you park in the wrong spot somewhere. maybe at a friend’s apartment complex, or at a store when you’re actually walking somewhere else, or whatever. they could ticket you—still charge you a fine for parking where you’re not supposed to. but instead, in a far more crippling way than a fine (which is already hard enough for low income people), they call a third party and steal your car. so you have lost your means of transportation, which you will only learn the next time you need your car, because they don’t have any need or care to notify you.

so first, you have to figure out which towing company they used. which you can only do if the place that decided your car was in the wrong spot is still open, or if you can get someone on the phone.

assuming you figure out which company towed your car, which one time took me over an hour on its own because the number on the signs warning about towing in the parking lot was a dead number, you then have to figure out how to get there. without a car. god help you if you don’t have someone in your support network to pick you up or public transportation, because most of the time it’s at least a mile away.

you find a way to get there, you call them to see if your car is even really there, and they tell you they won’t give your car back until you pay them. how much? well, it’s not regulated, so they can pretty much say whatever number they goddamn feel like. i recently got towed by a company infamous in my college town and they charged me a whopping $180–half of my paycheck for two weeks during the school year. when the same company towed my brother last year, and we both have the same sized cars, they charged him $300. they don’t have to justify the charge, they don’t have any itemized receipt, because what are you going to do? not pay it? you have to get to work and you’re already short on time because you had to walk to the goddamn towing place or have someone come get you to bring you there or spend an hour on the phone with different people trying to figure out where the fuck your car was in the first place.

it’s extortionate. it’s absolutely insane that they can, without exaggeration, steal someone’s car and hold it for ransom under the assumption that you will pay anything to get it back, because of the extent to which our society is dependent on cars.

This happened to me so we just abandoned the car cuz we couldn't get it out, which means they sold it off. This was way back in 2016/2017 I think.

And a few days ago a debt collector had us served for the almost $10k we still have on the car.

So yeah not only will they steal it and sell it but you will still also have to pay for it anyway.

Because you parked in the wrong spot for an hour or two.

For those wondering, the study is "Walsh, Reubs J., et al. "Brief Report: Gender Identity Differences in Autistic Adults: Associations with Perceptual and Socio-cognitive Profiles." Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 48, no. 12, Dec. 2018" 

queerasaurus-rexx:

terfs keep mentioning the % of autistics who are trans/nb and that we're 'brainwashed'

and because i'm an asshole, i decided to look into why so many autistic folks are trans/nb. it's not an inaccurate statement, at least the first half, but terfs lie through their teeth so i decided to get to the scientific root of it.

the answer blew my fucking mind.

the study on gender and autism i found said two very specific things about autistic people: we are more mentally resistant to things like social conditioning and binarism. we like our secret third things, y'know.

an excerpt:

“The finding that non-binary identities are most elevated seems to support hypotheses focussed on autistic resistance to social conditioning, which are consistent with existing evidence of the same effect with respect to self-description of sexual orientation. Perhaps elevated rates of trans identity in autism might result from a rejection of the binary cisgenderist norm, which combined with a below-typical concern for social norms could promote the disclosure of the identity.”

94% of autistics surveyed for that paper identified themselves as non-binary.

other studies have found autistic people have higher levels of critical thinking, and require more evidence to maintain or convert to a belief system (hence why many of us eventually fall away from religion) than allistic people.

which means, at least from my perspective, that:

a) the 'brainwashing' terfs are accusing the trans community of inflicting on autistic folks would likely not even work if they tried.

b) the current binary definition of gender flies directly against embedded autistic modes of thinking to begin with.

you cannot brainwash someone into thinking something they already believe.

This essentially suggests that autistic people are likely to be NB because we are in fact resistant to the relevant brainwashing.

[copied from a reply by @maxens]

This is SO SO SO important!! The goal of a strike is to end up with a good contract. This is the goal of any action to support a group of workers engaged in collective bargaining, many of whom will never go on strike because they don't have to. Strikes make the news, but they are a last resort when negotiations aren't going anywhere. I want a world where we have fewer strikes and more employers being reasonable at the bargaining table.

"intrusive thought" gets thrown around by assholes talking about putting strainers on their heads or stepping on a leaf who in the next sentence will say "if your thoughts are about actually hurting people they should put you in a psych ward". compulsions and rituals get seen as proof you're "crazy". ocd insight CAN be delusional, even. pocd and sexual ocd is especially demonized, though even something as "harmless" (to others. not *us*) as contamination OCD is still mocked, belittled, and seen as a sign something is fundamentally wrong with you. I have seen people twice my age advocate for violence against anyone who thinks the way I've been forced by my mental illness to think since i was 6, maybe 7 years old.

OCD is not destigmatized.

Wikipedia is a bunch of servers in like a basement

boobs touching, sloppy style, with tongue, etc ..