#In the innate way that neurotypicals can

[rants-about-opm]

Thinking about how it is entirely possible for your brain to sabotage you but most people don't realize that because they don't think of it as their brain, they think of it as them, meanwhile all the neurodivergents in the house are fighting the gray matter blob that's hogging the pilot's seat and trying to get the body to throw hands with itself.

[spencereid]

thinking reid would be a bad profiler specifically because he’s autistic just.... say ur ableist and go babes i dont wanna hear it

[youcouldmakealife]

Could you explain the concept of masking, especially in the context of the last SAIT? I'm not really familiar with this concept - as far as I understood it, it means that neurodivergent people "pretend" (for lack of better word) to behave more in a way that they would consider neurotypical? What did Robbie mean when he compared Georgie and Finn - that they are both hiding something? Georgie isn't neurodivergent - or is he?

Happy to!

I'm just going to preface that while I've read up a lot on this in the past few years, I'm obviously not an expert, and this is my own personal take on the information I've gathered rather than any 'official' definition of the term.

I'm going to talk about how masking applies to a few of my characters in a post I'll link here, because it's already long enough.

Masking is most often used to describe a particular set of behaviours by some neurodivergent people; it can also be described as 'camouflaging', which I think is a useful way to highlight that the biggest part of this behaviour is to get through social interactions safely.

Safety can be literal physical safety, but it can also be without someone getting upset at you, or being mocked or criticised. This is especially difficult if you're not sure what exactly leads to criticism, or mockery, or offence, or why -- a lot of ND masks involve being very, very quiet, because in the past, honest behaviour and speech has lead to Repercussions.

Speech and social behaviour aren't the only things involved in masking: most high masking autistic people don't stim in public, for example, or will replace big, noticeable stims (rocking, flapping the arms or hands, auditory stimming like repeating words or sounds) with more 'socially acceptable' stims, like hair twirling, repeated throat clearing, and non-disruptive fidgeting, often because they punished for the original behaviours.

This can also apply to other ND 'coded' behaviours, like interest in things that are deemed weird or inappropriate or not for their age group, a flat affect (a monotone voice, expressionless face, or little body language), 'blunt' speech, interrupting others or monologuing, and other 'inappropriate' behaviours.

In the case of masking with neurodivergent individuals, it's a behaviour that sort of...imperfectly replaces the 'sense' that neurotypical individuals get from conversations. The mostly unconscious things that neurotypical people can pick up from non-verbal indicators like body language and tone do not come innately to neurodivergent people.

I should note here how important the word 'innately' is. A ton of neurodivergent people are capable of picking up those things, and some are even more sensitive than the average neurotypical person to them -- some are even hypervigilant, particularly if they needed to be for their personal safety -- but this is a learned set of skills that require energy and active effort to implement, even if the ND person is not consciously aware of that.

Basically, it's a program running constantly in social situations, and, like any constantly running program, it drains the hell out of the battery. An ND person will be drained by masked social interaction no matter how enjoyable the people or extroverted the person, because it involves constant monitoring and adjustment if the monitoring notes that something's off.

But I think it's really important to note that everybody masks to some extent. Two people are having a lovely chat in front of you and then one of them privately says 'I hate that bitch' right after the other person leaves? They were masking. Smiling at your boss even though he just piled a month's worth of work on your desk? Masking. Being very polite to the man aggressively hitting on you because he's setting off alarm bells? Masking. Saying 'I'm good thanks' when someone asks how you are, even though your day sucked? Masking.

Masking is fundamentally behaviour that does not match the authentic reactions and feelings of a person.

And it's not inherently a bad thing! At least in small doses. It's actually hard to say sometimes where the line between 'being polite and behaving in a socially acceptable' becomes masking. I think the biggest difference is that for neurotypical people, it's a conscious behaviour used in specific scenarios. For neurodivergent people, it's that program running constantly in the background. And it's not just used in specific situations -- it's almost all the time.

Many ND people are only unmasked when alone, or with individuals they trust not to use their unmasked identity against them. This can include family, friends, partners, or fellow neurodivergent people they're not necessarily close to, or even friends with, but also don't feel they have to monitor themselves in the same way with. Many people have at least one person they're comfortable being around unmasked. They may not use that term, but they may speak of someone 'not draining their battery' or 'people are hard to talk to, but you're different', etc. It's because they're not socially performing with that individual.

It's also important to note that this isn't ND people 'tricking' others in social situations like a socially manipulative person might. It's a survival mechanism that develops as a result of the 'real' (unmasked) behaviours leading to consequences in their past. It's a response to being criticised, yelled at, mocked, etc, by parents, teachers, peers, etc for authentic behaviour. For that reason, you can also see masking in neurotypical people with CPTSD. Again, it's not to trick anyone. It's to remain safe -- physically and emotionally.

