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I hope this email doesn't find you. I hope you've escaped and now you're free.
Credit to The Feral Spiritualists on FB.
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G’day there! I’m Ben, and this is my about… 19th social media #introduction post? I’m a #photography and #science nerd, and the victim of perennial curiosity.
I’m an #actuallyautistic #disabledartist, living in lutruwita/Tasmania, #australia, in my mid 30s. I specialise in #landscapephotography, #astrophotography, and #timelapse in the island’s wild places.
I like to play with light. These are some of my more successful experiments.
How are we all? Say hello!
During the autumn months, Tasmania sees a brief explosion of a short-lived bioluminescent fungus, the so-called Ghost fungus (Omphalotus nidiformis) in secluded damp forest patches affixed to rotting trees. Owing to their typical low position hidden underneath forest canopies, a view out to the night sky is very rarely afforded, much less on clear nights – making this view out to the crown jewel of the night sky, the galactic centre of the Milky Way, a truly once in a lifetime opportunity.
Tasmania’s Low Head is home to one of the most important lighthouse arrays. Sitting at the mouth of kanamaluka/River Tamar, it serves as herald of land for sailors arriving across the Bass Strait. Occasionally it plays host to the southern aurora and the setting Milky Way, captured with grasses and rocks fluorescing strongly in the foreground.
Under certain spectrums of light, living and organic matter can produce intensely vibrant colours, glowing as if by magic. This process is called biofluoresence. Here, the Milky Way’s galactic core rises behind a small oceanic lake on Queensland’s coast.
Tasmania’s endemic Tanglefoot (Nothofagus gunnii), Australia’s only gold-weather deciduous tree is draped in a thick blanket of snow. Its leaves are a bright golden, contrasting against drab greens and greys of Snow gums and Pandani.
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Sharing from
https://bsky.app/profile/thinkingautism.bsky.social
Some autistic people can speak, & some need to communicate in other ways. Some autistic people also have ID, and some autistic people don’t. All of these people are autistic, because there is no right or wrong way to be autistic.
https://bsky.app/profile/thinkingautism.bsky.social
Some autistic people can speak, & some need to communicate in other ways. Some autistic people also have ID, and some autistic people don’t. All of these people are autistic, because there is no right or wrong way to be autistic.
https://autisticadvocacy.org/about-asan/about-autism/
@actuallyautistic
#actuallyautistic
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This is a lovely paper by Friedman, McHaffie, Noble and Stenning on autistic people's experience of/connection to nature, and why #actuallyAutistic folks challenge the category of "nature" by refusing to privilege or separate human from non-human life.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10779
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@ergative
There's lots of discussion around this in the #actuallyautistic and academic community. A good place to start might be looking at recent publications by @SueReviews and her co-researchers, and some of the folks at STAR <https://stirlingautismresearch.stir.ac.uk/meet-the-team/> - @autgeek especially might have good pointers.
The short answer is: stay right away from anything that divides the community into high support/low-function and low-support/high function. Any autistic person can fall into both of those categories within the same day, depending on social context, challenges, their particular profile, etc.
Think instead in terms of appropriate enabling support, inclusive design and decisions, and so on. But go read up on - and talk to - the people I've mentioned.
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One lesson from being an #actuallyautistic parent of #autistic kids:
Rouse them at their own speed in the Dark Months. There is nothing worse than a chain reaction meltdown across multiple sleepy, grumpy, disoriented people to make sure that no one gets to school at all.
Anti-Autistic Ableism
The next day, I had a call with the producer. I broke down why the play was so harmful and why putting it on was a bad idea. She defended the choice, saying the harm could be mitigated with a talkback after the show.
I asked who would be on the talkback panel. She said:
• The playwright, who has an autistic daughter and based the play on his experiences.
• A social worker who works with families of autistic kids.
• A parent from the community who suggested the play, who has an autistic son.
I said, “Do you know who’s not on that list?”
She admitted they didn’t have an autistic person on the panel. She asked if I could recommend an organization to reach out to for someone to join the talkback. I said, “It has to be an autistic person.” And also, the panel shouldn’t outnumber autistic voices with people who likely believe they have the right to speak over us.
She asked how to handle the play sensitively. I said, “You can’t.” The way it portrays autistic people is so harmful that simply putting it on is damaging. It reinforces anti-autistic beliefs and plants harmful ideas in the heads of those unfamiliar with autism.
I asked if she truly believed putting this play on was the right thing to do. She said yes. I was flabbergasted—this is someone who has repeatedly gone out of her way to listen and learn from me as an autistic person.
She said she’d speak with the board and the director to figure out what they could do, then asked if I’d meet with their team the following week. I agreed.
