(((Digimon Is Forever)))

i am autistic

i refuse to see it as a negative

no matter what other people tell me

I think everyone should make the effort to encounter and understand the autistic perspective on the world

both because we need to be understood, and because the assumption that the experiences and feelings of life are identical copies that every person can slot into themselves interchangeably is wrong

What I’m getting at is, we know that perception and the senses are a bunch of completely obscure bullshit oozing from the depths of the brain and we still mostly have no idea how an injury gets turned into the perception of pain. It’s slippery and opaque.

And yet, our world is so firmly built on the presumption that the amount of discomfort an experience causes is concrete and consistent between people.

On some level we KNOW experiences affect people differently. But...we scarcely question whether it really makes sense, or is humane, to expect people by default to all go through the same experiences with the same amount of support and reassurance and come out with the same (lack of) lasting psychological damage.

Our world assumes that whatever a majority of people can survive or endure without lasting harm can be labeled an objectively Not Harmful thing, and people in the minority are encouraged to silence their distress and hurt, even labeled as abnormal or wrong because of the distress and hurt, simply because it does not conform to the majority.

It is assumed to be a difference in behavior or cognition. No one thinks about the possibility of a difference in the experience itself, a difference in what is felt which originates from a difference in the brain that produces those feelings.

Autistic people are just as awesome, wonderful, and valid as any other person.

When society keeps claiming stuff like “the way you do things is weird” or “you don’t look normal” or “you should try harder to fit in”… they’re the ones who are wrong, not anything about you.

Neurotypical standards or means of expression should not get to be the default, because the spectrum of human life experience is far wider than that.

Neurotypical is not “right” and neurodiverse, including autistic, is not “wrong”.

Being your unique self is inherently right, no matter how that looks for you and how different it may be, because there is goodness and beauty and worth and importance in every human and their individual life experiences.

you aren’t bad if you have no empathy. you aren’t bad if you have hyperempathy. you aren’t bad if your levels of empathy change.

Them: What are you gonna do with all this collection merchandise when you eventually lose interest in this show?

Me: Bold of you to assume I'll ever lose interest!