Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
uh actually dont? yell at hets for using words like datemate and partner?
because there is always a chance that one of them is a closeted trans person and they’re trying to not misgender them while also not outing them
and normalizing gender-neutral language makes doing that safer anyway
normalizing gender-neutral language for romantic or sexual partners also lessens the strain on closeted LGBPA people in same gender relationships
normalizing gender-neutral language for spouses/partners/datemates/SOs/etc even for cishets is helpful to everyone, ESPECIALLY queer people
Normalise gender-neutral language. Make it No Big Deal. When people choke on it, remind them that you have good manners and carry on as if it is still no big deal.
If they rant about it, keep asking nice, innocent questions until they out themselves as a bigot, or catch themselves and start to think.
For the uninformed, functioning labels are terms like high functioning autism, low functioning autism, mild autism, severe autism. Other words like moderate or level 1, level 2, etc may be used too.
Functioning labels are extremely offensive because they’re placed on autistic people based on observation from the outside. This is problematic for three reasons.
Functioning labels determine how autistic people are treated. People associate “low functioning/severe” with incompetence or infancy and they end up treating the autistic person like a pet or a baby. High functioning/mild gets stereotyped as people who are just a little quirky and their difficulties get ignored as laziness or intentional stubbornness.
Functioning labels imply brokenness and treat people as if their intrinsic value is determined by what they contribute to society rather than the fact that they are a living being with oxygen in their lungs and blood in their veins like everybody else.
Functioning labels create a dichotomy as if there are differing “levels” of autism or that people exist on different areas of the spectrum. NO, NO, NO, that’s not how it is.
Think of spectroscopy and how the elements create their own signature color lines. Now put peoples’ names in place of the elements: Hydrogen/Harold, Helium/Henry, Lithium/Luke, Oxygen/Olga, Carbon/Carol, Nitrogen/Nadine.
Autism is like that. We’re all on the same spectrum and all that is unique is how we display our symptoms, our sensory issues, our splinter abilities and so forth.
In light of that, I want to change the language. Let’s start pushing for support levels instead of functioning labels.
High support: Anyone who isn’t able to live independently and needs help with some or all of their basic daily living skills such as eating, bathing, basic grooming, putting on makeup, getting dressed and completing tasks. Can be abbreviated online or in writing as HSP for High Support Person or HSAP for High Support Autistic Person.
Usage in speech: Clarissa is a high support autistic person and needs assistance with getting dressed and taking a shower. Abbreviated usage online: I’m a HSAP and I’m really into physics, so the poor sucker who signs me on is gonna hear a lot about it when they hand me my iPad!
Medium support: Anyone may or may not live independently and doesn’t need help with basic living skills, but needs help with other things like cooking, completing some tasks, transportation if unable to drive and assistance for things like grocery shopping. Can be abbreviated online or in writing as MSP for Medium Support Person or MSAP for Medium Support Autistic Person.
Usage in speech: Kevin is a medium support autistic person and needs some assistance to prepare meals and shop for the wood he uses for his carpentry projects. His boyfriend, Max, usually helps him with those. Usage online: I’m a MSAP and I’m looking for info about saws. Any fellow auties know what’s best for cutting oak?
Low support: Anyone who more often than not lives independently and may only need assistance with minor things like balancing a checkbook, getting started on some tasks like organizing a garage sale or arranging to move from one house to another. Can be abbreviated online or in writing as LSP for Low Support Person or LSAP for Low Support Autistic Person.
Usage in speech: Jesse is a low support autistic person and she only needs help keeping her checkbook balanced. Usage online: I’m a LSAP and I’m thinking about moving to Seattle. What’s the weather and traffic like there?
Reasons support levels are better:
They don’t make assumptions about intelligence
They don’t encourage infantilization or pity
They sound more respectful and dignified
Ditch functioning labels and start using support levels. These terms can apply to practically every kind of disability, not just autism.
For the record, I’m a MSAP.
Please reblog this whether you’re disabled or not. Make this viral.
im gonna be that autistic asshole and say that these do not look at ALL better than the high/low functioning labels except in name.
in fact, the “levels” described are exactly what people think of when they divide autistic ppl into “function” terms, and the fact is that all of these are useless bc your average autistic person is “high” in some areas and “low” in others.
Example, myself: I am quite good at managing my money and doing things like organizing moves/garage sales/other projects. I can also go to school/work and come home regularly with little to no problem. But I have STUPID amounts of trouble doing things like feeding myself and most of the basic living skills under high support. I cannot live alone and eat/do laundry/other necessary tasks regularly, but I am extremely capable of keeping financial resources, taking care of my cat, and everything you’ve defined as a “minor task”. I live independently right now and while I am not dead, I’m not doing too great bc my eating is at stupidfuckdiculous levels of fail and lose. But I can do well enough in school to keep a fellowship, do multiple classes and work 4 jobs. …where do I fall on this? Nowhere.
These are just functioning labels, rebranded.
And this is even before getting into how abilities and skillsets can change (sometimes a LOT) over the course of one autistic person’s life, much less variance among different individuals.
Nypicals would still use it like ableist language. Like: “Oh you seem so normal, I’d never have guessed you were MSAP.” ::immediately starts babying the ASD person::
It’s tricky to find some way of communicating how we are to nypicals. Even other ASD folks have trouble. I have way more anxiety issues than Beloved, and I would be a rich person if I had a dollar for every time I got told, “just get over it.”
It’s taken literal years, but I’m finally getting some of the emotional support I need. My method? Keep explaining until they either get it or give up.
