piece of media: this character is Creepy and Insane. They’re totally crazy and Nobody Understands Them.

the character: *just displays a bunch of neurodivergent traits like rocking back and forth, talking to themself, pacing, doing the same thing over and over again, being a loner, etc*

Like that’s literally just a normal Saturday for me.

While I know I can’t actually convince people to not use the “r*tard” in any context, I would like to say that there’s no actual reason to use it given how many other words there are for “to slow/stop”

delay, slow down, slow up, hold back, hold up, set back, postpone, put back, detain, decelerate, hinder, hamper, obstruct, inhibit, impede,check, restrain, restrict.

There’s no reason to use it so like why use a word that makes an entire group of people be in definitely emotional pain and may even result in physical pain?

With more children getting diagnosed as autistic there's more and more parents realizing that they're also autistic. It's a beautiful thing.

please respect people who are mentally ill and disabled who cannot work. please respect people who look like they’re just relaxing all day when really they’re waging an internal war just to stay alive or fight their pain. please respect people who could not finish school, people who had big plans and could not see them through because of disability. people who look from the outside like they’ve “given up” or “aren’t doing anything.” people who are hospitalized repeatedly or permanently, and people who are grown adults who are still dependent on others. please respect disabled and mentally ill people. 

this is not a polite suggestion, by the way. it’s an angry demand. we are people, and we deserve the same respect as anyone else.

Understand this:

Autism is not an illness, a disease or a curse.

It can’t be “caught” or “triggered” or developed later in life. A person is born with autism.

Autism is not caused by chemicals or parental style. It is 100% genetic.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder — a mental disability. It is life-long and cannot be “cured” or “trained” out of a person.

It’s who we are. Don’t try to make us “normal” — it won’t work — instead try to understand our difficulties if you really want to help us.

Hey PSA for the abelist assholes

Stop adding “tard” to words. Just because you don’t say the full word doesn’t mean you’re not being a dick. Eg: Femtard, libtard, fucktard.

We all know what you’re saying. We all know what you mean. Just because you make it a portmanteau with some other thing you deem insulting does not make it less of a slur, or any better than flat out calling someone the R slur.

You’re not fooling anyone.

THANK YOU

I don't think people who don't have our mental health conditions realise how much it affects us when they call us ableist things. Like, I still remember all of the times I've been called crazy or selfish or pathetic or difficult or messed up. I don't forget. I have worked very hard to forget but some of these are things I was called over ten years ago.

Ableism is not a lesser form of discrimination. It's not a less harmful form. It shouldn't be tolerated in society,

The things you say to us really stick and they can take forever for us to forget. But for you, they're just words, probably said in anger, definitely said in ignorance, and then maybe you apologise or times passes and that's it.

For us, we internalise that stigma and we think this is how people really see us, or this might actually be who we really are, or no matter how close we are to someone they're not actually safe or they don't actually get what we're going through if they can turn around and say things like that to us.

The unfair things that people say to people with mental health conditions don't just go away like that. So maybe you should reconsider saying them in the first place.

Some illnesses can't be cured. Some struggles are lifelong. Not every battle you face can be won. Acknowledging this isn't negative or anti-recovery, it's a fact - and it's a fact you need to internalize in order to stop blaming people for circumstances they can't control.

To clarify, making fun of an autistic person (when you know they are - and there’s every reason to think they did) for being “nonsensical” and “not getting jokes” is ableist. Those aren’t insults or criticisms of actual poor behavior or personality traits. They’re straight up just insults of stereotypes and/or actual challenges of autistic people. I hope that simplifies it

It’s about the expressed wishes of the group in question.

People who used to be medically diagnosed as “mentally retarded” are now generally called “developmentally disabled” or “intellectually disabled”. (Those are two groups that overlap frequently, but not all the time.)

Developmentally and intellectually disabled people have been VERY LOUD about not wanting to be called the R-word. Like, as a group they’re still having to fight to get their federal minimum wage raised from $1 an hour and to be able to live in homes they choose that don’t lock them in at night, and they are STILL committing time, money, and political capital to saying the R-word is never acceptable.

On the other hand, since 1990, LGBT+ people have been labelling themselves “queer”, as a deliberate effort to fight their erasure from the respectability politics that meant only the nicest, whitest, most monogamous cis gays and lesbians got any political power or airtime. When I say “queer people” and “queer identity”, there are hundreds of thousands of people who will go, “Yep! That’s us!”

The queer community, and the LGBT+ community, do not entirely overlap. “Queer” is about “anyone who deviates from society’s expected norms around sex and gender”, especially anyone who does so deliberately, visibly, or in the face of societal pushback. Therefore these days in many countries, a lot of cis gays, cis lesbians, and binary trans people do not consider themselves “queer”, because they’ve carved out a big enough social niche that they’re not going against societal pressure. “Queer” also includes a lot of groups and identities that get left behind by the LGBT movement, like asexual, aromantic, nonbinary, third gender, multisexual, polyamorous, and kinky people whose oppressions don’t get recognized by groups that have gained wider societal acceptance.

So you can be LGBT without being queer. Feel free to peel the word off if it ever gets stuck on you. “Yeah, I don’t consider myself queer.” But when someone says “queer people” or “the queer community”, we do exist, and will not go away just because you don’t like us.

There are some words the disability community has reclaimed and held up with pride, but it’s mostly in areas like physical disability and mental illness, not intellectual or developmental disability.

I recommend that anyone who doesn’t like the word “queer” quite simply add it to their Tumblr filters, or get Blacklist on New XKit and filter it out.