> Nobody is stepping on anyone’s face

> I mean, this just isn't true though, Bell was hurting people. I don't think these communities are making this stuff up; oppression is real.

Who said anything about Bell not hurting anyone? I was the one who called him a Eugenicist upthread. Can you point to something I’ve said that suggest that I think Bell didn’t hurt anyone?

> I also don't think anyone is saying you personally are stepping on people's faces,

Why would you even imagine such a thing?

> what people like me are saying is that discrimination and anti-community policies/actions against disabled communities exist.

What do you mean ‘people like you’? What group membership are you claiming? Given that I also agreed that such policies exist, are you saying I am someone like you?

> I'm not sure why that statement is controversial.

Where is the controversy?

> Bell was advocating for eugenics. I actually don't think he got up in the morning and thought he was doing something bad, I think he probably thought he was trying to help deaf people. But he was doing something bad, he was contributing to deaf cultural suppression and advocating for eugenics.

Agreed.

> Separating people's actions from their intentions can be good, but only if we don't allow the intentions to completely override their actions.

Disagreed. If you knowingly attribute intentions to people, that you don’t have evidence for, then you are simply lying for political gain.

You never have to ignore the impact of peoples actions. But whatever the impact is, there is no justification for lying or making false accusations.

As soon as you do this, you lose moral authority and are simply engaging in tribalism.

> And I've read enough accounts of people who have gone through BMT to know that there is actual harm that's happening around these communities, they're not making it up.

Did someone say they were?

> to claim that they cannot think for themselves because their faces are being stepped on.

> I think you might possibly be reading some intentions into the author that aren't there. No one is claiming this, it's your own leap of logic.

No. The author is claiming that people can’t think about other intentions because their faces are being stepped on. This is exactly what they are saying. You don’t seem to have understood their analogy.

It would be true if someone was literally stepping on their faces. That would be a good reason not to be able to reason about why it was happening. It’s also true for someone in the midst of a coercive therapy. Thus far we agree.

However it’s not true for you, or the author, or large numbers of marginalized people, most of the time. We are not literally having our faces stepped on or being confronted by police, so that isn’t a reason we can’t think clearly about people’s intentions.

> People are pointing out there there are policies (intentional or not) that suppress communities and hurt people.

You pointed out the part about suppressing communities. I have agreed that people are being hurt. I’m not sure why you are making this comment.

> GP isn't saying you're part of those policies,

Clearly. They don’t say it anywhere or even imply it. Why would you think this was ambiguous?

> nor are they saying they speak for everyone about what that oppression looks like, the comment you're replying to never uses the words "we" or "us", only "I" and "me". This seems relatively uncontroversial to me.

Yes, he uses the terms “I” and “me”, but the context is that he is placing himself in the metaphorical position of a community member who his having his face stepped on. He is asking us to imagine he is one such person. I.e. a representative.

If you are going to take “I” and “me” literally, then you must also think he was literally having his face stepped on as he was typing that comment. I don’t think so.

> We can agree that suppressing sign language or performing electroshock therapy on autistic kids is wrong -- regardless of what anyone's intentions are

Yes, I agree with that.

We can also agree that misrepresenting or distorting other people’s intentions is wrong regardless of who they are or what their impact is. Doing so creates additional harm including to ourselves and our communites.

Here’s an example that might help clarify why it’s wrong, and just as systematically violent as the things you are listing:

Alex: “We have a spare office that is unused. Would you mind if I used it while it’s available? I would be able to be much more productive if I didn’t have to deal with movement and noise in my field of vision and hearing.”

Jack: “You just want special treatment. Those offices are reserved for when we hire more managers.”

Notice that the oppressive move in this conversation is when Jack imputes a false intention to Alex.

If we want to live in a world where Autistic people’s motivations are not misconstrued or falsely imputed, we need to live in a world where people’s motivations are not misconstrued or falsely imputed.