#also the line about 'allistic physically disabled people' makes me think you are taking about me. I'm autistic. fyi.

[thedreadvampy]

Autism doesn't equate to neurodivergence, it's a developmental disability that's present from birth. And physically disabled people who are born disabled as a result of brain damage in the womb are more likely to have comorbid autism. Just because allistic people on social media have defanged autism and call every specifically autistic trait "neurodivergence" doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered the separate thing that it is. "Neurodivergent traits" don't exist. Able-bodied men with autism being annoying doesn't make it okay for allistic physically disabled people to downplay autism. Most of us who have multiple disabilities end up under conservatorships bc of how debilitating our autism is, combined with presumed incompetence due to being visibly disabled as well.

babe what are you talking about for real.

[zhong-leigh]

Sometimes I hate that I can get fixated on things and I can't let go of them until I talked about it.

I am currently self dx-ing as autistic with the help of my audhd therapist while waiting for an assessment that can take up to 2-4 years. I've been on the waiting list since... early 2022.

Self dx is valid as long as you do an extensive research into autism and come to the conclusion that you'd DEFINITELY fit the specific set of criteria AND ruled out everything else that could possibly cause some of the overlapping/similar traits. Like social anxiety and sensory sensitivity can also be caused by trauma, PTSD/C-PTSD, but this is also highly comorbid with autism. Again, you have to fit a specific set of criteria.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder/disability.

It means it has to have been present since your childhood and early development. There is research that shows that some autistic people don't start to show very obvious signs until later, BUT that doesn't mean some subtle signs weren't present (such as lining up toys, not being very keen on physical touch OR wanting 'too much' of it -- sensory avoidance or sensory seeking behaviour).

I'm writing this post because I woke up to some transabled and transautistic discourse on my tumblr timeline, and no, it doesn't mean what you might think it means. They're not talking about being transgender AND disabled. Oh, god no. There's neurotypical/allistic people out there who genuinely think they can slap a disability label on themselves even if they don't have it. And some disabled people seem to encourage it.

Please, for the love of god, STOP IT.

You are either disabled or you are not. You are either autistic or you are not. You can show SOME traits of autism to some level, BUT that doesn't automatically make you autistic. As I said before, you have to fit a specific set of criteria. The criteria specifically says that it has to cause impairment in your functioning. That means autism has to be, to some extent, disabling to you. Social anxiety doesn't mean you're autistic if that's the only thing you can relate to. And everybody stims. But autistic people do it a lot more, it's a lot more repetitive, we need it to regulate on an almost every day basis because the world around us is just really too damn overwhelming and wasn't designed to include us.

If you're not autistic, you are not autistic, period. You're not "transautistic" just because you feel like you wanna be autistic or that you should be. Holy fucking shit. No.

If you are AFAB, BIPOC or LGBT+ it IS possible that they've missed you in your childhood or it is possible that the medical field denied you a diagnosis due to racism, sexism etc. But if you don't fit the criteria, then you're not autistic. You're not disabled if you're abled bodied.

And these people out there are like "who does it hurt if someone 'transitions' into being autistic?" It hurts the autistic community for one. Hurts the ones with any level of support needs that they either get or are denied. The people who can't just decide to not be autistic and have support needs. It's incredibly ableist and mocking to people that abled people just... want a disability.

Because at the end of the day you, a "transautistic" will not be the one mocked for a hidden disability. Not gonna be you getting bullied because everyone knows you're different. Not gonna be you getting called rude for not being able to make eye contact or asking questions to clarify things. It's not gonna be you who has meltdowns and shutdowns, sometimes in public, and not gonna be you who people will look at weird for this.

