Newbie

Use Autism **Acceptance** Month (as opposed to Autism Awareness Month).

NO “light it up blue” or puzzle pieces. Google “Autism Speaks hate group” to learn more.

Use red or gold instead, which are colors supported by the autistic community.

Use identity-first language (most autistic people prefer “autistic” instead of “person with autism”), but don’t police the language of someone who prefers to be called a person with autism.

NO scare terms like “suffering with autism” or “afflicted with autism.”

Avoid functioning labels like “high functioning” or “low functioning.”

If autistic voices are not at the center of your efforts, you’re doing it wrong.

When in doubt, ASK AN AUTISTIC PERSON. 

BABY IS SAFE

Dave: “We probably can’t keep him so don’t get too attached now ok”

(one hour later)

Okay, so my friend Chloe just pointed this out, and it’s amazingly accurate:

“Because of the scarcity of Dwarf-women, their secrecy and similarity in appearance to males, and their lack of mention, many Men failed to recognize their existence.”

Okay, so?

Well, Tolkien was a philologist, and a Norsist, and that means he knew Völuspá well enough to pull the names of every dwarf from Dvergatal and he had a pretty firm grasp Old Norse grammar.

In fact, he grasped it well enough that he knew if you dropped an n from a name ending in -inn, it changes from the masculine definite enclitic to the feminine.

Well, what the hell does any of this mean?

Well, I give you the names of the Dwarves from the Hobbit, as they appear in Dvergatal (stanzas 14-16) and in the order they appear:

Dvalins,* Dáinn, Bívurr, Bávurr, Bömburr, Nóri, Óinn, Þorinn, Þráinn, Fíli, Kíli,  Glóinn, Dóri, Óri

Now, in the Hobbit, they’re named as follows:

Dwalin, Dáin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori, Óin, Thorin, Thráin, Fíli, Kíli, Glóin, Dori, Ori.

Now, you notice something with the way those names got changed? That’s right, he changed the masculine -inn definite suffix to -in, which is feminine.**

That means that, at least grammatically, Dwalin, Dáin, Thorin, Thráin, and Glóin are female Dwarves.

Since we know Tolkien was meticulous about his grammar, this was done most likely as an in-joke (lol we’re so learnèd about Norse grammar that my comment on Dwarf women being indistinguishable from men is hilarious because of this grammatical funniness)

But there’s a not-inconceivable chance that the Dwarves were using the masculine pronouns in Westron because that’s what the Men who met them used, despite the fact that a third of the company was female, and hey, it’s kinda neat to think he wrote a bunch of Dwarf-ladies going on an adventure.

*-ins is the masculine Genitive definite article suffix in Old Norse