Friday 22 February 2013

The flaw in the the social model idea of disability.


I'm addressing two things here, the problem with the social model, and the persistent notion that GF is a fad diet which feministe loves to add to.

The problem with the social model is that people often take it as "No disability, just society disabling us". Which results in mindblowing events like the time a non-hard of hearing person tried to tell me, (A hard of hearing person) that I wasn't disabled by my hearing loss and persisted in treating disability as a bad thing solely because some people with hearing loss don't consider themselves disabled. They also tried to argue that because light is faster than sound, Deaf/Hard of Hearing people would see something before hearing people would hear it, quite apart from the relatively limits of vision, that's just bad science.

The social model shouldn't mean that if it wasn't for icky society being a problem, we'd be perfectly able. But it's often treated that way by many people who don't listen past "social model".

I am autistic, even if society was more informed about my autism and more accommodating, it wouldn't magically turn my life into a NT type comparative stroll in the park in terms of communications. It's the same for my use of a wheelchair. Sure, it would be nice if every building had a ramp, all pavements were straight, curb cuts were more common, excetera, but it wouldn't change that a wheelchair is still quite bulky to maneuver, or that people often grab mine without realising it is part of me. They don't mean to lay hands on me but they do. Even if they knew better? It still wouldn't change that having to use a wheelchair is quite frustrating, my feet get me places faster when I can use them so it takes an awful lot longer to get around in my chair.

Not to mention sitting down all day? Makes your leg muscles ache in different ways than over taxing them does. Most wheelchairs barely cope with urban terrain, try going camping or hiking in one? Unless it's a specially built one? You ain't doing any such thing. We can hardly pave nature.

Then there's the fatigue, the shoulder dislocations (I really need an electric wheelchair) and all the other wonderful side effects of having my disability. Ramps everywhere, and straight pavements won't fix them.

 I have long thought we need an answer that is somewhere between the medical model and the social model, a functioning model if you will that addresses that disability or difference is a social and bodily issue, and that we can do much to help with the social side but the person will still have a disability or difference at the end of the day.

Now onto smashing the notion of gluten free diets as a "fad weight loss" diet.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/06/03/gluten-free-dishes-that-sound-ok/

Let's break this down.

Jill says: "But “I’m allergic to gluten” seems to be the new cover for women who are basically just seeking to limit their food intake, and is almost never mentioned in any articles covering the trend of gluten-free eating. For example, the Times says:"

Seems to be? There's no evidence given whatsoever for this claim, and to be frank, I think it's fucking bullshit.

To be blunt, as someone on the gluten free diet? There is nothing in the GF diet that limits your food intake, I can still eat as much as anyone else, in fact I often need to eat more because GF diets make it slightly harder to get all your trace minerals.

Also GF food tends to sold in smaller weights but those weights are much more calorie dense. For example, A giant regular muffin has 450 calories, a GF mini muffin half the size has the same amount. In having a good old munch, I can easily down more than twice the calories I would if I was eating food that contained gluten.

This is because things like oil are used to bind in the place of gluten often sending the calorie content rocketing. I also find that many replacement foods such as GF bread do not keep me as full as the regular gluten version. So if you go on a GF diet to lose weight? You're a frigging nitwit.

It would be easier to simply order the salad.

Jill says: "But we should maybe be casting a bit of a jaundiced eye on the gluten-free fad. It can be great, for folks who can’t consume gluten products without getting very sick; it’s also great insofar as it makes us more creative with the food we eat, and less reliant on the same old ingredients and recipes."

Hey Jill thanks for telling everyone to stick their noses into our business, because we disabled folks don't get enough of that shit, and even if a woman does have an eating disorder? What fucking business is it of yours or anyone elses?

Jill says: "Yeah I totally agree — people shouldn’t have to explain (unless there’s a real health issue — there are some people who are so gluten-intolerant that if gluten touches a pan they can get sick, and someone preparing food for them needs to know that)"

Because being sick obliges us to explain our food choices of course. How could I not enjoy that?

