Tag: language

This is why Autistic Ally Thor. I guess.

What I mean is, to me that comic is an illustration of why I’m careful with new slang, and with repeating words from other people in general. Thor is cute and endlessly enthusiastic. Sometimes I don’t want to be cute and being wrong a lot wears me down.

I went to the mall with people today, and I think I did pretty good. I talked more than usual.

I also swallowed roughly 50% of the things I wanted to say, because there wasn’t a break in conversation where I could fit them in.

I had a pretty nice conversation with C the Defense Attorney, though, during the time when Sparkly was on her phone.

Words/ideas that come in clearly separated chunks are really, really nice.  (This is why I abuse line breaks so much.) 

I sort of feel bad for liking a style that means (person I follow on tumblr) is having trouble putting things into words, because that seems rude, but her way of writing when she’s trying to make things simpler is pleasantly easy to understand for me.

 

*

I googled the phrase “covers a multitude of sins” because I have a policy against quoting things unless I know the original source, and I was very sure the book I recall it from was referencing something else.  Turns out it’s from the Bible.  (And apparently the person who made a vaguely evil wizard in a fictional universe use it does not follow my policy.  Heh.)

(I have this policy because I ran into a lot of trouble with this when I was younger.  And yeah, there are worse things than “Oh, I remember Kirk said that on Star Trek once.”  “Yeah, he was quoting [famous philosopher]” but that isn’t exactly fun, either.)

In which not talking covers a multitude of language problems.*

The fact that I haven’t given her a nickname yet tells you that M is a generally self-contained and competent person, I guess.  As does the fact that I can’t come up with a nickname for her that doesn’t seem rude.  Anyway, I want to tell a story that relates to her.  I went over to her house for a while on Halloween– she had a party with a campfire.  I stayed most of the night, because Sparkly was working late and the university is closer to M’s house than to our apartment, and lots of other people went in and out.  One of them I know fairly well from [fan organization]; let’s call him Blushing Guy.  After he left, M told me that they’ve sort of started dating (they’re taking it very slow) and talked about how she finds him adorably shy.  And he is adorable, and he blushes a lot, as mentioned, but…

I didn’t say this to her, but here’s what I had been thinking earlier, while I was talking to him: I like talking to him.  He talks mildly slowly, but he leaves big spaces between his sentences which actually leave me enough time to think of what to say and respond.  I can talk quickly when I have clear ideas about something, but in a “small talk” sort of conversation where I have to think if I know anything related, and whether it’s appropriate to say, and the topic jumps around a lot without much foundation, I’m pretty slow.  But I can actually talk to him without being rushed, and also without the conversation seeming awkwardly stilted and slow.  He acts like that length of pause is normal.

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone else who I can talk to like that.

So I sort of wanted to disagree with M.  It’s not necessarily because he’s shy.  Maybe he thinks like me.  Apparently he’s lived around here since his teens, so it probably isn’t a cultural thing, but it could conceivably be that, too.

I’m not sure whether I should tell her this or not.

“not a real person”

A lot of people I follow on Tumblr use this phrase to describe what more academic people would call dehumanization, or denial of agency, or objectification.

It’s the kind of phrase that’s easy to skip over.  It doesn’t sound weighty or scary.  At least, I find that my eyes skip over it without really feeling the weight of it.

But it is the simplest and most straightforward way to describe those things, and it is weighty and terrible.  I want to remind you all not to skip over it.  Believing that someone is not a real person, whose opinions and desires matter, is the foundation of every way of harming that person.  When you believe that what someone wants and needs doesn’t matter, you can neglect and abuse them, you can manipulate and con them, you can rape them, you can steal from them, you can cause them pain, and believe that it’s okay, because it doesn’t matter.

This is just a reminder.  I think it’s pretty straightforward as long as you stop to think about it.

I also want to tell you something that’s a bit tougher:

You probably think there are exceptions.  If there are any at all, they are a lot fewer than you think.

Anne McDonald had severe cerebral palsy, which gave her very poor coordination and motor skills.  She was assumed to be “profoundly retarded” because she couldn’t walk or speak.  People assumed that because she didn’t respond to things they way they expected (because she didn’t have the physical ability to) that she didn’t understand anything.  But they were completely wrong.  Once someone bothered to teach her a way to communicate that didn’t require so much coordination, she wrote a book.

And there are many other people like Anne McDonald out there.  People you would look at and think “retard” or “vegetable” or “off in their own world, no understanding of reality”– they are real people, and they are looking back at you and seeing what you think about them and how you treat them.

Two wordy things that I disagree with people about.

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Saying this instead of actually apologizing for what you did, when what you did is unambiguously wrong, is nasty.  And a lot of people use this to try to get away with doing wrong things and not apologizing.  But sometimes this is the truth.  Sometimes you have to do something, even though it will upset people.  That doesn’t mean you don’t regret upsetting them, and it doesn’t mean you were wrong to make the choice you did.

“Let’s agree to disagree.”

I have used this phrase.  I use it to mean “I don’t want argue with you about this right now.”  I think that’s a perfectly legitimate goal, obviously.  No matter how strongly I feel about something, there are times when I don’t want to discuss it.  There are times when I have a schedule to keep, or I’m tired, or I know that the person I’m talking to will never change their mind and would love nothing better than to have a huge argument with me and ruin my day.  And I think this is a perfectly reasonable phrase to use to do that.  Yes, some people use it in a way that trivializes things, that seems to imply “You couldn’t possibly be angry with me for believing that, could you?  It’s not that important.”  I don’t think that should poison the phrase.

I miss Spanish.

You’re allowed (encouraged, even) to put more clauses into each sentence.  And that tends to be easier for me.  I try not to do it in English because it can get confusing quickly. 

Fortunately I now have a reason to do more Spanish, although I didn’t start this post to tell you about it.  One of Sparkly’s friends was looking for a tutor.

(I actually wrote this post because I was going to say something else, but I gave up on trying to disassemble it and reassemble it into sentences that start with the subject.)