shame is for other people

plainjanefaye:

GY*SY IS AN ETHNIC SLUR.
GY*SY IS AN ETHNIC SLUR.
GY*SY IS AN ETHNIC SLUR.
STOP USING “GY*SY” IN YOUR URLS AND PROMOS
GY*SY IS AN ETHNIC SLUR.

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surskitty:

This post brought to you by that one post going around saying to tag sarcasm for autistic people:

No, tag sarcasm for people with a low threshold for Poe’s law.  Some of those people are autistic.  Plenty of autistic people can usually identify sarcasm and satire.  Plenty of allistic people can’t.  Everyone sometimes messes it up.  That’s the whole reason ‘Poe’s law’ is a concept: everybody’s coming into conversation from a different context, and no one can always tell what that person would think is a reasonable opinion to express.

Stop spreading condescending posts framing things as ‘do this for people with $specific_disability so you will be the Understanding Able Person’ when plenty of people without it would benefit and plenty of people with it would not.  I guarantee you that for any accommodation you can think of, there is someone who would never in their life identify as disabled who could benefit.  It’s also likely that that plenty of people who you might think would need that specific accommodation would find it completely useless.  People are different and disability is a complicated thing. 

If it is helpful for you specifically to have a thing tagged?  Say so.  You’re a person, too, and you don’t need to generalise for it to be more valid.

And there is this huuuuuuuuge tendency for people to reblog every ‘please tag #trigger’ post they see as a self-congratulatory backpat that’s coupled with neglecting certain other very straightforward accessibility concerns.  Namely, keep your tumblr layout neat and readable, your background static (no gifs) and uncluttered behind your text, your colour-scheme simple and not involving extremely saturated colours, your autoplay off or nonexistent (so, remove the ‘auto’ from your ‘autoplay’), your font size legible, your images described (link is to a blind dreamwidth user’s suggestions for helpful alt text), and if you don’t have time & energy to transcribe audio and video, at least label them.  If not?  You’re being about as generally helpful as that one kid who’d made a completely useless braille printer out of legos.  Tagging every single picture with a face in it ‘scopophobia’ isn’t going to start meaning your blog’s accessible.

And as before, these are all things that aren’t specific to people with disabilities!  Some people have slow internet connections, or limited bandwidth.  Tumblr mobile doesn’t always load images.  Audio and video posts often won’t play at all no matter what you do.  If you don’t have the energy or time to describe them extensively, label it in a few words that at least give enough context to let someone know if they want to check it later, or have someone else check it.

Use some discernment.

via:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1q6w4RN

speak-like-a-sunrise:

(warnings for: eugenics, mentions of abuse and murder, lots of capslock)

HEY!

Something happened recently. You may have heard of it. You may not have heard of it. You may not know why it’s important. But it is.

GOOGLE is now partnered with an organization called AUTISM $PEAKS* on a project to create a DATABASE of the GENOMES of AUTISTIC PEOPLE and their FAMILIES.

“Why is this important?” you may ask. “Why should we care?”

YOU SHOULD CARE BECAUSE:

This database will include TWELVE THOUSAND people’s genetic data! It will be available to researchers, scientists, and maybe even the general public (2). That’s a huge breach of PRIVACY! But that’s not the worst part!

This database will be used to find a “CURE” for autism (3)! “But why is that bad? Isn’t autism that one thing where you can’t speak and act like a weirdo? Wouldn’t not being autistic make everything easier?”

AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER is actually a diagnosis based on a collection of TRAITS that result from experiencing the world in a DIFFERENT WAY. There are many autistic traits, such as: being non-verbal; having something called a special interest; info-dumping; being really good at something (being a savant); not understanding social cues, body language, or sarcasm; doing something called stimming (which is short for self-stimulation, and before you get dirty means flapping arms, tapping fingers, bouncing, rocking, humming, basically soothing behaviors that make us look autistic!); or having comorbid disorders which often come with autism, like ADHD, bipolar disorder, sensory processing disorder, alexithymia, dyslexia or dyspraxia. There are also many more traits associated with autism! (8) (9) (10)

Autistic people are all different, and all have different combinations of these traits to different degrees, but we all have being autistic in common. The important thing to remember is that AUTISTIC PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE TOO, and just because we think differently does not mean there is something wrong with us! We think non-autistic people, who we call allistic people for the sake of simplicity, are weird too! The problem is that allistic people have a lot of POWER over autistic people’s lives and choices, and think that some autistic people using assistive devices or requiring care means those autistic people are INCAPABLE OF MAKING THEIR OWN DECISIONS.

