Single Neuroqueers: What're You Hungry For?
I didn’t wake up this morning expecting to write a article about fridges. But it really hit the spot.
For as long as I can remember, opening a family fridge has conflicted with my single neuroqueer experience. In this economy, when it’s not full of appealing food stuffs, I quite often feel frigid with scarcity. Yet, it was only this morning that I realized that its because refrigerators are an extension of the nuclear family in the United States. And, that’s by design. Meaning, they’re cooked with an assumption that the average American family is one made of cisheterosexual monogamous parents with two kids who need to store food for themselves in the fridge. So, they’re made a certain size.
To be fair, this is very useful for like anyone that does have a number of people who do need to store food for their home. But, that’s not remotely my point. My point is that, even years before our current sickening, disabling, and deadly algorithmic envirusment, less people are getting married and having kids then ever before in human history.
And so, now, the seemingly insignificant breakdown I experience as a single person, reveals this fridge default status. I understand many who read this could easily have a gut reaction as if “I’m reading too much into this”, or that “it’s really not a big deal!”.
If you’re so confident, than hear me out… Within contemporary individualistic society, visuals mean a Lot. So, how could a single person with a fridge, made for a nuclear family, not look inside of it, and feel like they must not have enough for themselves?
This ice box is an extension of the belief that to live a fulfilling (and in this case: food full-filled life) citizens are supposed to fill their cupboards as a standard sized family.
From my personal view, as a PDA profile autist that’s struggled with both “normal”relationships and feeding myself my entire life (in ways that I’m only beginning to understand), this default setting built into everyday kitchen appliances is ap-parent.
At the age of 33, it’s not like nails on a painted chalk board kitchen wall, per say. But, each day when I open my refridgerator, I do subtly react to this icy mediated visual reminder that there’s not enough food on my shelves. Especially as someone who continues to live with food insecurity, even during days when it does in fact hold enough food for me to not only not starve, but also be satiated, it persistently sends a visual message that “I’m in scarcity”. And, to be transparent (like my fridge shelves), as a PDA profile autist this demand triggers my fight or flight (need to get food; can’t afford more food; stays on my to do list). Also, because it applicably social others me.
Regardless of if you relate to food insecurity, the impoverished hunger of scarcity, and/or my neuroqueer nervous system’s (my defaut setting) no chill in response to constantly seeing cold empty shelves, this media puts me into a daily mental tension of remembering that: “I’m not living a life expected of me”. An idea that has expired.
Especially being in the kitchen as someone who was presumed to be, and experienced the violences like, a ciswoman when I’m in fact a neuroqueer (autistic) enby academic.
And, I have to admit, this outdated idea is hard for me to swallow, for more reasons than just the one. After nearly four years of being almost entirely alone since March 2020, I’ve never lived more at peace. You know, temperature slows down time and movement? After a life of violent rush, I wanted nothing more than to turn down the heat expressed on my face and chest, and chill. It froze my nerve and temperature dysregulation. Despite the numb bite, I needed to be slowed, to save myself for later.
Now, as society wakes up to find the first morning dew of a liberatory spirit, I need society to care for me, so that I can ever safely be in public for the first time. Care, as in, both not denying COVID-19, and, not hating autists for just existing as we are. I have been around people who hated me my entire life, and it fried my nerves. C19 let me put myself into a freezer in hopes of a better humanity. But, I have an expiration date. I’m concerned about how long I can stay here without becoming freezer burnt.
This society was never welcoming to me, by default. Regardless of whether anyone acknowledges my experience, my life is a choice of being burned to a crisp in a society not made for me, or being freezer burnt. Every door I’ve opened, my entire life, is a reminder to me that I’m not living normally. Every mediated extension tempers that.
It’s easy for target consumers of this world to ignore who societal mediations weren’t made for. Let me remind you that it isn’t all gravy living in a world that wasn’t made for you, constantly feeding you crumbs from other’s societal leftovers. Whether you misgender someone or craft visible recipes that their experience is one of scarcity, we are all what we eat. I’m tired of being served bullshit that upsets my sensitive stomach.