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#infantilization
neon-slime · 11 months
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one thing that really bothers me in the conversations about transandrophobia is how people imply that infantilization isn't a Big Deal.
The posts I've seen argue that being infantilized just hurts feelings and trans men/mascs just have to get thicker skin.
This is so incredibly hurtful for so many reasons. I want to think more on it and add to this post later but I just wanted to get it out there that the idea that infantilization is just hurt feelings and doesn't lead to loss of body autonomy and rights makes me want to scream
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traumacure · 5 months
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if you don't consider someone a "real adult" until they get a job, move out, and/or become financially self-sufficient (all goals impossible for a large number of adults, for many reasons) you are an ableist shithead and i have no interest in hearing a word you have to say lmao. adults are adults, and yes, you are an asshole for condescending to some 24 year old who's never worked a day in their life or a 45 year old who never moved out of their parent's house as if they're a 14 year old just because you don't respect adults who haven't met some bullshit criteria that proves they're "all grown up now."
stop calling disabled adults "babies" and "baby adults" just because they can't drive, or move out, or make a living. it's fucking infantilizing. also? even literal children deserve better treatment than this. if you call disabled adults "children" or "babies" or "infantile" and insist they can't be trusted to decide anything for themselves (which is not even true for literal children, who are already condescended to and disregarded way too much), you're an ableist asshole. there's no two ways about it, cut that shit out if you even want to pretend to be an ally—otherwise, we'll see right through you.
and here's a real kicker: no, it's not okay to make fun of someone for lacking these milestones even if you feel CERTAIN it's not because of any disability. because you will never fucking know. you just can't. so much goes undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, and even the stuff that does get diagnosed, no one is ever obligated to disclose to you. there are also many very valid reasons outside the narrow metric of "disability" that exists in most people's minds to be unable or unwilling to achieve these kinds of milestones. so be kind and respectful or be cruel and condescending, those are your only two options. you don't get to pick and choose who's an "acceptable" target for the same tired ableist rhetoric. because, surprise! it's ableist either way
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cheatsykoopa98 · 1 month
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realizing pomni feels infantilized and joked at by the game since it made her room too big and filled it with toddler toys and the fact her avatar is a jester is not the level of relatability I was expecting from this character
shes 25, she probably has a job and some mental issues to deal with irl, considering how anxious she is, at the same time we can tell she doesnt enjoy being pushed around and not being taken seriously by anyone (except maybe ragatha)
that dichotomy of "im not a baby, please take me seriously" and "Im a failure, someone please help me, im overwhelmed" is like... literally me
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By: Louise Perry
Published: Jun 8, 2023
When we get home from the supermarket, our two-year-old likes to assist with taking the groceries out from underneath his stroller and carrying them to the kitchen. He will pick up a carton of milk and heave it towards the fridge like an atlas stone. “Well done darling” I say to him in a pitch slightly higher than usual, “you’re being so helpful.” 
Of course he isn’t actually being helpful. In fact, he’s slowing down the process of unpacking and risking an enormous milk spillage all over the kitchen floor. But my goal is encouragement and kindness – he’s only two, bless him, and that carton is awfully big and heavy. 
My husband regards these exercises with more of a gentle briskness. “Thanks mate” he’ll say in his usual tone of voice, excising my white lie. In this, I’ve learnt, my husband is typical of other men. In a 2015 study led by Mark VanDam, a professor in the Speech and Hearing Sciences department at Washington State University Spokane, researchers outfitted preschoolers and their parents with recording devices to monitor social interactions over the course of a normal day. The mothers, they found:
… used higher pitch and varied their pitch more when interacting with their child than with adults. The fathers, on the other hand, did not show the same pattern, and instead talked to their children using intonation patterns more like when they talked to other adults.
As an instinctive speaker of so-called ‘motherese’ – that is, baby talk – I find that when our son mispronounces a word (‘tawtah’ for ‘water’ or ‘mulack’ for ‘milk’) I will automatically echo it back to him, while my husband will automatically respond with the correct pronunciation. These differences persist despite the fact that we share childcare almost exactly equally within our family. 