Anti-Autistic Ableism
I didn’t hear anything for days, then got an email the next Monday afternoon asking if I could join a Zoom call at 5 PM. I couldn’t make it. They went ahead without me, and I heard nothing further.
So, I reached out to the director and asked if he still wanted feedback. He said yes. I spent hours writing a detailed breakdown of why the play is harmful and offering suggestions to mitigate some of the damage (even though putting it on at all is harmful). My feedback was professional, thorough, and compassionate to their position.
He read it. I haven’t heard anything since. The play opens this weekend. They’re promoting it heavily, with press releases and social media posts.
I’m not going to reach out again. The onus is on them to follow up. But I’m devastated. I put in so much time and emotional labor because I thought they genuinely cared about autistic people. It hurts.
It hurts even more because the musical I directed for them earlier this year is nominated for a BWW award. They’re tagging me in posts asking people to vote for it, while simultaneously promoting this play that actively harms me and my community.
To make matters worse, around the same time, I found out the producer of another show I was in had been telling people I’m “difficult to work with” because I’m autistic. I dropped out of that show.
I don’t know how to end this except to say that I’m tired. I’m so tired. It’s hard to trust anyone when people I thought were advocates and friends turn out to be so dismissive.
Anti-Autistic Ableism
An upsetting #ActuallyAutistic experience I’m in the middle of.
A local community #theater I work with asked me to review a play they selected after I volunteered to help them improve their autistic inclusivity. The play is about a family with an #autistic son.
They sent me the script at the beginning of October, but I was sick the entire month and couldn’t review it until early November. When I finally read it, I was specifically asked to provide guidance on how to approach the material and production sensitively and considerately.
Let me preface this by saying: I had full faith in this theater to listen to my feedback. They have consistently demonstrated a willingness to listen and learn without talking over marginalized people.
Then I read the play. And it. is. horrific.
It’s so deeply problematic in how it depicts and discusses autistic people that I was genuinely shocked.
The autistic child is functionally erased. He’s not listed as a character and doesn’t appear on stage, except for a brief optional moment. He is reduced to a literal prop in a story ostensibly about him.
The script is littered with harmful lines. Characters (who aren’t portrayed as villains) say things like how the autistic kid “doesn’t know how to enjoy life,” “doesn’t have anything to say,” and doesn’t know “how to be human.”
The story centers on the kid’s parents, whose struggles with him lead to infidelity for both of them. The only character with hiss best interests in mind, a social worker, is painted as an unsympathetic shrew for calling the parents selfish.
On top of all that, the play endorses ABA, a therapy widely criticized by autistic people as harmful and dehumanizing.
The overall message is clear: autistic people are burdens, and caring for us ruins the lives of our loved ones. It’s peak “ #autism mom” rhetoric.
I was utterly disgusted.
Anti-Autistic Ableism
The next day, I had a call with the producer. I broke down why the play was so harmful and why putting it on was a bad idea. She defended the choice, saying the harm could be mitigated with a talkback after the show.
I asked who would be on the talkback panel. She said:
• The playwright, who has an autistic daughter and based the play on his experiences.
• A social worker who works with families of autistic kids.
• A parent from the community who suggested the play, who has an autistic son.
I said, “Do you know who’s not on that list?”
She admitted they didn’t have an autistic person on the panel. She asked if I could recommend an organization to reach out to for someone to join the talkback. I said, “It has to be an autistic person.” And also, the panel shouldn’t outnumber autistic voices with people who likely believe they have the right to speak over us.
She asked how to handle the play sensitively. I said, “You can’t.” The way it portrays autistic people is so harmful that simply putting it on is damaging. It reinforces anti-autistic beliefs and plants harmful ideas in the heads of those unfamiliar with autism.
I asked if she truly believed putting this play on was the right thing to do. She said yes. I was flabbergasted—this is someone who has repeatedly gone out of her way to listen and learn from me as an autistic person.
She said she’d speak with the board and the director to figure out what they could do, then asked if I’d meet with their team the following week. I agreed.
Anti-Autistic Ableism
An upsetting #ActuallyAutistic experience I’m in the middle of.
A local community #theater I work with asked me to review a play they selected after I volunteered to help them improve their autistic inclusivity. The play is about a family with an #autistic son.
They sent me the script at the beginning of October, but I was sick the entire month and couldn’t review it until early November. When I finally read it, I was specifically asked to provide guidance on how to approach the material and production sensitively and considerately.
Let me preface this by saying: I had full faith in this theater to listen to my feedback. They have consistently demonstrated a willingness to listen and learn without talking over marginalized people.
Then I read the play. And it. is. horrific.
