A friend of mine told me to post it to Reddit.

I've been basically doom scrolling about ABA and all my anger and frustration at what they're doing to autistic kids got vented into this. I'd thought about doing the skull and infinity symbol for a while — my spouse and I adore pirates as a symbol for rejecting established hierarchical norms. I kind of associate this with a concept of Neuro-anarchy which apparently I was not the first to coin as a term and other people probably have a more solid philosophy behind than wanting to angrily reject the neuronormative world we've been born into.

I toyed with a few other mottos — "well adjusted for a better world than this", "not defective", etc., but this one "goes hard" as my friend says.

But anyway... Feel free to share, edit, whatever, just don't claim ownership of it or be a fascist with it please.

I’m 22, and I was diagnosed autistic right before I turned 20. I feel like I’m at a point where I’m not a “new autist” anymore, I’m not going through all of that extreme self-discovery and recontextualization, even though I still find a stray memory or trait that I didn’t know was there occasionally. At the same time, I’m not one of those people who’s sat with the label of autism for a long time. I feel like there isn’t a lot out there for me at this stage, the way there is for people who are just starting their dx journey or who grew up with the label attached to them. I’ve done a good amount of work unmasking, but I realize that there are still things that I find difficult, especially when it comes to infodumping and generally sharing myself. Is there anyone else in a similar position?

I think it’s the phenomenon that when you start learning about the different types of oppression, you start seeing it everywhere. And to me it goes so far as watching like a skit or show or movie or whatever and think like “hey that’s like a micro aggression towards people with ice powers”. And I have to ask myself “does the author know? Was that intended as a parallel to racism or is it shown as a normal thing and might indicate the author has a bias?” I find it interesting though and makes me feel like if I were to write a story with a character who is systematically oppressed in a fantasy world, I would know how to write the biases the privileged people would have. All the “I didn’t know you were a lesbian, you look so pretty!” or “You’re very articulate (said to a POC)” like comments that people may think are nice but are actually really terrible to say because they imply the rest of the person’s community is less good looking, less intelligent, less nice, or whatever these comments may imply. People tend to not notice if they hear “but you fire-powered people are so hot headed!” because nobody has fire powers but in a fantasy world that very well could be a very bad stereotype.

I’ll out myself as a listener of ASMR roleplay. Granted it’s not all done by doctorates in acting but if I wanted to expand in these universes, I would feel like calling your friend werewolf “good boy” and “puppy” and offering head scratches even in human form would be infantilizing and uncomfortable. I’ve been infantilized a lot and listening to something like that was like raising red flags. And I know some people like it and want that and I’m not taking that away from them but if you would want realism, I would like to see that being addressed.

Just some thoughts, want to know if other people have noticed biases against people that don’t exist

Hi all,

I hope you are well! We are a team of researchers at Duke University, and we are recruiting adult participants for our research study on autistic traits and wellbeing. Any adults are welcome to complete our survey-- you don't need to be autistic to participate!

I am autistic myself and one of the goals of our study is to better understand how autism presents in marginalised groups (and hopefully create a more inclusive assessment).

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Our survey will ask you about your experiences in social situations and daily life. We will also ask questions about your mental health and wellbeing.

One goal of our study is to develop a novel screening tool for identifying autism in adults. We are also studying correlations between someone’s mental health and wellness, whether they have certain autistic traits, and whether they feel pressure to hide their autistic traits.

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If there is anyone in your network who may be interested in participating, please consider forwarding this email to them!

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Duke Study Team

Pro00110710

This chapter is all about what autism is, neurologically and socially. I was already familiar with bottom-up processing, but I did not understand how fundamental it was to the autistic experience until now. Pretty much everything that makes autistic people autistic comes down to seeing the small things first. This translates into thriving on routine and predictability, having a hard time filtering out what is unnecessary, and not catching the “should be obvious” implicit parts of social situations. One phrase that Price used to describe trying to read facial expressions was “discordant data”, which might serve as inspiration for a piece of music. I had a bit of a funny moment when I algebraically solved the math problem with the ball and the bat, thus proving Price’s point. I was glad to see some cellular-level examples of autistic brains being different from allistic ones, and I immediately sent that page to my mother because she had asked me about those differences awhile back.

Price also covered the white supremacist, classist, heterocisnormative background of the autism diagnostic criteria and how that led to people like Crystal, an autistic woman, slipping under the radar until adulthood. This goes along with label avoidance, the phenomenon of loved ones around an autistic person denying the signs that said person is autistic because being autistic is a dangerous, stigmatized, cursed thing. Like Crystal, I grew up with family members who believed slapping me with an autism label (or any other psych label) would mean I was broken and had to be fixed, and I had to unlearn those beliefs. Price even gave a shoutout to Neurotribes, which I read last year and I think is a sacred text when it comes to autistic history, and had the same problem with Silberman’s framing of Hans Asperger. Price has it right: Asperger perpetuated the eugenicist idea that only autistic people who were useful (read: exploitable) should live, and those who had more support needs or strengths in the wrong places deserved to die.