I should also note that masking isn't universal among ND individuals -- it's more common among those with low support needs, and those AFAB, who were expected to comply more closely to social norms than those AMAB. You'll also find it a lot in those, like me, who weren't diagnosed until adulthood, because, well -- masking, by its very definition, makes it harder to notice someone's neurodivergence.

I've been making efforts to unmask since my diagnosis, and have since realised I did not understand the extent I was masking, nor the extent it was draining me, until I stopped masking most of the time. This is common for a lot of ND individuals.

That's important because it's hard to stop doing a behaviour that isn't wholly intentional, and it's even harder to realise how much it's hurting you. The strongest correlation they found between autistic individuals and autistic burnout is masking. It's also the biggest correlation between autistic individuals and suicide. It, like many coping mechanisms common to ND individuals (addiction is much more common in ND individuals than the general population, especially for those with ADHD) can possibly be helpful in the short term, but it's extremely harmful to the individual in the long term.

So just. For my ND readers. Please be aware of that. It can be genuinely helpful, and protective. I personally still use it in certain situations, and when I do not, I am more likely to make a social 'blunder'. But the difference in my mental health pre-and-post unmasking is immense. The more you wear the mask, the more you think that mask is you, but it isn't. And you cannot properly care for yourself if you don't actually know who you are.

[redditreceipts]

hello! i wanted to ask a question, this may be personal for you, so feel free to ignore if it is. im a woman, and im in a relationship with an autistic woman, we are both in our early twenties. i know for a fact that we have different views on the gender and trans thing, and so far it hasn't been a problem, but sometimes she says she doesn't understand gender and that she doesn't really know what she is, but she's also doesn't identify as non-binary. sometimes this kinda bothers me, because sometimes it's like she understands and is sure that she's a woman and there isn't anything wrong with that, and sometimes she says stuff like that. you also being autistic, do you maybe have some kind of insight on this, something that can help understand her feelings (both for me and her)? i want her to know that gender literally doesn't matter, but i feel like the way i've explained it in the past doesn't resonate with her or maybe I don't make myself clear hahaha if u could help I'd appreciate it a lot! thanks in advance :)

heyyy :) sorry first of all for the late answer, and say hi from me to your girlfriend!!

First of all, what exactly is it about gender that your girlfriend doesn't understand? I personally think that even before I became a feminist, I did understand gender in the same way I understood ableism for example. What I didn't understand was the enthusiastic participation in gender. Why would people identify as the offensive stereotype patriarchy had prescribed them? It was a mystery to me. Maybe it's the same for your girlfriend?

If I was speaking to my younger self, I would try to explain that most of the apparently arbitrary social norms that neurotypicals put up with are actually not that arbitrary. For example ironing your clothes: it might seem stupid and ridiculous that neurotypicals only want to go out with ironed clothes, because it literally doesn't make any difference in hygiene or anything else whether your clothes are crinkly or not. But the social signifier for ironed clothes is that you show the other neurotypicals around you that you have your life under control to such a degree that you have time and energy for such superfluous activities like ironing your clothing.

Gender is another social construct that seems random on the first glance, but is actually a mechanism to enforce social control towards women. Women are told to be meek, quiet, submissive, subservient, pretty, etc. This has been the case for centuries. But how did women cope with it? The thing for neurotypical people is that to endure the injustices of social structures that they are subjugated under, they have developed a system of justifications not only towards others but towards themselves. This lessens the pain of existence under an oppressive social system. An example is the fact that many members of racial minorities report themselves that they and other members of the same minority are inferior. It may seem stupid on the first glance, but it's actually a mechanism of survival - like a child that gets told that they are stupid, and the child then goes on to tell themselves that yes, they are really stupid and they deserve this treatment. People of all marginalised backgrounds start to grow into the stereotypes that are perpetuated against them, to lessen the pain of being falsely characterised as inferior - if they actually are inferior, there is nothing wrong with their oppression, right? This is the process of internalisation. It's a mechanism of self-preservation. Women, who have been treated as less than for millenia, have mastered this art of internalising the false narrative that is told about them. And that's where identity comes into play. Many women have mastered this art of self-delusion to a degree that they actively identify as the inferior stereotype that men have made up for them. Gender has become so naturalised that an entire movement has formed around the idea that gender is innate, unchanging, literally connected to your soul - and seeing it that way, you kinda get it, right? It's so much less painful to act as if your own dehumanisation is not something imposed, but rather something innate.

But the truth is that it's not. Gender is not something productive, and gender categories have to be abolished. Not feeling like any gender is a human's natural state and the only path to liberation for women is to let go of it. Nobody inherently identifies as any gender, and autistic people are less likely to condition themselves into doing so. Autistic people not feeling like any gender is the sign that gender is not inherent, but rather social. And in the end, that's a good thing, right? Because what else but oppression, violence and pain has gender ever brought upon humanity?