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/06/03/gluten-free-dishes-that-sound-ok/#comment-369777

Jill says: "As I’ve clarified several times now, the point of the post was not to say that people should bug other people about their reasons for avoiding certain foods. It was to say that media coverage of food trends is woefully inadequate."

Because describing a diet as a fad diet and encouraging people to think of it as one will magically never ever translate into bigotry and inappropriate nosiness into our lives or legitimise the existing shit we get for our diets.

Intention, it's fucking magic like that. This shit is why I often don't like mainsteam feminist groups.

Saturday 16 February 2013

Problems in the social justice movement:


And there are many of them, from the feminist tendency to racism, transphobia, and disabilism to the Gay advocates tendency to be Biphobic, sexist, and paternalistic.

But right now I'm going to blog about problems with the actual acceptance of disabled people especially autistic people in it.

To be frank, many Allistic social justice groups and so-called safe spaces only support autistic people so long as we meet the following criteria.

1. Our autism must be mild enough to be almost invisible. In short, you must pass as NT to get treated well in many spaces.

2. We must get everything on their time table and not ours. Not getting a badly explained idea that doesn't make any sense is a bad thing in social justice and is proof that you're a bigot rather than just a confused struggling autistic.

3. We must be content to sit back and let them speak for us. I know no end of so-called advocates who crow about the time they were all "inclusive" and shit in support of a disabled person who didn't have the power to assert their need for inclusion, but the minute we are in a situation where the power differential isn't so great as to render us speechless? The same people seemingly take no end of delight in lecturing us on being "scary" because we objected to horrible behaviour.

A good example would be the "not bigot" who didn't see an issue with me getting death threats but told me I was horrible and scary because I loudly objected to said death threats, because she thought I might also criticise her at some point. Because being criticised is totally worse than death threats.

They prefer us passive, basically.

4. Our autism must not impinge on the conversation at all if it is not centered around us, even if it's a discussion of say racism in which people are throwing around disabilist slurs that hurt us, asking for them to stop that shit is impinging and racist automatically.

5. We must accept that we do not "understand" the allistic people if we criticise them for saying shitty bigoted things about autism, but if they criticise us, then they are always right and there is no room for an alternative view even if they're judging us by NT Allistic standards not as the autistic people we are.

6. We can either be strong or not strong. If someone attacks us and we defend ourselves, we're assumed to be able to cope with abuse and thus nothing will be done about the attacker, even if their actions are explicitly against the rules. We are also assumed to not need any support, even if we say we do need it.

If we are deemed not strong, then we must remain in the "pity spot" as I call it, we cannot show strength at other times, that is a betrayal of our "agreement" to be the "pitiful one".

7. Because social justice spaces are often built on the same social hierarchy as NT allistic spaces are outside of safe spaces. We must accept that even in the safe space we remain the weird kid in the corner everyone picks on, because we're often not popular read social butterfly enough to be anything else.

8. We must accept the voices of allistic NT "advocates" even though they supplant and silence us. Anything less than "sharing" our platform, and by "sharing" I mean getting shoved off it by someone else is deemed "uninclusive".

9. We must sit down and shut up when allistic "allies" are talking about us. We aren't included unless we're acceptable.

10. We absolutely must not bring up our autism when talking about struggles within social justice. Don't get a concept? You're a bigot! Don't get it because of some unspoken assumption? Accept the bigot label and don't mention autism, because then you're not just a bigot, you're a "person hiding behind your label" who "hurts REAL autistic people".

This is why we need our own spaces and why our voices flourish when in them and wither in allistic dominated "safe space" social justice spaces.

Friday 15 February 2013

Crap response from Autism and oughtisms:


http://autismandoughtisms.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/the-privilege-game/#comment-7776

Dissection time:

"My post is not asserting equality, quite the opposite in fact. To have reached your view of what I’ve said, you’d have to have significantly misunderstood the post."

So what was all that complaining about how awful it is that parents voices are asked to held as lesser? If not demanding equality without equity?

