Diagrams are helpful to me

[ID: A diagram labelled “Spectrum of Overwhelm.” There are three cartoon figures indicating different points in the spectrum. From left to right: The “rage beast” figure is a person enraged, with flames around its body. The “wet beast” figure is a person sweating and sobbing, with a wobbly blue line encircling it. The “404 error” figure is a person staring blankly with an empty lot bubble, surrounded by a pair of boxes. The “404 error” figure is labelled “shutdown.” The “rage beast” and “wet beast” figures are labelled “meltdown.” /end ID]

The hard truth about autism acceptance that a lot of people don't want to hear is that autism acceptance also inherently requires acceptance of people who are just weird.

And yes, I mean Those TM people. Middle schoolers who growl and bark and naruto run in the halls. Thirtysomethings who live with their parents. Furries. Fourteen-year-olds who identify as stargender and use neopronouns. Picky eaters. Adults in fandoms. People who talk weird. People who dress weird.

Because autistic people shouldn't have to disclose a medical diagnosis to you to avoid being mocked and ostracized for stuff that, at absolute worst, is annoying. Ruthlessly deriding people for this stuff then tacking on a "oh, but it's okay if they're autistic" does absolutely nothing to help autistic people! Especially when undiagnosed autistic people exist.

Like it or not, if you want to be an ally to autistic people, you're going to have to take the L and leave eccentric, weird people alone. Even if you don't know them to be autistic. You shouldn't be looking for Acceptable Reasons to be mean to people in the first place. Being respectful should be the default.

This reminds me of that global warming comic, like

So; the application of that cartoon to this problem is, actually, kind of revealing when you think about it.

See, here's the thing. The people who try to gatekeep 'weirdness' like that don't think that letting neurotypical people be weird makes the world better. They think it makes it worse. They think that allowing people to make animal noises and naruto run, or live with their parents as adults, or all the rest of it, would make the world uglier, and as such permission to do those behaviours without social punishment has to be restricted to those people who have diagnoses that imply that they need to do, or cannot help doing, such things.

If it wasn't obvious, they're wrong. The world is not made unworthy by weirdness. I was gonna say 'harmless weirdness' but tbh that would miss the point. Harm and weirdness are totally separate qualities. If something is harmful, it's never harmful because it's weird. Even if it is, objectively, weird, the weirdness-the deviation from the norm-isn't what causes harm.

But if you want people to start letting other people just Be Weird without demanding that they prove their Autism Credentials, then you first have to get them to rethink their base attitude to weirdness.

[Image: drawing of an auditorium with "Climate Summit" on a banner in the upper corner. The presenter's screen is edited to say, "Be nice to people (yes, even if they don't seem to have a reason to be 'weird' or 'wrong')". The person in the audience has gotten up to speak and their speech bubble is partially edited to say, "What if they are neuro typical and we create a better world for nothing?" /End description.]

Hate how we’re starting to be like “having a niche interest in something = autism” in the same way that “i like to be organized/need my colored pencils in order = ocd” used to be repeated

Another version of this is: "The neurodivergent urge to [insert behavior that is perfectly common to almost the entire human population]."

personally, i only found one recipe in here to try out, but i loved the general tips on cooking to achieve particular colors, tastes, or textures. there’s worksheets for figuring out your aversions that can also be used as communication aids for nonverbal ppl.

recipes all have their colors, tastes, and textures labeled right up top, so you know if it suits your needs right away. the author is autistic and has an extremely nonjudgmental way of writing about picky eating.

One absolutely hilarious part of human existence is the repeated incidents of spicy bananas. People who have lived their entire lives up to this point just assuming that a specific fruit or vegetable is supposed to taste bitter, tangy, or spicy, having no fucking idea that all this time, they've been allergic to this plant. Because how would they have known? You learn what things taste like by tasting them, nobody's going to tell you that bananas are supposed to be one of the mildest flavours out there. And people already eat so many things that taste hot, bitter, tangy and tart! Because they like how that kind of thing tastes like!

You can just happily much on a plant, thinking "ah, this angry plant tastes sharp because it hates me. Much like all the other sharp angry plants that people eat because they like the sharp", and it wouldn't cross their mind to think that the plant just hates you, specifically.

This is sitting on the shelf of human experiences riiiight next to people who don’t realize they’re colorblind.

