Tag: marginalization

❁

“Shut up and listen to marginalized people” isn’t quite the right rule […] We need to do better by each other, and start listening for real.

Ruti Regan

❁

[…] The whole thing is set up in a way where the only way to move forward is to find something to oppose and devour. There is never a point where the way you do things is good enough. You have to find more and more words and ideas to oppose. Words and ideas that mark who is in the know, and who is bad. These things constantly change.
[…]
Within this culture, you stop noticing your surroundings. Instead, you see a network of lines representing various power dynamics, bad words and ideas, good words and ideas, and the way this community responds to them. You stop being able to see that this is not the only way to respond to injustice.

Mel Baggs

❁

[It’s possible that one who] outwardly celebrates the diversity in labels, doesn’t necessarily celebrate the diversity of thought – not seeming to grasp that the two by necessity has to go together. A group of diverse people would take different routes to achieve a purpose. They would have different ideas on how to do it, when to do it.

potteresque-ire

❁

[…] Autonomy as a value of deliberative democracy is contested by non-disabled family members who advocate with their disabled family members in order to portray the interdependency of their interests. Charlie’s experience thus gives new meaning to the value of reciprocity in deliberative democratic theory, moving it away from mutual competence towards mutual dependence.

Stacy Clifford

❃

People everywhere, every day are trying to navigate {many} kinds of dilemmas, and {some of the time} are doing so in a culture that refuses to discuss {them}.

Partial quote, Sarah K Reece

❃

When new ideas emerge in society there is usually discussion about them. It’s a sound general principle – the best way to evaluate new ideas is to explore them critically and freely.
{Plenty of} issues […] are of importance to society as a whole. […] Surely we can agree that {people, especially the referred groups} should have the right to discuss it?

This must be done in an atmosphere of mutual respect in which anyone is free to critically discuss anything they wish, using whatever (respectful) terminology they choose.
The underlying issues, {redefinitions, and introduction of new concepts} must be seen for what they are: nobody’s exclusive property.

Partial quote, Jonathan Best

In the same series:

Truth Beacon – Research & Authority

Truth Beacon – Experiences

Spectrum

Lines – Amber (Part 2)

Sometimes the same behaviors in a person {read as} neurotypical would not even be noticed.
But because people with autism are scrutinized all day, every day, by teachers, therapists, parents, and almost everyone else around them, their behaviors are labeled, treated […]

Partial quote, Lisa Jo Rudy

❁

When you tell me there is no such thing as normal, this is true, in a sense. The things we as a society prize as normal can not all be found in one person. […] There is no one ‘normal’ person, never was, never will be. So many of us are more comfortable with people like ourselves that we take as normal those with a certain amount of similarity to ourselves, and if we have sufficient power in society, this normal may override the normals of others.

Alyssa Hillary

❁

There is simply no need to speak at all of ‘what makes us human’ in scientific discourse. What makes us human is nothing, save perhaps our rich diversity.

Sophie Vivian

❃

A lot of people think they can relate {to my struggles} which means it’s brushed under the carpet as not a big deal.

Partial quote, Amy Miller

❁

“You know how it is. People like that . . . they don’t experience emotions the same way that you and I do.” […]
I thought about telling her [that I am autistic]. I chose not to. I’m not sure what it would have accomplished if I had told her […] revealing myself to be a person like that

The truth is, I don’t experience emotions in the same way as that woman who spoke to me about her disabled clients. Or in the same way that you do. No one does.
Human beings are cognitively and behaviorally diverse. We are so diverse that we defy taxonomy entirely.
There really is no norm, no fixed point of reference from which to deviate.

Caroline Narby

❁

[F]ew issues are completely exclusive to one group, but some things affect some groups more strongly than others, and that can be very important.

Elizabeth Bartmess

❁

[S]ome critics […] suggest abandoning the term ‘autism’ altogether. In their opinion, labelling autistic people as such was merely a mistake: We thought there was a natural category called ‘autism,’ but now that we know more about it, we can see that this was an error.
[I]dentifying as autistic may not be biologically meaningful, but it is politically meaningful
[W]e have our own communities, norms, and practices […] Autism, in other words, has begun to develop into a culture, and this culture opens up the space for autistic behaviors to begin to manifest as meaningful […] challeng[ing] existing standards of acceptability within […] dominant social and ideological framework[s]

Some of our most significant and deeply-entrenched human categories – like race and gender – are partly rooted in a constellation of physical elements, and partly in historically situated social construction.
They do not reside on a single gene, or even a network of genes, and yet they are both extremely ‘real’ and extremely important to our conceptions of self and others.

