That will be ableism, to you, internalized ableism. Perhaps internalized racism, internalized sexism, internalized “gender-ignorance,” internalized hetero-neuro-normative whatever, you name it, I feel my marginalization as an Autist, so I’ll say ableism. It’s not a huge point, because my point that it’s not about any particular marginalized group, we are not responsible for our own disenfranchisement – and words like “ableism,” always name the hate after the victim.
“Anti-Asian hate,” a year or two ago, it’s all-victim, perpetrator-free crime. The news won’t even tell Asians who to watch out for, just don’t be Asian. But ableism.
Thinking ableism is “about” disabled people is agreeing with your enemies.
I know; “about,” and “because,” are complex, and the limitations of language hinder us, I’m trying to solve some of that.
Abuse “because,” we’re disabled, that’s their line – and it’s internalized ableism if it’s ours. It’s not because of us.
Having to abuse everything and everyone, this is some “them,” we’re talking about, a trait of some “theirs,” not everyone except theirs. It’s not like the haters single out your marginalized group, it’s obviously the other way about, they single out one group to keep and marginalize the rest with one broad stroke.
The community on Twitter is forever saying, “nothing about us without us,” and that’s great – but to the haters, it was never “about” us in the first place, they don’t know who we are. We say, they need to start seeing/thinking something about us, but again, they don’t know what we are and they don’t much care, they do it to everyone, it’s a function that really doesn’t look past “Other,” it really doesn’t spend any cognitive energy on things with that designation (what does @autismsupsoc call that, fast and dirty Allistic processing?). That would seem to be the point of the designation, no processing resources for you.
Black people wonder, “what’s wrong with being black?” and the LGBTQ+ community wonders, “what’s so wrong with not breeding?” and the ND community wonders, “what’s so wrong with thinking differently?” and of course the answer always, collectively and individually, is nothing!
Of course, nothing!
I mean, everything has its upsides and downsides, I guess, but nothing, nothing about any of these labels is something anybody needs to bloody do anything about! This trait of wanting to do something about people, though, can we please, before the end of eternity, talk about that? Obviously, that is a problem.
Black and brown folks talk about white people, the Non-Binary talk about cis people, the ND talk about the “neurotypical,” which describes nothing but their perceived numbers, and I don’t deny the Venn diagram is basically one big circle for all of those things, especially around here, but it’s just not the point.
It’s not white peoples’ skin colour that’s the problem any more than it is anyone’s skin colour, is it, and it’s not cis peoples’ breeding habits and it’s not “neurotypical” peoples’ commonness, is it? The hate isn’t “because,” of diverse types of people – and so it’s not “because,” of the simple existence of the haters either, something has gone terribly wrong with them, of course, this is what I’m saying too, but I can’t abide ending the conversation there, naming and blaming isn’t enough.
That we have already been trying for some generations already, the Good Fight is keeping us morally occupied but it’s not solving the problems. Anyway, to say it’s because of who they are, their natures or some such, that’s their crime and their error, isn’t it?
Can we not escape the same lethal ideology of the worst human sorts?
I won’t be caught parroting that, and I’m here to beg you not to be either. There are real world reasons for things, not natures, and the more people insist upon these natures, the worse those people behave.
As I said, there are reasons, there have to be – sometimes I think it is not in my Autistic neurology to accept a noun as an answer to “why” anything, and “because they are, racist, haters, Nazis, white, cis, NT, all these are nouns – and because they simply are doesn’t satisfy me. Nouns are “whats,” and this Autistic needs a verb.
“Why,” is an action question, you “neurotypical” weirdos. Not only is “because those people,” wrong, it’s not even grammatically sane, you couldn’t be right no matter who you named. “Why,” demands a verb.
Of course I had to make my own, it’s “antisocialize.”
The extreme antisocial nature of racism, sexism, etc., this is a noun we all know, hate, but creating hate requires action, a verb, despite what they told us in Sunday school, and despite what your high school science teachers who also attended your Sunday school told you too. You weren’t conceived with a load of hate already on board. They, we, are making the hate.
The noun that refers to knowing this function I have designated Antisocialization Theory, or AST for short, and the dominant folks of this world have it the worst, but most of us have it. It’s what is internalized, AST, the hurt and the need, the hurt from people hurting one another when they think someone needs it and the belief, born of the need, that someone does. Rather, AST describes the process of internalizing negativity generally, regardless of the flavour, and how it changes us, antisocialization is the process of acquiring our internalized hate – I mean the feeling of hate.
Ah!
The specifics, who we’re to hate, and the whys and wherefores of our applied hate, these are perhaps merely informational, a part of our general socialization, certainly they would be considered to be, if we felt that all people have enemies and conflict were inevitable – but the emotional effect, antisocialization, this sets that default. If you were spanked, hate is natural and inevitable to you, and you’ll need to know where to put it.
The same logical structure exists in the positive, your prosocialization would derive from your emotional experience of feeling loved, and so being loved would be natural and necessary for you, but the general socialization of your society and environs likely specifies who and what to love . . . ah, something sort of new, isn’t it.
I’ve been calling “socialization” a general, inclusive heading, the name for all of it and saying it’s made up of positive, neutral and negative socialization – now maybe classic “socialization,” can just mean informational, period, who and what – but the pro- and anti- versions mean something else, something emotional, antecedent to any specifics, the template, the blank forms, so to speak.
Wow, I do believe something moved there.
If only anyone knew, huh.
So the theory is, if you want your kids to experience love, love them and they’ll want that, and if you think you need them to hate, hate on them a little, beat on them a little, and they will want that too, and we know they will find their own people and things to love – and that is the AST theory of racism, etc., that they will find their own things and people to hate too, society provides mates and enemies.
You can “teach,” racism, but you don’t have to. Spank them, show them the systemic racism, and they’ll figure it out, their hate will find its niche. Same for ableism, sexism, too, spanked people and relatively consequence-free targets for them.
This is AST, and this is what we need to fight and to change, that second thing, the “hating on your kids a little,” meme. All of our disenfranchised identities can lobby to be on the “prosocialized for,” list alone, in competition for this decade’s entry, or we can try to solve the problem at its root, with simply deciding we don’t need that, we would rather our kids weren’t hate-ready before they can even speak.
That’s the battle, and it’s the same battle, no matter who you are, stop the spanking, stop the hate.
Simple!
Jeff April 9th., 2023
Abuse with an Excuse 