3:43pm July 15, 2015

mmmyoursquid:

seananmcguire:

mmmyoursquid:

chameleonchild:

eenymeenypia:

mmmyoursquid:

People love to talk about whether or not disabled people can work

but if you can work just fine and your disability is destroying your ability to have a life outside of work (because work takes all your energy and more)

Dead silence. Nobody cares.

File this under, oh you can be active for 4 hours? You can work part-time. Um no, I have to get ready for work (30 min) get to work (15 min) get home from work (15 min) feed myself all day (30 min) maintain myself, my home and my life (15 min, yeah right), which leaves 15 min for work and absolutely nothing else.

This is so accurate, back after I’d relapsed I wanted to try and go in for one class at school so I could still stay in contact with the education system. I let slip during a meeting that I managed to drag myself to that I could manage about 4 hours of activity a week, which the teacher sprang on to mean I was being lazy for just trying to get to 1 hour class. Never matter that it was 30 minutes travel, that I would have to get washed and dressed, that I would probably still need to recover for 3 days from it. 

Far too often abled people see the things they do easily as “non activities”, they don’t realise that for many disabled people these things have to be carefully planned and measured, and sometimes they simply can’t be done.

reblog bc the non activities thing seems really important words

I get X number of pain-free steps per day right now, which means that, for large conventions (like SDCC), I need to be in a mobility device.  I had someone ask if I used up my steps every day before transferring to the scooter, and look surprised and a little horrified when I said “no, I save them so I can go to the bathroom unassisted.”  Like, they had never considered that walking is involved in peeing.

!

I constantly have to remind people of things like…

Okay so I suddenly gained a bunch of skills recently.  Like they popped in out of nowhere for the first time since I became an adult, really.  Like I’ve learned all kinds of emotional coping skills and social skills as an adult, but until now practical skills have all been losing not gaining.  And suddenly after getting treated for adrenal insufficiency and myasthenia gravis (which I’ve had at least one of, not sure which, since I was probably 18 or so, minimum, from what we can tell) I’m gaining some practical skills.

Like I can clean up cat puke for the first time in my life.

But I still can rarely clean the litter box.  Like it’s something I can do if I really work hard at it and someone starts me off, but it’s not something I can do consistently very often at all.

Someone approached me and told me basically “Since you’re learning all these skills you should do MORE.  So maybe we should have staff prompting you to clean the litter box.”

And was completely shocked when I blew up at her.

I calmed down enough to explain.

And one of the many reasons I was pissed off was…

Despite the amount of services I get, there’s a large section of the day that I spend alone.  I can have someone come over during most of that time, if I’m really really stuck, but that’s a last resort, it’s not something I can do every night without there being problems.  (I’m working on getting a roommate but I’m not there yet.)

And in all that time, I need all the spoons I can get so that I can go to the bathroom and back, self-administer medications, manage my feeding tube, and do all the other things that people don’t think about at all.

That means that if an activity is going to pointlessly lose me spoons, then that is not an activity I should be doing.

Like, if I get a lot out of something?  Like crocheting?  Then it’s okay, because it improves my quality of life.  Everyone should have something like that they can do – but a lot of us don’t, because loss of spoons means we lose the ability to do things we like as much as things we don’t like. 

(This is what I try to explain every time someone makes it sound like my six years in bed were some kind of frigging vacation from life.   If you’re sick enough to be in bed for that long, then you’re sick enough to lose the ability to do things you like as much as things you don’t like doing.  It is so completely not the same thing as staying home from school with a (real or fake) stomachache or something for a few days and feeling good that you got the time off.  After enough time in bed, you want to go to school or work or something.  In fact I took online classes to keep from losing my mind, literally.  And I couldn’t finish some of those.)

But like, pointlessly asking me to clean the litter box?  Not going to happen.  There are people who are literally paid money to do that for me.  They’re not paid as much money as I would want to pay them if I were in charge of their funding, but they’re paid in money and pretty good healthcare benefits and stuff like that.  There is no danger that if I don’t scoop the catbox, my cat will suffer because of it.  Because there are people willing, able, and even paid to do that.

Which means, having me do that?  Simply takes spoons away that I could be using for something else.  Like all that long stretch of time when I have to manage things on my own.  Things that other people think of as “nothing”, but that take actual effort on my part.  For instance, any time I cross a boundary line – like a doorway, or getting in or out of bed, sitting on or off the toilet or a chair – it eats spoons like nobody’s business.  I can spend hours in bed working up the energy just to cross the bed-to-floor boundary so that I can go to the bathroom.  Once I’m past a boundary line, everything is relatively easy, but every boundary line takes energy out of me.  And that’s true for mental boundaries as well (harder to explain but same basic reasons – autistic catatonia).

So, yeah.  Things that people do that they think don’t take any effort at all, simply take effort that they don’t notice because they have so much energy that they have the luxury of not noticing how much work they put into doing things.  I don’t have enough energy, even with treatment, to be able to spare the spoons on things that don’t directly improve my quality of life and that can’t be done for me somehow.

Oh another thing that confuses people (and this happens with a lot of cognitively disabled people in general):  The more you help me, the more independent I’m able to be.

That’s because all the things I’m unable to do are like thousands of straws on my back (thanks Donna Williams for the straws-on-a-camel’s-back analogy), and each thing someone does for me takes a straw off my back (or spares me the spoons, to use another common analogy), which then allows me to stand up straighter and do more things for myself.

Also, I will pretty much never refrain from doing something if I could do it myself without any effort or dangerous spoon loss.  Why?  Because when I can actually do something, it’s fifty billion times easier to just do it than to explain to you what I want done and how I want it done and how to do it.  Even asking for help takes spoons I don’t always have.  (Which sometimes actually results in me losing spoons doing things for myself because I’d lose even more spoons explaining how to do them, which is a sucky situation that happens more often than I’d like.)

So… yeah.  All of this and more.

Oh, the difference between cat puke and the catbox?

Cat puke generally happens in a spot that’s in my way, and advertises its in-my-way-ness by sitting there being disgusting right in the middle of the path, or (as Fey tries really hard to do) near the drain in the bathroom, or wherever.  It’s fairly easy for me to throw a paper towel over it, which is what I learned to do first, and then from there was able to learn to use the paper towel to scrub it up and spray stuff on it and then scrub some more.  The entire situation prompts me to respond to it.

The catbox is out of the way and requires crossing at least two boundary lines.  It does not stand in my way.  It sits in a corner of the bathroom.  Cleaning it requires picking gross stuff up and carrying it around and then operating the toilet, all the while avoiding getting cat litter everywhere.  All of these things require crossing more boundary lines than cleaning cat puke.  And this is all if the cat is actually using the catbox as directed, which is not a safe assumption (she likes to, instead of burying her crap, tear off a huge chunk of the litter box liner and then pull it over the crap and possibly pee or crap on top of it again, so it’s also logistically hard to get in there and pick it up without doing some gymnastics).

And, as I said, there are people who will gladly clean the litter box and are paid to do so, so it’s not like I or my cat are suffering because I can’t do it consistently.  (When I can do it with minimal consequences, I do do it, of course.  See above about doing things vs. asking people to do things.)

