Hannah Gadsby’s rightful success gives me hope that we’ll be seeing more (openly) autistic people out there in the world, and with that, hopefully, there will be more understanding from the allistic people around us.
I had poured so much of myself into my protagonist. When my agent called my character childish, naive, and vulnerable, I couldn’t help but feel she was calling me childish, naive, and vulnerable.
We spoke with writer, public speaker, and autism self-advocate Gyasi Burks-Abbott about growing up Black and autistic in a much less autism-aware era, and how he was able to thrive thanks to the guidance of his intuitive and supportive mother.
Learning to advocate for myself, after learning late in life I was autistic, has given me the strength, self-awareness, and tools to stand up for myself after I was suddenly deposited back on the breast cancer treadmill.
Over-valuing certain abilities means looking down on people who don’t share them. Aspie supremacy is the ideology that follows from taking this to an extreme: ‘aspies’ have extraordinary powers which not only make their existence worthwhile, but make them better than other people.
One of the positives of ChatGPT’s engaging with me on topics related to neurodiversity, access, activism, and autism is that I am giving GPT a chance to learn an Autistic perspective from an Autistic person.
You can listen and understand and believe and respect autistic adults every bit as much as you do those things with autistic children. If you don’t, you’re being ageist.
We talked with several autistic people about how non-autistic people can be good friends to autistic people. This is their advice.
This post is about the hundreds and thousands of autistic people who are misdiagnosed everyday by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other professionals.
My brother died because of ableism. Because people—including very close family—were terrified to face his neurodivergence, and his disability.
