Here’s the thing about being a professional who works with people in any kind of health or social care job:
We go through years and years of training. We are constantly urged to update our knowledge and skills. We amass knowledge in the hope it will service our clients well and ultimately we are driven by a strong desire to help people to improve their lives. We are often highly qualified, overworked and underpaid and I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone who’s in it for the money.
But that does not make us unchallengeable “experts.” And it is dangerous for us to pretend that we have a more valid understanding of our client’s experiences than they have themselves.
If you look at the history of this sector, you can see that we’ve come a long way in a short time. It’s not that long ago that a lot more people were confined to asylums for no real reason. It’s not that long ago that people were put through countless painful operations in order to “improve” their physical disabilities, with no real consideration given to the person’s wishes. It’s still legal in most countries (everywhere except Malta) to operate on an intersex child without parental permission. Even in the early days of medicine, doctors set themselves up as “experts” and a lot of unsafe practice went unchallenged for decades as a result.
This sector has a dark history of abuse and the best professionals work with an awareness of this and a desire to avoid repeating those mistakes. Which means putting the clients’s experiences at the heart of everything, because when things are forced on people without their wishes being considered, that’s when it becomes abusive. You cannot work effectively with a person if you let your view of their situation override their own. My qualifications do not take precedence over first-hand experience.
Like a lot of allistic professionals, I was taught that “person with autism” is a preferable label to “autistic person.” To some extent, I can see there was good intent behind this. However, out of the classroom, most autistic people I’ve encountered disagree. So I have to defer to them, and if it’s uncomfortable to apply the same rule to everyone on the spectrum, I can simply ask people what they prefer. For me to presume that my classroom learning has more validity than the experiences of autistic people would be dangerously arrogant.
I’m not claiming to be the perfect professional or anything, but I am highly shocked when I see professionals on tumblr claiming that their professional knowledge is more legit than knowledge than comes from first-hand experiences. First of all, it’s highly unprofessional for you to be arguing about this in ALL CAPS WRITING on a social network. Secondly, all professionals have to be open to challenge. If an autistic person challenges you on your person-first language, hostility is a completely inappropriate reaction. As a professional, you have obligations that continue after you finish work for the evening. Respecting other people is the most basic one.
It is good to see a not-autistic say the things we are saying.
Tag: to remember
really every smiley is an unmatched parenthesis, but thinking too much about that is probably not conducive to sound mental health
(: is it sweaty 🙂
I like it. Using inverted smileys specify which parts of your sentence are sarcastic. It’s so logical, I’m (: sure it will catch on 🙂
my god that is sarcastic as fuck, I love it
Now there’s a distinction the English language has been needing
(: because that’s not a habitual problem with text-only communication or anything 🙂
this is a brilliant example of why “automatically convert smileys to graphics” is a horrifically bad idea
It is essential, however, that discipline should not be practiced like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of one’s own will; that it is felt as pleasant, and that one slowly accustoms oneself to a kind of behavior which one would eventually miss, if one stopped practicing it. It is one of the unfortunate aspects of our Western concept of discipline (as of every virtue) that its practice is supposed to be somewhat painful and only if it is painful can it be ‘good.’
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
(via molibdenita)
I reblog this every time I see it, because it’s one of life’s hardest lessons.
where the fuck was this when i needed it
Poison Ivy as a kindergarten teacher
no, but really: flytraps use up a LOT of energy closing their traps. You know a lot of other plants that move that much? Tricking them into closing when there isn’t food there is indeed mean.
B-but… they’re plants… they’re devoid of sentience, right? They don’t “feel,” they’re more like little wind-up machines. Right? They don’t act on instinct, they’re… well… traps. You can’t actually be mean to a plant. Right??
I’m of the opinion that meanness is about the nature of the action, not awareness on the part of the target of the action.
Tricking them into closing their traps is actually harmful to them, since the energy expended in closing and then re-opening the trap isn’t replenished by having a tasty insect to digest.
I’m of the opinion that meanness is about the nature of the action, not awareness on the part of the target of the action.
Honestly I just want to live in a big pack of my friends, it’s important to me and I’m just gonna keep trying to figure out some circumstances where I can do it
I feel like that’s basically reasonable but honestly please tell me if this is a thing I’m allowed to think or say or if it’s creepy or weird or utterly socially unacceptable bc I genuinely can’t tell anymore
This is 100% legit and an ideal I personally share.
Sorta living this. Got a few friends that are far away, but I have a little pack that is my community and I love it. 10/10, highly recommended.
northfield nakama is the best tribe i love you all ❤ ❤ ❤
btw, as for being ‘allowed’ to think, more than that, it’s kind of the natural human instinct to live in groups of about 10-30 instead of nuclear family units or large collectives.
don’t try to all live in one building. you’ll drive each other crazy. try to be geographically nearby each other but not on top of each other. the northfield nakama have their own apartments but seebs and i have a big old house that’s everyone’s hangout space.
also don’t try to share everything. i know idealists like to talk about how property is theft, but knowing what stuff you can rely on to be available to you is important to psychological security. from big stuff like covering each other’s rent shortfalls, to little stuff like whether it’s ok to just walk into each other’s kitchens and make a cup of coffee, be up front about what you’re ok with sharing.
consent isn’t just for the bedroom. some people feel loved and cared for if you check up on them frequently, and some people need lots of solitude; don’t assume. make sure you have consent to be in someone’s space. remember that you don’t owe anyone any particular instance of emotional labor, even though being a family involves giving lots of it in general – you can always say “no, i’m not up for that,” and you need to be willing to accept no when other people say it.
found family is real family, and humans are tribal animals. i hope you achieve your friendclan goal. ❤
Sometimes i think about the idea of Common as a language in fantasy settings.
