One Day At A Time

So, I should probably approach this with some kind of coherent order. Even if it will likely inevitably break down in a few paragraphs' time.

I find it a little amusing that I scraped together something to post yesterday because there hadn't really been anything to post about, and then all of a sudden several things pop up all at once. The kind of amusing that makes you want to facepalm a bit, anyway.

First up, midwife update.

Second, an addition to my earlier Ballastexistenz post.

Third, Hyperbole and a Half talks about depression. Really, really well.

Lastly, the Bloggess. And cats.

Me to the dozens of feral cats in this parking lot: "LET ME LOVE YOU." Feral cats: "DO NOT WANT."
— TheBloggess (@TheBloggess) May 9, 2013

This is a pain I know well. My husband is surprised I'd never had fleas even once before meeting him, given my tendency (nay, compulsion!) to stop and try to pet every cat that I see. The first time I ever got fleas was off his mother's cat, amusingly, and I have yet to get them off any of the stray or just strange cats I have approached - this despite how utterly tasty fleas seem to find me. It doesn't take long for any biting bugs in the vicinity to home in on me.

Also, these blog posts are getting fairly consistently more difficult to write. This is because, as my pregnancy progresses, our cat is becoming steadily more and more obsessed with me. If I'm sitting up, she'll come try curl up on my chest, or right next to my side, nearly pinning my arm to me. If I'm lying down, she will plant herself firmly between the laptop and my body.

Failing these, she will still make sure to spend the appropriate amount of time vigorously rubbing herself all over the laptop, my glasses, and my person.

Apparently, pregnant people smell really good or something.

The best paths in this life are never easy.

Choosing to be who you are, no matter what anyone else might say, is a difficult path to walk. I wish it weren't so, but it is. The easy path is to conform. If you fit into society's box, you will always have friends and people you can talk to. If you dare to step outside it, the only friends who will stand by you are those who are your friends for who you are... and those people can be depressingly rare at times.

As we step out into the darkness, into the forests that lie between the beaten paths, I know that this journey is a difficult one. I cannot begrudge those who choose to stay on the clear-cut roads where they will find safety in numbers. I cannot blame them. This is not always a happy path.

Truly, the ones I have the most respect for of all are those who walked with everyone else, but found the strength to turn away and forge their own path. Rare as people who accept you for who you are can be, they are even harder to find when everyone around you is busy fitting into a socially acceptable box. The kind of person who will take you as you are generally asks that you do the same for them; you will have trouble finding them while trying to be someone else. So those who leave the bounds of what society considers normal are the most isolated of all, at least for a time.

Personally, it was something I never bothered to do, so I've never had to experience everyone I care about turning away from me in an instant, because of a single choice. I think little of a relationship that stands on such shaky foundations as to evaporate so easily, so I've never had much truck with them. If you won't take me as me, you're not the kind of person I want around anyway.

I know not everyone shares that view, though. Many consider poor friends better than the risk of no friends, if they consider it at all. Many care, and can't not care even if they are shown this caring is not mutual. So as painful as it is to watch someone reach out, only to start boxing themselves back up again, I cannot consider the choice an unreasonable one.

For those of us who do walk the dark spaces between, take up a torch. Ballastexistenz works to make people aware of disability rights, and the unfair treatment the physically and cognitively disabled receive. The Bloggess seeks to chase away the shadows and pact of silence surrounding depression and social anxiety. Take up a torch and light the way. If we work away at these brambles, slowly, the easy path may widen. We may manage to make spaces where one can be socially acceptable without having to tear themselves apart and bind away the unique things about them.

And perhaps, if we can't change society, we can light the way for each other. Perhaps we can make a path to walk together, our own path, to tell each other; we are not alone. Here, you will find companionship. You don't need to search for years to find it, and you don't need to give up your self to get it.

It takes strength to stand in the face of society and be who you are anyway, but the more we light the way, the less those who follow us need to be so strong.

And, maybe, the fewer who will turn away from this path for fear of the dark.

Recently, this was posted on Ballastexistenz. An interesting enough post in its own right, or I wouldn't have been prompted to comment on it with my own thoughts. However, the one I actually want to talk about is one mentioned in that post. Namely, "In My Own Language".

Though the mention of that post had me terribly curious, I first saw it when I was needing to be careful of bandwidth usage, so at the time I had to pass on watching a video of unknown length. Fortunately, though, because I commented on the post mentioning it, I have gotten periodic emails reminding me of its existence, including one this morning. With only a few more days before the bandwidth resets for the next month, finally I could dig out the post she's referring to and watch the video.

It was absolutely fascinating to watch, and yet in some ways equally frustrating. As I mentioned in my comments to the first post linked, this communication barrier that presents such a problem doesn't exist only between NTs and autists, but even between autists and other autists. It's like all NTs are on one frequency, maybe five or something at most, and autists are spread across the other hundred or more. Autists on the same frequency, or at least the right frequencies, can communicate incredibly well. Even just among those using the same method of communication, though (generally typing, for my personal experience), I have met those who actually communicate better with autists than they ever could with each other. Attempts to cross those frequencies led to more gross misunderstandings and fiery explosions than any attempt to talk with an NT did.

