-one will listen when i talk about everything being gray and cold and exhaustingly complicated because people make no sense and almost all my emotions are dialed so far down it's a joke i lack the ability to laugh about.

No one has believed me that the one emotion I have in spades is rage and that i have to literally consciously work out from first principles why violence is a bad option as my sole method of controlling that, my ONLY EMOTION OF ANY STRENGTH, which I cannot allow myself to feel for any length of time because I start losing sight of that consequence model and I worry i'll make a mistake I can't unmake. Or that it took me two decades to learn not to smash things I need when someone looks at me funny. Or just smash them.

Or that i have to keep my hands in my pockets and chant "don't steal" in my head some days. That I wear tight clothing with shallow pockets to make stealing harder so that, like guns, I simply can't do it easily and therefore short circuit my behaviors.

People are more than happy to hurl me at any problem that requires a lack of emotion, but if I dare to be less than appropriately emotional on a date? At a wedding? Funeral? If I make an error and don't diagnose it myself and perform contrition appropriately, regardless of if I knew there was a social or personal rule there? Well, I'm fired/broken up with/punished/evicted.

But I am not actively a problem for society. So none of those things are worth diagnosing. Or helping in any way.

And those that are useful? Are often fed utter horseshit and encouraged to break society. Bankers creating recessions. Generals commanding useless wars. Cops. Doctors that uphold a broken system. Politicians that pursue a broken society.

I know, I can see, that ASPD people catch a shit ton of shit cause they get blamed for "useful" psychopaths mistakes, and none of the benefits when said same psychopaths are lionized. Looking back at what it was, and what it is now, pathologically speaking, it makes perfect fucking sense for the asshats that designed a diagnosis to only include the people they don't like as the "sick" ones, and label the "good" ones as "heroes." Makes a nice distinction there between people we want to demonize and people we want to lionize for having the exact same chemical imbalance, and neatly creates a fall group when any of the "heroes" trip up. Silence those who can't cope, elevate those that can, treat neither effectively, and if an elevated one stops coping, we can just "realize" they were "sick" all along, and oh, yeah, those sick people are so bad, you guys, nothing like those heroes at allllllll.

I am...so tired of this society bullshit.

So anyway, I'm a psychopath. Paranoid, some schizoid. So whatever grains of salt you feel like taking, grab 'em, I guess. I'd mostly like for people like me to stop being weaponized, lionized, or punished for having a different neurotype. I'd like to be able to talk to a doctor about that and for there to be some options beyond "stop that," "get locked up," "have you considered the army" (yes, a doctor actually asked me that as a teenager) or "you seem fine, tho."

And if you resonate with this, well...I'm 32, never been arrested, mostly managed to avoid terrible shit, and I've got a life, couple partners, and I'm surviving, so like. You can do this. Lotta people wanna tell you you can't have this or that cause "you're not bad, tho." They're stupid. Y'ain't evil, just different. Don't let them get to you.

And (this is a joke) if you decide to shoot someone, do it once, correctly. Saves time.

[lunarssong]

I feel like this should go here, too. (Post is being written by Sieglinde, @punkroselalonde.)

(Transcript below the cut.)

I think we've talked about this here before, but I don't think I have, and we left the house twice in the past week or two, so I'm thinking about it again.

The difference in how people treat you with a cane and how they treat you without one is shocking. We're getting used to the new treatment now, but it's still so different.

The one time we rode the bus, it was a vastly different experience, even ignoring the changes due to COVID. In a thrift store, an elderly shopper was very apologetic for accidentally getting in our way.

In Hot Topic, an employee moved a chair out of our way, and other shoppers were also much more apologetic/accommodating/polite than strangers tend to be.

In a Walmart, when we saw a visibly distressed, shivering, and alone dog wearing a service dog vest, who was trying very hard to get our attention, and sat with him to try to help him out until someone came back + sent our sibling off to go look for our parent, because I was just at a loss for what to do, and was really concerned about whoever he was supposed to be with, though he was acting off-duty, since he still had a vest on.

People passing by assumed that he was ours. (For anyone else also concerned, Henry was the service dog of the late girlfriend of the man he was there with, and he was shivering because he'd come inside while it was raining. So, very reasonable explanation he was cold, and wasn't with whoever needed him.)

I also believe we've been semi-followed by employees in stores as of late, though not with ill intent. They just really want to help us and make sure we're finding everything okay so much more than they used to.

There's also been concerned looks when whoever we're with walks off someplace else (usually our sibling) and we stay, because we realized we needed a basket or buggy or something and didn't want to walk all the way over and back, and prefer to wait.

On the topic of the bus - The driver asked if we wanted the bus lowered when we were getting off, and began to lower it before we could automatically respond with "No, it's fine" from the "don't be an inconvenience" instincts.

It's not necessarily *bad* that people are being more accomodating of us now, just.. new.

We've always had invisible disabilities most of the time, aside from when we can't suppress tics or fully mask, which is terrifying, but doing it is so uncomfortable and exhausting, so that's a different situation, or sometimes for the few moments it takes to get out and use our inhaler before putting it away again, but no one actually treats asthma like the physical disability it is.

There are a lot of other things/places I'm honestly almost excited to do/go, just out of curiosity about what ways people will treat us differently now.

The soonest one is sometime this month, I forget exactly when. We're going to finally get vaccinated for COVID. Of course, the majority of people there will also be disabled, which is also pretty interesting to think about - We've never actually been in a space with primarily only disabled people present before.

But, that factor might mean less of the aggressively accomodating behavior than we generally get in public now, at least from other patients/patrons/etc. Employees, though, I suspect may still act roughly the same way.

I guess my interest in this is probably some kind of psychology thing. I know @iris-sylph-of-mind finds it interesting, too, and they're the one in our system with a reputation for literally taking notes on headmates' behaviors, tone, body language, moods, motivations, etc, and she also likes to do a lot on Fear alignment and classpect/sway, the connections between them, and assigning them to people, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's something similar.

Ramble over, I think.

[autismisaokay]

The finalized version of the autistic vocabulary that was posted in my school’s newsletter. I’d like to thank everyone who helped contribute to this and can help explain terminology to those in need.

Autistic Vocabulary

The English vocabulary is vastly different than how it was thirty-eight years ago. It’s even different than it was ten years ago. If you were being bullied in the eighties it would be a “grody” situation. Nowadays it would simply be referred to as a “hot mess”.  Autistic vocabulary is no different, we have our new words too, to help not only explain autistic behavior. For the way that some of us may or may not like to be called by. Terminology for non-autistic people too that we can use and call them by. This article will be a chance to learn that terminology and perhaps broaden other’s vocabulary.

#actuallyautistic-  A safe space tag for people on the spectrum that isn’t for people who do not have autism. It’s a way for speaking our own truths in the community that has a better time for the most part at understanding us. This tag can be found on popular social media sites/apps such as Tumblr Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and so on.

#autism acceptance- A large quantity of the masses are already aware of autism to an extent. What this tag is trying to explain is that we need more acceptance for who we are as people and in society.

#redinstead- If you see this tag it means a person is against Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks uses #light it up blue for their brand of autism awareness. This tag is made by an autistic person to be used by autistics and allies to promote autism acceptance.

Ableism/Ableist- (aye-bal-ism or aye-bal-ist)  A person who defines a disabled person on what they can and cannot do. Or if they are even disabled at all. They can have little to no prior knowledge or be a friend/partner/family and do this to a person. They view disabled people on their worth and what they can and can’t do from their perspective.

Neurodiversity- (nur-o-div-er-isty) A neuro difference of the human brain compared to most brains. It is a viewpoint backed by scientists. Neurodiverse brains are variants of the human genome. There is a movement going on right now called the Neurodiverse Movement which is all being categorized as an Autism Rights Movement and a civil rights movement. Fighting for more accommodations and better treatment such as technologies, home care, medical help, monetary support educational support and help with discriminations.

“Nothing about us without us”-  Started by the Disabled Movement in rallying for rights and support. This statement is the catchphrase for ASAN the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. It’s pretty self-explanatory in meaning if it’s not backed by an autistic people you probably shouldn’t be using/apart of it.