Whereas if I don’t clean up the cat puke, it’s in the way, it reeks, and the cat is in danger of eating it and getting sick again.

So one of these things requires fewer skills to do, and is more important for me to be able to do, and unsurprisingly that’s the one I learned to do pretty consistently.  This, really, should not be surprising.

Also?  When someone learns practical skills for the first time in their adult life?

Congratulate them.

But do not frigging tell them “Oh you just learned some skills for the first time ever?  Here’s some more skills you need to learn.  They just happen to be the skills that would be more convenient for me if you happened to learn them.  What, you don’t want to learn them?  Don’t you want to be independent?  What’s wrong with you?”

I guarantee that somewhere inside they’ll want to trout-slap you.  If you don’t understand why, read the above and think about it for awhile, and maybe learn to be less condescending.  (The “don’t you want to be independent?” as a code word for “don’t you want to learn skills that would make my life more convenient?” thing is incredibly condescending and fairly manipulative as well.)

13,238 notes

9:17pm December 3, 2014

“Being an unemployed, nonverbal rich girl can be quite luxurious and relatively stress-free, especially with a get-out-of-jail-free label like autism.”

Barb Rentenbach, Synergy

I am continually amazed by people who can admit their luxuries without embarrassment, especially when one of the luxuries involves getting away with stuff due to being autistic and generally thought not to know any better. I know a lot of “low functioning” autistic people who will admit to this at least among each other. And honestly when you have as little power as a nonverbal autistic person has, manipulation of this sort is not always wrong. It’s a survival tactic, a way to secure freedoms that most nondisabled people take for granted. And a way to avoid punishment for things you truly can’t help.

I know that when I went from verbal but only partially communicative, to functionally nonverbal but more communicative in writing, people treated me differently. There have been times I’ve been in the bizarre position of trying to convince staff or agencies to hold me accountable for my own behavior.

16 notes

9:16pm August 19, 2014

I just had a semi-hypnagogic revelation that is important for once and not just silly.

I was reading words on a typed screen.  They said something like, “Watch out when you hear one person telling another, "you didn’t even get that right, real autistic people flap their hands top to bottom, they don’t shake them.”  When people start telling you that your expression of your own disability is inauthentic.  More importantly, though, when you hear someone gloating like that about another person – “Ha ha, they tried to get it right but they totally failed, real disabled people don’t think/speak/move/act like that” – that is a warning sign.  It’s not a warning sign against the person who supposedly “couldn’t get it right”.  It’s a warning sign to get the hell away from whoever is spreading gossip like that.  Don’t believe their claims to expertise on how “real disabled people” operate.  Just stay away.  Don’t repeat their claims.  Don’t believe their claims.  Speak up about it if you see other people believing them.  Because they are bullies.

And they are bullies that are using a tactic.  They are saying “I am smart enough to see through this person’s act, and if you’re smart too, you can see through it.  If you can’t see through it, you’re stupid and gullible.”  And that is a tactic that people who’ve been called stupid and gullible our entire lives are very prone to falling for.  Don’t fall for it.  If someone tries to manipulate you by saying you’re stupid and gullible if you don’t believe them, something is wrong.  With them.  Not you.

My hypnagogic hallucination was more pithy but this will have to do.

12 notes

12:56pm July 17, 2014

Nonviolent Communication can be emotionally violent

realsocialskills:

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) culture facilitates abuse in part because NVC culture has very little regard for consent. (I said a little bit about this in my other post on ways NVC hurts people.) They call it nonviolent, but it is often a coercive and emotional violent kind of interaction. 

NVC has very different boundaries than are typical in mainstream interactions. Things that would normally be considered boundary violations are an expected and routine part of NVC dialoging.

That can be a good thing, in some contexts. There are settings where it can be very important to have different emotional boundaries than the default. To have intense engagement with people’s emotions. To hear out their emotions and state yours and try to refrain from judgement and just hear each other, and then talk together about what would meet your mutual needs.

In a NVC interaction, you have to regard your needs and the other person’s needs as equally important, no matter what they are. You have to regard their feelings and emotional reactions as equally valid and worth hearing as yours, no matter what they are. That is a good thing in some contexts, but it’s dangerous and deeply destructive in others.

That kind of interaction can be a good thing. I understand the value. But here’s the problem:

One way NVC can be abusive is that it supports coerced emotional intimacy, and coerced consideration of someone’s feelings even when their expressed feelings are abusive. This isn’t actually a good thing even when someone’s feelings are not problematic in and of themselves. Coerced emotional intimacy is a violation in and of itself, and it’s a violation that leaves people very vulnerable to greater violations.

I recently challenged an NVC advocate to answer this question:

Consider this situation:

An abuser has an emotional need for respect. He experiences it as deeply hurtful when his partner has conversations with other men. When she talks to other men anyway, he feels betrayed. He says “When you talk to other men, I feel hurt because I need mutual respect.”

Using NVC principles, how do you say that what he is doing is wrong?

This was their answer:

“You’ve described him as "an abuser”. Abusing people is wrong because a person with abusive behaviour doesn’t or can’t hold with equal care the needs of others.

 

Is he doing something wrong? Or is he being honest that he feels hurt when his partners talks to other men? His partner can become his ex-partner if she doesn’t agree to what he’s asking for.”

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with NVC philosophy. This abusive partner’s honest expression of his feelings is actually part of how he is abusing his partner. NVC has no way of recognizing the ways in which expression of genuinely felt emotions can be abusive. It also has no recognized way for someone to legitimately say “no, this is not a conversation I want to engage in” or “no, I don’t consider that feeling something I need to respond to or take into consideration.”

Part of what it would take for NVC to stop being an abusive culture it to recognize that NVC-style dialogue and emotional intimacy require consent every single time people interact that way.  Like sexual intercourse, this kind of emotional intercourse requires consent, every single time. Having a close relationship is not consent to NVC. Having a conflict is not consent. Anger is not consent. Having found NVC helpful in the past is not consent, either. Consent means that both parties agree to have this kind of interaction *in this specific instance*.

NVC can’t be the only kind of interaction allowed, even between people who are very close to one another. And it’s not ok to coerce people into it.

And yet, NVC culture is not careful about consent at all. NVC tactics are routinely used on people whether or not they agree to have that kind of interaction. (Some NVC advocates may say otherwise, particularly in response to criticism. But actions speak louder than words, and NVC proponents do not act in practice as though consent is important. They are case in point for When Your Right to Say No is Entirely Hypothetical) This is wrong. Emotional intimacy requires consent.

NVC practitioners express deeply felt emotions and needs to non-consenting others. They do this with the implied expectation that the other person experience their expressed feelings as very very important. They also expect that person to respond by expressing their feelings and needs in the same pattern. They also expect that person to refrain from judging the NVC proponent’s expressed feelings and needs. It is not ok to force this pattern on someone. Doing so is an act of emotional violence.

It’s not ok to force someone to be emotionally intimate with you. It is not ok to dump your deep feelings on someone with the expectation that they reciprocate. Other people get to decide what they want to share with you.