Here she makes the classic mistake, she claims not to try and speak for autistics but she cheerfully decides that I misunderstood. Ergo, therefore my opinion is invalid. She is telling an autistic that they do not understand. I understand that very well, I've heard it all my life from privileged NTs who felt that my thoughts and feelings about the shitty things they said were not valid because I do not think the same shitty things.

Here's the thing parents? I don't give a shit what you intended, my reaction and perceptions of what you say are indeed valid because you don't get to control how I see your words. You're used to dealing with people who think like you and who agree with you (notice the godawful Flannery who basically hates autistic advocates is agreeing with the original post), so when someone disagrees and pulls out underlying hurtful ideas that your privilege blinded you to? You immediately dismiss us as "not understanding" because actually facing it would mean facing that you hold harmful ideas.

We understand all too well. We understand that your privilege blinds you and you refuse to check it or to consider that you said something hurtful because you didn't intended to say hurtful things because intention is the fifth fucking element and magically makes sure that nothing you say could ever be harmful, hurtful, ignorant or not thought out, much less all of those.

http://genderbitch.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/intent-its-fucking-magic/

"Actually, no, you have not understood the spirit of my argument. See above."

Translation: Lalalalalalaalala Imastickmyfingersinmyearsandnotlisten.

"I do not ignore adult autistic voices."

Suggestion for NT parents in general. Do not say this after you've just done that twice. If NT parent's weren't ignoring adult autistic voices, the default response wouldn't be "you, the autistic person, don't understand", it would be to consider that perhaps they the NT person don't understand and to try to understand what we're saying and why we're saying it.

"I read them widely and often. I must point out that “they” do not speak with one voice either, and my post was about a specific type of claim I’ve seem repeated over and over as a form of attack on non-autistic (and even autistic) parents."

Reading our viewpoints doesn't mean understanding them as has been demonstrated, also given that the specific claim was "you have privilege", I don't think they understand what an attack is.

"I was quite clear about what that was, and I separated out the attack from the claim and concept of privilege at the start; I did not simplistically conflate the two."

This is probably a sign of a classic issue. Here's the thing, everyone? Only you know what you intend, if you fuck it up and completely bollix conveying that and end up conveying the opposite, whether by unacknowledged bias or simply bad writing? People even NT ones do not magically pick up on what you intended. The other people agreeing are agreeing because they agree with what she actually said, not what she claims to have said.

Seriously, I am so fucking tired of being told that I simply don't understand every time I disagree with an NT person who said something ignorant and/or shitty, especially when NT people seem to think they also know my every thought and feeling so well that they can declare them invalid.

Edit: Since she decided to delete it in a fit of temper at having me accurately criticise her. Here's my last reply in response to: http://autismandoughtisms.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/the-privilege-game/#comment-7792

"And most are parents, including a few known to be horrible to adult autistics on the regular basis.

I do understand your post, I just see the parts your blinkers cover up for you. The implications in what you're saying both in general and to me.

No, I don't think I am, if I was, you would listen, understand and be able to lay my concerns to rest with more than "you don't understand/know me". That you're not argues that you can't, and therefore that there's more than a little accuracy there.

You can't open the minds of others when yours is in a iron cage of privilege and blinded by it. You need to open yours first, or you will forever be part of the problem and you will always be called out on the basis of your privilege because it has such as large impact on you.

You will never escape the argument that you're complaining about because in your case it's true that your privilege is a problem, your privilege does cloud your ability to see, to understand, to empathize, to step into our world, and your denial of it makes those clouds into lead.

You are part of the problem, part of the reason why autistics do not want to share a platform with parents, because you don't share. You dominant and ignore the harm."

Edit2: Baaaaaaaaaaaaawletion, because heaven forbid you point out that someone has publicly shat themselves and it smells when they want to think they smell of roses and sunshine.

Suggest not following Autism and oughtisms, blog owner is privileged, biased against autistic people and their viewpoints and incapable of recognising it even when it is pointed out to her in simple terms.

And I should probably stop engaging such parents, I'm not going to educate them with anything less than an A bomb to their privilege to crack the blindfold. All it really does it expose to how stunningly childish supposedly educated allistic adults can be when told to check their privilege by the people they're hurting.