Stim/Stimming (St-im) (stim-ing)- Self soothing repetitive habits that help calm down autistic people. It should be noted that not only autistic people stim but people with ADHD do too and anyone can stim. Which was why the fidget spinner and fidget box phase was going so well because stimming helps not only regulate the body but help you focus as well. The technical terminology is self-stimulatory behavior. It could be a bodily motion by spinning, hand flapping, chewing, hair twirling, pen clicking, there is no specific way to stim. Some may be more common than others. There can be more subtle ways to stim such as visual and auditory. You could listen to certain songs over and over again or only one song but reputedly. Looking at certain pictures on your phone might help too. These are the only some of the wide range of stim’s culture that can be interpreted in many different ways that can be gratifying.

Spoons/Spoon theory- Spoon theory was originally used to describe chronic illnesses by Christine Miserandino but has branched out in supporting people with mental illnesses and autistics with an explanation. The explanation of our energy on mental, social, and physical and how it works.

They are used as a representation of how much energy we have throughout to day-to-do certain tasks. If someone only woke up with twenty spoons they would have to manage how many they used throughout the day. 5 for getting dressed, 1 for making breakfast, and so on and so forth. Once you run out it’s just that you’ve run out and we can’t get our energy back or push through like many other people. We have to take a rest and trying to get it back by stimming, taking part in a special interest, or just taking a five-minute sit in a dim quite area. Sometimes depending on how much energy was expended that may not even help. So that’s why it’s important to plan carefully on how we use them and know prior to what we are doing.

Scripting- Scripting is when an autistic person has practiced a certain set of words or phrases to say in social interactions. It can be used for a variety of circumstances when getting through the social world.

Example:  Barb has a hard time ordering food at Mcdonald’s at the cash register her words become jumbled, anxious, and she forgets what she wants to order and becomes silent. Barb has been practicing the same phrase prior in the mirror for five minutes before she came to McDonald's. Barb has remembered her order and was able to communicate what she wanted.

SpIn- (sp-in) It’s just a shorter way of saying Special Interest.

Twice exceptional or 2e- A term in the educational field for people with learning and mental disabilities. It refers to “gifts” they have such as the things they excel in (reading, math, art, so on) and their disabilities.

Allistic- (allie-is-tic) Specifically means to not be autistic.

Masking- Commonly seen as a female presenting autism trait but any orientation with autism can do it. It’s when an autistic person masks their autistic traits in order to blend in with the world around them. It can help them with getting friendships, family, jobs, and even relationships. In the long haul, masking is unhealthy and leads to more psychological problems then it does good.

[streamworthytv]

“Ableism as Plot Device” in Netflix’s “Locke & Key”

So...as noted, I have a beef with Locke & Key, and the way certain characters were handled in the show (remember, this has nothing to do with the comic, which I haven’t seen...I have no idea if it’s fraught with the same problems).

I first watched the show as part of my Streamworthy TV venture (currently set up & being fleshed out on FB/IG/Twitter/Tumblr & Snapchat, with YouTube in progress...give me a follow, if you care to help someone AWESOME, that can’t work a traditional job...even part time). I myself am on the spectrum, and have mobility issues that require a chair often, due to EDS. So just putting it out there that people without these issues may not immediately have noticed the problems that I’ll be mentioning...but if you’ve seen the show, you’ll know what I’m talking about (you can also see my other, previous post on general crappiness, as well as LGBTQ issues, that are present in the show).

But this post will focus on ableism, and misrepresentation of neurodiversity and disability. (Please know that this is a PURPOSEFUL separation, as I don’t see my OWN Aspieness as a “disability,” but rather, an advantage. **I know that not all people may feel that way;** however, those of us that benefit from/appreciate the autistic aspects of ourselves ALSO have the right to not see autism as a “disability.” Autism is different for everyone, and thus it shouldn’t be forced into the box of “disability.” (Example: my hyperlexia from a young age served me VERY well with reading, writing papers, and test taking, for many, many years. But back to Locke & Key.)

The reason I brought up the above point was because, through the first season, L&K uses the “autism as disability only” angle, which many of us in the ASD community are used to seeing (and being annoyed by). And despite ZERO character development over the course of the series, I’ve seen “AUTISM AS PLOT DEVICE” employed THREE times, at LEAST. I was dragging through the show, annoyed at the portrayal and usage of the character, as well as a different character, who is wheelchair-using, and nonverbal. But suddenly the “realization of ableism” bolt hit me about the larger problems with the portrayals and usage of ASD here - and I got PISSED.

Maybe we have interests that may SEEM to others to “not be age appropriate” (...when, give me a break, how many NT adults/older teens love stories or movies from comics, or collect Funkos, or went hunting for Pokémon...? It’s NOT just us, y’all). Also, older kids CAN INDEED hang out with younger kids in a mentor-type way, without it being a situation of “welp, ASD = emotionally stunted, so character only hangs out with young child.” But those tropes aren’t enough.

We DON’T innocently extrapolate situations outside our head (in front of others!), ESPECIALLY if it breaks a safety rule we were told, i.e., “well, my mom said I’m not supposed to say if I’m home alone...but you’re a friend, so...no, she’s not here.” Before you tell me otherwise, keep this point in mind - if we have the ability to be home alone, SAFELY taking care of ourselves...then we wouldn’t slip like that. NOPE. If we DID, it wouldn’t BE safe for us to be home by ourselves.

As well, if we REALLY care about an item, we don’t let it go missing (the ASD character doesn’t, but someone else uses said character’s autism to blame for “needing to go looking for the toys he left behind, then got ‘upset’ about,” - also inferring a “meltdown” - every time she needs to go to someone’s else’s house). **If something is related to one of our SpIns (special interests), we DON’T MISPLACE THOSE ITEMS HAPHAZARDLY!!** I’ve been that way since I was a kid. Ugh!!! You also see someone destroy one of his treasured items, just to be cruel. This shows us how important the items are to the character...so he WOULDN’T be forgetting them.

So, we see a mother using tropes of her son’s autism, to manipulate herself into certain important areas/situations, more than once. That, and the fact that the character with ASD is able to let someone know they were home alone when a crime occurred (thus making the person that lives with them a suspect), because of their completely unrealistic, verbalized musing of “the ASD thought process”...mix it all in with the total lack of character development, and you come to the final conclusion:

“This character is only here as a plot device. They’ve been given zero character development, and have been shown JUST enough to ESTABLISH THAT THEY ARE NEURODIVERSE, and then are thereafter ONLY in ways that FURTHER THE PLOT...in ways that would only occur BECAUSE the character is neurodiverse.”

So yeah. This is lazy writing of the worst degree, and I’m more than a little annoyed. I’m sick and tired of “DISABILITY AS PROP OR PLOT DEVICE” (whether that disability is a assumed or not), as well as disabled or neurodiverse characters ONLY being shown as tropes. This does a disservice to not only the ASD community, but to society as a whole; people will expect us to act a certain way, and not be understanding of those that are “higher functioning” - for lack of a better term - than those that are portrayed on television. As well, it’s part of the reason why females with autism are still VASTLY under-diagnosed (as they can have VASTLY different presentation). Not only do people get used to seeing a particular suite of “symptoms,” which they equate to ALL people on the spectrum...but those shown in media are almost NEVER female.

I’m not sure if the comic is set up this way as well, and it’s just poorly executed on TV...but I’m peeved AF😡 There is also the poor acting/treatment of the wheelchair-using, institutionalized character, & how her being non-verbal is ALSO used to further the plot (yikes, my hands are shot...but I’ll get out what I can, here).

I’ve worked with MANY non-verbal children (it was actually my specialty, before physical & mental health issues of my own)...and I’ve also had my OWN bouts of being non-verbal, due to trauma/illness. On BOTH sides, I have always found a way to communicate. Even when my Dad was on a ventilator and life support (mostly for breathing/kidney function, due to sepsis...we sadly lost him a few weeks later), I was able to communicate with him...because, with my background, I saw that he was able to respond with the wiggling of a toe, or squeezing of a hand.

So the use of a non-verbal character that “can’t tell her important secrets,” as another necessary part of the plot, is just MORE lazy, insulting, ableist scriptwriting. The character is NOT catatonic, and is aware of what’s going on all around them; so, by what you see in all interactions with her, it makes you wonder what’s happening to her when she doesn’t have visitors. Is she just rolled into a back room, or off to the side, where no one gives her ANY adaptive equipment?

Any research would show that one with speech issues can build sentences with an eye-gaze machine, or even eye-gaze itself, with symbols. I’d like to think that in real life, a CENTER for those that are disabled, of all places(!!!), would have at least ONE of those machines, or some other means of communication, available.

