I was inspired by @the-nobody-tournament’s contestant 43 to write a post about selective mutism (SM). This post will include information that I have gathered through research as well as my own experiences. I will include links to some resources at the end.
SM is an anxiety disorder categorized by an inability to speak under certain (or select) circumstances, usually social settings and often when they are expected to speak. The failure to speak can appear as complete silence or whispering, and the person might use non-verbal or non-vocal methods of communication, such as signing, writing, or gesturing. Some additional symptoms of SM include fleeing from stressful social situations, crying, and physically freezing up.
SM is largely considered to be a childhood disorder, usually developing in early childhood and fading out as the child gets older, though it can develop in older persons or persist into adulthood (my own developed in my late teens). As such, most resources focus on SM in children and diagnostic guides refer to the patient as a child and focus on SM related to school.
There is no singular known cause for SM and it is considered to be multifactorial. Some theories include that it is caused by a heightened freeze response linked to social anxiety or by dissociation linked to traumatic stress.
From an exterior perspective it can appear that the person experiencing SM is choosing to be silent. In fact, it was once called elective mutism because psychologists believed that the children were choosing to be silent as a way to punish their parents. Of course, this is completely wrong - in fact, the person experiencing SM often wants to speak but is literally unable to.
When dealing with someone with SM, you should avoid putting them in highly stressful situations and be aware that their failure to speak is involuntary. The last thing you want to do is get mad at them for having SM because that can exacerbate their symptoms and lead to a total shutdown of communication.
Here are some resources on selective mutism:
- American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
- What is Selective Mutism by the Selective Mutism Center
- Complete Guide to Selective Mutism by the Child Mind Institute (you can listen to this article)
- NHS
This is not an exhaustive explanation of selective mutism and I highly suggest that you do your own research into it.
based off of @navysealt4t’s post :3
saw a post the other day that said that psych survivors were overexaggerating and fearmongering for saying that people should be aware that having diagnoses on your record can be a danger + impede your life. and the more i think about it the more annoyed i am. because i think people need to know that there are exceptions to health privacy laws that can make having psych diagnoses and psych hospitalization history on your record risky depending on your circumstances. diagnoses follow you through your health interactions-you do not have to consent to have your information shared between providers. judicial proceedings are also an exception to the HIPAA privacy rule, so for things like custody battles, guardianship, getting orders of protection--the court can petition for medical records. there's so many other situations where even if they can't legally access your information without your authorization, people will require you to disclose diagnoses, records, previous hospitalizations and refuse to give you services/hire you/whatever unless you share that information with them. for example in many states anyone (a provider, a cop, friends and family) can disclose that you have certain psych diagnoses like bipolar to the DMV which then might require that you undergo drivers license review as frequently as every 3 months. my university is actively trying to kick me out right now because i had to disclose my medical record, psych diagnoses, and hospitalization history to them as a requirement to stay enrolled.
and i don't want to scare people or make people think that having a diagnosis on their records is automatically going to mean that it is weaponized against us. because i do know plenty of people who have never faced issues with their records. but i do expect that the community supports the people speaking out about the ways that we have been harmed by diagnoses creating barriers to accessing necessary parts of our life. instead of attacking us or saying that we're lying about things we are currently experiencing.
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people with undiagnosed physical disabilities
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people with undiagnosed mental disabilities
Happy disabled pride month to mobility aid users
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people who are in constant pain
Happy disabled pride month to AAC users
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people with ableist family
Happy disabled pride month to fat disabled people
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people with scars
Happy disabled pride month to disabled addicts
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people who's disability is progressing
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people who love their disability
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people who hate their disability
Happy disabled pride month to disabled people with underrepresented and/or uncommonly known disabilities
Happy disabled pride month to all disabled people. I love you. /p
I could talk RPG design forever…
Please do. I love RPG design shit
As we enter July in a few days I'd like to remind everyone that it's Disability Pride, Acceptance, and Awareness Month. We don't have to pick one. We shouldn't pick one. The needs of disabled people are just as diverse as the people themselves. Even people with the same disability will want the focus to be put on different things and that's ok and good. Let disabled people use this month for whatever we want to use it for.
hey writers if you want to make a metaphor for racism, please maybe remember that racism is literally based on nothing. Africans weren’t enslaved en masse because the Robo-Musa threatened to destroy the world, they were enslaved because it was economically rewarding and politically convenient. If at any point your allegory for racism includes “so <oppressed group> did this major catastrophe and” then you have not only missed the point but you are literally reinforcing the ideas that racism have let racism self-perpetuate (that e.g. black people are naturally dangerous and violent and must be contained or begrudgingly accepted by the Nice White People)
i know 196 is a reddit thing but like. what does it mean. what do those numbers represent
r/196 is (was?) the successor subreddit to r/195.
