That someone is in a position to be the president of a board in an organisation supposedly designed for advocacy when they have engaged in a systematic bullying campaign for a long period of time is absolute trash.
Your disability can cause communication difficulties with others.
Even if the other person shares your disability (or doesn't). Your disability , your trauma, does not give you a free pass to continually inflict trauma on others. People have a right to safety.
Yes, your disability, or your trauma, or both, may make navigating complex social situations difficult to navigate, but if someone says to you "This is really hurting me, please stop" or as we teach our kids to advocate "Stop it, I don't like it" - then you should stop.
I'm not talking about valid critiques- calling out/in, those discussions can and should be had within any community, I'm talking about bullying, and in particular, the weaponising of white fragility which is clearly apparent here.
It isn't easy to sit with your own white fragility. To examine defensiveness as it rises, to be curious about why it is there, to learn that you need to do that - and not everyone has the capacity to do that. Which is ok. What is not okay is being racist towards a woman of colour
I acknowledge my own privilege in this thread, I am white, I am a cis woman, I am (mostly) able bodied, I am university educated. I have attended many years of private therapy to deal with my trauma, my mental health - and still trying to settle into this language - my disability
Identifying as disabled - is something I struggle with, in part due to complex trauma, and in particular the way it manifests in my understanding of myself and my place in the world (am I disabled or disabled enough, or am I just a failure?)
The point of that brief segue is that I am pushing into discomfort by talking about this issue, because I have long internalised my position as an ally, not as a disabled person
No one is demanding that a neurodiverse person understand every nuance of social engagement, but there have been multiple expressions of how harmful and anxiety inducing this lateral violence is, and they have not only been ignored the tactics have escalated.
It is wilful abuse.
And it must stop.
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