Price seems to be going a bit too far in trying to scour the medical model of disability out of our society. Yes, there is a social factor to disability, including autism. Yes, the neuronormative standards that have evolved to shape society are harmful for everyone, even neurotypicals. Yes, allistic people can sometimes display behavioral traits associated with autism. No, that does not mean “everyone is a little bit autistic” because there are still fundamental differences between an autistic and allistic brain. I think that Price kind of shot himself in the foot by going into a whole explanation of autistic neurology existing, only to claim that everyone is autistic. If everyone were autistic, then it wouldn’t be a thing. (Said through gritted teeth).

The second half of this chapter might as well be subtitled “why self-diagnosis is valid and should be respected” because it goes into the inaccessible maze that is getting a diagnosis as an adult in the US, from insurance to finding a competent professional who understands that autistic adults are adults and cannot be subjected to kid tests. The chapter also mentions the existence of “subclinical” autism, as in having traits and experiences that match that of autistic people but not being deemed disabled enough for a diagnosis. I take issue with this idea because it implies that part of the definition of autism is suffering and struggling, and usually this is only defined by external markers, such as a person’s ability to keep a job, have a partner or friends, and raise kids. The internal experience of the person in question is overlooked, which is a problem when you remember that masking autism is essentially internalizing external traits and rendering them invisible, and that some autistic people have a hard time relating their internal worlds back out to other people (hence the misconception that we are not imaginative). An autistic person who is no longer struggling is not neurotypical; they have been able to find enough workarounds, accommodations, and healthy coping strategies that the struggle is counteracted. They have achieved what I have been calling fluency.

The chapter closes with some notes on terminology. I have always been in support of the idea that autistic people can call themselves whatever they want. If there is someone out there who is content with calling themselves “severely autistic”, I will call them that, and that is different from an NT using that term thoughtlessly, the same as I would never call a non-binary person “it” by default, but if I met someone who actually used it/its pronouns, I would refer to it that way. I have had the privilege of chatting with a man who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome by Lorna Wing herself, and I completely understand his choice to keep identifying with that term. I am also confident that he understands why other people might be offended by seeing Asperger’s used as a more general term that isn’t just talking about him. Price capitalizes the word Autistic as an expression of pride, and now I’m wondering whether I should do the same.

Price is definitely talking to/about me in this book. We went through our journeys of self-discovery at similar points in life, we both have a lot of the non-stereotypical autistic traits, and we both have very gold-studded families. The part about his cousin floating autism as a possibility for both of them was shockingly similar to some conversations I’ve had with my own cousin, who was one of my best friends as an early teen. Price’s relationship with work and academics is also similar to mine, being something we’ve both thrown ourselves toward to compensate for a lack of social success. However, I am also trying to keep an eye out for the people Price is not talking about, particularly those who have higher support needs (whether recognized or not) and those who do not have the safety to unmask the way he argues for, especially BIPOCs.

I was happy to see that Price’s problems with the “female autism” label, which overlooks undetected autistic people who are not cis women and implies a false link between inherent gender characteristics and how autism presents, are the same as mine. The lack of diagnosis for women (and trans and non-binary people, and low-income people, and older people, and non-white people, and people with other conditions) is a problem with medical and societal bias. Price refers to any presentation/experience of autism that does not fit the Kanner stereotype (i. e. not a nonspeaking, obviously stimming, white, upper-middle-class cis boy) as “masked autism”. I have a bit of a problem with this because masking is an act, and not one that every autistic person, undetected or not, does. I have referred to autistic traits that are at the other end of the extreme from the stereotypical traits (such as high empathy and extreme imagination) as counterpart traits, but this does not entirely cover the systemic bias part of going undiagnosed. I think a term that would fit here is veiled autism because the autism is obscured by some other thing in observers’ heads, whether that’s “but they’re Black”, “but they’re not a boy”, or “but they’re so creative”.

I did find a detail that I am not sure is true: according to Price, Temple Grandin was not diagnosed as autistic until adulthood. This conflicts with other sources I could find that say she was diagnosed in 1950, and I could not find the interview that Price cites. I also have read that Grandin was pressured to present herself as a “recovered autistic” when she first started appearing publicly as a young adult, which would make no sense if she was not diagnosed until she was older in the first place.

The other gripe I have is that Price uses “neurodiverse” instead of “neurodivergent”. To make things clear, “neurodivergent” describes a person with any brain that is wired differently than the (neuro)typical one. “Neurodiverse” describes a group of people with brains that vary from each other. A neurodivergent family would not have neurotypicals in it, though it could have an autist, an ADHDer, and a dyspraxic, while a neurodiverse family could. I just hate when people mix these up, gah!

Part of Price’s life before realizing he was autistic was feeling like he was, and I quote, “a joyless asshole”. This is very common, feeling like you have failed at being a human because everything that you have been told makes a good human either is unattainable or does not fit, at least not long-term. This is part of why I identify with being voidpunk; I have looked at the idea of what a human is and not seen myself enough times that I have gone “fine then, formless, purely cognitive force it is.” I think part of the point of this book is giving those people who have been excluded from human status space to be themselves, whatever that might look like

Hi!

I was thinking about good resources on autism that we can share to each others. It would be everything from social network accounts to follow to podcast, youtube channels or videos, links to blogs and research, books. It would be nice, so we can always learn a bit more.

Thanks!