It’s so deeply problematic in how it depicts and discusses autistic people that I was genuinely shocked.
The autistic child is functionally erased. He’s not listed as a character and doesn’t appear on stage, except for a brief optional moment. He is reduced to a literal prop in a story ostensibly about him.
The script is littered with harmful lines. Characters (who aren’t portrayed as villains) say things like how the autistic kid “doesn’t know how to enjoy life,” “doesn’t have anything to say,” and doesn’t know “how to be human.”
The story centers on the kid’s parents, whose struggles with him lead to infidelity for both of them. The only character with hiss best interests in mind, a social worker, is painted as an unsympathetic shrew for calling the parents selfish.
On top of all that, the play endorses ABA, a therapy widely criticized by autistic people as harmful and dehumanizing.
The overall message is clear: autistic people are burdens, and caring for us ruins the lives of our loved ones. It’s peak “ #autism mom” rhetoric.
I was utterly disgusted.
Content Warning
Can anyone recommend a toothpaste in the UK that is less of a punchy mint taste, and more gentle and suitable for someone with sensory sensitivities?
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@docjohng
"Overdiagnosis is just as possible with mild forms of autism as it is for mild forms of ADHD, because the presentation relies on subjective symptoms that are present in most children to some degree."
This is three well known anti-autistic strategies bundled together
(1) the "everyone's a little bit autistic" move
(2) the "it's about how you feel" move
and
(3) the "mild autism" move.
All are categorically untrue; autism is a neurodevelopmental pathway that yields a different brain structure and hence different experience of the same shared situation. Autistic people vary in their presentation and experiences across their lifespans and across a single morning; someone who seems "high-functioning" or "mild" in one situation may well be severely affected by another.
#actuallyAutistic people learn to recognize the signs of misinformation and oppression.
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Pellicano has just published a study of #actuallyAutistic mothers of autistic children, and their struggles with teachers in Australia schools.
It really resonated. Even though I present as male and authoritative (academic background, government job) I recognise the instant dismissal of autistic expertise by some, though not all, classroom teachers and head teachers.
There are wider problems, too. Especially in secondary school, the teaching methods and curriculum in Scotland are wholly wrong for our present crisis - a relentless emphasis on entrepreneurs, capitalism, having social worth through wealth, a complete unwillingness to recognize or criticize autonormativity, endless covert Protestant dogma - and certainly by secondary school a child can recognize hypocrisy and propaganda. That dissonance is never allowed as a subject of discussion, even though our children will refuse school the day after a particularly egregious bit of NewSpeak.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13623613241297223
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"Advertising falls flat with autistic people."
Does anyone have ideas as to why?
🤔
My family are Asian, but not from any of the dominant media types - not Desi or Steven He or any of those. My children grew up on true stories of their ancestors being slaughtered and mutilated in order to build an empire that is now a lovely tourist trope. Nuns and monks are regular visitors to our home, but they are geeks and ascetics and my dear friends, not mystical weapons masters with six-packs. I have told my children the amazing stories of the brave rabbit, the prince who abjures violence, the yaksas who get into philosophical debates, and house-guardian spirits who swap their gender so fast it leaves the sexist old monk unable to debate the emptiness of gender.
We don't drink alcohol. Some of us are genderfluid. We do rituals every day, not because we are wizards or clerics, but because that's just part of a well-ordered, polite family. We think hijras and sex workers are, umm, people with jobs and families. When the local thugs -- heck, the oldies with dyspepsia -- don't want to see us, we get told to f**k off back to {Pakistan | India | Thailand | ...} but we are from none of those places. We speak a language that a national government has repeatedly tried to extinguish, and a few more, and we always get asked, "Where are you *from*, that's *such* an interesting accent."
2/n
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So now that the kids are out there, looking at RPG materials on the internet, they are not seeing any healthy, affirming representations. It's hard enough at school or the GP surgery ("yep, that is really our family name. No, that isn't our language, really not." Year after year after year...) but online RPG stuff is awful.
So: could folks kindly recommend positive RPG sites that _start_ from waaaaay over on the far side of whatever divide it is that has white guys with token others on this side?
I fought this battle when I first played RPGs, back when DnD and Traveller were just three flimsy books, and I was lucky because I lived somewhere where being mixed-other ethnicity, being a sex worker, being from a family that was boringly traditional about religious values but not Protestant...where that was normal, or at least my adolescent #actuallyAutistic brain thought it was. I left, and moved far away, and became an anthropologist.
But all this White-normative, gender-binary, alcohol is good, wizards smoke pipes, Oriental girls and spirits are sex objects crap on the RPG internet - I need allies for my kids please. And I do not mean, just to be clear, White trans folk - thank you, but this is a different battle.