woke.

[SuperBacon]

1 hour ago, Michael_3165 said:

It's weird because many people w autism are now wanting to use the word autistic. 

What is the matter w these bullying fucktards? (EDIT: Not autistic people!)

What are you on about?

[Michael_3165]

8 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

What are you on about?

The term autistic. Many people w autism are now reclaiming the word  rather than it being a negative.

For a number of years autistic wasn't used as much because of the negative connotations. However, "with autism" suggests there is something wrong w them, autistic is a set of characteristics (as far as I can tell) and not a negative term. Neurodiverse is still used alot but i find it a bit clunky and lumps everyone together who have adhd, autism and other neurodiverse diagnosis. 

I'm surprised the right are using it as a slur, given how reclaiming the term is becoming more mainstream. and rightfully  it shouldnt be a derogatiry phrase. 

 

Ps. Apologies, my incoherent posts are often when I am walking  doing other things etc. Which is apparently quite common! 

Edited May 3, 2023 by Michael_3165

[Jazzy G]

I'm not surprised people try and use autistic as a slur, it's ableism. 

[Keith Houchen]

1 hour ago, Michael_3165 said:

fucktards

Nice ableism you have there. Cram it up your pisspipe. 
 

I think the reason autism is being used as a pejorative isn’t because of people with autism, it’s because autism is seen as a must have character trait by some, hence the self diagnosis and chasing a diagnosis. These kind fit the invented image of the rights enemy (dyed hair, pronouns, vegan, Tik Tok etc)So it’s people without autism causing the problem. 
 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Keith Houchen said:

I think the reason autism is being used as a pejorative isn’t because of people with autism, it’s because autism is seen as a must have character trait by some, hence the self diagnosis and chasing a diagnosis. These kind fit the invented image of the rights enemy (dyed hair, pronouns, vegan, Tik Tok etc)So it’s people without autism causing the problem.

Do you believe that bolded part and think it's a helpful message to propagate? Or have I misinterpreted?

In any case, I think what draws the right to use "autistic" as an insult is because the few examples they've seen of it include "furious screeching" memes and campaigners like Greta who they're conditioned to hate, so they think anyone who feels passionately about an issue that the right would rather ignore must therefore fit this categorisation.

[Keith Houchen]

3 minutes ago, Uncle Zeb said:

Do you believe that bolded part and think it's a helpful message to propagate? Or have I misinterpreted?

I believe it because I see it. Since my partners diagnosis, she joined a lot of support groups. Every day these groups are filled with posts of people angry they haven’t been given the diagnosis they wanted, or have been told they aren’t autistic. So they’re asking for tips on how to act in their assessments to get the diagnosis. Inevitably after a few attempts they self diagnose themselves and start accusing “Actually Autistic” people of gatekeeping. 
 

There’s a fair bit of discussion in the autism thread about the problems self diagnosis and wanting to be autistic create. It’s plays a part in why the waiting list for assessments is so long. There are other, bigger factors such as government cuts, women finally being taken seriously etc but clogging up the system because you want to have something you don’t have does impact it too. 
 

This is more suited for the Autism thread though to be honest. 

[TheScarlettChad]

4 hours ago, Michael_3165 said:

It's weird because many people w autism are now wanting to use the word autistic. 

What is the matter w these bullying fucktards? (EDIT: Not autistic people!)

I'm autistic. I was diagnosed at 12. I have always used the term. I don't know what else term I'd use honestly.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

I believe it because I see it.

I don't doubt that it happens. I also don't doubt that comments like the one I referenced can make people insecure about seeking a legitimate diagnosis. I'll leave it there.

[Keith Houchen]

1 minute ago, Uncle Zeb said:

I'll leave it there.

Appreciated 

[BomberPat]

I don't know if it's so much that it's "must-have", as that there is a tendency among some people, often younger somewhat educated people in my experience (if only because my primary experience of this phenomenon was as a student, and then when working in colleges and universities), who either want some kind of badge of identity to mark themselves out as different, unique, or interesting, because they're in a stage of their life where they're figuring out who they are and find a variety of labels useful, or because poor information on the internet has led them to believe that any and all quirks of behaviour or any negative emotions must be pathologised. That's something that goes way beyond autism self-diagnoses - you can't move on social media or TikTok for wordy bullshit about how every human behaviour under the sun is actually a "trauma response", or something uniquely neurodiverse.

When it's not Autism, it's Anxiety - any 16 year old who's ever been nervous about anything now talks about it as if it's a clinical condition, rather than a natural state of experiencing the world as an awkward teenager. I remember a conversation with a lecturer at my old job who said that half the teenagers currently self-diagnosing with Anxiety would have had Depression ten years ago, and their equivalents will have something else in another ten years. That is obviously not to discredit those who genuinely suffer with these conditions, and have been formally diagnosed and so on, just to say that there are always going to be young people who adopt them either as a badge of identity or as means of helping them navigate their understanding of the world. My charitable read on that is that it's all part of figuring out your own identity, and that considerations of mental health being part of that conversation at least means that young people are open to discussions of mental health in the first place, and that it can do a lot to get rid of stigmas around these conditions - the downside of that is risking propagating the alternative stigma, that they're all just trendy pretend conditions.

