"In recent years, there has been a rush on the internet to supply image descriptions and to call out those who don’t. This may be an example of community accountability at work, but it’s striking to observe that those doing the most fierce calling out or correcting are sighted people. Such efforts are largely self-defeating. I cannot count the times I’ve stopped reading a video transcript because it started with a dense word picture. Even if a description is short and well done, I often wish there were no description at all. Get to the point, already! How ironic that striving after access can actually create a barrier. When I pointed this out during one of my seminars, a participant made us all laugh by doing a parody: “Mary is wearing a green, blue, and red striped shirt; every fourth stripe also has a purple dot the size of a pea in it, and there are forty-seven stripes—”
“You’re killing me,” I said. “I can’t take any more of that!”
Now serious, she said it was clear to her that none of that stuff about Mary’s clothes mattered, at least if her clothes weren’t the point. What mattered most about the image was that Mary was holding her diploma and smiling. “But,” she wondered, “do I say, Mary has a huge smile on her face as she shows her diploma or Mary has an exuberant smile or showing her teeth in a smile and her eyes are crinkled at the edges?”
It’s simple. Mary has a huge smile on her face is the best one. It’s the don’t-second-guess-yourself option."
--Against Access, by John Lee Clark, a DeafBlind educator
I do wish that "oppositional sexism" was a more commonly known term. It was coined as part of transmisogyny theory, and is defined as the belief that men and women, are distinct, non-overlapping categories that do not share any traits. If gender was a venn diagram, people who believe in oppositional sexism think that "men" and "women" are separate circles that never touch.
The reason I think that it's a useful term is that it helps a lot with articulating exactly why a lot of transphobic people will call a cis man a girl for wearing nail polish, then turn around and call a trans woman a man. Both of those are enforcement of man and woman as non-overlapping social categories. It's also a huge part of homophobia, with many homophobes considering gay people to no longer really belong to their gender because they aren't performing it to their satisfaction.
It's a large part of the reason behind arguments that men and women can't understand each other or be friends, and/or that either men or women are monoliths. If men and women have nothing in common at all, it would be difficult for them to understand each other, and if all men are alike or all women are alike, then it makes sense to treat them all the same. Enforcing this rift is particularly miserable for women and men in close relationships with each other, but is often continued on the basis that "If I'm not a real man/woman, they won't love me anymore."
One common "progressive" form of oppositional sexism is an idea often put as the "divine feminine", that women are special in a way that men will never understand. It's meant to uplift women, but does so in ways that reinforce the idea that men and women are fundamentally different in ways that can never be reconciled or transcended. There's a reason this rhetoric is hugely popular among both tradwifes and radical feminists. It argues that there is something about women that men will never have or know, which is appealing when you are trying to define womanhood in a way that means no man is or ever has been a part of it.
You'll notice that nonbinary people are sharply excluded from the definition. This doesn't mean it doesn't apply to them, it means that oppositional sexism doesn't believe nonbinary people of any kind exist. It's especially rough on multigender people who are both men and women, because the whole idea of it is that men and women are two circles that don't overlap. The idea of them overlapping in one person is fundamentally rejected.
I think it's a very useful term for talking about a lot of the problems that a lot of queer people face when it comes to trying to carve out a place for ourselves in a society that views any deviation from rigid, binary categories as a failure to perform them correctly.
"t4t" is not simply a cute abbreviation for "transgender for transgender" with no history attached to it. it is a term that was invented by trans women to (often self-)describe a trans woman who only dates other trans women, an orientation that is both political and sexual-romantic in nature, and is born by necessity out of a political reality in which other trans women are frequently the only safe and reliable partners we can have, because everyone else -- that is to say, any TME person -- has the structural power of transmisogyny over us and cannot ever be fully relied upon to never use it.
i recognize that due to linguistic drift there are now trans people of all kinds who use "t4t" as shorthand for any intratrans relationship. if you are not a trans woman and you casually use t4t in this way, that's fine by me, but you must do so with the awareness that in its original meaning this term denotes a politics which you as someone who is not a trans woman lie explicitly outside of. know your history and don't be an asshole. and don't you dare come on a post of mine where trans girls are talking about what t4t means to them to fucking correct a trans woman about what the term really means.
A Isma em BRASILEIRINHAS CUNTY:
a message to all the haters and losers: miau miau miau miau miau miau miau miau miaumiaumiau
the word slop is overgeneralised, generic and imprecise, applied with a minimum of analytical thought to anything the user categorises as low quality or beneath their consideration. its ubiquity neutralises the expression of individual taste or creative flair in describing what is objectionable, or even unremarkable, about the work to which it is applied. in this way the word slop itself is slop. be ever vigilant.
By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.
Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.
This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):
Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):
Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.
But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:
Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.
Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation
Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.
Meditation
Martial arts
Sports in general
Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)
Woodworking
Cooking
If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers
Things can be easier. You might always have a disability around this (I certainly always will), but it can be easier. You do not have to be this stuck forever.
Mob Psycho 100?? More like Mob 'why are all these characters just different flavors of autistic holy shit'..... 100!!!!!
