If you look up symptoms of ASD specific to girls one of them is frequently “masculine behavior/dress” or whatever and people love to blame that on autism being an “extreme male brain” but it’s really very easily explained when you consider what femininity is: a set of implicit social rules forced on women. Like, of course autistic girls and women aren’t going to be as successful at performing femininity “correctly.” It doesn’t have to do with the fictitious male brain. It has to do with femininity being inaccessible to people who have difficulty navigating complex and arbitrary social conventions.
disabled people are not metrics for each other, we are individuals. This person may push through more, that person may be doing less, but they’re not a metric to grade your life by. Your way of handling pain and difficulty isn’t less valid just because a different disabled person handles it differently.
“Autistic fashion” isn’t just big cute cosy sweaters with sleeves so long and loose they swing along when we flap
Autistic fashion is a dozen unworn shirts in our wardrobe – you liked the colour, the pattern, the cut, but they itch and hurt and scratch; yet you keep them because you hope that one day maybe you’ll be able to wear them
Autistic fashion is stretchy worn-out jeans ripping at the leg seams after you’ve been wearing them since high school and the thought of throwing them away makes you choke back tears
Autistic fashion is taking blunt scissors and impulsively trying to cut off every single tag from your clothes, and accidentally unravelling something because you happened to cut open a seam
Autistic fashion is crying over socks on some days
Autistic fashion is a drawer full of old worn-out underwear because they’re stretched out and comfy
Autistic fashion is changing clothes twice a day in summer because sweaty fabric is sensory hell
Autistic fashion is wearing wristwatches all day or for half an hour, bracelets stacked halfway up your forearm or bare skin only ever covered by t-shirt sleeves
Autistic fashion is necklaces hidden under your shirt, because they’re for chewing or fidgeting but you don’t want anyone to see
Autistic fashion is wearing what makes you feel comfortable and still feeling scared that people are gonna judge you
If you want some idea of how much autistic people struggle to understand allistic people when they don’t say exactly what they mean, take a cooking recipe and replace all units of measure with “enough but not too much”. For example:
enough but not too much white sugar
enough but not too much butter
enough but not too many eggs
enough but not too much vanilla extract
enough but not too much flour
enough but not too much baking powder
enough but not too much milk
preheat oven to hot enough but not too hot
bake for long enough but not too long
Even someone who’s experienced with cooking would probably struggle to follow that recipe. Now imagine if they had no experience cooking and had no idea what these ingredients are.
When I’m out and about and need to escape being overwhelmed with noise, light, or socializing, and the people I’m with don’t know I’m autistic, I don’t tell them that I’m heading towards a meltdown or am experiencing sensory overload.
I tell them I’m getting a migraine.
Meltdowns and migraines are, from my understanding, neurologically similar events, and for me they often go hand in hand– if I get one, it’s a signal to me that I’m likely to get the other pretty soon and need to take care of myself. The remedy is the same: removing myself from the situation and retreating to a dark, quiet room.
The difference is that NTs often don’t understand and simply dismiss sensory overload if you explain it to them as such, but nearly all of them understand what a migraine is and sympathize. 99% of the time, if I tell a NT that I have a migraine or am about to get one, they treat it as an emergency and help me get away from the source of the overload as quickly as possible. I am then free to recover in a quiet, dark place without anyone trying to invalidate my needs, forcing me to “tough it out”, or thinking that I’m rude for having to leave or to outright avoid certain events or situations in the first place.
Laziness: I’d rather sit here than pick up those clothes
Executive Dysfunction: I need to pick up those clothes I need to pick up those clothes why am I still watching this thing on Netflix while sitting down c’mon stand up I need to pick up those clothes I need to pick up those clothes I need to-
If you’re autistic and/or have ADHD like me, I recommend switching to ‘Simple English’ when reading lengthy and complex Wikipedia articles because it makes it so much easier to take in, comprehend, and understand
how to do:
On the sidebar on the left, there’s a list of languages listed in alphabetical order, so you have to scroll down a bit to find ‘Simple English’. But even if you can’t, you can just edit the URL from en.wikipedia.org to simple.wikipedia.org
Here’s an example of the difference between English wiki and Simple English wiki:
English:
Simple English:
[Image 1: A lengthy article about Japan in difficult words, with long paragraphs and no pictures.
Image 2: The article about Japan, only now the text has been compressed into a mere two paragraphs and there are pictures visible on the right (the Japanese flag), as well as a table of contents.]
Holy crap this is actually a life saver
This is important and wonderful. Knowledge should be available to everyone. Not just people with the right brainware or educational background.
autistic people using big words and “clinical” sounding language because they feel it to be the most effective means of communication is so often perceived by allistics as pretension. autistics are then made fun of for this use of language which can be incredibly damaging and often causes autistics to retreat further into themselves as any attempts they make to communicate with allistics cause them to be punished
so in general if you don’t like the way someone speaks (especially if you know for a fact that they’re autistic) maybe don’t make fun of them and instead do your best to understand and communicate with them in a way that’s beneficial to you both
hot take: autistic people shouldn’t have to disclose that we’re autistic in order not to get mocked for our behaviour
what i mean is i’ve seen/experienced way too many times where someone’s being ridiculed over doing something harmless and when the people doing the mocking find out the person’s autistic they’re like ‘ooohhh…….. well i didnt know…’ and apologize. like? at that point it doesn’t even matter if the person is autistic or not, if you’re making fun of autistic behaviour you’re making fun of autistic people, period. either you’re an asshole or you’re not, and autistic people shouldn’t have to inform everyone that we’re autistic in order to get some sympathy and be allowed to exist as we are without getting made fun of
queerhomestuck 