make-space-for-as - Tumblr blog

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Me: *to my therapist* I had the spoons, so I did heaps of stuff and now I'm so exhausted I feel sick.

My Therapist: This is where you got to treat spoons like cash. Just because you have them, you need to figure out if you have enough to spend, or else you're going to be in debt. Remember, you're autistic, so you regain those spoons slowly and use them quickly. Everything, good and bad, uses that cash for you. You may enjoy the activity but it's going to exhaust you just as much as a bad activity if you're not careful.

Me: Goddamnit....

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Shout-out to the autistics who crave hugs. Shout-out to the autistics whose love language is touch.

And shout-out to the autistics who were denied a timely diagnosis because a misinformed professional thought you were "too affectionate" to be autistic.

You aren't any less autistic because of how you show affection. And you aren't nearly as rare as pop culture and outdated research would imply.

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Never be afraid to be yourself

Spectrum Sloth

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Flashback to that one moment where it felt like I'd found an aroace cheatcode on life somehow

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Straight and cisgender people, have you ever had to Google if you’d get arrested at your vacation destination?

If we got to choose our sexuality or gender, we wouldn’t choose to be put in jail, or even GET KILLED.

So many of us are closeted from fear of losing our homes, family, friends, jobs, sometimes even lives.

We don’t get to be who we actually are in over 70 different countries.

We don’t want to turn your cishet kids queer, we want your queer kids to be alive.

If love is illegal, so will our silence

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I just randomly saw your post about giving a sermon about asexuality and being a good ally and I would like to take you up on your offer of slides/notes, if it's still on the table? (As this is Tumblr, I of course cannot tell if the thing I'm referring to was posted last week or 5 years ago so I have no idea the likelihood of success here)

But yeah I just really liked that story, and also it wouldn't hurt me to be equipped should I ever need to talk about that stuff for some reason.

If you're still confused what I'm talking about I reblogged it

No worries, I literally just gave the sermon yesterday (April 14, 2024). The video was posted by the church website today, so I reblogged with a link, as well as photos of the slides and the notes that I wrote for it.

Also, there is a toggle to turn on timestamps for posts, under settings, then "dashboard". Hope that helps!

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I just gave a sermon at my church today about asexuality and how to be an ally. Not only did I get a lot of comments about how much people liked it (and how it was easy to understand for so many old folks), but one old lady came up to me afterwards with tears in her eyes and she said, "I'm 77 years old and I finally know what I am. Thank you." And that just made everything I've done worth it.

(also, thank you @onbearfeet for letting me use one of your blog posts. It resonated with a lot of people)

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Undiagnosed Autism

Autism Parenting + Wellbeing

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Happy Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day! 💗💛💙

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as a demi-panromantic non-binary asexual I love living life knowing a homophobe would be foaming at the mouth with how many labels I have

Submitted April 5, 2023

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Autistic and zoning out when the social battery runs out…

Neurodivergent_lou

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To all the people who think aspec people aren't LGBTQIA+ because we aren't "discriminated against enough", here's a lovely list of reasons why you need to educate yourself:

- We suffer from dehumanisation, people actively devaluing or even erasing our humanity because of our identities (The voidpunk community is heavily supported by aspec people because of this)

- We suffer from self hatred due to feeling as if and being told we are broken, that no one can be happy unless they're in a romantic/sexual relationship, because of allonormativity and amatonormativity that actively damages our mental health

- Amatonormativity shapes laws that put us at an active disadvantage, such as giving married people financial and legal benefits

- Aspec people have been victims of conversion therapy, correctional rape, a lower quality of life, and other effects of being a marginalised and oppressed group

- We suffer from our identities being pathologised and deal with medical stigma because of this, causing many of us to feel unwelcome in and even avoid health care settings

- We suffer from our identities being erased, which can range from people completely denying our existence and people equating it to celibacy, to an almost complete absence of aspec representation in the media (It's been getting better lately, especially for alloaces and aroaces, but I have yet to ever see a canon aroallo character, and representation for those on the spectrum rather than in the extremes is often ignored)

- YOU are creating a hateful, exclusionary space in a community meant to be about inclusion. The same thing that happens to us happens to bisexual people, to polyamorous people, and other identities that are "disputed." In a community meant to be about rejecting the norm, YOU are shoving us out because we don't fit the norm of being LGBTQIA+. Because we're not enough like you.

These are only a few examples of aphobia that people like me deal with. Discrimination and oppression against aspec people stretches far beyond this.

But even if it didn't, it is disrespectful and harmful to everyone involved to gatekeep membership in the community based on oppression and discrimination.

We aren't LGBTQIA+ because we experience oppression. We are LGBTQIA+ because our existence alone goes against heteronormativity and other societal norms forced upon us.

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Happy Autism Awareness Month everyone!

I thought you all would enjoy some sensory items that they recommended!

Sensory Item Recommendations

Neurodivergent_lou

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I dunno, sometimes it feels much better to have a neutral word to describe a neutral reality rather than being defaulted to "gay" at best and "frigid bitch" at worst

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Autism is a Spectrum, but Not Like This

Lil Penguin Studios/Autism Happy Place

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so i was with a friend earlier and he got excited about something to the point of stimming by flapping their arms, and i complimented that because i'm insecure about some of my stims (we're both autistic) and he was curious about what i do, so i flapped my arms too because i love to but i stopped quickly because of insecurity and past ableism i've faced, and they smiled at me and ended up telling me that just because i'm used to negative reactions whenever i show my autistic traits doesn't mean i can't start accepting positive reactions, and i wanted to tear up (positively) after hearing this