Tag: actuallyautistic

lumpatronics:

butterflyinthewell:

hopelessly-paradoxical:

Can someone explain to me the differences between a form of autism and tourettes? I’m not being rude, I’m genuinely curious. I was diagnosed with tourettes as a child and somewhere along the line they switched to autism, so I don’t understand

I don’t have Tourette’s, so I can only say I know the condition involves a buildup of sensation or stress that is released when the person tics. Tics can be resisted up to a point before it comes out and may come out worse.

Stimming can have an urge or need to do it, but I can resist it if I have to and it goes away, or I can attend it later when I choose. Sometimes I start stimming without realizing I am, and once I realize I can decide if I want to keep on or stop.

Anyone with Tourettes want to chime in?

I have both, and you’re pretty accurate about the difference between Tics and Stims. If I am stressed, I can stim to calm down, and though I have a preference on what I do (shaking my hands, not quite flapping) I can choose to do a more discreet stim if the situation requires. I can also hold off entirely, and it’ll mean I can’t destress, but the situation doesn’t get worse from not stimming.

Tics on the other hand, I can’t choose and it happens before I can tell I’m doing them. One tic I have is that I’ll shrug my shoulders, and bring up my elbows. It’s a quick movement and I’ll do it several times in a row, and I cannot count the amount of poor passerbys I’ve elbowed in the face because of it. Suppressing a tic is tough since it’s much more of an impulse, and can make the situation worse for the person. Tics aren’t always caused by emotional states, but they can sure make it worse if you don’t do it. Also, I always feel like the space around my bones is… Itchy? Which is a godawful feeling.

That sounds about right to me, too.

There’s also a lot of overlap. Apparently, >20% of autistic people also have tic disorders. And >20% of kids starting out with a Tourette dx also meet autism criteria.

(I have mainly vocal tics and some physical ones, which often got treated as being purposely disruptive growing up. I didn’t recognize any of it as tics until my 30s. It can still be hard for me sometimes to figure out what’s what with some tics and stims, but mostly they do feel different. Stress does really make some of my vocal tics start exploding, but people are different.)

myautisticpov:

autisticchangeling:

myautisticpov:

myautisticpov:

myautisticpov:

myautisticpov:

theshadowcommissioner:

myautisticpov:

I think one of the biggest worries that I have with autism awareness that centres on helping NTs understand how autistic adults can mask how difficult certain tasks are is that I am not as optimistic in the outcome as everyone else.

Like, the end goal seems to be “so that NTs can understand and be more empathetic towards the problems faced by autistic people, even when autistic people mask how difficult those things are”.

But it seems to kind of misunderstand why we mask these difficulties?

If it was socially acceptable and people were empathetic towards you struggling with something, there would be no social pressure to mask, and so we wouldn’t.

But instead, someone struggling with something is seen as a liability to those around them, and so we do mask.

So, I think the aim is that they believe NTs will be more empathetic if they understood how much we struggled and will help us.

I just don’t think that’s the case. I think that saying “some autistic people can mask their autistic traits, but it takes a toll” will instead translate in NT minds as “wow, this autistic person seems competent but I now know that that’s a lie and shouldn’t hire/date/be friends with them because they are essentially a time bomb”.

What does everyone else think? Too cynical?

I understand that this is information that helps autistic adults figure out that they’re autistic, and it’s something educators and medical professionals need to be aware of, but I’m talking about awareness campaigns specifically targetted at the Average Joe on the street.

This is a good point. It would be just typical of NTs to use the concept of masking to undermine us. You might be giving them too much credit though – I don’t think the average NT will remember much once April is over.

My problem with autism awareness campaigns is that they rarely reflect the gender and ethnic diversity of the autistic community. It’s hard enough to find positive representation of autistic heterosexuality, let alone anything acknowledging trans autistics outside of specifically queer media. That’s just not right.

The other problem is that none of this stuff has made it feel safer for me to be openly autistic. At the very least, I want those who discrimination against us to be publicly shamed. I’m fantasizing about a fundraiser where hiring managers are strapped into one of those machines that’ll dump them into a water tank if you hit the right target with a tennis ball.

I mean, to be honest, the thing I was specifically talking about was a clip from the Channel 4 program “Are You Autistic?”

