kaberett | Someone on the Internet is wrong (Reply)

Ableism, cissexism, biological essentialism, racism, etc, which I wish to vent about to a sympathetic audience.

A few weeks (months?) ago, a member of the Captain Awkward commentariat (I think -- I didn't make a note or engage because it was clear it was going to Bother Me and I wanted to minimise the options for neg-stimming) opined that Counselling Isn't Supposed To Be A Life Sentence, you're supposed to go along and Work On Your Problem and then You Will Fix It and You Won't Have To Stay In Therapy (Like Those Crazy People). In the context, I think, of how to break up with a therapist, and how it was a totally normal and natural and expected part of any therapeutic relationship because nobody should expect therapy to be a long-term commitment. I have been seething about this on and off ever since. (I am having to sit on my hands hard to avoid going to dig up the actual comment, because it will just make me cross and unhappy.)
FB has been advertising a study to me that is billed as building an adult autism screening questionnaire, made by those with autism. WEIRDLY ENOUGH they're WAY MORE INTERESTED in engaging with parents of autistic people who were diagnosed in childhood than with me, an autistic academic diagnosed as an adult with special interests around medical advocacy. It took me way too long to get around to reading their About page, which specifies that they are "working to find environmental causes for the increase in autism". I am well awrae that I shouldn't really be surprised that people who are trying to eliminate us don't want to engage with us, and it's probably overall beneficial for me to be giving them pushback over how terrible this is, but I'm not sure if it rises to the level where I can make a complaint to the university ethics board that approved the study.
My new favourite subtype of quietly TERFy politically active cis women? The ones who post about having discount vouchers for menstruation-absorbing underwear who, when you politely enquire why they felt the need to include "(don't worry gents, not for you)" respond "it was lighthearted and intended to diffuse any discomfort around the subject matter. I’m sorry you found it something to be irritate by." ... and then go weirdly and inexplicably completely silent when you -- still politely -- explain that you're not irritated, just curious about why they're more concerned about the potential (socialised, misogynist) discomfort of cis men with discussion of menstruation than the completely avoidable and unnecessary exclusion of trans people.
At least this morning's egregious cissexists (it's "empirically incorrect" for people to point out that they're women, "biological sex" is absolutely meaningful objective fact and in no way a social construct, gender is exactly the same as race and height and so it's precisely as meaningless to correct other people on the Objective Fact of your gender as it is to correct people on the Objective Fact of your height, etc etc etc) were already being countered by two dudes, with citations, one of whom has gone off into an actually delightful side conversation about bees with me. (Plus I got to be all "it's poor form to conflate the enormous importance of social constructs and 'objective truth', particularly in social species", which is how we got on to bees in the first place.)

... okay I feel a bit better for having written that pile of nonsense down, good.