This is another point that is sad for society at large to view, as it makes people think that they “shouldn’t bother with” people that are non-verbal, as there’s “no way” to let them be part of communication, besides the method used in the show (which I have used as well, but you would think this poor character would be getting SOME type help/services/etc!) It was just CRINGEWORTHY AF...I’m SO sick of shows/movies where someone needs to address someone thrown in the back of an institution alone, to rot (off the top of my head, I remember this from “Dark” on Netflix, as well as on “Orphan Black,” amongst others).

So...yea. I just wanted to post this, for if anyone asks for a link, or anyone stumbles across this, and themselves saw these issues, and got upset. Trust me - it wasn’t just you. This is a comic that was supposedly quite successful...the television adaptation of this could’ve been MUCH better. If there were tropes of other marginalized groups in the comic, you can be SURE that those would be righted for TV. But the ableist train keeping chugging right along, as more people than EVER claim to be “woke”🙄 YIKES.

[jbk405]

Y’know, this rant’s about ten years out of date, but I’ve got to get it off my chest: I am not happy with the way Stargate Atlantis wrote the defeat of the Ancients by the Wraith 10,000 years ago.  It just doesn’t make sense.

As introduced and explained in “Rising”, the SGA premier episode, the Wraith are supposed to have technology that “rivaled” the Ancients (The Ancients’ own words).  This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s superior -- or even directly equal -- to Ancient technology, since it’s also established that the Wraith had vastly superior numbers in the war with the Ancients, but to say the Wraith ‘rival’ the Ancients then it’s got to be at least in the same ballpark.  However, as shown throughout the series, the Wraith not only aren’t in the same ballpark as the Ancients, they’re not even in the same sport.  They’re so far behind that it’s not like comparing a jet fighter to a prop fighter, it’s like comparing a jet to a glider.

Hell, in some areas the Wraith are even technologically deficient when compared to the Goa’uld, the technological scavengers who were outpaced by modern-day Earth after only eight years of research and development.  Wraith hyperdrives are less efficient and slower than Goa’uld ships, and they seem to lack any frontline military shielding technology.  As we see throughout SGA, an attack that a Goa’uld Ha’tak literally shrugged off without concern in their first attack on Earth (SG1 “The Serpent’s Lair”) is capable of disabling (Effectively destroying) a Wraith Hive Ship in one hit.  There are some areas where the Wraith in fact are more advanced than the Goa’uld, but still....come on.

Much is made in the episode “Underground” of the fact that there are at least 60 Hive Ships throughout the galaxy, which is certainly a threat to the resource-strapped and isolated Atlantis expedition, but once we see how (relatively) weak they are it becomes almost laughable to think that this force defeated the Ancients at the height of their power.  During the Battle of Antarctica in “Lost City” (SG1 season 7) a single Ancient chair platform was shown to be able to destroy thirty Ha’taks in a single stroke, so I cannot help but wonder why sixty Wraith ships should prove at all difficult when you add in the extensive satellite defense network the Ancients were known to possess.  You can also add whatever mobile units they had; with their power I can’t imagine it would take more than five Ancient ships to destroy the entire Wraith fleet.

As SGA continued and this clear preponderance of power became obvious to everyone, even the writers, they started writing in explanations and justifications for how it happened.  They had stories about how the Wraith used cleverness and trickery to out think the Ancients, who had become complacent in their power.  They implied that the Wraith at the time of the war had much greater forces that they have disposed of in the intervening years after resources became scarce.  Ultimately, it was revealed that the Wraith used stolen Ancient technology to rapidly increase their numbers and overwhelm the Ancients unexpectedly.  Etc.  But none of these really work once you examine them critically: Yes the Ancients were arrogant (This is a recurring theme of the series), but the war lasted for over a century; eventually they’re going to lose enough of their overconfident leaders to attrition or even old age and have new blood coming in.  Yes the Wraith may have built down over the past 10,000 years, but unless we’re talking a factor of a hundred then even their heavier forces back then should have been laughable compared to the Ancients.  Yes, they used stolen ZPMs and cloning chambers to rapid-breed footsoldiers, but frankly this is the least-worthy explanation because footsoldiers don’t serve any function in a space war.  As presented, I simply cannot accept the Wraith as having defeated the Ancients in any sort of pseudo-equal confrontation.  Not as a clash between two empires.

What they should have done was never give the Ancients an empire in Pegasus in the first place.

As established in SG1, the Ancients who first came to the Pegasus galaxy were refugees.  A plague had swept through their civilization in the Milky Way (Possibly unleashed by the Ori), and after trying many different pathways to a cure (Including time travel) they realized that they could not prevent their own demise.  Many of their number Ascended in this time, many more succumbed to the disease, and finally the last of them took their cityship and fled.  I bold the word “fled” because it needs to be clear that this was a last-ditch hope to save their lives, practically done in a panic, and they even left behind their own people who had been infected.  This wasn’t a planned colonization or exploration of a new galaxy, this was them staring at their own extinction and trying a Hail Mary pass to save something of their society.  Add this to the way they had already started to Ascend back in the Milky Way, and the Ancients should have already been on their way out when they arrived in Pegasus.

After settling in Pegasus they should have turned their efforts to Ascension en masse as the inevitable next step.  They know it’s possible, and it’s the goal their society has been working towards for millennia.  Now that they’re out of the pressure of the plague threat and imminent death it should have been the focus of their scientific and philosophical development, and precluded the sort of wide-scale settlement and resource exploitation which lead to a galaxy-spanning civilization.  They could still explore space to seek knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and they could still seed stargates and human evolution on planets across the galaxy as a means of legacy and hope to have a successor to follow in their footsteps after they’re gone (They did as much in the Milky Way after the plague using the Dakara device), but why would they build new cities and regrow their population when they’re already in the process of leaving this plane of existence?  They could retain Atlantis itself as their home, a place to pursue Ascension and to guide the younger races in their infancy, but why would they need more?

In this way, when they encountered the Wraith and the war began, it’s not a galaxy-spanning civilization facing the monsters, but the last lingering survivors of a single city.  Without the resources to construct a fleet of Aurora-class battleships, or the population to crew them even if they could build them.  Without the ability to absorb even light casualties or replenish them to learn and adapt to combat.  Already suffering from a bunker mentality since they were  planning to abandon this existence anyway, so they’re hesitant to try any daring or offensive actions.

Now the Wraith vastly outnumbering them makes sense; sixty ships is quite a lot when you only have one or two, instead of a fleet.  The Ancients being unable to adapt to the war or emotionally prepared to accept the bloody costs required makes sense if they’re already a dying people who’re expecting an imminent peaceful end.  In this scenario the Wraith wouldn’t be the species that kicked down the Ancients’ door and beat them up, but would instead be the ones who came and smothered them in their sleep, which lines up very well with the species as we see them throughout Stargate Atlantis.

This wouldn’t just help justify the backstory, it would also explain a lot of individual episode plots as well.  Throughout the series the expedition keeps stumbling across desperate, half-completed, and hastily abandoned off-the-wall scientific gambits that the Ancients were trying to find some way to defeat the Wraith.  Unstable power sources (”Trinity”), exploding tumors (”Sunday”), genetic engineering (”Tao of Rodney”), time travel (”Before I Sleep”), hyperdrive disruption (”First Contact”/”The Lost Tribe”), MiniDrones (”Harmony”), etc.  Given how these all seemed so slip-shod and rushed into service, something which the characters themselves remarked upon, it makes much more sense to think of them as springing from unsupported and desperate research carried out in rushed isolation than as products of a wide-spread and fully-functioning R&D civilization.

If they hadn’t felt the need to hype up the Wraith as THE Big Bad of the franchise, treading very heavily on their legacy as the ones who Defeated the Ancients to emphasize their threat, they could have had a much more logical foundation for the series.  They could have told many of the same stories without any modification, and not strained credulity when this supposedly unstoppable force kept being stopped.   The Wraith still could have been shown as a dangerous and powerful adversary, given credit for overwhelming even the weakened Ancients given just how advanced the Ancients were, just not been sold as having somehow used analogue sticks-and-stones to defeat a nuclear power.

Alas.

[oliverreviews]

Luck in the Shadows

“When young Alec of Kerry is taken prisoner for a crime he didn’t commit, he is certain that his life is at an end. But the one thing he never expected was his cellmate. Spy, rogue, thief, and noble, Seregil of Rhimenee is many things- none of them predictable. And when he offers to take on Alec as his apprentice, things may never be the same for either of them. Soon, Alec is traveling roads he never knew existed, towards a war he never suspected was brewing. Before long he and Seregil are embroiled in a sinister plot that runs deeper than either can imagine, and that may cost them far more than their lives if they fail. But fortune is as unpredictable as Alec’s new mentor, and this time there may be... Luck in the shadows.”