An example: White NVC proponents sometimes express feelings about their racist attitudes towards people of color, to people of color who have not consented to listening to this. They do so with the expectation that the person of color will listen non-judgmentally, appreciate the honesty, and share their intimate feelings about their experiences with racism as a person of color. This is a horrible thing to do to someone. It is an act of racist emotional violence.

NVC people also use empathy to violate boundaries. They imagine what someone must be feeling, name that feeling, and express empathy with it. Then they either insert a loaded pause in the conversation, or ask you to confirm or deny the feeling and discuss your actual reactions in detail. These are not really questions. They are demands. They do not take “I don’t want to discuss that” as an ok answer. They keep pushing, and imply that you lack emotional insight and are uninterested in honest communication if you don’t want to share intimate information about your feelings. That is coerced intimacy, and it’s not ok.

For instance, an NVC advocate with power over someone might say in response to a conflict with that person: I can see that this interaction is very difficult for you. I’m sensing a lot of anger. I’m saddened that your experiences with authority figures have been so negative. (Expectant pause). I think you are experiencing a lot of anger right now, is that right?

That is not ok. When you have power over someone, it is abusive to pressure them to discuss their intimate feelings rather than the thing they object to in your behavior towards them. Emotional intimacy requires consent; it is not ok to force it on someone as a way of deflecting conflict. And when you have a lot of power over someone and they aren’t in a position to assert a boundary unilaterally, you have a much greater obligation to be careful about consent.

NVC advocates may tell you that they are just trying to have an honest conversation, with the implication that if you want ordinary emotional boundaries, you are being dishonest and refusing to communicate. They are not right about this.

You do not have to be emotionally intimate with someone to listen to them, or to have an honest conversation. It is ok to have boundaries. It is ok to have boundaries that the person you’re talking with doesn’t want you to have. Not all interactions have to or should involve the level of intimacy that NVC demands. It is never ok for anyone to coerce you into emotional intimacy. Using NVC-style dialogue tactics on someone who does not consent is an act of emotional violence. 

362 notes

11:56pm July 12, 2014

Nonviolent Communication can hurt people

realsocialskills:

People who struggle interpersonally, who seem unhappy, or who get into a lot of conflicts are often advised to adopt the approach of Nonviolent Communication. 

This is often not a good idea. Nonviolent Communication is an approach based on refraining from seeming to judge others, and instead expressing everything in terms of your own feelings. For instance, instead of “Don’t be such an inconsiderate jerk about leaving your clothes around”, you’d say “When you leave your clothing around, I feel disrespected.”. That approach is useful in situations in which people basically want to treat each other well but have trouble doing so because they don’t understand one another’s needs and feelings. In every other type of situation, the ideology and methodology of Nonviolent Communication can make things much worse.

Nonviolent Communication can be particularly harmful to marginalized people or abuse survivors. It can also teach powerful people to abuse their power more than they had previously, and to feel good about doing so. Non-Violent Communication has strategies that can be helpful in some situations, but it also teaches a lot of anti-skills that can undermine the ability to survive and fight injustice and abuse.

For marginalized or abused people, being judgmental is a necessary survival skill. Sometimes it’s not enough to say “when you call me slurs, I feel humiliated” - particularly if the other person doesn’t care about hurting you or actually wants to hurt you. Sometimes you have to say “The word you called me is a slur. It’s not ok to call me slurs. Stop.” Or “If you call me that again, I’m leaving.” Sometimes you have to say to yourself “I’m ok, they’re mean.” All of those things are judgments, and it’s important to be judgmental in those ways.

You can’t protect yourself from people who mean you harm without judging them. Nonviolent Communication works when people are hurting each other by accident; it only works when everyone means well. It doesn’t have responses that work when people are hurting others on purpose or without caring about damage they do. Which, if you’re marginalized or abused, happens several times a day. NVC does not have a framework for acknowledging this or responding to it.

In order to protect yourself from people who mean you harm, you have to see yourself as having the right to judge that someone is hurting you. You also have to be able to unilaterally set boundaries, even when your boundaries are upsetting to other people. Nonviolent Communication culture can teach you that whenever others are upset with you, you’re doing something wrong and should change what you do in order to meet the needs of others better. That’s a major anti-skill. People need to be able to decide things for themselves even when others are upset.

Further, NVC places a dangerous degree of emphasis on using a very specific kind of language and tone. NVC culture often judges people less on the content of what they’re saying than how they are saying it. Abusers and cluelessly powerful people are usually much better at using NVC language than people who are actively being hurt. When you’re just messing with someone’s head or protecting your own right to mess with their head, it’s easy to phrase things correctly. When someone is abusing you and you’re trying to explain what’s wrong, and you’re actively terrified, it’s much, much harder to phrase things in I-statements that take an acceptable tone.

Further, there is *always* a way to take issue with the way someone phrased something. It’s really easy to make something that’s really about shutting someone up look like a concern about the way they’re using language, or advice on how to communicate better. Every group I’ve seen that valued this type of language highly ended up nitpicking the language of the least popular person in the group as a way of shutting them up. 

tl;dr Be careful with Nonviolent Communication. It has some merits, but it is not the complete solution to conflict or communication that it presents itself as. If you have certain common problems, NVC is dangerous.

3,701 notes

11:08am June 7, 2014

“

I learned, too, that when people look at me as so different that they want to feel pity, I can probably get anything I want out of them. I can manipulate the hell out of them.

While they see me as weak and unable - well, I’m not. I can come on strong and capable when they’re staring at my wheelchair and my respirator and feeling entirely sorry for me. I can use that, tactically. It’s a very powerful tool and it’s something we should teach people to use in practical ways.

I learned this, interestingly enough, from the women’s movement. I watched women in the self-support groups [consciousness-raising groups] in Berkeley teaching each other how to manipulate the stereotypes of weakness in women. And I thought, ‘Wow! That could work real well for disability.’ I began to use it tactically.

You see a lot of people who take that role as part of their whole life. That’s a whole different thing. When you use that sick role all the time, it’s toxic.

Parents may see their disabled kids try to manipulate them. The kids may not be aware of doing it, but there’s always a very natural tendency. Hopefully, we can recognize it, and encourage people to use that for a tactic, but also be clear with them about what’s going on there.

”

23 notes

3:12am June 1, 2014

patternsmaybe:

when complying with the prompting is graceful, and resisting is immediately humiliating, rude, out of line

When they make it so that you’re doing a dance.  And the dance looks beautiful to all the onlookers.

And when you resist, it’s as if you dropped a glass of champagne on their foot and it shatters and you spilled food down their shirt and accidentally kneed them in the groin, all at once, everything that is embarrassing and clumsy.

And worse, besides, but I know the pattern, and it is despicable.

21 notes

11:15pm May 31, 2014

patternsmaybe:

trying to figure out a way of describing a particular kind of violation

when your communication is prompt-dependant

and someone figures out how to prompt you in the ways that make you say what they wanted

and you know you don’t believe that

and you can’t help saying it anyway, over and over and over

while there’s this layer of you on the inside that has no access to expressive words

it’s *horrible*.

I know it very well.

If I were less sleepy I would write about it.

I hope to remember to write about it when I wake up more.

Because it’s very important.

And very evil.