My best friend’s husband didn’t realize he was colorblind until after they were married in their mid-twenties and she watched him run a stop sign that was in front of a big bush. He’d lived his entire life not knowing. So when they did some tests and realized “hey, you’re super colorblind,” he got to thinking, it’s X-linked, right? Which means it had to have come from Mom’s side of the family, so he started digging and asked his mom’s dad, and Grampa was like “Well that would explain a lot, I suppose. I kind of thought your grandma was just pulling my leg about the tomatoes.”

Because Grandma had apparently banned him early on from picking the tomatoes in the garden because he was constantly coming in with unripe ones, and he thought she was just being super nitpicky about it. This was a lifelong family joke, that Grandpa couldn’t tell a ripe tomato to save his life, and nobody ever stopped to wonder if maybe he and the grandson who routinely colored the grass red on his drawings might have something going on with their ability to see red and green as distinct colors.

i thought aloe vera gel was SUPPOSED TO burn your skin. like how rubbing alcohol burns when applied to a cut. figured that everyone else was just better at gritting their teeth and bearing the full body aloe sting than i was. i just didn't feel like the stinging was worth the mild healing properties aloe had.

yeah... turns out it's NOT supposed to burn and i was just allergic to aloe

STORY TIME!!!!!!!

My husband comes from a “weird” family. Like, the whole county knows. “He’s a total weirdo. AAAH THAT’S HIS LAST NAME THAT EXPLAINS IT OKAY NO PROBLEM GO FLY FREE DUDE WE LOVE YOU!!” The family’s just a bunch of freaks, like the Addams Family meets the Beverly Hillbillies. I ADORE them.

It was celebrated because they’re so valuable to the local community. This one sells meticulously grown veggies at the farmer’s market, then hisses at you for suggesting they wear soemthing that isn’t tie-dyed. That kid was in kindergarten before she said her first word, and that’s cool because her older sister translated for her NO THANK YOU TEACHER WE DO NOT NEED A DOCTOR THAT IS NORMAL FOR THIS FAMILY GO AWAY. She’s got two quiet kids of her own now and WE STILL DO NOT NEED A DOCTOR GO AWAY. That uncle knows everything there is to know about every car engine ever, and he never wears shoes with laces because he literally never worked out how to tie them (He’s 60). He’s also the top mechanic in his town and makes serious dough that put his super-smart daughter through college, and now she’s an ace veterinarian who pterodactyl screams at acrylic sweaters and keeps everyone’s pets alive. I shit you not, the family matriarch gets excited for tax season every year and begs everyone to bring her their taxes so she can MATH at them. It’s her freaking hobby.

Whatever. They’re in OUR family. It’s totally normal for us. The family’s just full of freaks, that’s all. We encourage our people to go with their strengths and use their skills to make our little corner of the world a nicer place to live in, then teach them how to manage the difficult parts of the world because we all had to learn to do it ourselves. “Because this family’s full of people just as freaky as you. You’re one of us.”

No, most of them don’t go to college. It’s rural Illinois, of course they don’t. Lots of them end up in specialized trades, like electricians or farmers, and they always kick ass at it. They tend towards jobs that require a lot of focus, and attention to detal, and very specific, in-depth knowledge that is almost useless outside of whatever field they’re in. We’re mostly spread between two or three small towns in Illinois, and I do not think these three towns would function without my husband’s family fixing and growing everything they do.

One of our cousins’ kids got diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder a few years ago. His now-ex-wife insisted that something was wrong and that our cousin was a jerk for not caring enough to notice. The family reacted with “He’s fine, it’s normal, we all did that when we were his age... wait... shit... what do you mean it’s genetic?”

It turns out that like 70% of my husband’s side of the family is autistic as fuck. We’re talking about grandmothers. Uncles. Cousins. People are in their 70s just now figuring out why they are how they are. 

They’re just so famously weird in our community that they attract the other weird people as partners, and then they have weird little kids, and no one really looks twice. A bunch of the people (including me) who married in were informally adopted first. “Oh, your parents punished you for this behavior? We all do that here. Come to the barbecue!” Two years later, I had their last name and was helping watch their adorable little handflappy babies.

We’ve got an entire gene pool over here of autistic people thriving so well that no one noticed we were all autistic.

