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Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
psychologeek

dikebytch asked:

Hi. One of the main characters in my story is autistic, which makes her very particular about certain things (i.e. textures). However, she’s also Jewish, and I’m worried that I might be feeding the stereotype of Jewish women as complainers and nitpickers. How should I avoid this? Her autism does manifest in other ways but none that I found potentially problematic. Thanks!

writingwithcolor answered:

Autistic Jewish character

Thanks for raising this, it’s an interesting point. In order to respect your autistic readers, you’ll want to make sure her sensory issues aren’t written as an annoying choice she’s making. It’s an involuntary physical reaction that will hopefully be described with empathy towards her. In my opinion, this solution should also be fine for avoiding the nagging trope, which is usually about how unreasonable the Jewish woman’s actions are and how inconvenient she is to others.

-Shoshi

A writer you should check out is the late Xan West (z’L), who wrote this experience from the inside with several of their characters. Both heroines in Eight Kinky Nights (which comes with detailed content notes so you can skip the chapters with kink or sex if you prefer and you’re just reading for research), the hero in Their Troublesome Crush, and the heroine of Tenderness are autistic and Jewish. Tenderness I remember this being especially relevant, with on-screen stimming, plus it’s a short story and friendship-only, so this may be the most universally approachable option of the three. Just a heads up that it’s about friends helping the MC cope with being dumped, but it’s very loving.

Generally, there’s a way to approach your character’s needs in your own tone as a narrator that will coax and guide the reader to understand that their requests are justified. That’s more of a writing skill than a diversity skill.

–Shira

One thing we neurodiverse Jewish people LOVE is to look for signs of neurodiversity in Jewish historical figures! Autism is especially easy to read into a variety of different people, places, and eras, and one thing that’s conspicuously missing from problematic depictions of Jewish women is any connection with Jewishness earlier than 19th-century Europe. Looking for and finding positive representation in her own Jewishness can help her be positive representation herself.

-Meir

So everyone has very good points about Jewish characters and writing the internal narration, but I want to raise a different point: how outside characters relate to these sensory sensitivities will need to be established in order to well and truly avoid this stereotype.

Because autistic people are absolutely seen as nags! Sometimes we kind of are, because the only way to get any respect is often to make a huge fuss to play along with stereotypes in order to get accommodations, because the outside world loves to gaslight about autistic experiences. There’s out and out a poem called “Growing up autistic / growing up gaslit” that can shine some light on things.

It will be much easier to avoid any sort of nagging—either assumption or performance—if you surround your characters with supportive people who accept the sensory issues as soon as they’re brought up and don’t force either suffering or escalation, which can very easily be read as nagging.

You’re going to need to create some sort of supportive environment where the sensitivities genuinely don’t matter for social acceptance, because that’s pretty much the only way to avoid getting the character to repeat that they need x over and over and over again.

Even better, if they’re old friends, the sensory sensitivities have already been accommodated long ago and they’re in a routine of just going through it the way the autistic character needs.

If the autistic character is in one of those gaslight-y situations, maybe consider having one of her friends do the heavy lifting of advocacy? Or backing her up in the advocacy. This will help avoid the worst of the “singular person wants something ridiculous” implications that come along with both the Jewish Nag and the Gaslit Autistic presentations.

You’re going to need to do more work than just establish internal stuff to the reader (you don’t specify if this main character is a point of view character, which, if she’s not, will make internal establishing impossible). You’re going to need to look at the environment to see what, if any, factors will create situations that make nagging-like behaviour inevitable. 