There’s one version of it I’ve called push-pull.  But that one isn’t about language.  It’s just a variant of it.  There’s many variants.  All manipulative.  All evil to the core.

i need to remember to write about this.  Need to.  Important.

69 notes

3:04am May 3, 2014

➸ A Message I Really Think Needs to be Heard

stickiebun13:

dear-indies:

I want to take a minute to talk about a serious issue in the RPing community.  It’s an issue that many I don’t think even realize exists.Abusive online relationships. They do happen in the rping community and there are several signs to show when someone might be one you want to look out for. It is a personal issue close to my heart as I know several people who have dealt with it, myself included.

So to try to help those in the future and to keep people wary of those types of people I have made a list of warning signs that you may see in those people who often turn out to be abusive.

First thing is first, not all abuse is physical. So that doesn’t mean that abuse can’t happen in an online setting. There is also emotional abuse and it can be just as damaging to an individual. It is often a form of cyberbullying and it is something that I think needs to be addressed.

So I have compiled a list of warning signs, things that these people often do that you should look out for.

          1.      Telling you that you can only RP with them, or only with their character. Or generally telling you not to RP with someone.

This would be a sign of them being too possessive. Not willing to let you do what you want with your account. Generally RPing is supposed to be fun and about what you want. If you want to have only one of each character or only a few RP partners, that is up to you. But you should never let someone tell you who to RP with or who you can’t RP with. It is not up to them and don’t let them think it is.

          2.      Getting mad or upset with you for not answering them right away or getting upset that you are replying to others and not them.

It’s your character and your account. That is something you should always remember. If your character wants to focus on one or two people. That’s okay. Nobody should make you feel bad for not being able to reply to them at the time for any reason. Whether it is being busy with life or just not feeling up to replying to those threads. Most people will understand and usually don’t pressure you. It’s a bad sign if someone does.

          3.      Being told on a regular basis through messages and in public posts that nobody cares and that everyone in the end always leaves or something along those lines

It is often a sign of someone trying to guilt people into staying or doing things with them. Often times it doesn’t matter if that person receives lots of love or has a lot of threads. They will still make it known that they are feeling upset and that nobody cares. They want people to feel guilty if they think about leaving and it is usually a bad sign. Though some people may make a post like that every once in a while. If you are seeing it often or being constantly reminded personally then be cautious. It is a tactic to guilt people into staying.

          4.      Being threatened or told that if you leave or don’t/do something that they will delete, harm themselves, or something similar.

Another tactic to guilt you into staying. They want you to think that you leaving or doing something they don’t like will harm them, sometimes in physical ways and it is a way to manipulate you into doing what they want. Most of the time they are not being serious and it is a sign that they themselves need help.  Help that you will not be able to provide to them no matter how much you may want to.

          5.      Telling you that you are not any good or that you stopped being good after doing something they told you not to.

They want you to think that you are not good enough to find other RP partners. Bringing you down and making you feel miserable because they are is a tactic often used by these types of people. If you don’t think you are any good then you won’t go seeking other partners for fear that they will think that as well. This is an especially damaging tactic and can cause you to feel worthless and unwanted even after a person is gone.

          6.      Getting yelled at, being attacked, or them being mean for what appears to be no real reason, then a while later apologizing. This will likely happen over and over again.

Most of the time there might not be a real reason for it. Something as simple as you talking to someone they don’t like or you not sending them enough memes or replying. They end up being mean and outright yelling at times. Then they apologize and you might think that you should give them another chance, maybe they changed, and maybe it won’t happen again. But it usually does. Many times and if it continuously happens, there is a point where you need to ask yourself is it really worth it. Because in the end, it is not anything you have done wrong and you don’t need to let yourself be attacked just because they apologize after. One of the biggest signs of abuse.

          7.      Getting annoyed with you for RPing the way you do. (whether it is because you RP with a lot of people or only a few)

If they get mad at you for you RPing how you want to, it is usually a good sign that you should steer clear of them. People like this will try to give you the idea that you are wrong and that you shouldn’t do that. In the end you RP how you want and there is no wrong way to do it. Whether you want to stick to only a few threads or you want 200 and like plotting for more. It’s about what you like. And those that enjoy RPing with you, will be patient and stick with you no matter how you want to do it.

          8.      Being attacked or called names for RPing with other people, and/or attacking your RP partners for RPing with you.

If someone outright attacks you are starts calling you names simply because you RP with others. That is a clear sign that you should avoid that person. This is supposed to be fun and there is no need to be rude to you or others for how you RP. It is especially a red flag if they also attack your RP partners. That means they are being far too possessive and avoiding and blocking would probably be the best idea in that instance.

          9.      (An, its gone too far sign) They make you overly anxious every time you see them or feeling as if you are going to panic if they message you.

If it has gotten so bad that their very presence makes you a big ball of stress or have an anxiety attack, dropping them would be the best option. Nobody should make you feel stressed and anxious when on. If the idea of them messaging you, because you are afraid of what it might say, gives you extreme anxiety. That is the time to drop, block, and do not interact or look for them in any way. It is not okay for someone to cause this.

In general, RPing is supposed to be about fun, you enjoying RPing as your muse and doing what you like to do. It is never going to be okay for others to make you think you are doing it wrong. In the end, there is no wrong way to RP. So don’t let anyone make you think that there is. If someone doesn’t like the way you RP then it is best for them to find someone else. And you should never feel bad if you think you need to drop a RP partner because they are causing you anxiety or anything of the sort. If a RP partner is causing you stress, avoid them. Stress is bad enough in real life, there is no need for people to add to it in RP.

The people that do this, honestly, might not even realize they are being abusive to someone. Maybe they have had their own issues in life and it has molded them into the way they are, but in the end, they need help, but not from you. And there is no way you are going to be able to help them. In the end, they need to realize it themselves and seek help.

These kinds of situations can have long lasting effects on the person who has dealt with it, lingering anxiety or depression, being self-conscious about everything they do, feeling they are not good enough, wanting to avoid their RP account. This is not okay and for those who suffer these issues, you are not alone. Sometimes talking about it can help, whether with a fellow RP partner you trust, or seeking out a friend in real life. Don’t keep it to yourself, because it can make the feelings worse. And even if there are those abusive RP partners out there, there are also those that are very caring and will be willing to listen.

So keep the warning signs in mind and don’t let someone treat you like this. It’s about fun not about them. 

Guys, no, this is VERY IMPORTANT!!! I was in a very abusive RP-partner relationship for a very long time and I didn’t realize it, even as my other partners (Whom I had started keeping secret from said abusive partner) had seen that and were trying to help me out. This person damaged me in many ways that I am still recovering from. Even my Writing/RPing style was damaged because they would control how I replied. I worried constantly about appeasing them, I lost my own sense of self in an RP sense. I had no idea how damaged I was until after I broke away from them and found a new partner who saw just how submissive i was, how i seemed like I wasn’t really RPing but simply trying to please her with small, timid responses (Even if my character was not timid and they were still in character) they saw how careful I was being and they sat me down to talk it out with me, even with my own plot ideas. Thanks to her, I’m getting my voice back and my writing is improving again, but it’s still not quite up to the standards I had held myself to before this one abusive partner. I’m healing, and looking back, I can see just how abusive this partner had been. If you are unhappy in the slightest with RPing with a partner (normal disagreements aside) then stand back and evaluate things. EVEN IF YOU ADORE THE PLOT YOU HAVE WITH THIS PERSON, Take a good look at this above list, talk to a trusted and close friend that is not this partner, and then, step back/away if they meet the criteria. My said abusive partner did almost all of these above things to me. Plus they did a few things not listed above. So I’ll add to the list.