Also, that cousin got RID of his wife when she started talking about how “tragic” their son’s autism is. Their son is a perfectly normal child in our family and will be raised as such. We joke now that when something needs fixed, “Oh, just call Uncle So-and-So, he’ll autism at it.”’

I fucking love this family so much.

A woman came into my work a little while ago loudly complaining about her (perfectly well-behaved) son, saying how he was ten years old and didn't know how to listen, and I nodded along like "yeah I totally remember being that age", and she looks at me and goes, "no, seriously, he's Autistic," and I spread my arms and go, "Hey, same! Twinsies!"

And this woman's eyes. My God, it was beautiful. She goes, "Really? And they let you WORK here?"

And then she turns back to her kid to nag at him and over her shoulder little dude and and I make what I can only describe as the purest form of eye contact I have ever experienced in my life

She snapped at him to stop running around and hold still so I froze in place like a terrified statue and he copied me and we both grinned and he's my favourite customer now

One experience that has not changed my whole life is the joyous vindication that comes from an adult communicating to a kid that yeah, you're not stupid, this other adult just needs to untwist their pants

this post just made a full trip back to my dash and reading it over again two years later I feel the need to add that when this happened I was working as uniformed security personnel

and I really really hope that the memory of "person in position of authority thinks that you're doing great and your mom is wrong about you" sticks in their head for when they need it most

Btw I was talking to Kiddo about social rules because we're both autistic and it doesn't come naturally to either of us but I have 25 years experience on them so I have some useful tips

And as proof of that: in that conversation I realised what neurotypicals mean when they say we "make everything about us"

When they're talking and we interject "fun facts" or start talking about something related to what they're saying we mean:

"I am showing interest in you and your interests by engaging with them and showing I'm listening by adding information"

From their perspective we are stomping over their turn to talk and making it our turn and therefore making it about us

Conversation example:

NT: my favourite animal is sharks

Autistic person: with some sharks species the shark pup that hatches first hunts the others and eats them while being incubated inside the mother

Autistic person perspective: I have shown interest in you by giving you information about a topic you have shown interest in

NT person's perspective: wow they made my favourite animal a time for them to show off instead of letting me talk when it was my turn

It's doesn't matter if it's "on topic" or "relevant to the person" if it's when it's their turn to be the focus of the conversation

Like I know there is a bit more to it but this is the first time in 39 years I have understood the accusation "you're making this all about yourself"

OHHH. Ok? I think I get it?

NT important variables: When (whose turn is it), and How (intonation, etc) - Conversational metadata.

ND important variables: What (the literal text/information exchange), and Why (the purpose fulfilled) - The base conversation.

From one autistic to another: you can master this exchange with one easy tool.

Ask a follow-up question.

As stated, allistic conversations do put a lot of weight into whose turn it is to speak. So in the above example,

Person: my favorite animal is sharks

The best follow-up response is "what do you like about sharks?"

Your conversation partner will answer, and if they're not a dickbag, then they will turn the conversation back to you, likely with a relevant question - "what's your favorite animal?" At which point you are free to infodump just a little. Keep it within one or two sentences - unless of course the person finds the info interesting.

But then keep asking follow-up questions, or at least give your conversation partner a chance to follow-up on their statements. Don't worry too much about the timing of questions, and if you're even slightly anxious that you're asking something too personal/rude, then tack on a "sorry, you don't have to answer." Allistic people just like to know that you're listening to what they have to say about the topic.

This is good advice and largely what I told my kid to do

I'm still thrown though that even though I had picked up on the "you need to ask questions and limit your sharing" (even though I'm not great at it) but I was 39 before I realised why allistics went about things the way they did

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share an issue that some autistic people may have: PDA (Pathological demand avoidance). I found an article that explains PDA in more detail, according to this article:

The existence of PDA as a ‘diagnostic term’ and how it fits within the autism spectrum is widely debated. With limited evidence-based research there is no conclusive and agreed upon definition of PDA. What is generally agreed upon is what is often referred to as a PDA profile. Here we will detail what is meant by this profile.  

People with a PDA profile are driven to avoid everyday demands and expectations to an extreme extent. This demand avoidance is often (but according to some PDA adults, not always) accompanied by high levels of anxiety.

