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What’s actually wild is that when I have an awkward moment as an autistic person that makes neurotypicals bullies me, the question I always ask myself is:

Did it seem like I fucked up specifically because I’m autistic and misunderstood or did I actually fuck up and their bullying was justified?

I never can tell, and this is why my internalized ableism was always the hardest form of internalized bigotry for me to overcome. I feel like anti-autistic sentiment is so socially acceptable as long as you don’t explicitly make it about autism, i.e. you can get upset with someone for displaying supposed “autistic tendencies,” but you can’t call them a slur or directly poke fun at the fact that they’re autistic for doing so. This is actually true for a lot of forms of bigotry, as I used to work a job where I was the only black person there, and I got harassed in ways that I found very hard to disconnect from how my coworkers may have been perceiving me on the basis of my race. Looking back at these microaggressions, I genuinely believe that if I were white, things would’ve gone a lot better there, but that’s only a hypothetical, so who knows?

I also have this very powerful tendency to feel like my emotions aren’t valid in the context of people getting upset with me, especially if it’s a neurotypical person. If a neurotypical person shouts at me for something and it makes me sad, then my gut instinct tells me “It’s you. You need to stop being sad. The way they treated you is fine. You just need to learn to stop being sad, which is an irrational response on your part.”

There is much truth here.

This explains exactly why these kinds of feelings were even worse and even more frequent before I started using Hexbear. Most people I had interacted with in my personal life beforehand were very invalidating of who I am with no exception. I come from a devout Catholic family, and their misunderstanding and hatred of trans people could comparatively make Matt Walsh look like the biggest trans ally (very exaggerated, I know, but you get the point). I joined Hexbear shortly after going no contact with family members I worked with for roughly 6 years in educating them on how to accept me for who I am. In these 6 or so years, they hadn’t made an iota of progress, and that’s because they didn’t want to. They wanted to either neglect the issue as if that’ll make it go away, and if they couldn’t do that, they wanted to discourage me from embracing my truth because the RCC just didn’t let them do otherwise, so knowing that my truth being embraced and my relationship with these family members were mutually exclusive, I proceeded in the only way I knew how.

There is so much vague messaging thrown out about “accepting yourself for who you are,” but if “who you are” is just too damn beyond what society is okay with you being, then you have to take a step back. You are encouraged to repress these parts and just conform to these standards that society had set out for you from the get-go.

I have dealt with people telling me: “Why do you have to identify as non-binary? Why not just identify as a feminine cis man?” while also, somehow, having people tell me “Why do you have to identify as non-binary? Why not just identify as a trans woman?”

Boxes, boxes, boxes. I’ve been identifying as non-binary for years now. Not only is this identity very accurate for describing my experiences (which are simultaneously very different from what feminine cis men go through and what binary trans women go through), but it’s home. For some ignorant, manipulative bozo to come at me with “identify differently because the way you perceive your identity is too complicated for me and most of society” is such an insultingly unaware take. It is too complicated, and that’s why I cannot simplify it for the sake of appeasing small-minded people.

If I could truly be absolutely content with rejecting my non-binaryness, I would, but I can’t. This always takes me back to finding the whole cursed “non-binary people just do it for attention” take. I have never gotten positive attention for being non-binary. In fact, the closest you can get to describing this is people having to support and comfort me as a response to negative attention I get for being non-binary.

The intersections make it worse and worse and worse. Non-binary identity is hard enough for many people to get on its own, but the fact that it has to be paired with me being black, raised in an immigrant household, neurodivergent, and effectively everything that comes with what being Angel in particular entails means that I have to feel double, triple, or even quadruple misunderstood. Misunderstanding seems to manifest as malice the most. So many people are caught up in believing that they must despise someone’s existence, simply because that existence is not in alignment with what they deem palatable to their sense of society, the world, and human beings. I sit far beyond those things in the context of most people’s minds.

I can’t separate these intersections, and that’s why they’re intersections. When I get people telling me that “being non-binary is a white, western liberal trend,” this is nothing short of proof as to why I can’t help but feel like the bigotry just stacks more harshly than it would if I were merely non-binary but white or if I were merely black but cis. I don’t experience enbyphobia and racism separately. They actively work together to dehumanize me to the highest degree possible, and that’s the issue generating this internalized bigotry the most.

No one wants to listen. They want to use misunderstanding in bad faith. They say “I don’t understand people like Angel,” not because they’re opening the door for someone to explain to them, but because they want to set that as their foundation of why they want to hate me, all while not understanding that this hatred of me benefits no one, not even themselves.

Thank you a whole lot for the recommendation. I only briefly read around the description tonight, but it sounds like an incredible fit for helping me process this pain and isolation, and I will get to reading sometime after I wake up most likely.

🥺👉👈

It most certainly is more special than the approval of bigots. If there’s anything good being this way offered me, it’s the ability to have a based outlook of opposing oppression, since I experienced so much of it firsthand.