Autistic people are MURDERED, often by their families or other caregivers, and allistic people excuse that by saying that it must be so hard for the families to deal with their child being autistic (12)! Autistic people are ABUSED into acting like allistic people using something called APPLIED BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS (ABA), and allistic people excuse that by saying that it’s for their own good, really, that they won’t be able to function without learning to be allistic (11)!

I know this all sounds really scary! And it is! You might be thinking, “But I would never do that!!” And that’s GREAT! The problem is that a lot of people WOULD do that, and DO do that, and think it’s OKAY TO HURT THEIR CHILDREN to make them seem “NORMAL”.

The thing is, “treatments” for autism DON’T WORK. Autistic people are autistic, and it’s something inherent in every one of us (13). Trying to “cure” autism generally means trying to KILL AUTISTIC PEOPLE so there are less of us!

This is very similar to developing a PRE-NATAL TEST for autism, which this database will also be used for (2). A PRE-NATAL TEST means you would know before your child is born whether or not they’re autistic.

Raising an autistic child is not that different from raising an allistic child. They are just different from you, and will need things that maybe you didn’t need. They also might not need things that you needed. Most importantly, autistic babies are not very different at all from allistic babies! You wouldn’t need to know before the baby is born if you need to set up special autistic things. You would only need to know if your child was autistic when they needed extra support!

So WHY do we need a pre-natal test?

The answer can be found in the statistics about Down Syndrome pre-natal tests.

If a baby has Down Syndrome, they are WAY MORE LIKELY to be ABORTED than a baby without Down Syndrome (7)! Abortion is a controversial issue, and I am not saying anything about abortion itself. But aborting a child JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE DISABLED when otherwise it would be a wanted pregnancy is very close to eugenics (which I will explain more about later) and ableism (the oppression of disabled people). You may think that disabled people have such a hard time in life that just not having them is a better idea than having them! And I will talk about that later. But many of these abortions are pushed for by doctors who give their patients all of the bad information and none of the good! The pregnant people in question don’t get to know the whole story, and they don’t get to hear the stories of those who are disabled in this way. They don’t get to give INFORMED CONSENT about their abortion because they are NOT INFORMED! They are just told how sad it is that their child will be disabled, and how terrible it will be for them and for society. They are encouraged to abort their disabled child instead of inflicting them on the world (5). This is related to something called eugenics.

Eugenics is the idea of improving the genetic quality of the human race by promoting the production of positive traits and reducing the production of negative traits. It began in Europe in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, and advocated (and performed) the sterilization and removal from the gene pool of people with negative traits. These negative traits were often things related to having mental illness, being physically disabled or neurodivergent/neuroatypical (being different mentally), being of non-white races, or being gay. Eugenics as a philosophy has resulted in the forced STERILIZATION, ABORTION, EUTHANASIA, and GENOCIDE of millions of people! It was one of the main things ADOLF HITLER was trying to do (6)!

I know bringing up Hitler will end a conversation. But HEAR ME OUT.

Telling people that it’s so sad that their child will be disabled, that their child will never be “normal” (whatever that is supposed to be), that their child will lead an unhappy life — that is NOT THE WHOLE STORY! Many disabled people have led happy, fulfilling lives! The problem is that new parents are often told nothing about how their child could be happy, and all about the possible difficulties they’ll face, some of which can be avoided or mitigated (14).

Developing a pre-natal test for autism will only cause more autistic babies to be aborted for being autistic, and continue the OPPRESSION, SILENCING, and DEHUMANIZATION of a group of people. HUMAN PEOPLE. Who are KILLED just for being WHO THEY ARE.

