“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”
We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”
Or “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” That happened a lot, too, especially before the 19th century.
Or, backing up FURTHER
and lots of people think this very likely,
“Oh little Sionnat has obviously been taken by the fairies and they’ve left us a Changeling Child who knows too much, and asks strange questions, and uses words she shouldn’t know, and watches everything with her big dark eyes, clearly a Fairy Child and not a Human Like Us.”
The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost textbook depiction of autistic children.
To this day, “autism warrior mommies” talk about autism “stealing” their “sweet normal child” and have this idea of “getting their real baby back” which (in the face of modern science) indicates how the human psyche actually does deal with finding out their kid acts unlike what they expected.
Given this evidence, and how common we now know autism actually is, the Changeling myth is almost definitely the result of people’s confusion at the development of autistic children.
Weirdly enough, that legend is now comforting to me.
I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. I’m only a little bit autistic; I can pass for neurotypical for short periods if I work really hard at it. I have a lack of talent in social situations, and I’m prone to sensory overload or you might notice me stimming.
But here’s the thing: life is louder, brighter and more intense and confusing than it has ever been. I live on the edge of London and I rarely go into the centre of town because it’s too overwhelming. If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.
I’m not trying to romanticise the past because I know it was hard, dirty work with a constant risk of premature death. I don’t actually want to be a 16th century farmer! What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. When you make people more disabled, you start to see more people struggling, failing at school because they’re overwhelmed, freaking out at the sound of electric hand dryers and so on. And suddenly it looks like there’s millions more autistic people than existed before.
“…disability exists in the context of the environment.”
Reblog for disability commentary.
That last paragraph is absolutely important.
Tag: autism
probably gonna get slammed with anon hate for this but like…
much of the ableism towards Autistic people doesn’t happen “because we’re Autistic,” it happens because we’re weird.
now consider that… and now consider what some of the most common insults are here on tumblr.
weird, gross, embarrassing, cringeworthy… all insults based on that same idea of “you are different and we don’t like you.”
and now consider the constant mocking of “just trying to be special” and “Not Like Other Girls™” that is constantly seen on tumblr.
from early childhood, we are taught and conditioned to know that any deviation from the norm will be punished. for Autistic people, who make up a big portion of what is usually thought of as tumblr’s userbase, this conditioning is often increased tenfold by coercive “therapies” such as ABA and Social Thinking.
the fact that so much of tumblr’s culture is based on strict deviation from the norm– often citing “weird, embarrassing, cringeworthy, just trying to be special” as offenses– is regressive. and as an Autistic person, I would go so far as to say that it is at least somewhat rooted in ableism.
if you’re Autistic and you do this, especially if you’re a survivor of coercive behavioral and social treatments designed to make you “normal,” please think about why you take part in this treatment of others. I know you’ve been hurt, and overcoming internalized ableism is hard. I’m here to help.
if you’re allistic and you do this, please stop. just stop. we’ve already been through enough.
also yes, allistics can reblog this. please do, in fact.
This is absolutely true, and something I’ve been too unsure how to articulate, so thank you.
Yes, don’t mock other people’s special interests. But also don’t mock people who don’t seem to do anything but watch Minecraft youtubers, or talk to you for hours about, I don’t know, MLP or their favorite wrestler.
Yes, don’t mock people for sensory issues or for stimming. But also don’t mock the middle schooler who still sucks his thumb, or that kid who shrieks every time there’s a loud noise, or anything you haven’t necessarily diagnosed in your head as autistic.
It’s as simple as not mocking “weirdness” that isn’t harmful.
Don’t mock people for being autistic, yes, but don’t make it “it’s okay for them to be weird, as an exception, just because I know they’re autistic. This is acceptable because it’s autism.” Maybe, instead, question why it was ever unacceptably “cringey,” and why you needed to know.
Don’t make exceptions for us in “cringe culture”: create a culture in which (aside from any genuinely harmful difficulties/behaviors, I have some, that’s different) we’re not weird.
This is such an important post! I won’t judge anyone who doesn’t, but if you have room for it on your blog, please share; it would improve many of our lives materially.
lately i’ve started to think that cringe culture is largely perpetrated by people who’ve suffered from it, as a kind of retroactive self-defense. like, “this thing i was punished for is genuinely bad, right? i won’t be punished any more now that i stopped doing it? it’s not just that people are mean and could hurt me again any time?”
it’s yet another of the Just World Fallacy’s poisonous tendrils. people must deserve to get hurt, because otherwise you can’t stop it.
livebloggingmydescentintomadness:
If you look up symptoms of ASD specific to girls one of them is frequently “masculine behavior/dress” or whatever and people love to blame that on autism being an “extreme male brain” but it’s really very easily explained when you consider what femininity is: a set of implicit social rules forced on women. Like, of course autistic girls and women aren’t going to be as successful at performing femininity “correctly.” It doesn’t have to do with the fictitious male brain. It has to do with femininity being inaccessible to people who have difficulty navigating complex and arbitrary social conventions.
there’s also the fact that so much of performative femininity amounts to sensory hell.
