Tag: actually autistic

actuallyclintbarton:

actuallyclintbarton:

lowspark13:

I really want to start communicating through text more often, except it wouldn’t make me more comfortable since I can barely stand reading things I’ve written. It gives me the same feeling i get when I listen to my voice on a tape recorder.

Also I’ve…

Yeah I mean. ASL would be nice and helpful, but not necessarily any more helpful than AAC. It’s…

Okay to be perfectly honest? Part of it is I don’t feel like I deserve it but most of it is not even that I’m afraid to use it but I am petrified of using it and then someone who saw me use it hearing me talk with Birdie or someone I’m comfortable talking with at the time and judging me for it.

Which is stupid because it’s not just for completely 100% 24/7 nonverbal people and I know that, and usually I couldn’t give a rats ass what some random person would think, but I’m honestly kind of afraid some off-their-gourd allistic is gonna start something when I’m least capable of handling it.

At least with ASL I can just say that I’m hard of hearing and it’s easier in louder spaces to sign sometimes. (Which would both be and not be a lie).

And that is a compromise and it’s OKAY to compromise and do what’s most likely to cause you the minimum of stress which INCLUDES avoiding stupid questions by random strangers. Okay, this probably doesn’t connect (in my head, it does, but that doesn’t always translate), but here goes. I use the word lesbian to refer to myself. It encompasses the fact that I’m in a long-term,committed monogamous relationship with a woman. People sort of get it. It’s shorthand. But honestly? I don’t consider myself a lesbian. I’m ambivalent about the word bisexual, though that’s closer to the mark. Queer probably comes closest, because it’s a general term. The reality is ‘I fall in love with people’ tends to result in a hell of a lot of blank looks, confusion, and demands for clarification, even in the queer community. If I added ‘sometimes I like sex, sometimes I just want cuddles and scritches and petting, and sometimes I really don’t want to be touched at all’, there would be even more confusion. So I use lesbian even though I don’t really click with it because it gives people a label they can understand (even if they’re homophobic, they know what a lesbian is), and they’re happy that they’ve categorised me and can move on.

The point I’m making is this – people, even people who work with autistic people, even some autistic people themselves, JUST DON’T GET that sometimes, some autistic people can’t use verbal language all the time, or at times, it’s so stressful and hard it’s exhausting, or leads us into a meltdown. And to explain all that, when you’re on the edge of a meltdown or exhaustion, is TOO MUCH. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to be too exhausted to be the perfect information resource/soapbox advocate. You’re allowed to think of your autistic manifestations as being disabling. That doesn’t make you a bad autistic person. And if using ASL, or home sign, or signed english means you can use the excuse, “I’m Deaf/HoH, and it’s easier to sign in this situation/when I’m tired/when I’m having trouble keeping up”, then that’s fine, even if the real reason you’re signing isn’t completely to do with the fact that you’re Deaf/HoH. YOU DON’T HAVE TO JUSTIFY YOURSELF HONESTLY AND COMPLETELY. You are under no obligation to. And if the short explanation you give isn’t enough for them to accept and leave you alone, then they’re a rude asshole anyway.

actuallyclintbarton:

lowspark13:

I really want to start communicating through text more often, except it wouldn’t make me more comfortable since I can barely stand reading things I’ve written. It gives me the same feeling i get when I listen to my voice on a tape recorder.

Also I’ve never used AAC and I don’t think explaining why I “suddenly” can’t talk would work out very well. I’ve never gone completely non-verbal;I can always mange to force out the words.

I have been thinking about trying to get my wife and I into an ASL class so I don’t have to always talk but I don’t have to rely on text/having my phone or laptop on me.

Plus I can’t hear well anyway so it’d be plenty helpful for loud places or when her voice isn’t very loud.

(Though tbf I have not discussed this with her yet as it’s not currently a viable option due to money – she might not want to.)

I totally understand though – I’ve ALLOWED myself to go fully nonverbal like. Once. Because I was safe and with people who understood. I feel like I’m almost not allowed to use AAC since I can almost always force words out if I need to.

AAC is for everyone, but if you feel ASL is going to be more accessible for you, then, by all means, go for it. Learning another language is never a bad thing.