Robert Chapman

❁

When you are different it’s okay for you to not quite meet up with the rest of the world here and there, because most of the time, when it matters, everything syncs up.
When you are disabled you don’t have that luxury.

When you are disabled you have to prove, over and over again, that you are a real person […]

Julia Bascom

❁

In a world where autism exists, because we do taxonomize human difference and build systems of power around it, I am autistic.

Caroline Narby

Spectrum

❁

[…] as soon as someone says they’re on the autism spectrum, we categorize them and treat them differently.

Creigh, Caley

❁

It’s interesting the way that little label changes where the presumption lies.
If you’re NT and you decide to go explore a local park on a whim, you’re just indulging a whim. If you have ASD though, that’s ‘dangerous wandering’.
If you’re NT and you hire someone to do your cleaning or your lawn, you’re just freeing up spare time for yourself, but if you have ASD, you’re not ‘living independently.’

Cynthia Kim

❁

When I am open about being Autistic, I am handing people a weapon to punish me with. [Many times] my autism has been invoked during a disagreement. I have ended up leaving so many communities because I was told that I was only disagreeing because my autism meant I didn’t really understand. […]
Anytime someone wants to dismiss my opinion or experience, they point out that I am Autistic, as if that trumps anything and everything. […]

Telling people that I am Autistic gives them the opportunity to understand me better.
It also gives them the opportunity to dismiss anything and everything about me as irrelevant, deluded, pathological, unacceptable. No one has to provide a logical counter for anything I say because my words are Autistic words so they mean nothing. They are merely symptoms and can be disregarded.

Max Sparrow

❁

Like it or not, public perception of autism is not very diverse (yet). […] We need adjectives like ‘mild’ or ‘severe’ to help other people understand the extent of the autistic person’s needs.

Chris Bonnello

❁

There is no such thing as severe autism. There are autistic people.
Autistic people all have needs to be met. Just like everyone else.
These aren’t special needs, or different needs, they are human needs.
Autistic people need food, shelter, connection with other people, and to feel safe and valued. Just like everyone else.
Autistic people will communicate their distress when their needs are not being met. Just like everyone else. […]
They are not ‘severely autistic’– they are autistic and severely misunderstood, severely stigmatised, severely stressed, severely anxious, severely exhausted […]

Michelle Sutton

❁

My ‘high functioning’ child is not yet potty trained and still has to use diapers. We support her and teach her, but we never shame her publicly or otherwise for being Disabled and on a different developmental path than other children her age.
Wait, does that make her ‘low-functioning’? I get confused because she is also reading ‘The Hobbit’, which might make her ‘high-functioning’.

Romana Tate

✦

(See previous quote for context)

Deviating from the gist of the quote; it is interesting to note how – generally speaking – using diapers and reading The Hobbit are associated with respectively ‘low-functioning’ and ‘high-functioning’ in the first place.

❁

Part of the problem of the “labels are for jars” argument is that it inextricably links the label with diagnosis and pathology. It completely ignores the possibility that the label can be part of a disabled identity [when it is not] entirely defined by medical terms.

Kim Sauder

✧

A diagnosis is meant to give a reason. We can say, look, you have cancer. That is why you are feeling so unwell. You have depression. That is why you are so sad. You have this, so you are that. We expect a direct correlation, a cause, a salve to soothe us against all the things in the world that don’t make sense. The things that hurt us. A diagnosis tells us if A, then B. In this way, we define and we mend and we neatly slot the world into order. A diagnosis of disability tells the world where to fit a person, what they can and cannot do, how they will be loved and love in return. It designates relationships and builds hierarchies. From the moment my sister was diagnosed, people expected it would define us, too. Her and me. When they spoke they left so much room for the wrong words, such as caretaker and burden and problem, but too little for the right ones, such as sister and friend.

Out of context, Lauren McKeon

✧

Being assigned the label also became an experience of crossing over the threshold of ‘normal’ to ‘abnormal.’ […] They also continually compared their inner experiences and behaviors against an imagined standard of ‘normal.’

Out of context, Susan G. Goldberg