I mean, just wearing a bra can be agonizing when you’re hypersensitive to the way it feels on your skin, and then there’s makeup, high heels, uncomfortable clothes, hair styling, perfume, etc etc. all this shit can be really uncomfortable just for allistics, but when you have sensory issues it can be downright unbearable.
I think it should be mentioned that this affects trans people too in that when I came out to my mom she said “you’re not trans, it’s just your autism”
also like the ‘prize’ for performing femininity well is just social status. like, that’s it. if you don’t prioritize the approval of strangers over your own comfort and autonomy, you’re not going to be a very ‘good’ girl.
good point. social status is just so abstract and weird when you’re autistic, why would you even want that? like if it’s the only way to get people to quit bullying you, fine, but once you’re out of school it’s much easier to avoid people than politic at them. so of course autistic women aren’t going to deal with makeup and pinchy shoes and scrunchy clothes and fifty million self-contradictory social rules just to get something that’s, to us, about as interesting as being a 33rd degree scientologist and getting to learn about the space clams or whatever.
male privilege is me getting to be respected for being forthright and well informed instead of for wearing complicated clothes. autistic women have it rough, y’all.
My friend told me a story he hadn’t told anyone for years. When he used to tell it years ago people would laugh and say, ‘Who’d believe that? How can that be true? That’s daft.’ So he didn’t tell it again for ages. But for some reason, last night, he knew it would be just the kind of story I would love.
When he was a kid, he said, they didn’t use the word autism, they just said ‘shy’, or ‘isn’t very good at being around strangers or lots of people.’ But that’s what he was, and is, and he doesn’t mind telling anyone. It’s just a matter of fact with him, and sometimes it makes him sound a little and act different, but that’s okay.
Anyway, when he was a kid it was the middle of the 1980s and they were still saying ‘shy’ or ‘withdrawn’ rather than ‘autistic’. He went to London with his mother to see a special screening of a new film he really loved. He must have won a competition or something, I think. Some of the details he can’t quite remember, but he thinks it must have been London they went to, and the film…! Well, the film is one of my all-time favourites, too. It’s a dark, mysterious fantasy movie. Every single frame is crammed with puppets and goblins. There are silly songs and a goblin king who wears clingy silver tights and who kidnaps a baby and this is what kickstarts the whole adventure.
It was ‘Labyrinth’, of course, and the star was David Bowie, and he was there to meet the children who had come to see this special screening.
‘I met David Bowie once,’ was the thing that my friend said, that caught my attention.
‘You did? When was this?’ I was amazed, and surprised, too, at the casual way he brought this revelation out. Almost anyone else I know would have told the tale a million times already.
He seemed surprised I would want to know, and he told me the whole thing, all out of order, and I eked the details out of him.
He told the story as if it was he’d been on an adventure back then, and he wasn’t quite allowed to tell the story. Like there was a pact, or a magic spell surrounding it. As if something profound and peculiar would occur if he broke the confidence.
It was thirty years ago and all us kids who’d loved Labyrinth then, and who still love it now, are all middle-aged. Saddest of all, the Goblin King is dead. Does the magic still exist?
I asked him what happened on his adventure.
‘I was withdrawn, more withdrawn than the other kids. We all got a signed poster. Because I was so shy, they put me in a separate room, to one side, and so I got to meet him alone. He’d heard I was shy and it was his idea. He spent thirty minutes with me.
‘He gave me this mask. This one. Look.
‘He said: ‘This is an invisible mask, you see?
‘He took it off his own face and looked around like he was scared and uncomfortable all of a sudden. He passed me his invisible mask. ‘Put it on,’ he told me. ‘It’s magic.’
‘And so I did.
‘Then he told me, ‘I always feel afraid, just the same as you. But I wear this mask every single day. And it doesn’t take the fear away, but it makes it feel a bit better. I feel brave enough then to face the whole world and all the people. And now you will, too.
‘I sat there in his magic mask, looking through the eyes at David Bowie and it was true, I did feel better.
‘Then I watched as he made another magic mask. He spun it out of thin air, out of nothing at all. He finished it and smiled and then he put it on. And he looked so relieved and pleased. He smiled at me.
