I don’t think your post is bad or wrong. If I’ve worded my post ambiguously in a way that makes you feel attacked that was not my intention and I apologize; I do see how this could be the case re-reading it. I stream of consciousness post mainly. I intended to clarify your experience, which is why I started with the drawing of the spectrum and then in the second paragraph drew the argument without any specific citing of anything you said (but again re-reading this I can see how the ambiguity could read as inflammatory)
That said (and this is my opinion) I do not think your post should be changed; I generally do not think that any post should be changed so that the dialogue exchange can be preserved for others to see how things evolved. I believe there is a great deal of value in not just saying “this is the rule” but also exposing exchanges that clarify why “this is the rule” (though to be clear I don’t think this is a rule).
But I also believe that one should have autonomy over their content and that being the case if you choose to delete or edit your post I would support you exercising your autonomy even if i ultimately did not support the actions of changing your content. This inherently conflicts with the internet though as even sites like lemmy get archived plus I know some content on lemmy is publicly logged with things like moderator actions though I don’t know the extent of this. That’s just the nature of the internet in 2025 though. So much for “the right to be forgotten”, sigh
To clarify further on the reason it can be damaging is because it puts expectations on that population to be cheery and uplifting. Then when they are not they can be further ostracized for being “extra difficult” and “not one of the good ones”.
There were interesting social dynamics in those group homes. There were certainly a number of people who unfortunately had an intellectual impairment that was so severe they did not really register the other people around them in the typical social ways one would think. They would mainly consider in an immediate context and only form relationships with people who put in serious effort to engage and deliver positive feedback/rewards, which were almost always staff and not peers.
But then there were also plenty of people who had severe but not as drastic deficits. They would have much stronger social and communication skills but need much more assistance with things like safety awareness, activities of daily living, medical support, education and work supports, etc. this is where the aforementioned issues would come into play. Often the people who would be very personable and out in the community often would be trotted out for all kinds of things as a kind of marketing for the agency. They were a sign of the “great things” we did there.
Many of the people we worked with had unpredictable behavior that could become extremely dangerous, exhibited behaviors that were socially unacceptable like playing with feces or purposefully vomiting, etc. They didn’t get to go out as much and they didn’t get to be “the face”. To be clear we made efforts to take everyone out into the community as often as possible but some got special treatment. A place like that often gets donations and then “the special group” gets to go to a Major League Baseball game because a benefactor gave up their private box. Then everyone’s jealous because once again they’re left behind while the “good ones” come home with free stuff and tales of free chicken fingers.
In educational settings this came up too; I would consult and people would openly express disdain for special needs children who had high need because they weren’t like the other upbeat special needs kid that was easygoing. And this was crazy because it wasn’t just like a classmate bullying situation usually. Often that actually wasn’t happening anymore because the kid had scared the other kids. But now they’d be getting open disdain from educators and aides. Like I’d be observing in classrooms and the teacher would say something like “you see? I can’t handle this! No one can! This kid is impossible! He/she needs to be in a facility”. This isn’t like a “oh this happened one time, so crazy” thing, this kind of thing happened multiple times, multiple elementary schools. And frankly the teachers were partially right, basically every kid was inappropriate for public school and should have been placed out of school but that’s a different story about the snails pace of obtaining funding for alternative placements
Essentially this is a (very long, sorry) way of saying that this class of people is essentially invisible to the population at large and perpetuating this stereotype that they are cheery and nice means that the ones who don’t fit it are either hidden away or met with disdain (or outright aggression) because it is seen as abnormal.
I also like to touch my own asshole