• Making you rp with them every day on their time no matter what, being insensitive to your own life and what you may have going on in it.
• Making you go back and redo your replies because they don’t like how your character handled the situation.
• Telling you that you are too good for any other partners, that your other partners don’t deserve you (In hopes of manipulating you into ditching your other partners)
• Constantly comparing you to their other partners (Which they openly have but you may not be “allowed” to have other partners yourself) and/or comparing your muse to theirs if said (fandom) muse is the same canon character.
• Intimidates you to not bring out one of your muses as a side character because they are picky over that (Again, usually fandom) character on how he/she behaves or headcanons, or simply because they have a strong dislike of said character.
• Not respecting your limits such as kinks, preference on NSFW things, etc. Forcing them into the RPs even after they know it makes you uncomfortable.

Having an abusive RP partner is more damaging than you’ll know. The faster you get out of that situation, the better off you’ll be, and the faster you’ll heal. Please don’t let yourself be used and abused by a partner just because you like a plot.

I used to think that Abusive relationships was just between two people in a “romantic” type relationship. But it’s not. Friendships can be just as abusive. partnerships can be just as abusive.

Edit: and it was a slow change into being abusive. so that’s why I didn’t realize.

4,528 notes

12:57pm April 30, 2014

If someone has one of these “you have to reblog this or you’re an asshole” things on their post.

Then I will remove it before reblogging it, unless I don’t catch it for some reason.

Because if I reblog things, I want it to be of my own free will.

And when people say shit like that, it feels like they’re attaching a string to my stomach and trying to yank me around by it.

And that’s not okay.

No matter how much I agree with them otherwise.

So I’ll do my best not to pass that stuff on, when I see it.  And I will delete it before reblogging, if I see it.

Otherwise I just would not reblog it at all, because trying to pressure me into doing stuff like that tends to backfire.

113 notes

10:09am March 29, 2014

soilrockslove:

realsocialskills:

altimetres:

realsocialskills:

fourloves:

realsocialskills:

Anonymous asked realsocialskills:

When people say “I can’t” I’ll sometimes encourage them to say “I decided not to” or something instead. Nobody can predict the future, so maybe nobody can know for sure whether somebody would be able to do something if they tried some more times. However, a person has a right to decide to stop. They may judge that it’s so unlikely they would succeed that it’s not worth trying; and doing it may not be worth a tremendous amount to them. I also have a right to my opinion that maybe they can.

realsocialskills answered:

You have a right to your opinion, but you don’t have the right to have them respect your assessment of their abilities. You especially do not have the right to have them take your opinion into consideration when they’re deciding what they can and can’t do.

Inability to do things is real. And yes, I may sometimes be wrong about my inability to do things, but taking it seriously when I think I can’t do something matters. Even if I’m wrong.

There’s a difference between deciding I don’t want to do something, and deciding that I think I am incapable of something, or that doing the thing is unacceptably risky for me.

Even if other people think I’m wrong - I still have the right to assess what my limits are and act accordingly. And even though I will sometimes mistakenly think that I am unable to do something I am actually capable of, “I can’t” is still a vital part of my vocabulary.

There’s a difference between not wanting to do a thing, and reaching the conclusion that I’m probably not capable of doing the thing and that trying is hurting me.

I need to be able to acknowledge that I have limits in order to manage them correctly, and do what I can instead of pretending that enough willpower makes everything possible.

So does everyone else. In particular, people with disabilities who have been taught that we’re not allowed to take physical limitation seriously. But being disabled and physically limited isn’t a moral failing. It’s just a fact of life that sometimes needs to be accounted for.

fourloves said:

anon needs to go away

who else gets chills when special ed teachers say “the word ‘can’t’ is not allowed in my classroom”

realsocialskills said:

Yes, teaching kids with disabilities not to recognize their own limits is a *major* anti-skill, and it does serious damage to people with disabilities.

altimetres said:

This. This. THIS.

I cannot tell you how many times in my early education I was told I am not allowed to say “I can’t” by special education teachers. At such a young age, that is dangerous. You are telling someone that they are not able to say “I can’t” to a variety of situations which can lead to very bad endings, and it is never the students fault.

One thing I remember clearly is one of my physical education teachers doing this. I have had joint problems my whole life (at 14, my knee joints were filled with micro-fractures, and that was not enough to get me out of PE), and it was never respected. One particular day, the teacher was putting harnesses on us to climb this indoor rope net. I KNEW I would not be able to manage it, as it requires a lot of work from your lower body. More importantly, your fucking knees. 

I told my teacher “I can’t do this” and she gave me the same speech that anon gave. “You CAN do it, we can’t tell what’s going to happen. You’re not allowed to say you can’t.” And even when I fought it, even when I went to walk away, I was threatened with a failing grade for the day. And since all my special education (well, 97% of it told me I couldn’t say no), I ended up on this net.

And what happened?

I made it four feet up, my knee popped out of it’s socket, and I was taken down crying as it popped itself back in. As my joints did.

And my teacher said “See, you CAN. Even with pain you CAN, you just don’t want to.”

This landed me on crutches and in doctors offices for 2 weeks.

So yeah, I wish I would have had more teachers with the guts to tell me “You can say no and mean it”. 

Fuck ableist teachers, get a new job.

realsocialskills said:

Yes, this.

This is what it does to people when you tell them “You’re not allowed to say I can’t.”.

All of this!

And besides all this, if someone says “I don’t want to” and you force them to do it anyway - that’s no good either. O_o  And most people who I know who have said “don’t say can’t” aren’t that good at respecting “won’t” either.

This attitude is extremely popular among nurses, LNAs, and physical therapists and my local hospital.  And I’ve seen it do serious damage, both to me and to roommates I’ve had.

There’s a particular, really seriously awful, trick I’ve seen them pull on people multiple times.  Including me once, at which point I refused to ever get in a position where they could do it to me again.  (Which involved at one point firing my physical therapist.)

So here’s an example:

I was in really, really bad pain.  Not the worst pain I’ve ever felt, but bad enough that I couldn’t make myself sit up.  And I’m good at making myself do damn near anything.  This turned out to be because my feeding tube hadn’t been inserted properly, but they treated me like I was just being a wuss and complaining too much.  Like my roommate at the time would get them rushing into the room and giving her five different kinds of pain meds for every twinge, while I was actually frequently delirious from pain and they only grudgingly gave me pain meds, and only one kind.  It was really frustrating.

