So I found some links on ableism and I’m still reading them but yoooo I’m unlearning a lot of shit right now and I’m having a braingasm. Check it out.

Ableism in Language

Is this Ableism (i’m mad that i just now found this)

So why is “stupid” ableist?

Institutionalizing Inequity: Ableism, Racism and IDEA 2004, an abstract

BUT YOO THIS ONE RELATES TO US AND CALLS US OUT YOOOO

harrycryirk

The next person to compare racism to sociopathy on my dash gets a big unfollow.

Because I am tired of people thinking that “perceived as being unempathic” is the same thing as actually being unempathic.

I am tired of the lack of thought being put into the diagnostic criteria and how it impacts psych/patient dynamics.

I am tired of psychiatrists being seen as infallible and as knowing our own minds better than we do.

I am tired of diagnostic criteria that primarily rely upon another’s perception of your emotions or thought processes.

I am tired of the demonisation of people with non-neurotypical emotional responses.

I am tired of an uncritical approach to the concept of empathy.

I am tired of empathy being held up as what makes one a good person.

I am tired of being told that I am a bad person for not experiencing it or showing it in ways neurotypical people deem appropriate.

I am tired of this being “evidence” for why I am sub-human.

And I am tired of racists being let off too easily.

I am tired of racists being called sociopaths.

For them to be sociopaths, it would have to be widely recognised by society, and by their psychiatrists or other people in power, that their responses are not appropriate.

Socially learned or condoned sociopathy is an oxymoron that does not accurately portray any kind of mental illness, and perpetuates the dismissive stereotype that “everyone’s just a bit crazy”.

To call lack of empathy (or compassion) sociopathy lets white people off far too easily.

It implies that white people are not in power.

It implies that they did not shape the medical and psychiatric institutions to perpetuate racism and the kyriarchy in general.

It implies that the medical and psychiatric institutions (and those that participate in them in a position of power) are infallible.

And it overestimates the amount of power non-white people have in society, that they can label white people as sociopaths.

It implies that white people look uncompassionate or unempathic. Calling them sociopaths does not imply that they actually are these things.

I completely agree that much of the time, white people do not act with compassion towards non-white people. That much of the time they do not even view us as fully human compared to them.

But this is not sociopathy, and you should not compare it to sociopathy unless you are prepared to be critical of the power dynamics within the psychiatric institution, ideas of empathy, the idea that mental illness is by definition not the norm within its society, and that mentally ill people as a group do not hold power in a way that is comparable to Whiteness.