Thursday 14 February 2013

Where's my fainting couch?


Did someone accuse you of being privileged in a discussion about the not privileged? Oh horrors.

http://autismandoughtisms.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/the-privilege-game/

This non-autistic parent seems to feel "you are privileged and do not understand" is a silencing tactic. I feel that she's trying to silence autistics by what she's doing. How many times are we told to be "nice", this entire article is an appeal to "nice", it's an appeal to privileged parents. This is a form of privilege denying, the only way it works as an argument is if you place the non-autistic parent in the same bracket as the autistic person in terms of power and voice, which cannot be so, because they're not equal in reality.

Here's the thing non-autistic parents. Nobody is silencing you. We do not have the power to do so even if we wanted.

Unless you think:

"Support our voices, include us, listen to us, hear us, remember your child will some day be us, tell others to hear us as well since they are listening to you."

Is silencing you?

The only time non-autistic parents get told the shut the fuck up in my experience, they're usually saying frightfully horrible things that hurts not just adult autistics and advocates but also their children. The kind of "my child is monster/broken" bigotry.

The only time we want you to sit down is when you're raising money for organisations that demonise us and make our lives harder. Who disseminate hate and propaganda that gets us physically, emotionally and mentally attacked.

Let me quote some from the article and break down where I disagree.

"Clearly, parents of autistic kids are in a position of weakness and lack of power when it comes to society and particularly to the parenting world."

No, you are not, not really. Not in terms of autism and catering to within special education. If you were? When NT parent murders their autistic kid, the response would be "send them to jail" not the martyr talk we get about how it's understandable when a parent butchers a child because that child has autism and we're dreadful burdens.

If you did lack power? The media would not be full of martyr mommies crowing about all the self sacrificing they do for their autistic children who are only contextualised as the incredibly burden those martyr mommies carry, not as real people.

If you did lack power? You would not make up 99% of the board members of any autism based charity/effort, and the 1% of us would not be mere tokenism.

If you did lack power? People would not speak to you and ignore me when it comes to me and my needs.

If you did lack power? You would not be the only voices allowed in the media and in society when it comes to autism.

If you did lack power? NT parents of autistic children wouldn't come into our spaces and basically be demanding or feel entitled to our time, consideration, and anything else they think they deserve. That attitude only comes from having privilege.

You are not in a position of weakness or lack of power. That you believe you are? Just says that you can't see the inbuilt privilege you have.

"If disability is a social construct, then how you experience something like autism is hugely informed by your position of wealth, your ethnicity, your nationality, your gender, and a lot of factors completely independent of the condition of autism, since they are used to define and construct disability."

Except something like wealth doesn't magically make people understand and work with you instead of against you. While other lacks of privilege can be stacked on top of autism to make it harder, having a privilege in another area is not an automatic handup when it comes to autism. Oppressions are intersectional, privilege however tends to only relate to the specific area.

"So, if this is true, then those with autism who are not-poor/white/ heterosexual, would have to be ready to give up their own speaking platforms and verify their own view-points in relation to autistic people who do not have their privileges"

No, that's not how it works, that this person thinks it is goes back to the whole problem with that post, namely that the author seems to think "We need your support and for you to make room for us and promote us" is silencing. I might not be able to speak to how disabilism rolls into racism because I'm white, but I can certainly talk about how it rolls into poverty, gender, other disabilities, sexuality and much more. If I want to know about how autism interacts with race? I go ask an autistic person of color, because I don't think there's anything unfair about having to learn about someone else's experience.

"at the very least one should not assume the parent who is writing is not autistic, as so many people do assume."

Personally I only assume after the "are they saying harmful things" test, if it's harmful things? Then they're probably NT, and most of the time, said test is accurate, occasionally I'll come across someone with serious amounts of internalised disabilism. But 99 times out of a 100, the person calling us monsters and saying we should be put down is a allistic person.

Generally I find many NT parents of autistic children use "but I might have autism" as a derail and to try to make their voices sound less objectionable to actual autistic people. If you have autism, say so, if you don't, don't try to bluff in an attempt to make whatever you said more palatable.

