Forrest Sterling

Anyway backstory. I am autistic, I was diagnosed nearly 3 years ago after a good few years of me just doing nothing. Seriously. I had no friends, I stayed at home. Was the good life to be honest.

I am speaking right now as an autistic person. Yes I know there are autistic people with higher needs. To put it bluntly right now, this isn't about them. This is about the people who use autism as an excuse. Same with the people who believe they are helping by going 'what about people who are autistic?'.

Autism isn't just one thing. For example, I will not have the exact same needs as someone else who is autistic. We are all different people. In fact I, like many others dislike it when we are all lumped in one group. Because we aren't the same. Each person is different. It is commonly agreed that each autistic person is different.

So why is it not the same when we mention veganism? Why is autism being used as a reason why we supposedly cannot be vegan? It is because it is being used as an excuse, often by people who aren't even autistic. We do not need you to use us as an example just so you can shit talk vegans.

It is absolutely wild to me that people will just speak for us all. Like yeah, there will be some who would struggle. I am not saying that there isn't. But when people blatantly use autism as one of their excuses I just stop listening. Like okay, maybe that is your reason. However there are a lot of us. Not everyone's autism appears the same. So why couldn't they try?

I have sensory issues. Before I was vegan, I struggled with eating too. I have safe foods, even now. When I realised the abuse and exploitation that animals are put through, I realised my own experiences were nothing. The idea of eating eggs after learning what happens to male chicks put me right off. So I stopped. I looked for my safe foods, started with them. Same with stuff that I have tried before. Now I have been vegan for nearly a year. And I wish I went vegan before.

To be honest, a lot of the talk around it feels infantilising. Yes I understand I am a lot more privileged than others. I don't struggle with communication too much. I am verbal for example. But when people speak for us, it feels like you don't see us all as people with our own voice, that we can choose and speak against the cruelties. All because a section of us would not be able to.

I'm going to repeat myself here. This isn't about the people who are non-verbal and have carers. This is for the autistic people (and the non-autistic people who speak for us) who know of the horrors.

Also here is a description of how to freeze and thaw tofu to give it a texture that is extremely similar to chicken nuggets. I've done this before and it's very straightforward. It can go a long way if the normal texture of tofu is too off-putting.

Misogyny enforced by women is too often handwaved away as “internalized misogyny,” and misogynistic women are shown more sympathy and more easily forgiven because they’re victims of the same system they’re enforcing. In contrast, men who are lifelong victims of misogyny (e.g. trans men, intersex men, queer men in general) are rarely given this same grace and in fact are often subject to even harsher scrutiny than their pericishet male peers. This also applies to trans women who, despite being women, are heavily scrutinized and accused of being more misogynistic than cis women due to the myth of “AMAB socialization.”

The grassroots organization in the Twin Cities that has stood up to ICE is an example of how anarchism works: it is horizontal and participatory, without centralization or authority.

How could we live without centralization or authority?

Here's an FAQ to answer your questions:

the oral history project from act up

the lesbian herstory archives

the transgender archives of the university of victoria

the digital transgender archives

glbt historical society (digital)

anything that moves

a masterpost of lesile feinberg’s works by @genderoutlaws

the dyke march compilation 

paris is burning 

how to survive a plague

united in anger: a history of ACT UP

one archives

screaming queens

a collection of audre lorde’s poetry

the arquives

dykes to watch out for

The Wretched of the Earth

Discourse On Colonialism

Making Space for Indigenous Feminism

Settlers: The Mythology Of The White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern

Red Skin, White Masks : Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

Borderlands/La Frontera

As We Have Always Done

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Books I couldn't find on the archive but still recommend you purchase or check out at the library:

Discourse on Colonialism (Aimé Césaire) - this is more a focus on colonization, but I feel it's a necessary read in my opinion as in order to understand decolonization I believe it's important to first understand colonization.

Wretched of the Earth (Franz Fanon)

Decolonization is Not a Metaphor (Tuck, Yang)

The Wretched of the Earth (PDF, ebook)

Decolonization is Not a Metaphor (PDF)

45 year-old man, Chad Michael Watts, attacked a group of children protesting ICE in #Texas while wearing a read MAGA hat. The youth bravely fought back and defended themselves.

Highly recommend this video by Bowman TV exploring the ecological damage done to our rivers & wells: