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Trash With Apposable Thumbs

@mrqueenalienunicorn

☆jamie/any name☆nonbinary☆any pronouns☆ace panromantic☆traditional artist with occasional vectors☆strong language and content but no actual nudity☆

When studies show that underage drinking is harmful, it's banned easily. But when studies show that spanking is harmful, it remains legal and parents still insist on doing it.

Age restrictions on purchasing cigarettes pass easily. But laws prohibiting smoking where children are forced to breathe in secondhand smoke are much harder to pass.

Children under a certain age are prohibited from using most social media websites. But adults are allowed to post videos of their children's meltdowns.

Teenagers need their parents' permission to get body modifications. But parents can get their babies' ears pierced.

Anyone who genuinely wants to protect children would not panic about the children's own choices while ignoring what adults force on them. Anyone who genuinely wants to protect children would not insist that studies on the dangers of children's own choices be fully trusted and obeyed while ignoring and arguing with studies on the dangers of how adults treat children.

But many adults just want to control children, not protect them.

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ADHD in the era of the personal brand is wild.

You get into a thing and hyperfocus harder than anyone ever has hyperfocused. Dozens, hundreds of posts across multiple platforms. You discover things no one knows, you create many new things, you intangibly weave your very digital soul into the threads of this niche thing’s fabric. You are now known as “The Thing Guy” on several websites (despite not being a guy). People screenshot it and crosspost it to other websites, and the comments are like “OH IT’S THE THING GUY AGAIN!”

three weeks later, you drop it like a stone. You still want to do it, but you have no more motivation, and you can’t force yourself to touch it again. Your brain just goes “bored now” and moves on. 

Mere months later someone goes “hey, aren’t you The Thing Guy?”. You are suddenly smoking a cigarette. You take a deep drag. “Used to be, long ago… back in March”. They look at the calendar. It’s halfway through May. 

stacys mom turned me into a frog!

im eating flies and live inside a log!

stacy cant you see she has placed a spell on me!

now im in a bog and look just like a small green frog

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i understand that this is the "disabled people know our own limitations" website, but ime, if you are the kind of disabled where everyone around you knows about it and has known you as a weak, incompetent, subhuman creature your entire life: it is important to learn how to make the distinction between "i can't" and "i'm not allowed to."

"i can't hold fragile things without breaking them" vs "my housemates won't let me do dishes anymore."

"i can't manage my own finances" vs "my family won't let me make my own financial decisions"

"i can't ever learn how to drive" vs "the state has decided that people with my disability cannot be allowed to drive."

also "what would need to happen for it to be possible for me to be able to do dishes?" or "what would i need if i were to ever move out?" or "what kinds of supports would i need if i did try volunteering?"

even if the answer to these you come away with is "i actually cannot do the thing, no matter what supports or accommodations i'm given" that's fine! they're still useful questions to ask!

Boy did I ever have to learn the difference between "I often struggle with normative social cues and subtext" and "I am bad at socializing and will embarrass the people I'm with every time I open my mouth"

"i can't socialize" vs "people wont let me speak/advocate for myself/share my opinions"

"aborted fetuses are not technically lives and it's harmful and not medically accurate to refer to them that way" and "people who have early miscarriages of wanted pregnancies are still allowed to grieve and consider them their child" are two statements that can and should coexist

"people who made the difficult decision to have an abortion because it's right for them and their situation are still allowed to grieve how things could have been if their circumstances had been different" is another statement that should be added