One of my least woke opinions which, again, comes of working with students, is that the same is true for a lot of teenagers' sexuality and gender identities. It's an exercise in playing around with labels and seeing what fits, figuring out your own personality and identity, and finding ways to mark you out as different - and that's not always an act of attention-seeking or narcissism, so much as a sense that you are different, and figuring out which category best explains that. When I was sixteen, practically everyone I knew at college claimed to be bisexual, and most of them probably weren't, but it's a label you can put on yourself without really having to do any work or change how you approach the world. I think the same is true of a lot of teenagers currently presenting as gender-neutral or non-binary; it's a way of them figuring out questions of identity in their head, as well as a bit of an outward claim to being different from the norm, without having the onus of much actual work on their behalf. Again, that doesn't mean that all people of non-binary gender identities fit this category at all, nor do I think it's necessarily a bad thing that kids feel free to use alternative gender labels as part of that exercise of figuring themselves out, because it means those ideas are broadly acceptable enough; there are non-binary and trans kids at my nephews' and nieces' secondary schools, and to the best of my knowledge they're not getting the absolute shit kicked out of them every single day, as absolutely would have been the case when I was at school, and I'm almost certain there wasn't even a single out gay kid at any school I went to. All of these things are complicated parts of progress and inclusion.

 

I think the right-wing use of autism as a pejorative is unrelated to any trend toward self-diagnosis, though, it's just good old-fashioned ableism, though the Mumsnet/Autism Speaks branches of the right-wing do it with a side order of infantalising autistic people and advocating eugenics. 

[SuperBacon]

It's interesting, as I see our generation (using that term loosely for all of us, apart from Thunderplex obviously) as being pretty open minded, but I speak to and listen to my children and how they speak/act/think and it blows my mind at how progressive this generation is.

We had one openly gay kid in our year at school, that can only be described as super-gay, and everyone loved him, even the dickheads, so he escaped the dreaded "queer bashing" that unfortunately a lot of people endured.

I had a very "1 fucking nil to me" moment with my Dad recently. 

Our eldest would like to be referred to by another name and not their birth name(pretty much the nickname we have always used for them anyway) and at the moment (their words) doesn't like she/her pronouns so I told my Dad who then went on a rant about "all this gender stuff" and being "different to try and stand out"

"Didn't you have long purple hair at 16 that Grandad hated?" "Yes but..." "And isn't your favourite artist of all time David Bowie, a queer alien?" "Yes but..."

1 FUCKING NIL POPS!!!

Edited May 3, 2023 by SuperBacon
Realised I had used the wrong pronouns. BOOMER

[BomberPat]

22 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

We had one openly gay kid in our year at school, that can only be described as super-gay, and everyone loved him, even the dickheads, so he escaped the dreaded "queer bashing" that unfortunately a lot of people endured.

When I was in my teens and early 20s, and living somewhere generally very provincial and closed-minded, I honestly don't think I went a week without someone directing some kind of homophobic insult at me, either in the pub, in the street, or shouted out of a car window at me, whereas I have a gay friend who says he never experienced any real homophobia living in the same area. I think about that kind of thing a lot, and it's really no different to the mindset that allows a die-hard racist to have a black mate and have the cognitive dissonance to think "well, that's different, that's just Jim", mentally putting him in a different category to the abstract concept of "black people" that he'd otherwise slag off.

Homophobia rarely has anything to do with whether someone is actually gay or not, but about some kind of perceived transgression from gender norms or a very narrow definition of what a "man" "should" look and behave like. When I was maybe 19 or so I had a bloke outside a pub ask me, aggressively, if I was gay, and I asked what difference it made who I slept with, or something like that, and he was genuinely set aback that I would think he was talking about sex, said it had nothing to do with that, and then started mincing about to indicate what he meant by "gay". These people had this whole mental category of "gayness" that had absolutely nothing to do with whether it was a man who slept with men or not.

That obviously doesn't explain a "super-gay" kid escaping queer-bashing when others didn't, but I wonder if the openness kind of paradoxically acted as a bit of a security blanket for him - there's no point going after the kid who everyone already knows is gay, it's about identifying "gayness" in kids who aren't gay, or who aren't out yet. 

Quote

Our eldest would like to be referred to by another name and not her birth name(pretty much the nickname we have always used for her anyway) and at the moment (her words) doesn't like she/her pronouns so I told my Dad who then went on a rant about "all this gender stuff" and being "different to try and stand out"

"Didn't you have long purple hair at 16 that Grandad hated?" "Yes but..." "And isn't your favourite artist of all time David Bowie, a queer alien?" "Yes but..."