I just finished the first novel in the Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling and really recommend it to fantasy lovers. It was an immensely fun read with well earned twists, yet also wasn’t difficult to get through like some high fantasy can be. Immediately after finishing it, I was itching for the sequel. This isn’t a “let’s go on a quest” fantasy, this is espionage and political intrigue.

I’ll try to keep my write up as spoiler free as possible.

Representation wise, things were above decent. The royal family the characters are involved with is ruled by queens, warrior women. Monarchy also isn’t the be all end all, they openly talk about how bad it can be at times and the horrible choices even good leaders make. Women are soldiers, forgers, merchants, stay at home mothers, anything they want to be. While I’d say the three main characters are all men, we don’t have a lack of women on a LOTR’s level and the women who are present are treated well.

The two main characters come from vastly different backgrounds. Alec is a country boy and from a rather conservative culture where people don’t talk about being queer. In direct contrast, Seregil and those around him are highly comfortable with such things. Seregil is openly bi/pan and two of the four gods mentioned in the book are described as being individuals that are both men and women. Considering this book came out in 1996, I’m counting that as solid trans/nb rep written in good faith. Frankly, with how comfortable Seregil is disguising himself as various types of women, the argument can probably be made that he’s nb or gender nonconforming himself.

To my recollection, none of the major characters were described as PoC, unfortunately. Disabled characters were similarly absent.

I’ve provided some of the big content warnings here. We do get some brief descriptions of torture. There’s a dream where a character is confronted by their parent in a homophobic manner. The main love pairing that’s being set up is between a sixteen year old and a fifty something year old being with a lifespan far longer than a human. While a slow burn is clearly being set up and I doubt anything overtly romantic or sexual will happen until the sixteen year old has matured more, I know that sort of thing can squick people out.

[newstfionline]

China’s Ex-Soldiers Join Its Legions of Protesters

By Chris Buckley, NY Times, June 25, 2018

BEIJING--They converge from across China, marching in the hundreds, ungainly from lack of training but proudly waving red national flags and wearing green uniforms recalling years of military service. Then they line up in front of government buildings.

But they come to protest, not protect, the officials sheltered inside.

They are the latest discontented group to upset the Chinese Communist Party’s image of imperturbable dominance: People’s Liberation Army veterans who have held protests across several cities in recent weeks over what they say is mistreatment, poor job prospects and inadequate benefits.

The latest erupted last week in Zhenjiang, a city in Jiangsu Province in eastern China. Hundreds of former soldiers--some online accounts claimed thousands--rushed there after rumors spread that at least one veteran had been beaten while seeking government help. The precise course of events is unclear, but for many protesters, the episode crystallized their broader anger with officialdom.

“The problem is that there’s too much corruption at the local level,” Chen Wuliang, a former soldier from eastern China who said he had gone to Zhenjiang, said by telephone. “Where the local corruption is bad is also where old veterans who fought in wars are worst oppressed.”

The recent burst of veteran-led protests does not present a dire threat to Communist Party rule, which remains broadly popular and backed by a daunting police apparatus. On Monday, the protests in Zhenjiang appeared to have dispersed.

But the demonstrations show how even under the sweeping dominance of President Xi Jinping discontent persists, taking forms that can catch the government by surprise. The veterans, coming from across the country and with tight bonds formed in military service, are a particularly stubborn headache.

“We’re comrades in arms and all keep in touch,” Mr. Chen said. “Generally, it’s through WeChat and sometimes the phone,” he said, referring to a vastly popular social media service.

Other Chinese cities have been struck by similar protests in recent months. In late May, many hundreds of veterans gathered for days in Luohe, a city in central China, after accounts spread that a former soldier’s wife had been detained by the police after she joined veterans who had gone to Beijing to demand better treatment.

In mid-June, veterans protested in Zhongjiang County, in southern China, after rumors spread that a disabled former soldier there had been beaten by the police. Websites dedicated to human rights issues in China record many more smaller assemblies by aggrieved veterans, often after they lose jobs or fail to win improved benefits.

Party leaders in Beijing were shocked in 2016 and early 2017 when about a thousand veterans twice entered the capital and sat in protest--the first time outside the People’s Liberation Army headquarters, and the second outside the party’s anticorruption agency.

Despite censors, Chinese internet chat rooms for veterans are still lively with talk of the various protests. After the latest one, a message warned that former soldiers were honing their skills in confrontation, just as they had once drilled on parade grounds.

Demonstrations and petitions by aggrieved former service personnel go back many decades in China. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping retrenched one million troops, and from the 1990s, many found it hard to find secure work as market reforms eroded guaranteed government job assignments.

But the sizable protests this year are still striking because Mr. Xi has often praised Chinese soldiers, promised better treatment for veterans and this year established a Ministry of Veterans Affairs intended to end bureaucratic buck-passing over their needs.

Despite such steps, many former soldiers feel a gulf between the rhetorical laurels from the government and the practical problems they face. The new ministry has already become a destination for veterans who feel that local officials have ignored their grievances.

Many veterans seem “highly skeptical that the establishment of a new ministry will matter much, and interpret it as a symbolic concession,” Neil J. Diamant, a professor at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania who studies protests by Chinese veterans, said by email.

“A new ministry gives veterans an address, but no more power,” he said. “They remain supplicants for state largess--and this is exactly how the government wants it to remain.”

China has more serving military personnel than any other country, and by official estimate it has 57 million veterans, most of them recruited from villages and towns for a few years’ service. That makes for a large pool of potential discontent.

Often, protesting veterans are unhappy that they have been shunted into low-end work or lost their jobs in cutbacks. Other sources of complaint are poor medical care, and pensions and stipends smaller than they believe is their due. Many veterans, using a Chinese saying, liken themselves to donkeys slaughtered after they are too old to work a grindstone.

“The government increasingly proclaims its having ‘arrived’ in the rank of top nations,” Professor Diamant said. “Veterans have noticed this. Naturally, they wonder why should they struggle for medicine and pensions when the government they served is now rich.”

Not all the veterans contacted for this article supported the demonstrations or said that their living conditions were stagnant. Some said that more spending by local governments in recent years had helped. Those who spoke on the record did not want their precise whereabouts described.

But apart from strained living conditions, discontented veterans said that they had not been afforded the dignity they expected from society after years of poorly paid service, and sometimes sacrifice in wars. Quite a number say they fought in China’s war against Vietnam in 1979, when the People’s Liberation Army forces declared victory but suffered ignominious setbacks.

The government appears likely to tighten surveillance and perhaps offer concessions to veterans in an effort to douse protests. But some former soldiers warned that they would wait only so long to see if the new Ministry of Veteran Affairs improved their lives.

“If the ministry is just decoration, the same old medicine in a different broth,” a message on a veterans’ internet chat room this month said, “then no number of iron stallions of stability preservation will be able to stop the great army of rights defense.”

[schoolpsychlife]

AS A TEENAGER, Danielle Sheypuk, PhD, was stung when relatives would ask her younger sister, "So, are you dating anyone? Who’s your boyfriend?" Nobody asked Sheypuk those questions. She was in a wheelchair because of spinal muscular atrophy type 2. The implicit message was clear: "Dating and relationships weren’t going to be in the cards for someone like me," she recalls. Today, Sheypuk is a psychologist in private practice in New York who specializes in dating and intimacy issues. About half of her clients have disabilities. They talk with her about their relationship and sexuality concerns, including how tough it is to meet people and to deal with such invasive comments as "Can you have sex?" or "When you are out of your wheelchair, are you helpless?" They also seek her guidance on the practical hurdles. Perhaps most of all, they seek to learn how to still the inner voices that have internalized messages about their unsuitability as sex partners. "The misconceptions and stigmas are numerous, and they are profound and they are hurtful," Sheypuk says. People with disabilities get the message that "because your body is so different, it’s going to be hard to find someone to ‘look past those issues’ and see you for who you really are." As a result, Sheypuk says, many of her clients—who are confident in other areas of their lives—have self-esteem that’s "in the gutter" when it comes to sexuality and relationships.

FACING STEREOTYPES

The greatest challenge that people with disabilities experience when it comes to sex is society’s beliefs about sexuality and sexual relationships, notions such as, "Why would anybody choose to be with somebody with a disability when they could have a nondisabled person?" says Linda Mona, PhD, a psychologist with a disability who practices at the VA Long Beach Healthcare System.