It turns out we’re not alone in this sex difference, and that it may well have some adaptive purpose. "We think that maybe fathers are doing things that are conducive to their children's learning but in a different way,” writes VanDam, “the parents are complementary to their children's language learning.” Mothers speak down to children, while fathers speak to them like equals – in combination, these two kinds of stimuli promote the development of adult language. 
The adoption of motherese is an instinct that, in its correct context, is both comforting and developmentally useful. But it can also, in some circumstances, be dysfunctional. And, as I have become more and more fluent in it, I have started to notice that motherese is no longer confined to the nursery or the classroom, but is now to be found also in public life. Not in its full expression – “have you got a boo-boo, honey?” – but in a more subtle form. 
I heard a lot of motherese, for instance, in the responses to philosopher Kathleen Stock’s appearance this week at the Oxford Union – a political event considered significant enough to attract commentary from the Prime Minister and rolling updates on the homepages of several national newspapers.
Students at risk of being traumatised by Stock’s mild-mannered, centre-left brand of politics were ushered towards ‘welfare rooms’ offering ear plugs, bottles of water, and snacks. “The Union has made the choice to amplify a voice that actively harms trans students, trans people and the trans community at large” wrote one student politician, “we’re tired of [the Union’s] refusal to listen to the communities they hurt” insisted another. It was as if Stock was a rampaging bully on the playground, knocking other children to the ground, and her critics were leaping to the defence of the persecuted toddlers. 
Witnessing the backlash against her, you’d never guess that Stock’s only sin is to offer a careful academic critique of the doctrine of gender identity – that is, the claim that one can become a member of the opposite sex (or some other identity category in between) merely by force of will. As she reiterated in her Oxford Union speech, to reject this doctrine is not to deny the humanity of trans people, but rather to balance their interests against those of other people, particularly women. 
But I am by no means the first to notice an unexpected feature of the crowds that formed outside the Oxford Union this week, and indeed all of the crowds that congregate in support of trans activism (now a regular occurrence, and not just in the Anglosphere). While the occasional acts of outright aggression are overwhelmingly committed by men, the crowds in general are mostly composed of young women. 
Polling reveals this to be a wider pattern. In the UK, women – and particularly young women – are far more supportive of trans activism than are their male counterparts. The same gap can be seen in US polling. The public figures who have received the most flak for their criticisms of trans activism are disproportionately women – I’m thinking not only of Kathleen Stock, but also of JK Rowling – and yet so, too, are the movement’s most devoted allies. This is, in the main, an intra-female conflict. 
But if trans activism poses a threat to women’s interests – as Stock and Rowling insist that it does – then why have so many women come out in support of it? I want to propose two explanations for this seeming paradox. 
Firstly, in socioeconomic terms, the women who have the most to lose from the disintegration of female-only spaces – prisoners and domestic abuse victims, for instance – are not actually the same women who are draping themselves in blue and pink flags outside the Oxford Union. This is a textbook example of what Rob Henderson has termed a ‘luxury belief’ – an idea that confers status on the rich, while causing harm to the poor. 
But then I am begging the question, because why on earth would trans activism confer status on the rich, or indeed anyone? This is where we come to the second factor: the extraordinarily well-documented differences in personality that have been observed between male and female populations cross-culturally. 
Note that there is a crucial distinction to be drawn between average and absolute differences. It is not true that all men or all women exhibit only masculine or feminine personality traits, in the same way that not all women are short and not all men are tall – rather, average differences between the sexes are obvious only at the population level. 
One trait on which men and women differ substantially is agreeableness. To put it bluntly, women are usually nicer than men – that is, they are “more nurturing, tenderminded, and altruistic more often and to a greater extent than men,” as psychologist Professor Yanna Weisberg puts it. 
This nurturing instinct often finds its way into polling on political questions. For instance, a typical study from 2017 asked 3,014 college students the following question: “If you had to choose, which do you think is more important, a diverse and inclusive society or protecting free speech rights.” 61% of male students chose to prioritise free speech, compared with only 35% of female students – exactly what you would expect from two populations that differ in this most crucial of traits.  
