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.
Tag: autism
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.
Reading A Kind of Spark, I felt a part of myself represented and explained on the page that I’d never seen anywhere else before. I feel so much for Addie, the 12-year-old autistic main character: How she puts herself in the historical stories of witches, and how the injustice of their history upsets her, while others seem detached.
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.
Unmasking is something I am coming to terms with, but having an environment within which I can feel safe and be myself helps significantly with that. As things stand, it’s a lifetime of damage that needs reversing.
When you look up what Autistic people have said about how to help us through meltdowns, the most foundational piece of advice you will see again and again is to remain calm. But what about when you can’t remain calm? What about when that Autistic person’s meltdown is triggering your own trauma response?
Every time I find a new ear protection tool, I am more and more amazed as to how other people can believe that we’re hearing the same thing.
If you’re the parent of autistic child or adult, and you are also horrified by the blatant misinformation being peddled and swallowed by MAGA truthers, you should be just as concerned about grievance-based autism parents and organizations.
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.