Shoutout to neurodivergents who were punished or marked down in assignments for using too complex language, and also shoutout to neurodivergents who were punished or marked down in assignments for using too simple language, and also shout out to neurodivergents who were punished for both of these depending on the most recent way they fucked up

Image ID: A meme with a white bar on top of the picture, underneath is a picture of a red, hexagonal stop sign on a blue sky background. The black text in the white bar reads "Disabled student: *requires an accomodation*

The Admin:"

The text continues onto the blue background and the stop sign. The white text on the blue sky background reads:

" I can't do that!"

And the white text on the stop sign reads

"Stop Asking"

End ID

When the teacher says stuttering will affect your grade on a presentation but you literally CANNOT talk without a stutter.

do you ever wonder if you would've started at uni if they assured you from the beginning that accommodations weren't a possibility at all? because I started at my university in September 2021 and have been a student ever since, and 3x I've asked for accommodations and all got refused. I don't even count the moment I thought about asking for it and just didn't end up doing it, because I knew it would get refused, so I just pushed through. I just hate that they are seemingly very aware of 'diversity and inclusivity' and 'accessibility is very important to them'. But in reality I just get disappointed (and frustrated) over and over.

the other thing about being disabled in academia is everyone is like "yeah we can't do much about the buildings they're old :/" as if "old" being a synonym for "inaccessible" isn't just a constant reminder that the people who built the school did not imagine that someday someone like me might study there

I think a lot of the skepticism and derision toward the idea of "gifted kid burnout" stems from the fact that a lot of folks have no idea what the gifted track in most high schools actually looks like; they've got this mental image, possibly informed by popular media depictions, of "gifted kids" as a privileged group of students who get to go on extra field trips, monopolise the teachers' attention in class, and constantly be told how special they are, but who are otherwise treated identically to all the other kids.

In practice, the gifted track in most high schools – most North American high schools, at any rate – has the same problem as any other educational program: the need to adhere to published metrics. These programs exist for the benefit of students only insofar as those benefits can empirically be measured, which leads to several common outcomes:

Students on the gifted track being afforded fewer choices regarding elective classes – often to the extent of having no choices at all – in order to stream the highest-performing students into the subjects that are most valuable in terms of boosting institutional metrics.

Students on the gifted tracking receiving restricted access to educational resources such as tutoring because it's perceived as a waste of funding. In many cases, gifted students are not only denied access to tutoring, but expected to serve as volunteer tutors and teaching assistants themselves, effectively becoming a source of unpaid educational labour for the schools they attend.

Students on the gifted track being assigned considerably more homework, often literally doubling their workload in an environment where homework loads are already routinely high enough that kids have difficulty finding time to eat and sleep, simply because you get more measurable academic performance data that way.

The upshot is that the gifted track is often less about fun perks and constant praise, and more about receiving less freedom, fewer resources, and heavier workloads than one's peers, getting strong-armed into providing unpaid labour to the school on top of it, and constantly being told one should be grateful for it – and that's without touching on the fact that the unspoken secondary purpose of many gifted programs is to serve as a quarantine for all the neurodivergent kids the school couldn't find an excuse to institutionalise or expel.

Like, shit, there's a reason kids on the gifted track exhibit elevated rates of alcoholism and substance abuse compared to general student populations. That doesn't arise in a vacuum!

(To be clear, I'm not saying that people graduating from high school and immediately having an existential crisis upon realising they're not special after all isn't a thing that happens, but in my experience that's more usually something that happens to the kids who were on the football team, and reframing it as a nerd culture thing is really weird.)

15 year old google psychologist on tiktok: you HAVE to be PROFESSIONALLY DIAGNOSED WITH AUTISM or else youre a FAKER whos STEALING RESOURCES from ACTUAL PEOPLE WITH AUTISM

psychiatrist: you dont act autistic. ok well i guess you acted autistic as a kid but not now so clearly something changed. whats masking?

psychiatrist: you experience a lot of traits of autism but you made eye contact with me for a bit so you cant be autistic

psychiatrist: you cant be autistic because youre too smart

psychiatrist: well you experience profound symptoms of autism but your brothers already diagnosed with autism and thats not possible for you both to be

psychiatrist: ok you seem autistic however youre a teenage girl. have you considered you might have borderline personality disorder/bipolar disorder instead?

*also when you get diagnosed*

psychiatrist: i cant advocate for your disabling ptsd to the government, i can only do autism. yes i know your autism isnt the actual problem here but have you considered that youre just being autistic about it?

psychiatrist: i cant write a letter of recommendation for gender affirming care because youre autistic. yes i know you work a full time job and live independently but youre not capable of making these decisions

psychiatrist: *doesnt try to treat/talk about anything but the autism*

the 15 year old again: i know you SAID youre diagnosed with autism but i dont believe you because anyone can say that, so im going to continue to harrass you about it anyway

I'm going to preface this by saying that I have really complex feelings about this, and much of it is inspired by my personal experiences and a bit of learning about what other trans people experience. If I come across as messy, it is because of these reasons.

