Tag: autism

A Reminder…

jabberwockypie:

getoffamyrunway:

jabberwockypie:

whatwhiteswillneverknow:

It’s okay to go up and get offline or watch Netflix during a time like this. 

It’s okay to relax and go to bed, hoping for the best.

It’s okay to protect yourself from the on-pouring of updates.

Your sanity and ability to cope is just as important.

Just know that you’re important. Mute me if you have to. 

Levy, I love you for reblogging this. I just wrote up a similar post because I wasn’t seeing any. Hugs to you.

Thank you! I feel bad for not being involved, but since I am actually in the hospital right now I’m just going on tumbler for fandom related cheering up and trying to ignore the serious stuff.

Aw, honey, I hope your head gets better. Those non-stop migraines are the worst.

I think – especially people who are socially privileged in one way or another (I’m white and cishet, for example) and try to recognize and work on that and pay attention to social issues – we can feel like we’re BAD for not being able to process or handle serious stuff.

But I think you can recognize “This is a terrible thing” even if you just can’t deal with it or process it or it’s just TOO HORRIBLE or follow the updates. I can distance myself from violence, mentally, but even I felt nauseated and furious seeing some of those pictures of how rubber or wooden bullets harmed people.

(As long as you’re not going “Oh, the police are right!” in which case I hope something bad but non-lethal happens to you.)

Bottom line is it’s AWFUL! But I feel helpless and angry and … I can’t do anything about it. I don’t have money to fund the lunch programs and stuff and just … it’s too big for me.

So you might have to use X-Kit or Tumblr Savior to block posts and/or do things that help you stay in your happy place.

For anything – whether it’s a smaller thing affecting mostly just your life or a huge problem, you NEED to be able to take care of yourself before you can take care of anything else. And recognizing your limits is part of that. YOUR mental health and well-being HAS to come before anything else.

Am I making sense? Is what I’m saying offensive?

One thing it took me a long time to learn is that IT IS OKAY TO PROTECT MYSELF. I have an anxiety disorder. I am autistic. I also, if I let myself, compulsively watch/read rolling news, because my mother compulsively watches/reads rolling news, and because I was raised in that house, I learnt that that’s what you DO if there’s shit going down. It has taken me many, many years to be able to read/watch a little, and then walk the fuck away, because if I DID walk the fuck away, I felt like I was being a bad person, and pretending that it wasn’t happening. Particularly if the thing happening was to people a different colour to me. I felt I HAD to witness it, or I was being Just Another Privileged White Person, ignoring what was happening.

After many years, I have come to a kind of a truce. I am allowed to read a little, I am allowed to make myself aware of a situation. I am allowed to sign internet petitions, and help if there is any realistic way I can help. And then I have to put it down, step back, and walk away for a while. Immerse myself in escapism; read a fic, watch a movie. Knit. And that is what I need to do to protect myself. And that’s okay. I have acknowledged the situation, and pushing myself into a day-long or days-long anxiety attack doesn’t help anyone and doesn’t make me a better person. It hurts me, and helps no one. I am allowed to protect myself.

And so are all of you. Protect yourselves. It doesn’t mean you don’t care.

autisticadvocacy:

Autism and Race Anthology || Indiegogo

autisticadvocacy:

We matter. We invite you to support us in amplifying the voices of autistic people of color.

Lydia Brown and Autism Women’s Network is raising money to produce an anthology on Race and Autism! Please check it out and consider donating- it should be a very valuable resource for the community, particularly for members of the community who are often over shadowed and under represented. 

From Lydia’s Facebook timeline:

Submissions will be due before the end of this year — stay tuned for more detailed information on how to submit. 

Submissions will be welcome from anyone who identifies as both autistic (self-identified regardless of formal diagnosis) and some kind of person of color, including indigenous and mixed-race people. 

Please consider sharing with your networks!

I am not of colour, personally, but I am signal boosting it in the hopes that someone who *is* will see this and want to participate! There isn’t much out there by autistic people (compared to parental and clinical accounts) and there’s even less from non-white sources, so let’s spread the details of this around to help change that and get this published.

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’