‘’Now we’ve both got invisible masks. We can both see through them perfectly well and no one would know we’re even wearing them,’ he said.
‘So, I felt incredibly comfortable. It was the first time I felt safe in my whole life.
‘It was magic. He was a wizard. He was a goblin king, grinning at me.
‘I still keep the mask, of course. This is it, now. Look.’
I kept asking my friend questions, amazed by his story. I loved it and wanted all the details. How many other kids? Did they have puppets from the film there, as well? What was David Bowie wearing? I imagined him in his lilac suit from Live Aid. Or maybe he was dressed as the Goblin King in lacy ruffles and cobwebs and glitter.
What was the last thing he said to you, when you had to say goodbye?
‘David Bowie said, ‘I’m always afraid as well. But this is how you can feel brave in the world.’ And then it was over. I’ve never forgotten it. And years later I cried when I heard he had passed.’
My friend was surprised I was delighted by this tale.
‘The normal reaction is: that’s just a stupid story. Fancy believing in an invisible mask.’
But I do. I really believe in it.
And it’s the best story I’ve heard all year.
I’m disappointed in a lot of the conversations about neuro-normativity in inter-personal interactions, mostly because of how absolutist they tend to be and how useless that is in most real life interactions.
A lot of conversations ignore that you can’t be sure you’re not talking to another non-neurotypical person but more to the point they also overlook the fact that ‘neurotypical’ people (which I sometimes think is more a society wide enforced ideal than an a human reality anyway) can be emotionally hurt, triggered, sensory-overloaded, extremely exhausted or emotionally fragile in some other way. Neurotypical people have meltdowns and panic and moments when they are so so fragile.
So when someone doesn’t respond well to your non-neurotypical behavior, maybe they’re a huge ableist asshole, or maybe their needs are incompatible with yours in that space, maybe your bouncing leg is pushing their sensory overload over the edge or your directness is something they are too emotionally vulnerable to deal with, or your uninterrupted talking is speeding up their panic attack, etc. Maybe their melt-down is as unavoidable as yours.
Like, maybe it’s just me, but a lot of my bad experiences seem to come from incompatible neuro-needs, like when my partner really needs to hear that one song to calm down and I really need to not hear it to calm down, when I really need clean uncluttered spaces to relax and a friend really needs company in their own home, which is a cluttered space. Our needs clash, and the language or neuro-normativity in the ‘you are ableist, I am not’ absolutes doesn’t cover our situations well. We can’t use the language of privilege vs. oppression to handle these moments. We need tools about neuro-diversity that work from a place of mutual understanding and assume that we are both vulnerable and we are both doing the best we can.
my theory about stimming and other autistic behaviors is that nt’s (i’m using this here to mean ‘has no neurological disability’ not ‘has no mental illness’) do the same things when stressed to the same extreme, it’s just that sensory processing disorder and other elements of autism mean i’m pushed to that point a lot sooner, and by a lot of things nt’s aren’t bothered by.
but you take an nt into the megamall on black friday, and after a few hours of shopping they’re going to have the same planked stare that i get from hanging out with six friends having fun. they’re going to be stimming, too. look for it. they’ll be fiddling with the zipper on their coat, running it up and down, or twisting their hair around their fingers, or some other ‘nervous habit’ that you’d call stimming if an autie was doing it. they may go semi-nonverbal – although, not realizing it, they might yell at people or say stupid shit instead of accepting that talking is not working right now.
a lot of what we talk about as autistic behaviors are really universal human stress behaviors.
it’s just that you see me doing them a lot more often because nt’s don’t experience a flickering fluorescent light like a moth fluttering against your eyeball, and can put up with hours and hours of it while i have to shield my eyes from it by hunching over, and thus look like i’m too stupid to understand sitting.
tl;dr: everybody stop gatekeeping useful terms like stimming and spoons. stop now. that’s over. you’re done.
Aspergers/autism is seeing a needle, and then a minute later possibly noticing the haystack.
This is so accurate it almost hurts.
I don’t understand this
it means you pick up on weird extremely esoteric little details about things while completely overlooking what seems most obvious to everybody else
like. someone asks a silly question and you think and give it a really serious comprehensive answer, while everyone else realizes it was a joke. or you have to do this really repetitive mind-numbing task, and you’re halfway done before someone walks by and tells you you’re doing it “wrong” and theres actually a much simpler/more common way to do it, which didnt even occur to you but seems self-explanatory to allistic ppl. that type of thing
Autistic brains analyse bottom-up, while other people their brains analyse top-down.
