Omg So Relatable.

I think some of you forgot that autistic people sometimes act strange and say things that are poorly worded and speak with incorrect tone and misunderstand or miss social cues because they are autistic

Ok so, I just remembered how people in the comments of a tiktok video were being assholes, and I want to rant now :3

The video showed two wheelchair users at a train(?), who had just arrived to their stop to find nobody was there with a ramp so they could leave the train. One of them blocked the door so it wouldn't close, and this lasted for 15 minutes. The train was stopped for said 15 minutes. There was a button by the door, that said that it'd contact the driver when pressed. It didn't. People offered to go find the driver, and they came back with the news that there were no people in the platform to put the ramp. In the end, passengers had to go out, and place the ramp themselves, before the train could carry on. The wheelchair users had warned they were coming, and asked to have the ramp put there so they could get down. The platform turned out to have workers, they all just ran away because they'd never encountered the situation in which they needed to do this simple task.

Because of the workers' negligence, the train was forced to stop for 15 minutes.

Everyone's comments?

"Why did they block the doors and stop the train? So selfish" Selfish were workers who refused to do their job.

"What if someone had needed to get to their stop urgently? They shouldn't have stopped the train" It wasn't the disabled people's fault, it was the workers who were negligent.

"Why didn't they just wheel themselves down those steps?" They shouldn't have to risk their (expensive) chairs just because people didn't do what they were paid to do.

"If I had been in that train I would've been pissed, how dare you stop it" And you probably wouldn't have even thought about fixing the problem yourself, would you?

"Entitled assholes" Ok I'll leave you stranded in a train with everyone who could help you get down outright refusing to. Let's see who's an entitled asshole now.

If someone fights for accessibility, as much as it might be a bother for you, you do not have the right to be mad at them. If someone fights for accessibility, it is exclusively the fault of a world catered exclusively for able-bodied people.

So next time you think, "hey the consequences of these disabled people fighting for their rights bother me", instead of blaming them for this, help them solve the issue. This way, next time they will not have to fight at all.

Able bodied people, go out and fight for a fucking accessible world if you're not an asshole.

[ Able-bodied people are encouraged to reblog this post, but try not to derail ]

Omg so relatable, I thought I didn't have autism because I could understand metaphors. Nice to know I'm not alone.

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

btw 'syscourse' and plural infighting isn't accomplishing anything. back in the late 90s and early 2000s, the only communities and resources for plurals that were widely available were for and by non-traumagenic systems. the only people who were advocating for normalizing and accepting plurality on a large scale were non-traumagenic systems. if you did research into plurality 10 - 15 years ago, most of the results that came up would have been experiences written by spiritual and natural plurals.

many people at the time were expressing their dislike of forcing every single plural to identify as if they had trauma- many found this insulting to themselves, and rightfully so! no one should be forced to identify in a way they don't agree with just to rightfully be a part of a community they already occupy. this obsession with "you can only be plural if you have trauma" has only come about extremely recently. i found out about plurality through the otherkin community. i was actually told about DID by someone in the spiritual plurality community. people don't seem to understand that most non-traumagenic systems have respect for traumagenic systems and don't gatekeep their spaces to prevent us from entering.

older plural spaces on the web like healthymultiplicity accepted all plurals. the goal of the community was to show that you can live as plural and not have it be a tragedy or something to "fix". if anything, folks with dissociative disorders owe a LOT to non-traumagenic systems for pushing to normalize plurality without implying that we HAVE to integrate our headmates and try to stop being plural. a huge part of the early online plural community was there to push that plurals can and do live happy lives and shouldn't view their plurality as a bad thing

it's not going to make singlet society see us in a better light. it's not going to get people to understand plurality better. it's not going to get us better mental health resources. it's not going to improve the quality of care for dissociative and traumagenic systems. all you're doing is bullying someone else that you don't understand simply because you don't agree with them.

you're not going to recover from your trauma or understand your own plurality better by denying the existence of other types of plurality. you're not "making the community safer" by gatekeeping. telling other people how their brains work is policing their identities. whether or not you want to accept it, if you forcefully kick endos out of plural spaces, you are the cop you claim to hate.

fighting with people on your own team will never net you a victory. to every other dissociative and traumagenic system: endos are on your side. you are wearing the same jersey. you are made of the same flesh and blood. enough. come together to share your similarities instead of fighting over differences. celebrate the diversity that plurality offers. don't take someone else's identity personally. someone can share the space with you without having to match exactly how you identify. diversity is what makes a community thrive.

Here’s my metaphor for systemhood that I tell my singlet friends.

Imagine you’re playing a first person video game. You have the controller, you control your character. It’s a normal first person game. You are an alter, the character is the body. This is fronting.

Other people live with you. Sometimes, they come into the room and sit and watch while you play. They sometimes try to guide you, give you advice on what to do next. They don’t always agree, and they can argue with each other. Other times they scream at you that you’re doing everything wrong and you suck at this game. This is co-consciousness.

Imagine how distracting it would be for people around you to tell you what to do, or to scream at each other or at you, even if they have good intentions. It wouldn’t be easy to focus on your game, would it?

Then sometimes, something happens in the game that prompts you to hand off the controller to someone else so they can play and you get a break. This is (some types of) switching. This can be good.

Other times, someone rips the controller out of your hand or fights you for it. This is (other types of) switching. And sometimes, six other players hook up their controllers, but there’s only one character to play as. So all of you have your controllers, but you’re all trying to play the same character. This is cofronting.

Imagine how difficult that would be. Imagine how hard it would be to try and play a game while someone is trying to take the controller from you, or while six other people are trying to play too.

There are also times that nobody is playing, or you can’t decide who should play. What’s happening to the character in the game? What are they doing if no one is playing? This is dissociation. The character is doing nothing. They’re stuck.

This is the best metaphor I have come up with for being a system. It’s something a lot of people get because they’ve played games before.

Exactly, all systems are different in their own, beautiful ways.

Just like knowing an autistic person means you know one autistic person, knowing a system means you know one system. Systemhood/plurality is an incredibly diverse experience and it's impossible to get the full scope of the lives of every system out there by talking to one system, or even just a handful.

What feels restricting to one system may fit another perfectly. What feels comfortable to one system may make another feel dehumanized. Something that's a common experience in one system may be downright impossible in another. And on and on with many personal preferences and experiences.

This is fine, and normal. We're all unique, whether that's unique as individuals or unique as collectives. Just remember that the way one system works has no bearing on how another works; do not presume you know everything about systems just due to your own experiences or those you've talked to. It all depends on the system/plural/person in question.

"Actually many disabled people do contribute to society" is not a great argument against eugenics, by the way.

anti-endos 👏 do not 👏 own 👏 the rights 👏 to 👏 plurality 👏

starts punching and tearing at everything in a blind rage. i want AROMANTIC characters i want characters with not an OUNCE of romance about them i don't JUST want aroace characters i want AROMANTIC characters that AREN'T ASEXUAL i want people to headcanon characters as AROMANTIC not just aroace i want fandom to treat AROMANTICISM as AROMANTICISM, and not a SUBCATEGORY OF ASEXUALITY. RRRAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH

[ID: banner reading "don't tag as ace or aroace"]

I don't know who needs to hear this but...

That thing you're worried about is probably going to work out one way or another. Give it to the Divine and relax.