On the one hand, it’s a nice convenient narrative device that doesn’t necessarily need to be explored, but if you do take a moment to think about where it came from or what it might look like, you find that there’s really only 2 possible origins.
In settings where humans speak common and only Common, while every other race has its own language and also speaks Common, the implication is rather clear: at some point in the setting’s history, humans did the imperialism thing, and while their empire has crumbled, the only reason everyone speaks Human is that way back when, they had to, and since everyone speaks it, the humans rebranded their language as Common and painted themselves as the default race in a not-so-subtle parallel of real-world whiteness.
In settings where Human and Common are separate languages, though (and I haven’t seen nearly as many of these as I’d like), Common would have developed communally between at least three or four races who needed to communicate all together. With only two races trying to communicate, no one would need to learn more than one new language, but if, say, a marketplace became a trading hub for humans, dwarves, orcs, and elves, then either any given trader would need to learn three new languages to be sure that they could talk to every potential customer, OR a pidgin could spring up around that marketplace that eventually spreads as the traders travel the world.
Drop your concept of Common meaning “english, but in middle earth” for a moment and imagine a language where everyone uses human words for produce, farming, and carpentry; dwarven words for gemstones, masonry, and construction; elven words for textiles, magic, and music; and orcish words for smithing weaponry/armor, and livestock. Imagine that it’s all tied together with a mishmash of grammatical structures where some words conjugate and others don’t, some adjectives go before the noun and some go after, and plurals and tenses vary wildly based on what you’re talking about.
Now try to tell me that’s not infinitely more interesting.
Okay, but like… While I love this, I think you’re putting the cart before the horse!
What if it’s not that humans were cultural imperialists, but rather that “human” is a social construct? Humans are the “default”, the “youngest race”, and often have the most visible genetic diversity. And although only a few races bother to have a name for part-human hybrids, mixed-race romances are attested to in plenty of stories.
So what if “human” is the word for the product of millennia of introgressive hybridization? What if “human” is the word for a genetic “mutt”, someone who’s a smidgen of most races, interbreeding for so long that they’ve become something new?
Or what if Common is taught as a religious language, like Hebrew and Arabic are in our world, and humans just happen to come from the same area where the prophet-bookwriter came from, so they speak the language natively?
Or what if humans are the language-nerds of the universe, the only race that goes around inventing dozens of new languages just for fun? So when there’s a new spell or invention, or when you need to translate a concept, you turn to the nearest human and go “hey, come up with a word for this.”
(This also explains why some spells have great names, and some are damned ridiculous. Like Mr. Tenured Elf Professor is going to do research to double-check his TA’s spell names?)
(”Smith, give me a name for this spell.” “Fuck, I don’t know, it’s fire that’s sorta like an arrow, right? Call it a fire arrow?”)
(Also: WAY too many things end up being dick jokes.)
in our dtd game, which is space fantasy, our gm has declared that ‘common’ is pretty much esperanto. it’s a constructed language designed so every species humans interact with can make/hear its phonemes. old earth languages still exist. murphy the space cowboy also speaks english, chinese, and a little spanish. he can swear in irish gaelic, though his accent is terrible. none of these are ‘common’; common is its own thing.
you deserve to be loved without having to hide the parts of yourself that you think are unlovable.
I do believe that you can be kind, and soft, and gentle, and still refuse to be subjugated or be complicit in subjugation. Think of a king; a king can be kind, and gentle, and have softness, without surrendering an inch. One can be pleasant without seeking to please. But it’s very difficult to distinguish between softness one has been made to perform and softness that exists for its own sake. Ultimately I think it must come down to the refusal to perform – the rejection of performance entirely. If I must act – and in order to exist in the world one must become an actor, of sorts – I will play only my own character.
Sometimes “giving up” can be a valuable lesson. I’ve been thinking about this often lately during training – we are instructed to support our students in whatever challenges they set for themselves and not to pressure them into doing anything they’re significantly uncomfortable with. We let them set their own goals and don’t shame them for choosing not to climb all the way to the top of the rock wall, deciding not to ride the zipline, or backing out of going on the giant swing. Encouraging them to push their own boundaries is great, but push too hard and they won’t gain any psychological benefits from accomplishments.
I kind of wish I’d had more support like that as a kid. I was hard on myself. I refused to give up on anything, even when it made me utterly miserable or terrified. To this day, I have difficulty knowing where my boundaries are because I have almost always ignored them or pretended they didn’t exist. As much “strength of character” this may have created, it’s also put me in some really bad situations. Being able to “give up” and acknowledge that my personal feelings are as important as my goals and viable to change them has been very liberating.
sometimes I give up before I even get out of bed
This is excellent advice.
I used to be a much less effective programmer than I am now. I used to fuck up a lot more, mostly. You know what changed?
Let me paraphrase a thing I said in the internal company chat server last week:
“Okay, that’s the third really obvious error in the last half hour and I really need to reset, I’m gonna go spend half an hour with a blanket over my head like a bird pretending it’s night.”
And then I did it.
And then I came back and got stuff done.
What changed is I learned to recognize signs that I actually can’t work effectively right now and I need to stop trying and figure out what needs to happen to get me functional again. Food. Rehydrating. Shower. Shaving, because itchy face will absolutely make me grumpy and stupid. And sometimes I just plain don’t have the brain today, and if I try to write code, it will be bad. So I do other things, or hell, nothing. Because that will be less bad.
Giving up sometimes: Very important skill. If I hadn’t been willing to give up on a thing that was going badly, I think I’d still be trying to get even the first phase of a project done, instead of saying “okay I think this is ready to be tried out”.
just moving along like everyone else 