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Jan 16

📢Please share this call for participants! Seeking young autistic ppl in canada who attended or underwent Social Skills therapies/classes/programs. More details in thread, fill out survey here: brock.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1H (no compensation for survey but follow-up phases are paid)

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ALT

Sometimes “poor compliance” is actually “physician with neurotypical expectations of a neurodivergent patient.”

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Someone on Twitter: "What do you miss the most that covid caused?" Some people: "My physical fitness since the lockdowns." "My kids lost so much during the lockdowns". (Those were almost THREE YEARS AGO.) Me: "My various friends' kids who DIED of covid, ages 20, 32, 33, 34."

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Not eating indoors ever again is a true travesty. As bad as medically vulnerable people being killed off by selfish actions during a pandemic we’re refusing to mitigate anymore…

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alok.

@eschatoL0GICal

Replying to @robins36

It's a sensitive subject, for sure. I've done all I can but I can't stop my life. I've felt that once the vaccine was out and widespread, all we could do is be aware, get vaxxed, not go out when sick, mask in places like doctors offices, etc. But to simply not eat indoors again?

thetimes.co.uk/article/16b267

Can't get over the Ontario PCs selecting a white cop and former prison guard man to run for office against a Black woman disability justice community leader and wheelchair user. Like just. The image alone. So violently colonial and white supremacist.

*sigh* I suppose we should talk about this article. Yet another article pushing misinformation and demonising neurodivergent people (this time framed as us being the cause of the overstretch of services). 🧵

@thetimes

screenshot of an article by Dominic Lawson with title “I’m sorry, but all this ADHD doesn’t add up. Celebrities have helped convinced us that we all need an ‘illness identity’”.

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ALT

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Replying to

i used to work in special ed and we had all kinds of cool chairs for kids to use that were a safer way for them to do this stim! i wish more teachers understood that you can’t force someone to stop a stim, the sensory needs are there regardless

When they said they didn’t want Big Government, what they meant was they didn’t want a government that gets in the way of the powerful hurting and exploiting the weak. That’s what they’ve always meant.

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Our schools are set up as torture factories for neurodivergent kids and most teachers either don't know or don't care. I've literally said this is a stim, so I assume all the teachers ignoring that part just don't know what a stim is. & prob shouldn't be teachers til they learn.

Anthony Hopkins is autistic and old and refused to risk everything just for a little award ceremony and the Oscars were an embarrassing mess rather than accommodating him haha

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zach silberberg

@zachsilberberg

14h

remember when they restructured the Oscars to put best actor last so they could finish by giving chadwick boseman a posthumous award but then he lost to anthony hopkins who wasnt there bc they wouldnt let him accept anything over zoom so he had gone to bed & then the show ended

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@recombobulating

This is so fucking creepy and dehumanising ugh. We are not computer programs. Nobody is. We are human beings. It's just easier for some people to assume we are empty vessels devoid of inner life cos then they don't have to even try to understand us.

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Victoria Duncan

@SNeurotypicals

23h

People like to talk about the angry autistic community online but in our defense I give you just a random example of the nonsense people will absolutely write about autism if you give them half a chance forbes.com/sites/rahulraz

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Shoutout to everyone working tirelessly to convince the handful of humans who still care about other humans that they’re just some sort of risk averse weirdos. 🦠 ❤️

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Angela M. Vázquez, MSW

@AngelaMSWinCA

I am so very tired of being the only person who cares about my safety from infection.

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Teachers are so good at ignoring kids needs I swear

Lotta teachers in the replies not acknowledging the stim part and only worrying about injury. Teachers: something being a stim means you need to actively PROVIDE ANOTHER GOOD STIM if you're gonna forbid a kid from doing it, + even then it's better to just make it safer instead.

Isabel Mavrides-Calderón

@powerfullyisa

22h

70% of people with chronic pain are women, yet 80% of chronic pain studies are conducted on men. In the mean time, women are called hysterical, women are called weak, women are called crazy. It’s time to center women, believe women, and address chronic pain.

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It is absolutely wild having interactions like this and being reminded that so many people go their whole lives without ever considering that someone could be simultaneously different from them, while also being as fully and complexly human as them.

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Absolutely breaks me when a parent/ sibling of autistic person asks how to "handle challenging behaviours", autistics respond that it's actually not random or inherent, there are causes for distress in what we are experiencing, & the family says "never thought about it like that"

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The same thing happens with dementia, expect someone to sit in a chair all day looking out of a window and then be surprised when they "wander".

