Thread by @mykola

There’s no such thing as “too sensitive”, there’s just chronically unheard.

There are power dynamics in play in all of our interactions everywhere that are informed by race, class, gender, neurotype, etc.

Those of us who are white or male or etc enjoy power we didn’t ask for.

We can’t escape those dynamics, can’t choose to put that power down. We can’t choose not to be intersectionality empowered.

That’s what privilege is.

Privilege is the freedom to ignore something. Lack of privilege means having to deal with it.

A lot of people with privilege think they can just ignore that privilege, thereby making themselves just like anyone who doesn’t have it. “I don’t use my white privilege” they may think.

But ignoring the fact that you’re ignoring things is actually just doubling down.

We have a crisis right now, and it’s been brewing for a while, on #ActuallyAutistic twitter. A large portion of our BIPoC community feel unheard, spoken over and misrepresented.

These are the things we fight against, ostensibly. But here we are, speaking over and for.

And white people we’re so bad at this. We get told “hey that’s kinda racist” and how often do we respond by melting down and running away instead of saying “yikes, thanks for telling me!”

That second response is hard BUT THAT’S TABLE STAKES! It’s the minimum commitment to play.

And the intersection with neurodiversity is *hard*, of course it is, that’s what intersectionality means.

As autistic people we are routinely misunderstood and accused of saying things we didn’t mean. That’s a thing.

But this gets complicated by intersectionality:

If I’m used to people misunderstanding me, I’m used to talking through it and clarifying what I meant.

But if some marginalized group calls me in on something problematic, explaining what I meant is the wrong solution.

They’re telling me how what I *already said* hurt them.

The correct thing to do here is to stop explaining what I meant and thank them for the call-in.

I gotta interrogate my biases seriously and consider what they’re saying, because it’s not a debate it’s them informing me that I caused harm.

This is easier said than done when tempers are high, when you’re emotionally invested, when listening to the hurt means listening to people tell you your behavior was racist or harmful, etc.

I find myself increasingly good at it in most domains, but it’s still very hard.

I don’t know where I’m going with this except to say that we all have to do better, white autistic twitter. It’s not enough to not be racist, we need some anti racist actions.

Anti racism 101: get rid of the idea that only certain people are racists and understand that all of us have internalized white supremacy and that it manifests in myriad ways. Including you.