Greenstorm's Journal

Most folks' first image of someone with autism is a straight white geeky guy who's a huge jerk. I won't reference the fictional TV shows. IMO they don't deserve it.

In reality gender diversity and autistic folks go together: there's a high correlation between autism and being trans, non-heterosexual, gender-nonconforming, etc. Some folks say that's because autistic folks already lie outside social norms, so they need to question them, and they're more likely to reject them. Other folks say that implied social pressures are less effective on autistic folks so they're more likely to accept these differences in themselves, so the autistic population reflects the true prevalence of various gender stuff that neurotypical folks hide even from themselves.

Either way, gender has a profound effect on autism diagnoses. There is a lot written and spoken about autism in women and how it presents differently than in men-- autism's social differences tend to be turned inwards and hidden rather than turned outwards where they bother people. We only tend to diagnose people who bother us; our model cares much less about folks who only harm themselves, at least until they harm themselves enough that they can't function. What was originally -- and still all too often is -- called the "female presentation" of autism is inward-turning like that. I'm including a list of these underdiagnosed traits here.

This type of presentation was first understood as applied to women and named the "female type". In my own life I'm still rebounding from the experience of "supposed to be a woman" and my response tends to be to the gender category rather than the content being presented about autism. Still, the basic diagnostic criteria and expected autistic behaviours tend to be seen when they manifest as written in men. They are less looked-for in women and so they are less seen. The "women's" autistic presentation is common in women, and also present in men, non-binary, and other-gendered folks and leads to later and less likely diagnosis or discovery.

I'm still very new to learning about all this. A huge percentage of autistic folks are nonbinary. I have real trouble tracking down their voices. If you would like to give me a gift, track down a writing or a video or something by a nonbinary autistic person and link it to me please?

In the meantime here's the "unofficial autism in women" checklist (more properly, less-diagnosed autistic traits) and some women talking about this other type of autism:

https://the-art-of-autism.com/females-and-aspergers-a-checklist/

https://youtu.be/P3ohpP5q3m0

https://youtu.be/YAhQJ08bzgs

I wanted to write some on the idea being "a little bit autistic" but I haven't been finding good words.

Very briefly, saying that seems to be pretty invalidating. Autism is when folks lie so far outside the norm in multiple specific areas that it's reasonable for them to expect punishment from our society -- that's people like you and me -- for letting their guard down and being genuine. Autistic folks have generally experienced a great deal of stigma and rejection around their essential way of being in the world, leading to trauma and alienation. So when you say "everyone is a little autistic" you're missing the forest for the trees, you're missing the intensity of the difference being expressed, and you are essentially not believing the level of work these folks are doing during their day-to-day to seem normal to you, because they're being successful in this work. They've been doing this work all their lives. That front of everything actually being ok? Probably not real.

However. It's super common for autistic and neurodiverse folks to run in packs. It's generally more difficult for communication across the neurodiverse/neurotypical divide than it is within each group.
And so if you're looking at the list of autistic traits and thinking: but everyone has to pretend all the time! No one ever feels seen or comfortable around people and society! The wrong sensory input really is disabling, akin to pain, for everyone! And so on, when an autistic person is describing their experiences, if you relate to having those experiences at a disabling and unbelieved-by-others level, if you're dismissing it because you feel the same way and others dismissed you...

...no, not everyone has that experience. Lots of folks don't! And might I recommend hopping on to an autistic adult fb group and listening for a bit, or watching a bunch of videos, or finding writing by #actuallyautistic folks, and maybe realizing you're not as alone as you thought.

Written on my phone keyboard, oof.

Ok. Autism. It's the day or month or whatever when folks post about this. I'll be posting a bunch, and I'm going to start with some context.

There are two ways to look at autism: as wrong stuff people do based on what people around them are annoyed by (the social deficit/medical model) and as a cluster of ways of experiencing the world and the self (the correct way, sorry folks).

A lot of autistic folks don't learn they're autistic until a lot later in their life, if ever, because they are really good at acting-- at treating social situations as a play, and memorizing or guessing at their lines and then performing them. Even if they don't do this perfectly some of them they aren't annoying people around them often enough to be captured as autistic under the medical model -- which is, remember, based on how much they annoy folks.

But those folks still have a different experience of the world, and hiding that different experience of the world is exhausting and sometimes they slip up and the stigma around autism tends to lead to punishment. Knowing you always have to act or you'll be punished is hella alienating.

And they don't know what's wrong because autism isn't properly understood as some different ways of experiencing the world, those different experiences aren't publicized, the internal experience isn't publicized. So folks don't understand that there's a huge community of people that share their ways of thinking and of experiencing the world. They don't feel like they're allowed to take joy in their essential selves. They just feel like a really bad or flawed version of a person, rather than feeling like a valuable, interesting, and lovable person who is not typical of the folks who set the culture.

This is a really big problem. A huge number of people feel broken and awful and incorrect just because our public information on this topic is wrong. The difference is stark: read the diagnostic criteria for autism, then read people's personal experiences with it. One of these is much more human, if not directly relatable to you then easier to imagine as someone's experience of the world.

This is where the #actuallyautistic movement comes from.

One of my personal points of belief is that everyone has valuable things to contribute to society and that it's society's job to maximize its ability to use those contributions-- it's not the individual's job to warp themselves to try to contribute a limited set of things society thinks it wants. Another personal point of belief: being seen and accepted for who you are is a source of great joy and fulfillment and should be available to everyone. I consider the silencing of these voices, and the misdirection of the experience so folks can't find validation, to be a significant failure of our society.

Start to fix it by reading or listening to some folks' stories this month. I'll be sharing some, and the hashtag up there has a ton of content.