Research documents such stereotypes. A study by Michelle R. Nario-Redmond, PhD, professor of psychology at Hiram College in Ohio, surveyed 50 people with disabilities and 47 people without disabilities about stereotypes related to disability. Both groups of participants reported that the common view was that people with disabilities are asexual and unattractive (British Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2010). Another study led by University of Alberta researcher Shaniff Esmail, PhD, surveyed 32 people, including service providers, people with visible and invisible disabilities and the general public about their attitudes toward sexuality and disability. Again, the predominant view was that people with disabilities were asexual (Disability and Rehabilitation, Vol. 32, No. 14, 2010).

Sometimes stigma toward people with disabilities for being sexual can be subtly expressed, says Erin Andrews, PsyD, a supervisory psychologist at Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, who is an amputee and mother of two whose husband is nondisabled. She finds it frustrating when people shower him with praise for marrying her. "People will say to him, ‘You’re such a good man, you’re so amazing,’" she says. The implication is that "he’s a hero or some sort of inspiration because he’s willing to put the traditional standards of beauty and sexuality aside to be with me. It’s almost taboo to admit that people with disabilities can be sexually attractive.

These attitudes can undermine the lives of people with disabilities in many ways, resulting not only in lower sexual self-esteem and satisfaction, but less access to medical information and sexual health care, as well as more difficulty finding partners and starting families.

And contrary to the stereotypes, research shows that people with disabilities have the same levels of sexual desire as people without disabilities, and many have positive sexual relationships. However, depending on when the disability occurred and how severe it is, some have less sex and more sexual dissatisfaction. A study by Marita McCabe, PhD, and George Taleporos, PhD, of the School of Psychology at Deakin University in Australia, for example, found that people with disabilities who had experienced their disability longer had significantly more positive feelings about their sexuality. The study also found that people with more severe disabilities had less sex and were less satisfied than people with milder or no impairments (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2003).

FINDING PARTNERS

Of course, for some people with a disability, finding a partner is the first challenge. "What most people want is a relationship," says Sigmund Hough, PhD, a certified sex therapist in private practice and a clinical rehabilitation neuropsychologist at the Spinal Cord Injury Service, VA Boston Healthcare System. When people first come to him for counseling, they don’t usually ask about sex right off the bat, he says. What they are looking for is a meaningful connection with another person.

Nowadays, many people look for those connections online. Technology has "vastly improved the lives of people with disabilities in many ways," says Sheypuk. Not only can they get counseling online (she and other therapists do sessions via Skype), but online dating helps people connect more easily than in the past.

This ease of access does, however, come with downsides, such as deciding when and how to disclose a disability, especially if it’s invisible. "Trying to figure out how you talk about disability in the initial stages of meeting and dating is complicated," says Mona. "Do you disclose or not disclose? If you disclose, will someone still contact you? If you don’t disclose until you see someone and then it’s, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m in a wheelchair,’ that’s not always the best foot to start off on."

Once an online connection is made, another hurdle is arranging transportation and meeting in person, which, depending on the disability and where one lives, can present challenges, points out Hough. Safety is an additional concern, given that people with disabilities are at a higher risk of sexual assault and physical abuse, and are potentially more vulnerable (Lancet, Vol. 379, No. 9826, 2012). Sheypuk helps clients come up with contingency plans, such as having a home attendant in another room.

Nonheterosexual people with disabilities have additional concerns when it comes to sexuality. A review by California psychologists Sarah Fraley, PhD, Linda Mona, PhD, and Peter Theodore, PhD, points out that people who are lesbian, gay or bisexual are a "double minority," experiencing another set of stigmas in addition to those attached to disability. For example, ideals exist for both gay women and men valuing "strong, active, athletic body types" that may not fit most people with disabilities, while sex-ed materials or medical care may be geared to the needs and practices of heterosexuals, among other challenges (Sexuality Research & Social Policy4, No. 1, 2007).

A study of "sexual minority" women led by Michele Eliason, PhD, at San Francisco State University found that they reported a poorer quality of life than their nondisabled sexualminority peers, with more PTSD and anxiety disorders, as well as more experiences of discrimination (LGBT Health2, No. 2 2015).

Andrew Gurza, a gay blogger, podcaster ("Disability After Dark") and disability rights consultant in Canada who has cerebral palsy, says there is a lack of awareness about disability in the LGBTQ community.

"The LGBT community is very ability-focused and there’s not a lot of disability representation," Gurza says. People in this community aren’t used to seeing people with disabilities in general, let alone "someone with a disability being up front around what they want sexually and romantically. There’s a lot of fear around being queer and disabled."

One solution, he says, is for there to be more discussion of "the lived experience" of having a disability—the day-today challenges, like arranging transportation or using attendants to help with bathroom visits—that can ease the fear of the unknown that people without disabilities may have.

Gurza also echoes one of the findings of Fraley’s paper—that there is an overemphasis on hard-body looks that can leave many with disabilities invisible.

"There’s a big obsession with health and fitness, with going to the gym and having a particular body esthetic," he says.

WHERE’S MY SEX ED?

In the late 1990s, Margaret Nosek, PhD, executive director of the Center for Research on Women with Disabilities at Baylor Medical School, surveyed 475 U.S. women with physical disabilities and found that 41 percent believed they didn’t have adequate information about how their disability affected their sexual functioning (Sexuality and Disability, Vol. 19, No. 1, 2001).

They still don’t, according to psychologists who work with this population. Among them is Alette Coble-Temple, PsyD, a psychology professor at John F. Kennedy University who has cerebral palsy and who counseled a married couple who were in wheelchairs. The couple saw a photo on Coble-Temple’s desk of her with her family, including her daughter. They asked her how she was able to have a child, Coble-Temple says. "No other medical professional had ever talked to them about intimacy, about how to navigate sex with a disability, about the adaptations and adaptive baby-care equipment that are available," she says. "They looked at me completely shocked."

Coble-Temple had run into inadequate information about sex before. As an undergraduate, she visited a doctor to get birth control. The doctor never discussed sex with her and assumed she wanted it to control her menstrual cycle. Later, Coble-Temple found out her seizure medication could have made her birth control pills inactive. Because her doctor had not considered her a sexual being, she ran the risk of an unplanned pregnancy.

"That was my wake-up call," she says. She went on to write her dissertation in 1998 on the topic of sexuality and disability, finding that when people with disabilities requested information about sex or reproductive health, "they were met with opposition and shock."

Sheypuk says that many of her female clients report "horrific" first experiences with gynecologists who are not versed in seeing patients with physical disabilities. For example, if the gynecologist is unable to do a complete exam due to reports of pain and/or tightness by the patient, the gynecologist may only do a bare-bones exam and not refer the patient for a more complete follow-up.

There may be an assumption that the patient is not going to have sex anyway, so there’s no need to put her through such an exam. Sheypuk refers clients to NYU’s Initiative for Women with Disabilities, where they have a gynecologist on site who only sees women with physical disabilities.

The lack of sex education continues even though there is a hunger for information about how to achieve intimacy, says Mitchell Tepper, PhD, a certified sexuality educator and counselor who works with people with disabilities and who was paralyzed in a diving accident in 1982. Tepper helped the Department of Veterans Affairs implement the "PAIRS" couple curriculum and adapt it for vets, as well as train staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center about sexual health. He also is working on a documentary about veterans who have restored intimacy after injuries, called "Making Love After Making War." Through the film, Tepper hopes to give people with disabilities a vision of hope and to educate health professionals and society overall. "It’s a film really about sexuality and disability, and it will show people a different way to love and be in love," he says.

REDEFINING SEX

These different ways to love can involve rethinking traditional sexual scripts and discarding the idea of sexual intercourse as the only way to make love, say psychologists in the field. "The most beautiful intimacy I have seen was between two clients who physically weren’t able to engage in typical heterosexual intercourse," says Coble-Temple. But, she says, "They could look into each others’ eyes with a level of passion and intimacy that was 100 percent stronger than what I see in the average couple."

While much remains to be done to educate people about sexuality and disability, awareness is growing, says Tepper, especially as younger people with disabilities use social media to connect and spread information. "There’s a greater awareness and greater amount of advocacy and projects among people with disabilities worldwide than there was 20 years ago."

