Today you are You, that is truer than true. 
There is no one alive who is You-er than You. 
 Dr. Seuss
On Functioning and “Functioning”
by Autistic Academic


Not only did I present on deconstruction, autism, and digital communities at #cwcon this week, I also roomed (and presented) with a number of other autistic people.

I’ve made several autistic friends via the Internet, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts (and in the presentation).  I’ve even met a few of them one on one.  But spending time in a group gave me a perspective I haven’t had before.  Like:

  • The fact that I’ve never had an IEP, or was never diagnosed in childhood for anything, may be relatively unusual for autistics/NDs in my approximate age group.
  • I’m as awkward at autistic conversational norms as I am at NT ones, but I am less anxious about this awkwardness because something about autistic conversational norms feels intuitively right to me in a way that NT conversational norms never have.
  • Most of my autistic body-language norms have been completely extinguished.    READ MORE
When we, as professionals or parents, set goals for the autistic people in our lives to reach, "normality" or the set of behaviors that most closely resemble it is often held up at the golden standard. But we need to remember that normality doesn't really exist and each one of us - autistic or not - is our own unique self. Sacrificing pieces of ourselves to "fit in", expending energy to "be like others" is exhausting, and yet far too many people on the spectrum feel required to do this - and bear the costs. That is why our best hope for the autistic people in our lives is not for them to hide who they are in an attempt to seem "normal", but for them to be their best, authentic selves.

In Their own words

In Passing: On Not Passing, Failing to Pass, and Social Skills 
by Michael Scott Monje Jr.
think inclusive had a very interesting guest blog about passing, the pressure to do so, and the choice not to last week. I loved it. It was exactly as confrontational as it needed to be, refusing to pull punches about important issues. Around the same time I found that, I also ran across Stuart Duncan's post about insanity, where he talks about the issues revolving around "getting fixed" by therapists. As I considered the points being made in both posts, something started to eat at me, and I didn't quite know what my problem was, at least not until I found this article over on Mama Be Good on how the autism narrative gets framed. Then it all fell into place.     READ MORE
Learning to be Autistic
by S. R. Salas
That sounds funny, doesn’t it? I hear all the time about people learning to NOT be Autistic (i.e. being forced through therapies to not “behave” autistically). I’ve yet to hear about anyone actually wanting to learn how to be Autistic. 

So what does it mean?

Last week my friend Cynthia who blogs over at Musings of an Aspie wrote a great piece, At the Intersection of Gender and Autism – Part I. I read it and found myself nodding in agreement through much of the post, especially at this:

“Knowing that I’m autistic has helped me to reconcile so many confusing aspects of my life. It’s as if I’m slowly reassembling the pieces of myself.”  –  Cynthia Kim     READ MORE
“Sucking It Up” To Pass as Non-Autistic    by Judy Endow
It is a lot of work to look non-autistic, and yet, looking non-autistic is the ticket to sit at many tables. It is not right, and yet, I choose to expend a great deal of energy inhibiting my autistic ways for the sake of sitting at some of society’s tables. Employment is one such table. Just like all other adults I need to pay the monthly bills, buy groceries, have transportation, etc. This all poses quite the conundrum for me.

I spent most of my life to trying to figure out the world around me – to fit myself into it in such a way as to feel more comfortable, raise my children, remain employed and have a few good friends. This all has come at a high personal cost. In many areas of life, I have to literally “suck it up” and be someone I am not just to have a ticket to participate.    READ MORE
Normalization versus Normal life    by Restless Hands
So, the term “normalization” is something of a dirty word in disability rights circles, and especially in the autistic community. It generally refers to making a child put a lot of effort into trying to look, act, or speak in a more typical way for the purpose of making everyone else more comfortable around the disabled person. Proponents will tell you that, the more a child can “act normal” and “fit in,” the better they’ll get along with peers, the more education and career opportunities they will have, etc..

There is, of course, some truth to this: being able to “pass” for “odd” or “quirky” instead of “disabled” or “autistic” can have a lot of advantages, especially as an adult– from not having your doctor talk to you as though you were a child to being taken more seriously in the workplace. It won’t actually make you more friends, though, at least not real friends. And the cost to one’s self-esteem can be unbearable (if you can stand reading an emotionally devastating example of this, I highly recommend
http://timetolisten.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-cost-of-indistinguishability-is.html).  READ MORE
14 things I hate about being autistic     by Suburban Autistics
I am an autistic woman. As many already know, being autistic can be difficult and upsetting. Here is a list of 14 reasons why.
1:  Most don’t accept who I am unless I tell them that I am autistic.
“I’m not too good at socialising sometimes.”
“This place is too loud for me.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that would be offensive to you.”
“The lights here are too bright and I am overwhelmed”.  READ MORE
Are We Trying Too Hard to Teach Our Autistic Children? by Suburban Autistics
I often hear the phrase “teachable/teaching moment” within the autism community. Whilst I can see what is meant by this, in terms of a team effort by therapists and parents, I question this base assumption that our kids must constantly and incessantly be being taught stuff.

I feel as though many of our autistic kids can never escape from this idea that they must always be being corrected; must always be being taught; must always be building on skills; must always be attending therapies and classes; must always be being “consistently disciplined”; must always remember every second of every day that they are autistic and that they have so much to learn, so far to go, so much more that they need to be.   READ MORE
Growing up into an Autistic adult     by Yes, that too
This is in the Down Wit Dat August 2014 Blog Hop, BTW. The theme is about how disabilities and such are a natural part of life.  

Well, at this point I'm 21, almost 22, so I'm definitely already an adult. I've been working part-time in math education since I was 17, almost 18, and I've done some other kinds of work (research, information technology, physics lab TA.) Also I just read Mel Bagg's What Not Changing Us Means.

When we say we don’t want to change, we’re incorporating all four dimensions in life already. We’re incorporating growth through time into our concept of the thing we don’t want changed. We’re saying “We don’t want to be changed” in the same way that a cat, faced with becoming a dog, would say “I don’t want to be changed.” The cat isn’t denying the important passage from kittenhood to adulthood. The cat is saying I want to grow as a cat, not a dog.-    READ MORE
Diary of a Mom (FACEBOOK POST)
A reader who identified himself as an autistic father to three autistic children just left a comment on my last post, of which the following was a part. 

"... eventually the stress of trying to be like everyone else becomes so hard that you throw the mask away and embrace the real you. This is true recovery, the recovery of your autistic personality from the straightjacket of trying to be like everyone else, of pretending to be a complete stranger so people will accept you."

That. Right there. That's why. 

Thank you, Graham. 

‪#‎IndistinguishabilityIsADangerousGoal‬
‪#‎SelfActualizationIsABeautifulOne‬