"There’s a problem again: There is no consensus on view-points on autism amongst the autistic either. There are a huge variety of perspectives on whether autism is great or a curse, is easy or hard to live with, from the very people who have autism; views that vary just as much as those held by non-autistic parents of autistic children."

Just because we don't always agree doesn't mean anything. No group is a monolith, disagreement is all very well and good but it doesn't mean it's okay for someone outside the group to try and dominate the discussion. Not all people of color agree on reclaiming racial slurs, that doesn't make it the place of me or any other white person to say whether or not it's acceptable to reclaim racial slurs, even if they are the white parent of a child of color.

In no other group do we have privileged parents trying to dominate so thoroughly. Nobody would talk to the white parents of mixed race kids to get an opinion on racism, or to the straight parents of gay kids to get an opinion on homophobia. Nobody would consider the thoughts and voices of white parent to be equal to the thoughts and voices of a person of color on the subject of racism. Yet that is what we're being asked to accept here.

Nobody denies that that being close to someone who is institutionally oppressed may further your understanding of their oppression, but equally well, experience matters and you do not experience the oppression if you have privilege. If you're white and you have a kid with a person of color, your child experiencing racism does not translate into you experiencing racism.

 "So unless we want to say these people are wrong and inauthentic, we need to allow for that variance, and if you’re going to allow for that variance which often sits alongside the exact variance you see in parental viewpoints too, then why silence or belittle the non-autistic parent viewpoints? Just because they have “privilege?”"

Here's the thing non-autistic parents, it's not that you have a viewpoint that's the problem. It's These:

1. A persistent insistence many NT parents have of speaking over and silencing Autistics.
2. When a NT parent of an autistic kid is basically being a bigot, they often refuse flat out to consider the harm they're doing, often screeching that they can't be hurting us because they love their kid.
3. The tendency among your ranks to insist that your child is worse than all of us automatically and therefore your voice is the most important ever. (This is especially annoying when the person is talking to severely autistic people and just didn't know it).
4. The constant tendency to forget that autistic children grow up. I can't begin to tell you how many NT parents I've met whose attitude was "fuck adult autistics, me me me me".
5. Martyr mommies. Climb down off the damn cross if you do this, we need the wood.
6. The repeated defense of disabilism by NT parents, I'm so sick of NT parents telling me what I am and am not allowed to think about disabilism.
7. The persist abuse of autistics by NT parents. I'm really tired of being called names because I'm autistic and some parent thinks that my ability to talk makes it okay to dismiss and abuse me.
8. The constant "oppression olympics", "well my child is worse than you so my voice is more important".

I could go on but you get the idea. In short, you can have an opinion, but nothing says it's okay to be badly behaved about it, and to be frank, allistic parents of autistic kids tend to be badly behaved about it.

"Your understanding and experience of raising an autistic child is irrelevant and wrong because of your brain. That, to me, is no different than attacking an autistic person’s views just because of their autism. We should be engaging with what the person is saying, not simply with who is saying it."

No, it is very different, as I've explained, it isn't so much having a viewpoint, it's the bad behaviour of allistic parents of autistic kids that's the problem. But even if it was, you cannot fucking compare a minority to a majority as if they are equal. You cannot compare a minority person dismissing a privileged person because of privilege to a privileged person dismissing a minority because privilege has a huge impact there. Privilege is a bullhorn, it lets you shout others down and dismiss them, it is power even if you don't see it as power or recognise you have it.

"And by the very same token, neither does never having had autism predetermine that you can’t have insights or expertise on autism itself."

It however means it's far harder to empathise or to understand. It's like listening to someone speaking in Russian when you don't speak Russian yourself, you might be able to guess at what they're saying and you might be right, but it would be far easier if you spoke Russian.

Privilege is a blind fold, it keeps you safe, it keeps you ignorant of what you're really saying, it stops your ears and eyes. You cannot see it unless you look for it and even then it is adept at hiding. It misleads and confuses you while elevating you. It calls you an expert while putting huge mountains you cannot see in the way of you being an expert. That is why privilege matters.