I think that it's also important for you (the person writing this ask) to acknowledge that even though your girlfriend might not identify with any gender stereotypes, it's possible that she doesn't want to be very gender non-conforming. I know that if I'm gender non-conforming, because of that and my autism, I just get treated like a child. People talk to me like I'm severely developmentally stunted, which is why I do try to present myself as more "adult" (as in using make-up, certain clothing items, perfume, etc.) It's not because I like it, but because I kinda don't want to deal with the double discrimination of being autistic and gnc lol

So yeah, I hope this helped you a bit (even though I've been very late in responding - sorry for that again!) I wish you and your girlfriend the best! ❤️

[lonelyroommp3]

a few people are talking in the notes about how it will vary depending on how you know the hosts. like personally for a good friend i’ll show up in the first half hour (maybe even early for a BESTie), for a friend who’s not super close an hour late, when i don’t really know the hosts or as a plus one two hours or more. and people are getting absolutely inflamed about the existence and unspoken nature of this. but what’s the alternative? sending out invites saying “i don’t really know you so don’t show up before 8”? i also think people settle into rules like this anyway even in their absence as they aren’t arbitrary - if i don’t know you, i don’t really want to be one of the few people in your house making small talk and putting out bowls of pretzels (and vice versa) so i’ll come late.

also, i’m not autistic (though i have struggled with social anxiety so i can relate to aspects of it) and like, a lot of these rules aren’t innate and predownloaded with the neurotypical software. i also had to learn them, sometimes the hard and awkward way. that’s just how a LOT of society works IMO.

exactly! like the etiquette does make total sense when you think about it even if it's not first glance intuitive or contradicts other cultural expectations about punctuality in different situations (although as i said in another ask response, contradictory punctuality standards in different situations is just like. a completely normal part of society lol), and i can bet every single person on the planet regardless of whether they're autistic or not has had an experience of having to learn this or any other unspoken etiquette rule the hard way.

however i think a lot of people on this website (and on other social media lol) have fallen into the trap of thinking "some neurotypical social rules are difficult for me, as a neurodivergent person, to grasp or even understand the purpose of. this means they are objectively stupid and pointless and designed to confuse me personally and/or force me into masking and we should therefore reject them wholesale" which is actually oftentimes not the most helpful way to move around the world. like if it's really that stressful for you then by all means stick to your autistic and/or neurodiversity affirming friend group who will give you an exact to the minute schedule of when you are expected to arrive for every single social event, if that's genuinely what you need then go for it. but that doesn't mean the people (neurotypical or otherwise) who would find it awkward at best and actively rude at worst when someone they hardly know shows up to their 8 til late party at 7:32pm are wrong for that

[tyrantisterror]

Can you tell me about vampire lore in the Lost Epoch/Midgaheim setting-their powers, weaknesses and origin?

Vampires in my setting are a subtype of cambion, i.e. mortal/demon hybrids. They're also a large group of infectious diseases. They are these two things at the same time.

Moroi are the "patient zero" vampires, being the direct descendants of a human and a demon taking human form reproducing human-style. They're "living" vampires, with heartbeats and body heat and all that jazz, and basically have the same power set as Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel.

Upon death, moroi will rise from the dead if their bodies are hit by moonlight, becoming strigoi. Strigoi are nearly identical to moroi for the most part, except they're worse at hiding their inhuman nature - they don't have a heartbeat, exist at room temperature, are pallid in complexion, and are basically indistinguishable from a freshly slain corpse upon examination. They don't actively rot, though, and have the same Bram Stoker Dracula powers as Moroi do.

Both Moroi and Strigoi can make more strigoi vampires with the rite of Vampire Baptism: a complex process where the mortal victim is drained near to death several nights in a row, then finally forced to drink the vampire's own blood an incubate the vampire virus in their blood stream. If the process is rushed, however, the virus will not incubate correctly, and will mutate into one of the many other strains of vampirism.

Before we get to those, though, we have to talk to moroi and strigoi weaknesses. Many of these are psychological - vampires do not have the same brain chemistry as neurotypical humans, and so have some unique compulsions that can be exploited, like their need to count clusters of small objects (like the seeds or berries on certain bushes), aversion to certain strong smells and tastes (garlic), or freezing up at odd sensations (i.e. becoming paralyzed when swimming against running water). Perhaps most macabre of these compulsions is their innate tendency for depression and self-loathing, which can manifest as psychosomatic pain when confronted with symbols of what they consider "good" - i.e. a Christian vampire recoiling from the sight of the cross or burning when touched by holy water.

