No Disorder Is Inherently Evil.

"Brain damage" only sounds like a harsh and offensive way to describe brain injuries because people constantly use it as an insult. It's a totally neutral descriptor of what it is. I have brain damage. My brain is damaged. It's not ableist to call it that, it's ableist to call people you don't like brain damaged because you think it's an inherently bad thing to be.

(Yes abled bodied neurodivergents, that includes you)

I want to see representation for pyromania that's not just crazy guy set chairs on fire and went to jail

I want to see the actual symptoms

I want to see a kid grow up with a clear affinity for fire

I want to see someone staring at fire and flames while the others are talking

I want to see someone use flames as a way to calm down

I wanna see someone use fire as a way to cheer up and feel better

I wanna see someone play with a lighter like those characters who play with a coin as they idle

I wanna see someone who has lots of candles, like a hoard of candles, a collection of lighters and matches etc

I wanna see someone struggle with impulses and handling repercussions

I wanna see someone burn edges of notebooks without a reason for doing so other than liking it

I wanna see someone who burns their hair clippings instead of throwing them away especially if it was an impulsive haircut

I wanna see someone have a lighter at the ready and never for cigs

I wanna see actual day to day pyromania symptoms in a character and not have them be some defining character trait nor a main antagonist or 'insane trouble maker' trope.

I love you level 1 autistics

I love you level 2 autistics

I love you level 3 autistics

I love you autistics who can talk verbally

I love you autistics you use AAC or other aids like sign language

I love you autistics with no professional diagnosis

I love you early diagnosed autistics

I love you late diagnosed autistics

I love you queer/trans autistics

I love you autistics who don't look autistic

I love you autistics who do look autistic

I love you autistics with co-morbid conditions (intellectual disabilities, ADHD, ARFID, etc.)

I love you autistics with 'scary' mental disorders (dissociative disorders, personality disorders, schizospec, etc)

I love you autistics with high empathy

I love you autistics with low empathy

I love you physically disabled autistics

I love you autistics! <3

Bruce Pardy: Mental disabilities shouldn’t be accommodated with extra time on exams

A professor who awards an A to the best exam and a B to the middle of the pack discriminates between exams. She also discriminates between students on the basis of their cognitive skills and mental…

I am speechless at this blantantly ableist article from Bruce Pardy of the National Post.

Here’s a personal story. I have various learning disabilities one of them is called slow motor skills. This results in very poor writing speed. If I did not get extra time as accommodation or access to a computer to type my exams, I’d fail all my classes because I would not be able to finish my exams, and unlike Pardy’s claim, getting extra time doesn’t make me an A student. I’m not an A student and never have been, despite trying very hard. My accommodations don’t give me an edge, if anything they level the playing field. My disabilities have more of a negative effect on my learning than any accommodations I receive provide positives, but these accommodations allow me to at least pass my tests and continue my studies.

What’s pardy’s conclusion? People with disabilities shouldn’t be allowed in post secondary education? Because that’s what’s going to happen when you take away disability supports.

I am furious right now.

Psoriasis on my forehead got really bad (mom says it looks like I have a chemical burn) so now I have to be emo and do the swoop fringe until it goes away. Ugh.

Came across a video of a guy showing other wheelchair users how to get up and down escalators in a manual chair, and my God, the comments were just filled with people, or rather 2 very dedicated people yelling "This is SO DANGEROUS!! You should not be showing people how to do this!!! You will never need to do this because everywhere HAS to have lifts!!! Its the law!!!!" Over and over again.

Like tell me you've never gone to a public place with/as a wheelchair user, lol. Even in countries like America that have the ADA and Australia that has the DDA, you aren't garuenteed accessibility. You should be, but the unfortunate reality is that just because it's the law doesn't mean businesses/people will listen.

If I didn't know that escalator trick in uni I'd have probably missed so many classes I'd have had to repeat a year because the lift at the local train station broke at least once a week, and the ones at my local shopping centre I think worked maybe...twice the 3 years I lived there. Like obviously, it should be more accessible and lifts should be available because not everyone can do that trick, but why are you getting mad at disabled people for working with what we've got? Get mad at the people breaking the ADA/DDA, not us.

Disabled people aren't these fragile little flowers, nor are we children that need protecting from ourselves. If we are using the escalator, we can handle it, I promise.

Genuinely I don't care about the opinions of someone who has never been a compulsive or pathological liar when it comes to anything related to compulsive and/or pathological lying. If you haven't been that person you have no clue what it feels like, why someone is doing it, or how to tell the difference between the two or any other kind of lying.

No I don't care if you're a therapist or a psych major or a psychiatrist or whatever, your opinions are only based in what you can observe from the outside and that will never be a full and accurate understanding, and when the nature of the condition itself gives you an easy pass to not believe the experiences of the person living with it, I will find any argument you could make to be suspect.

I know.

I know why your autistic child screams in public.

I know why they "do weird things".

I know why they repeat you.

I know why they repeat a word over and over.

I know why they dont like that food.

I know why they dont like hugs.

I know why they repeat themselves a lot.

I know why they are who they are. But you wont listen to me to help your child. Your child could thrive if you listened.

And why do I know all this? Because I'm an autistic adult.

I don't want to detract from a post so I'll give my rant here.

