Rina Answers

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...

I wanted to share a couple Android apps I've found to be helpful on days that I'm overwhelmed (nonverbal). Regardless of how thoroughly an autistic person learns to speak, there will be days where it really costs too many spoons to make words come out with proper enunciation, especially in order. So, apps like these are essential for austistic adults, if only because many people are too lazy to communicate with sincerity. There are many such apps, but these two are free and highly configurable. Kids may prefer apps that use more/larger pictures, but once they develop a larger "inner vocabulary" the picture boards won't be suitable. I remember clearly when I was a kid, because I couldn't say the words I was reading, my mother assumed I didn't know them, that somehow I was fooling all my teachers into thinking i was more intelligent than i actually was because I was somehow cheating on the book reports I was turning in. She constantly made me feel as if ever...

A short essay I wrote in response to a long "argument" with someone obsessed with calling the previous OP ableist for not wanting someone at her birthday party. My overall arguments are 1) that it is not morally acceptable to coerce someone into being inclusive, 1b) that you cannot be accommodating without also being compassionate, and 2) that teaching compassion can only be done *with* compassion. My supporting reasonings include how violation of consent is a valid reason for a person to become angry and defensive, how lack of compassion creates situations that are no more accommodating than before, and how behavioral science indicates that OP will continue to associate related circumstances (ie, physical disability) with negative feelings. I also specifically referred to Alfie Kohn's book Unconditional Parenting, as he is a subject matter expert who breaks down and demonstrates this science more clearly than I can. As for a summary of why I don't feel li...

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. ---- 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 fr...

This is like the third time I've heard some variant of this complaint: "My kid turned X years old and now the Doc wants to take away their diagnosis because they are social!" You don't just stop being autistic. It's a lifelong condition. If the kid was autistic during diagnosis, the kid is autistic now. But what does "social" mean, like, verbal? plenty of verbal autistics. Well-spoken, interests outside of their age group, Hans Asperger's "little professors" are very social - to adults. Not so much to their peers. These autistic people are the savants, the maskers, the people who get shit on for being too autistic to fit in with the neurotypicals and get shit on for not being autistic enough to match somebody's stereotype. (Hey, internalized bullshit is still bullshit.) Anyway, bit tired, sorry, recommend reading this article on Augmentative and assistive Communication for verbal and semiverbal autistic adults; and my collec...

One difficulty with online friendships is that a parent isn't as likely to have casual conversations with their child's friends as they carpool to school or have lunch at home, and a child isn't likely to have casual conversations with their friends' parents, meaning significant distortions in logic can develop by bouncing around the echo chamber of a teenage clique. Bigotry, like drain fungus, grows best when never confronted with personal relationships or at least unemotional logic. Many young people have been getting "red-pilled" by their online, low-responsibility relationships, private misogyny exploding into public violence without any indication of a trigger ... just like the parent of a child groomed for sexual exploitation, the parent of a person groomed for domestic terrorism never has any idea that it was going on.  To be clear, this is in no way intended to be a presentation of judgement, merely observation that there is a common dange...