Some such situations include:

  • Disbelief that x can produce y
  • Assumptions that it’s possible to tough out (for some of us, btw, it actually is, up to a point)
  • Assumptions that the provided accommodations are good enough (“what do you mean, you can hear x through your headphones? We turned the volume down as low as we’ll put it!”)
  • Conflicting access needs (shockingly common, as even within autistic spheres you can get hypo and hyper sensitive— for example some autistics need bland food because they’re hypersensitive to taste, while other autistics need tons and tons of spices because they’re hyposensitive)
  • People doubling down on doing a thing because they want to stick it to the “snowflake” (basically everyone disabled has some sort of story or knows of someone who has some sort of story where a coworker or clerk purposely tripped the sensitivity because once they found out about the accommodation, they insisted it couldn’t be that big a deal and often landed the person in hospital)
  • Food workers get special mention because, oh my god, the number of them who will not make your order exactly the way you want it because they don’t think you need sugar free or gluten free or anything they consider a “fad” is a lot

You get the gist. And in all of these situations, you either have to leave, or you have to be firm, or, in worst case scenarios, you have to throw a fit to get it fixed. 

Having a supportive environment makes all the difference to establish a person is not a nag or nitpicky by nature, and when they’re in a place where they’re respected, they are totally different people because they’re not constantly stressed out and on the verge of meltdown.

Yes, autistic people can be rigid, and very meticulous, but you can show that happening in positive ways, as well—like them memorizing the favourite things of all their friends and giving it to them when their friends feel down. Or even just having a harmless routine that goes like: wake up, drink orange juice with their multivitamin, then brush their teeth so they don’t taste the juice and toothpaste mix.

Basically, look at the environment on top of the internal. It’s a lot easier to not be a nag when generally respected.

~Mod Lesya

P.S. for anyone who wants to come in and say “autistic” is the wrong term: please don’t. It’s the majority-preferred language by quite a lot of the community, including the WWC autistic mods. 

Published Nov 2021

psychologeek

hi, I don't know if you are still looking - but I'm Jewish and autistic, if you have questions I'll be happy to try answer :)

writer resources autistic character jewish character autism jewish jew jewish women
stealingyourbones
gallusrostromegalus

A Haiku:

📲 💡

🖼️ 🆔 📖 🗣️

🖥️ 📜

[Image Description: Three lines of Emoji, that can be read as:

Icon Idea
Image ID Read Aloud
Online Poetr
y

End Image Description]

deaduncledave

Reminds me of an old internet poem:

< > ! * ' ' #

^ " ` $ $ -

! * = @ $ _

% * < > ~ # 4

& [ ] . . /

| { , , SYSTEM HALTED

The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, as such:

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,

Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,

Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,

Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,

Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,

Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH

luciferhimshelf

OH I GOT ONE AS WELL

Behold, the math limerick:

((12+144+20+3*sqrt[4])/7)+5*11=9²+0

A dozen, a gross, and a score,

plus three times the square root of four,

divided by seven,

plus five times eleven

is nine squared and not a bit more

trickstertime

Only vaguely related but my uncle showed me this one when I was a kid to keep me busy:

image

He wouldn't tell me what it meant for fucking ages

It helps if you read it with a cockney accent. It reads:

'em are spiders' em are

See 'em beady eyes

'em are spiders' em are

zeemczed-blog

Okay, this one isn't symbolic, but...

CIVILI DEREGO FIFTIBUS INERO

DEMIS NOBUS DEMIS TRUX

The intended reading:

See, Villi, dere `ey go. Fifty bus in a row.

Dem is no bus, dem is trucks.

gallusrostromegalus

My dad got in trouble with a Nun in school for that one!

the-witchhunter
stealingyourbones

Short DPXDC Prompts #719

Constantine opens a door in the House of Mystery and walks into a Nasty Burger

the-witchhunter

Danny watched as a blond man walked out of the... maintenance closet? At least that’s what the plaque on the door said. 

He didn’t recognize him. That’s not that unusual, he can’t be expected to remember every single person, but Danny is certain that he has never seen him before. The man looked around for a second, seeming almost confused before shrugging and walking up to the counter and ordering Nasty Deluxe combo. The accent sounded British, and Danny was sure he had never met this man before.

So why was he giving Danny a weird feeling?

It was something dark, oppressive, and almost oily. It lingered after the man got to close. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t a ghost, but Danny wasn’t sure if he was entirely human. 

