Concept: Maybe “neurotypicals” who consistently reblog post about autism and other mental disorders and illnesses because they relate to them actually aren’t neurotypical, and just don’t know it.
Even the ones who say, “But everyone does this!” might only be saying it because they do it, and therefore think everyone does, when that’s not the reality.
Like, I remember someone who very obviously had OCD saying, “Everyone gets constant, upsetting intrusive thoughts, and does things to make them go away! It’s normal!” and everyone who responded to them were like, “Uh… No, it’s really not. You have a mental illness.”
I hate how everyone is so quick to assume anyone who relates to their posts without having every aspect of their mental state listed on their blog is obviously an evil, appropriating neurotypical. Maybe they are technically neurotypical, but have one or two traits associated with whatever form of neurodivergence. Maybe they’re neurodivergent and just don’t feel like listing it. Maybe they think they’re neurotypical, and are in the process of realising that they actually aren’t.
Please don’t be so quick to judge. This gatekeeping helps no one.
This is an extremely important point.
I know at least one trans person who didn’t realize they were trans until they were talking about how much they relate to trans things. Only, it was in the context of being dismissive of trans people. “Oh, sure, of course you prefer those pronouns. Everyone does.” But that wasn’t a cis person being dismissive of trans experiences; it was a trans person not understanding that they were trans.
Same thing with a lot of mental illness stuff.
Honestly, if you relate to an experience, you have the experience. Doesn’t matter whether you have it for the same reason someone else does.
On a similar note that I was thinking about recently: perhaps some neurodivergent people who are dismissed by their parents have neurodivergent parents who don’t know it. Like, if your mom says “everyone has that” when you tell her about your depression, there’s a decent chance that she’s not minimizing you, she just has depression herself and doesn’t realize it.
Bless you all
Also important to note that not everyone lists these things on their blog.
Ive had someone angrily come at me in messages because I was reblogging BPD posts when I “didn’t have BPD” but when I explained that I do, in fact, have Borderline Personality Disorder, they were apologetic but that doesn’t take back the distress their ask caused. Same thing with gender issues.
Please don’t assume that everyone on tumblr is willing to list their mental illnesses on their sidebar like a badge.
On the subject of dismissal by parents that is absolutely a true thing that I have experienced. My dad and I both have ADHD and we only both found out when I got diagnosed like a month ago. He’s always really supportive but I’ve had a lot of really painful conversations with him where he’d be telling me the whole “that’s normal everyone gets that” thing, and it was pretty much because he’d been living his whole life with ADHD and had no clue. People judge what’s normal based on their own experiences, and because everyone tries to manage and hide the things they’re struggling with, it’s easy to assume everyone is dealing with the same problems as you when they might not be.
We learned this in Social Psychology: perception is reality.
Whenever
I see people quoting/referencing/parodying My
Immortal it’s always one of the same four or five lines. You know the ones.
The
iconic opening paragraph, “Hi my name is
Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair… (et
cetera).”
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU
DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!”
“I MAY BE A HOGWARTS
STUDENT… BUT I AM ALSO A SATANIST!”
“Then he put his thingie
into my you-know-what and we did it for the first time.”
“And Loopin was
masticating to it!”
As
great as those are, I’d like to throw a spotlight on what I think are some
of the underappreciated parts of this classic work of fanfiction.
Ebony puts blood on her Count Chocula cereal instead of milk.
Enoby is canonically a weeaboo and speaks to her friends in Fangirl Japanese.
Harry’s scar is now a pentagram instead of a lightning bolt, so either he found
some sort of spell to alter the appearance of the scar or he actually took the time to carve a
pentagram into his forehead.
There is an OC named either Tom Riddle or Tom Rid who works at a “punkgoff” store
in Hogsmeade and has absolutely nothing to do with Voldemort, he just happens
to have the exact same name.
Tara somehow got Fred and George mixed up with Crabbe and Goyle.
The reason Snape doesn’t like Harry in this fic is because Snape is Christian
and Harry is a Satanist.
Marty McFly literally appears out of nowhere to help Enoby travel through “tim”
with his “tim machine.”
Chapter 11 ends with Hagrid singing along to “a gothic version of a song by 50
Cent.”
