Being intellectually disabled doesn’t preclude you from being an asshole, and to imply as much is kinda insulting to their humanity.
I’ve known many (and am related to one) many intellectually disabled people, and while most of them were nice, I’ve met a few who were raging assholes (one of which was given an assigned seat on public transportation because he constantly bothered high school kids and the driver was sick of it). The intellectually disabled are human and aren’t necessarily good people just because of their diagnosis; they’re just people who have personality flaws just like the rest of us.
quixotic120@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Eh, it’s a spectrum like any other diagnosis (albeit deprecated). I’ve worked with intellectual and developmental disability for much of my career. I do more general outpatient now but the beginning of my career was almost solely ID/DD
I would argue it’s just as harmful to paint ID individuals as the “happy friendly” caricatures to sanitize them. They are dynamic and multifaceted. They have good and bad days, they are sometimes nice and sometimes mean. Some more than others. As a result some are just kind of jerks, frankly. And to be honest this is kind of fucked up but from my time working in inpatient residential I can tell you that it’s not unlikely that the people you encountered in the gym were on the “good temperament” side, or having a good stretch in their lives. Generally the people who were having a rougher time didn’t go out into the community as much, especially to a place as potentially dangerous as a gym
That said I truly don’t think Elon is intellectually disabled. I think he is possibly a sociopath who equates that to Asperger’s because he thinks it’s cool and mysterious since he’s emotionally stunted and stuck in his 14 year old edgelord phase for life, apparently. But I don’t know, never met the guy
GrymEdm@lemmy.world 1 week ago
That’s an interesting addition and I have no reason to doubt you. It’s quite possible the people I saw regularly were there exactly because they were inclined to be friendly and happy. It probably also helps that they were closely accompanied by professionals. I can only comment on my experience with them, and what I wrote accurately describes my time with them at the gym.
I honestly don’t know if I agree that it’s harmful to relay my couple of years interacting with the intellectually disabled as I did. It’s definitely the truth of my experience, and I would like people to see the same value I discovered. At the same time I can completely believe it’s not the whole truth, and varies by individual. I’d definitely insist on my point that even the nasty folks aren’t doing anywhere near as much damage to global society as Elon Musk.
Do you think I should change my post? And if so how, given what I’ve written in this reply?
quixotic120@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I don’t think your post is bad or wrong. If I’ve worded my post ambiguously in a way that makes you feel attacked that was not my intention and I apologize; I do see how this could be the case re-reading it. I stream of consciousness post mainly. I intended to clarify your experience, which is why I started with the drawing of the spectrum and then in the second paragraph drew the argument without any specific citing of anything you said (but again re-reading this I can see how the ambiguity could read as inflammatory)
That said (and this is my opinion) I do not think your post should be changed; I generally do not think that any post should be changed so that the dialogue exchange can be preserved for others to see how things evolved. I believe there is a great deal of value in not just saying “this is the rule” but also exposing exchanges that clarify why “this is the rule” (though to be clear I don’t think this is a rule).
But I also believe that one should have autonomy over their content and that being the case if you choose to delete or edit your post I would support you exercising your autonomy even if i ultimately did not support the actions of changing your content. This inherently conflicts with the internet though as even sites like lemmy get archived plus I know some content on lemmy is publicly logged with things like moderator actions though I don’t know the extent of this. That’s just the nature of the internet in 2025 though. So much for “the right to be forgotten”, sigh
To clarify further on the reason it can be damaging is because it puts expectations on that population to be cheery and uplifting. Then when they are not they can be further ostracized for being “extra difficult” and “not one of the good ones”.
There were interesting social dynamics in those group homes. There were certainly a number of people who unfortunately had an intellectual impairment that was so severe they did not really register the other people around them in the typical social ways one would think. They would mainly consider in an immediate context and only form relationships with people who put in serious effort to engage and deliver positive feedback/rewards, which were almost always staff and not peers.
But then there were also plenty of people who had severe but not as drastic deficits. They would have much stronger social and communication skills but need much more assistance with things like safety awareness, activities of daily living, medical support, education and work supports, etc. this is where the aforementioned issues would come into play. Often the people who would be very personable and out in the community often would be trotted out for all kinds of things as a kind of marketing for the agency. They were a sign of the “great things” we did there.
Many of the people we worked with had unpredictable behavior that could become extremely dangerous, exhibited behaviors that were socially unacceptable like playing with feces or purposefully vomiting, etc. They didn’t get to go out as much and they didn’t get to be “the face”. To be clear we made efforts to take everyone out into the community as often as possible but some got special treatment. A place like that often gets donations and then “the special group” gets to go to a Major League Baseball game because a benefactor gave up their private box. Then everyone’s jealous because once again they’re left behind while the “good ones” come home with free stuff and tales of free chicken fingers.
In educational settings this came up too; I would consult and people would openly express disdain for special needs children who had high need because they weren’t like the other upbeat special needs kid that was easygoing. And this was crazy because it wasn’t just like a classmate bullying situation usually. Often that actually wasn’t happening anymore because the kid had scared the other kids. But now they’d be getting open disdain from educators and aides. Like I’d be observing in classrooms and the teacher would say something like “you see? I can’t handle this! No one can! This kid is impossible! He/she needs to be in a facility”. This isn’t like a “oh this happened one time, so crazy” thing, this kind of thing happened multiple times, multiple elementary schools. And frankly the teachers were partially right, basically every kid was inappropriate for public school and should have been placed out of school but that’s a different story about the snails pace of obtaining funding for alternative placements
Essentially this is a (very long, sorry) way of saying that this class of people is essentially invisible to the population at large and perpetuating this stereotype that they are cheery and nice means that the ones who don’t fit it are either hidden away or met with disdain (or outright aggression) because it is seen as abnormal.
ZeDoTelhado@lemmy.world 1 week ago
This was some great insight. I know some countries out there culturally the parents are “ashamed” they have disabled kids and simply the kids do not get out of the house often, but I was not aware how things can be on an institution level.
GrymEdm@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I did not think you were being inflammatory or attacking me. I thought your response provided valuable perspective, and reminded us all that people are a diverse group that defies blanket categorization. I asked for your feedback because I just didn’t know how to fold that into my post, which as I said was the truth of what I experienced. I also wanted to help divorce criticism of people like Elon Musk from “accusations” of mental disability, which I don’t feel should be an accusation or “gotcha”.
I’m legally permanently disabled because of mental illness, and I live on permanent disability. I’m lucky in that I’m physically and mentally capable, but even so I’ve experienced a fair bit of well-meaning and malicious misunderstanding. It’s of course worse and more consistent for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities to be judged, and I don’t want to be part of that. That’s why I’m taking our conversation seriously.
I’m not going to delete my post because I stand beside what I said, but I did include the following edit: “Edit: After discussion below, I think it would be right and humanizing to add that although my time with that group was positive, the mentally disabled are people like any of us and will run the spectrum of friendliness, happiness, and social capability.”
I don’t think that will interrupt the flow or message of my post, and will address some of the context you’ve provided.
foenkyfjutschah@programming.dev 1 week ago
thank you.