But there are also purely physical weaknesses. Vampires are beings who are half in the mortal world and half in the spirit world, which makes killing them in a traditional way almost as difficult as "killing" a ghost. However, they are mortal enough to be harmed physically in ways that count - impaling one through the heart will be enough to paralyze them, cutting off their head will render them medically dead, etc. But to be absolutely sure a strigoi or moroi is permanently slain, you must dismember and burn their body to ash, then bury that ash where it cannot be touched by moonlight. Only then can you be certain they'll never regenerate and haunt you again.

Strigoi also have the unique weakness of becoming essentially comatose when exposed to direct sunlight, while Moroi are merely nocturnal by nature and have trouble staying awake during the day.

This is important to mention as the many OTHER strains of vampirism tend to try and fix one of these weaknesses, but in doing so make some of the others more severe, while also slowly whittling down the powers that strigoi and moroi enjoy.

There's the Nosferatu lineage, a group of strains that focus on becoming more ghostly than flesh-and-blood, giving them heightened shapeshifting powers and resistance to dismemberment, but struggle to cling to physical world. This varies from disintegrating in sunlight for the Nosferatu strain, to struggling to remain corporeal at all without blood consumption, which is the downfall of the Shade strain.

There's the Vrykolakas lineage, which forgoes the shapeshifting powers and anti-rotting nature of the strigoi to become more corpselike and solid, but makes up for it by being able to reproduce faster, until you get the final strain of this lineage, the Revenant, who can infect others with a single bite.

There's the Upior lineage, which protects itself from many of the traditional weaknesses like impaling and decapitation by concentrating itself on building a wormlike internal parasite within the corpse host, but becomes less and less sapient with each variation even as the number of parasites per host increases.

There's the Nelapsi lineage, which tries to get away from the impaling weakness by growing extra organs, and then in its later variations begins messing with the internal biology of its host even more to make it more resistant, but become incapable of reproduction in the process.

Then there are the psychic vampires, which are "cousins" of normal vampires within the cambion family. Like normal vampires, they are the product of mortals mating with demons in human form, but instead of the demon in question shifting into a human shape, it simply possesses a human being and uses their body instead. Doppelgangers are a result of humans mating with demons possessing living humans, while Doppelsaugers are the result of humans mating with demons possessing human corpses. Both of these don't feed on blood or meat, but rather absorb life force direct from the ectoplasmic tap by inflicting emotional/psychological damage on their victim to make an opening in their soul.

Vampires are predators by nature, but most are still sapient and in possession of souls (indeed, most of their powers rely on them having souls, and strong ones at that), and so they are not necessarily evil creatures. For much of their history, vampires have been victims of a collective self-fulfilling prophecy - they get ostracized for their different biological needs, are forced to live outside of civilization, become desperate, and end up forced to prey upon humans for survival. And if all your history tells you you're evil by nature, well, it's not hard to start believing it yourself. Nonetheless, it's possible for vampires to realize that they are still people at the end of the day - people with a very unique disease that needs to be strictly managed, but people nonetheless - and choose to be more than the monsters they seem destined to be.

[coffinsister]

Thinking about ASPD through the lenses of tar souls.

ASPD is both a genetic disorder, and a trauma disorder, I find the fact that tar souls can simply not hatch, or not be fully tar, very curious.

Just thinking about Ms. Graves having the exact same disorder as her daughter, represented as her having a tar soul, but simply, because of her own life experiences, the personality disorder never showed through as much.

So she was an unhatched tar soul.

Ashley's genetics, together with all the trauma she constantly underwent, at a very early age, became her into a fully hatched tar soul.

Which shows on her very heavy anti-social personality disorder syntomps.

And apparently, Andrew who shares her same genetics, and has gone through quite a good bit of trauma as well, it's not a fully hatched tar soul.

Which adds up in the sense, that while Andrew doesn't really seem to feel the innate type of empathy that most neurotypicals can feel, he does seem aware of the situations around him, and how he's expected to act in response to them.

(Plus, his own self awareness about knowing that he's feeling differently from how the "Normal" people around him feel.)

I do wonder if that's going to stay that way, or if the events that are still to come will end up making Andrew's soul fully tar, also represented as showing fully dissociative anti-social behaviors, which do fit with how he behaves in the incest route of the second chapter.