I often wish I learnt more Auslan. We had a Deaf class at my infants school, but the kid I bonded best with was Shannon, and his hearing with aids was good enough that he hardly used it and got mainstreamed with the rest of us kids by second grade. Now all I remember is how to fingerspell the alphabet.

transyoite:

yungrufio:

megasumpex:

shout out to the kids and adults who have memory problems, who get yelled and screamed at by their families for not remembering things

or over-remembering. remembering things no one else seems to remember but still having blankets of empty in their memory and wondering why they can’t remember chunks of things or why their timelines are all off

oh my god i thought i was alone

neurowonderful:

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a pro-Neurodiversity, pro-Autism documentary starring actual autistic advocates?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if this educational film exposed the controversy of Autism Speaks, while at the same time covering topics like the Judge Rotenberg Center and the horrifying society-sanctioned pattern of disabled people being murdered by their caregivers?

Wouldn’t the icing on the cake be an exploration of the Autism Acceptance/Neurodiversity movement through the eyes of autistic people, featuring interviews with Ari Ne’eman of The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Landon Bryce of thAutcast, artist/author Robyn Steward and autism activist Zoe Gross?

This film exists! The documentary is Citizen Autistic, Produced by William Davenport, and it needs help. William Davenport is currently trying to raise enough money to be able to do a screening tour and bring this incredibly important film to people all over the US. They have an indiegogo campaign here, and their goal is to raise $5000.

This is a big opportunity for the a/Autistic community to spread a message of truth. As William Davenport said, “After screening the film, people have remarked to me, ‘I didn’t even know that adults have autism’.” Right now the loudest voices are the voices coming from Autism Speaks and other pro-cure and anti-acceptance organizations led and directed by non-autistics. But films like Citizen Autistic can be a part of changing that!

Please check out their indiegogo campaign here and consider donating, and please help spread the word! Citizen Autistic also has a facebook page here. To see more excerpts from the film you can see William Davenport’s vimeo page here.

Even though my funds are very limited, I just donated $25 to this because the $25 perk is a DVD copy, and as an Australian, it’s likely that this is my only legit way of getting to see this film. So if you’re an international autist who wants to see Citizen Autistic and can afford it, donating is a great way of not only helping out, but allows you to experience the film, too.

(Source: http://neurowonderful.tumblr.com/)

In short, what allies do is guide the conversation from a place where we are at best peripheral to a place where Autistic perspectives are central. Allies help us in our fight for a seat at the table so that once we get there we have the energy to make good use of it.

But here’s the thing: if you are trying to be an ally, you need to recognize that it’s not about you. If you are talking over Autistics or otherwise bringing the discussion back to center on ‘allies’, you are not a real ally. Real allies tell these people “don’t do that shit. This isn’t about you.”

If you are really an ally, you are not going to make it about your feelings. Declaring yourself an ally isn’t something you get to do. If you are really fighting with us and for us, it should be because it’s right, not because you want an “Ally!” sticker for your Good Person collection.

A conditional ally, by the way, is not an ally at all. Anyone who says they’d be for your cause if you weren’t so mean/if you personally educated them on every issue/if you were more appreciative is not an ally. Again, it’s not about the privileged group’s feelings here-it’s about equal rights and about our very existence. My exasperation with nearly everything does not reduce my personhood or the fact that I should have equal rights.

Let me expand on that a bit: if you’re only for my rights when I give you warm fuzzies, you aren’t at all for my rights. I’d rather know this in advance-before I put effort into you. Building strong allies from relatively clueless people who want to do the right thing is one hell of an energy investment. I do not have the time or the energy to squander on people who are ultimately faux allies.

Kassiane S. http://autisticadvocacy.org/2012/10/what-is-an-ally/ (via theaubisticagenda)

soulpunchftw:

I find it oddly flattering that the Anti-Vaccination crowd thinks that I— an actual Autistic— am some kind of monster that was created in a lab. There’s a ’50s B-movie in this, is what I’m getting at.

‘My God, Doctor! It’s alive! What does it want with us?’

*the creature lumbers forward, inciting obligatory screams*

‘LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT TRAAAAAAAIIIIIIIINSSSS’

a blog!

autisticandpoor:

hello there! this is a new blog for autistics on a limited budget.

i will be posting things like cheap stim toys and where to find them, low spoons cooking and ways to make unfriendly foods into friendly ones, and hopefully some tutorials on making weighted objects.

please feel free to send in things you have discovered such as a good recipe or a store that has a lot of inexpensive stimmy stuff!