Because you DECIDE that now you want a disability that caused me so much anxiety that I couldn't sometimes go to the toilet at someone else's house unless I really needed to. It caused me so much anxiety that I kept rejecting food for the 300th time despise being hungry as fuck, to the point where I felt dizzy because of the hunger. You decide to "transition" into a disability that you don't have that caused me to panic speedrun my tests in school because my brain processes things a lot slower than the allistic brain does, and by the time I processed the questions I barely had time to jot down my answers. It resulted in a lot of mistakes and worse grades than I could've got.

If you're not autistic, for the love of god, DON'T try to identify as autistic.

(ps. It's also quite transphobic, this whole "transabled" thing)

(ps.2 no I am not arguing about this, if you want to object and claim being transabled and transautistic is valid, tell that to your wall thanks)

(ps.3 autistic people feel free to correct me if I said something about autism that is incorrect, I am still very much learning, and feel free to add anything you might wanna add)

[meanautisticenbian]

Fuck it, I'm gonna dissect all the bullshit in that one Lilith post bit by bit

TW// Lilith hate, victim blaming, abuse, cult mention, ableism towards Autistic people, sexualization of minors (briefly mentioned)

I'll be putting my text in bold just in case it's hard to distinguish between the pictures and my commentary

Here's the post I'm referring to in case you're curious

Moving on and starting with this bit

People pay attention to Eda all the damn time, she's literally one of the main characters. Funny how you only mention tik tok and nothing else. Is that the only other social media you have? Because fans on different social media platforms act much differently; on IG and Reddit stuff like the sexualization of minors and fucking ODALIA AND ALADOR STANS are normalized, where everywhere else it's pretty much universally agreed that that stuff is bad. I don't know a lot about what toh Tik Tok is like just because I don't usually go on tik tok, but even if it is like this, it's not the same for the rest of the fandom. A lot of the fandom still hates Lilith and blames her for her abuse and not being able to leave

You say that like she's a bad person, she's really not. The curse she placed on Eda wasn't intended to be permanent and probably wasn't even supposed to take the effects that it did. She was most likely scammed. I mean look at how she reacts when Eda transforms for the first time. She also feels guilty enough about it to throw herself into an abusive situation and spend almost her whole life trying to make up for it. Lastly, yes she hurt Luz, but let's not forget that Belos threatened her life upon Eda's capture and Lilith was running out of time and had no other option. Obviously what she did was wrong but she's not the real monster here.

"I do like Lilith" this entire essay says otherwise.

Literally none of us ignore any of the bad shit she's done, stop lying about us.

Yes, Lilith did mock her for her curse, which was messed up, but we don't actually know for sure if the curse is basically canonically a disability in that world, so if that's the case then for now it's technically not ableism until we get confirmation otherwise.

"it was an accident and I forgive Lilith" no you fucking don't. First of all this entire essay is you talking about how evil you think she is and secondly, if it really was as bad as you view it, you wouldn't be that forgiving.

Ah yes the victim blaming, the one thing that almost everyone does to Lilith and barely anyone talks about.

There is literally not a single Lilith stan out there who blames Eda for getting cursed. You're just mad that your victim blaming towards Lilith got called out so you silence us by lying about how we do the same thing to Eda.

No one is making Eda out to be the villain either, the only example I can find of this is a few fanfics where she treats Lilith a lot more harshly than she should, and even then, scenes like that are written in a positive light as if you're supposed to be on Eda's side, so with that in mind, the writers of these fics are clearly not even Lilith stans. In terms of how actual stans treat Eda, the worst they do is make her slightly ignorant of Lilith's trauma, kinda like the fandom, minus the "slightly", until she grows as a character and learns to see the red flags. If that's the problem you're talking about, then breaking news: Eda's not perfect either. She has flaws too just like literally everyone else in the show and people are allowed to write about them

Tell me the truth: are people making playlists for Lilith that include a lot of sad and angry songs because she's not a happy person anyway so there wouldn't be a point in having any happy songs, or are they making "trauma" playlists? There's a difference

I'm sorry, are you trying to tell me that people recognizing Lilith's trauma is victim blaming Eda? That's not how it works sweetycakes

There is far more Eda angst out there than there is for Lilith, where are you finding so much Lilith angst? LILITH is the one who's traumas are being ignored while Eda's gets all the attention. You're acting like one of those white cis gays on twitter who see black people talking about the anti blackness they experience daily and accuse them of being homophobic because "there is so much homophobia in the world and they still manage to make it all about race".

