oh my god
Photos from Devin Sarno’s Instagram.
he/they/xe, finn/finch, trans masc, bi or gay or whatever, likes dnd, audrey hepburn, fangoria, harry houdini, and croquet
When people ask, “How can I tell if someone is disabled or just lazy?” I think about my parents.
My parents have known me my whole life. When they’re not actively contemptuous of me, they do seem to be somewhat aware of my general personality and character. In one of his nicer moments, my dad has called me “sweet-natured.” They can tell that when I make them a surprise breakfast or lunch that I enjoy being helpful and doing nice things for people.
They know from watching me grow up that I have always had trouble keeping my room clean, getting homework done, and keeping my desk tidy at school.
The longest I can push myself past my limits is about nine months. Then I collapse and end up less functional than I was before I pushed myself. This has been a pattern throughout my middle and high school years. I would go to public school for about a year, and then collapse and have to do the rest of my education at home. My work history follows this pattern, too.
I once sat in a therapy session with my dad to talk about the constant struggle we were having at home because he wanted me to help out more and do better in school. When he asked me why I didn’t do things, I broke down in tears, because I couldn’t explain it. “I just CAN’T. I want to, and I CAN’T.” Nobody listened.
My mom asked me why I don’t do things, and I said, “I just can’t. I sit there for hours trying to convince myself to do things, and I can’t. Move.”
And she said, “Don’t think about it, just do it,” completely missing the point.
When I got older I found words for the things I was dealing with. I got professionally diagnosed, and I’d look up information about my diagnosis and e-mail articles to my parents explaining what my disability is and why I can’t do things.
My parents have firsthand information about my character (helpful, likes doing things for others) and my history with disability (can’t consistently keep things clean, can’t manage a daily schedule). I’ve talked to them extensively about my diagnosis and given them information about it. They have known me my whole life, and I’ve always been this way. And they still, STILL choose to believe I’m just a bad person who doesn’t try and doesn’t care.
My disability isn’t invisible, people refuse to look at it.
People like problems they can yell at. They like having a target for their frustration. They don’t want to admit disability is real, because they want problems that they can either solve, or blame someone else for. And the disabled person themself is their scapegoat, someone who can’t ever opt out of their role because the disability is never going to go away.
Lotta good reblogs in the notes. I just wanted to say that my experience mirrored OP’s exactly, right up until I got my ADHD diagnosis and suddenly my dad had an explanation for why his eldest daughter was so inconsistent.
My dad apologized. He asked me what I needed. He told me he was sorry. That he didn’t really get it but that he understands it’s a real thing. He’s gotten better too. He recognizes ADHD in others now. He implements accommodations for them. Which is important since he’s in secondary education as a career.
It’s not always bad, but I don’t want to sugarcoat things. I still twitch when somebody tells me to focus because of how my mom used to yell at me to focus when I was (poorly) requesting she body-double for me in school. If I miss a dose of my meds I have to take sick time because my performance nosedives so badly that I start beating myself up and am so upset I can’t function. But my dad believes me when I tell him I struggle. And that means so much to me.
Hello white mutuals. Before you is a charcuterie board with 15 different types of cheese. If you manage to go 12 hours without touching the cheeses you can leave this room. Good luck.
I was eating off this cool cheese plate while you were talking can you repeat that pls
just saw a post where someone put “detrans dni” and like… hey we should be supporting detransitioned people bc if we don’t terfs will
sometimes you’re wrong about your identity and that’s ok like i used to think i was bi but it turns out i was wrong and i know ppl who thought they were trans but it turns out they were wrong and it should be ok and accepted that sometimes people don’t get it right on the first try
@shadowknight1224 this is an excellent way of putting it thank you
This touches on something I have felt for a long time, which is that one of the reasons rigid queer labels and gatekeeping is so dangerous is because if you want to encourage people to explore their gender/sexuality, there has to be a safe "Actually I was wrong" option.
I went through so very much anxiety coming out, and when I really think about it it was squarely from the fear of being wrong about it all. That I was, at heart, a cishet woman, and therefore I was appropriating a label that didn't 'belong' to me, and I would (somehow) be harming other people by doing so. There's so much more unnecessary pressure if the sword hanging over your head is "But you do have to be right about this, you can't back out once you've even asked the question."
I think that is Bad. I think it makes fewer people ask the question. I think that includes those who need to ask, and would be much happier for it.
to summarize: one of the things the Q stands for is QUESTIONING
and that is as it should be
I’d like to also submit the possibility that some people may be more prone to shifts in their gender identity than others, and that it’s not necessarily even a case of being “wrong,” so much as it’s a case of just changing over time. I know the predominant narrative we see in discourse is that a person who transitions was never their agab—and I’m sure that’s true for a lot of people! But… it’s not true everyone? I remember reading an interview with Danny Lavery after he came out, and he said something along the lines of “One day, I went to bed a woman and woke up not a woman anymore.” So if a person can change once, who’s to say that can’t change again? For example, I know Eddie Izzard (whose labels have shifted a lot over the decades, as terminology and options for gender identities identity have changed many times over since the 1980s) has said she goes through long block periods of being a particular gender, so right now she’s “based in girl mode,” (her words) but she’s previously had blocks of time being based in “boy mode,” too. So like, whose to say other people don’t have block periods like that? Maybe somebody really was non-binary for ten years and now they’re not anymore, y’know? Not feeling something about yourself forever doesn’t have to mean you were wrong the whole time. Of course, being wrong is okay too! But I’d make room for both.
i LOVE this addition, especially because it helps us move away from the "ive always known" narrative that dominates so much trans space. sometimes your gender literally changes, and it's not helpful or healthy of us to act like that means everything that came before was false or mistaken.
Gender Fluid Vibes… Nice!