This post is for…

feralismyheart:

youneedacat:

  • Aspies who sometimes can’t speak, despite having no speech delay in early childhood.
  • Aspies who have permanently lost the ability to speak, despite having no speech delay in early childhood.
  • Aspies who are quiet and sensitive, not loud and blundering.
  • Aspies who sit out entire conversations because they can’t figure out where and how to join in, or how to initiate communication.
  • Aspies who stim, a lot, visibly, to the point people assume they’re “low functioning” and are surprised to hear them talk.
  • Aspies who can’t take care of themselves at all, despite what the DSM says about no significant delays in self-help skills.
  • Aspies who have the stereotypical high-tech computer job… and secretly wear diapers because they’re incontinent and always have been.
  • Aspies who are very echolalic, very ‘sensing’, other things more commonly associated with ‘auties’ than ‘aspies’.
  • Aspies with autistic catatonia who have gone from being considered very high functioning to very low functioning in a fairly rapid time span.
  • Aspies who are ‘passive’ or ‘aloof’ rather than ‘active but odd’ or ‘formal’.
  • Aspies who look exactly like many of Kanner’s original patients.
  • Aspies with extremely severe visual processing issues and other sensory issues, well beyond finding certain stimuli painful.
  • Aspies with something resembling visual agnosia.
  • Aspies with an IQ in the 70-90 range.
  • Aspies with an IQ slightly below 70, who got diagnosed with AS anyway (despite this being against the criteria) because some doctors will diagnose AS in people with, say, a 65 IQ, if every single other thing about them fits the Asperger criteria and not the autism one.
  • Aspies who did badly in school, and never made it to college, or did horribly in college or university and never got a degree.
  • Aspies who grew up partly or entirely in self-contained special ed classrooms or schools.
  • Aspies who find it easier to gesture than to speak.
  • Aspies who find body language easier to understand than understanding language.
  • Aspies who are extremely polite and careful about respecting people’s boundaries.
  • Aspies who are quiet and gentle and shy.
  • Aspies whose speech sounds like that of a very young child — they had no early delay in speech, technically, so they got an AS diagnosis, but their speech stalled at the age of five or so, and never got any better than that.  And somehow that doesn’t count as a speech delay because it happened too late.
  • Aspies who grew up being considered severely intellectually disabled, didn’t speak until they were 15 (after first learning to type at age 13), but didn’t have an autism diagnosis at the time.  And now they’re adults and are being diagnosed with Asperger’s because they can speak now and there’s nobody to corroborate their speech or diagnostic history so the doctor just doesn’t care about getting it right.  So now they’re officially an aspie.  (I’ve seen this happen more times than you’d be surprised by.)
  • Aspies who more than meet the criteria for autistic disorder, but aren’t being diagnosed with it because their doctors are ignoring the DSM entirely in favor of their ‘clinical judgement’ that someone has Asperger’s rather than autism based on seeing them as an adult.

Basically, this post is for ‘aspies’ who fit stereotypes normally reserved for ‘auties’, but had (or were presumed to have) no speech delay and (often) don’t meet the criteria for autistic disorder, so got diagnosed with Asperger’s.  Because such people are all over the place, yet when people say ‘aspie’ they never mean them, of course.  Even though they’re frigging everywhere.

so many of those examples are things i am / i deal with. i stopped calling myself an aspie a year ago (not long after i started) because of that, since it didn’t feel like it fit, because i felt alienated by the idea that being as ‘aspie’ meant i was supposed to function in certain ways that i almost never do. so i just call myself autistic.

anyway, i really like this post.

same. I call myself autistic because aspie doesn’t fit, even though it’s my official dx.

Film Review of documentary “Sounding the Alarm: Battling the Autism Epidemic”

autisticwomen:

Recently, I decided to watch the new Autism Speaks documentary “Sounding the Alarm: Battling the Autism Epidemic” and live tweet my reaction/outrage in real time.

Why did I do this?

Well, I had seen clips of the documentary. I’d heard some feedback that was concerning. I know that many of my friends wanted to watch but were afraid to. I think it is quite telling when a group called Autism Speaks puts out a documentary that Autistic people are afraid to watch. I wanted to watch it because I wanted to know what was being said about us, without us. Again.

Film Review of documentary “Sounding the Alarm: Battling the Autism Epidemic”