But here’s what they pulled on me:

They wanted to get me to get up and transfer to a bedside commode to use the bathroom, rather than being rolled and using the bedpan.  I don’t know about you, but if I’d been able to get up and use the commode, I would have:  I hate bedpans.  But they seemed to think I was being lazy.  They said they had people with much worse surgery than me up and moving on the first day, and therefore that I was just being lazy.  Nobody thought to check and see why I was still having excruciating pain so long after the tube was placed, when it shouldn’t be doing that.  No, they just chose to doubt that the pain was really that serious.  The pain had to get to a nine on the pain scale, after I got home, before anyone even checked the position of the tube, only to find that a piece of it was lodged in a really horrible position.

So what they did:

They badgered me and cajoled me and forced me until I finally put forth a phenomenal amount of effort to get up.  This involved gradually rolling over and creeping along the bed, taking frequent breaks in which I was crying and screaming from pain.  (It takes a lot of pain for me to do that.)  It was painstaking and horrible.

Then, after getting some help and getting to the commode, they showered me with praise and told me “See, you can do it after all, you just have to try.”  They told me how great I was for trying.

It was horrible.

Doing that to someone is a violation.

And it wasn’t a one-off thing, I saw them do that to a roommate with myasthenia gravis who was terrified of falling, forcing her to walk across the room and then showering her with praise at the end.  She had some cognitive disabilities that made it hard for her to see that as manipulation, and they were able to talk her into endangering herself regularly.

If you’ve never been in that situation, maybe you don’t know what a huge violation it is.

But to push someone into doing something that is painful or dangerous to them, to badger and cajole and threaten and harass them until they do it, and then shower them with praise when they can do it after all… it gets into their heads.  It tells them that they’re wrong about their abilities, that some nondisabled person has to show them their real potential.  And it puts them in grave danger, a lot of the time, because it overrides their own ability to judge what is safe for them and what is not.  It’s awful and it should never be done.

After the incident above, I fired my physical therapist and refused to get out of bed until the pain went away some.  I was told that if I stayed in bed for even a week I’d get deconditioned and horrible things would happen.  I told them I’d single-handedly brought myself back from months worth of deconditioning and that a week wouldn’t kill me.  But I had to fight them every step of the way.  It was worth it, though, because pushing through pain that bad is never a good thing.

936 notes

4:13am March 14, 2014

just a friendly reminder

milkedmothprincess:

if you do a favour for someone or give them a present without it being requested, you may not later use that as ammunition to get them to do something for you, that is emotionally manipulative

it’s using emotional attrition to make someone feel obligated to do something that they otherwise might not, on the premise that your provided unrequested service necessitates payment

that’s coercive and terrible in every way

that is all thanks

I used to know someone who did this all the time.  She’d bring me all these little presents, and she’d do things for me, and she’d insist that I needed to be her friend to repay her.  And she’d also try to get me to give her large sums of money I didn’t even have – when she always seemed to have thousands of dollars to throw around and I was living on disability payments.  Anyway, I grew to dread any time she did anything for me, because it always had strings attached.  I was glad when I finally got her to stay the hell away from me, it was completely good riddance by that point.  But she managed to make a lot of people feel obligated to her, by doing little things for them or buying them unsolicited gifts, and then making demands in exchange.  And she wasn’t even subtle about it.  It was “I’m doing this for you so now you need to do something for me.”

20,557 notes

4:41am January 10, 2014

thegreenanole:

rachellgmh:

I love that these ladies basically sent these dudes howlers.

Perfect.

This is the sort of manipulation I could never even IMAGINE until I see someone do it, and then probably couldn’t pull off if I tried. I suck at this kind of stuff.

578,034 notes

6:04am December 27, 2013

➸ It's weird how this one cyberbully I knew could make ANYTHING sound like an accusation.

clatterbane:

madeofpatterns:

theselfproclaimednordicnerd:

youneedacat:

I remember her saying something about “that thick head of hair you have” and somehow making it sound like a scandal. That’s the kind of language/manipulation skills I’ve talked about before… like she may have not been able to write in a fancy way, but she could write in a way…

Understanding language in an organic ways helps.

For example ‘that’ is a harsh word, it depersonalizes something from you (‘this’ comes across as something you’re involved with; it is near. It also has less bite). If you’re familiar with ‘us vs them’ dangers and how creating things as distant can lead to wars. It’s taking the humanity, dignity, or value away of something. It dissociates.

Your hair is depersonalized from you. It is made into an object. Most humans dont relate to or have feelings for objects. ‘Head of hair’ can easily be replaced woth the word thing and still make sense. Also, generally, the wordier the language, the harsher it comes across, because it relies on facts and cold cut statements to express versus emotional input.

(My brain is turning off here)

And your hair is further removed from you by being something (thing) you own, ‘of yours’.

Also, for some reason, only usung one adjective adds bite.

The word choice was choppy and cuting. There was just an overall object-ification (hyphen becauE this isnt meant with context, but the literal meaning of making things into objects) of things that created that sense of othering.

I don’t think it’s just that. I think someone could do all those things without creating this kind of response.

I grew up around somebody who is also a master at this. Part of it is the deliberate phrasing construction like that, and part of it seems to be some kind of other manipulative skill that I just can’t quite put my finger on, much less describe well. How that can come through clearly in writing, I don’t know, but it can. And it sounds like the person in the OP does very similar. :/

Yes it definitely goes well beyond the choice of words.  Like someone could say the above, and make it sound affectionate, if they wanted.  But this person can somehow twist anything until it sounds like an accusation that you’ve done something wrong.  It’s almost as if she can add little packets of information in between her words, that are not actually in the words themselves.  And the packets say things like:

“You are a liar.”

“You are scandalous (in a bad way, in the worst possible way).”

“You are a fraud.”

“You are horrible.”

(Substitute “this person” for “you” if it’s a third person reading it, and not the person it’s directed at.  This has the effect of turning people against the person it’s directed at, without them even noticing they’re being manipulated into hating someone.)

And it’s amazing that someone could incorporate those four packets of information into a description of my hair, but she really could, and people who couldn’t pick up on the manipulation there, actually were easily manipulated by her in this way.  And yes, I don’t know how she did this in text form, but she did, absolutely, all the way.  

She could also do it in body language though – like to me, it was really obvious a lot of the time that the body language she was sending out was completely false.  Like she would have body language that claimed to be hurt and pitiful, but actually be happy and gloating over her manipulation underneath all that.  But people who couldn’t see underneath it felt sorry for her and saw her as someone vulnerable to protect.  (The “I’m vulnerable please protect me” thing was another packet of information she sent out louder than almost any other information she sent out, whether she was sending it out in body language or through text.  But it was completely false information.  She was actually hostile, domineering, and manipulative, not vulnerable and needing protection like she tried to claim.)

It got so bad that she would be manipulating me and other people through this weird skill she had, and in fact exploiting my near-total lack of such skills, and my problems with language.  At the exact same time as saying that I was this eloquent master of words, who was exploiting her language problems.  And it helped that her writing style wasn’t very eloquent-sounding, that backed up her claims… except that even if she lacked eloquence, she had something else that more than made up for it… sort of an intense intense ability to use words, and something she shoved in between the words, to manipulate people in a way that they were not capable of seeing easily.  I may (sometimes) be “eloquent” in some senses of the word, but I’m not capable of that, and it frequently drove me to tears trying to explain to people what was actually happening there.  She was so good at flipping situations around and making it look like she was the victim and I was hurting her.  Only I wasn’t actually doing anything to her.  In fact, I was avoiding confrontation, avoiding reading anything she wrote when I could help it, and avoiding her, yet she managed to make it look like my very existence was hurting her and the only way that I could stop hurting her was to stop existing.  (Which is why she started threatening my life and getting away with it in some circles because they thought it was justified for someone who was hurt by my existence to do that.)