r/195 was just a place for some roomates to post memes, and it was named after their apartment number. There was only one rule: if you visit the sub, you must make a post before leaving. The sub eventually grew in popularity, the original members couldn't keep up with the demands of moderating it, and they closed it down. Soon after, r/196 was born and eventually far outgrew its progenitor.
r/196 also kind of just organically grew into a left-leaning, LGBTQ+ positive space. This was possibly helped because at the start, the only available user flair (a little phrase or icon that appears by your username on posts and comments) was "trans rights".
oh my god the king of norway from 1046 to 1066 harald iii aka hardrada hi thank you so much welcome to tumblr in the year 2023
Thank you, my thane, for the kind welcome! If only the rest of my subjects were as loyal as lathiat! Truly all that other vikings know today is how to polish their armor and drink mead. They can't even navigate by the stars or raid a monastary!
hahaha! *quickly glances at harald iii of norway's wiki*
couldnt be me! im extremely loyal and i love invading places for my king! *wipes sweat from my forehead*
reblog if you fully and intentionally are referring to aspec people as well when you use the word queer to refer to the community
my partner once said, "if you have to explain your sexuality to straight people, you're probably queer"
Concept: A supervillain with a complete mismatch between their outfit, their name, their powers, and the puns they make.
Like, they’d have a blue and yellow outfit with lightning patterns, but their powers are to control glass and plastic, their name is Master Inferno, and they make bird puns.
Concept: A glassblower with a car that has lightning decals who is well known for their bonfire parties and does birdwatching in their spare time.
Today's hot take:
Men... Can be oppressed.
They can be men of color, or disabled, or queer, or Jewish, or poor, etc.
"Men aren't oppressed" is a nonsense statement. Being a man does not exempt men from being marginalized in other ways.
Men as a class are not oppressed. Thats what feminists mean when they say men are not oppressed. Being marginalized in other ways does not negate their male privilege or the truth of that statement.
I'm a feminist. I don't say "men are oppressed" because I don't think there's any way you can phrase it or modify it to make it actually true for all men. I also don't even believe "men as a class" is a useful descriptor, because... well, I'll get into it.
So the thing is that dropping the "as a class" part off the phrase "men are not oppressed" means people think you're saying "men (as individuals) are not oppressed", and that's how you get people who say "men (as individuals) can never be oppressed".
So one of my protests here is against the generalized language where people aren't making it clear if they're talking about "men (as a class)" or "men (as individuals)".
And no, I do not think we should "just assume" what someone means specifically because that muddies the waters, and folks take advantage of that.
If you just assume and never clarify, then people can either trick you into saying you agree with something you're actually against, or they can intentional misrepresent what you're saying to others.
For example, if a radfem says "Men can't be oppressed", she means that both on a class basis and on an individual basis. Many radfems literally do not think it is possible for men to be oppressed, period.
But!
Even saying "men as a class aren't oppressed" isn't quite right.
I'd say the closest-to-correct way to phrase it would be:
"Men, as a class, are often privileged for being men, but can also be oppressed for being men when their manhood intersects with other marginalized identities."
Like. It's just quite literally impossible in any way to say "Men as a class are not oppressed for being men". Because there are men who are oppressed for being men. So either those men don't belong to "men as a class", which is a whole barrel of worms,
OR
we should just stop saying "men can't be oppressed".
Try out "Men as a class are privileged".
I think that gets across what you're trying to say much more clearly with implying that like, marginalized men aren't oppressed. Because someone can be privileged and marginalized at the same time, even for the same identity (manhood, in this case).
Thats a a lot of word salad to say you dont understand basic feminist principles despite calling yourself one. If you dont agree with the statement that men are not oppressed for being men, that men and women are distinct classes, and that men oppress women on the basis of our sex then you are not a feminist (which is fine). But one of absolute basics of feminist analysis is talking about men as a oppressor class.
Trans men are oppressed for being trans men, not just for being trans. Black men are oppressed for being black men, not just for being black. Gay men are oppressed for being gay men, not just for being gay. And that's just three examples.
In all of these cases, if the person ceased being a man, the oppression would change and in some cases completely go away.
We can talk about "men as an oppressor class" but saying "men aren't oppressed" with no clarification as to whether or not you are speaking about "men as a class" or "men as individuals" is inherently unclear and only contributes harm to these discussions.
And to be quite frank, I don't think there is a monolith "men as an oppressor class". I don't think there's a monolithic "women as an oppressed class" either for that matter.
Your gender or sex does not, in fact, determine if you're the most oppressed person in the room.
Gay men are oppressed for being GAY. If they were straight men the oppression goes away.
If a black man was a black woman shed still be oppressed for being black.
Ffs
Yeah and if he were a cis woman the oppression would go away, too, because now he'd be a straight cis woman.
Gay men are oppressed for being men attracted to other men.
Their manhood is an integral part of why they are oppressed. If they were not men, they would not be gay in the first place.
You can't be a gay man without being a man.