[cyrsed]

Nick Walker on neuroessentialism in neuroqueer heresies: notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities

Those who view neurodiversity through a neuroessentialist lens have an unfortunate tendency to compare and contrast neurotypicality with innate forms of neurodivergence like autism in a way that implicitly assumes autism and neurotypicality to be equally innate and equally intrinsic to a person's being. In the less well-informed discourses on neurodiversity that unfold on social media, for instance, one too often sees people speaking of "the neurotypical brain," as if neurotypicality were a biological destiny that unfolded inevitably from being born with a specific kind of brain. On a strictly neurobiological level, there's not actually such a thing as a "normal brain" or a "neurotypical brain," any more than there's such a thing as a "male brain," a "heterosexual brain," or an "American brain." Neurotypical people aren't people who all share one distinct type of human brain, they're people whose compliance with prevailing cultural standards of neuronormative performance gains them the privileges that come with being considered "normal" within the dominant culture. Neurotypicality is more a social phenomenon than a biological one. [...] some people have more innate capacity than others to adapt to the demands of neuronormative performance. But having that capacity isn't the same as being innately neurotypical. If we begin from the premise that neurotypicality is performative in the same sense that heteronormative gender roles are performative, then a newborn infant can't be legitimately considered neurotypical for the same reason a newborn infant can't be legitimately considered a straight cisgender female or a straight cisgender male: newborn infants are obviously not engaged in enacting acquired habits of performance. Infants are adorable messy little bundles of possibility, and which possibilities become realized and embodied over time depends to a large extent on the nature of the actions that a given individual learns to perform. If the innate predispositions of a given infant are fundamentally incompatible with the demands of neuronormative performance, such that a life of comfortably and convincingly performing neuronormativity isn't within that infant's scope of future possibilities, then we can legitimately say that the infant is neurodivergent-i.e., it has already diverged from the path of neuronormativity, right at the outset. The reverse, however, doesn't hold true. If the innate predispositions of a given infant are compatible with the demands of neuronormative performance, such that neurotypicality is within that infant's scope of future possibilities, that's not the same as the infant actually being neurotypical yet or being biologically destined for neurotypicality. To say that an infant is innately and "naturally" neurotypical just because it's capable of acclimating to a life of neuronormative performance makes no more sense than saying that the infant is innately and "naturally" a software engineer just because it would be possible to someday teach it to design software. In other words, it's possible to be born neurodivergent but it's not possible to be born neurotypical.

[radfemfox5]

What do u think about the arguments of the brains on transgender people? I have seen that the standard response is "brain sex is not a thing". But I have seen that there is a great discussion between scientists about this and there are proofs that brains between men and women are different in some little ways. I also see this through autism lens, because I'm autistic and females are underdiagnosed and there is a discussion about it too: socialization or brain differences that make more easy the masking and faking neurotypical behaviour.

But of course, even if the brain argument is correct, I don't see how transition is the logical next step to take then. Like, is ur brain, u can take therapy and be gender nonconforming if that's the case anyway. Brain can be trained due to neuroplasticity and kids with gender dysphoria can be treated in a way to become more comfortable in their bodies.

Sorry for my poor english, I'm chilean.

Hi, thank you for your question. Don't worry, English isn't my first language either.

So, this is hard to answer. The short answer is that no, brain sex isn't real. If brain sex is not real, then trans-identified males cannot be born with a "female brain." I feel like this has been retired as an argument for transgenderism, as it's not only a nebulous concept but also goes against the concept that you can identify as anything you want (ie: no biological component to gender).

The long answer is that it's complicated. We don't know enough about the brain to fully understand which part does what, let alone what minute differences there may or may not be between the functioning of a male and a female brain. It's been proven that men and women use different parts of the brain to process the same information, so while there are no structural differences, there could be functional differences that we simply don't know about yet.

@woman-for-women has an excellent post about brain sex here (archive), and I'll use the sources she links as references for my next points. Go check out her posts, seriously, she's incredibly thorough and condenses difficult subjects into easy-to-digest infographics.

I'll first go over brain sex, why it's not real / not proven, and consequently why a male having a "female brain" is impossible. This turned out to be very long, so more under the cut.

In my opinion: the myth that males and females behave differently because of innate differences in brain structure comes from 2 things:

Logic / Common sense. If you present a man with a stressful situation, he will not react the same way a woman would. In our everyday lives, it's easy to assume that men and women are simply wired differently, since we have unique behaviours and thought patterns. Contrary to popular belief, most of this doesn't stem from innate biological differences, but rather from gendered socialization. It's hard for us to gauge what portion of our gendered differences is nature (innate) and which portion is nurture (socialization).

Anecdotal evidence and misconceptions about brain function. In the 18th century, it was discovered that a woman's brain weighs on average 5 oz lighter than a man's. This would lead the general public to assume that, since a woman's brain is smaller, this has an impact on her overall intelligence, which is not true.

Assumptions are often made in the general public and even in neuroscience when it comes to which part of the brain does what based on preexisting notions of what a man is and what a woman is. The study I just showed, for instance, was misconstrued in order to strengthen sex-based stereotypes.

What a surprise, my personal interpretation of my results just coincidentally happened to match gendered stereotypes that I was taught. How bizarre.

In all seriousness, this study and its methods have been ripped to shreds by people much smarter than I.

