"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”

and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."

-a 15yo autistic girl experiencing ABA therapy

Source

  • KeriKitty (They(/It))@pawb.socialEnglish
    2·
    8 months ago

    Ohey, familiar. Lately getting that particular bit of equivocation from my own abusive “family” who’ve been threatening everything from having me jailed to having me “institutionalized,” calling the cops on me to evict me without notice, physical intimidation… Turns out “no” is a grievous offense to such people. The whole “children as property” thing is vile, absurd that some clearly think giving birth yields the ultimate entitlement, to an entire person and their life. I wonder if not getting diagnosed is a ‘blessing in disguise’ :| Tried for a decade or two to tell BioMom I thought I was ‘on the spectrum’ but always just got bullied out of ever seeing a doc. “There is NOTHING wrong with you!!” she’d say, every time. So now I’m a wreck 'cause two people screwed and entitled themselves to getting by with this crap (and more besides). I hope that person manages better.

    …Could really use help escaping before I become a data point, actually :-\

  • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    8 months ago

    “If you don’t respect the privileges I think I ought to have in my position in the social hierarchy, I won’t respect the rights I might be willing to grant to someone in your position in the social hierarchy.”

  • kr4ster@lemmy.world
    1·
    8 months ago

    A quote from a book that I’m currently enjoying: “Do you mean ‘respect’ or ‘obedience’?”

    • Icalasari@fedia.io
      1·
      8 months ago

      From a quick search, it’s basically a therapy where, instead of figuring out why the patient is upset, you train them like a dog. And not even the training where you do gentle redirection from bad behaviours. The kind where you whap the “patient” (ie victim) for being “abnormal” so they effectively become a nervous wreck who does as you please to avoid being hurt

  • Lightdm@feddit.de
    1·
    8 months ago

    Isn’t this nearly verbatim from an old tumblr post? Or is that the girl being quoted?

  • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1·
    7 months ago

    Tangential, but relevant I think.

    “And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

    “It’s a lot more complicated than that—”

    “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

    “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—”

    “But they starts with thinking about people as things…”

    ― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

    All too often, people who identify as an authority do so because they think of people as owned things. An ugly situation somewhat ameliorated by Celine’s Second Law “Effective communication is only possible among equals.”