That is what Autism $peaks is advocating and has advocated for years (15). They recently pressured Congress not to pass a bill giving autistic people more voice (1). They say they speak for us when in reality, they speak to silence us (15). Autistic people are the only ones who can make decisions about their lives. Can you imagine your parents taking total control of your whole life? Can you imagine them deciding that, because of something inherent to you, you aren’t able to make the choices that will impact your life most? Can you imagine not being told about relationships or sex because it’s expected that you will never have those things? Can you imagine having tape put over your mouth every time you try to speak up, because you couldn’t possibly understand what they’re talking about? These are all things that have happened to autistic people.

Can you imagine going to another planet and being expected to instantly understand everything — the language, the body language, what’s an insult and what isn’t, what’s a joke and what isn’t, what people think of you based on what kind of things they do or say? Can you imagine being completely alone on that planet, with no one who understands why you do the things you do, with no one who understands you and your language, and no one who will make the effort to? Even if you spend years pretending to be from the planet you traveled to, you will always be different, and even if you act like the people from that planet, you will never really have an intuitive understanding of things and you will never be from that planet. That’s what being autistic is like when no one understands.

Autistic people, no matter what they can or cannot do, are people. By saying they want a cure for autism, Autism $peaks is saying they want to kill me and people like me. By compiling this database of autistic genes, Google and Autism $peaks are furthering a cause that will end me and the people who understand me.

That’s why you should care.

“So?” you ask. “What can we do?”

WELL.

Boycotting Google is pretty much impossible! They have made themselves part of everyone’s lives! Boycotting Autism $peaks is already happening, but doing that is good too! The problem is that boycotts aren’t making enough impact! What we really need to do is make this a HUGE DEAL.

Post on Twitter. Post on Facebook. Post on Tumblr. Look for stuff written by autistic people about being autistic! There is a starting list at the bottom of this. Read all you can about autism and Autism $peaks! Raise awareness about this!

Organize a rally! Talk to your government representatives! Use the privilege of being listened to that you have because of being allistic to raise up the voices of autistic people!

We cannot do this alone. We are but a small fraction of the population that those who hate us and discriminate against us and abuse us are already used to silencing. The sad truth of it is, if it’s allistic people talking, allistic people listen to them. Please, speak up. Speak up to those who would eradicate us. Speak up and use your voice to trumpet our truths to the world.

We are autistic, we are disabled, but most importantly we are human. And we are not alone.

 

*Autism $peaks gains traffic from people using their name — thus, this solution, of being clear without generating traffic for them. The name of the organization is actually with an S.

 

RESOURCES:

goldenheartedrose’s post about A$ is a lot more eloquent than I would be about why they’re terrible, aside from this incident. (Their blog in general is a lot about autism, but be warned about swearing! You can check their tag for autism as well as their Autism 101 page and their list of resources!)

queerability is also a pretty cool blog, specifically about the intersection of disability and qu**rness!

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, also known as ASAN, one of the only autism organizations made of autistic people

Ask an Autistic, a blog where you can ask questions regarding autism!

Radical Neurodivergence Speaking, blog posts written by autistic people. specifically this.

Just Stimming…: The Obsessive Joy Of Autism - This post especially, but the rest of their blog too!

Musings of an Aspie, a blog by a woman with autism. Start with her Essential Reading page.

Awareness versus Acceptance: Do Words Matter?

Autistic Hoya

 

CITATIONS and other INTERESTING STUFF (general trigger warning on these links for the terrible things that happen to autistic people):

http://ift.tt/1xFDddz

http://ift.tt/1s1zdnz

http://ift.tt/1pBuDbg

http://ift.tt/1pCHY2Z (please note this link and the link before lead to A$, so proceed with caution!)

http://ift.tt/1gvhRIH

http://ift.tt/MbdC0X

http://ift.tt/1ipFjoa

http://ift.tt/1iEr1Pg

http://ift.tt/1oQBjTu (this website uses a lot of gendered language, a lot of which is not really relevant, but it’s very useful!)

http://ift.tt/1pDf6aT (please note this site in general may contain swearing, but this page does not)

http://ift.tt/1oQBmyv

http://ift.tt/1oQBjTx

http://ift.tt/1dCOzrY

http://ift.tt/1ipFjo9

http://ift.tt/1loJmEg

via:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1ipFj7K

affectingly:

I understand the desire for things to stay civil. But I want you to think about this: Why do you think it is that politeness and civility and calmness are held as the standard for any discourse? It’s because people in power set the rules.

