this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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When I hurt someone's feelings, I say sorry. When I meet a neopronoun user, I learn and use their neopronouns. I think apologies and pronouns are forms of performative attention.
Apologizing and using pronouns is all part of being a decent human being, nothing wrong with that.
But for example, I was once trying to work on a project together with someone who was trying to convince me that yelling at me was part of her creative process. For me one the other hand, being yelled at was not part of my creative process, so I ended the common project.
Or the night my ex-partner wanted to discuss the problems now and kept me forcefully awake for that while angrily gesturing at me. No thanks.
But it might be that you put the right people together and they yell at each other while creating great art, or yank each other out of bed at night fixing their relationship. Not going to judge, I'd be happy for them. It's just not my intensity level of being. So, what can be part of a decent performance level for one person can be felt as emotional abuse for another person. Which leaves us in a situation where nobody has to be the bad guy, we just have to match the right people to each other.
Yelling and forced awakeness can often be violent. Your creative partner owed you the performative attention of quietness, and your romantic partner owed you the performative attention of patience.
Failing to accommodate for your volume and sleep needs is a failure on their part to accommodate for your lack of ability. Needing sleep isn't a disability, it's completely normal, but it's still a lacking ability that they failed to address. My points that performative attention and accommodation for disability are owed apply just as well to your abusers as they do to you. I hold them to the same standard and I hold them accountable for choosing violence. I believe they had the potential, under the right circumstances, to learn to get along with people who enjoy quiet and sleep. Just as I had, and fulfilled, the potential to get along with narcissists and borderlines. I believe all these skills can be learned by anyone.