Yeah. “Emotionally draining” is just the start of it.
Speaking of linguistics, there’s one particular linguistic tick that I think clearly separates Baby Boomers from Millennials: how we reply when someone says “thank you.”
You almost never hear a Millennial say “you’re welcome.” At least not when someone thanks them. It just isn’t done. Not because Millenials are ingrates lacking all manners, but because the polite response is “No problem.” Millennials only use “you’re welcome” sarcastically when they haven’t been thanked or when something has been taken from/done to them without their consent. It’s a phrase that’s used to point out someone else’s rudeness. A Millenial would typically be fairly uncomfortable saying “you’re welcome” as an acknowledgement of genuine thanks because the phrase is only ever used disengenuously.
Baby Boomers, however, get really miffed if someone says “no problem” in response to being thanked. From their perspective, saying “no problem” means that whatever they’re thanking someone for was in fact a problem, but the other person did it anyway as a personal favor. To them “You’re welcome” is the standard polite response.
“You’re welcome” means to Millennials what “no problem” means to Baby Boomers, and vice versa.The two phrases have converse meanings to the different age sets. I’m not sure exactly where this line gets drawn, but it’s somewhere in the middle of Gen X. This is a real pain in the ass if you work in customer service because everyone thinks that everyone else is being rude when they’re really being polite in their own language.
This is weird because I’m among the last of the Baby Boomers (I remember being told so) and I’ve always said “no worries”.
i wish there were words like “girl” and “boy” and “man” “guy” “lady” etc to refer to nonbinary people besides just “person” bc sometimes i dont feel like gendering myself when i want to say stuff like “guess who just slipped and fell in the mud while walking the dogs. this girl/guy.” because “guess who slipped in the mud while walking the dogs. this person” makes me feel like i am a robot or an alien trying to integrate into human society without being noticed and is not doing it quite right
What about “bod”? Short for “body”.
I know it’s still a little depersonalising, but it scans roughly the same as girl/by/guy/man/lady…
Cons: Can be mistaken for ‘bot’. May still need explaining. Aforementioned depersonalisation.
Pros: At least it sort of fits with language as it exists?
All my life [that’s 39 years and counting] I have used the word “piker” to mean “someone mean with money”. Usually in the following situation:
::self finds 5 cent coin:: “Wealth beyond the dreams of Avarice!” (beat) “Avarice was a piker.”
It’s a routine I inherited from my parents and it used to be a bit of harmless fun. Something funny to say.
I have since learned via an internet chat, of all things, that “piker” is derived from “pikey”, meaning “Irish gypsy”.
I do not believe that any particular ethnic group should be singled out as having one main trait. Not all brown people, for instance, are astoundingly athletic. Or perpetually happy. Not all native Americans have an instinctive connection with the mystical. Not all Jewish folks are smart with money. And not all WASPs are intolerant bigots willing to slap a label on anyone or anything just so they can stop thinking.
The Gypsies [Rom, Sinde(?) and a few others I forget, right now] have had a bad run of things. Chiefly because they remained nomads in a perpetually growing environment of others who settle down in one place and stay for the long haul.
And it’s precisely because they don’t have a homeland, a King, and whatever other trappings we “normal” people decide they “should” have, that we stationary folk find it so easy to cast aspersions on them.
And vice versa.
We gadje are WAY more likely to thieve Gypsy kids than the Gypsies are prone to take ours. The whole bit about one side eating the others’ kids is racist claptrap invented to encourage separatism. And the persecution. OMFG the persecution. Even if they try to move in and settle and try to “be normal”, they face unbelievable hostility and social shunning from everyone around them because they are “not like us”.
For fuck’s sake, people! No matter what flavour your “us” or “them” is, we are all humans together on this planet! We’re all born with the same number of appendages, sensory organs and whatnot. Just because someone is raised into a different set of beliefs is no reason to get your hate on. “They” are ordinary people within the perspectives of their culture. “They” are just trying to raise their kids and have a decent life. Just like “us”.
Once we see that, once we listen and try to understand, then we have a halfway decent chance of making this poor, broken world we’ve made work better.
I try not to hate any one group of people. I also try not to assume they have special gifts because of their genetic heritage.
And I feel a great shame because I happen to belong to the group of pale-skinned monotheists that did a whole bunch of evil in the past to people of differing hues, lifestyles and theologies. I don’t want to make the same mistakes. I’m trying to teach my kids not to make the same mistakes.
I try to avoid saying “black” when talking about people who are melanin-enhanced. Mostly because a very rare few are actually black. Brown is not black. Black is black. I prefer to say someone is “of [continent] descent”. Native Australians and their descendants of mixed heritage are “of Australian descent”. I am of European descent. Mostly.
Though my skin is pale beige, there are little hints that I might not be completely “white”. There’s these little, downward protrusions on the edge of my cheekbones. An alleged legacy of Gypsy descent. Yet, all my life, I have been using a racial slur as personal amusement.
It should not be “okay” because I “am one”. Nobody should use hate-speak about any racial group. “Whites” should not use the word ‘cracker’ on themselves or anyone who looks as pale as they do. “Blacks” should not use any of the multitude of slurs that I choose not to repeat here. [As an aside: why the hell are there more racist terms for non-WASPs than there are for WASPs? WTF?] Everyone everywhere should be “other people” first and their colours and creeds after that.
To me, hateful words breed a hateful attitude.
I will not be doing the “Avarice was a piker” routine any more. I will instead say, “Avarice was a Grinch.”