"As Gina Rippon, author of The Gendered Brain and outspoken critic of neurosexism shows, the hunt for proof of women’s inferiority has more recently elided into the hunt for proof of male–female ‘complementarity’. So, this line goes, women are not really less intelligent than men, just ‘different’ in a way that happens to coincide with biblical teachings and the status quo of gender roles. Thus, women’s brains are said to be wired for empathy and intuition, whereas male brains are supposed to be optimized for reason and action."

In reality, according to more recent studies with bigger sample sizes, men and women don't have significant differences in brain structure to conclusively say that brains are sexually dimorphic.

If you're a more visual person, here are the graphs from the first study, showing overall brain matter volumes and volumes for specific brain structures. The second study's visualizations are less easy to understand, as they're brain scans and brain tissue images.

These graphs are called bell curves, and they're used to demonstrate a distribution. Basically, the peak of the "bell" shape means that this is the most common value for a certain demographic, while the extremities are outliers or rarer values.

As you can see, "considerable distributional overlap" means that these bell curves are nearly identical in most brain structures. However, white matter, grey matter and total brain volume are different in men and women, with women in this study typically having lower numbers. This doesn't affect overall intelligence, as we saw earlier, or affect the overall proportional volumes of different brain structures. This is just a result of women having smaller skulls on average.

So, if there is so much overlap between the sexes, then why can't a male have a female brain? The graphs do have overlapping sections, don't they?

The thing is, brain structure is nearly identical in both sexes. Therefore, there is no typically "female" or "male" brain, but rather "unique mosaics of features" which aren't uniquely male or female.

A good analogy that woman-for-women gives is this: if a man's height is closer to an average woman's height, does that mean this man is now a woman? No, he is a short male. Being in the overlap of this graph doesn't mean that you aren't a part of your own bell curve.

This is a complex topic that was very interesting to look into. If you have more questions about this, feel free to send another ask or look into the sources:

Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic (archive)

The human hippocampus is not sexually-dimorphic: Meta-analysis of structural MRI volumes (archive)

Sex Differences in the Adult Human Brain: Evidence from 5216 UK Biobank Participants (archive)

Delusions of gender: How our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference. (archive)

[demonanastasi]

Dear fellow adhders:

It is okay to sleep among the pile of clothes you left on your bed because your brain was done with putting away laundry after you put away everything leading up to that.

The dirty dishes surrounding and resting in the sink are well to be there. You needn't wash any of them until you need a specific dish, at which only wash what you need to use immediately. Or, simply eat off a paper towel or wax paper or drink straight from the container in the fridge. If dishes are developing mold, let them be; they can be cleaned when you are mentally ready to clean them.

If there is an unpleasant smell and you can't clean to attend to it, use a good-smelly to ease your mind, and clean when you are ready (good-smellies i.e. lighting candles or incense to make the room smell nice, spraying fragrances on your clothing or comfort plushies so you are not traipsing or cuddling perturbed).

Caffeine is your friend, and utilize sugar for dopamine.

If autism is comorbid, engage in your special interests liberally to be infused with the joy and energy that dopamine you get from it brings regularly. Playlists of special interest songs/songs pertaining to/reminding you of your special interests are a passive boon that boosts spirits and energy. Place illustrations/pictures/etc. reminders of your special interests around your home so when your distractible mind ganders, you get a boost of dopamine.

Above all other things in life, focus on dopamine maintenance. Our brains have a natural deficiency in dopamine generation compared to neurotypical brains, so we must meet their baseline first before doing the things they do without issue. Truly, dopamine is the key. Getting that need met allows all the rest to fall into place -- not in a neurotypical way, but in an adhd (/audhd) way. Our lives won't be the same as neurotypical lives. Why should we compare our lives to theirs? Why should we feel externally-imposed shame for how we lead our lives? We shouldn't. We should never.

Point of this post is, shame has no place in adhd lives. We can carry out our existences in peace in our messy surroundings. Dishes remaining by the sink, with some washed and others not. Unswept floors, cat hair accumulating in corners. Laundry increasing in height in the basket. Stepping over a paper that is to be thrown away only when we are ready. A zen life in an abode neurotypicals would judge negatively and make demands of.

Our homes are not to be demanded of, realms of peace they are.

Sincerely, an audhd man who is making it on his own and leading a relatively peaceful and stable life, thanks to honoring his brain's natural ways and orchestrating his life within that innate framework rather than one alien constructed and placed before him. Shedding the judgments cast down by others in his past. It's a work in progress, unlearning the forced shame that causes us to feel distressed and useless (when we are not!) but I am close.

Don't try to lead a neurotypical life. Lead a YOU life.

We must all relearn peace for ourselves.

Attain peace, and freedom from neurotypical judgment, and pursue the dopamine like your life depends on it.

