Special Interest is exclusive to autistic people as we have been pathologized for our special interests.
Hyperfixation is the community wide term, and was coined specifically so people with ADHD could talk about the shared experiences around having hyperfixations/special interests without appropriating special interests.
– Os
That “special interest” is autism-specific and people with ADHD should say “hyperfixation” instead is not a consensus of the autistic community, and the human brain is not actually configured according to our political distinctions in terminology.
My opinion is that the ADHD blog (whose author I know personally) was correct, and autism-asks is incorrect.
Neurodivergent people should be able to use the words that accurately describe what we are experiencing. (FWIW, I am autistic, I do not have ADHD.) Some people with ADHD experience interests or passions in a way that isn’t substantially distinguishable from the way in which autistic people experience this phenomenon. They may not be pathologized for it in exactly the same way, but that isn’t what determines whether the experience itself is pretty much the same thing.
And like a LOT of people are diagnosed with ADHD (whether correctly or not) before they’re diagnosed with autism (whether instead of or in addition to ADHD). Their “hyperfixations” do not suddenly become “special interests” when their diagnosis changes.
And a lot of people who don’t qualify for any specific diagnosis experience isolated features of autism, because autism is caused by the combined effects of lots of common genes. 90% of mothers of autistic kids, whether they’re autistic themselves or not, experience some kind of sensory processing anomaly.
They deserve to be able to call those experiences what they are, in a way that enables them to make themselves understood. Nobody is helped by falsely separating out the allowed language for who is experiencing what, if they are substantially the same thing.
I do not know how things got this way, but I think some folks could stand to…learn to appreciate that some neighborhoods of the autistic and ADHD communities think of these topics a little differently than they do. People with ADHD who subscribe to this way of talking about them are not in the wrong.
(And some of us with autism hate the term “special interest.” Honestly, ADHD’ers can have it for all I care.)
I am kind of done with gatekeeping tbh going on like… My opinion is to agree that the ADHD blog was correct. I’m autistic and have ADHD so like… Hi, yes, defs not a consensus in all parts of the autistic community!
Also, “hyperfixation” means exactly the same thing as “special interest” (just look at what it’s been used for in the psych literature. And “hyperfixation” was proposed as an umbrella term by a Tumblrite in 2015, so people could use it in place of hyperfocus, special interest, obsession, etc. My problem with that is that it is not accurate, and can lead to some misunderstandings. If you write about your “hyperfixation,” do you mean your current special interest or the thing you’re hyperfocusing on right now? They are two different things. Your special interest isn’t necessarily the thing you are hyperfocusing on, though it’s more likely than not. But even so, talking about “breaking hyperfixation” could mean breaking out of hyperfocus OR it could mean changing your special interest.
I like accuracy. Umbrella terms don’t help with accuracy.
Special Interest is exclusive to autistic people as we have been pathologized for our special interests.
Hyperfixation is the community wide term, and was coined specifically so people with ADHD could talk about the shared experiences around having hyperfixations/special interests without appropriating special interests.
– Os
That “special interest” is autism-specific and people with ADHD should say “hyperfixation” instead is not a consensus of the autistic community, and the human brain is not actually configured according to our political distinctions in terminology.
My opinion is that the ADHD blog (whose author I know personally) was correct, and autism-asks is incorrect.
Neurodivergent people should be able to use the words that accurately describe what we are experiencing. (FWIW, I am autistic, I do not have ADHD.) Some people with ADHD experience interests or passions in a way that isn’t substantially distinguishable from the way in which autistic people experience this phenomenon. They may not be pathologized for it in exactly the same way, but that isn’t what determines whether the experience itself is pretty much the same thing.
And like a LOT of people are diagnosed with ADHD (whether correctly or not) before they’re diagnosed with autism (whether instead of or in addition to ADHD). Their “hyperfixations” do not suddenly become “special interests” when their diagnosis changes.
And a lot of people who don’t qualify for any specific diagnosis experience isolated features of autism, because autism is caused by the combined effects of lots of common genes. 90% of mothers of autistic kids, whether they’re autistic themselves or not, experience some kind of sensory processing anomaly.
They deserve to be able to call those experiences what they are, in a way that enables them to make themselves understood. Nobody is helped by falsely separating out the allowed language for who is experiencing what, if they are substantially the same thing.
I do not know how things got this way, but I think some folks could stand to…learn to appreciate that some neighborhoods of the autistic and ADHD communities think of these topics a little differently than they do. People with ADHD who subscribe to this way of talking about them are not in the wrong.
(And some of us with autism hate the term “special interest.” Honestly, ADHD’ers can have it for all I care.)
Hi, autism-asks. Are you familiar with the history of the autistic community, particularly our inclusion of Autistic Cousins (ACs), which includes many people with AD/HD?
I’d like to reiterate that the person who runs the blog in question has long-standing involvement with the autistic community.
Many parts of the autistic community dislike this kind of language policing because it needlessly separates our experiences from other people, including other disabled people. This does not advance our interests of de-pathologizing autism.
You are entitled to your opinion, but you don’t speak for every autistic person and you don’t have the right to tell people with longstanding community involvement that they are wrong to use certain words.
The Phoenix police department is saying that the protesters started the choas by deploying the tear gas first. The tear gas was initially thrown by the cops. One guy kicked it back towards them after they threw it at us. A news reporter was near by and saw the whole thing. They can’t hide this bullshit.
Down here in Phoenix the cops just deployed tear gas and smoke bombs into the crowd. People near by don’t know why. Apparently someone threw a water bottle at a cop, even a CNN reporter near by doesn’t understand why they started throwing the tear gas. As a response they deployed tear gas into a crowd of THOUSANDS and caused chaos. People were running and blinded by the smoke/gas. Vendors here abandoned their stands because of the danger.
The cops fucking caused chaos because apparently a water bottle is dangerous to an armed cop in full fucking riot gear. People have been out here all day peacefully, in the 112 degree heat, and this shit was due to cops overreacting like usual.
I really hope, in the wake of this recent tragedy, that we think really hard about what normalization really is.
We are witnessing serious attempts to normalize Nazism right now.
That doesn’t look like what antis in fandom often call normalizing–writing a story with acknowledged dark themes and giving warnings.
Normalization looks like downplaying people intentionally provoking a riot and one of them committing murder. It looks like those people being primed for years by slanted information that presents itself as NEWS. That presents itself as TRUTH.
Yes, the communities that spring up around that stuff often INCLUDE didactic and propagandistic fiction. But if you’re really trying to normalize something bad?
It takes a campaign. It takes making your fringe group look clean cut. It takes promising you’re telling the truth others won’t tell and knowing how to sound convincing.
That’s what real normalization of bad stuff looks like, kids.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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