Have you ever seen that post about where Rogue is asking if mutants could really be cured and Storm said no, because there was nothing wrong with them? And people were calling Storm's ability one to "make clouds" and really taking the situation at face value? Storm was right.

First off, Storm's ability isn't just "make clouds." Her ability is omega-level- for the record, that's the second most powerful level. It means her powers do not have an upper limit. Storm is an incredibly powerful mutant and she had to learn to control herself from a very, very young age. Because Storm's ability is far more dangerous than Rogue's could ever be.

To start, when Storm caused weather to happen somewhere, she was basically taking that weather away from somewhere else. If she were to use her power to summon rain and end a drought in one place, she would be taking that rain from someplace else and could cause a far deadlier drought without realizing. Ororo was told this at a young age. There is absolutely no safety in her "making clouds." She has to be extremely careful what she does or she could cause a catastrophe.

Additionally, the level of power Storm has is literally world-ending. If she wanted to, she could wipe out continents, even the world. If she lost control of her powers, she could kill hundreds, thousands, millions, billions. Ororo was a child when she manifested. In some canons, she was a child when she learned exactly how powerful she was. But, child or teen, she still had to adjust to exactly how dangerous she was. She had to look back and see how many times she could have ended everything. Such difficult lessons for a child to learn, but she learned them.

Storm's control is legendary. She had to learn to keep her emotions completely and utterly in check as they react hard when she's upset. To keep omega-level mutations under control as perfectly as she does is one thing. It's infinitely more impressive that she has as much control as she does when her powers are triggered by her emotions. Storm's ability to exist without being a constant threat to everyone around her is the product of years, maybe decades, of hard training to keep herself in check.

Storm does not just make clouds. She absolutely knows what Rogue is going through. But Storm is also old enough to see the full picture.

Number one, Rogue has only recently come into her abilities. Control very much could be possible for her. She's new to all of this.

Number two, there is no evidence that the cure is safe. Given the amount of genocide that goes on against mutants, the older ones were probably worried it was yet another attempt at wiping them out. Even if it wasn't, what if it hadn't been properly researched? What if medical trials hadn't been done properly? Had they bothered to look into what a "cure" would do to someone with a physical mutation like Wolverine's? There's so much unknown and the adults all know it. They don't know enough to know if this is dangerous.

And number three, the cure was dangerous. As Magneto says, how long before parents had the right to force this cure on their children, employers on their employees? How long would it have been before the cure became mandatory? They could not trust humans with a cure because humans were demonstrating a long history of wanting all mutants gone. Hell, humans literally weaponized the cure, shooting people with darts and forcibly injecting them with it, in the same movie! How long would it have been for them to go mask-off eugenics and genocide? They couldn't even make it the full movie without proving Magneto right, that this cure was going to be used to hurt them.

No matter what, the cure was a bad thing. Storm had the wisdom to know that. Rogue didn't.

This isn't comparing autism to depression in the "wanting a cure" debate, this is two high-support-needs autistics debating the autism cure thing. One desperately wants to not be autistic, the other understands that the cure is potentially unsafe and has some extremely dangerous implications. Maybe, one day, Rogue could be cured if she wanted to be. But that cure existing then, when people hated mutants, was only going to end in eugenics and genocide and could only be a bad thing. Regardless of the good uses of it, it would be used to turn all of them human.

Storm knew what she was talking about. Stop acting like she didn't.

Homicidal Ideation

homicidal ideation is the term for having active thoughts about murdering others. these thoughts can be intrusive, however they can also often be voluntary.

misconceptions:

‘people who have these thoughts either have killed someone or will kill someone in the future’ - this is false. most people who have these thoughts usually have disordered behaviours (most commonly as a result of personality disorders) and struggle to find healthy ways to cope with their emotions, therefore provocation and stress can easily cause thoughts of inflicting harm onto others. this doesn’t inherently mean these people are dangerous, nor does it mean that they’re going to act upon these thoughts. most people who experience homicidal ideation never act on it and use it more as a way to process their distress/frustration internally.

‘having these thoughts about people in your life means you can’t possibly care for them’ - also false. caring for someone doesn’t make them an exception to mental illness and it doesn’t stop your mental illnesses from existing. to think that someone’s love for you is only valid as long as they’re not displaying traits of mental illness is unfair and is hugely misinformed. to love and be loved by someone who is mentally ill is to accept that they will display symptoms of their mental illness. you are not the exception and they do not love you any less by showing traits of being unwell.

‘so you endorse murder’ - no. that’s not at all what this means and if you seriously think this then your grasp of severe mental health issues is too limited to be commenting on such topics.

‘you’re evil’ - for being unwell? don’t be a cunt. if you seriously think that having a disordered manner of processing emotions internally makes someone ‘evil’ then that sounds more like an issue with you being too sensitive and having a lack of understanding, not an issue with the mentally ill person experiencing these thoughts. don’t make your inability to understand mental illness into someone else’s problem.

as someone who does experience homicidal ideation, it’s also important to not make the mistake of assuming everyone who is mentally ill experiences these thoughts either. i had an anonymous ask earlier today that directly associated the fact i’m mentally unwell with murder and homicidal thoughts, to immediately make this assumption just because someone is mentally ill is disgusting.