There's this unshakable feeling I have that when allies and even other trans people talk about trans people, transition and motivation for transition, and anything related to such, that there's only certain things that x type of trans person can (and should) experience and talk about.

Like, when people talk about FtMs/trans men/transmasc people, a common idea is that we're motivated to transition to game the system, to manipulate people into treating us better because we're now seen as men. A huge reason I never even bought into that idea is because, since transition (especially medical), I have been treated worse than I ever have been. Since transitioning and being on testosterone, I've been catcalled, had people insist I hand my number over, and I have to emphasize that I've never experienced these things until a couple of years ago (to clarify, this was in my real, corporeal life). I honestly can say that, while transition has saved my life and soul, I am treated worse by others than I ever had been pre-transition. However, because the idea of transmascs is that "they were victims of misogyny and they only want to escape it through transition" is popular even among some trans people, I feel like it's almost... taking something away by acknowledging that. Add to this that I'm white and that TPoC have so many experiences that intertwine with race, and that race absolutely goes into how trans people are treated.

I am not saying that my experience is the only valid or true one. I am very aware that I'm probably an outlier. However, I just notice that, time and time again, people hear what they want to hear about transness, and if people have even slightly different points of view from their experiences, it doesn't matter, or worse, those people are duplicitous and conniving.

Too tired/low spoons to put an image ID but. I hate this specific kind of ableism I’ve had handed to me again and again (Edit: added and slightly edited an ID from the notes!)

[ID: A comic. Panel 1 dialogue, from a person holding up a piece of paper: "I'm here to get help with problem X, what should I do?"

Panel 2 dialogue, from a cheery second person, assumedly a tutor or other teaching figure: "Well, what do you think you should do?"

Panel 3: Person 1 stares at person 2 silentely, but their thoughts are written behind them in faint all caps: "Why the fuck would I be asking you for help if I hadn't already tried doing what I thought I should do, and even tried what I thought I shouldn't do!" the rest of the thought is covered by the people but continues to the bottom of the panel.

Panel 4: Sound effect "BAM!" Person 1 cartoonishly flattens Person 2 with a folding chair. /End ID]

As a medium supports autistic person who will literally never be able to live without a caretaker,

Transautistic people fucking sicken me , because they only ever want to be the "silly, YIPPEE, tbh creature, very low support needs, 'ideal autistic', able to mask perfectly" autistic person and not the "physically cannot mask, will always need a caregiver, cannot perform basic everyday tasks, requires an aac, ostracized for being autistic, high/medium support needs autistic person, violent when overstimulated"

Transautistic people will ignore us medium/high support needs autistics because they just want the "quirky, silly goofy" parts of autism.

I think that everyone studying to become a disability aid in school should have to go through a mandatory course written, produced and taught by disabled people to teach them not to be ableist pricks because like. Almost every abled school disability aid I've met has been extremely ableist with an enormous savior complex and it's so damaging for the disabled (especially neurodivergent) students they're "helping".

Forcing disabled kids to work through episodes, forcing them to work in ways that are literally physically impossible for them, forcing them into uncomfortable situations all while infantilizing and talking down to them is damaging as shit. I've seen a disability aid guilt trip a student literally having a flashback for not doing work (because of the flashback), I've seen them yell at deaf kids for signing ("you'll become reliant on it! you need to be considerant of hearing people!"), I've seen them forcing autistic kids to take off their noise cancelling headphones leading to meltdowns (which the student was then blamed for), I've seen them yell at antisocial kids for "sass" (actually them just having flatter emotional expression), I've seen them punish attention-deficit kids for fidgeting and then get angry when they stop focusing. And they get so angry and play the whole "it's so hard to work with special needs kids!" thing when you call them out.

Like. You are not helping. You need to get the fuck over yourself and listen when disabled people tell you that you're damaging these kids. Just. Let disabled people teach you how to care for disabled kids. You do not know better than disabled people on disabled issues, don't act like it.

“this bathroom is accessible!!1!1”

if my chair was one (1) inch longer, the door wouldnt have shut. this stall was also the exact same size as the non-accessible stall next to it. you cant just slap some grab bars on it and call it accessible 🙄

image ID: first image: a shot of someone sitting in their wheelchair in a bathroom stall, the stall is so small that the edge of the toilet hits their knees. the stall is very narrow as well. there are grab bars on the walls around the toilet. second image: a shot from the other view showing how the wheelchair fits in the stall. the back wheels hit the stall door, and there is about an inch between the footplate and toilet. end ID.