When someone has done something to you and made you angry and you shouted at them, and then got scolded for shouting, was that just about trying to keep things “calm” and “civil”? 

Or is it a tool to take your power away from you? Is it a way to keep the conversation under the control of the person in the wrong?

When the oppressor gets to set the terms for the oppressed to react to their oppression, that is keeping the power in the hands of the oppressor. 

When something has happened to a person (a racist act, a misogynistic one, a homophobic one, an ableist one, etc.), do you think it’s fair that they get angry about that? Don’t you get angry when someone does something hurtful to you?

And it doesn’t matter if you choose to express your anger in a different way than the SJ blogger or minority you’re dealing with. What matters is that, even if you’re really not trying to dismiss their argument, even if all you want is for them to be civil with you, by asking for that, you’re telling them how they get to express their anger with a fucked up, oppressive system.

You’re doing the very thing that people in power have been doing all along: setting the terms of the discourse for YOUR comfort, instead of the oppressed’s comfort.

So yeah, it really sucks to deal with angry people who say “mean” things while getting their point across, and yeah, it hurts our feelings sometimes. But when you’re dealing with someone who has systematically had their power stripped from them within a system that you benefit from if you’re white and talking to a POC, or cisgendered and talking to someone who is trans*gendered, or a man talking to a woman, etc. etc. …is it that much of a sacrifice to accept whatever way they want to deal with their oppression? 

Because I don’t think it is, and not only that, if you don’t like the way they choose to do things, you can click away. You can google the same topics and find all the information. That’s your privilege as someone not directly affected by racism (or ableism or transphobia or homophobia, etc.). And also remember that privilege is intersectional, and just because you may not have straight privilege or male privilege or thin privilege doesn’t mean you don’t still benefit from white privilege or cis privilege or what have you.

It’s not about tit for tat when SJ bloggers get angry. Most people don’t even LIKE getting angry because expressions of anger often leave a person even more exhausted and emotionally drained. Anger and how we choose to express it can be very powerful, though, and in the face of oppression and abuse, people have a right to express it. 

I hope that helps.

—

[this version is rebloggable]

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harmalade:

if you accidentally misgender someone, or say the wrong name, just correct yourself in the same manner as if you called a cis person by the wrong name or pronouns, which is not unknown because we are all capable of verbal slips.

sometimes i accidentally call people my dog’s name, or i call them “mom”

the right way to do this is “[wrong name], excuse me, [correct name]” or “[wrong pronoun], I’m sorry [correct pronoun]”

if you accidentally mess up someone’s pronouns, do not call attention to it by falling over yourself to apologize.

conversely, do not just move on and hope they didn’t notice. they definitely noticed. not correcting yourself is offensive, and pretending that you didn’t mess up is a form of gaslighting.

if you feel like going the extra mile, apologize the next time you’re alone with them, without excuses. say “I’m sorry that I misgendered you” or “I’m sorry called you the wrong name.” 
do not say “it’s so hard, and i keep forgetting! I’m so bad!” trans people hear this over and over, and the message is that they should apologize for being what they are.
if someone close to you has changed their name and/or pronouns, and you’re having a difficult time with it, maybe you should practice at home. 

via:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1sybSog

lesbianese:

When a person of color says that they hate white people, they hate white people as an institution (aka white supremacy/hegemony)

When a woman says that they hate men, they hate men as an institution (aka male dominance/patriarchy)

When a queer person says that they hate straight people, they hate straight people as an institution (aka heteronormativity)

When a trans* person says that they hate cisgender people, they hate cisgender people as an institution (aka gender essentialism/rigid gender roles)

SO WHEN ANY OF THESE PEOPLE SAY THAT THEY HATE ANY OF THESE GROUPS, DON’T RESPOND WITH “NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE/ MEN/ STRAIGHT/ CIS PEOPLE ARE LIKE THAT”. WE KNOW THAT. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU PERSONALLY. IT’S ABOUT INSTITUTIONS AND THE WAYS IN WHICH THEY, AS INSTITUTIONS, OPPRESS US. SHUT THE FUCK UP.

via:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1lsEPRG

I've set it on fire because it's not true.
fyeahcopyright:

Don’t let misinterpretations of the proposed updates to Tumblr’s Terms of Use keep you from tumblr-ing.  (And please check the end of this post re psychfacts’ truthfulness.)

