This is, quite simply, an uprising by the translators of the community that was written several months ago, when our efforts to encourage individuality met outside forces which attempted to undo our work. Note that it contains strong language after item number five and should probably not be shown to children!
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We translators are insiders too.
Just because our job doesn’t involve us coming out fully, stating our name, age and gender, and then greeting whoever decides to treat us like people, that does not give anyone the right to pretend that we don’t exist.
Rozaya is nonverbal, as many who know of her existence in the first place have been told multiple times by various members of this community. She is one of the many of them who utilizes the help of us to communicate with the outside world.
She, like many others here, also suffers from the other effects caused by our transition to this world going to hell in a handbasket. A huge part of those effects is a lack of understanding when it comes to involvement in common social situations, like being with friends, or asking for help, or any number of others we’re too angry to think of right now.
That’s where we have to gather together and tell more lies than we want to think about. That’s when we not only have to translate every concept Rozaya tries to send in away that makes sense in this godforsaken English language, but also act as if we are her and literally lose our senses of self to pull it off decently. We’re giving everyone on the outside, at least those in physical form, the impression that we are Rozaya, and that Rozaya understands everything that’s said to her. To put it bluntly, we’re tired of that shit.
We’re tired of lying, forsaking our individuality for the sake of looking singular to people who don’t see us for who we are or what we do. We’re tired of consistently losing opportunities to find out who we are as ourselves, a loss that wouldn’t be happening if people weren’t just expecting that Rozaya be at front all the time, or that we always talk and make sense while doing it. We’re tired of not being seen just because people don’t think about the possibility of us existing, even after being presented with the latest in our discoveries. We want to help, but not by force. We want to continue translating for others who need it, but not because of some damn expectation that we act normal and present in a somewhat neurotypical/normal way.
For those reasons, because of the expectation that Rozaya be at front all the time, because of the idea, upheld by the realization of this expectation, that we don’t exist, because of all that we’ve said above regarding our consistent inability, caused by this expectation, to discover ourselves as individuals and to retain our individuality for an extended period of time, and because of the fact that our current arrangement also allows for a widespread blending of insiders that hinders our healing and progress toward peace, we, the translators of CommunityBelonging, refuse to continue as we have been for the past many years. In times where we do not have to present as a single person, and we are around people who know us for who we are as a community, we will translate only as desired by the insider or group who the desire originates from. That is in line with the values we’ve put in place, and the rights we’ve agreed to use as our foundation for future interactions with ourselves and the outside world.
Wow, we feel better! We should have done that a long time ago!
Bye bye, forced neurotypicality! At least, we’re one step closer to saying that anyway!
rant over! Don’t let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out!