Because our lives do 💚✨

[takami-takami]

trauma can often have similar symptoms as adhd/autism but the causes are different so like sensory issues could be caused by trauma and if the trauma is worked through it might become less of an issue but if it is autism it is probably innate and unlikely to resolve so taking steps to mitigate with noise canceling headphones and stuff like that is more relevant or trouble focusing could be treated with adderall if it is an adhd thing but if it is cptsd you could try dbt or emdr and there is lots of overlap because unfortunately a lot of neurodivergent people are also traumatized from growing up in a world designed for neurotypicals and having to change themselves to fit in as best they could but either way im sending you so much positivity and love

This is extremely helpful!!! Yes I am in EMDR and it's... A lot. Lol. But I am working through things! Sending love and positivity back your way as well!!! <3

[eelfuneral]

Tech speaks very differently from other clones. He has a different accent, avoids contractions and informal slang, and uses precise wording to describe things. He also tends to gesture a great deal and utilize almost exaggerated facial expressions, which makes his communication style stand out. As an autistic viewer, this is all very interesting to me because these can all be autistic traits, and since Dee Bradley Baker went on-record saying that Tech reads as autistic to him, I think that we can assume that some of this was intentional autistic coding. Let’s take a closer look at Tech’s wonderful (and very autistic) communication style.

Tech’s many hand gestures and exaggerated body language make sense in combat situations since his face is covered and he still needs to physically communicate with his squad mates, but this behavior also persists outside of active combat and is paired up with intense facial expressions, so I think that there might be more going on. When you are autistic, you are basically born without the innate social skills that most non-autistic people have, and facial expressions and gestures are among these skills. Some autistic people may come across as having a “flat affect” because they don’t instinctively move their faces and bodies in a way that people expect, but others overcompensate for their difficulty with neurotypical-style nonverbal communication by turning the nonverbal communication cues up to eleven. Tech strikes me as someone who has to consciously choreograph his facial expressions and body movements, and due to his intense focus, they come off as a bit exaggerated. He was raised in a culture where everyone is literally a clone of the same person, so his communication differences likely stood out to his peers early on, making him feel a needed to mask them to fit in.

Tech’s formal, precise speech is known in medical literature as “pedantic speech”, which is a terrible name in my opinion because it implies intentional condescension. As someone who speaks a bit like Tech, I don’t do it to make people feel small or intellectually inferior, but I do it because I have a hard time knowing what comes off as “overly-formal” or “stilted”. While Tech can certainly be pedantic, I don’t think that the way that he speaks comes from a place of arrogance. He just sees it as the way he naturally speaks and he likely never picked up on the levels of formality and that exist in human speech. Tech also spends a great deal of time buried in research, and I imagine that he spent more time buried in holobooks than socializing with his peers as a child, so he may not have picked up on their register and slang. He may have gotten his accent from interacting with instructional and research materials where the presenter had a similar accent, and being socially isolated (as both a “defective” clone and autistic child) meant that he didn’t develop the same accent as his peers.

There are a lot of really subtle, cool things going on with Tech’s characterization in terms of his communication style. I’m not sure how much of this is intentional autistic coding or the writers adding general “nerd” character traits (which I suspect originate from people’s observation of “nerdy” people that they had no idea were autistic), but it’s weirdly affirming to see social behaviors that I have and relate to in one of my favorite characters. While other characters get annoyed with Tech (which is entirely realistic, since non-autistic people don’t always “get” why we communicate the way that we do), no one tries to change the way that Tech communicates. They just accept him for who he is.

[feralthembo]

Also i dont believe in "neurotypical" as an innate thing that someone can be. There is no Typical brain. Everyone is sick or different or some kind of variant. Neurotypical is a mask. A thing people wear to pretend theyre just like everyone else. Its pretending you arent suicidal at your dead end job. Its hiding your fear of abandonment so well you get read as dependable and consistent. Its only stimming in socially acceptable ways people dont recognize as stimming. Its only allowing yourself productive things to hyper focus on.

What it isnt is that guy with anxiety youre clowning on bc he sticks to social scripts or that fella with low empathy who was rude to you.

[hazbinsponsoredbyvee]

Dearest Lucifer,

Would I truly be better off in Heaven, though? Truly? I'm an AuDHD transman with a crazy ton of empathy and an absolute inability to lie, not even if it would be to save my own life. How would Heaven receive a person who has rejected the gender they were born with and done several surgeries to change their gender expression? My whole existence is a blatant example that God does indeed make mistakes. I'm not even touching on all the unspoken societal rules that neurotypical people seem to innately know and follow without struggle. They feel like such profoundly stifling requirements that frankly don't make much sense to me. I am a dreamer, and I forever question the status quo, challenge the stringent rules that usually demand rigid compliance without providing a good reason.