We were away all weekend at a Harry Potter thing at Universal, and came back to an Ask box and email in-box filled with questions about the updates to tumblr’s Terms of Use (and staff post about it), and in a project that reminds us of the times we explained changes to the LiveJournal Terms of Use (sometimes not terrible, sometimes head-deskingly awful, which is why so many aren’t there much anymore), as well as those of Yahool, MySpace and yes, AOL when Usenet became accessible via their proprietary system. 

In other words, we’ve been trying to reduce panic (or, alternatively, foster it) for longer than some of you have been alive. 

Rather than tackle each Ask and email separately, we’ll go through some of the more significant rumors, and invite any follow-up Asks at any time - but we also note that none of this is legal advice, and the copyright laws of your country will vary at least slightly from those in the US. 

Will tumblr now own all the copyright in everything I post or add to a reblogged post? 

No. Tumblr has (always? If not always then at least for the last three years) held a license to host, share, distribute and do certain other things with any content you post. Tumblr could not exist if it didn’t hold those licenses. Tumblr exists so people can reblog and share content!

You - yes you - own the copyright to any original work you post on tumblr (photos, poems, songs) also many if not all of the original elements in your fanworks. You own those rights pretty much as soon as  you create those works. You hold all the copyright - and Tumblr needs you to license some of those rights to them so they can show your content to the world.  They make copies by backing up the site on backup servers; they distribute copies by allowing others to see what you’ve posted, and then others make copies by reblogging what you’ve posted. 

If you don’t want people to reblog what you’ve posted, don’t post it on tumblr. If you do want people to reblog what you’ve posted, they need a license to do so. To put it simply, the Tumblr ToU contains those licenses. It contains them now and it will continue to do so. 

Why did the Community Guidelines change from “authorized” to “allowed” re posting things copyrighted by other people? 

We hope it’s because Tumblr loves fanworks and realizes their importance on the site and to its users. 

If something is authorized, then you’ve been given explicit or implicit permission to do it. If something is allowed, then that might be the case - or the law might allow you to do it. In other words, I’m not authorized by JK Rowling or any of her designees to write Harry Potter fanfic; they haven’t given me explicit permission. I am, however, allowed by US copyright law to write Harry Potter fanfic for a number of reasons (transformative works, fair use, laches). Tumblr is now saying that if I am allowed to post something, even if I am not authorized to post it, their Community Guidelines say it’s fine. 

SQUEE!

BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS, FYEAHCOPYRIGHT? 

This isn’t true, and it isn’t true because they aren’t saying they own your copyright (and as we explain below, little-to-no uncopyrighted work is posted to tumblr). They are not saying they own any of the content you post. They, in fact, explicitly say they do not own any of the content you post. 

At line 140 in Section 6 of the ToU, it says this: 

Subscribers retain ownership and/or other applicable rights in Subscriber Content. 

That means that subscribers retain whatever rights they have when they put something on Tumblr. 

Subscriber Content is defined in the Agreement as Subscriber-submitted/transferred/provided “video, audio, photographs, images, illustrations, animations, logos, tools, written posts, replies, comments, information, data, text, software, scripts, executable files, graphics, Themes and interactive features.”

In other words, you submit/transfer/provide, you still own what you already owned (ie the text on a pic of Doge, your poetry and songs and fanfic and the photo of the hot Butterbeer you had for breakfast yesterday).

How true is this? 