1 FUCKING NIL POPS!!!

This is something that I think, while far from foolproof, is pretty much the best way to approach that kind of thing. My girlfriend always frets about her Dad sharing fairly reactionary right-wing stuff on Facebook, but he isn't really that bloke when you meet him in real life. He'll admit to not "getting it", but he has queer and trans family and friends, and would stick up for them if someone genuinely tried to slag them off. He just doesn't mentally associate the two things in his head, so in conversation the best thing to do is to help him draw that connection himself, to bring it around to a frame of reference that he understands, because that generation don't necessarily have the kind of joined-up understanding of "identity" that we think we do.

And our kids will look at us the same way one day, no doubt. 

Edited May 3, 2023 by BomberPat

[SuperBacon]

Yeah, my Dad's not a bad person but will bang on about "wokeness" etc (pretty sure i shared in this thread some of the funny messages he sends as they aren't nasty, just are funny)

By drawing comparisons to things/people he likes it makes things a lot easier I think. It's a very simplistic thing maybe, but if he thinks "Well I like Bowie and sometimes he was a girl/boy/whatever" it almost humanises that and makes it easier. In fact I'd say that a large majority of his heroes weren't straight.

He just has a hard time comprehending it straight away, and that's fine. I think he learns more by speaking to my kids than he does anything else, and that's the most important thing.

 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

32 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Our eldest would like to be referred to by another name and not their birth name(pretty much the nickname we have always used for them anyway)

Unlike gender identity this is not a new thing as I have found out to my frustration. Whilst doing the whole genealogy thing on my mum's side of the family it was initially baffling that I couldn't find anyone. My mum's mum had 10 siblings (Farming folk, no electric) and I could only find 1 to start with. I eventually found out that the other 9 all used names that were not there original first names, but were names they chose themselves and everyone just went with it. None of the names were even middle names. 

I'm not sure I have more of a point than me finding out my great aunt June was really called Margery was frustrating and funny in equal measure, but if I did have one it would be that if farming folk from the Lincolnshire fens born between 1908 and 1935 can get used to calling people by the name they want to be called then anyone can. 

 

[Tommy!]

58 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

don't know if it's so much that it's "must-have", as that there is a tendency among some people, often younger somewhat educated people in my experience (if only because my primary experience of this phenomenon was as a student, and then when working in colleges and universities), who either want some kind of badge of identity to mark themselves out as different, unique, or interesting

It's always been my understanding that we all like ultimately like to be part of a group in some way, although sizes may differ, be that religion, class, football team support or hundreds of other things. As a base level we get safety and recognition of self worth from being within a group and part of a wider pack, which in my limited experience is somewhat related to the above. People ultimate, consciously or subconsciously, need something to identify as and with in all works of life, and as you say that leads to an exercise in playing around with labels and seeing what fits, especially as a young adult where that is a fundamental part of personal growth into the world. I don't know if you agree or not, but you seem far more knowledgeable than me so I'd be keen to be shot down about that TBH.

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

When it's not Autism, it's Anxiety - any 16 year old who's ever been nervous about anything now talks about it as if it's a clinical condition, rather than a natural state of experiencing the world as an awkward teenager. I remember a conversation with a lecturer at my old job who said that half the teenagers currently self-diagnosing with Anxiety would have had Depression ten years ago, and their equivalents will have something else in another ten years. That is obviously not to discredit those who genuinely suffer with these conditions, and have been formally diagnosed and so on, just to say that there are always going to be young people who adopt them either as a badge of identity or as means of helping them navigate their understanding of the world. My charitable read on that is that it's all part of figuring out your own identity, and that considerations of mental health being part of that conversation at least means that young people are open to discussions of mental health in the first place, and that it can do a lot to get rid of stigmas around these conditions - the downside of that is risking propagating the alternative stigma, that they're all just trendy pretend conditions.

Off topic slightly but one of the things I had to be taught when I've gone for help was the difference between a reasonable emotional response and an unreasonable one, because i just couldn't mange them effectively without understanding the difference. That does than annoy me a bit when people try and relate with something ultimately banal "ohh I'm the same, I get so nervous when I'm presenting" because that a perfectly rational response and isn't sitting in the dark in the early hours convinced you'd better kill yourself before something unpleasant happens to you for no disenable reason.

Same when people talk about OCD meaning they don't live in a shit heap which is perfectly normal, as apposed to you know actually a condition.

I guess my point is I completely understand peoples desires to attach labels, either to explain themselves or feel a sense of belonging as we cling onto a dying rock hurtling through the abyss of space, but desperately trying to apply some rather than just being open to discuss them isn't the right thing IMO.