Then the Brit looked right at Danny. The man grabbed his tray and strolled over to Danny’s table and stood there for a moment.

“Mind if I sit here?”

“I’m actually waiting on some friends.” Danny lied.

“Then let me keep you company until they get here.” The man grinned as he sat down.

“I’m sorry, have we met before?”

“I don’t believe so spooks. I think I would have remembered a fellow like you. Here, my card.” The man pulled a business card out from his rumpled trench coat and slid it across the table. Danny cautiously took it.

“John Constantine, Occult detective, master of the dark arts, and... petty dabbler?”

“That’s me, but you can call me John, mister?”

“Danny, just Danny.”

“Well Mr. Just-Danny. Mind telling me why you were staring me down?”

“I was-”

“Don’t lie now, you’re not good at it, and you weren’t exactly subtle mate. So take it from the top.”

“I really wasn’t!”

“Let me give you some advice. Never play poker, you don’t have a knack for bluffing.”

“Okay, fine. I was looking at you, so what?”

“I want to know why.”

“You came out of a maintenance closet.”

“Ah, fair enough.” The man sat in silence for a minute before taking a bite of his burger. “Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.” he mused.

“Why would it be bad?”

“Danny, the place is called Nasty burger, that doesn’t exactly instill confidence,”

“Yet you still ordered.”

“That I did.” The silence stretched on for a moment as the two sat there, munching their burgers and staring at each other. Danny knew the other man still wanted something from him. There was a look in his eyes, like a man concentrating on a jigsaw puzzle. Danny didn’t like the way he could tell when he managed to make a couple pieces fit.

“Why do you feel like that?” Danny asked, surprising himself.

“Like what?”

“Weird.” John cocked his eyebrow. “Like a dark cloud. Something that clings to you and sets my teeth on edge.”

“Hmmm, well, that could be a couple of things. Maybe it’s the demon blood in my veins.”

“You’re part demon?”

“No.”

“But you said-”

“More like a transfusion. Just something that keeps my healthy in my old age. So yes, it could be that, or, more likely it has to do with all the charms and wards on me and the fact you’re dead.”

“I’m not--” 

“Can it. We’ve already been through all this, you’re a shite liar.”

“... how did you know?” 

“You’re not the first ghost I’ve met, maybe the first one that’s still walking around living, but not my first ghost.”

“Why are you here?”

“Took a wrong turn and ended up here.”

“Yeah right.”

“Believe what you like, but you mind telling me what’s going on around here? This whole place feels like playing with a Ouija board in a cemetery, and that probably means it’s about to be my problem.”

“Why would that be your problem?”

“You read the card.”

“Because you’re an occult detective?”

“Because I’m a petty dabbler, with a habit of walking right in the middle of huge messes in need of a bit of cleaning.”

“You think you can fix things?”

“Depends on what needs fixed.” John looked up and cursed. ‘Can we talk about this elsewhere? My ex just walked in.” Danny looked around confused. The only new person in the store was...

“Johnny! Is that you? I haven’t seen you since college! When we went ghost hunting with Vladdie in that haunted house?” Danny stared on in horror as the man if front of him slumped forward and sighed,

“Hi Jacky. It’s been a while.”

dc x dp dp x dc john constantine danny fenton
witches-bottle
catchymemes

Translation:

UNINTELLIGIBLE, that I'm telling you.

It's not easy birthing a child... It's not easy.

What are you going to do with your children? What will you give them?

Where is your husband?

witches-bottle

I'm not gonna lie, I did this to my baby boy when I saw him mounting a woman in the complex... it was like:

I know that you're of that age where you want to experiment but you need to understand that there's a lot more to this than pump and dump. You're going to be a father. You don't have a job, you don't even have a good credit score. How are you going to take care of the babies if you can't even afford a condom? I'm raising a dignified man, you can't even go and buy wet food for her. So what are you going to do?

cats