In one of the books about autism that I have, their is a picture that illustrates this perfectly. It’s an illustration of a forest with the trees vaguely drawn but all the little details like a mouse and mushrooms are drawn in great detail. The explanation next to the illustration was the following; When a person with ASD walks into a forest, his/her brain starts to collect information to create a context just all the other kinds of brains do, but the autistic brain starts at the bottom. First it sees the mushrooms, then some leafs, a bird flying by, the bushes, … Meanwhile the not-autistic brain in the same situation will notice the large group of trees first. The non-autistic brain will think “Ah a big group of trees, this is probably a forest”, and then goes on searching for details that confirms this and adds more information. At the same time, the autistic brain still doesn’t know it is in a forest, however, it does know it is somewhere where there are mushrooms and wild animals. The brain will continue to look for details until it finally reaches the point it notices the trees and other obvious signs you are in a forest.
TL;DR/ An autistic brain uses details to create a big picture of a situation. A non-autistic brain will use the general context to create the big picture.
This difference in processing information has some consequences, like @marxism-sjwism already mentioned.
Other occurring ‘problems’ are f.e.: doing tasks slower, getting tired easily*, becoming overstimulated when there is too much information, headaches, intolerant of bright colors/loud sounds/touch/smells/taste**, having difficulties doing a certain task because the details weren’t explained to you, getting stressed out because a detail changed in a situation***,…
*Because an autistic brain processes a lot more information than any other brain, it also demands a lot of energy from its body. Sadly, the human body can’t provide the energy this kind of brain needs. As a result, most, if not every, person with ASD gets tired quickly and needs hours, or even days, of relaxation to reload its batteries. Especially after big events like going to a party f.e. (I myself need a lot of sleep).
**Because the autistic brain gets its information from details, it has hardly any filters. When a non-autistic person is at a party and talking to someone, his/her brain wil cancel out other inputs so it can focus on the conversation. An autistic-brain doesn’t do this, or if it does, it isn’t doing a good job. When a person with ASD is at the same party, talking to the same person as the the person without ASD, he/she will have difficulties understanding the conversation and keeping focused, because the brain isn’t canceling out all the other information. The conversation a nearby group of people is having will be equally as loud as the conversation he/she is participating in. This also means that a person with ASD can get easily distracted. F.e.: I was talking with someone, when suddenly I could hear two people talking in the room next door. It was a muffled noise and I could not understand what they were saying, but it was enough to distract me and render me unable to keep focused on my own conversation, resulting in me forgetting what I was saying mid sentence over and over again. Anyway, worst case scenario, if there is to much information for the autistic-brain to handle, it will become overstimulated, and this overstimulation often results in a fight-or-flight reaction. This behavior is often illustrated in mainstream media by an autistic child who suddenly becomes unmanageable, crying, kicking, screaming, … often at public places like a supermarket. Not every person with ASD will throw a tantrum when becoming overstimulated, some shut down, some start crying (like I do), some get angry, … It’s important to understand that this person is not being an asshole because he/she wants too, or that the child is not badly raised. These people their brains have triggered a natural instinct and their is nothing they can do about that except obey it. Best thing to do is to remove them from the situation to another less stimulating environment where they can calm down.
***Last but not least, there is another important consequence of having a brain that gets its information from details: it doesn’t recognize a same situation when a detail is changed. This causes difficulties in many different kinds of situations and it can occur in many different ways. A person with ASD will find it difficult to drive a different (brand of) car than he/she is used too, because, even though it’s a car and all cars operate the same, small details like a different dashboard layout can be confusing and stressful. A more extreme example is when the barman in a pub you frequent always wears a red shirt, but one day he wears a blue one. The change in color is enough for the autistic brain to think this is a completely different and new situation and thus it operate as if this is a new situation. This is why people with ASD can be insecure in situations that should be no big deal. Or why people with ASD seem to forget how to do a certain task, or lose their shit while any other person quickly adapts, all because something is different. Or also why they keep asking for explanation on how to do a certain task even though they have been doing it for months.
All these things are mostly downsides of having an autistic brain but it also has its benefits. People with ASD notice details much easier and faster which can come in handy when doing certain jobs. They also make different connections and come to new ideas that others never would’ve thought of.
The work they do is often more correctly because they pay attention to details, include details, or want to make sure it is 100% the way it should be because their brain only takes peace with that. Consequently, a lot of people on the spectrum also have a high sense of justice and are good detectives, insurance agents, police(wo)men, lawyers, mystery shoppers, …
A brain like this makes these people also excellent at IT, gaming, art, music, programming, math, bookkeeping, science, sorting, systematization,…
Sadly, people on the spectrum are often still seen as a problem instead as and added value. Like Temple Grandin often says; The world needs to realize it needs different kinds of brains to work together to reach greater heights.
