Garrett (it/he/they)

There are no main characters!!!!

No one rules nature!!!!

(Extra information: I’m talking about having been born without autism and live your life the same except for everything having to do with your autism)

Even after that, when I could tell she’d considered it further and realized my theory had merit, it was like she was afraid of the word autism. She’d say I was quirky, or a little different, or just very sensitive, and that I “moved at my own rhythm”. At the very most she’d admit that I might have some slight traits but if I was autistic I would be “very very high-functioning” and probably didn’t meet enough criteria to be diagnosed. She agreed I should get an evaluation, but mostly so I could find out other disorders I might have.

Anyway, I got the diagnosis. She of course spun it like she’d been sure it was going to happen the whole time. She made sure to assure me that no one could tell, and again how extremely high-functioning I was. She’s still afraid to say autistic, and will jump through hoops to avoid saying the word.

But yes, it's horrible that even medical professional's only view of autistic people is high-support needs/nonverbal white boys.

Women, people of color, high masking, and low-support needs autistic get the short end of the stick as always.

I feel like part of the reason you see so many autistic people who identify with non- or alter-humanity is because we have a fundamentally different understanding of things that society accepts as "just the way things are," especially if society made things that way in the first place and they're not any kind of universal truths or set-in-stone facts (think gender, social norms, conversation/communication rules).

Like with gender, we know that autistic people frequently have a different relationship with it than allistic people do. That's why there's so many autistic trans and gender non-conforming folks. Allistic people see boxes around that kind of thing that autistic people just don't, as much.

I think that's at least one big part of why there's so many autistic people who identify as non- or alter-human. Our brains don't always do that automatic "this is the way things are" thing that allistic brains do.

Allistic folks go "You're a human person, therefore your identity is contained within those terms," and a lot of times autistic people will go "I don't feel human in the way that I see other people experiencing human-ness. I feel a connection to something else, even with the knowledge that I physically am human. My identity cannot be contained in your terms in a way that fits comfortably for me."

Apparently me and my friend both wanted pot pie at the same time.

Dinosaurs didn't stop at 66mya!!!

Birds didn't magically appear today out of thin air!!!!

They went through tons of evolution and there are so many cool extinct kinds, not just recent ones, but throughout the Cenozoic!!!!

AND BARELY ANYONE DRAWS, DEPICTS, OR TALKS ABOUT THEM

ITS A CRIME

A CRIME, I SAY

Conflict of Interest Report: I study some of them for my job