Thread by @AutieAdorableMC

Constantly thinking about how capitalist society structurally excludes and harms me as a neurominority, and how Westerners spent 500 years systematically eradicating societies that could have taught us how to *not* structurally exclude neurominorities.

💔 Heartbreak.

It's annoying to see Conservative and centrist types who believe that this is just how things always have been and the only way to live. That only *wage* labour is valuable. The individualist bootstrapper mentality is a symptom of urbanisation and white supremacy.

I know my family history. They were poor Yorkshire sheep farmers and cottage weavers who moved to the city factories during the industrial revolution, then spent 200 years rolling around like broken cotton reels at the bottom of society with our "undiagnosed" neurodivergences.

I don't romanticize the past. I don't believe in golden ages. Rural living/agriculture was difficult, dangerous & before penicillin, but at least we didn't have structural bigotry to contend with. We'd have been less likely to be locked up in urban psychiatric institutions, too.

Suddenly the support system of a whole village turned into only having a support system that reaches as far as an urban nuclear family, if you're lucky. This was the beginning of structural disadvantage for neurominorities who often need a lot of support, often invisibly.

And because people didn't stray far from their villages, that support was probably supplemented by there being other neurodivergents in the village too (the genes being shared), so neurominorities could support each other and cultivate a micro-culture.

Village/rural labour would have been more flexible, less dependent upon a big bully boss or narrow office goals; even the passage of time was non-standardized, slow and steady.

This peace and flexibility would have been healthier and more accommodating of neurodivergent work.

Capitalism's response to disability was to create a paternalistic welfare state where one has to "prove" one deserves a bare-minimum income to live; the burden of proof disadvantages invisible disabilities/neurominorities. And workism means claimants are demonized as non-workers.

The allistic mass education system was built to feed this neurotypical workist economy. Originally basic education for factory work, then better education for office work.

The consequence : neurodivergent trauma, non-completion & poverty.

Basically, I feel trapped in this society. I played the game as far as I could, plotted a neurotypical career and attempted to launch into workist society, but it almost killed me.

Now I'm burdened by the thought/accusation that I didn't try hard enough.

I've gained a lot of wisdom from the struggle and from listening to non-Western cultures that have been harmed by white supremacy, but no matter how hard I try I can't stop feeling guilty for not contributing to workist society. I'm a burden on the also-struggling taxpayer.

Workist society makes working class/middle class people resent their "dependents", the welfare claimants. We're pitted against each other. They're socially conditioned & encouraged to hate me. Their ableist bigotry is a catharsis for them. Easy, socially sanctioned scape-goating.

One of my life goals is to unlearn this existential guilt.

For my sanity. My health. And my human right to a happy life.

I'm not a burden. Society is just structured in a way that frames me as one.

#ActuallyAutistic