No one is saying that Lilith has worse trauma, we're only saying that her's is also severe and that it definitely exists. Also funny how you're allowed to be mad at us for comparing Lilith and Eda's trauma (once again lying about us), then you go on to do the exact same thing and say that EDA'S trauma is worse. Even if, hypothetically speaking, Eda did have it worse, that doesn't mean Lilith doesn't have the right to be traumatized. Both of them have trauma, both should be recognized. Also, Lilith had far more going on in her life than just the guilt of her actions, she was was implied to have been psychologically and maybe physically abused, and was probably even tortured. Stop ignoring all the red flags and condemn the actual abuser (Belos) before you criticize anything the abused (Lilith) has done.

We're not making everything about Lilith, like shut up.

Please don't say that autistic people "have autism", it implies that it's something that can be removed from us. For example: you don't say "a person with blackness" when referring to black people or "a woman with homosexuality" when referring to Lesbians.

Oh yeah I'm also autistic so here are MY thoughts

Amity and Lilith are not antagonists anymore, hcing them as Autistic is not villainizing autism.

The autistic Lilith headcanon was made by autistic fans, allistics only latched onto it because they either wanted to be supportive or they saw that she actually had a lot of autistic traits

You're not the only autistic person alive, just because you're not like Lilith or Amity doesn't mean none of us are or they're not autistic. I mean, I know I am

You're not fun or funny

"not all Autistic people are like this" remember that line, dear readers

Actually, I prefer the autistic villain trope MUCH more than the grown ass autistic adult that acts like a five year old trope. At least we'd have less stereotypes associated with us.

Autism is not supposed to be portrayed in only fun and happy characters, that is literally the epitome of stereotyping and infantilizing. You literally just said that not all autistic people are the same, doesn't this count as being all the same? Does this mean I don't exist anymore? Am I just not autistic? Are you even aware that a flat affect or monotone voice is literally a very common autistic trait? You can't just say that we're stereotyping autistics and then just go on to stereotype us, like what the fuck are you even on? Is it only ok when you do it?

Amity is not edgy for fuck's sake

Literally no one is headcanoning Lilith or Amity as autistic because they're mean, we headcanon them as autistic because they actually show traits of it

Oh, our harmless headcanons are making you feel uncomfortable because they don't fit into the stereotypes you made up about us? Good to know our plan is working I guess

Last thing I wanna say regarding this post as a whole: why are you acting like liking Lilith and feeling sympathy for her is a bad thing? If you find this then don't say "I don't think that's a bad thing", answer HONESTLY

Well that's all I have for now, thank you for reading, I need to go to bed soon

[concerningwolves]

Hey I'm doing a short story for class about an autistic girl who discovers she have telekinesis and I want to knows how to portray her properly and how beint autustic affect her powets with makint autism sounds baf

Hi anon! I’m very sorry if I’m answering this too late for you; I barely had time to even look at my inbox in October and November, and then when I got time to do so this month, I got overwhelmed by the backlog. Nonetheless, I’ll answer this and hope that even if it’s too late for your original purpose, something in it will help you (/help anyone else who reads this) :]

AUTISM, SUPERPOWERS & FAIR REPRESENTATION

Okay, so, the basic answer to “how not to make autism sound bad” is approach the story with compassion and/or empathy – but that’s a very broad answer and probably not overly helpful for specifics. I’ll start with the “how to represent autism well” part and then break down the superpower-specific stuff from there.