Frankly speaking, trying to follow the rules of Heaven and their many times demonstrated demands for "normalcy" and conformity sounds like my personal Hell. So, please forgive me for wanting to be near the being whose capacity to dream I emulate, and who has given me the ability to tear out of my own biology shell to live and express my true self unequivocally.

"I'm with you on following rules. Definitely not a rule-follower, me. Heh. Obviously. But the rest of it isn't really as big a deal to Heaven as some people would have you believe.

"Unfortunately, Eve eating that apple had a whole lot of unforeseen consequences, and I'm really sorry about that. It wasn't supposed to be this way. But now the world is broken, and because of that, things can go wrong. One of those things being that... sometimes people are born the wrong gender. And I'm sorry for the part I played in that. It was never my intention. But not even Heaven is going to hold it against you for correcting that."

[eyecicles]

What is the most obvious sign of L being neurodiverse? I defiantely think he is but it's hard to explain why

It's more the sum of everything he is than anything specific. Everyone diverges in some ways from what is the norm, average, common or whatever.

And the term “neurodivergent” isn't as clearly defined as many seem to think. Originally, it was used to look at autism from a new perspective, to think of it as something other or more than just a disorder. (Mainly just a rare neurotype that serves a certain purpose in human societies.) Now, people use it as an umbrella term for every innate neurological condition…or for basically everything in the DSM.

But what makes L clearly “neurodivergent” to me, is that his quirks aren't just something that makes him more interesting, but a person who stands out in most situations whether he wants to or not. His lifestyle is adjusted to his peculiar wants and needs, because he’s in a very privileged position. But someone doesn’t have to suffer in order to be ND.

For example: O&O said themselves that L basically had no choice but to reveal himself to Light at To-Oh because he sticks out like a sour thumb & automatically raises questions. The students indeed can immediately tell that he isn't "like them", and there is, just in general, no scene in which L can blend in with a group. And it's not because he's wants to be the centre of attention, but because he wants (and probably needs) things a certain way: his clothes, his food, the way he sits, etc.

Now it's never explained why he is like that, but when you look at L: Wammy's House/One Day, it becomes clear that his creators view him as someone who was always like that. It's not just that being rich made him weird.

[the-void-itself]

RANT: ableism, autism, capitalism

I do not understand humanity, nuerotypicals and the able-bodied especially. It pains my heart to see how poorly neurotypicals treat my system, my host, and I. I just want us to make enough money to leave our parents' home, but it feels like we are not truly liked no matter where we go... In school, in work, almost nowhere outside of our friends.

Everyday, it is too much labor. When we are working, we are constantly sore. Our body aches from our joint issues, from the regular muscular pain, from our migraines and seeming inability to truly rest or get past our fatigue.

They don't see us practicing our lines at home, researching on "Charisma 101," trying our best to be the best in that shift. No, they see someone who is rude, someone who seemingly is never in a good mood, someone who is lazy and doesn't care. Some deadbeat 20-something who probably is just like everyone else their age. They don't know how much we are truly working.

Other people don't see or understand our pain. They don't have empathy, they don't have sympathy. They say to communicate, then we do and get told to get over it. What they see is someone going into the back and not doing anything. They only see a worker, not working. They don't know our knees are burning, that our hip just popped out of place or that our head is pulsating in pain. They just see a worker not working. Even when we tell them we just need 5 minutes, and that's all they see. That's all they know. That's why we can't hold down a job.

What are we to do? Go get diagnosed with several physical disabilties with money we don't have, then go on disability just to live paycheck to paycheck with the 2 or 3 thousand dollars we are allowed by the U.S. government to have? What is this, fucking hell? In all my time and research into demonology and the infernals, I can confirm they're better than the dystopia we live in.

Fuck the U.S., fuck ableism, and fuck the system we live in. We exist, we are working hard, and most importantly we are trying our best. Everything we do is never enough for them, the older folk who don't get that they are victims too, or for the assholes who work their way up through connections and all that shit. It is never. Fucking. Enough.

We don't need to be babied. What we need to be allowed to sit down for a fucking 10 minute break without someone yelling at us for being a human being with needs. What we need is someone who could actually explain to us what we are doing wrong without assuming it is on purpose. What we need is someone who doesn't see us as incompetent for not getting what seems so innate to them. What we need is a genuinely empathetic person, and in a world where people think empathy is pity, there is damn sure a real shortage of it.

I could go on and on about how much I truly hate humanity and the society we are forced to live in, about how much I truly and deep in my heart dislike almost every single person I seem to meet, but I will leave my message with this: I am not bitter because I don't have love in my heart, I am bitter because other people don't have love in theirs, and I have too much self-respect to care for their lack of so-called "humanity."