"It’s about respect, it’s about being heard, it’s about hearing diverse viewpoints and experiences."

Very well, find me more than a handful of NT parent who respect, and hear autistic people. Oh wait you won't because most Allistic parents don't respect us, refuse to hear or consider us and basically are only interested in themselves and their martyrdom.

To be frank, NT parents with autistic kids have been nasty to me pretty much every time I've encountered one, they've told me that I should be silent, that I don't deserve rights, and worse. Autistics do not routinely treat NT parents like they treat us, and NT parents should be ashamed of themselves when they behaved in the ways we criticise and remember that we have NT parents as well and someday it may well be their autistic kid who is getting the same treatment they mete out from someone just like them.


Friday 8 February 2013

And McCreath strikes again...


Misgendering me.

According to the misogynistic, classist, anti-choice, biphobic, and phobic of any Trans/Queer person who isn't a trans woman and who doesn't meet her strict binary gender criteria McCreath, I'm a female.

Fact: I'm gender queer/fluid for all society sees me as a woman and my body is biologically female. If my body matched my internal gender, it would be closer to Intersex than either gender because I flow between the genders, though I accept she/her as terms for simplicity, I am not a female. But then McCreath thinks we're all either a boy or a girl and people like me don't exist. Much like she thinks bisexuals don't exist.

McCreath and those like her are why people like me don't feel safe in trans/gender queer spaces. McCreath is someone I don't want in a space when I discuss reproductive rights, my female body or how society views my gender because she makes safe spaces unsafe with her bigotry towards my gender/sexuality and her ignorant ideas about gender. If she'd been born a cis woman? I still wouldn't want her in a safe space with those ideas.

Mccreath honestly scares me. She scares me because she makes it clear she thinks anyone who isn't a trans woman is automatically lesser or cis, she scares me because she thinks a non-existent test is enough of a reason to basically demand people are forced to give birth and risk death or disability as well as increased poverty just in case Trans people might not get born. She scares me because everytime she opens her mouth, she does harm to the fight for gender equality and recognition of the fact that gender is not binary, it's a spectrum. She scares me because she makes people like Brennan look more reasonable than they are and that takes some doing given Brennan is a major bigot.

She scares me because she does her best to silence and shout down gender queer people who aren't trans women. She scares me because she clearly doesn't give a shit about anyone but herself. She scares me because I honestly think she'd throw every other non-binary gendered person under the bus if it benefits her. She scares me because she's classist as hell.

She scares me because she seemingly just wants to railroad through changes without considering anyone else including gender queer people. She scares me because any disagreement results automatically in her shrieking abuse, misgendering people, and being a bigot.

Thursday 7 February 2013

Why socialisation matters:


Trans woman often argue that having transitioned, the male privilege they had while being seen as a man has no effect on their now lives. They are seemingly baffled as to why those of us with Uteruses, whether we're cis or not disagree. Well here is why I think male privilege does have an impact.

You can always tell a trans woman who came out later from one who had an accepting family and who grew up as a woman. Why?

Because in my experience a closeted for a long time trans woman's misogyny when directed at people with a uterus tends to be externalised misogyny not internalised misogyny.

I'm not saying that Trans women who come out later can't have internalised misogyny. But I always get the distinct impression that many trans woman of earlier generations or more repressive families have two misogyny based compartments for a woman/someone who is seen as female by society based on what is between her legs, and the one in which anyone with a uterus falls into is startlingly similar in some ways to cis male misogyny which is externalised misogyny.

With many trans women now, they are the ones who didn't have accepting families and remained seen as boys, often for multiple decades. The result is:

When a trans woman slut shames, it is almost always directed at people with uteri, not at other trans women.

When a trans woman makes body shaming comments, it is often applied exclusively to people with Uteri, such as the recent claims one trans activist made that vaginas are disgusting unless surgically created.

When a trans woman is anti-choice, their comments are often based on sneering at anyone who has a uterus for needing reproductive rights and ignoring that trans women need health care as well.

