So here is the thing I'm struggling with about antifa at the moment

[kaberett]

It is all very well to say "if you are not with the [explicitly violent] antifascists, you're with the fascists" but what these explanations do not seem to include is actual detailed discussion of how or why I can operate on the assumption that these people won't decide that I'm the next target. "Because you're not a fascist!" Okay, right, no, try again. Try again. I have been told, by people still substantively respected and liked in my geographically local community, that being visibly autistic in public is oppressive. I want to know what the fuck system of rules you're working with that means I won't be deemed unacceptable and I won't be deemed an appropriate target.

"Try not being a fascist!"

Yeah, thanks, see above about "me being visibly disabled in public is oppressive". See every interaction I've ever had where my disabilities are an inconvenience to The Cause.

Try again.

I'm really not comfortable with the extent to which people seem to want to shout me down on this one, using that well-known abusive tactic of telling me that if I don't unquestioningly support them in spite of grave reservations rooted in, like, bare minimum historical literacy plus personal experience, I am all that is Bad and Evil.

I am struggling to articulate this any better because of the sheer visceral horror I'm experiencing at a lot of the rhetoric that's happening. But, like, if you want to engage with me on this -- and I am, very definitely, open to being talked to -- please consider starting from a point of "I see your concerns and they're valid, here's why I'm convinced", not "you're a bad person for having doubts".

If, however, you want to ask me how Very Dare I tone-police you on this, I request that you sit this one out.

Comments

[niqaeli]

1990. Is when the US got the fucking ADA. Which was a pittance, and gets trampled all the time, but the point is both of us, neither of us All That Old, were not only born but self-aware children. When the US passed federal legislation acknowledging disabled people HAVE some rights.

I can't speak to the history in Canada and the UK, I honestly haven't had reason to research the legal history in either, but. Yeah, it's very fair to say it's only in the last 20-30 years that we've seen effective anti-ablist work. It's honestly only the last 10 I've seen it getting any kind of serious traction.

[recessional]

We're similar. We have the Charter and its applications rather than a specific Act but it's a similar time frame.

Just, you know. I do not want to ignore the work done by advocates in things like the Deaf community or the schools for the blind or what have you. But in terms of "disabled rights" as any kind of cohesive thing and especially when it comes to cognitive stuff and mental illness....yeah. We're genuinely more than fifty years younger, as it were, than any other group in this stuff.

[the_rck]

There's a reason I still list 'reasonable accommodation' as an interest in my profile. It's one of the interests in plain type that isn't a link, so I guess no one else lists it.