Voldemort inexplicably speaks in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.
Voldemort wears high heels.
Draco has a flying black Mercedes-Benz and a black MCR broom.
Snape has a Dork Mark on his penis.
Speaking of penises, Draco is apparently “hung like a stallone.” I guess Tara
is a Rambo fan?
The Hedwig/Voldemort sex scene, wherein Hedwig is a male human instead of a
female owl, for some reason.
Dumbledore flies around on his broomstick while holding a loaf of rye bread. At
least, that’s what I think Tara meant by “Sudenly
a gothic old man flu in on his broomstick. He had lung black hair and a looong
black bread.”
Oh yeah, and Dumbledore is an Avril Lavigne fanboy, because of course he is.
James Potter’s “goff” nickname is Samoro, because Tara erroneously believes
this to be the masculine form of the name Samara.
Draco’s singing voice is described as “a
cross between Gerard, Joel, Chester, Pierre and Marilyn Manson.”
Tara’s brief feud with her editor Raven, as chronicled in the author’s notes, may or may not have had something to do with Raven borrowing Tara’s sweater
and not giving it back. IDK, it’s unclear.
Voldemort smokes a “gothic blak Nightmare b4 Christmas cigar.”
McGonagall has the best insults, like “horny simpletons” and “mediocre dunces” and probably some others I’m forgetting.
Dobby only appears once in the entire fic and literally all he does is watch
Snape and Lupin have sex, and then run away crying.
Sirius is referred to as Harry’s dogfather, and not gonna lie, even if it was a typo I
think that is a genuinely clever pun.
The Hogwarts janitor may or may not be Chuck Norris.
Tara accurately predicted how Harry would defeat Voldemort in Deathly Hallows. No, really. “nd den hairy wil have 2 kommit suicide so
voldimort will die koz he will rilly be a horcrox!!!!!111”
This line: “Snap stated loafing
meanly. He took out a kamera anvilly.”
And this one: “‘Crosio!’ I shited pointing my wound.
Snoop scremed and started running around da room screming.”
look i don’t know about yall but queer is literally the go-to slur here in The South. more than the f-slur! i’ve heard it all my life here in mississippi… and i still do… today… AS A SLUR… in 2017.
i don’t care how ya wanna label yourself! im sure most people don’t! what they have a problem with is when you apply the word to them??
i can’t think of any situation where i’d be comfortable with someone calling me queer without flinching. when i was hospitalized for suicidal tendencies a year ago, the nurse admitting me said, in disdain, “what are you, some kind of queer or something?”
… it’s still a derogatory, Othering word here in this very reality that i live!
so maybe come down from your perspective in the Big Cities and consider what it’s like for rural and southern kids, perhaps? im glad that you have had an experience that allows for queer to be a good and comforting word to you– i really am– and no one can take that away from you… but, like, people who don’t want to hear it probably have reasons that aren’t radfems brainwashed us
STEM fields don’t need to be ultra competitive monocultures that work people to the bone and systematically drive out anyone who is seen as not being able to hack it.
Just because the system is set up in a way that fosters a super high stress lifestyle doesn’t mean that it needs to be that way. There’s nothing inherently competitive about science (except evolution).
Grad school, and STEM in general, should be intellectually difficult but not nearly as emotionally difficult as it is, and yet way too many people just accept it because that’s they way it’s always been.
I’m not saying it should be easy, but we shouldn’t have to sacrifice out mental and emotional well beings, anything resembling a personal life, or just a somewhat normal work/life balance at the altar of Science.
The pressure cooker environment of grad school and science in general is both unnecessary and bad for science. It self selects for a certain type of scientist and drives out anyone who varies from the norm.
But the people in charge aren’t incentivized to change it because they’re products of the system. They are the very type of people who the system was built to serve. When people fail they shrug and say it was unfortunate but not everyone was cut out for this life.
That is bullshit. You do not have to be broken down and built back up to be a good scientist. Science is not war. We are not soldiers. We are curious, creative people who want to understand the universe.
We need to stop trying to patch the leaky pipeline and rather build a new pipeline. One that isn’t coated with acid and pressurized beyond the point of failure.