Even though I was able to see through her manipulation to some extent, and see what she was doing to people, I wasn’t immune to her manipulation, which is why I stopped reading her writing.  Reading what she wrote, I would become convinced (on a subconscious sort of level that’s really hard to rid yourself of, even when you know better) that I was somehow hurting her by existing.  What she’d do, is she’d take things I’d written and say I got them from her life, and that I was pretending they were a part of my life in order to hurt her.  But I knew – and she knew too, because many times she actually set up these situations so that they would look even more like that – that these were really part of my life.  (Whether they were also part of her life, I don’t know, because she lied so much I don’t know anything truly about her other than that she was utterly horrible to lots of people.)  And because they were really part of my life, the only way I could stop “hurting her” was to stop existing.  Hence, I would start thinking that maybe the only way I could avoid “hurting” her was to kill myself.

It got that far partly because I, and many other people in the communities this happened in, subscribed, consciously or otherwise, to the idea that when a victim of abuse says they are triggered, then you absolutely have to stop doing whatever you’re doing that triggered them.  No matter what you were doing.  Even if they sit there following you around, refusing to remove themselves from your presence, and saying that every single word you say triggers them intensely in the worst possible way and that you are making them so miserable they might die from malnutrition because they’re so stressed out they stopped eating because of you.  And so even as I knew that there was nothing I could possibly do that she wouldn’t claim to be triggered by (and that in fact she was setting up many of these situations so that she would appear to be triggered to the maximum degree possible), I also had that instinct that told me that because she was an abuse victim, I had no right to contradict her, had no right to do things that triggered her, and therefore had no right to exist.  In addition to the abuse victim thing, there was the “whoever is the most oppressed is always right” thing that works in the same way, and she claimed to be the most severely autistic person who could post on the Internet, therefore the most oppressed, therefore the most in need of listening to.  And she used that to manipulate people into attacking many many innocent people, not just me.

One reason I talk about this is to warn people.

I don’t want anyone to end up as twisted around as I did, by someone who consciously manipulates the norms of a community in order to achieve the maximum possible damage to both the community and people in it.

What amazes me is that I wasn’t the only one she was calling a fraud.  She believed that all “high functioning” autistic people (including people dxed with Asperger’s or PDDNOS) were frauds who really had borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia.  (By the way, that’s a warning sign.  Anyone who constantly, constantly, rails against people with borderline personality disorder, seeing them everywhere everywhere everywhere… I’ve never met anyone who does that who isn’t really nasty or even dangerous.  I don’t know why.)  And she believed that anyone but her who claimed to be “low functioning” or “nonverbal” or “Kanner’s” (which doesn’t mean “low functioning” or “nonverbal”, but she knew very little about autism) who used a keyboard to communicate, was either a fraud or someone being used as a hoax by their caregivers.

But many of these people that she also claimed to be frauds, were so quick to believe her about me.  Maybe it’s because she stopped saying they were frauds, publicly, in order to be more palatable to them so she could turn them against me, who was her main target at the time.  Maybe it’s because they believed that as ~the most low functioning person on the Internet~, she had a right to call any and all other autistic people fake, because of her experiences in the world and the degree to which she was more oppressed and had experienced worse abuse than they could ever imagine.

And that’s the danger of assuming that the victims of the worst abuse or oppression have the right to define everything about a situation, and are always right about it.  That’s when I learned how dangerous this whole concept was.  That’s one reason I try to warn people against this mentality.

Because if you have this mentality.

And you are targeted by someone who has the means to exploit this mentality for all its worth.

Then you will be gutted.  You will be ripped to shreds.  You will be turned inside-out and upside-down and may literally be driven crazy by it – you may even end up being manipulated into suicidal thoughts, as she managed to manipulate me.

And if you don’t think predators think communities with these norms are a wonderful place to prey on people, then you don’t understand where a large amount of drama in these communities comes from.  Some of it is for other reasons.  But some of it is because vulnerabilities of this magnitude attract social predators.  And social predators will hurt you in ways you didn’t even know you were capable of being hurt.  And they will enjoy it.

That’s why I talk about the bullying I’ve experienced.  I don’t want anyone else to be as vulnerable to this kind of colossal mindfuck as I was.

That’s why I warn people about the dangers of simply switching things around, listening to the most oppressed the most, rather than the most privileged.  Because there are always people who will manipulate that to their advantage and stomp on your face and laugh about it.

(What is the alternative to listening to the most oppressed or abused person the most?  It’s evaluating situations individually, with a cautious eye.  Being aware of how privilege can warp your perceptions.  But also being aware that not everyone who claims to be the most oppressed really is the most oppressed.  And that not all oppressed people are right, even about oppression.  The only way forward with this stuff is to keep all these things in mind, but evaluate each situation on its own.  And to always be aware of your vulnerabilities and how people will exploit them.  It’s not just garden-variety social predators and bullies who exploit these things – COINTELPRO used these exact same community norms to break up social movements in the seventies, including by planting agents who were, or claimed to be, more oppressed, so that people would feel like shit if they tried to out them as a fed.)

Anyway… I really fear people who have this ability and have crappy enough ethics to use it on people.  It’s like they can implant packets of information that go in between the words, and other people pick up on those packets of information subconsciously and are manipulated by them.  And it’s awful.  I’ve seen awful things done to people.

I have a friend who lost her entire online community at once to this same bully.  She was a trusted member of an online community that meant a lot to her.  Then, this particular bully showed up in the community.  We now know that she lurked in the community for ages using a pseudonym, before she ever attacked.  But when she attacked the damage she did was devastating.

She showed up and spun her usual story of being the most severely autistic person on the Internet, who suffered horrible abuse beyond what any high functioning person could imagine.  She claimed to be in support of this community in a lot of ways.  And when she gained their trust, she started claiming that people high up in the community were hurting her.  She claimed that they didn’t understand her because she was low functioning, and that they were saying horrible things about low functioning autistic people.

My friend felt torn between her friends in the community and her feeling of duty to protect the underdog.  (The bully in question loves to pose as the underdog for that exact purpose.)  She eventually decided to protect the underdog, and posted things in support of the bully, who had shown her doctored logs in order to make it seem as if she and all other low functioning people had been bullied by these other community members.  I believed her as well, at the time, being caught up in the same mentality as my friend.

My friend’s friends in the community were shocked and felt betrayed.  They ended up banning her from the message boards.  She came back for awhile under another name, because she couldn’t bear to be away from many of her online friends that she’d gotten to know and care about, but she was discovered and banned again.

The trust never came back.  She lost those friends, and that community, for good.  They don’t understand why she would believe this stranger over them.

And yes, they are the victims in this situation.  But so is she.  Because that’s what this bully loves to do.  She loves to break up friendships and communities.  And she sees people’s vulnerabilities and uses them against people.