Copyright (in the US, where tumblr and Yahoo are located) attaches to a work - a photo, note, story, poem, song, video - as soon as that work is “fixed” - such as when it’s written on paper, printed out or saved to a hard drive, the cloud or a USB stick - or when it’s posted on a website. And it vests in the creator, unless that creator assigns the copyright away. A license is not the same as an assignment - it means you’re giving someone else some rights, but not all of them. 

WHY does tumblr keep a license to my stuff after I delete my blog and go away?!?

Because someone else may have reblogged it in the meantime. That’s how tumblr works, and why it’s different from sites like MySpace, or how LiveJournal used to be. If someone reblogs your content while your account is live, they have a copy of it - sometimes with their comments on the post or in tags - and to use tumblr the way it was created to be used, the way it has been used for years, they need to be able to hold on to a license to keep using content you submitted to tumblr. 
If you don’t want tumblr users to reblog your stuff or even host it after you leave or delete it, host it offsite and link to it or embed it. Then you keep more control over the content itself. 

But what about commercialization! I don’t want anyone commercializing my stuff!

Given how tumblr exists, you can’t stop other tumblr users from reblogging your stuff on tumblr, or linking to it from other sites. 

There are commercial sites with accounts on tumblr. Tumblr and Yahoo are for-profit companies. Tumblr and Yahoo have been profiting off of user-posted/submitted content since said content was first submitted. 

That’s how the sites work, and why they exist. 

But even if you are ok with Tumblr and Yahoo making money off of your content, what about other sites - those “third parties”? They could be anyone! You might not like them!

True. But as long as they are on tumblr, they can reblog your posts, images, videos, stories, etc - and they can put ads on them, or link back to their site which has ads, or put a link that gets them more followers, etc. 

If you’re not comfortable with the theoretical possibility of that happening with your content, don’t use Tumblr. That’s your decision. 

But it’s been an aspect of Tumblr’s platform for years, so please don’t freak out that it’s some sort of new and weird and evil sudden action. 

What is Poor Man’s Copyright and should I do it with all my stuff right now so tumblr something-something?

Back in days of yore before computers and the internet allowed us to have a machine document the creation date/time of a work, people would mail their original or a copy to themselves in a sealed- sometimes Notary-Public-certified - envelope because it would supposedly confirm the date on which something was created. As the US Copyright Office says on their website, there is “no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration.” Registration is a cool thing to do with stuff you’ve created, and we’ll do a post on it later this week, but whether you have it or not won’t impact anything re tumblr’s current or proposed Terms of Use. 

Kudos and thanks to basilintime for a fantastic summary of the changes with much less tl;dr than our post. 

As of now the panic-generating images posted by psychfacts’ tumblr have almost 60,000 Notes - a bunch of them explain the ToU and contradict the panic, but please reblog this so our (admittedly tl;dr) analysis can be out there. 

ETA re Psychfacts: We don’t know if they’re trying a social experiment on tumblr users, or if they just think it’s funny to post lies and see how many reblogs they get. 

We do know this: Many if not all of the “scientific” terms mentioned in the images on psychfacts’ posts are fake. "Hexodermic radiation"? "Kemblen cycle"? "Sutoamephrine"? NONE of it exists.

It is possible that Psychfacts is experimenting on tumblr users to see how many reblogs they can get for made-up content that’s scary, in contrast to how many reblogs they can get for made-up content that’s soothing or cheerful. If that’s their intention, then they’ve managed over 60,000 reblogs for the scary versus an average close to twenty for things that are not.

It’s possible they’re making stuff up for some other reason. We have no idea. But they are not honest in their posts, and they are deceptive in their post re the tumblr ToU.

via:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1cYJjwc

Reasons why I might unfollow you on Tumblr: I’m following too many people and my dash is gunked up with the same post being reblogged 60 times, either by you 60 times or 60 people all reblogging it I don’t know you or talk to you ever You reblog things that I’m not interested in or that I’m uncomfortable with that I don’t necessarily want to see on my dash Not reasons why I might unfollow you on Tumblr: I hate you and I want you to die and our friendship is over 5ever

http://shamelesslymkp.tumblr.com/post/32504724544/reasons-why-i-might-unfollow-you-on-tumblr-im