(((Digimon Is Forever)))

[Purpleish gradient square with a Laura Tisoncik quote: “The difference between high-functioning autism and low functioning is that high-functioning means your deficits are ignored, and low-functioning means your assets are ignored.”]

People on Tumblr: Bullying autistic people is wrong. I don’t know who would do something like this.

Also People on Tumblr:

*makes fun of users who don’t recognise fake/prank news articles*

*makes fun of users who can’t spot sarcasm in writing*

*makes fun of users with ‘cringey’ interests*

*makes fun of users who write or phrase things oddly*

*makes fun of users who treat jokes seriously*

*makes fun users who post obsessively about the same thing*

*makes fun of users for the exact same autistic traits autistic people are bullied for offline all the time*

some autism advocacy really comes across as: “everyone should be able to unmask and show their true selves! but not if your autism presents in a way that makes the community look bad”

and on one level, I get that. I really do. when you’ve lived your whole life with a stigmatised disorder, it makes sense that your first instinct is going to be to try to separate yourself from the stigma. and it makes sense that your advocacy work would then focus on disproving certain aspects of the stigma.

but autism advocacy is useless if it leaves behind the most vulnerable members of our community. some of us have traits that look a lot like the stigmatised and stereotyped idea of autism that people have in their heads.

destigmatising autism shouldn’t be about saying that those people don’t exist. it’s about saying that we’re still human beings who deserve to be treated with love and respect, the same as any other human being. it’s about allowing a broad range of voices to be heard in autism spaces.

and it’s about making people more comfortable to be outwardly autistic if they want to, regardless of what that means, or what that looks like.

unpopular opinion but I love it when people write essays for fun on the internet. I don’t think it’s cringe if you’re being polite and coherent and making your own post instead of making unwanted additions to other people’s posts. why say something in a 7 word meme format sentence, faking disaffection and chillness, when you could flesh it out in 7 paragraphs of sincere and substantial nuance. not just for seriousness but for fun concepts, is what i have in mind. for talking about a story or character. for talking about life. talking about anything. this is a wordy person safe zone

you don’t even need any factual backup to headcanon a character as autistic tbh. they don’t need to have whatever you consider to be “common autistic traits”. if an autistic person wants to headcanon a character as autistic because they identify with that character, or because it makes them feel good, or for whatever reason, let them.

I’ve seen allistic people reblogging this post and that actually makes me really happy. thank you for listening to autistic voices stay tolerant and stay lovely

I swear, sometimes it feels like autistic people are immediately discouraged from liking something the moment they become passionate about something. A neurotypical person can become near obsessed with sports, but the moment an autistic person becomes passionate with something that’s not popular, it’s a “problem”

I remember back in high school, I was extremely passionate about animation, particularly SpongeBob SquarePants. I talked about it a lot and collected a lot of merchandise, but it was completely harmless. Still, most of my teachers thought it was a problem, and outright banned me from talking about it. I was even actively discouraged from even enjoying animation, as if it was something that was poisoning my mind

It just really angers me that these kinds of things happen to us. If it’s not harming the person, let them enjoy it!

actually it’s super intrusive that people expect me to make eye contact with them. bitch I am already talking and listening to you, what sort of entitlement

(Image description: four square images with an autistic pride flag background, white and black text in the center of the images reads: 1) "Nothing about is without us". 2) "Celebrate neurodiversity". 3) "My autistic brain is beautiful". 4) "Autistic and proud".)

i am autistic

i refuse to see it as a negative

no matter what other people tell me

“I am autistic.”

“You shouldn’t define yourself by your autism, sweetie. You should say that you are a person with autism, hun.”

“I’m not saying that I define myself solely as being autistic.”

“That’s great, sweetie. So are you high functioning or are you low functioning?”

So when the trigger your autism person found out that I was autistic, they said

“Well you must be only 1% autistic”

That’s- that’s not how this works…

Ableists be like well I personally see you as a human being so your disability must be both quantifiable and also a small amount

When I tell someone I’m autistic:

“you’re not autistic, you’re just [list of autistic traits]”

sometimes, people don’t understand that we are hated for being autistic. “But I don’t hate autistic people!”.

That’s right! Because you don’t know how autistic people are.

You know, people never bullied me for being autistic. Because neither me nor they had the terminology. Nah, they punished me for being weird. And what made me weird to their eyes? I spoke weird and often stumbled, and I spoke like a grownup anyway, and I wouldn’t shut up about Ancient Greece. I moved weird too, because I was (am) really clumsy, and I didn’t have any friends. I was boring and didn’t catch jokes (made at my expense) and I didn’t look them in the eye, and so on and on.

If you asked any of the people who bullied me for years whether they hate autistic people, they’d say “no!”. Because they don’t hate autistic people, but oh boy do they hate weird people. Perhaps they don’t hate autistic people, but surely they hated me for being obviously autistic.

I’ve been trying to explain this concept to a lot of people. You did a really good job summing it up.

ive seen people online claim to support autistic people and then kind of mock/ostracize others for not immediately picking up on all the unwritten online social rules

Hey ableists? Stop concern-trolling autistic people online.

We all know you’re not actually “concerned” for us, or for the “poor suffering children with autism” you claim to be speaking for.

We all know you’re not actually “concerned” about us at all, and are just trying to push your totally false idea that “neurodiversity just means high-functioning autistic people speaking over low-functioning autistic people”

We all know you’re just trying to shut down self-advocacy. And we won’t let you.

No offense but i love my autistic self and no, that’s not “glamorizing autism”, that’s self-acceptance. Autistic people should be allowed to love and accept themselves without neurotypicals telling them it’s bad.