RESOURCES

American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists www.aasect.org

PleasureABLE: Sexual Device Manual for Persons With DisabilitiesKassioukov, A., MacHattie, E., Naphtali, K., Miller, W.C., & Elliott, S., 2010

Sexuality and Disability in Adolescents Holland-Hall, C., & Quint, E.H., 2017

Sexual Health Care for People With Physical Disabilities Rowen, T.S., Stein, S., & Tepper, M., Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2015

[American Psychological Association, Monitor on Psychology, Dec. 2017]

[kansascityhappenings]

E-scooters suddenly appeared everywhere, but now they’re riding into serious trouble

Brussels. San Diego. Bogotá. Walk around any major tourist destination these days, and you’ll see them.

Electric scooters, gliding silently around city center streets, zipping through traffic signals, or abandoned — lying on the street, propped up against trees or, in some cases, dumped in rivers.

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Scooter-sharing systems similar to city bike schemes have sprung up in more than 100 cities worldwide as their popularity has grown.

But this tiny-wheeled transport revolution could be about to end as quickly as it began.

While they’ve attracted admirers for their convenience and fun, they’ve also incurred the wrath of those annoyed at having to leap out of people riding across sidewalks or step over scooters lying in their path.

There are also mounting safety concerns and questions about environmental claims made about using them.

This month, Singapore announced a trial prohibition of e-scooters on sidewalks that could become an all-out ban next year. It took the decision, says Lam Pin Min, senior minister of state for transport, following the death of a cyclist who collided with an e-scooter. Local news reports said one Singapore hospital had reported six deaths of scooter riders in 2019.

Meanwhile in France, a sidewalk scooter ban was enforced in September, three months after a rider was hit by a truck and killed.

In the UK, scooters are also banned from all public roads, sidewalks and cycle lanes — although that hasn’t stopped them being a regular presence on all three.

The UK now insists that retailers including Amazon put safety warnings on packaging, a measure introduced in October, after a YouTube star, Emily Hartridge, was killed riding an e-scooter in London in July.

‘Disproportionately affecting’ those with disabilities

The scooter revolution has been billed as a green way to get around big cities, with rental apps acting in the same way as city bike schemes. You pick them up, pay by the minute and drop them off at your destination.

Where some city bikes often have docking stations — to which the bikes must be returned for the fees to stop — scooters can be picked up or dropped off anywhere.

A picture taken in Paris on July 31, 2018 shows electric scooters of US start-up Bird. (Photo by ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images)

And while that may be handy — apps like Lime, Bird and countless local spinoffs have live maps showing users where the nearest scooters are — it’s causing issues for other road users.

Simon Minty, a disability and diversity consultant who presents the Ouch disability podcast for the BBC, was in Brussels this summer when he came across abandoned scooters blocking the sidewalks.

“I predict these two wheeled electric scooters will become very annoying,” he tweeted. “They seem to be abandoned, in the middle of the pavement, everywhere I go. I saw three from the station to my hotel.”

Minty says that a friend who’d been to Paris said the situation in the French capital before the September ban was “exactly the same.”

People with disabilities are “disproportionately affected,” he says. “You’re going to hit these, and you’ll be absolutely stuffed.”

Environmentally friendly — if you’re replacing a car

Proponents of scooters say that they’re environmentally friendly. “Cruise past traffic and cut back on CO2 emissions,” trumpets Bird’s website.

But an August 2019 paper by researchers from North Carolina State University found that they may not be as green as you’d think.

In fact, traveling by scooter has a higher carbon footprint than going by bus or moped — as well as on a bike or on foot, according to Jeremiah Johnson, an associate professor at NCSU who led the research published in the Environmental Research Letters journal.

Instead of looking at scooter carbon footprint per journey, Johnson and his team looked at the entire lifecycle of scooters — crucial because they are notoriously short-lived, he says, with customers mistreating them.

The materials used to make the scooters — an aluminum frame, lithium battery and rubber wheels — all result in an environmental burden, he says. As does the manufacturing.

“They have a really short lifetime, especially in this application of them,” he tells CNN. “Aluminum doesn’t provide much service. They only last several months.”

What’s more, because users can ditch them wherever they like, rental apps pay third parties to round up the scooters every night, grouping them more sensibly for the morning’s customers, he says.

“They receive compensation per scooter, so there’ll be folks doing this as a side hustle, students trying to make money — it’s a prime source of income,” he says.

“It’s very competitive and done in a very short window, and they’re largely driving their personal cars to pick them up. That’s a pretty big share of the impact.”

Lime scooters are taken to warehouses each night by a local operations team, said a spokesperson. Senior director at Bird, Caroline Hazlehurst, said that Bird’s scooters are collected “regularly, but not always every day… How we collect them changes from country to country.”

But she added: “Every town and city throughout the world suffers from the same two problems: too many cars creating congestion which in turn leads to poor air quality.”

Of course, they also need to be charged overnight. And the final thing to take into account is what method of transport they’re replacing.

If you’re scootering to work instead of driving yourself solo, the scooter is a “clear environmental win,” says NCSU’s Johnson. But, he says, many people surveyed in Raleigh, where the university is based, said that pre-scooter, they’d cycle or walk to work.

While many people in the US drive to work — and Johnson is clear that “in moving away from car ownership it’s almost certainly a win for environmental performance” — in European cities, where public transport is the norm, using a scooter is therefore relatively less green, he says.

The upshot?

“Scooters look innocuous but people tend not to think about the unseen cost,” Johnson says.

Hazlehurst says that Bird has changed its scooters from “consumer grade” to a “vastly different” and “rugged” version since they launched. Its “Bird One” model now has a lifetime of around 18 months, she said, while its latest model Bird Two can last two years.

Lime says that its third generation model is “demonstrating a lifespan of more than 12 months.” Its spokesperson says that Johnson’s study “raises important issues” but “doesn’t capture Lime’s approach today.”

“We’ve already taken steps to reduce our environmental impact, including streamlining our charging operations, powering our scooters with 100% renewable energy, offsetting the emissions from fleet vehicles, and establishing a robust repair and reuse program to extend the life cycle of our products,” the spokesperson said.

Where are scooters legal?

Rules on e-scooters vary around the world. In the UK, riding one on a road can net users six penalty points on their driving license. Riding them on the sidewalk, cyclepath or footpath is subject to a £300 ($385) fine.

A report by the UK House of Commons Library in August suggested that things could change in the future, but a spokesperson for the Department for Transport declined to comment, citing rules around the upcoming UK election.

In Paris, while you can ride them on the road, using them on the sidewalk can incur a €135 fine, while dumping them in a doorway, on a crosswalk or in another antisocial place incurs a €35 fine.

“Pavements are only for pedestrians,” mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted in March this year.

Germany approved e-scooter use this year, though not on sidewalks unless in “exceptional” circumstances. Bird’s Caroline Hazlehurst says that “especially in Europe, we’re seeing cities and countries change laws to specifically allow scooters to operate.”

In Sweden, where scooters are classified as bicycles and allowed on sidewalks or footpaths, 241 accidents have been registered this year alone including one death. Tomas Eneroth, the Swedish minister for infrastructure, has called the situation “a mess.”

The law in Spain was changed this year. E-scooters can no longer be used on sidewalks. Additionally, they are banned in Barcelona. Madrid authorities in October refused to grant licenses to ride-sharing companies Bird, Lime and Voi.

In the United States, over 100 cities have e-scooters, and Americans took 38.5 million trips on them, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

Portland, Oregon, is midway through a year-long trial, following a four-month pilot in 2018.

The 2018 program “raised concerns about people riding e-scooters on sidewalks, in violation of state traffic laws, creating conflict with people walking and people with disabilities,” says a statement from the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

The PBOT will “evaluate the program” following the pilot.

It used to be illegal to use the scooters in New York City, but a law change in summer 2019 means that you can use your own, if you have one — although ride-sharing rentals are still banned.

And in LA, authorities this month suspended Uber’s permit to rent e-scooters because of its failure to share ride-tracking data with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. Seven other companies are licensed to rent scooters in LA though.

And in San Francisco, the scooter companies were dubbed “spoiled brats” by Aaron Peskin, one of the legislators who voted to clamp down on the companies when they were introduced in 2018.

In April 2019, however, the city granted permits to four companies: Jump, Lime, Spin, and Scoot, the last of which had previously been operating.

San Diego struggles to cope

San Diego has been at the forefront of scooter wars since the machines arrived in February 2018. The city is awash with more than 19,000 scooters, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune — with almost 15,000 complaints about them to the city authorities over the summer, 3,700 scooters impounded for parking violations, and almost 500 riders receiving traffic tickets.