Don’t think that I’m bashing agreeableness per se –  it’s one of those personality traits that really does offer advantages and disadvantages all along the spectrum. Disagreeable people are often rude, but they can also be refreshingly honest; agreeable people are often pleasant, but they are easily taken advantage of. Think of agreeableness as motherese: soothing and lovely in the right circumstances, cloying and foolish in the wrong ones.  
The problems arise when an agreeable style of politics gloms onto a group that seems to offer plentiful opportunities for babying. Right now, it is trans people who have found themselves in the hot seat (or the high chair). For just one example of this babying tendency in action, observe the progressive response when then-66 year old Caitlyn Jenner came out as trans (a response parodied exquisitely in a South Park episode titled ‘Stunning and Brave’). When Glamour honoured Jenner as the magazine’s 2015’ Woman of the Year' – despite the fact that Jenner had not yet lived as a woman for a full year – I couldn’t help but hear the high pitched notes of motherese (“you look so pretty sweetie”, “well done that was very brave.”) 
Observe, too, the trans celebrity Dylan Mulvaney’s recent appearance on Drew Barrymore’s talkshow, which culminated with Barrymore kneeling on the ground, looking Mulvaney straight in the eye, and offering a heartfelt pep talk on self-love. Some gender critical feminists looked at this scene and saw a woman prostrating herself before a man. What I saw was a mother kneeling down to reassure a young child – for some bizarre reason, Barrymore was speaking motherese to a grown adult on national TV. 
At the risk of stating the obvious, trans people are not babies. Nor are they pets. They do not need earplugs and snacks to withstand an academic discussion, and they do not need to be spoken to like toddlers. Real two-year-olds may benefit from the gentleness of motherese. The rest of us need to grow up.
==
https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The-Politics-of-the-Culture-Wars-in-Contemporary-Britain.pdf#page=57
Women are more likely than men to say a trans women should be able to enter a women’s refuge, favouring this by a 36-32 margin while men oppose it 40 to 30. In fact, across all 6 questions pertaining to the trans issue (Stock, Rowling, refuges, gender identity, pronouns, teaching biological sex), women are significantly more supportive of the trans rights position even when ideology is taken into account. Women even exceed LGBT identifiers in their support for the pro-trans position on many questions.
Why? Is this not against the female interest? The likely answer is that women are more likely to be cultural leftists than men across most of the 25 attitudinal items in the survey. The inclination to empathise and care for groups perceived as vulnerable best accounts for the pattern. The result of the empathy dynamic is that the gender-critical feminist position, while intellectually prominent, is still a contested view among women. Indeed, the largest source of opposition to greater trans access to women’s spaces comes from cultural conservatives.
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This isn't a war between men and women, as some would like to assert.
It's really a war between different denominations of feminism. Like Catholicism vs Protestantism. Or Sunni vs Shi'a Islam.
One thing that's hilarious and worth pointing out: gender-critical feminists will sometimes say things along the lines of, well that agreeableness was socialized into women by "the patriarchy" to make them compliant. Which means they're denying the same evolved sex-based differences that they started off defending. Like claiming to be a Catholic while denying transubstantiation.
Either sex-differences are real, and can explain different participation rates in physics and kindergarten teaching, different career priorities and trajectories (and thus, the mythical "pay gap") and different work patterns as readily as they explain differences in swimming, cycling and weight-lifting performance, making "the patriarchy" as unnecessary as a god is to the existence of the universe... or they're not, and the gender-critical argument goes up in smoke in the flames of social constructivism. God can't be both good and unknowable.
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icedsodapop · 2 months
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Speaking of double standards regarding cishet White men bad behavior. Think of how pple reacted to Zac Efron spreading misinformation on his Netflix show vs Oprah Winfrey platforming quacks. Pple in this youtube video's comments section being like, "that guy seems to be a bad influence on Zac Efron". Talking about Zac Efron like he's a teenager and not a grownass 30-something year old man who can make his own damn decisions. My god, the infantilization. Maybe the himbofication of White men is not always a good thing.
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Someone in their 20s. A """""child adult."""""
