(((I Will Outlive)))

It's so insulting to know that just being a partner of an autistic person can get you labeled such horrid things simply because of people's incorrect beliefs surrounding autistic adults.

We all talk about how other people shouldn’t have to explain their “weird” triggers and we should be willing to tag them until something like this happens. How hard is it to ask if the anon is asking bc they find it “gross”/feel uncomfortable with it, or bc it’s a legit trigger?

One example would be if anon is gay and was assaulted for gay pda and feels fear for the couple and/or has flashbacks when they see pics of gay pda. How do you think this response and all the notes it’s gotten would make them feel?

Odds are that that’s not why the ask was sent, and that it’s bc the anon is homophobic, which isn’t a good reason to tag gay pda, but is it that hard to be thoughtful enough to consider other possibilities and ask in case your initial assumption is wrong?

Well, for one, people can personally curate their own tumblr feed and if they don’t want to see PDA, and a blog posts PDA, they can just unfollow it.

And see, here’s the issue. People only ever ask for GAY PDA to be tagged. If someone is legitimately triggered by PDA, they should request that PDA be tagged, not specifically gay PDA. Asking for gay PDA to be tagged is no different from asking someone to trigger tag gay people. The emphasis is on it being gay, not being PDA, so there’s always an ulterior motive.

Marginalized people are not a valid trigger, and if someone is triggered by the existence of an oppressed group, they need to get over themself.

October 14, 1977, Anita Bryant is pied for her antigay bigotry at a press conference in Des Moines, IA.

It was 40 years ago today…

Never gets old.

40 years on and it still is gratifying

Anita’s still alive and kicking and being anti-gay. Thom Higgins, who threw the pie when he was 27 – and was poetically from Beaver Dam – passed away 17 years later at 44. Info on his life is here. The pie throwing was a big deal. In an age before the internet let gays feel connected, and long before ACT UP, the pie showed small pockets of gays that we could fight back.

it showed that gays were human beings, who might be in the room with you, that you had been accepting as being equals and treating as people. you didnt suspect them as bieng gay, why should you treat them different after? do they become less human after finding out? i mean, its almost like you just found out they have an oppinion on your bullshit

She was “pied” on TV.  All across the country, people got to see proof that the LGBT community weren’t going to just sit there and take it.  People who thought they had no choice but to stay silent saw a horrible woman get humiliated on live TV.  

One of the best moments in television history.

“So you think that a woman being with a man is good bi representation?”

Translation: I’ve apparently forgotten what bisexuality means.

Anyway, super pissed off at all y’all who’ve been painting any casual, social relationship between minors and adults as “grooming” or “predatory,” as I try to point an 18-year-old on Twitter whose parents are attempting to force them into ABA therapy towards possible sources of help or support, and they say they have….zero safe adults in their life who are older than 18-20.

Folks. Unrelated, decent, older adults are a vital source of support and safety when someone’s family and school are unreliable or abusive.

There are different appropriate boundaries for friendships between kids and adults than between kids and other kids, but making kids believe that zero adults in their lives are safe to have as friends is not actually making them safer.

Adult figures can be supports, mentors, and friends. They can provide valuable perspectives on adult life, important lifeskills, and reality-checking about abusive relationships. And beyond that, they can provide tangible support and guidance to kids they know need help.

Having supportive adults can mean the librarian who helps them with college applications, getting a tutor, or finding an apartment. It can mean the teacher who tells them about a scholarship to the summer camp that gets the kid out of the house for the summer, or helps them get into a college away from home.

It can mean the boss or supervisor who’ll say they’re working when they need to go to a doctor or therapist without their parents knowing, or let them store a go-bag of supplies in the staff room in case they get kicked out.

It can mean the aunt or uncle who lets them stay in their spare room for a few nights or months when things are too tense at home, or gives them a ride to the bus station and money for the trip.

It can mean the pastor of the only LGBT-friendly church in town coming over to drink coffee with their parents and talk about how much better things turn out if you support your kid’s transition

Or in this case, it can mean an older autistic adult who can help them find a better treatment program to suggest instead, maybe recommend a therapist who will advocate for them, and testify personally about how much ABA harmed them.

Abuse can make it really hard to trust, because telling someone you need help makes you vulnerable, and what if you get hurt again? So it really helps for kids to have lots of alternatives to an abusive relationship, and a sense of how to recognize and avoid abuse.

So just teaching kids that any adult outside their family is a Guaranteed Predator, and not talking about what abuse looks like other than “if they’re nice to you they’re trying to molest you” does not keep kids safe. It does the opposite.

Having supportive adult friends when I was a teenager meant that when I finally realized I was gay, I had someone to reach out to and ask if they were sure it didn’t make me a horrible sinful person, which helped me feel comfortable getting back in touch with queer friends my own age that I’d (briefly) cut off in a panic, including the girl who would one day be my wife.

It also meant that a couple years later, when I’d been forced to move back in with my homophobic family and essentially forced to “work” (aka volunteer) at a homophobic, transphobic, abstinance-only sex education organization in order to not be kicked out and homeless, I was able to make plans to move in with a trusted adult friend instead of staying in a harmful home situation, until I was able to get somewhere else.

It meant I had someone to talk to about my rape when I knew my parents would blame me for it having happened (they did, when they found out).

It meant I had people who provided me with support and care during a period of my life when I came so close to hurting myself very badly more than once, and who were some of the important reasons I didn’t.

I probably would not have survived to celebrate my 35th birthday less than a week ago if I hadn’t had unrelated adult friends when I was a teenager. They weren’t grooming me or abusing me or anything, they were just being older people who considered me a friend. Like… older siblings or fun aunts. They clearly recognized my age and occasionally treated me differently than their friends who were peers because of it, but they were still my friends. And I am so so so glad that they didn’t hold to this bullshit of not being friends with teenagers, and that I didn’t hold to it being intrinsically predatory for them to be my friend.

Because it’s not intrinsically predatory. It’s just human.

Rebloging this since I also reblogged a post about adults making kids/teens uncomfortable a week or so ago.

This here is the other side of interacting with adults. Thankfully they aren’t all scary, predatory people and it’s good to have them as older friends with more life experiences and advice to share. It’s just important to keep both sides of interacting with them in mind.