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6:44pm June 3, 2013

josiahd:

mousesinger:

In answer to someone who wondered, I do use the term “cis” because in some discussions (any discussions where trans* individuals and individuals who aren’t trans* must be distinguished from each other) it’s relevant and avoids confusion.

And I do use some of the more popular social justice terminology if I get that most people in my community are using it - because the hassle and stress I save by speaking in the same general jargon as my immediate community, sometimes just makes it more worth it to do this than it would be to make a death hill political statement out of my resistance. I have way too many bigger fish to fry to spend much of my time arguing with people on tumblr.

I don’t at all use the word “queer” to apply to anyone who doesn’t identify themselves as queer. It’s a distinct identity, not a catch all for all LGBT people.

Words. No good ones for some things. All of them are fraught and political. Makes things hard to talk about.

Wish people would just give each other the benefit of the doubt and pay more attention to meaning than flagging.

I don’t think anyone was referring to anything I said, but I want to be clear on some stuff just in case what I have said has affected people in certain ways…

I just want to be clear that in all the things I’ve said, I never mean to tell anyone else what words to use. Because I don’t like to be told what words to use myself. It’s hard enough to do words without having to think about every single one and destroy my brain and be unable to do anything else ever. So I don’t ever want to give anyone the impression I’m asking them to do that themselves, even if they use words I can’t understand or that hurt my brain. That’s why I’ve been reluctant to publish the list of words that bite my brain, because I’ve been afraid it would just turn into a list of words people would be afraid to use.

Unfortunately, my inability to use a lot of SJ jargon doesn’t come from refusal or resistance as much as those little brain explosions in my head whenever I encounter certain academic words, highly abstract words, or neologisms.

Although the funniest and most frustrating thing to me is there are terms I’ve coined myself that, when I read them, can sometimes set off those little explosions in my head. Which is a really weird experience. Like sometimes they go through my brain just fine and sometimes they get stuck. Sort of like the clogs in my feeding tube. And when they get stuck it hurts.

It’s impossible to use language that is accessible to everyone anyway. Because each person has different, often conflicting, versions of what is accessible. Some people thrive on abstract language and have trouble with simple words, other people are the opposite. Some people, like me, have a higher expressive vocabulary than a receptive vocabulary, so some of the words we use are inaccessible to ourselves.

That’s a common problem in certain kinds of hyperlexia actually – we learn words as sensory patterns, not as meaning, and we can use words long before we can get any receptive meaning out of any words at all. I was surprised to read that, but apparently the earliest descriptions of hyperlexia are of children who fit that developmental pattern – early decoding skills, severe receptive language delays, and speech or language that was more based in uncomprehending versions of echolalia (that may or may not, because of pattern matching, end up actually communicative despite not comprehending the meaning). I fit that description exactly, and despite knowing I was hyperlexic I didn’t know it was connected.

Unfortunately that language learning pattern is the opposite of what’s intuitive to most people, so they have trouble believing that a person with a seemingly high expressive vocabulary could have a low receptive vocabulary. I’ve always tested that way though, since I was five. And when I was in my twenties I encountered a way to, by randomly flipping through dictionaries, discover your approximate vocabulary size. At my absolute best, giving myself a lot of allowances that don’t usually apply, my receptive vocabulary was only something like 3/5 the size of my expressive vocabulary. And that’s not counting times when all receptive language drops out of my mind entirely, or things in between my worst and my best. And having severe receptive language delays causes all kinds of bizarre-looking problems with expressive language that most people don’t even know how to look for. (Somehow the psychiatrist who diagnosed me with autism could see how messed up my language skills were, particularly comprehension, and tried ineffectually throughout my therapy with him to get my receptive language better. It took a huge leap forward when I got off neuroleptics and met other autistic people who used language in ways I could understand better than the way nonautistic people used it.)

Sorry, everything I say since I got out of the hospital has turned into a long ramble without my intending it. I still suspect lorazepam withdrawal making me jittery and hyper and stuck in uncomfortably conceptual modes.

Anyway, I just happen to be someone who finds a lot of SJ jargon inaccessible, along with a lot of academic language, and a lot of abstract language. As well, sometimes I find all language inaccessible. I also have serious trouble learning new words, so neologisms are difficult for me, as are words I haven’t encountered before. The dictionary feature on my kindle and iPad are my best friends, I use them more than most people are aware of, on words “everyone” is supposed to know.

Also, while the most abstract language is the hardest for me, I find all language to be abstract. Even words like flower. It’s just that words like intersectionality are even more abstract. It’s difficult for me to hold that kind of thing in my head and look at it and understand it without it falling out at the earliest opportunity. My language comprehension difficulties occur in both voice and text, and are not the same as auditory or visual processing difficulties (which I also have). They have to do with language specifically, and can happen even when I can hear or see the word perfectly.

So anyway, all that at once is behind my problems with the accessibility of SJ jargon. I’m not asking anyone not to use it. And my inability to use much of it isn’t that I’m taking a stand, it’s that I just can’t. So I kind of have to talk about it and say why, I can’t just decide I’m going to say all those words and blend in.

Not that I’m saying any of you think I said any of these things, I’m just trying to clarify in case anyone was worried I was trying to ask them not to make it, or in case anyone thought I was just sort of… like being rebellious or something, or motivated by… anything like that, really. It is just something I can’t do. My only motivation in talking about it is knowing that I can’t do it and therefore other people probably can’t and that people think it makes us unaware at best or hostile at worst.

And like josiahd I also wish people were more concerned with meaning than word choice.