Although there is no prevalence study as yet, the demand avoidant profile is thought to be  relatively uncommon. However, it’s important to recognise and understand this distinct profile as it has implications for the way a person is best supported.

I’ll leave you the article down below so you all can read more if you’d like. I hope some of you find this helpful.

[ID: The handshake meme with "wearing your favorite clothes until they turn into literal rags" in the middle. To either side are "punks" and "autistics". End ID]

[Image description: a tweet which reads:

"everyone's autistic now" okay my single 63 year old neighbor with $1.2 million of model trains in his basement who wrote a 90 page letter to the city about the brightness of streetlights when i was growing up was just a regular guy then

/ID end.]

Tags via @gallusrostromegalus

Zero doubt in my mind that my great uncle Francis was both asexual and autistic. My great grandmother was bi and had ADHD. None of this is new. We just have names for it now. And fewer people becoming alcoholics or killing themselves about it.

End tags.

Okay I know that people are just making fun jokes and I know that there's a significant problem with the pathologization of everything neurodivergent people do but I think when people discuss autistic "elopement" the key element is not suddenly leaving places but rather leaving places without communicating with anyone about it - which, if the person in question is a child or otherwise needs daily support to maintain their personal safety, is a problem that needs to be acknowledged and addressed, and understanding it as a common trait in autistic people could discourage caregivers from interpreting it as willful disobedience. Idk I just don't think it's necessarily bad to put a neutral label on that kind of trait

For Autism Acceptance Month, I felt the urge to focus on Quinn’s terrible experience with a certain type of therapy that many autistic children were/are subjected to. For Quinn, this lead to masking, self harm, and overwhelming stress growing up. Because of her need to protect Claudette from this abuse, she was finally able to understand that her own autism wasn’t a bad thing and taught her daughter the same.

Misinformed and ablest societies are the reason why autistic people call for acceptance rather than awareness. We don’t need a cure, we need understanding and resources that actually help us rather than those that stigmatize and try to change us. 

Read more here: https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/controversy-autisms-common-therapy/

Content Warning: Ableism and mentions of a way to ‘overcome’ autism; references to ‘ABA therapy’; references and mention of self harm [ID: A 16-panel comic about Autism Acceptance Month. Panel 1- A mother and father outlined in black and white with red nose and hair look concerned, their daughter Quinn, in a pink shirt with red hair, is in the father’s lap and is looking off to the right. Someone off-screen is saying, “It appears Princess Quinten has autism spectrum disorder. We recommend therapy to help her overcome her autistic traits.  Panel 2- Quinn is looking off to the right, touching a strand of her hair. Someone off-screen says, “Quinn, look me in the eyes.”

Panel 3- Right of panel 2. Quinn looks down and to the right nervously and says, “No. It hurts.”

Panel 4- Down and to the left of panel 3. Quinn looks forward, nervously. Someone off-screen says, ”Just look for 15 seconds and you can go play.” To the right side is black text that says, “…1…”

Panel 5- To the right of panel 4. Quinn is staring forward, shaking, and starting to cry. Black text around her head says, “…2…” “…3…” “…4…” “…5…”

Panel 6- Below panels 4 and 5. Quinn puts her head in her hands and says, “No!” Someone off-screen to the left says, “Now we have to start over.” Someone off-screen to the right says, “You will not move from this table until we make that eye contact.”

Panel 7- Quinn’s eyes are closed, she is smiling, and flapping her hands. Black text around her says, “Quinn. Quiet hands.”

Panel 8- Below panel 7. Quinn is frowning, one hand clutched in the other, looking down at a Hershey’s chocolate kiss in front of her. Black text around her says, “Good girl. Have a treat.”

Panel 9- To the right of panel 8. A close-up of Quinn’s left hand digging into her right arm.

Panel 10- Quinn looks excitedly to the right side of the panel and has a dialogue text box with cut-off text about facts about tigers. 

Panel 11- Right of panel 10. Quinn looks to the right and frowns and clutches her right shoulder with her left hand, not speaking. Black text near her says, “Remember, you can only say one thing about tigers, then it’s time to be quiet.”

Panel 12- Quinn looks upwards and smiles nervously. Someone off-screen on the left says, “I had my doubts but I think therapy is working.” Someone off-screen to the right says, “She so much more NORMAL now. A perfect princess!”