What on earth is going on here? 🤦‍♀️
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soullessjack · 5 months
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hot take but if you can only enjoy an autistic character when they’re being woobified and infantilized and you actively go out of your way to ignore or refute any of their actual personality and adult traits to keep woobifying them then maybe you just don’t like autistic people
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olskuvallanpoe · 5 days
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I’m hereby gatekeeping wylan van eck because no one knows how to treat him like anything other than a defenseless baby, and I’m sick of it
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0never-alone0 · 2 years
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Monkey D. Luffy: The Infantilization of his Character and Why that is Not Okay
So here's my long promised infantilization rant about Luffy. It is quite long so buckle in everyone.
Something I noticed about OP, very early on in the fandom, was that people treat Luffy like he’s a ten yr old in the body of a seventeen/nineteen yr old. This treatment can even be seen in how some bits of the fandom are upset (not all of these people, but some) with the “seriousness” of post-timeskip and look at pre-timeskip in such a “holy fun-times-silly-bit” light. They just, in summary, (and once again, not everyone, but some) don’t like that Luffy acts “more like” an adult than he did before, having thought of him as some stupid ten yr old who kinda didn’t know what he was doing.
The biggest way people infantilize Luffy is by calling him stupid and childish in the way he acts. Sure, there are moments where Luffy does show himself to be not-so intelligent and moronic, but the majority of these instances are riddled with hyperbolic phrases and actions to really drag home humour (Oda, and manga/anime creators period, really love to use hyperbolic humour in their works). For example, when Luffy goes red in the face when he “thinks” bc its “too hard.” Unfortunately, Luffy thinks all the time (all sentient species do) and so that scene is just a hyperbolic humour to sort of drive home the point Luffy’s not the most conventional or “sharpest tool” in the shed. 
They point to him struggling with words, being hyper, not understanding certain social ques and etiquette, etc. as reason why he is like a child and stupid, using examples (like those I mentioned above) as to WHY Luffy’s a kid or childish or “uwu baby.” This is an incredibly problematic way of thinking (outside of just being funny or using hyperbolic language yourself) and I’ll elaborate more below.
Artists depict a SEVENTEEN/NINETEEN year old Luffy - who is canonically very fit, well built, and while lean, is a physically/mentally matured young adult - as a skinny, small, big-eyed, innocent chubby-cheeked baby. Which when compared to the way they draw Law/Zoro/Sanji etc. really makes Luffy look TEN and not THE YOUNG ADULT HE IS. If your art style is leaning more toward how I described Luffy above, and you draw all other characters the same - you are wonderful and keep up your beautiful work. Bc you are not infantilizing and just have that kind of art style. I’m only mentioning this in regards to art that will purposely draw, for example, Zoro or Law with sharp angles, big chests, sharp jaws - as matured - and then Luffy small, skinny, and chubby/rosy cheeked beside them. This depiction makes it look like Law/Zoro/etc are standing beside an actual child - which is really not okay. 
People talk about Luffy as if he can’t take care of himself. As if Nami’s the Captain in everything but name and not Luffy bc he’s “too stupid” or “too childish.” They point to how Luffy lets Robin and Nami makes decisions, how the crew face-palms over Luffy, how they have to “hold him back” like he is some child when he is not.
I could rant to you about all the reasons WHY Luffy’s an adult - more mature even than the typically seventeen/nineteen yr old, in great detail, but I won’t bc it’s truly clear if you watch/read OP with a critical eye. I’ll just say this. He runs his crew well, he is a very talented fighter, emotionally he is able to understand and aid people extremely well, he understands injustice and such with a very good critical eye (to the point where he can’t really understand how people can be bad/mean), he is capable of understanding situations well enough to knock some sense into people (ex: Luffy telling Vivi she can’t save everyone), he can feed himself, etc. etc. etc. I could keep going, but I won’t bc I’m probably preaching to the choir. 
Anyways, people point to reasons as to why Luffy’s “childish” and “stupid” and I’m here to tell you no, he is not, and you pointing that out is a very ableist way of thinking. 
Individuals who are disabled, who are neurodivergent - as adults - are perfectly matured and capable individuals. However... society doesn’t see them as such and points to certain things and says, “Oh look. Child.” when that is not the case at all. 
Individuals with sensitivity and textural issues are called childish for cutting off tags or being “picky eaters,” wearing the same sets of clothes or eating the same meals. Yet they work and earn a living, feed themselves, do taxes, feed their families, have families, go to clubs, etc. 
