Okay, so maybe 2 weeks of reading. This week’s topics include gender (+ alcohol), race (+ alcohol), more gender, autism, and mental illness.

Later, I’d hop into a cab, coiffed and pumped for a television appearance, ready to talk whiskey.

And then this would happen: “What does it mean to be a women in whiskey?” or, “What kinds of whiskey do women drink?” or the nebulous, “What can you tell us about women and whiskey?”

— Whiskey-Drinking Women Get Stereotyped — What If Men Did Too?

I bet that sort of thing comes up in every “traditionally male” industry… Saw this posted n a group chat after someone else was talking about an interview asking “What’s it like being a woman in STEM?” and how frustrating that is.

A recent Nielsen study commissioned by the Brewers Association found that while black drinkers compose 11.2% of the US population, they consume only 3.7% of the country’s craft beer. Compare that with the 80% of craft beer guzzled by whites, who make up 60% of the population, and you’ll start to get a sense of the size of the divide.

—There Are Almost No Black People Brewing Craft Beer. Here’s Why.

The rather obvious answer is systemic racism, but the article details some of the beer-specific history that got us here.

But for transgender and gender nonconforming people like myself, the question of what to wear to work becomes an exhausting question of identity and of survival. For us, the question changes from “how do I present my best self at work?” to “can I present my best self at work?”

—Why I’m Genderqueer, Professional and Unafraid

“Professional” clothing is quite gendered, and that’s definitely one reason I prefer to stay in the “draping jersey shirt” area of clothing. This is a great discussion of navigating professionalism when you don’t fit “white cis person”.

The “truly stunning” findings, published this month in the journal Pediatrics, show that transgender kids like mine (those allowed to live in the gender they say they are) are just as mentally healthy as their non-trans peers. They aren’t depressed or riddled with mental health diagnoses. In fact,  emotionally, they’re pretty average.

—Trans Kids Not Necessarily Crazy

A parent writes about the results of a survey on the mental health of trans kids, unsurprised that those allowed to live as their actual gender are just as “normal” as their cis counterparts.

Researchers are aware of these problems. But because so few elderly adults have an autism diagnosis, healthcare workers have little experience helping them navigate the pitfalls of old age.

—Adults with autism face old age without much support

Following up on The Missing Generation, this post goes into more detail about the issues older adults with autism face.

I also want to link To The Friends That Knew I Couldn’t Do This ‘Mental Illness Thing’ Alone, but it’s not quote-able, it’s almost like a poem? Any quote I pulled out would not do justice to the weight of the whole piece.

Some things I’ve read this week that I think are worth sharing.

When I ask high school students what they’d like to learn how to make if they knew how to hardware hack or code, they say things like, “Maybe a social app.” “Maybe some kind of a website.” But you get very different answers if you ask them, “What household objects would you enchant if you were in a Hogwart’s charm class?”

— Art and Math and Science, Oh My!

If Chris is a hero merely for hiring someone with a disability it lets all of us other “non-hero humans” off the hook. It also implies that there is something inherently wrong with Sam that it took a hero to hire him in the first place.

— Ellen DeGeneres’ Video About the Starbucks Barista “Sam with Autism” Shouldn’t Make You Feel Good

But this was only the first of numerous – too many to count – anecdotes about autistic children which described them repeatedly as odd, strange, violent, disconnected, destructive, dangerous, difficult to handle, their behaviors meaningless, their interests obsessive. As isolated, unspeaking, severe, uncooperative, and having illogical anxiety. They describe autistic children as vanishing, having broken minds, as screamers, runners, and head bangers. These are the words that Donvan and Zucker use to perpetuate a tragedy narrative that is meant to justify every horrible thing that will be done to these children by parents and professionals.

— Cognitive Dissonance In A Different Key, by Erin Human

One of the most sweeping arguments used to silence disabled activists in the debate was the argument that “the discussion was about the environment, not disability”. The thing is you can only have one without the other if you have somehow managed to exclude disabled people from the human race.
[…]
This debate has never been about sacrificing the environment for the sake of disabled people but asking to be considered as part of the solution.

— Oranges, Access, Opposition and “Yes, but…”, the follow up to When Accessibility gets Labeled Wasteful

Lastly, a book I’ve been looking forward to, On The Edge of Gone, came out last week… but I still haven’t started it.

There’s been a lot rattling around my head lately. There are things I want to write about, but my primary website ends up being so developer-focused that it feels strange going there to post about personal topics. I’ve been reluctant to splinter off into a new blog – I don’t post much on my dev blog, would I really post more here? I didn’t a few years ago, when I did have a personal/developer split.

But I’m giving it a shot. Maybe with a “side blog” I’ll actually post these thoughts I have about being queer, being female(ish), being neurodivergent… and maybe eventually I’ll be comfortable putting them in my “public” blog. For now, though, they’ll live here.