Please be kind to each other
Oh hey, I think I see where the “discussion” that led to the shunning of Surly Amy took place. I’d assumed it was on The Orbit, and there was no way I was going to look for it there, but it seems to have happened on The Orbit’s Facebook wall, where it’s a doddle to read posts by visitors.
So unless there’s another parallel discussion on The Orbit, this is where the Aggrieved ordered the Orbit to shun Amy and The Orbit said okay.
It’s a public post, by the way.
Emily Titon to The Orbit
March 30 at 11:29pm ·I would love to support the Orbit, because some of my most favorite bloggers are on it. But I can’t, not in good conscience, because I have learned that also on The Orbit is someone who was not only ableist but doubled down on their ableism when called out on it – in a pretty spectacular fashion. I have included a link below for reference. Amy Roth hurt a lot of people, and dismissed disabled people, and seeing her and especially the very thing that was ableist in the first place, the thing she was first talked to about – being a part of what is supposed to be an awesome and amazing social justice place – as an award for supporting, no less, and without having ever seen a true apology from Amy, or any sort of a resolution or affirmation that what she did was harmful – it just doesn’t make The Orbit seem very good or very safe.
There are many comments supporting this ludicrous claim.
America Madeleine YamaguchiI am extremely concerned about this as wellm
America did a followup post to say so.
Chris Hall I’m really not sure what the problem is. Amy Davis Roth doesn’t have a blog on The Orbit.
Emily Titon Ah. My mistake then.
But The Orbit shouldn’t be using her creations as rewards though, either, IMO; as you will see at the link, they are the same things that were at the center of things and were ableist. By using them as rewards, it seems to me that The Orbit either was unaware of this and now is and can choose to act or not, or they knew, but didn’t see it as a problem.
It’s a problem when works by someone who is unrepentantly oppressive are being promoted on a social justice site, because that implies that they think or that she is concerned with social justice. Which, if she was, she would have sincerely apologized, and because her apology was sincere, she would not have used the same ableist things as rewards. Or The Orbit would not have used her creations as rewards because that is holding them and her out as good for social justice.
That that shouldn’t happen unless and until she apologizes sincerely for her ableism and works to correct it going forward.
America Madeleine Yamaguchi She is participating in the Kickstarter by providing several rewards.Kassiane Alexandra S. Anyone partnering in any way with someone so wantonly, knowingly, & unrelentingly bigoted is unsafe by association.Mox Sapphire The offer and distribution of those rewards promotes her reputation. The Orbit is signaling their support and approval of her.Alyssa Hillary The rewards from her on the Kickstarter indicates approval. This does not fly.Neeley Fluke Any official word from The Orbit yet?Kassiane Alexandra S. Approximately “tough shit but don’t say we don’t care about ableism”Emily Titon Thus proving you right so far.
I am hoping they will do better. I know they can.
Kassiane Alexandra S. I hate being so often right. I’d love to be proven wrong.Emily Titon I would love for that to happen too.The Orbit All,
We have heard your concerns and your criticisms and we are currently deliberating on the best way to address them. As we are a collective, it will take some time to craft an appropriate response because all members of The Orbit get a say in situations like this. Please rest assured that we have heard your concerns and though the decision making process may appear slow, we are working to resolve this issue.Ronja Addams-Moring Update appreciated — best of luck with the discussions and please be kind to each other.
Ronja Addams-Moring Adding myself to the “official” head count of concerned people. Also: April 2nd is almost upon us, so if any of you have time, reposting articles and memes against Lighting It Up Blue would be very valuable. I’ll add a few links into replies.
Added: I’m neurodivergent and cognitively disabled: ADHD + dyslexia + PTSD.Like · Reply · 2 · March 31 at 11:58pm · Edited
Ronja Addams-Moring Come to think of it: if people are comfortable doing so (seeing as this is a public thread), please add to your comment if you are cognitively or developmentally disabled or if you are commenting because you want to ally. I have personally seen at least two dozen neurodivergent people (I am including what are usually called “mental illnesses” in the ND definition) commenting on this topic in various FB threads, and I think it is important to note and take into account that this is NOT a case of “allies-dominated overkill”.
