Hello, I'm here to seek out a community of other #Disabled people and accomplices.
I'm working to build a non-profit tool to make alt text easier, and I want to connect with folks who can help guide that project toward a useful start.
I've built a proof of concept, but getting it further will take building community. I'm #Autistic, and networking does not come easy to me. Boosting this is an immense help.
Almost unilaterally, non-autistic people began describing themselves in terms of their relationships to others– if they were a parent, a spouse, what their career was, where they lived, what their religion is, and what their roles were related to others (sister to a Senator, military brat, pastor’s wife, soccer mom, etc.).
And, almost unilaterally, #Autistic people described themselves as what they loved to do, what their values were, and what they had experienced. Many even said this, having intuited the basis of the theory. Among the answers were, “I am a verb,” or “I am what I love,” or “Who I am is what I do.” Autistics would answer, “Lover of Justice,” or “Dreamer,” or “One who values autonomy.” Some would describe themselves as a “lover of” or “obsessed with” an intense passion, like trains, lichen and fungi, or theoretical physics and black holes.'
If you are hosting a holiday gathering where #autistic or #ADHD folk will attend (or anyone else who would benefit), please consider setting up a #ChillRoom as a quiet space where they can go to escape the sensory onslaught and draining socializing. You can ask people what they might like in a chill room, but snacks, family photo albums, coffee table books, plushies, puzzles, playing cards, comic books, fidget toys, and lego bricks are all reasonable things to try. And it doesn't have to be a solo space – a quiet, out-of-the-way spot to sit and have a conversation is also nice. Protip: If there is an aquarium in the home, use that to anchor the chill space. Nothing beats a good fish tank for chilling out, though a window with a picturesque view is a close second.
If you're someone who would love to have a chill room available at someone else's holiday gathering, try asking them to set one up, or maybe offer to help set it up if that's not too much trouble. Sometimes all you have to do is ask.
Good luck with your holidays, make an effort to include the people whose needs usually get overlooked, and don't let anyone make you feel bad for not being able to keep up with the neurotypical social norms.
[We have another big holiday coming up, so bumping this post again.]
I'm not going to link to it, but Sabine Hossenfelder just posted a youtube video titled "Why is everyone suddenly autistic?" If you don't know who that is, she's a famous theoretical physicist who does a lot of science explaining and usually says everyone is wrong. A few weeks ago she did a video about whether being trans was a teenage fad, and it was pretty bad. But this video about autism is truly terrible.
She starts by invoking Simon Baron-Cohen. His name is literally the first thing she says. (SBC is a well-known villain in the autistic community.) Then she talks about the DSM symptoms, and does her usual science skeptic thing for a while. Eventually she gets around to branding the neurodiversity movement as being extremist, defends AutismSpeaks as a charitable organization, Google/Alphabet's MSSNG genetic analysis project as obviously not eugenics (she's wrong), and sides with ABA providers that autistic children need to be abused to behave. And through it all, she didn't forget her signature-brand stupid jokes that are barely amusing when she's punching up but come off as kind of evil when she's making fun of autistic children.
This is Hossenfelder at her worst. She "just wanted to learn about the symptoms of autism" and ended up in a field where she has no expertise, but decided her generic science chops would make up for that. It's weird that a science communicator who is known for tearing down bad science got fooled by bad science, but not really surprising. Mumble mumble Dunning-Kruger mumble.
Tweet shared to the FB group Feral Neurodivergent Raging Meme Posting and now here with you. I’ve been down and this was the first thing that made me laugh today. I hope it makes you laugh too. #actuallyautistic#autism#autistic
since am one of those #ActuallyAutistic people Dx at the tender age of 50 (yes, 50. and yes am older now, shut up), am not acquainted with the american rituals of national days or awareness months involving autism.
I honestly believe that one big reason why the paradigm of pathology is so strong when it comes to #autistic, #adhd and other #neurodivergent folks is that:
we have a strong tendency to dismantle all the things.
We do not automatically respect authority, not unless we see that it is deserved.
We question the status quo as our natural mode of operation.
It has even been labelled and demonized as "justice sensitivity" or whatever, one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.
"Oh you don't like it when people are being oppressed? You must have justice sensitivity."
And seeing folks like us as valuable and useful to society might be tricky for those who benefit from all that oppression.
We are the people who call shit out. I for one am very proud of that. It has always been one of my best qualities.
To all my #ActuallyAutistic brethren (in the US) so there's three salaried positions at ASAN (Autistic Self Advocacy Network) I'm not eligible but I thought someone else might be. They are offering remote working & actively employ #Autistic people.
Please share because these sound like amazing roles & there's waaayyy too much unemployment & underemployment for us.
I live on the west coast of Sweden, just north of Gothenburg. I'm married and we have a son who will turn 18 in just a few days. I work in tech, with business-critical systems for the eCommerce sector. I'm #autistic and have #ADHD, was not diagnosed until I was 34. My interests are many, such as #science#tech#politics#climatechange#education#healthcare#travel#space and of course everything about #ecommerce.
