@nekobakaz / nekobakaz.tumblr.com
"Silberman said he 'always' flinched to see media stories about autism presented primarily in terms of their cost to society, for example 'an estimated fifty million dollars a year.' He asked: 'what is the cost of a human life? It’s inestimable and no one knows what someone’s potential is going to be, particularly when that someone is a child.'”
Content note: Transphobia “Part of the point of the letter is how harmful it can be to assign the products of collective efforts to individuals.”
Tumblr: Only neurotypical people do X. Neurodivergent people never do X. It's literally never necessary to do X, and if you do, you are by definition acting out of malice.
Neurodivergent person whose neurodivergence primarily expresses itself as X:
#Repost @rockandmetalfan89 (@get_repost) ・・・ These organizations are worth supporting and following. Whatever you do, DON’T support Autism$peak$. #boycottautismspeaks #autismacceptancemonth #neurodiversity #actuallyautistic #autisticandproud #dontlightitupblue #redinstead #lightitupgold #fuckautismspeaks #autismspeaksdoesntspeakforme #autismspeaksisahategroup #fuckableism
Image description: three white autistic people, two adults and a teen, outside a cafe.
And article by Emily Paige Ballou on TPGA
Fair warning: this post is not really about doing homework, rather ideas for successfully acquiring/accessing more general living and organizational skills while dorming. Also, my first semester has been a shitshow so idk how qualified I am to give advice on the matter, but take it as you will. In a way it’s “things I learned the hard way”/a reflection on my first semester.
That being said, here we go:
1. To remember to bring the correct notebooks and materials, get a hanging clothes organizer and label for the 5/7 days of the week. Place the books/materials needed for each day on each labeled shelf. If you need certain books on multiple days, you can put index card placeholders or label what should be in each compartment.
2. Alternatively, you can get a mini days of the week dry erase board or a computer printout and write what materials you need on which days and which classes you go to (in order.)
3. This tip also works for homework: in college, the workload is much more predictable week to week, so if you always have online math due Monday, put it in another weekly table and schedule days to work on it in advance.
4. Schedule your asssignments to be done ahead of time. It’s a lot harder to get deadline-related accommodations in college and if you’re like me you feel uncomfortable asking for them. I’ve only needed to ask for one non accommodation included extension this semester, and it’s largely due to this.
5. Get. Your. Accommodations. In. Order. Before. The. School. Year. Starts. (if at all possible)
Learn from my mistakes. To be fair I didn’t have another option because my school requires everything to be done in person but it took me a month to get my letters which resulted in some awkward/discriminatory situations. Oops.
6. College accommodation processes are different than high school. There are no 504s/IEPs/under the table stealth accommodations here. Some colleges require retesting for your documentation. All require you to fill out a bunch of forms. You are largely responsible for knowing what helps you (though your liaison will likely make suggestions) so make a list of what worked for you in high school and will fly in college and request those (bring it with you to the meeting if you will forget). Also, your parents are generally forbidden from getting involved unless you sign a consent form, which is a huge change. You will need/be forced to develop self-advocacy skills. I definitely did. You also generally need to request to renew your accommodations every semester, and it’s your responsibility to remember. Set a reminder on your phone/digital calendar.
7. Post its are your friend. For me, they’ve been a valuable asset to my sucky working memory and using them minimizes resulting anxiety.
8. Laundry is hard, especially when you have physical disabilities. Double check your pockets or you might accidentally send your favorite pen through the wash and induce a meltdown. (To be fair I do check- which is why I said double check)
9. Choose specific dates/times to do your laundry, and set reminders. If you alternate lights and darks and do it, say, every Wednesday morning (pick an off time- Friday nights are great) you are a lot less likely to end up with a month’s worth of laundry and nothing to wear when you really need to look nice. Also, your suitcase can double as a rolling laundry basket.
10. Try to eat around the same times every day. Set alarms if you forget. Try to go on the off hours and eat as healthily as possible.
11. Clean your room before it gets too messy. This should go without saying but my drawers got junky by the end of the semester. Try scheduling a day of the week to do a quick clean up.
12. Your space can be a reflection of your mental state. I need things visually organized, but when I’m not doing well mentally I stop cleaning off my desk, putting my clothes in the laundry basket, making an attempt to make my bed, you name it. I’ve learned to recognize that this is a sign of stress and that tidying up a bit will make me feel a bit better.
13. College is not conducive to sleep, especially for work heavy majors. You. Need. (around) 8. (ish) Hours. Get them. It’s hard but everything else will fall apart if you don’t.
