#neurotype

Telling a autistic person who is in a middle of a melt down to be claim is emotional abuse.

Telling people who have anger issues because of trauma to be claim is emotional abuse.

Expecting people with RSD to not have strong emotions over rejection is emotional abuse.

Saying people with BPD are abusive because of extreme emotions is emotional abuse.

You motherfuckers will say all emotions are valid up in tell the point it does not fit within neuronormativity. In which case the person is a "evil abuser" because you feel like there should be zero consequences for Neuronormative privilege. Yet when you trigger these feelings in neurodivergent people with neuronormative privilege are "innocent victim".

"well, if you put 2 autistic people in a room they tend to communicate just as well as 2 neurotypical people would, just in their own way!"

And listen, this is partly true. Autistics generally have a much more enjoyable and successful time communicating with other autistics rather than neurotypicals.

It is also true that autism is technically a neurotype.

However, removing the "disabled" part of autism DOES NOT DESTIGMATISE AUTISM.

By removing the word "disabled" from the vocab surrounding autism, you aren't making autism more socially accepted.

You are trying to make autism more socially ACCEPTABLE FOR OTHERS.

You are removing the parts of autism that make neurotypicals uncomfortable (high support needs, unnappealing traits, gross stims, etc.) to make autism seem like this nice, quirky, personality type.

The reason this is super problematic is because for majority of autistics, autism is super disabling in many aspects of their life. The reality is that even if we lived on an island with only other autistic people, most of us would still be disabled.

Not only would we likely still have troubles with communication BUT - we would also still have issues with sensory processing disorder, dyspraxia, auditory processing disorder, chronic illness such as IBS, burn out, meltdowns, shutdowns, ARFID, executive dysfunction, etc.

Autism is an extremely pervasive disability for many autistic people and it can seriously affect every aspect of your life.

Trying to re-package autism in a way that makes neurotypicals comfortable is not destigmatising autism.

EDIT: I realized a bit after posting this that I worded it poorly. By “AFAB”, I meant that I didn’t want people to assume I was excluding non-binary or genderqueer / etc people from this. I thought by just saying “girls” people would find it to be offensive though I realize I didn’t word it well. I meant that non-binary (or other related gender identities like genderqueer) people who were assigned female at birth or identify as more feminine can use it. I’m not trans myself so I have trouble knowing how to word things at times and I apologize if I offended anyone. The symbol is free to use for cis females, trans females, and feminine aligned people. Sorry about my poor wording and I hope nobody is mad at me <3 

Edit 2: the reason why I say AFAB is because people tend to claim that anyone who was born female can’t be autistic. Even if someone transitions to male, that doesn’t change that “people who are female can’t be born autistic”. As you don’t “develop” autism, people may say “well you were female at one point so you still aren’t autistic”. I thought that it would be good for there to be a symbol to represent anyone who people say “can’t be autistic”, as a way of saying “yeah, we can be”.

I’m sorry for offending people, I genuinely struggle with wording things and it’s hard to tell what is or isn’t okay to say. I really would appreciate if people would respectfully explain to me how/why something I said was bad so I can fix it and know not to do it in the future. I didn’t mean to cause any harm, I wanted to include everyone. I just have trouble putting my thoughts into words.

/

I made it pink to be the opposite of Autism $peaks’ logo, which originally was blue due to the whole “only boys are autistic”. And because pink is a pretty color. I then made it be a gradient into gold, as gold is the color associated with autism due to how gold’s code on the periodic table is AU.

I also applied a cool holographic filter to it, but there’s a version without it as needed.

Feel free to use and adapt this symbol to your liking! I made this to be used and shared amongst autistic users.

-Allistics can reblog, but I’d appreciate if you didn’t use this symbol unless you’re using it as an ally. Please don’t put it in your icon unless you’re autistic or neurodivergent in another way!

-While this was intended as a symbol for girls/AFAB people, boys are free to use it if they like how it looks! 

Are mood disorders and other mental health conditions— specifically bipolar disorder, generalized/ social anxiety, OCD, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective— a neurotype or neurodivergency? Why or why not?