Hallo! I’m trying to get a bit more social interaction in my life, so here I am writing an #introduction post on #Mastodon. :moogle_peek:
I’m Jaden (though I go by different names in different circles :bulbasaur_confused:). I have a silly potato (@nuz) and a silly sausage (#sillyDoggy). I’m fairly socially awkward, a bit #autistic and very #ADHD. :ms_neurodiversity: Sometimes I say very little and sometimes I say a whole heck of a lot, depending on the topic. I’ll probably be posting random facts or videos that I find particularly cool/amusing~ :cat_wow:
I love science (and have a PhD in #physics, but was it really worth it? :frog_think:) and maker videos that try to bring comic books and fiction to life (shoutout to #Hacksmith and #JLazerVideos, amazing folks)! I also really love technology (in particular, I really like #LTT / #LinusTechTips, although I know he can be a bit problematic :shiba_hide:).
I'm also an avid video gamer! :gaming_love: I play a lot of #RPG, #Survival, and #Automation games. Some of the ones that I've really enjoyed and/or played recently are:
Feel free to say hello, boost, follow, or any combo of the above! I'd love to make new friends on here, but I feel awkward a lot, so I might just end up favoriting your posts if I can't figure out what to say :panda_derp: (but I appreciate you nonetheless! :blob_heart:)
So many of my #autistic and #adhd students are ashamed of their special interests, which breaks my heart. They're too young to see that engaging in things you're passionate about is difficult for most NT people. It's a life skill NTs must learn.
Most NTs I know have to work hard to find a deep passion for something. Not that they can't, of course, but that the social pressures around them discourage it. They struggle to disentangle from those pressures enough to be themselves.
"disrupted cortical development and disordered neural circuitry"
Please, for the love of God, researchers, can you just get to know a few #autistic people personally before you do research on us? I think that might cut down on the horribly normative language that you invariably use when describing us. If our cortical development is "disrupted" and our neural circuitry is "disordered", why is it that so many of us have above average IQs or otherwise can do things that people with blandly normal brains cannot? Normal doesn't mean best. Normal doesn't even mean good. Just take the value judgments out of your language and be done with it. There are both normal and autistic people who can or can't do all kinds of things. None of us is broken because of those differences. Mere variation should never be labeled as broken or inferior. If you so desperately need to label something as broken, ask people what they'd like "fixed". You'll be surprised by the answers.
When #autistic folk say "It's exhausting having to work so hard to fit in all the time," we don't mean we want encouragement to work harder at it. We want y'all to stop demanding we fit into a world that doesn't fit us.
“The Autism Books by Autistic Authors Project is an (ongoing) attempt to catalogue all books — non-fiction and fiction — written about and related to autism by Autistic authors.”
There are over 1,000 books catalogued! Including mine and other authors I see in my #actuallyautistic feed here on Mastodon.
#introduction Hi, I’m Cait (like Kat), and I moved over to the Wandering Shop server. I’m a #queer, #disabled, and #autistic award-nominated #sff author and award-winning disability fiction editor. That makes me sound really fancy, but I’m just a fun, feisty, and friendly human who really likes cake.
Neurodiversity is probably beneficial for groups of humans as it brings different behaviours from the fore, which are different from the Neurotypical crowd.
This leads to new opportunities for everyone.
#ADHD & autism aren't disorders, they are syndromes or variances.
Does anyone here have familiarity with the process of getting a psychiatric service dog for an autistic child?
Our son has a really bad panic/flight thing going on, like bad enough that he’ll be wandering in his mind, then all of a sudden realize he’s not at home or school, and panic/freak out, and then bolt for the exit door and out into parking lots/roads with traffic, full speed, not stopping for anyone unless it’s me, my wife, or his siblings.
Recently he, my three year old, and myself were at Chili’s on a Saturday night eating dinner (he loves their blue lagoon drink), and I had to take the 3 year old to the bathroom to change his diaper. I told him where we were going, making sure he was paying attention and actually heard me. The bathroom was literally 15 feet away, he had even already gone and used it by himself while me and the 3 year old waited at the table. Anyway, I had just finished changing the 3 year old’s diaper and was about to walk out of the bathroom when one of the waiters opened the door and said “your kid is freaking out cause he thinks you left him.”
I walk out of the bathroom and start looking around and he’s at the entrance, out one set of doors and would have already been out the other into the parking lot with cars driving around were it not for a mom that was their with her family of four kids who did her best to hold him. Needless to say I ran to the door and grabbed him and picked him up but he was shaken to his core. He legitimately thought we had left him at Chili’s by himself.
So yeah, he definitely qualifies, but it’d be great to speak with someone who has gone through the process themselves so I get a better idea of what to expect.
Thank you in advance for reading my really long toot, and any help you can give.
The reason autistic people identify as LGBTQI more than allistic people is a mystery still but the theory that we "just don't give a shit" is strongly endorsed in the comments. #Autism#autistic#neurodiverse#lgbtqi#ActuallyAutistic
@olena@ideogram Gender is easy to understand as an #autistic. There are two sets of unwritten rules. One of them you are supposed to VERY MUCH and the other one you are supposed to NEVER. This is supposed to be very important to you for reasons and it's supposed to be obvious to you which set of behaviors you want to do. Violating these unwritten rules is punished even more severely than violating the regular unwritten rules because these are more important.