Panel 13- Time skip. An adult Quinn, who has red hair, lips, nose, and a pink hairband, stands next to her partner, who wears a blue shirt, has blue eyes, and black hair, and is looking to the left, an eyebrow raised. Quinn looks down at her daughter Claudette in her lap, who has blue eyes, red hair, and a yellow hair bow, and is looking down at a turtle toy on a table. Someone off-screen is saying, “Looks like Claudette has autism. There are several resources to help her cope nowadays, but we recommend a therapy to lessen her autistic traits.”

Panel 14- Quinn smiles nervously down to Claudette, who is in her hands, smiling with her hands over her head and holding the turtle toy. Black text says, “If not, she may have a hard time blending in with regular society.”

Panel 15- Quinn and her partner walk to the right. Her partner is smiling and touches a finger to Claudette’s outstretched hand. Claudette is smiling and reaching to his while Quinn carries Claudette, looking upset to the right. Quinn says, “That sounds like ‘regular’ society’s problem. She’s fine the way she is.”

Panel 16- An older Claudette is walking to the right, smiling with her hands outstretched to either side. Her skin is pink. She wears a red and white shirt with a red infinity sign on it, a rainbow skirt, a red bracelet, and blue earrings. Next to her, Quinn, with blue skin, smiles at Claudette, wearing a shirt that says, ‘Cure Ableism’ and with a necklace with a star charm on it, the star in her mouth. Red text to the side says, “Happy Autism Acceptance Month!” end ID]

Hi, if you care about us Autistic folks then please boost this

....yeah can we signal boost the hell out of this?

can someone write an id? damn thing wont load

[ID: Paigelayle, an ND tiktok star is taking.

Stop scrolling! I'm gonna need y'all to boost this one.

(background changes to Mark Robers recent video, The Truth About My Son)

I don't know if you guys know but recently Mark Rober made a video about his son being autistic.

The video is not that great but what's worse is that him and Jimmy Kimmel & all these celebrities and more (shows a list of various other celebrities such as Mark Hamill, MrBeast and Maya Rudolph) are hosting a fundraiser to go towards an organization called NEXT for Autism.

The organization funds autism hate groups like autism speaks, funds aba therapy and work towards preventing autism, aka parental screening for autism, aka aborting specifically autistic babies, aka eugenics.

Despite the autistic community being really upset about this, only a few celebrities have pulled out and so far they've raised almost a million dollars. So we're making our own!

On the same day, April 30th from 4pm to 12am EST a bunch of my autistic tiktok friends and more and I will be hosted by backspectrum on a twitch livestream donation event dedicated to ASAN, an organization we actually like!

I personally will be guesting from 8-9pm.

We may not raise a million dollars but we really want to raise awareness and raise our voices. We are sick of Nuerotypicals talking over us! We deserve to call the shots on our own disorder! Please consider donated and please spread the word, we hope to see you there! END ID]

The joke about smooth sharks has never been funny to me, partially because "insisting on something wrong and making fun of the other person for trying to correct you" was constantly used against me when I was an (autistic) kid and as a teenager I often assumed people were arbitrarily lying to me when they made innocuous statements. I was afraid to respond sincerely to anything and often ignored advice and information people gave me because of the chance it could be a joke at my expense.

It's even more grating in this case because people explicitly say they think the joke detects and entraps people who are already "annoying" and "need to be the smartest person in the room."

(Never mind that the "outcome" is entirely contingent on subtle differences in context and how social rules in the exchange were followed; the person that said honey is made by putting bees in a bee grinder got ridiculed even though they were doing the same thing—confidently asserting something stupid on the internet.)

The other reason I hate the "sharks are smooth" joke is that it obscures the reality that sharks are literally covered in teeth. They evolved from teeth, they are morphologically teeth. TEETH

See, this is interesting to me

Because I do tend to find that kind of joke funny

But this made me question why that is because you're right. Its mean. And it likely disproportionately targets autistic people

And its something that I had people use against me growing up

Like there was this one time in middle school where this girl who I considered a friend at the time but was really more of a bully, told me she didn't think wolves were related to dogs. To this day I have NO idea if she was just trying to fuck with me or not. But dogs were a special interest of mine. So I could NOT let it go. I conducted a survey at school to ask people whether they thought dogs and wolves were related. The response was unanimous that, yes, wolves and dogs are related. But she was still adamant that they weren't. I made her watch documentaries with me about dogs and wolves on Netflix and YouTube. I could not understand what she wasnt getting. I thought that maybe it just wasn't being explained cleary enough or maybe she didn't trust the sources I was pointing her towards so I needed to find one that she did. Eventually I gave up trying to convince her but it took weeks before that happened.

