How Not To Teach Inclusivity

I'm so angry at some of the commenters in one of my facebook autism groups!! I need validation in this or I'll just continue being angry. I apologize in advance for my tone, I am literally shaking and crying in anger.

The topic is the parents' invitation of a wheelchair user to an autistic person's childhood birthday parties without the autistic person's permission, possibly even against their expressed wishes.

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Let's work on inclusion without forcing disabled people into the role of teacher, please. We're fucking tired. You cannot force people to be compassionate. Overriding agency in order to impose an authoritarian false image of compassion only teaches how to hate us further under the guise of "helping people who can't help themselves". (Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting needs to be required reading stg.)

Guess what ableism can look like? It can look like people assuming all disabled people should automatically be friends with all other disabled people ever, despite the fact that we are as unique and have as many personality quirks as nondisabled people.

Consent is more important than making people feel good!

And God, some people with the "lucky" shit... let me tell you I'd rather never have had a single birthday party than having had so many days of literal terror and psychological torture that always ended in tears. Trust me, luck is in the eye of the beholder.

Comments

interdependence and apples

》　It really saddens me that it only takes one bad apple to ruin a bunch for most people. The reason the saying is, "one bad apple ruins the bushel/barrel" is that because of the way apples rot, they emit a gas that causes all the apples around them to rot as well. When talking about how people interact, a person did not develop their personality by accident or by chance; they were enabled by so many people that there's almost no way of picking out any particular influence. For instance, if you read the book about Trump by his niece, she points out that nearly every troubling behavior he has was initially caused by the extremely high desire he had to earn his own father's affection, and was subsequently reinforced by celebrity-dom and the trappings of wealth. Similarly MLK Jr., who was a reverend for some time before he became a celebrity, was strongly influenced by his own understanding of the Word of God and the unconditional support of his loved ones, ev...

the value of exploitation

》　 Income of black slaves? You clearly don’t realize slavery almost abolished itself because of hoe **nonprofitable** it was until the cotton jin Growing cotton has never profited from slavery. In fact, paid laborers were more profitable than slave laborers even after the cotton gin was created; although the question of whether the paid laborers were not also being exploited is certainly apparent. The country was divided on the matter of slavery from the very start - northerners, influenced by Quaker ideals, tended to express the belief that all men are equal under God, whereas white southerners, for what reasons I cannot fathom, tended to express the belief that the color of someone's skin displayed the color of their soul, or something to that poetic effect. Letters from 1775 show that white southerners *believed* slavery to be more profitable, to be a biological necessity, even held some kind of religious concern about it and definitely had concerns that the kingdom ...

Unintentional Abuse

Questioner: [what do you mean by] Unintentional grooming? Questioner: explain further pls cuz i’ve thought about that but never like- processed it fully >> I am doing my best to avoid getting really psychological here, but the basis of the concept is that the human mind avoids thinking about things that threaten your sense of self and reality. This is a well-documented and extremely strong instinct. So like, people don't automatically assume that they are doing something bad. Nearly every person will seek out and find justifications for everything they do. A 40 yo isn't going to suddenly get up and say, "I've never had an interest in younger people before, but I suddenly want to take advantage of someone's naivety." Becoming an asshole like that is a process shaped by exposure to the abuse of others (not usually direct abuse, surprisingly) and being enabled by social expectations and unfettered access. They do not believe that they are doing anythin...

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