14. Make “ routine cards” for things like showering. Write down everything you need to take a shower on an index card and your steps for taking a shower (you can set a timer) so that you don’t take half an hour to get out your shampoo.
15. Drink water. Carry a water bottle so you have the visual reminder. Drink a glass at every meal. Schedule “teatime” and make an event of staying hydrated.
16. Allow yourself to relax. This is hard because the college environment demands you be “on” at all times, and this resulted in me feeling guilty for not studying when I was, well, not studying. I’m trying to work on scheduling times to work and times to not work, and to remember that I need to do fun things to take care of myself.
17. If you dress nicer than usual, you will apparently not look as depressed (assuming you have depression in the first place…). Use this to your advantage.
18. If you have un/undertreated/situational depression, get help before it gets really bad. I know a lot of college mental health offices push people away but put your self advocacy skills to use and get that counseling or whatever.
19. In the same vein, if you are struggling in a class (for whatever reason) don’t be ashamed to get extra help/sign up for tutoring. Especially if you’re like me and never needed to study a day in your life before this because the courses are structured differently.
20. Recognize your accomplishments. College can be really, really hard for people with impaired executive functioning, mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, etc. The change is hard and the learning curve is steep. But you’ve made it this far- so congrats! Celebrate!
If you liked this, please consider following my blog for more related content if you are not already. I post advice and sensory product reviews/suggestions.
This helped me: if you have a hard time budgeting your finances outside of a meal plan - GIFT CARDS Sit down with someone (there's usually someone at the school who's trained to help) to figure out your budget. And then decide where you shop for things. Buy gift cards there. Get it as part of your monthly routine when you get money. (I do this now that I'm "an adult") This way, you have money for things you need and know exactly how much you have left for other things. (don't ask me how not to spend laundry money, I never did figure out how to do that)
But first…I’m sorry. I tried to get us heard. I feel like I let you all down. I threw everything I had into this to try and get his attention, stir up some empathy and maybe change his mind. And it was wasted because I don’t know if Freddie ever even saw the screen being read from. I feel like I let this community down. I tried SO HARD for you guys…
My message:
Dear Freddie,
Hello. My name is Cyndi. I’m a 37 year old autistic adult who has been watching The Good Doctor since it first began airing. I’m quite happy with your performance as Doctor Shaun Murphy. Many of the mannerisms I see you displaying look a lot like mine and I totally “get” every scene where we’re looking from Shaun’s perspective.
Recently, a little girl in a grocery store noticed me stimming and I overheard her telling her mom “That lady acts like Shaun on TV!” And the mother replied, “Maybe she’s autistic.” You’ve helped autism be recognized in a way that is not tragic or negative. I want to thank you for that.
Now, regarding your support of Autism Speaks. You want to help autistic people. That is very, very admirable. Unfortunately, Autism Speaks is harmful in ways someone who is not autistic can’t understand, and supporting them alienates the autistic community.
Autism Speaks has pushed harmful, stigmatizing perspectives on autism. I encourage you to look up ‘I Am Autism’ and 'Autism Every Day’. What do you see? One is a commercial where 'autism’ is a scary voice comparing itself to deadly diseases like AIDS, cancer and diabetes and purporting to ruin marriages. The other video features a mother stating she wanted to kill her autistic child and didn’t because she had a neurotypical daughter– and she says this with her autistic daughter in earshot! Look up Suzanne Wright’s “A Call To Arms” speech, where she describes autistic people as missing. Look up her speech at the Vatican, where she compares autistic people to people with Hansen’s disease– except she used the word 'lepers’, which is offensive to people with Hansen’s disease.
Autism Speaks has never apologized for or retracted these statements. Now what about what they do with their donations? Only a tiny percent goes directly to families. Out of twenty dollars you give, I get sixty cents of that for myself and what I need. The rest is ads, fundraisers, salaries and research that is not helping autistic people right now.
Freddie, you are a wonderful actor and you seem like such a sweet, understanding man. I implore you to listen to the autistic community about Autism Speaks. They do not center or represent what autistic people want. They have stolen from, silenced, belittled and ignored autistic people in the past, and they continue to do it in the present. I recommend you google “Autism Speaks controversy” and “boycott Autism Speaks” to learn more about why autistic people stand against this charity.
Autism Speaks doesn’t listen to us, but I hope maybe you will listen to me. That charity will never help autistic people the way we need it until it undergoes a massive change and centers autistic people in everything. Until then, I urge you to turn your support towards the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, or ASAN, an autistic-led charity aimed at providing aid to autistic people who need it right this moment. Their website is http://autisticadvocacy.org.