Marc Godin I don’t consider myself disabled (but do sometimes identify as neurodivergent for anxiety, depression, and addiction issues) and I’m adding my voice in support of reconsidering using surlyramics as a thank you for donating. I’m really concerned that she was considered at all, with my understanding that her history was known to the decision-makers. Others have listed the reasons why, and those who’ve been most hurt by her should be who we are listening to here.America Madeleine Yamaguchi I am neurodivergent. I also consider myself disabled. I am not able to get government benefits, nor do I need them while still under my parents’ roof, but I’m not sure what is going to happen once I lose my parents insurance next year. I definitely am limited in what I can do every day, so “ableism was made up by 4chan trolls” is not a welcome sentiment.Emily Titon It’s a disgusting and dangerous sentiment. Grrr.
And so the left continues to eat their own. I am reminded of a story I read somewhere as a kid about some sort of animal (maybe a tiger?) that started eating its tail, and ended up eating itself all up.
Amy is Pure Evil – apparently there are only two things to be: Pure Intersectional (which means, of course, denying feminism), or Pure Evil. There are no shades of gray, where people can be right about one thing and wrong about another. And there is absolutely no tolerance for people expressing an opposing point of view because they will not only be wrong, they will be evil. End of discussion.
Sounds a lot like fundamentalism to me.
What a horror show. Surly Amy is “wantonly, knowingly, & unrelentingly bigoted.” Surly Amy. Surly Fucking Amy. What color is the sky in these people’s worlds?
Upside: That move to their own network … they built their own cage and now they matches are on. [MONSTER TRUCK ANNOUNCER VOICE] “Only the purest will survive! Who will be the last one standing?”
Christ, these people are acting idiotically. (Incidentally, does that sort of usage let me off the hook? Can I say they are acting stupidly? Pathetically? With lameness? Or will even that usage put me on the Permanently Stained, a.k.a., Truly Unpure, list?)
I bought one of Surly Amy’s pendants for my disabled daughter’s 40th birthday. She wears it whenever she goes out to anything special. Do you think I should tell her how evit the person who made it is or would it be better not to mention it?
The fuck is neurodivergent? Do we really need more jargon to describe mentally ill/autistic people?
You comment on OB’s blog Tony; you’re already irredeemably Evil.
Are they actually trying to act like some sort of stereotype? Are they trying to be as ridiculous and strawman-y as the libertarian/asshole/MRA-crowd always accuses feminists of being? I mean… seriously??? How do these people go through life if they can’t interact with people (or people who associate with people) who once called someone “stupid”?
Okay. Whatever this is keeps showing up so I made the huge sacrifice: I followed a couple of links to try to find out what the F is going on.
Amy was writing a rather good screed against a bunch of trolls DDoSing a feminist site. Mentioning the usual — but nonetheless irritable-bowel-inducing horribleness when it actually happens to the real you! — death and torture threats. She came up with a good design to tell them what she thought of them, and part of that included a panel in which she called them “stupid.”
That, apparently, was enough. “Stupid” is triggering for developmentally disabled people, and that was all that mattered about the whole post.
???
Is this for real? Have I understood this right? Did I miss something? Rape and death threats and the continued millenia-long attempt to silence half the human race is a minor detail. The real problem is calling a bunch of creeps by a pejorative word. Seriously?
When I was a kid I was teased for having a big nose. I would like the entire web in future not to trigger me by using the words “big” or “nose.” Thank you.
This strikes me as the kind of incredibly naive behaviour of someone new to, if not the whole internet thing, then at the very least the blogging thing. You’re not going to be able to please everyone all the time: readers are always going to find something to disagree with.
The level of conformity of thought, and the sheer number of areas to demand such conformity is self-defeating: no-one who writes opinion pieces for a living (or frequently enough) is going to be able to maintain such levels of purity — especially if your writings are critiques of various socio-political and religious issues. It just cannot be done.
Amazing, isn’t it?
Blogs with which you always agree would be very boring.
(Reads #7…)
(Blinks…)
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
(Looks around…)
What?
Blood Knight, I’ve noticed a very rapid slide in usage for neurodivergent from meaning someone who had a diagnosable mental condition/impairment that rendered them markedly different from societies general experience, to someone who thinks they tick off a couple of boxes on the Aspergers spectrum, suffers from depression (diagnosed or not) or even (yikes) identifies as neurologically atypical.
It’s narcissism of the highest order. To state the blindingly obvious, to be divergent you have to be significantly outside the norm. The norm has a pretty fucking huge range. That includes a huge chunk of the population who suffer from clinical depression (PTSD or not) at some point in their lives and who are represented on the spectrum of conditions such as Asperger Syndrome, autism etc.