Long ago, the autistic community was smaller.  She attacked it in similar ways back then.  Everyone in the entire autistic community learned her name, learned to know her, know she was trouble, and she was pretty much banned from everywhere.  Many of the people she hurt at that time, she accused of “stealing her life” in the same way that she accused me.  She hacked computers, impersonated people on IRC, sent people abusive and threatening letters, and did everything she could to wreak as much havoc as she possibly could.  But people were on to her and they quickly learned to avoid her and keep her out of their communities.  I mean at first they were taken in and tried to be as nice to her as they could, but when she returned their niceness with poison, they learned.

But now the autistic community is large enough, and forgetful enough of its past, that she (and some of the other big-name social predators who preyed on the community at that time, there were others) has been able to make a comeback and convince at least some people that she’s in the right.  She’s learned not to alienate too many people at once, I think.  Although most people who are close to her eventually end up getting burned by her.  The only people I know who manage to stick close to her for any length of time are people with such low self-esteem that she’s been able to manipulate them into thinking they deserve the abuse she heaps on them, or other bullies who see her as an accomplice.  Even some people who hate me with a passion and have tried to get in close with her, have been attacked by her as “stealing her story” as well, or as potential “spies”.  (As if I have the wherewithal to have spies.)

Oh, and the friend of mine who stuck up for her back then, and lost her community in the process?  She told this bully that she wasn’t going to choose between the two of us, and for that she got called one of my “minions”.  (I don’t have minions either.  I have friends.  Weird concept.)

But… yeah, I am not her only target, and I’ve seen other autistic people viciously attacked by her.  One person who was one of her big targets back in the day when the community was small enough to know her for what she was, is now one of the founders of Autscape in the UK.  But I’ve seen her attack others more recently, too.  Anyone who claims to have Kanner’s is likely to be attacked by her.

And… even if she is everything she says she is… even if everything she claims happened to her has actually happened… and I don’t really care one way or the other whether she is or isn’t… that doesn’t mean what she does is justified.  Many people have endured far more abuse than her, and have not become vicious bullies and social predators as a result.  Many people are far more severely disabled than she is, and are not hostile to everyone less severely disabled than them.  Many people are far more oppressed than she will ever be, and even if they are justifiably angry at their oppressors, even if they lash out at people sometimes, they don’t try to destroy every community they touch, in fact they recognize the necessity of community if we are ever to fight oppression, and they don’t send death threats to total strangers.  None of these things are excuses for what she is and what she does.  None of these things make this okay or even understandable.

And I say this in case anyone who reads this ever has the misfortune to be targeted by someone like this:

1.  You are not at fault.  Even if you’ve done things wrong, things you regret… nothing you have ever done makes you deserve this.

2.  You don’t need to do everything someone asks, no matter who or what they are or claim to be.

3.  If someone claims your existence triggers them, you don’t need to stop existing, and it’s quite possible that they aren’t even telling the truth, but are rather trying to manipulate you into self-hatred or even suicide.  Especially if they make no effort to avoid you, but instead seem to be following you around or even stalking you and then claiming to be triggered by everything you do and everything you say, ever.  It's possible to be triggered by a person, but most people who are triggered by a person’s existence are not going to follow them around saying “you’re triggering me” every other second.

4.  If someone says you are lying about things you absolutely know happened and that they absolutely know happened, and that it’s your “lies” that are triggering them, you need to get away, fast.  If you feel like their insistence that you are lying means that you need to check with other people who witnessed the events in question to verify that they did, indeed, happen, then you are in too deep, and it’s probably you who are triggered in some way.  Get away.  Fast.  Don’t read anything they say.  Don’t listen to them.  Just get away.

5.  If someone is consistently nasty to people, and seems to have the ability to contain little packets of information in between their words, such that even seemingly innocent statements contain veiled attacks on people… get away, too.  You don’t need to subject yourself to this, and you will be influenced by those little packets of information, even if you know they’re false and know the person is being manipulative.

6.  You don’t owe anyone your interaction.  Especially if they do these things.  You don’t deserve this.

I can’t warn you enough how toxic this is when people do this sort of thing. I can’t warn you enough how much damage a person like this can do to people who trust them.  And how much damage they can do to entire communities, if it’s allowed.  This whole experience has probably made me stronger and more aware of certain things in the end, but nobody should have to go through anything like this.  People can be nastier and more manipulative than most people could ever imagine… and that’s part of how they get away with it, is people can’t imagine that they could really be as bad as they are.

feliscorvus had a family member like this too, that’s one way she was able to see through what this bully was doing, and befriend me back when this was at its worst.  I was so afraid she’d believe her, I’d seen too many online relationships ruined and I was afraid one day she’d find out I was horrible underneath and believe her.  But she didn’t, and she told me it was because of two things.  One, she had a family member who manipulated people in the same way.  Two, she had the same ability I have to at least partially see through things like this, by looking at patterns.

And as I’ve warned people before, speaking of instincts and patterns:

If you interact with someone and whenever you’re near them, you feel this implacable blast of hate flooding at you from their direction?  Get away.  They will hurt you, sooner or later.  It doesn’t matter if, on the surface, they seem to be doing something really nice.  If all you can ‘feel’ from underneath is hate, then there is hate somewhere and that hate will come at  you sooner or later and you don’t want to be around when it does.  If I’d trusted my instincts… this still would have happened to me, but it would have been less damaging.  All that time she was being fake-nice and at times sickly-sweet to me, she was gathering information that she’d later use to manipulate me and others.  Don’t give them even innocent information, you wouldn’t believe how innocent information can be used against you.  Just get away as fast as you can.  Run, don’t walk.

If, during all of this, you know you want to get away, and yet you feel like you can’t?  Like somehow there’s this sort of inertia that always somehow keeps you from getting away from them, no matter how much you want to?  Then do everything you can to break that inertia.  It means something really terrible.  Believe me, you have to focus on breaking away from them or you’re in for a world of hurt.  They’re likely manipulating you in some way, into not getting away from them, and they may be manipulating you based on your past abuse history, if you’re anything like me.  I feel like my worst bullies throughout my life have built inroads into my brain, that they can use to mindfuck me really easily, and one of those inroads is somehow convincing me I can’t or shouldn’t get away from them.  And that kind of bully… they can smell those inroads in a way I don’t even understand.  If you have them, they will be exploited, no question.

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4:58am December 26, 2013

It’s weird how this one cyberbully I knew could make ANYTHING sound like an accusation.

I remember her saying something about “that thick head of hair you have” and somehow making it sound like a scandal.  That’s the kind of language/manipulation skills I’ve talked about before… like she may have not been able to write in a fancy way, but she could write in a way that evoked all kinds of stereotypes and emotions in people’s heads.  Including making thick hair sound like a scandal.  Which was like… amazing.  I don’t know how she did it.  She was always saying random innocent stuff about me and making it sound scandalous and deceptive of me.  It was really bizarre.  And she did it well enough that when I first read it, I felt guilty for just a second, for having thick hair.  Then I caught myself and almost laughed, if it weren’t for the fact that there were people who could actually be manipulated by that kind of thing.

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