1) Autism should be an integral part of your characters’ personhood, but not their entire personality

As an autistic, I struggle to define where my autism ends and my personhood (i.e., my sense of the “self”) begins, because they’re so deeply entwined with one another.  Autism is a condition that alters how I think and interact with the world, and therefore profoundly impacts how I perceive both myself and the things around me. That doesn’t mean, however, that my only personality trait is autism. It all gets very convoluted and existential – would I still be ‘me’ if you removed autism? What is ‘me’? Is it even fair to think of autism as a separate Thing? – but it is worth considering if you want to get inside your autistic character’s head.

A trap that allistic creators tend to fall into is “this character likes [X] / does [X] because they are autistic”. For example, I once saw someone say that their OC likes blue because it’s a calming colour and therefore sensory-safe. This is a valid process on its own: I also like pale blue (+ other pastel shades) because it’s a sensory-safe colour! But where many allistics fall down is in not considering that an autistic character’s likes, dislikes and hobbies don’t have to relate to their autism.

Although the show has its flaws, I do think that Sam Gardener from Netflix’s Atypical is a positive example of an autistic character just liking something because they like it. His special interest is all to do with penguins and antartic wildlife/explorations, and he also enjoys art as a hobby because... he just does. That’s not to say these things don’t intersect – he takes a scientific illustration class in college precisely because it combines two things he likes; it’s also fair to say that autism gives him an edge in drawing because autism brain is excellent at grasping theory/technicalities. But ultimately it’s nice to have an autistic character whose interests and personality traits go beyond the stereotypical special interest.

For more on representing autistic characters, check out [this post] where I go into a bit more depth. (NOTE: that post is on my list of things that I want to revise/rewrite/flesh out, so it might change soon, but the basic stuff is still the same).

2) Autism isn’t inherently “bad” – but that doesn’t mean it’s without issues, either

Autism is not the devastating tragedy that neurotypicals like to present, but it does come with its own difficulties and pitfalls that you should acknowledge if you want to write a well-rounded autistic character. There’s often discourse/debates on my dash about whether it’s fair to call autism a disability. I’d say it is – there are definitely aspects of autism that are disabling, i.e., sensory overload, burnout, trouble communicating, etc. – but it isn’t a disability in the way that allistics/abled people think.  

Some aspects of autism are “double edged”, in that they have useful and troublesome sides. Speaking for myself, hyper-empathy means that I’m good at grasping why emotions Do The Thing, which is incredibly useful in filling in gaps in my social sense! But. It also means that I struggle to draw a line between my own emotions and someone else’s, and am simply awful at creating healthy emotional boundaries. As the writer, you create good representation by showing both sides. Let your character have meltdowns! Let them have trouble in social situations! Let them get burnt out or overwhelmed! But also make sure to show that this doesn’t make them inherently burdensome to other characters, and explore the good/neutral aspects of autism, too.

3) So, how would all of this impact superpowers?

A lot of that depends on your world’s magic/superpower system. Some things to consider are:

Does your character need to be concentrating?

Do emotions influence how controlled the power is?

Does the power take a physical or mental toll on the user?

etc.

These are laws you ought to think about as part of worldbuilding, regardless of a characters’ neurotype or ability, but I do believe that autism will have an impact on how a character interacts with their powers. For example, many autistic people have difficulty with fine motor skills and spatial awareness, either as part of autism or due to a co-existing condition [1]. This could theoretically cause trouble if a character needs to gauge personal space/use spatial perception when using telekinesis to direct objects. Where emotions effect a power, emotional dysregulation or rejection sensitive dysphoria could also come into play by disrupting a characters’ concentration or control. 

Make sure to show your character working with or around these sorts of issues, and keep a balance between the pros and cons. If sensory input throws off her concentration, what are ways she can get around that? Earplugs for noise, dark glasses for light sensitivity, seamless clothes, headphones... etc etc. On the more negative side, I can only imagine the chaos I might cause during a meltdown if I had telekinesis: objects flying everywhere, lightbulbs bursting, general pandemonium. That said, telekinesis would be great if I could levitate myself and just hang there without any sensory input. Also useful if I needed to get stuff and didn’t have the energy to move because of burnout, or if I could use telekinesis to “weigh down” a blanket on top of me during meltdowns. There are some really fun possibilities here! 