Individuals who have speech disorders and/or ADHD/Autism can stutter, forget words easily, have trouble pronouncing them on a common scale, not really understand social ques, etc. Yet they go to work, have families, pay taxes, do their grocery shopping, have sex - yes, this too, etc. etc. They are adults who are mature and not children. Yet bc they might be hyper or talk too fast, or have trouble speaking “normally,” etc. they are labelled childish. 
Luffy, as a character, very much “gives off” the vibe he is neurodivergent. ADHD, Autistic, ADD, honestly you could probably identify even more with him but for the sake of “simplicity” will leave it at these. I personally headcanon Luffy as on the spectrum bc he fits that very well for me. I know others who attribute ADHD to him which fits too. ADHD and Autism can sometimes appear very similar to each other. Maybe Luffy as a character embodies both bc he has both. All the traits people point to that make Luffy “stupid” or “a child” are also traits of someone who is neurodivergent. 
Equating those traits to stupidity and/or the person being childish - and so a child - (and so incapable of taking care of themselves/reliant on others/unmatured as a person) is a very ableist way of thinking bc that is exactly what happens to neurodivergent individuals is the ableist world. 
The infantilization of Luffy, is the infantilization of neurodivergent individuals. It is a very dangerous and problematic way of thinking when one considers the impacts that the infantilization of disabled individuals has had on the community. Such a way of thinking can kill, has killed. So please stop infantilization characters, period. Especially those who are reflective (whether purposely by author, purposely by fandom, or unconsciously/unknowingly) of the disabled community. 
But to finish... If you ship Luffy with anyone or don’t ship him with anyone and draw/depict him very childish near them/compared to them, you are putting out very problematic images. Infantilization of characters who are 17/18/19+ leads to sometimes hyper-aging actual children. If one points to a 17 year old and calls them a child, a mere baby who can’t take care of themself and needs a parent all the time 24/7, or can’t make choices for themselves - then a ten year old who is a child, a baby who can’t take care of themselves and needs a parent 24/7 is unwittingly equated to that seventeen yr old. People probably don’t realise this/mean it but that is what is going on. It’s also something that more so happens in the linguistics of real life over fandom tho but this is an observation from personal experiences. Anyways a Ten yr old is not a seventeen yr old or older. They are ten. A seventeen year old can go to the mall by themself, kiss their partner, have a romantic/sexual partner. A ten yr old can not, ever. I could keep writing examples, but I hope people see where I’m going with this and get my point.
In conclusion, I guess. Stop infantilization, it is ableist and dangerous when pushed onto people/characters who are disabled and incredibly problematic and very dangerous, period. No matter who it is done to.  
This ^^ also directly interacts in a very intertwined way with the feminization of Luffy and I will be writing on that next.
Edit: 18+
I’d also like to add that if infantilization is done for safe and sane kink/fetish reasons this post is not about such practises at all! If your engaging in safe, sane, consensual, and critical kink/fetish content I’m pretty sure your doing so responsibly and with an understanding of exactly what is going on and what is potentially problematic. It’s not in my business to kink shame or anything so I thought I’d add this on for further clarification purposes.
- some editing was also done to this post. Mostly grammatical since sometimes the grammatical embarrassment just comes on too deep, but a few sentences were added here and there if I felt more clarifying was needed to potentially stop any miscommunications!
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tacticaltrilobite · 8 days
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being a tomboy is only marginally accepted in very young children, and then you are expected to grow out of it by the time you reach puberty. which is also why adult trans men are told they just don't want to grow up. all the stories i read as a child with masculine girls, they always became feminine at the end as they matured and it filled me with shame and dread because i knew that is what everyone expected of me too, and it only gets worse as you get older. come on, when are you going to have a glow up and put effort into being presentable? you looked so pretty with long hair, why did you have to cut it? i know this is just a phase, you will grow out of it eventually, i don't care that you're in your 20s you are immature and your brain isn't fully developed so you can't really know you are trans!
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Will forever despise all the social media parents who exploit their autistic children, and parade them around like they’re zoo animals to be gawked at. What the actual fuck even is this. The most patronizing, infantilizing ableist shit.