I need to watch the whole program, but the clip I saw was talking about masking and had four autistic women doing speed dating to show how “normal” they seemed. At the end, they asked the men if they thought any of the women had been autistic, and they were like ‘no’ and then the producers went ‘Suprise! They all were!’ and then the autistic women were like “Yeah, we seemed totally normal, but we would probably follow up this date by going home to meltdown”.

Which… I don’t know. I would need to watch the entire program to get a better handle on what exactly they were going for, which I’m doing now, but I was mostly left with a feeling of ‘what’s the point?’ Like, I absolutely do not feel NTs seeing that clip would do anything to help my dating life… It might instead foster an idea of autistic women ‘tricking’ men into thinking they’re ‘normal’.

Now, don’t get wrong, in this instance, the point seems to be exactly what the title says “Are You Autistic?” It’s getting info out there for adults who might be autistic to help them see the signs that aren’t normally talked about.

But… Yeah, between that clip and how far into the program I’ve now watched – I am currently watching the whole thing – it drops the ‘we’re talking to potentially autistic adults’ thing and turns into ‘we’re talking to NTs to teach them’.

Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the show that I’ve seen is good info for NTs, but I was left after the speed dating clip asking ‘what was the point of this?’ and it was being shared by autism orgs outside of the context of the whole show.

OH NO RED ALERT THEY JUST PULLED OUT THE SOCIAL SKILLS ROBOT

OMG

WHY ARE NTS LIKE THIS?!?!?!

And now the presenters are dragging Baron-Cohen… I’m back on board, but this is such a mixed bag.

Kay, so, getting back to the masking segment, the presenters follow it up by saying “if people got diagnosed earlier, they probably wouldn’t have to mask”.

Which I just generally have complicated feelings on, but they mainly come down to the fact that there is still the societal pressure to mask, no matter if you know you’re autistic or not, so masking is still going to happen.

Again, I think my main issue was that clip being shared out of context than the show in general, which does feed into the problem of autism orgs maybe not always thinking through the implications of awareness messaging.

I feel like discussions of masking are best in a “People are pressured to do this because of ableism, which sucks” context. I haven’t seen what this post is about but it does not appear to have gotten that context across

Yeah, they kind of allude to that point but then treat a diagnosis as a cure for ableism, which is very common when people talk about poor diagnosis rates and just not accurate.

yet another drive-by hating

jumpingjacktrash:

i was looking up gluten-free baking tips and the top result was a mommy blog that started out something like, “whether you’re going gluten-free for celiac, or something else like inflammation or healing from autism” and i heard kill bill sirens and had to close the tab.

microaggressions: a gentle yet unceasing snowfall of rat poison.

fuck it. i’m determined to have a good day anyway. living well is the best revenge. and i will make fosterkid gluten-free noms for his celiac and then eat mock duck for myself. i will eat it autistically. i will be the curry mock duck sperglord of gluten hall, and i will throw myself parties about it, celebrating autism and spicy noodles. so there.

…There are aspects of being autistic, for me, that I doubt it’s possible for society to accommodate perfectly. That, even if society did a substantially better job at accommodating autistic people, being autistic would still markedly affect how I live, and will always leave me expending more effort than the non-autistic people around me just to get by…

…I will always be disabled. I don’t see that not being the case within my lifetime. There are, without a doubt, important roles for government, education, technology, and medicine to play in mitigating disability, but I will always be disabled in ways that even perfect acceptance and accommodation probably cannot erase.

So, neurodiversity critics need to understand that we who support neurodiversity aren’t confused about the fact of your child or loved one being really, truly disabled. We know there are non-speaking autistic people, epileptic autistic people, self-injuring autistic people. We know this because many of us are non-speaking, epileptic, and self-injuring autistic people.

Those of us who can communicate on the Internet believe that what we are saying about our own needs applies to the rights and needs of other disabled people, including the children and loved ones of neurodiversity detractors. So when we talk about the rights, acceptance, and accommodation that autistic people deserve, we are not the ones who think those things are only for people like us.

…We neurodiversity supporters believe that what someone can do matters. We believe that the way someone can communicate matters…

…We can help make a future that has room for people like your child in it, complete with the rights, the access, and the supports they need to live their fullest life. We think that that is doable. We think that that is right.

Yes, autistic lives are different. Yes, they are often hard. No, they will not look like the lives of non-disabled people.

We just don’t think that that makes disabled lives wrong.

Emily Paige Ballou, “What the Neurodiversity Movement Does—And Doesn’t—Offer” at TPGA

(I wanted to quote so many things out of this piece.)