Another way to avoid showing autism as a burden/something bad is to give your character a support network and/or accommodations in the story. Have your character find ways to work around issues just like a neurotypical person would, yes, but also have other characters be understanding and ready to help. Thriving support systems are just as important as the autistic character themself.

Basically, address the fact that some aspects of autism are difficult to cope with/require aid but don't overtly focus on that, you know? Your character can get upset, frustrated, or be resigned. She can beat herself up! All autistic people live with this feeling of "not good enough". But show her overcoming this, show her with a good support system, and show her being a person as complex and developed as any other character.

FOOTNOTE(S)

[1] general practise in diagnostic circles is to avoid diagnosing with things like dyspraxia if another developmental disorder is present (i.e., autism), but we’re still learning about what the big ice-cream bar of autism actually covers. What traits an autistic person has can vary hugely from one person to another.

[gehayi]

The Non-Replacement Children

I just finished reading an original story that made me more angry and upset than I can say.

The story, written in epistolary fashion, deals with autistic children.The non-allistic-performing sort who don’t speak, don’t want to be touched, etc. Two examples from the text, in fact.

Except...you know how the stories of changelings are now thought to have been about autistic children all along?

This story is written as a series of case studies by doctors and social workers who deal with the trauma of parents whose REAL children have been “replaced.” That’s what the changelings are called in this. “Replacement children.” “Replacements.” Or, occasionally, “fake children.”

Aside from the autistic kids (I’m NOT calling them replacements or fakes!) all having having silver hair--which, after all, there could be a gene for--there is no sign that they are, as their parents, doctors, and social workers believe, fae. There is also nothing in the text to indicate that anyone is truly stealing children; children (especially boys, in-universe) change, seemingly between one day and the next, and the fae are blamed.

Hypotheses pop up about where the real children might be. Some think that they are imprisoned within their own bodies--possibly within one of their organs  (don’t ask me). Others think that the real children are being held somewhere in a cellar or a shed, suffering terribly. Still others hope that the real children are ruling over a magical land filled with fairies and elves.

No one suggests that the real children have been right in front of their parents all along--or that just because the parents didn’t get the neurotypical children they expected and wanted, that doesn’t make the autistic kids that they do have any less real.

But wait. It gets worse.

See, almost no parents in this story want the fantasy-version autistic kids. They dump them--at hospitals, at “boarding schools” from which the kids never return home, even in the middle of fields of weeds (which is seen as a good way of getting the nonexistent neurotypical child back). All this is presented as being rather sad and certainly difficult for the parents, but it’s not really healthy to focus on such children. Parents are advised to have other children and forget about the autistic ones...who won’t even miss their parents. They don’t display affection in conventional ways, so that must mean that these children feel nothing...right?

Even that isn’t the worst. No, the worst are the ways that parents and grandparents use to try to banish the autistic child in the hopes that this will result in their real child being brought back from the lands of Faerie. You’ve probably heard about these methods in folklore. Some, like boiling water in eggshells, are silly but harmless. Others, like beating the child with a branch from a birch tree, putting the child on a chopping block for firewood, putting the child on a hot stove, feeding the autistic kid poisonous “medicine”, leaving the child tethered all night to a stake next to a well, pretending to throw the child in the oven, actually throwing the child in a fast river, and starving the child, are traumatizing and potentially lethal.

But again, the narrators do not criticize such actions. The most they say is accepting the child is an alternative, but it is clear that they don’t expect parents to avoid such things. Even when discussing children who have died as a result of such treatment, no one says anything about how horrible it would be to be murdered by your parents or caregivers simply because you weren’t the person that they wanted you to be. No one mentions arrest or charges of child abuse. There is not even a flicker of disapproval. 

