It's Autism, lads.

That friend of mine is somebody who gets a LOT out of exercises like journaling. She needs help putting feelings into words, or else she gets pneumonia lmao

But instead of celebrating neurodivergent people who innately reflect and put words to feelings, we just bully everyone into journaling lol

One of my extremely neurotypical friends caught a flu and it developed into literal pneumonia because they didn't take any time off work to rest up.

Why? Because she DIDN'T NOTICE SHE WAS UNWELL. Work was more important so she just ~did the important thing~

Hey neurodivergent people who never got anything out of journaling despite journaling extensively:

I think it was just more masking? Privately?? For no one???

Why was I— a debilitatingly reflexive Autist— doing reflection exercises??? And wondering why it made me feel worse????

If JK Rowling wrote an autistic character, his name would be "Stimothy Trainwhistle"

The Rorschach Test but it's just me asking you the name of the comedy movie about the Autistic guy whose dream is to do a thing but no one believes in him except a ragtag group of misfits and he wins everyone over at the end by being Really Unusually Good at the thing

The reason it seems like so many people you know are being diagnosed with ADHD isn’t because it’s trendy or over diagnosed—it’s because neurodivergent people find each other and form communities.

me: hating on neurotypicals is a slippery slope and we have a collective plight 💪💕

also me: neurotypicals ruined cartoons their creativity is flavourless and dead behind the eyes we'd have Spongebob season 1 vibes again if we just mandated blood tests and only funded medicated ND creators

(neurotypical voice)

I love <movie> by <neurodivergent filmmaker>, it's so unique and indescribable and I WISH I could begin to explain it but I could never and if you think you can i will actually kill you

All humans mask in order to not be socially ostracized.

Autistic and other ND people mask in order to stay safe. Not to get ahead.

We do it to survive.

That leaves a mark. Deep.

“self dx is bad” ok tell me why my cousins psychiatrist told her she cant be autistic bc shes asian

I don't think everyone is "suddenly" having adhd and autism. I think millennials were raised by parents who were ashamed of having children that weren't "normal" so we were forced to mask so hard that we "seemed" normal but were "just a little strange" and now we're all learning to unmask.

A lot of neurodivergence isn't what people picture when you say autism or ADHD. A lot of the behaviors and experiences that people picture are neurodivergence under extreme stress. It's like defining hunger as being near death because of starvation.

The 'Autistic supremacy' problem isn't Autistic kids posting stuff like "Autists make the best videogames", the problem is Musk and Altman's bullshit 'rogue-genius' act that tech-illiterate investors buy into because 'expert tech CEO' = 'Dysregulated Aspie guy who talk quick and wear black tshirt'

Thinking about how every job I've had there's been a manager whose entire purpose is to coax and trick me into burning myself out, and then I burn out and think "I've got Autistic burnout" and not "the professional burner-outerer whose whole ass job is to burn me out burnt me out"

Autistic adult reminding you that autistic kids grow up and eventually find community who will accept their harmless stims and quirks and not require them to change because you're embarrassed by them and man, when that happens, some of you parents look kinda bad.

Technically he got bashed for being a dirty little reactionary and ratfucking the feminist editors of the student newspaper out of their jobs... but ass whooping is an intricate tapestry ✨

In 1976, former neolib Australian treasurer Peter Costello led a student political faction called Centre Unity that got elected by supporting eugenics proponents Eysenck & Jensen, accusing protestors of being anti-science extremists. A local anarchist beat his ass for it and got off w a $50 fine 😚👌

Every complaint about the left here can be summed up with ‘they don’t believe Black people evolved to be unintelligent in a heritable way’

Pete Wharmby @commaficionado When talking or working with autistic people, don't treat our clarifying questions as a challenge to your authority. They're just questions so we don't misunderstand. It's horrible to misunderstand all the time. That's it. 2:40 AM • 14 Jul 22

Thinking about my trauma shit and how me asking clarifying questions to understand exact boundaries and expectations got interpreted as “trying to finding ways to get to what I want” instead of “trying to make sure I didn’t harm someone by misunderstanding something” by *other autistic people* 🫠

the process is the heart. the piece is in some ways just evidence of the art, not the art itself, art is the active ephemeral process

The Argument Over a Long-Standing Autism Intervention Applied Behavior Analysis therapy has a troubling history, and even many supporters say it was used too widely in the past. But has criticism of the practice gone too far?

The New Yorker took on ABA, and did OK (aside from unfairly representing ASAN's position on communication). Glad they talked to Tiffany Hammond, esp. about families with few choices, rolling my eyes about usual parent suspect insisting ABA is necessary for high-support autistics (it is not).

John Travilta alone

Hatching Autists:

“I don’t want to ‘claim space’ from Autistic people or dilute the support they receive”

People with a DX of ASD:

“… what support?”

Psychometric questionnaires and 'culture fit' hiring are purpose-built to expose Autistic traits and punish/exclude neurodivergent people from the workforce.

The whole discipline of personality assessment was founded on racist, ableist junk science and it's killing us one by one

There are so many grifters around disabled folk: bogus practitioners offering dangerous quack therapies, non-disabled researchers & “experts” dripping with contempt for their subjects, charities with dodgy aims, tragedy porn obsessed family members.

Your best bet is to listen to disabled people.

Everybody: You're different

Me: Y'know, I think I might be different

Everybody: Eugh STOP it you are NOT qualified, you need to be assessed by an EXPERT

The expert:

Bob Dylan singing into a studio mic at the 1985 recording of 'We Are the World', from the 2024 documentary 'The Greatest Night in Pop'. Caption: [mumbling] 🎵 ... our own lives 🎵

Bob Dylan and Quincy Jones crowded around Stevie Wonder who is playing piano and singing. Caption: [impersonating Dylan] 🎵 ... There's a choice we're makin' 🎵

Moments after previous screenshot of Bob Dylan, Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder. Bob Dylan is bent over, laughing, hugging Stevie. Caption: [Dylan laughing]

Bob Dylan back at the studio mic, singing, glowing with confidence. Caption: [confidently] 🎵 There's a choice we're makin' 🎵

The part where Bob Dylan's so painfully out of place at the We Are The World recording session that he can't sing and no one knows how to help until Stevie Wonder busts out a Dylan impression so blistering it revives his artistic spirit.

So. Self-diagnosis of autism. I see a lot of people who consider themselves rational & pro-science dumping on the idea that autistic people can identify their own autism. Let’s talk about why that attitude is harmful, especially for autistic adults. 🧵

Autism studies tend to be depressing, but this one specifically sidesteps the deficit paradigm and affirms what neurodivergent people have been saying for years about the pros and cons of inertia!

Link cards are broken for me rn! Link to read here:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Screenshot of data table titled, 'Table 1. Interviewee characteristics' 3 columns titled, Demographic Information, Sample Size (M or n), and Standard Deviation or Percentage. Top 2 rows show an average age of 44.3, and average age at autism diagnosis of 37.3 Bottom 4 rows show gender of participants: Women (including trans women): 11 or 46% Men (including trans man): 7 or 29% Non-binary: 7 or 17% Other: 2 or 8% The 'Other' group has a supertext 'A', denoting a footnote.

Screenshot of footnote 'A'. Highlighted text beneath prior table: "Gender was self-described as 'Autistic' by one participant, and 'demi-girl' by another.

Researchers: "Any link between Autism and gender nonconformity is PURELY ANECDOTAL"

Also researchers: "Our sample of Autistic volunteers was 25% GNC and also one person just wrote 'Autistic' with a capital 'A' in the gender box"

👑👑👑👑👑👑👑