Of course you are right, Bip @8, it can’t be done, especially if it stops there. But you are missing an important element of the ritual, which is the walk of atonement.
By walking naked while others shout “shame” at you and spit on you, those who sin can demonstrate their willingness to be Ever Pure, even if they sometimes get it wrong, while further acting as role models to others on The Only Way to Make Things Right If You Dare to Cross Dogmatic Lines.
Ophelia’s major mistake last summer wasn’t that she questioned doctrine a tiny, little bit, it is that she didn’t trade a walk of atonement for absolution. She failed to apologize ever-so-profusely, she refused to say the rosary ten times, she wasn’t low enough a person to treat a longstanding friend like shit, and she didn’t sacrifice a child to get her sin forgiven. She had the gumption to not complete the ritual at all.
Surly Amy? Same mistake. It wasn’t that she crossed newly-painted bright neon purity lines, it was that she did not sufficiently do penance and earn atonement. She didn’t complete the ritual, which demonstrated her unworthiness and clearly showed how “wantonly, knowingly, & unrelentingly” bigoted (bigoted!) she is. [I’m still shaking my head at this one.]
The Orbit? Ah, but they are holy and pure. When it was clearly demonstrated that they were associated with a heretic like Surly Amy, they did not hesitate to flog themselves publicly, once again demonstrating how perfectly, beatifically righteous they are. They also, once again, demonstrated their perfect heinousness.
“Stupid” is abelist? What the hell are we supposed to call stupi—er–really really dum–er, can I even use “asinine”?
Asinine seems pretty safe. I think…
When I was reading the Facebook post, they kept moving the goalposts. First of all, they were squealing about a two-year-old use of the word ‘stupid’. When one of them, in the course of their complaint, used the much more obviously ableist word ‘lame’, suddenly the original problem had always been the phrase ‘remember to breathe’.
I’m so glad I read 1984 (in 1972 or 3 if memory serves) and can recognise their tactics.
Oh, and that America woman unfriended me on Facebook after exploding into a sweary rage in PM because I wouldn’t agree with her that ‘uterine person’ was a fair description of anyone.
I’m obviously the wrong kind of trans person to be associating with one of The Pure.
#13 Tony
I was on a road trip last summer when the blow up happened, & have been wondering precisely what Ophelia wrote that some people found so objectionable. Can anyone point me to the blog post with the ‘offending’ content? The first few posts by others complaining about it too would be nice.
This “saying ‘stupid’ is ableist!” thing is wrong in several ways. In my job, I meet a lot of people with various learning disorders including reduced general cognitive ability. They’ll often tell me they feel stupid (dum, since I live in Norway), and they make it clear that to them that means they’re completely, permanently worthless and useless. Should I say that, no, “stupid” is a bad word, we mustn’t use that word? That’s like telling them that they’re right, but we’re just going to avoid the word and pretend that makes everything OK. Instead, I explain how I use the word: “stupid” is about what you do, and we’re all stupid sometimes. If I stay up till 3 playing video games when I have to be at work at 8, that’s being stupid. But calling someone stupid for having a cognitive disability is like calling them lazy for being a paraplegic – pretty stupid.
One assumes Rebecca Watson is well and truly disowned these days.
Jim Baerg @ 18 – it wasn’t any one post. They had to do things like scouring Facebook groups to see what posts or comments I had liked and add those to the indictment, to get it to look thick enough to be worth noticing.
Alex Gabriel’s post is a good enough example of the kind of thing. Later ones by Stephanie Zvan, Jason Thibeault, Dana Hunter, Richard Carrier and many more are even nastier but not much more substantive (although of course as the Facebook-scouring and enraged-post-writing went on, I responded with increasing levels of acid, which padded out the indictment).
http://the-orbit.net/godlessness/2015/06/11/smoke-fire-and-recognising-transphobia/
I wonder how long those will last in the community who accepted Amy’s apology and who remain friends with Amy. If they wear any of Amy’s jewelry, is that okay?
Skimming some of the comments on that post, I see a brilliant passage by Salty Current that is also relevant to this latest shunning, so I’ll just quote it here. SC is replying to “oolon”:
iknklast, I can’ t say I recall that particular story but there was one about a tiger chasing a boy around a tree; the boy shinned up but the tiger didn’t realise so chased round faster and faster until it turned into butter.