There's a distinct impression that I get from many late to come out trans women that they in some ways think like a cis man when it comes to someone who has a uterus. That they have absorbed the idea that anyone who has a period is lesser, and that they think of themselves as better by default. Not necessarily consciously but certainly unconsciously.

In short, part of having any privilege, is that society indoctrinates you to think yourself better and others lesser. There's no escaping that, and many trans woman do seem to have retained that indoctrination just like anyone who has privilege and loses it.

Monday 4 February 2013

This is why we can't have nice things:


Aka Landon Bryce says shitty things and then accuses other autistics of "wanting to hate" him when called out on them.

http://thautcast.com/drupal5/content/bisexual-privilege-and-autistic-autism-parents

Apparently in the world of Bryce, heterosexual couples totallu represent bisexuals, we're clearly omnipresent, just like all those pictures of Allistic folks totally represent autistics so autistics are clearly represented, oh wait, that's bullshit.

Dear Landon,

I'm bisexual. It doesn't mean I can be represented by images of straight people because I am not straight. The notion that somehow images of heterosexual people fulfill my need to see people like me represented is as asinine as the idea that images of allistic people fulfill the need of autistic people to see people like us represented.

Bisexuals don't have privilege, you proved that with your unthinking biphobia in assuming that representation = images of straight hetero people like we somehow default to straight by being bisexual.

Sexuality and gender covers a wide variety of images, you didn't understand this and felt bisexual people had no right to be upset at a singular presentation of sexuality and gender in a supposed inclusive space. You are wrong, and biphobic.

You compared being bisexual to being an allistic parent of an autistic child and arguing that we have privilege as well, that is offensive.

Bisexuals:

Do not try to speak for Gays and Lesbians for the most part.
Do not spread propaganda about gays and Lesbians.
Don't call being homosexual/Lesbian a disease or raise money to cure your sexuality.
Don't try to tell you how to be gay or argue you aren't gay enough to represent your sexuality.
Aren't mainstream like allism is.

Are:
Routinely ignored at best by the GLT community. At worst often derided as being fake, slutty, confused or as appropriating homosexuality. We're often told to either pick one side or the other by the cis-sexist Gay and Lesbian communities. We're accused of Transaphobia for merely existing by the trans community who don't understand that Bisexual doesn't refer to binary gender but to loving those of the same gender or a different gender.

We're subject to the same homophobia as Gay and Lesbian people, but with added derision from the Gay and Lesbian communities, if we date someone who makes us appear straight, we are "fake" and "appropriating homosexuality" if we admit to being bisexual, if we date someone who makes us appear same sex orientated, we are "in denial about our 'true' sexuality", and "lipstick lesbians". Our behaviour is constantly policed by both the straight and other sexual minority communities, if we do not find someone attractive, it is seized on as "proof" that we aren't really attracted to people of their gender, how we date is taken as proof that we're not really bisexual. If we demonstrate attraction to all genders, we're sluts and incapable of being true to someone.

How is that privilege? Oh yeah, it isn't. Even if it was privilege, it wouldn't be the kind of privilege Allistic parents wield against autistic advocates. You compared a minority group to a majority group. That's offensive.

Also you really need to learn to handle criticism without defaulting to denigrating others as "needing to hate". Sometimes people will criticise you and your group because you're being shitty. I'm autistic and bisexual, I'm not going to leave one identity at the door and accept you shitting all over part of me because you sometimes defend another part of me.

You want to talk about bias? Start by tackling your biphobia before attacking bisexual autistics who dare to call you on it.

Sunday 3 February 2013

Equality that isn't equality:

http://theconnorchronicles.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/equality-and-all-that-goes-with-it/

Yet another person who is feeding the old monster.

And parents wonder why they're unpopular with autistic advocates.

Apparently I'm transaphobic for calling out the biphobic, gender-queer hating, hater of thosae with Uteruses Jennifer McCreath. http://jennifermccreath.blogspot.co.uk/2012_09_01_archive.html

Cos nobody could criticise any Trans woman for legitimate reasons without it being transaphobia.