This was not so violent an interaction as all that, but it was still one of not-quite-matching frequencies, I think. On one hand, it was fascinating to watch and did strike a chord in me... but at the same time, it was unbelievably frustrating because it was also just beyond my comprehension. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that it made my brain itch, and that's a rather aggravating sensation, mostly because I can't just reach in and scratch it. It felt like I should have been able to understand entirely, and I almost could, but much like when you have a word on the tip of your tongue, it was just beyond my ability to grasp and form into a complete thought.

The latter half of the video, which did include text, made a very powerful and very true point. There is far from only one kind of thought in this world, and the kind NTs display is actually the more limited. After all, one of the big differences is that NTs are much better at filtering, seeing what they want to see and reducing the world to only one small segment of what is actually there. The problem with autists is that our filters are either poor, non-functioning or just unusual. Many deal with overload, due to difficulties narrowing their focus down to include only as much as they can actually process. Where an NT filters for human interactions and information, I am just as likely to take in what the cat is doing and saying as what you are doing and saying. Granted I'm a bit of a crazy cat lady, but that actually applies to a slightly lesser degree with other animals too. In my mind and with my filters, animal conversations are just as important and worthy of notice as human ones, and can provoke similar responses at times.

(Dear god I accidentally closed the tab thank god that didn't all disappear... everyone take a moment to pray to our lord of computer whim and thank him for this miracle :P Remember kids, always save long internet posts)

The question of natural language in autists is a fascinating one, and I'm actually not entirely sure how to answer it myself. What is my natural language? I don't actually know.

My first reaction is words, particularly typing. I'm one of the very verbose kind of autists, and certainly I find IMs much less stressful than, say, phone conversations. I'm also aural in preference to visual, and tend to think in words. Pictures give me more difficulty.

However, it seems to depend a lot on what, exactly, I'm communicating. For example, my emotional vocabulary is much more deficient than the rest of my vocabulary, and I have vast amounts of difficulty packaging identity, emotions and people into boxes I can wrap words around. Never bother asking me what someone is like; it's not a question I can answer. They're just... them. Here, my primary language instead seems to be a non-verbal one painted in nebulous swirls of emotion and impressions, something which I think my empathic abilities contributes to. It actually distresses me greatly when a situation arises that I need to try translate this in order to communicate it to someone else, because it is a language with nothing even resembling an equivalent in English.

Sensory Processing Disorder.

Autism interests me. I have, in fact, long taken a small bit of amusement out of an aspie whose monomania... is Asperger's. This just strikes me as chuckle-worthy.

So, I've read a number of resources regarding autism in my time. Usually, when something is also its own condition, it tends to get listed as such. ADD/ADHD is a common co-diagnosis for autism, and if I recall correctly it's actually one of the criteria to have at least one of the various dys- disorders (dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia - the last, also known as clumsy child syndrome, is by far and away the most common, and the one I personally fall prey to).

For some reason though, I can't recall having seen sensory processing disorder mentioned even once. It doesn't take more than a glance at Paris' description of the condition to see it's clearly part and parcel of autism - issues with specific textures, or notes/sounds, being sensitive to even a light touch or small smell, etc. Or, alternatively, noticeably less sensitive. I'm pretty sure the various and varying hyper- and hyposensitivities of autists are also among the diagnostic criteria.

There's not really a lot else to say here... it was just a mildly startling thing to run across and find it had its own name too, and I find it a little strange that this is the first I've heard of it.

Nothing so much happened to prompt this particular post today, it's just something I had on my mind.

Intolerance bothers me. When I see people particularly indulging themselves in it, I like to try get them to rethink the situation at hand.

Actually, that got me bitched out a few days ago. Semi-constant stream of almost exclusively intolerant and nasty anti-religious pics reposted on my news feed by one particular person. I tried to point out as gently as possible that calling out religions on being intolerant by being intolerant was, at best, a little hypocritical. There's only so gentle you can make that message, though, when it basically boils down to "Hey, you're making an ass of yourself right now you know". I'm actually anti-organised religion myself, because of the tendency for it to become a breeding ground for mobs. The faith itself has little to do with it though.

Still, I might've been more annoyed at being bitched out if the attempt to do so wasn't so comically sad. The big 'take that' in all of it was that the person in question was no longer going to bother giving me the extra-special congratulations on having a baby (that I haven't actually had yet anyway)... extra-special because usually she doesn't give congratulations on that because "I don't see getting pregnant as an accomplishment". For some strange reason, I don't think that had the effect she was looking for.

What bothers me even more, though, is that some people can absolutely never take that hat off. I do't just mean they have a particular group they can never, ever stop hating on... I mean they must always find someone to single out and point to as bad. Even in places that are specifically meant to remove the factor of 'us' and 'them' so everyone can relax for a while.