The title of that story spawned a new racist term in Britain for black people. The story itself was for infant school-age children (3-6 years), the racists of course were the adults.
I won’t name the story. It would only get Ophelia accused of giving racists a platform and being guilty by association, or some such bullshit.
Sometime in the last month or two, there was a comment at an FTB blog (I think it was Pharyngula, but I’m not sure) to the effect that we shouldn’t use “stupid” as an insult because it implies that there’s something bad about being unintelligent.
I really really wanted to push back on that, but in a rare display of restraint, I just backed away from my keyboard slowly.
Oh, and echoing Rob @12, there’s a lot of folks on the internet who like to diagnose themselves as having “a touch of Asperger’s” because they think it means that their lack of social skills is compensated for by higher intelligence. “Neuroatypical” in theory could be a useful terms, but I suspect is rapidly becoming just another instance of Special Snowflake Syndrome.
<- actually an adult with Asperger's Syndrome (and generalized anxiety disorder) and I really don't like it when people claim they're "a bit 'spergy" or whatever it is that is all the fucking rage. Can't do anything about it though and I sure as fuck don't spend all the time shaming people when they use "neurodivergent" to describe their special little selves (though maybe I should).
@ 23 Ophelia Benson
You liked it at the time. ;-)
(But I agree it’s worth repeating.)
Maddog1129 (and that username? I hope you realise you’ll be first against the wall?) it is the politics of the bully. It is nothing else.
It seems strange at first, this insistence of a few vocal people to pretend talking for the silent majority, for all the hypothetical people (I say hypothetical because they are silent and cannot be counted) hurt by the unthinking Amy. But for a very young organisation like the Orbit it is also a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: readers who may have been interested in such a site simply don’t have the investment, the history to motive them to keep up with it in the face of such a shitstorm over nothing. Most people also don’t really pipe up in these kind of situation. They simply vote with their feet. So the very vocal people, the instigators of the show-trials, will eventually speak for the majority, because they will be the only ones left.
This is how many politically left-leaning movements die: as if the search for purity inside the movement was far more important than anything that could be accomplished outside of it. It is an adolescent preoccupation and ideally would be treated as such: with disdain. (I am acutely aware, though, that it became less and less possible every year. The kids are getting louder all the time. Most of the abuse on the internet is the doing of teenagers, or the teenage personalities we seem to be encouraging more and more. All of a sudden their voices are given weight when they used to be dismissed as immature, and my, how they enjoy it, “how they grabbed it”!)
But ultimately it is about power. Because that need, that search can be manipulated by more astute people to gain ascendency. Hence the public accusations, the show trials; because what good would a quiet word in one’s ear do? A mail or a message on the back channels of either FtB or the Orbit? No, it has to be public, there needs to be an element of fear.
Silentbob, I think Ophelia likes it now also.
BOOGERWEASELS!
WEASELBOOGERS!
[Marc Godin] I don’t consider myself disabled (but do sometimes identify as neurodivergent for anxiety, depression, and addiction issues)…He identifies as neurodivergent, sometimed, and we all know that identity cannot be gainsayed. Oh my fucking god, first there was genderfluid for the special snowflakes of the genderwars, but now Marc Godin has invented neurofluidity.
#18, #21
Not only were past posts and comments and such dredged for evidence, but people were also suddenly recharacterising their own memories in the light of this new Ophelia Is Evil trend. ‘Oh yeah, I remember when she said […], I thought nothing of it at the time but now I realise her transphobia was staring us in the face the whole time!’ And just like that, she went from ‘outspoken, acerbic feminist’ to ‘problematic all along’.
@ 29 Rob
Me too. That was a ripper of a comment.
I’m sorry, and I apologize. That above comment was entirely mustelid-phobic, not to mention oppressive to those currently dealing with the heartbreak of nose wax. I am mammal-typical, and have clear nostril passages; my language use is violent against stoats, badgers, skunks, not to mention cerumen.
Please remind me to excoriate myself again in two years.
(“Nose wax is not a *heartbreak*, you wanton, knowing, and unrelenting bigot!”)
Skunks will actually help clear your sinuses. And lungs.
@ 31 Holms
There’s a comment on that Kickstarter update Ophelia linked to:
“I don’t know anything about this, but having read about how awful Amy is I was considering pulling my pledge!”
