Month: December 2015

My thoughts on the topic of tipping that has been happening for maybe a few days or so on Twitter:

(This applies to sit down restaurants in the US and Canada)

• Until this discussion came up, I didn’t  really understand that tipping was paying a server for their service. So let’s just repeat that, heck let’s bold it: TIPPING = COMPENSATION (PAYMENT) OF A SERVER FOR THEIR SERVICE. I wasn’t really told this all my life. Yes, I was told that tipping is required but I wasn’t told why.

TIPPING = PAYMENT OF A SERVER FOR THEIR SERVICE

• Don’t go if you can’t afford to tip. That is unfair to everyone working at the restaurant and it is stealing from the server.
• Tipping artificially lowers the price of food sold at sit down restaurants where tipping is required and passes the extra cost – which should be paid by the restaurants – onto the consumer.
• Instead of tipping, prices at sit down restaurants should be raised to reflect the extra value of the servers and the servers should be compensated with the price increase.
• We have fast food restaurants already – the difference in cost just reflects what happens at each kind of restaurant, and sit down restaurants should be valued accordingly.
• At the moment, tipping culture is in place. I repeat: Don’t go if you can’t afford to tip. That is unfair to everyone working at the restaurant and it is stealing from the server.
• If service from the server is extremely poor, well they still worked for you. TIPPING = PAYMENT OF A SERVER FOR THEIR SERVICE. Don’t pay them too little because of poor service.
• Service does not include intentional oppression or total refusal to change their behavior after being called on unintentional oppression. If that happens to you, it is up to you what to do re: tipping.

Enough with this phrase, abled people. Here’s why:

Everyone has different abilities.

Not everyone has disabilities.

There is SO much you are saying by this conflation, but the most problematic aspect of this is that you are perpetuating the notion that our everyday lives as disabled people/people with disabilities are special because we do things differently.

Actually, no, our everyday lives are mundane most of the time. We do the same things you do, just in different ways. Saying that those different ways equal disability leads to inspiration porn.

From an email by ATTN: about Sandra Bland:

“the responsibility to create a more racially empathetic and tolerant society falls upon all of us”

Nope, not true.

And a society in which race exists, um… Just no. Fuck race.

TW discussion of ableism

By using Disability words that perpetuate the idea that disability is negative, you’re saying that being Disabled is wrong and that anyone being the attributes of a disability is wrong.

These words refer to:

• People with mental illnesses
• People with intellectual and developmental disabilities
• People with physical disabilities
• Deaf/HOH/self identified Hearing Impaired people
• Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired people
• People of any other disability category I did not list here

There is nothing wrong with being a disability. Stop using these words.

Use these words listed instead (under the Non-ableist language section).

TW: mention of CSA

Hearing NT (neurotypical) culture is very indirect. As a neurodivergent person (Deaf, Autistic, ADHD). this often means that I know I have to do something, but I don’t really know why. And I think I understand the purpose of doing it, but in fact I find I don’t really understand when someone explains why to do it.

I once asked someone (a NT) why statutory rape was wrong, They didn’t know, they could only say that it was wrong. The answer is because of cognitive ability to understand adult sex.

I recently learned why tipping was important. I knew to tip, but not WHY. Now I know: compensation.

Gender is the interaction between neurology and culture. Your genitals do not make you male or female, rather your identification with the meanings of maleness and femaleness in the culture that you live in makes you male or female.

A scary thing indeed to witness us in North America not challenging or discussing authority and the extent of trusting authority.

By authority, I non-exhaustively mean:

• doctors
• cops
• heads of state and their political parties
• therapists
• academia
• employers
• any entity whose decisions can impact you for good or bad in very significant ways, and any person running the same

 

The driver is coming back soon. I will have to have a talk with management to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. It almost did once before but a few mins or so later the driver came.

Respectability politics is a set of rules that men, straight people, cis people, abled people, etc (privileged people) think they want women, queer people, trans people, disabled people, etc to follow so that those marginalized people can be respected.

But the root of that is the prejudice that privileged people hold. Marginalized people following a particular rule will never be enough for privileged people – there are always more rules because of that prejudice. These rules are impossible to follow and always neverending.

Examples of rules:

• if you don’t want to get pregnant, don’t have sex!
• Trans women must look like women in order to be treated as women!
• Black people should not be angry!
• Don’t be lazy and you will have money!

I am on the phone with Grocery Gateway, a grocery delivery service. Their driver did not contact me to inform me they were here in the apartment building. Trying to get the driver back.

Fuck you, audism and phonocentrism.