I'm a member on FetLife. Not currently active right at this moment... I may get back to checking things there again at some point. Whenever I am active, though, there is a singular common theme at any given time to my contributions... not all the threads I'm posting on, but more a matter of a constant presence. There is always at least one thread I am actively contributing to, trying to push back intolerance.

FetLife is supposed to be a safe place for those in the BDSM community to hang out and talk with each other. You'd think a group which gets attacked so much from those outside of it would know better than to be bullies themselves... but apparently not.

Nor is it a few people, or even all that infrequent. It's mind-boggling. The number of times someone will come along and post a question, and be immediately buried in a downpour of attacks from basically everyone else on the thread. Accusations of abuse start flying, and somehow, not a single one of them even bothers to answer the damned question.

Now, I'll grant it's important to be watchful for abuse in the BDSM community. There are always those who will use the excuse of BDSM to get away with things that are actually just outright abuse. But being watchful and constantly jumping to conclusions are two very different things.

These conclusions are generally (and kind of necessarily) based on the assumption that the OP's partner is not, in fact, into X. On one thread, an attacker tried to defend their position to me by pointing out that the OP never said otherwise in their question.

Now, the kink in question is one of those that will quickly result in the other person leaving if you try spring it on them and they don't share your joy... and the post fairly heavily implied that this was not the first time trying this. All the OP was asking for was a couple ideas for a specific situation within it. I was left staring at this reply, my mind boggling, thinking, why on earth would you assume that his wife doesn't like it? Why is that the first place these people's minds go? There was no evidence that OP's wife would up and leave him over it if he dared, which is what everyone was insisting.

As for not providing the information outright in the first post, why should he have expected to be attacked immediately? He was asking a question. For most people posting on FetLife, this does not need to include the disclaimer "yes, my partner is into this as well so please just give the specific advice I'm looking for", and it should not have been needed now. So no, defending your intolerance and bullying with "well he didn't tell us any different" doesn't cut it. Aside from having been a stupid assumption to begin with, if there's information missing that you need to answer a question, you don't just fill in the blanks yourself however you damn well choose. You ask. Very few people are likely to think to mention every relevant factor immediately from the first post.

That wasn't even the worst instance I saw. Another thread, later down the track, was about CNC (consensual non-consent) and marking - someone just sharing a particularly good time they'd had with their sub.

Hoo boy did that set off a gigantic firestorm of abuse accusations with great speed. CNC is indeed an extreme in the BDSM community... but mostly due to the difficulties in making it work on a practical basis, especially standing-agreement CNC as opposed to single-session CNC. Even then, it's not exactly vanishingly rare. Those that do it are noticeably around, and those that like the idea but can't really make it work make up an even larger group. So I'm really not too sure why this kind of attention around it seems to crop up a lot on FetLife. It's very similar to the more common humiliation-play; if you don't like it yourself you're not really going to understand the appeal, and on the surface of it, it can look abusive. Would be, if not for the fact that it is consensual and even desired by both parties.

In this case, a most baffling cry went up that she said no, so it was abuse. It was enough to make me wonder if everyone had forgotten where we were. The very reason that safewords are so important in BDSM is that no does not always actually mean no - CNC even takes it a step further in that that fact is the entire point. If the tale had included her saying 'pineapple' and OP not stopping, sure. But just 'no'? Especially when the end also included clear indications of the happiness of both parties and aftercare from the Dom?

The reason that this threat was so much worse, though, is that the sub in question actually ended up weighing in herself, pointing out that it was, in fact, consensual. Most of the attackers who hadn't been dissuaded already at least had the decency to look a little shamefaced at this point and stop calling the OP a liar. Two people, however, did not.

One just continued to say it was wrong anyway. Clearly a proponent of the "one twue way", this man seemed to think any way that wasn't his way was the wrong way. This is really more a particular brand of idiocy than anything else.

The woman, however, was far more stunning. She immediately accused the sub of either being a fake puppet account for the Dom (five seconds of glancing at the profiles was enough to fairly thoroughly put that to rest), or otherwise clearly mentally infirm. That's right. She was so thoroughly intolerant to CNC that, as far as she was concerned, anyone who would consent to that is basically just clearly incapable of making their own decisions, and on par with some severe mental disability; to be pitied and helped and kept away from the ebil Dom-man at all costs.

BDSM is a group above all that should know better than to single people out, bully them, and rain down accusations of abuse without looking at the actual situation at all. After all, as a group we get it from everyone else all the time. And yet, even in the one place that is supposed to be a safe refuge from that sort of thing, it's still rampant. So many people are just apparently incapable of helping themselves from turning around and attacking someone in any given situation, even up to and including for much the same things they object to having been unreasonably attacked for. Even "benefit of the doubt" and "innocent until proven guilty" are not just thrown out the window - it's like such concepts never even existed.

I truly and honestly do not understand it... but it definitely makes it hard to maintain one's faith in humanity.