…wow. this explains sooooo much. thanks for the addition
Jumping in: Temple Grandin once described the thought processes of someone with an ASD, and it fits in with this and is SUPER COOL.
Imagine you ask two people to draw a dog. One does not have an ASD, and one has an ASD.
The person without ASD thinks about the word “dog” and draws a very generalized dog. The brain complies the symbols that make up “dog”, out of all the dogs they’ve ever seen, and you get floppy ears, waggy tail, four legs, long body, a doggo snoot, etc.
The person WITH an ASD thinks about the word dog and draws a specific dog. Their brains go through basically a visual file folder that holds an accurate picture of EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL DOG THEY HAVE EVER SEEN. From there, they decide on WHICH dog means “dog” to them at that moment, and draw it. That dog is a specific dog, with a name, who existed.
IDK man, but that is cool as shit to me
also like js but why mock “introverts” when u could just say u hate autistics
The introvert/autistic overlap is so high that questions about being an introvert are part of the “aspie quiz”.
Every list I’ve seen of “what it’s like to be an introvert,” or “the care and feeding of your introvert friends,” or whatever, is made up mostly of autistic traits.
The crossover is so high that most autistic extroverts I’ve known, including myself and my partner, were absolutely sure we were introverts until we found stuff that other autistic people had written about what being an autistic extrovert is like.
Because even if you’re an autistic extrovert, you’re still the person at the party who’s off in the corner bonding with the dog, or who leaves hours early, or who needs to recharge after hanging out with people for an extended time.
Because animals are safer and easier and more fun to bond with than people, and because a large group of people and/or a less-familiar environment can be sensory hell, and because of the toll of navigating all the social cues.
That is a really good point, yeah.
Concept: Maybe “neurotypicals” who consistently reblog post about autism and other mental disorders and illnesses because they relate to them actually aren’t neurotypical, and just don’t know it.
Even the ones who say, “But everyone does this!” might only be saying it because they do it, and therefore think everyone does, when that’s not the reality.
Like, I remember someone who very obviously had OCD saying, “Everyone gets constant, upsetting intrusive thoughts, and does things to make them go away! It’s normal!” and everyone who responded to them were like, “Uh… No, it’s really not. You have a mental illness.”
I hate how everyone is so quick to assume anyone who relates to their posts without having every aspect of their mental state listed on their blog is obviously an evil, appropriating neurotypical. Maybe they are technically neurotypical, but have one or two traits associated with whatever form of neurodivergence. Maybe they’re neurodivergent and just don’t feel like listing it. Maybe they think they’re neurotypical, and are in the process of realising that they actually aren’t.
Please don’t be so quick to judge. This gatekeeping helps no one.
This is an extremely important point.
I know at least one trans person who didn’t realize they were trans until they were talking about how much they relate to trans things. Only, it was in the context of being dismissive of trans people. “Oh, sure, of course you prefer those pronouns. Everyone does.” But that wasn’t a cis person being dismissive of trans experiences; it was a trans person not understanding that they were trans.
Same thing with a lot of mental illness stuff.
Honestly, if you relate to an experience, you have the experience. Doesn’t matter whether you have it for the same reason someone else does.
On a similar note that I was thinking about recently: perhaps some neurodivergent people who are dismissed by their parents have neurodivergent parents who don’t know it. Like, if your mom says “everyone has that” when you tell her about your depression, there’s a decent chance that she’s not minimizing you, she just has depression herself and doesn’t realize it.
Bless you all
Also important to note that not everyone lists these things on their blog.
Ive had someone angrily come at me in messages because I was reblogging BPD posts when I “didn’t have BPD” but when I explained that I do, in fact, have Borderline Personality Disorder, they were apologetic but that doesn’t take back the distress their ask caused. Same thing with gender issues.
Please don’t assume that everyone on tumblr is willing to list their mental illnesses on their sidebar like a badge.
On the subject of dismissal by parents that is absolutely a true thing that I have experienced. My dad and I both have ADHD and we only both found out when I got diagnosed like a month ago. He’s always really supportive but I’ve had a lot of really painful conversations with him where he’d be telling me the whole “that’s normal everyone gets that” thing, and it was pretty much because he’d been living his whole life with ADHD and had no clue. People judge what’s normal based on their own experiences, and because everyone tries to manage and hide the things they’re struggling with, it’s easy to assume everyone is dealing with the same problems as you when they might not be.
just moving along like everyone else 