Please check them out. Please look up why autistic people stand against Autism Speaks. You will do the autistic community a huge favor. I encourage you to ask the same of the crew of The Good Doctor. You will gain much more viewership and I really want this show to be good for autistic watchers as well as neurotypical watchers. Will you please consider this and listen to what autistic people are saying?
Thank you for your time.
Yours,
Cyndi.
Dear Ms Roth, It has taken me years to write this to you & now I'm doing it almost on impulse all in one sitting. There's things you're probably tired of hearing that I couldn't figure out how to avoid doing, so I'm not going to avoid doing them. Instead, I am going to speak sincerely, from my heart, about the impact your work had on me and the impact it could have had.
What exactly is autigender? I've seen it used a few times now but there's several definitions and it's really confusing.
Ok, so this is how I view autigender. I have feels and reasons why I define autigender this way, and if you would like to hear, send another ask.
Autigender is not explicitly saying that “My gender is autism” - it’s not about saying you are a boy, girl, enby, autism, whatever. It’s about your relationship with your gender.
Specifically, gender is a social construct. The primary deficit of autism includes difficulties interpreting and understanding social constructions. This means that we have a disability that inherently makes understanding gender part of our disability.
Because of this, we can have exceptionally complicated and unique understanding of what gender is, how it affects us, and how we express gender.
Autigender is a word that describes this unique, complicated relationship. So when a person is saying that they are autigender, what they are saying is more or less that their understanding of gender is fundamentally altered by their autism.Because autigender describes the relationship with gender, an autigender person’s gender can be, well anything. Boy. Girl. Enby. Cis. Trans. Anything. Agender. Gender Nope.
So what about a person who says they are autigender, and that IS their gender? Well, I think this still describes the relationship with their gender - Specifically in this case, their autism affects their understanding to such a degree that they just can’t be any more descriptive with regards to gender. That leaves the only word they have - autigender.
The could just as easily say, I don’t know, or Gender Nope, or Genderless - and I know a lot of autistics that do.
For me personally, I have a pretty good grasp on my gender - but I don’t know exactly what my gender is. I call my self queer or gender queer or enby, but autigender does describe my relationship with my gender. I know a lot about my gender but there is a wall that I can’t get past and that wall is my understanding of gender - as it is influenced by my autism.
At first the whole idea of autigender made me really uncomfortable because I initially interpreted it as “autism is my gender.” It took a while to get used to, but autigender really clicked for me when I started viewing it as a relationship with gender.
I don’t personally identify as autigender, but it is fair to say that I am autigender. I have that wall, after all. Despite not identifying as autigender, I do fully support the idea of autigender - including its use as a neogender.
Understanding the nuances of autism and social constructs, when a person says “my gender is autism,” allows me to understand where that controversial statement comes from… That is, reaching the point where you understand that autism affects your gender and then… sometimes that’s all you figure out.
That’s okay. Sometimes, we just don’t get answers. And I think autigender is a perfectly wonderful way to communicate all of the the information in this post with a single word - autigender.
Today I attended my first professional conference as a speaker - Gender Infinity. I organized and planed the topic. It was called, “Not Quite Cis, Not Quite Trans: Medical and Social Gatekeeping in Autism.” This panel was a CEU (continuing education unit) for social works, educators, and autism services providers. It was attended by doctors, by psychologists, by therapists, and by autism activist.
This premise - this relationship between autism and gender - was the central focus.
Our community words and our community culture are working their way into the institutions that support us. They are listening to us. And they are starting to understand.
People shit on autigender all the damn time. The professionals? Well, they’re nodding their hands, their raising their hands, and they are asking, “How do I translate this idea into my profession so that I can meet my clients on their terms.”
This idea, this relationship with gender and how we view it, is not only important, but it is driving the evolution of standard of care and treatment of both autism and gender dysphoria for us.
oh!!! this sounds kinda like neuroqueer!!!! <<<<go read the link!!! it’s sort of an intersection of neurodivergent (autism, ADHD, etc) and (umbrella term) queer.
Apparently, October is Autism Awareness Month in Canada. Something I wasn’t aware of. Here’s the blog of Autistics 4 Autistics, a new org in Canada run by Autistic people.
my friend made this on facebook and holy shit if this isn’t the truest thing i’ve ever seen
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH
my friend made this on facebook and holy shit if this isn’t the truest thing i’ve ever seen
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH
If you’re autistic and ace you’re not contributing to stereotypes, you’re just being you, and that’s great. Keep being you!