And thats not the only time thats happened

But I think the main difference between that time and the other times for me personally was that the other times it was people who were ACTUALLY my friends who were doing it

And they would always try to clue me into the fact that it was a joke. Either by being straight up and telling me it was a joke or by just saying increasingly more absurd things until I picked up on it.

And ive done the same thing to another friend. There was an anime id been watching (I wanna say Ranma 1/2?) And there was this one scene where they were talking about how if you tap something in just the right spot it'll just completely fall apart. I thought that was funny and would be cool if it were true. So the next day I very confidently asserted this information to my friend. She was very confused. And very patiently tried to explain to me why that was impossible. But eventually picked up on the fact that I was joking when I started tapping our table in different places to make it fall apart. And it became sort of an inside joke for the rest of the school year.

.........im not entirely sure where I was trying to go with this but let me see if I can find it again

I think the reason I find the smooth shark joke funny is more cuz I think just repeatedly insisting something as true despite evidence to the contrary is funny and not so much because I think the people trying to correct them are annoying or deserve to be ridiculed. Clearly this is not how a lot of people are viewing those interactions and that definitely needs to be addressed.

Personally, I dont see a reason to continously correct someone saying something that theyre insisting as truth even after being presented with evidence and providing no actual evidence of their own unless you genuinely believe that the person believes what they're saying and can't pick up on whether they're joking. Not because of a need to be right but because YOU wouldn't want to have incorrect information so youre trying to help provide correct information. And if the other person doesn't make any attempt to clue you in on the joke it can be incredibly frustrating that they keep insisting that theyre right. Especially if its a topic you care about (and ESPECIALLY if you're autistic and its your special interest)

And in my experience most of the people who would be labeled as someone who "needs to be right" usually are autistic or at the very least have difficulty recognizing social cues. Even the ones who maybe act like dicks about it are usually only acting that way because its happened to them a lot and they dont understand why and are fed up by it. Now that doesnt excuse any verbal abuse they may throw at the other person (something else ive observed) but I think its important to keep in mind that not everyone can pick up on social cues. Even after repeat experiences. Especially if no one has ever bothered to explain it to them.

And that they still might not find it funny after having it explained. And that's ok! Ridiculing them for not getting it or not finding it funny after its been explained is not. Not everyone has to find everything funny but they still deserve to be clued in on the joke without being made fun of for not getting it.

Yeah. I think another huge reason this stuff is so icky and distasteful for me is that when I was young I was surrounded by a lot of people that believed in conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, some of it scary and harmful.

If someone confidently asserts something weird or insane and argues with people who correct them, it's always going to seem plausible to me that they actually believe it.

I had an argument with a friend in high school where she was saying that Democrats were spraying chemtrails from planes to give people in republican states diseases and I thought she was joking and she wasn't. Also most people I knew in high school believed the earth was 6,000 years old and that evolution wasn't real. I knew a guy that thought transgender people were possessed by demons

I'm unfortunately aware of so many strange beliefs that are connected to very disturbing conspiracy theories

can you infodump to me? (i love you) is this overwhelming? (i love you) is this the right texture? (i love you) is it ok to touch you? (i love you) do you want the subtitles on? (i love you) do you want to go somewhere less noisy? (i love you)

Literally…

[ID: Tweet from @/april_autie on Twitter on 9/6/22 saying: autism being an autistic person’s special interest is the most autistic thing ever… /End ID]

[Plain text: Literally… Autism Spectrum. /End Plain Text]

[Image: black text on a white background]

Text in image:

“I'm autistic, which means everyone around me has a disorder that makes them say things they don't mean, not care about structure, fail to hyperfocus on singular important topics, have unreliable memories, drop weird hints and creepily stare into my eyeballs.”

“So why do people say YOU'RE the weird one?”

“Because there's more of them than me.”

Autistic not weird.com

www.facebook.com/autisticnotweird

End text.