Awesometistic

Here are the prompts for each day of Autistic Character Appreciation Week.  Each day has a topic and some ideas for what you could write/draw/talk about, but you aren’t limited to just those ideas.

Day 1 (May 3rd) - Characters: An autistic character or characters (headcanon or coded autistic characters are welcome).

Day 2 (May 4th) - Stimming: How do your favorite autistic characters stim?  Did they ever pick up new stims from other autistic characters?  What are their favorite stims?

Day 3 (May 5th) - Special Interests: Do your favorite autistic characters have any special interests?  What are they passionate about?  Do they have a friend who they infodump to or with?

Day 4 (May 6th) - Sensory Stuff: What are your characters’ favorite forms of sensory input (scents, sounds, textures, etc)?  What forms of sensory input do they hate?  How do they deal with sensory overload?

Day 5 (May 7th) - Ableism: How often do they experience ableism?  Who do they experience it from?  How do they deal with it?  How does it impact them?

Day 6 (May 8th) - Intersections: How does being autistic overlap and intersect with other aspects of their identity?

Day 7 (May 9th) - Freestyle: Anything you want.

Autism Speaks currently has an ad running on Tumblr. Given how many of us are autistic here, this is incredibly concerning and frankly frightening. So, I’m asking you all to contact Tumblr (Click on Help under your Profile button, choose any of the associated links, scroll to the bottom of the page it links you to, and click “Contact Us”). Tell them why Autism Speaks is dangerous and despicable. Explain why it is painful for you to run across those ads. Educate Tumblr!

We have a real chance to make a difference here. We need to make sure that Tumblr remains a safe place for us.

I know this is frustrating and hard to deal with, but please try to keep your messages civil. Write what you want to say, leave it for 10 minutes, read it again. Then rewrite. Maybe have a trusted and non-ableist friend look at it. When you’re ready and satisfied with what you’ve written, send it off. Tumblr needs to know that we will not stand for Autism Speaks invading this space.

Hi, everyone!  This is the obligatory intro post for Autistic Character Appreciation Week.

This idea was inspired by the fandom challenges for Asexual Awareness Week and Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week.  It’s meant to celebrate autistic characters (canon, headcanon, and/or coded) in fiction.

The basic idea is we’re going to set up a different prompt for each day of the week, and you can post metas, fanfic, fanart, playlists, or anything else you want relating to your favorite autistic characters.

This year’s Autistic Character Appreciation Week is going to be May 3-9.  We’ll be posting the prompt list later today, so keep your eyes peeled.

-Mod Winter

So there were these people who were pulling “Not Like My Child” on those of us at autistics.org, which is generally a bad idea because if you combined all three of us who worked there at the time, you’d cover pretty much every base of either “I am like your child” or “I was once like your child”.

So we did an “Actually, we are like your child” open letter to these people, detailing all this information about us from our speech delays to our toilet training and lack thereof.  (Or, as in many of us, the fluctuations in such abilities over a lifetime.)

We also mentioned all the medical problems we had, because these parents were saying “You people who are adults now are different, you don’t have complex medical issues like the new autistic kids.”

Which made us fucking laugh because all three of us have major medical issues that aren’t easily solved.  (In all cases, genetic and/or autoimmune as far as we know.)

So we listed those.

And.

Now it wasn’t “You’re not like my child.”

Now it was, and a guy actually told us this:

“Those medical problems are so easy to solve.  Why should we listen to any autistic person who hasn’t put in the work to solve them?” [by going to DAN doctors, which, actually, I did in my late teens, and it made me seriously ill, but don’t confuse these people with the facts, apparently.]

It was kind of cool to list off our traits though because between us, and sometimes in just a single one of us, we covered all the high functioning stereotypes and all the low functioning stereotypes at once.  Even our ages at diagnosis showed a nice spread (4, 14, 42).

But I couldn’t believe that.

They have sick kids that they work so hard to “recover” and nothing actually works.

Thinking a loose association with an autistic person gives them an expertise greater than autistics and medical professionals.

Using the R word and other ableist slurs.

Using autism as an insult.

“Assburgers.”

Bullying autistics for their special interests. 

Bullying autistics in general.

Thinking that someone talking about being autistic is “making excuses” or is a “special snowflake.”

Assuming that people are self-diagnosed.

Thinking that real self-diagnosis is a result of 5 minutes on Wikipedia.

Calling autism a “burden” or “tragedy”

Using autism as a scare tactic.

Glorifying parents of autistic people.

Being sympathetic to people who abuse and/or kill autistic people.

Refusing to show the common courtesy they show other allistics to autistics.

Thinking of autism as a “white boy’s disorder.”

Ignoring autistic adults.

Intentionally triggering sensory overload and/or meltdown.

Accusing autistics of lying about their sensory issues.

Shaming autistics for their sensory issues.

Saying meltdowns are no big deal.

Shaming an autistic person for trying to avoid a meltdown.

Calling harmless stims “violent.”

Thinking an autistic person being happy with themselves is “romanticising autism.”

Insisting on person-first language.

Using functioning labels.

Silencing autistic voices.

SUPPORTING AUTISM SPEAKS!!!!

Abusing Autistic people

Supporting or participating in the torture of Autistic people for example wrt to the judge rotenberg centre

Putting Autistic people in cages

Absolutely! Autism is not a thing you can grow out of.

Eww, I’m sorry! I think the most popular autism pride symbol is the rainbow infinity symbol I use as this blog’s avatar. Brains are also used.

There is a “walk in red” thing for autism but I’m not sure whether that’s specifically for autistics to do, I’ve seen some conflicting points of view on it. Wearing black instead of blue has been suggested, in memory of all the people killed for being autistic.

ASAN also has a cafepress: http://www.cafepress.com/autselfadvocacy

to ignore anything at all on tumblr whenever you need to for your health - mental, physical, or emotional.

It does not make you an uncaring or horrible person to have fewer resources than able people. Taking care of yourself is a priority, and it is important. You matter. You deserve to be safe and as well as you can be <3

And anyone who thinks otherwise is an ableist jerk.