*facepalm*
Wow… just wow…
“I hate being so often right”
hahahahaha
@ 37 Cressida
Don’t laugh. You’re showing your neurotypical privilege. Do you realise what us infallibly right people have to go through?
I’ve asked my doctor if they can prescribe some drug that will make me occasionally wrong, but — as you can see — so far to no effect. I’m stuck being right all the time whether I like it or not. And your jeering only adds to my marginalisaton. So cut it out, and spare a thought for those of us cursed with incurable rightness.
Ah, The God delusion ^
;-)
It’s surreal. Indeed, the whole thing reads almost like a satire and I can only wish it were one.
For me, it’s not at all about whether “stupid” is in fact ableist. I’m perfectly happy with someone avoiding the term on his/her blog (or on a group of blogs) – what I say in such situations is “your blog, your rules”. Sure, I may consider your reasons unconvincing, but it’s not the point: as far as I’m concerned, in your own, private space you can still follow such linguistic practices until drunk with bliss. Moreover: by itself, it doesn’t make your place uninteresting or not worth visiting, no. Even if your “reasons” look to me like mere whimsies, I do not put too much weight on this. Of course, you can have your idiosyncrasies, why not! I certainly do have mine and when in your place, I’m perfectly ready to accommodate.
But with Surly Amy, this line was crossed and it’s not any more about a group agreeing on the language to be used in their space. On the contrary, the shunning of Surly Amy not only implies the indisputable validity and objectivity of the group’s standards, but also puts all the opponents beyond the community of “decent people like us”. Inknklast in #1 summed it up very nicely: “there is absolutely no tolerance for people expressing an opposing point of view because they will not only be wrong, they will be evil. End of discussion.”
It is a very sorry affair, especially that I view some of the Orbit blogs as excellent reads.
What I find intriguing is that you’d think an obvious comeback would be: “You may object to something Surly Amy said a couple of years ago, but right now she’s donating her artwork to support us, maybe that should inform your judgement about which side she’s on.” Clearly it did not occur to anyone at Orbit to respond that way.
They will eat each other, one by one.
I don’t know that she was donating it. I mentioned that I suspect she gave them a deep discount, but “suspect” is all that is, based on her history of generosity that way. But whether she was selling it at full market price or giving it away free, another obvious comeback would be “Do you seriously think that one item from two years ago, even on your own harsh interpretation of it, is enough to cancel out everything else about Amy? If so, why? WHY?”
‘Diverse’ and all its derivations is SUCH a magic word that we have foolish neologisms like ‘neurodivergent.’
I am NOT ‘sight divergent’ dammit! I am blind. Having one eye is LESS than two, not ‘different.’ Having a 75% retinal detachment means I have 12½% of the light-receptor territory that I was born with. The effort spent on policing the speech of strangers is 100% wasted.
A 24/7 culture of sleazy euphemism is NOT ‘intersectional,’ it is self-sabotaging. It is an echo of the crazy language called ‘Pentagonese’ during the Vietnam War. ‘It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it,’ was the most famous example. Creating a ‘safe space’ where no one has to think about Bad Things is infantilising.
The word “safe” seems to pop up quite a lot in those posts.
What does that word even mean?
Thinking more and more about this, and I can’t escape the notion that the scenario:
Assholes harassed outspoken women -> Amy said something arguably but inadvertently harmful in response -> others objected -> Amy apologized -> [play Jeopardy theme for two years] -> Amy is therefore a bigot
…has way less factual justification than the scenario:
Assholes harassed outspoken women -> Amy said something arguably but inadvertently harmful in response -> others seized on that while ignoring the context of harassment -> The Orbit backed those others up -> The Orbit is minimizing attacks on women.
Why, then, are we talking about whether someone’s use of “stupid” two years ago is ableist enough to demand shunning, and not about whether The Orbit is lending aid and comfort to harassers of women by piling on their targets?
Shmear Rouge. I do declare.
Hey, maybe Amy could do a colorful pendant on such a theme and submit it for some kind of consolation?
Jib Haylard, ‘safe’ means nobody belonging to the categories we decided to care about is ever going to be insulted or antagonized in any way. Anyone else is fair game.
Johm the Drunkard, how do you feel about figurative use of the word ‘blind’? Is it ableist to say ‘you have to be totally blind to not see the irony in having an SJW community attacking a person with a long history of fighting online bullying’?