“Omg see he’s so happy!”
“Omg he loves eating food!”
“Omg she’s smiling!”
“Omg he’s just like everyone else!”
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck all of you. Autistic people are not fucking zoo animals or entertainment.
Don’t even get me started on them using their children to demonize autism and basically insinuate that they deserve to be cured of their “tragic” life.
FUCK. YOU.
(Side note: a fucking radfem touched my post. Ew Ew Ew.
RADFEMS, GENDER CRITICALS, TERFS AND OTHER MISOGYNISTS AND TRANSPHOBES, FUCK OFF.
Signed, a ✨ Tranny ✨)
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scribbleymark · 4 months
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"During my freshman year of college, my psychology professor said, 'Everything is about sex. You are here, at this university, in this class, because you want to have sex...You came to college so that you can go to parties, meet people, and have sex. And so that you can graduate with a degree that will allow you to get a good job so that you can be an eligible dating and marriage prospect, and have sex.' All around me, heads nodded while I sat in confusion, unable to wrap my head around the assertion that everything is about sex.
I was already exceedingly aware of the fact that my lack of investment in seeking out sexual encounters alienated me from my college peers, especially because some of the people closest to me made it clear, in one way or another, that there was something 'abnormal' about this, about me. They viewed me as immature and undeveloped; some even pitied me. I needed to 'grow up' or else I would 'end up alone,' they’d warn. I referred to myself as a 'late bloomer' for many subsequent years, often as a sort of apology or disclaimer. Only after affirming my asexuality did I understand that this 'late bloomer' rhetoric was an unhelpful sentiment and a reinforcement of the same ideologies that caused others to treat me like an abnormality in the first place. One does not 'bloom'—as in, enter into sexual exploration—too late, because there is no set time frame in which one must 'bloom.' One is not required to 'bloom' in this way at all.
Infantilization is a dehumanizing process by which a self-righteous sense of superiority is wielded over someone seen as inferior—assumed to be less mature, more naive, and less worthy of respect. It’s closely akin to and often comes with a heaping side of patronization and condescension, with the infantilized being spoken to and treated as if they are unintelligent, unimportant, deserving of pity, and in need of guidance and education from those who are allegedly more superior and more knowledgeable about the world. This often manifests as the infantilizer regarding themselves as more qualified to make decisions on behalf of and about the infantilized, whom they regard as childlike and incapable of making these determinations on their own...
According to one study, 'Societal Challenge and Depression, Self-Esteem and Self-Concept Clarity in Asexuals,' 69.4 percent of the asexual participants report having had their identity challenged, and the vast majority of those challenges came in the form of infantilization, with phrases like 'you are a late bloomer' or 'you have not met the right person yet' being offered in response to them revealing their asexuality or simply being noticeably disinterested in sex. The association of asexuals with childishness and immaturity reproduces much of the same disregard and dismissive attitudes that are typically directed toward actual children. I understand the infantilization of asexuals as its own brand of gaslighting, in which seeds of doubt are continually planted in our minds and cause many of us to question our experiences, desires, and perception of self.
-Sherronda J. Brown, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture
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zebulontheplanet · 7 months
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As someone with an intellectual disability, and someone who has met and seen other intellectually disabled people on the internet, we are treated very differently.
I’m very open about my intellectual disability online. It’s the easiest way to know someone’s true intentions and meet people who just don’t care and are really chill about it.
In online spaces, especially online spaces made for neurodivergent folk, I’ve been treated drastically different. I’ve been treated a lot nicer. People are kinder, people are more patient, people explain things more to me. And although this is great, sometimes it’s really unneeded, and I wish they treated me like everyone else. I don’t need your extra kindness. I don’t need you treating me like I’m some child, or someone you have to be careful with your words with.
I’ve seen this with other people with intellectual disabilities. I’ve seen people claim to have an intellectual disability and get out of being banned from servers for doing horrendous things , because obviously we don’t know better. (/sarcasm)
I have so much more to say, but the bottom line is, we’re treated drastically different. Please, unless we say otherwise, then treat me the same. I want to be able to go into adult spaces, or be around peers without being treated like a child. I’m an adult. I should be treated as such.
