Autistic Hedgehog

PLEASE SIGNAL BOOST: Warning about Disabled Skepchicks Blog and Call for Help

ischemgeek:

sherlocksflataffect:

autistichedgehog:

merinnan:

autistichedgehog:

Hedgehogs, I need your help. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that we need our help.

A few days ago, my husband brought to my attention that the popular skeptic blog Skepchick was planning a sister site…

On the upside, Will finally came out with some cognitively-accessible language answers: No, parent bloggers will not be a thing. I had to resist the urge to write “Was that so fucking hard?!” I did write “this is how you do cognitively-accessible language for me”

I’m not keen on how Will is lumping autistichedgehog and her husband together as a single entity in posts, though, and I might’ve monologed a bit on why the posts were not cognitively accessible to me. Posting while atopy flare and sick and headachy = monolog filter not operational. Whatever, I think they needed a rundown of why, no, our concerns had not been answered until someone came out with an explicit answer.

Also: snarling at autistic people for having trouble with subtext and implication? Not on. Don’t tell me to “re-read” ad infinitum, clarify.

Also, yes, I am PO’d. So PO’d I made a tumblr while migraine auraing and asthma flaring and assorted other histamine fun times-ing. When adrenaline leaves, I will crash hard and probably need a pillow fort day. My posts in the thread are very academic b/c that’s kind of my defense mechanism when I feel threatened/anxious/angry. More nervous/threatened/angry I feel in an unsafe space, more distant/obtuse my language gets. Frankly, I’m surprised I didn’t start breaking out the hexa- and heptasyllabic words in my vocabulary.

Ye-ah, way, way too little, and way too fucking late.

Chemgeek, this was not you having a cognitive problem. You didn’t read anything wrong at all. The specific question that was asked was literally if parents of disabled/autistic children could apply. And the answer given was literally that they could and would be taken under consideration. 

Sarah tried to make up some bull about “what if a sixteen-year-old who can’t write well wants to apply”, but that was bull. She was not talking about any form of assisted communication, even if that’s what she’s trying to claim now. At no point did she or any other Skepchick staff member say “Parents can help their children apply but cannot apply themselves.” Again, the question the answered was not “Can parents of disabled/autistic children help their children apply?” it was “Can parents of disabled/autistic children apply?”

They said yes to that. And when people protested and explained why they had a problem with this, they made no attempt to engage. There was not anything to remotely demonstrate that it was a misunderstanding that needed to be cleared up. In fact, it was largely ignored, until they decided to attack me. 

Then suddenly I was being told I was “repeatedly demanding an answer” when in fact at that point I had posted what, once? With a polite suggestion to look at the Autistics Speaking Day blog to see why their stance on this matter was problematic. Rebecca Watson herself showed up to call me awful and ignorant and reactionary and a few other things, too, before straight up censoring me and my husband.

In a sense, Will’s clarification now is just more of the same gaslighting that was already occurring. He’s trying to make it look like that’s what they were saying all along, but it most emphatically was not, because they never once said it. And in point of fact, he and more than one person claimed they weren’t responding because of some bullshit about “not wanting to disagree with marginalized people because it might marginalize them further.” But if they didn’t think it was okay to allow parents to blog on behalf of their children, why the word disagree? I said “Parents should not be allowed to apply.” They said “We’re not responding because blah blah blah disagreeing with marginalized people." 

They said they disagree with me about parents not being allowed to apply. Never did they say parents wouldn’t be allowed to blog on their children’s behalf. And any child applying with their parent’s assistance would be applying for themselves. Thus the parent would not be applying. So if Sarah had said "Parents can help their children apply but not apply for themselves” that would be one thing. But that’s not what she said, that’s not what any of them said, and no matter how they try to claim it, that’s not what their subtext and implications said, either.

I write for a living. I am damn good at subtext and implications, especially when it comes to allistic people, because it’s the only way to protect myself from them. Chemgeek, do not let them convince you that you were the one who misunderstood, because you understood just fine. Right now they’re trying to cover their asses. Just like they’re claiming it was all a “little kerfuffle” over the word st*pid when the evidence shows it wasn’t, they’re trying to minimize what happened here. They’re trying to make it look like they weren’t horribly abusive and viciously ableist to disabled people.

But they were.They are 100% in the wrong here and you misunderstood nothing. It’s all there in black and white, and they’ve damned themselves with what they’ve said as much as with that they didn’t. They think that now they’ve bothered to answer, after all the abuse they heaped on me, that they did the right thing and get to have ally cookies now. But they sure as fuck aren’t getting them from me.