On the original topic, being of lower intellectual capacity does not make one a bad person or otherwise not worthy of having around. Causing damage by not using the mental capacity one does have is the problem. Is there a term for the latter that does not imply the former?
There’s a lot of folks with selective memories floating around Orbit. It was only as recent as one year ago, maybe less, that the gendered slur was the cause du jour in certain places. To refer to somebody as a twat or tit was not allowed because it was demeaning to women; prick and dick were equally banned because they were demeaning to men.
Not once did I see any of those Social Justice Whingers point out that men can have vaginas and women can have penises; I wonder why that was? Could it be that trans issues weren’t ‘trendy’ enough a year ago? It is especially confusing because many of those who were doing the bulk of the screaming and shouting and tearing the ‘sexist shitsmears’ new ones for using gendered slurs not only became ‘experts’ on trans issues overnight, but also now claim to be trans or gender-fluid themselves.
I make no conclusions about any of what I’ve just written, but will say to any of those hypocrites (whoops! Conclusion) who might read this: grab your coats, the next bandwagon is just around the corner. There are lots to choose from – there’s never a shortage of people who need to be patronised and defended by others who haven’t the faintest idea of the problems but who will magically feel their pain, by osmosis, probably – so if you’re not sure which one to climb on, don’t worry, just look to your leaders. Not sure who your leaders are? Just follow the sound of the loudest shouters (with apologies to the deaf and hard of hearing.. Genuinely).
Anat #49: one could have such a conversation, sure, but I wouldn’t call it “the original topic”. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the original topic was about unilateral decisions to the effect that the conversation is over and the time has come for drastic measures (namely, for eating each other – see SAWells #41 ).
All of this looks to me like a guaranteed, fool-proof method of producing thousands of powerless fundamentalist sects. This is the past, the present and the future of the left. I’m saying this with a lot of bitterness. At present there is no “left” worth its name in my country.
On the original twitter discussion, when Amy was first confronted over her use of a poem that included the word “stupid”, someone calling themselves ‘ischemgeek’ chimes in – the interjection requires no further comment from me.
13 Feb 2014
@SurlyAmy Stupid, IME, is polite-company “r*****d.” I say as a person who has been called both.
Chris Clarke @45, I wish they would just come out and admit it by making it their slogan:
“The Orbit: Lending Aid and Comfort to Harassers of Women by Piling on their Targets”
Because they haven’t met an intersection that wasn’t more important than women. Er, I mean non-males.
Chris @ 45 –
Very good question.
Mind you, I’ve thought of that as the subtext all along (“all along” meaning since last summer) – the shunning of me absolutely stank of lending aid and comfort to harassers of women by piling on their targets. The shunning of Amy is more of the same.
Chris & Ophelia, I’ m sure they can clear their conscience by saying that they’re harassing ableists and transphobics, and that the sex of the ‘offenders’ is neither here nor there.
Maybe they’ve changed the definition of hypocrisy to mean ‘other people’s behaviour, never our own’.
Yes, of course I want to preserve the forests. I’m just cutting down some of these trees that are blocking the view.
Re ‘neurodivergent’ and so on: not infrequently, when dealing with people who concern themselves with certain issues especially (and frequently on many sides thereof; nonbelievers by no means have any kind of monopoly on a certain flavour of self-absorbed assholeishness, notwithstanding the frequently comically unself-aware attitudes on this certain more numerous and culturally dominant interests tend to absorb and propagate clearly without about as much reflection as they give to, well, pretty much everything else), I am endlessly reminded of Nemo meeting the class…
Forgive the probably now obscure pop culture reference (if it is, feel free to look, it up), but the encounter goes, roughly: ‘One of my tentacles is a little shorter, but you can’t really tell/I’m H2O-intolerant/I’m obnoxious…’
… I note this odd parallel with a certain weary and conflicted affection (and even commiseration), honestly, most days. If, lately, in certain cases, more conflict, less affection. And the temptation to answer stuff like ‘I’m neurodivergent’ with simply ‘Are you sure you’re not just obnoxious?’ is pretty intense.
On the obnoxious thing, there should probably be some online test. I bet it’s underdiagnosed.
(/And just think how awesome that would be. People could come to you with ‘This web test sez I’m x on the autism spectrum… I’m MBTI this, I’m authoritarian that, this percentage a sociopath… And you could proudly, say: ‘I’m about 80% obnoxious. Most Tuesdays, especially.’)