Click on image for better resolution. Also an ID below, in case the text is too small to read:
[ID: art of Mob, Tsubomi, Tome, Ritsu and Serizawa from Mob Psycho 100, with a list of autistic symptoms below them. The background is beige and behind each character is a square mismatch of colors unique to them as a background.
Mob:
He is wearing his school uniform and smiling lightly. The background colors are saturated blues, cyans, pinks and reds, which are swirling in a liquid like fashion. Below, text reads:
Polite little autistic boy
flat affect
alexithymia
perpetually confused
attempts to mask, just ends up appearing a different type of ‘weird’ as a result
low empathy, high compassion
really strict moral integrity
didn’t have a special interest for the longest time due to repressing himself
disassociating king :(
comorbid inattentive type ADHD
Tsubomi:
She is wearing her school uniform, staring ahead with a bored, uninterested expression. The colors behind her are dark and sharp browns, violets and reds. Below, text reads:
Girlboss
masking queen
low empathy
can’t read social cues but has mastered the art of scripting and being polite and pretty to escape ostracization
hard time connecting to people
often acts unintentionally rude/blunt
stubborn
actually cares a whole lot about people she really considers friends
Tome:
She is also wearing the uniform, leaning her chin on her hand and flapping the other hand excitedly as she rambles about something. The colors behind her are a bright yellow, green and orange, formed as circles and some sharp edges. Below, text reads:
Weird Girl
stimming galore
loud™
special interest in the occult/aliens
finds herself only connecting to people through that interest
emotional dysregulation
comorbid hyperactive ADHD
barely passing grades
probably spends hours on random wikipedia articles
Ritsu:
He is wearing a yellow hoodie, looking to the side and finger raised in confusion. The colors behind him are green, orange and magenta, and they are swirling in a kind of square vortex around him. Below, text reads:
just a little hater
sounds /neg
has a selective wardrobe of comfy clothes cause textures,,,
has no idea what friends are
special interest in psychic powers
spoons are a comfort item
denied he was autistic for a long time because “wdym, i’m completely normal. Look how well adjusted I am.”
comorbid OCD
Serizawa:
He's wearing his usual suit and smiling, eyes closed with the grin, his hands clasped together at his chest. The colors behind him are cyans, blues, greens and magentas, some lines, some circles. Below, text reads:
gamer .....
self isolation as an (unhealthy) coping mechanism
uses comfort items
emotions also be dysregulating but like,, he’s learning to deal with it
high empathy
missed out on a lot of milestones, but it’s okay, he’s catching up :)
special interest in video games
finds comfort in dark, tight spaces
comorbid social anxiety
End ID.]
I've noticed more and more in public bathrooms that people skip the handwash and just take a squirt of hand sanitizer from wall dispensers on the way out. hand sanitizer is NOT effective against most things that come out of your ass. i cannot stress this enough. i'm begging y'all. please. please please please please please use the soap.
i'm out here immunosupressed fighting for my life to not get naturally selected while people around me touch a public toilet handles and walk back to their tables to immediately eat a burger
when playing danmaku games, is it better to focus on your character or on the incoming projectiles?
you ideally develop a sense of spacial awareness for your character, kind of in the same way that you develop an awareness that makes it so you don't have to be entirely conscious of where the cursor is when you move to click something across your screen
as for projectiles, it's best to never focus on the projectile itself, but the empty space around it, so you can interpret the field less as "a wall of mass that will kill me" and more as "the shifting space where it is safe to move"
sometimes i see cis people say "trans people will understand if you misgender them at first. i call my nephew 'her' all the time and he knows i don't mean it" no he doesnt. he probably never hangs out with you for more than ten minutes because that's how long you can last in a conversation before making him feel like shit. also he thinks you're, best case scenario, stupid for not being able to figure it out, or worst case scenario, uncaring about him and his needs. he doesn't like spending time with you. you're deluding yourself into thinking you're far kinder than you are. you're weird man.
Ohhhhhk
It's time for me to pull out my list of mp100 found family recs ( because found family is the best )
1. Issho - Reigen and Teru dynamics, hurt/comfort, god they're so sweet, it does contain violence and triggering themes (has warnings dw), BUT IT'S THE BEST OK
2. What we Make - Reigen and Tome dynamic, hurt/comfort, also has violence and appropriate warnings, i really like this one
3. The Joy of Cooking (for a Family You Didn't Know You Had) - Reigen and all his esper kids, THIS IS SO WARM AND SWEET, WHY HAVE I NOT SEEN A RECOMMENDATION BEFORE
4. The sun in the summertime - more Reigen and his esper kids, also sweet and warm
5. Domestic - this one's from the Attic au (if you've read abot you might be familiar), hurt/comfort, it's definitely sweet and incredible honestly, but also it does have a lot of triggers, proceed carefully. Personally I love this series so very much
6. Curses and Such - this is found family (in a way ig?), SnS trio and shenanigans, They're at the point where Tome, Serizawa and Ekubo are just used to Reigen's nonsense
And that's it! Those are the one's I've read (and reread). If you have recs, feel free to add to this post!
Autistic/ADHD adult | The biggest fan of Sol in the 21th Century
83 posts