It is clear that few people regard the silver-haired autistic children as human. Thus, their lives do not count.

At the end, the story focuses on a family that decides to accept their autistic kid...though the narrative continues to emphasize, of course, that this is only a “replacement child” and that the parents are being quite unusual in treating such a child like they matter. Naturally, this family is a privileged one (they can rent a summer cabin by a lake, they know how to sail, etc.). They take their son out for a sail on the lake. The boy lies on the deck for most of the trip, only falling out of the boat once. When he does not want to leave the boat, his mother, despite really wanting ice cream (yes, this is emphasized), suggests that they just sail back because he enjoys sailing so much. As they sail back, the reader is told that the clouds seemed to form ridiculous and beautiful animals that could never be. 

I think that we’re supposed to take this as a sign of fae approval of their parenting. Assuming that these children are indeed intended to be fae, then I am at a loss to understand exactly why those who abandoned, hurt or killed these children never merited any fae disapproval.

There is no resolution to the story. The parents and professionals never learn that there are ways of communicating with these children, or that the kids react as they do for physical and psychological reasons. No one ever so much as mildly reprimands the parents for treating their children like animals or aliens. Indeed, there is a general undertone of sympathy for the parents, while there seems to be none for the kids.

Most disturbing to me is the fact that the children are not granted identities, though the parents usually are. At best, they have initials. Amber and Clark Y. are the first parents we meet. They have a son with no name. Tina Q. has a son with no name. One mother (unnamed) has a son named Timothy; the alleged replacement, however, is not called Timothy but P.  Another replacement (one who sounds as if he would enjoy conlangs) is merely designated Q. Terri O. has an autistic child whom she takes to the park, but we learn neither the name nor the age nor the sex of the child. Susan K.’s child likes bland foods, and that’s all we learn about him. Leslie X. has a child who cries on being held, but we learn nothing about why he cries or who he is. And so on. 

A pattern emerges: the parents all have names that I could find in any predominantly white suburb, without  a Tanisha J. or Ximena R. among them. And the autistic children are all vaguely interchangeable, nameless boys. One gets a line of gibberish; the others are not given lines at all. The audience is not privy to their words or thoughts. In their world, they are voiceless. Indeed, the story itself acknowledges this:

What do the replacement children themselves think about all this?

We would guess some replacements wish to return where they came from; some may wish to stay where they are; and some must wish we not tell their story for them or, at least, that we tell a different type of story. (Emphasis mine)

I would rather hear the children’s story. I imagine that raising a severely autistic child must be difficult--but can it really be harder than being that child and knowing that your parents are willing to hurt you, even kill you, because you are not what they want? Is life valueless unless it fits a particular pattern?  Is a future in which there are more and better coping techniques for autism and where autistic people are seen as human beings rather than others from an alien world so unimaginable?

I have suspected for years that I am probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Knowledge of the condition simply hadn’t hit the mainstream when I was a kid; that’s probably how I avoided diagnosis. I do know, however, that I never had to deal with the label. I don’t feel that I have the right to tell the story of the kids from this fictional world.

I do know, however, that I don’t want to hear what autism looks like from the outside. I don’t want to read stories where parents of the disabled are wailing with disgust, “Pity me for having to deal with this!”  Honestly, we don’t need more stories where the disabled are either trials and burdens to the able-bodied or saints sent to teach the able-bodied. We are saturated in tales that embrace the notions of Bury Your Disabled and Inspiration Porn. I, for one, am sick of both--and have been for the past forty years.

But do I want someone who is autistic to write stories about the magnitude of such parental rejection or about futures where people aren’t dehumanized for having an identifiable medical condition? Hell, YES!  I want to know what they feel and how they think and how they would make things different. 

I want this because you can’t build a better future if all you can envision is a world that’s identical to now. 

And dehumanizing people is never a path to anything better.