Since April, the city has instated “corrals” — designated parking spots by the roadside for scooters, outlined with paint on the road. Riders can be fined for dumping a scooter on the street in a block that has a corral.

In April, the council introduced new restrictions on scooters, including speed limits in pedestrian-heavy places like Balboa Park, and a parking ban in places with speed limits below 8 mph, including beachfront boardwalks and in Little Italy.

Council member Barbara Bry, a vocal critic of the scooters, called for a moratorium in July, although it has not been approved. In December, the council will debate banning scooters on the beach boardwalks entirely.

“Throughout the city, I continue to see riders using the sidewalk, multiple riders on one scooter, and scooters strewn about the sidewalks, rather than in designated corrals,” she tells CNN.

“San Diego was slow to respond when scooters started showing up on our streets. While it has been inactive, other cities like Portland and Santa Monica have issued requests for proposals that include a fee structure, operational standards, data sharing and insurance requirements.”

She said the City has “let a technology overtake us rather than assist and empower our communities with safe and sustainable micro-mobility options,” and said that “all of downtown is experiencing cluttered sidewalks.”

“The corrals are overflowing with scooters that leak out into the road and automobile parking spaces,” she said.

The mayor of San Diego was not available for comment.

Victims of scooter crashes are cashing in

Catherine Lerer, a personal injury attorney based in Santa Monica, where scooters were introduced to the United States, says that over the past 18 months, she’s spoken to around 400 victims of scooter injuries — both riders and pedestrians. She believes them to be more accident-prone than bikes because of their smaller, more solid wheels and a more precarious center of gravity for users.

“It’s imperative that cities get ahead of any e-scooter rollout, otherwise they will be hamstrung in terms of regulating the scooters and sanctioning the operators,” she tells CNN.

Authorities should ban nighttime use, sidewalk riding and allowing the scooters on roads that have a speed limit of more than 25 mph, she argues in a list of 25 recommendations.

She says authorities should also insist that riders wear helmets, prohibit sidewalk parking, install tech that alerts the companies if a scooter isn’t upright, and fit the devices with lights, reflectors, turn signals, kickstands and identification numbers.

She says the devices should emit noises that can be heard by nearby pedestrians, to help those with disabilities.

For its part, Lime says it is tailoring its scooter roll outs so that they work with specific destinations and urges careful consideration before new legislation is introducted.

“Lime is committed to partnering with cities to build the right shared mobility program for each community,” a spokesperson said.

“We know the positive impact micromobility can have on communities around the globe… and we’re dedicated to collaborating with our city partners to tackle these challenges together.

“We support regulations that promote safety and greater transportation access without stifling innovation or consumer choice.”

Scooter fans still keen

Despite the issues, though, the enthusiasm of scooter fans show no sign of waning — and for some, replacing a putative car journey feels like the right thing to do.

Cyndi Hutchenson, a copywriter from South Florida, commutes via scooter most days — a journey of around 10 minutes. She has a monthly pass, costing $15, which allows her 30 minutes of scootering per day.

“I don’t have a car, and I don’t really want one,” she says. “I live downtown, and everything I want to reach is a relatively cheap Uber Pool away, if it’s outside scooter limits. And I’m new to the city, so I want to get to know it better.

“I’m conscious of the environmental impact difference of riding an electric scooter versus riding in a car every day. I also know that, were I to have a car, I’d be making more unnecessary trips or traveling farther outside my neighborhood for things I can easily have a range of within a scooter ride

“The buses are not convenient (in terms of timing, cleanliness, safety, and payment methods) in my city and don’t even go to my workplace.”

The future of e-scooters

But as cities continue to clamp down, and the accidents mount up, scootering around the globe might not be free and easy forever.

“I don’t want to be a killjoy, they do look a lot of fun,” says Simon Minty. “They’re exciting, new technology, they mean fewer cars on the roads — but people have to realize that there’s responsibility that comes with them.

“It’s not just people with disabilities. Parents with prams, older people — a whole bundle of people will be affected if we have to navigate round these scooters.

“I don’t quite understand how people can just leave them in the street. It just blows my mind a little bit.”

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/11/22/e-scooters-suddenly-appeared-everywhere-but-now-theyre-riding-into-serious-trouble/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/11/22/e-scooters-suddenly-appeared-everywhere-but-now-theyre-riding-into-serious-trouble/

[lostissarahsophiacaruana]

Do Androids Dream of Robot Sheep

Synopsis:  “In post-apocalyptic 1992 (2021 in later editions),[2] following a devastating global war called "World War Terminus", the Earth's radioactively polluted atmosphere leads the United Nations to encourage mass emigrations to off-world colonies to preserve humanity's genetic integrity. Moving away from Earth comes with the incentive of free personal androids: highly advanced robot servants that are practically identical to humans. The characters and text refer to these androids (or "andys") variously as "robots", "machines", and "programmed", but it is later made clear that they are constructed of organic materials so similar to a human's that only a tedious "bone marrow analysis" can independently prove the difference. To save time in identifying incognito androids, various polygraph-style personality tests have been devised.The Rosen Association manufactures the androids on the colony of Mars, but certain androids violently rebel and escape to the underpopulated Earth where they hope to remain undetected. Despite their realistic appearance and advanced intellect, androids are not treated as equals to humans. They are prohibited from doing many things, including emigrating from the colonies to Earth. Therefore, American and Soviet police departments remain vigilant, keeping bounty-hunting officers on duty to track and "retire" fugitive androids. Similar to the androids, humans with mental disabilities, psychological disorders, or genetic defects, called "specials", are also treated as sub-human; they are forced to remain on Earth and are prohibited from traveling to the colonies.On Earth, owning real live animals has become a fashionable status symbol, both because mass extinctions have made authentic animals rare and because of the accompanying cultural push for greater empathy. High-status animals such as horses cost far more than low-status animals. However, poor people can only afford realistic-looking robot imitations of live animals. Rick Deckard, for example, owns an electric black-faced sheep. These artificial animals appear and feel identical to real animals, but are described as "electric", having "circuits" and hidden access "control panels", and requiring "repairs". Compared to the android robots, Deckard regards these electric animals as "a kind of vastly inferior robot".The trend of increased empathy has coincidentally motivated a new technology-based religion called Mercerism, which uses "empathy boxes" to link users simultaneously to a virtual reality of collective suffering, centered on a martyr-like character, Wilbur Mercer, who eternally climbs up a hill while being hit with crashing stones. Acquiring high-status animal pets and linking in to empathy boxes appear to be the only two ways that humans can attain existential fulfillment.Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter for the San Francisco Police Department, is assigned to "retire" (kill) six androids of the new and highly intelligent Nexus-6 model which have recently escaped from Mars and traveled to Earth. These androids are capable of extremely realistic behaviors, which make them difficult to detect, but Deckard hopes to earn enough bounty money to buy a live animal to replace his lone electric sheep. Deckard visits the Rosen Association's headquarters in Seattle to confirm the accuracy of the latest empathy test, which he suspects may not be capable of distinguishing the latest Nexus-6 models from genuine human beings. The test appears to give a false positive on CEO Eldon Rosen's niece, Rachael, meaning the police have potentially been executing human beings. Rosen attempts to blackmail Deckard to get him to drop the case, but Deckard retests Rachael and determines that Rachael is, indeed, an android, which both Rosens ultimately admit.Deckard soon meets a Soviet police contact who turns out to be one of the Nexus-6 renegades in disguise. Deckard kills the android, then flies off to kill his next target: an android living in disguise as an opera singer. Meeting her backstage, Deckard administers the empathy test, but she calls the police. Failing to recognize Deckard as a bounty hunter, they arrest and detain him at a police station he has never heard of, filled with officers whom he is surprised never to have met. An official named Garland accuses Deckard himself of being an android with implanted memories. After a series of mysterious revelations at the station, Deckard ponders the ethical and philosophical questionshis line of work raises regarding android intelligence, empathy, and what it means to be human. Garland, pointing a laser gun at Deckard, then reveals that the entire station is a sham, claiming that both he and Phil Resch, the station's resident bounty hunter, are androids. Resch shoots Garland in the head, escaping with Deckard back to the opera singer, whom Resch brutally kills in cold blood when she alludes that he may be an android. Desperate to know the truth, Resch asks Deckard to use the empathy test on him, which confirms that he is actually human, and then Deckard tests himself, discovering that he has a sense of empathy for certain androids.Deckard buys his wife Iran an authentic Nubian goat with the bounty money. His supervisor then insists that he visit an abandoned apartment building, where the three remaining android fugitives are assumed to be hiding. Experiencing a vision of the prophet-like Mercer confusingly telling him to proceed, despite the immorality of the mission, Deckard calls on Rachael Rosen again, since her knowledge of android psychology may aid his investigation. Rachael declines to help, but reluctantly agrees to meet Deckard at a hotel in exchange for him abandoning the case. At the hotel, she reveals that one of the fugitive androids is the same exact model as herself, meaning that he will have to shoot down an android that looks just like her. Rachael coaxes Deckard into sex, after which they confess their love for one another. However, she reveals she has slept with many bounty hunters, having been programmed to do so in order to dissuade them from their missions. He threatens to kill her, but holds back at the last moment. He leaves for the abandoned apartment building.Meanwhile, the three remaining Nexus-6 android fugitives plan how they can outwit Deckard. The building's only other inhabitant, John R. Isidore, a radioactively damaged and intellectually below-average human, attempts to befriend them, but is shocked when they callously torture and mutilate a rare spider he's found. They all watch a television program which presents definitive evidence that the entire theology of Mercerism is a hoax. Deckard enters the building, experiencing strange, supernatural premonitions of Mercer notifying him of an ambush. Since they attack him first, Deckard is legally justified as he shoots down all three androids without testing them beforehand. Isidore is devastated, and Deckard is soon rewarded for a record number of Nexus-6 kills in a single day. When Deckard returns home, he finds Iran grieving because Rachael Rosen arrived while he was gone and killed their goat.Deckard goes to an uninhabited, obliterated region of Oregon to reflect. He climbs a hill and is hit by falling rocks, and realizes this is an experience eerily similar to Mercer's martyrdom. He stumbles abruptly upon what he thinks is a real toad (an animal thought to be extinct) but, when he returns home with it, his wife discovers it is just a robot.”

