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kaberett(Quick notes to self, more than anything else, because I'm clearly not going to get this done any other way. Self-injury discussion; breathing stuff.)
Scent-free spaces: access requirement for folk with multiple chemical sensitivity, but actively a problem for me because a lot of the ways I manage autism & depression involve scented products (I sometimes actually just... can't leave the house without them; wearing perfume means that if I'm heading for sensory overload I've an easy way out that doesn't involve stimming in ways that look like self-injury, which it's also good to avoid in public in the interests of avoiding triggering people).
I do take care that any perfume I'm wearing is close to my skin, and most people have to actually have their faces within about three inches of my skin in order to notice the scent at all. However I know that I'm sensitive to trace amounts of tobacco smoke most people don't even notice, so "most people don't notice my perfume" isn't actually a defence here; similarly, that I only wear scents I'm not allergic to doesn't help much.
Sophistry and sollipsism encourage me to argue that tobacco smoke is a carcinogen under all circumstances, and perfume ingredients are incredibly strictly regulated. That doesn't actually make any difference to whether I'm causing any given individual migraine/lung damage/etc, though, and if my argument about smoking is that it's all well and good for it to be a coping mechanism but you need to find a better damn coping mechanism in public, because if I self-injure I take great care not to bleed all over other people's shit, then I can't with any degree of consistency argue that it's okay for me to wear perfume outside my own house. (There is perhaps some mileage in the argument that my perfume usage is also much more localised than it is possible to make smoking, but again I don't think that's really good enough.)
Where I'm at currently: not even slightly avoiding scented products or wearing scent (except that our wash powder is as neutral as we could find and the deodorant I use is scent-free) in the general case; not going to scent-free spaces (largely because none of the spaces I go to anyway are declared scent-free...) [while wearing perfume, but I don't actually own any neutral shower gel]; if I'm aware that people I'm going to be spending time with might have problems then I flag up extremely explicitly that I do use perfume and ask to negotiate around whether I'll be safe provided I avoid particular compounds versus needing to not wear perfume at all.
I'm... getting very stuck on the part where it's pretty frequently the case that Specific Clothes + Specific Jewelry + Specific Scent is the only way I can get out of the house, and I work a lot less well if I don't have all three of them. Need to do more thinking. Hrrgh.
Scent-free spaces: access requirement for folk with multiple chemical sensitivity, but actively a problem for me because a lot of the ways I manage autism & depression involve scented products (I sometimes actually just... can't leave the house without them; wearing perfume means that if I'm heading for sensory overload I've an easy way out that doesn't involve stimming in ways that look like self-injury, which it's also good to avoid in public in the interests of avoiding triggering people).
I do take care that any perfume I'm wearing is close to my skin, and most people have to actually have their faces within about three inches of my skin in order to notice the scent at all. However I know that I'm sensitive to trace amounts of tobacco smoke most people don't even notice, so "most people don't notice my perfume" isn't actually a defence here; similarly, that I only wear scents I'm not allergic to doesn't help much.
Sophistry and sollipsism encourage me to argue that tobacco smoke is a carcinogen under all circumstances, and perfume ingredients are incredibly strictly regulated. That doesn't actually make any difference to whether I'm causing any given individual migraine/lung damage/etc, though, and if my argument about smoking is that it's all well and good for it to be a coping mechanism but you need to find a better damn coping mechanism in public, because if I self-injure I take great care not to bleed all over other people's shit, then I can't with any degree of consistency argue that it's okay for me to wear perfume outside my own house. (There is perhaps some mileage in the argument that my perfume usage is also much more localised than it is possible to make smoking, but again I don't think that's really good enough.)
Where I'm at currently: not even slightly avoiding scented products or wearing scent (except that our wash powder is as neutral as we could find and the deodorant I use is scent-free) in the general case; not going to scent-free spaces (largely because none of the spaces I go to anyway are declared scent-free...) [while wearing perfume, but I don't actually own any neutral shower gel]; if I'm aware that people I'm going to be spending time with might have problems then I flag up extremely explicitly that I do use perfume and ask to negotiate around whether I'll be safe provided I avoid particular compounds versus needing to not wear perfume at all.
I'm... getting very stuck on the part where it's pretty frequently the case that Specific Clothes + Specific Jewelry + Specific Scent is the only way I can get out of the house, and I work a lot less well if I don't have all three of them. Need to do more thinking. Hrrgh.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-12 11:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-13 12:03 am (UTC)