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magpiecrust · 2 months
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I still remember a post or comment that, in reference to Holmes' neurodivergent traits, that he's "like a child" that Watson needs to be a caretaker to.
I forgot who it was, or where, on when, but i'm still pissed off.
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On Infantilization and Tech
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I'll say it because I'm extra spicy today.
I see a lot of folks saying that Tech shouldn't be infantilized, and he should not be kept away from adult relationships.
Got it. 100% agree.
However....
Infantilization isn't just regarding relationships. It also involves how the person is perceived in greater society.
So....when you're writing about Tech, let me ask you:
Is he respected as an adult? His opinion taken seriously?
Are his ideas dismissed as childish or dorky?
Does he have a cool and/or IMPORTANT job? Or is he shoved into Dork Corner dicking around with engine parts?
Is his partner the dominant one who takes charge of everything?
Is it another team member in charge?
Is he contributing in a way that is fulfilling and respectful of his background and knowledge?
Or is he just toddering around until someone rescues him?
I get plot, I understand that character arcs need to happen. But every time I start a fic where Tech's being bossed around or taken care of by someone else, canon or otherwise, I immediately log out.
Why am I saying all of this?
Because I am a neurodivergent person who receives this horseshit on a regular basis.
I'm not a dumbass or lazy. I have a Ph.D and have been working in my field for 16 years. But I have been passed over and mocked and teased and shoved into corners because I'm biologically female, I'm a wife and mother, and I am vaguely on the spectrum.
Poor wittle Dr. Meat Muffin and her weak womanly ways, must help her over puddles and shit.
I'm putting in my yearly review right now. I expect that I will be talked down by my department director, despite performing wildly well.
I will be going to a conference shortly too. My colleagues with the smoother, charming voices will use the grants I wrote as a basis for THEIR grant writing course, of which I am being forced to take.
Learning about writing properly using your own writing as an example is a level of hell I didn't know existed and yet, here I am.
Maybe it's God's punishment for that Spiderman/Tech drawing I did earlier, who the fuck knows.
The point is, when you're writing about neurodivergent people, give them opportunities to use their skills and brains and contribute in fulfilling ways.
There's more than one way to infantilize someone, don't be that person.
Bleh.
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craycraybluejay · 6 months
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Saw a Reddit post about a cis woman infantilizing trans men, and this is why I think cis women are THE most annoying version of transphobia in the world. Like yeah a cis man will tell you "kys tranny" but he's not very well going to take the time to psychologically torture you for the heck of it by treating you like you are exactly [three] years old.
#im sorry but cis women are so much more likely to be really fucking weird to trans people#i cannot stand them#tw suibaiting#mentioned#transphobes#infantilization#transandrophobia#bite kill maim#look im not a misogynist BUT i dont trust women for shit#they are literally taught never to talk straight at people which results in some of the most convoluted psychological warfare ever#also on one side there's transphobic misogynists on the other side there's terfs#and very few women i've met cis OR trans have been normal about trans men and transmasculine people#even the tumblr trans community is chock full of either trans women telling us we're oppressing them and also us being hated doesn't matter#and spouting transandrophobic bullshit#but the cis women 'allies' who are like 'i know trans guys i have a trans friend who most definitely isnt scared to tell me off for my#fucked up behaviour'#the thing is this is very much how women bully other women so actually#newsflash#transmascs are not 'tme' and literally all fucking trans people are endangered by transmisogyny#some of you gals just have a superiority complex about it bc you want to have someone to look down on#almost every man I've met who is not old as hell or a borderline nazi is just. normal about it.#if a woman is too interested in your transness? run for the fucking hills#no she most probably won't physically attack you but she will try her damnedest to psychologically ruin you#not sorry if i come off as an asshole#these people are WAY too comfortable making us uncomfortable#i have had it up to here#if anyone tries to infantilize me for any reason i will scare them till they beg ME to leave them alone#idk how other people tolerate it but i sure as hell won't#and i am absolutely not above hitting a woman if she's touching me against my will#you want to baby me and constantly touch me and shit you are getting slapped into sunday
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