[lastkidpicked-blog1]

POST 8. Snowflake to Avalanche. Some cast writing.

Rhain was the first to send some writing in, in relation to the project. This will now change some as we are aiming for a humorous delivery. I thought she had some very strong ideas. 

Matthew also provided some writing but mistook Rhains questions as ones the whole group would answer. Despite this some strong ideas still emerged.

RHIAN’S 1st Draft. 

From Snowflakes To an Avalanche

 A few thoughts…

 Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (54-72 years old) Generation X: Born 1965-1980 (38-53 years old) Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (22-37 years old) Post-Millennials: Born 1997-Present (0-21 years old)

 1.      Why are Millennials so depressed?

Older generations do not understand that a new era has came with the internet that has changed the functioning of society forever. Young people are now experienced widespread guilt, shame and disillusionment from a hand held device that they never let go of. We are bombarded constantly through social media that has affected our attitudes negatively, as seeing posts about atrocities or violence constantly and only able to help by feeding into a go fund me page is debilitating to any person. We are also confronted with racial issues, terrorist attacks, bullying, body shaming and suicide, on top of this contemporary shame, inherited colonial trauma affects our generation the most due to its ever growing acceptance of otherness and feelings of empathy. We also face unrealistic success standards everyone feels they must portray, this is isolating for those who feel less accomplished. We are constantly bombarded by the entire worlds every day, all day on our most prized possession. Then trying to live up to our parents standards, who expect young people to be able to go out and get a job when the economy is vastly different from when they were young and the jobs that are available are a much more competitive process than ever before.

 2.      Why do millennials treat sexuality and mental illness like fashion statements?

The acceptance of difference has never been higher among society and so has resulted in many claiming dignity in their sexuality or gender. The older generation say there are more gay people than ever or is it just that more gay people feel able to express themselves in today's climate? Perhaps our generational guilt and depression stems partly from the oppression systematically enforced by generation Z? It has not become in style to self harm or self destruct or self express, we just now have the internet to try and not feel so alone and through the internet have found ways of supporting one another.

 3.      Why are millennials so concerned with political correctness?

A struggle for the baby boomer generation is understanding the difference between political correctness and causal racism. The younger generation is in constant cahoots with all other races, we do not have time for casual racism let alone brexit, as we see the struggle of refugees daily and we see ourselves in people from other countries as we are more exposed now to other cultures than ever before, a reason to be grateful for our privilege of being able explore further in the world more than ever before through travel agencies or social media.

 4.      Do you really find traditional family life so appalling?

A traditional life is no longer appealing to a millennial who has inherited a need for something greater than the generation before. New families are being introduced and a nuclear family setting although still a viable option is seemingly not stimulating enough in this new GO GO GO media society.

5.      Everything has been handed to you. When you are so pampered, how do you feel an existential loneliness?

The previous generation believe they have pushed the world in a state of progression and although this is true in a sense that millenials are the most privileged generation yet in terms of material possessions. Now our things are collectively worth years wages of the baby boomer generation and this is supposed to make us the happiest generation! All this proves is that material things are worthless and due to our higher education standard, we are also more aware that there are more homeless people on the street than ever with empty housing being held by the government, government aid being stripped from the disabled and redirected into military programs and referendums and the government are the enemy to our generation with tensions that were beautifully displayed between Stormzy and Theresa May after the Grenfell Tower Fire.

 6.      Why are millennials so worked up over bodily ownership?

The fact that a room full of mostly rich men decide what people and more particularly women can and can not do with their bodies regardless of context is a disturbing, whether they were voted by a majority into power or not, these issues are for a body and a body alone and laws regarding the body should all depend on its autonomous state. This isn’t generational just common sense???

 Phrases and images

 Inspiring-

‘Keep on truckin’’

‘A minute at a time’

‘This too must pass’

 MATTHEW’S FIRST DRAFT.

why are millennials so depressed? It seems the ideas of success and wealth are now measured more than ever on celebrity ideals, with talentless kids such as lil pump being worth a reported 6.5 million dollars at 18. How can anyone in the real world live up to these ridiculous ways, social media is at the forefront of almost all depression id argue. Whether it is girls comparing themselves to cosmetic Barbie dolls or guys seeing footballers flashing super cars, when it comes down to it social media is a place where life looks so perfect. Thus leaving kids to believe in this perfection and in turn ask why they aren't perfect or as happy as others. Why do millennials treat sexuality and mental illness like fashion statements? We live in a society where we are told to think outside the box and be different and if you aren't different you are somehow boring or just seen as 'normal' which is something nobody wants to be branded as. therefore this generation is using sexuality and mental illness to try and define themselves and stand out from the crowd. However the numbers of people in this generation that suffer with depression and anxiety are astronomically high, and therefore it is probably more individual and different to say that you don't have a mental illness, which is sad. As for sexuality it is getting more and more socially acceptable to be openly gay, and even though some say that this causes people to think they are something they are not. some people disagree with the fact that there were probably just as many gay men and women in the 80s as there is now, it is just acceptable for gay people to be open and public about it now as was not the way in the 80s. Why are millennials so concerned with political correctness? Political correctness is often misinterpreted as just not accepting 'causal racism' we all know someone who will start a sentence with "I'm not racist but..." and then proceed to say something which is in fact just racist. usually this will be from someone of an older generation but not always and where as with the older generations I find it easier to forgive as that was the norm back when they were growing up so they have not changed with the times and is harmless, however there are some members of these generations that are just ignorant and really are racists this is often not the case. it is members of my own generation which I can't forgive this casual racism, I was brought up in the same world as them and I don't use these racial slurs or statements so why should they, it is out of pure bigotry that they choose not to accept that racism should just simply not be acceptable in this day in age. Do you really find traditional family life so appalling?

I feel this is born out of some misconstrued idea that to be successful you have to have no 'distractions' and a family is seen as the main 'distraction'. It feels like people have to make the decision to either be successful or be happy, but why can't we have both?. Everything has been handed to you. When you are so pampered, how do you feel an existential loneliness?

It is this idea that we have everything given to us and we are the most equipped generation to succeed that there ever has been that causes this existential loneliness, as we are told we have the tools to do whatever we want yet we still fail. But rather than putting it down to being human and having to fail in order to succeed, we bury any dreams we have in the fear that we won't succeed. And it is this which leads to the loneliness. The pressure put on kids now is greater than ever before as there aren't as many jobs for people and we are told if you don't have a degree you won't be able to get a job, where as generations of the past were born in to a Britain which had more opportunities as they could go and work down the pit or work in a ship yard or some sort of manufacturing jobs. where as now we have been replace by machines, and we have to fight and scratch to get opportunities for jobs.