This has gone far! Go read and follow the work of nonspeaking autistic advocates! You will learn so much, I promise. Whole thread of links in the replies here:

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Feb 3

Leo In Bloom is run by the wonderful friend, @dannywithwords . It is a beautiful collection of writing by nonspeakers, describing the world and their experiences in it. leoinbloom.com

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Not the worst, but a funny one: I said I was cracking under the pressure of political systems that treat people like me as if we are incompetent burdens on our families & the knowledge so many people have this oppression in their heads. He said "you should watch more rom coms"

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Autistic Cherry

@Autistic_Cherry

What’s the most inappropriate thing a therapist has ever said to you? I’ll go first. Mine told me I should OD.

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Morris Night & The Space

@Deus_Ex_Human

There’s a kind of “HEAD IN THE SAND AS HEALING” attitude that really grinds my gears. A particular cowardice

ʙʟᴀᴄᴋɪᴛʏ ʙʟᴀᴄᴋ ʟᴇᴇʙ

@leebbees_ghost

They're acting like not being ableist and racist is an unreasonable demand and all the whites are eating it up

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I think I need to read some stuff by neurotypicals about how neurotypicals perceive and process oppression, bc from how folks act it's astoundingly clear they are not seeing oppression from the lens I am.

Some folks tried to make my life worse this week because they are entitled and privileged, & that's fine cause I'm used to it - it's the normal selfish ass reaction people have to being asked to consider oppressive systems. I don't have to keep being 'nice' now, at least.

I feel like this 'concern' reveals a lot about how those who identify as Normal treat identities outside of it. They see diagnosis as a doctor's note giving people special permission to be part of Normal and want to keep it as perfect and pure as they think they are.

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Adam Fare

@adamfare1996

Anyone who suggests that Autism and ADHD are over-diagnosed… especially in women and girls… clearly doesn’t understand what is actually going on, and is massively ignorant to reality.

Reminder to everyone jumping to share this without looking at sources: I'm Autistic. The things the OAC and the ABA/IBI lobby are arguing to fund are *not supported by autistic people*. Intensive behavioural interventions are inappropriate and dangerous for autistic kids.

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Isaac Callan

@isaaccallan

NEW: The Ford government promised that 8,000 children with autism would have funding services by the fall and, when it looked like they would miss their target, stopped answering questions. Through FOI, we have found out just how short the province fell. globalnews.ca/news/9411136/o

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Calling someone ableist for promoting and engaging in ableism isn’t bullying it’s just a fact

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If you think you're 'reclaiming' slurs by using them to insult people you don't like, then I put to you that you have no idea what 'reclaiming slurs' actually means.

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The issue was never that I didn't present as autistic, or I 'hid' it too well - because I was PAINFULLY clearly autistic and I did not hide it well - it was that my autistic presentation was interpreted through the lens of a sexist medical system that saw autism as a 'boy' thing.

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(she/they)

@RollWithRu

attendance policies and awards are ableist. celebrating the non-disabled who are physically able to attend schools whilst penalising those with disabilities who require time off for health, appointments etc is gross as should be thrown out the window

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When a parent says that their children were irrevocably damaged by spending two months at home with them, I think that says a lot about the parent, and not much about anything else.

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18.5K

I don’t think people should be allowed to make their “free” choices if it kills other people, no

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We shouldn’t wait until someone has burned out before people start giving support and accommodations.

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Replying to

Yup. Once my son started communicating using Text to Speech, he said “I make those loud noises when I’m bored.” So no, he was not in fact trying to be “challenging,” he was trying to express discomfort the best way he knew how.

I went through years of therapy that aimed to convince me that people were generally good & the pandemic has unraveled all of it. Like no, 12 year old me was actually right to be suspicious of everyone because it turns out people value eating in restaurants above human lives.

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Life as a disabled person… Disabled people: “This is Ableist” Non-disabled people: “No it isn’t, stop being so easily offended, the world doesn’t revolve around you”

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i feel like i've been robbed of a future -and it has nothing to do with my disabilities & ailments themselves, but rather all the ways disabled and chronically ill people are shut out and dehumanized in every aspect of life because of ableism and eugenics.

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Lai Thin 麗婷 (she/her)

@5laithin

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Important read about speech fatigue and spoon theory, and how important it is to validate communication choices and having good communication partners. For everyone who finds communicating via speech difficult.

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@autselfadvocacy

"There is a definite link between my physical energy and fatigue levels and my speech production and communication." bethmoulam.com/aac-spoons-and

is in solidarity with Stephanie Allen!

@mssinenomine