Ableism Puns

We are always treated as if we don’t have neurodevelopmental disorders because we don’t “look like people with neurodevelopmental disorders”. It is almost like nobody acknowledges our struggles. We get treated like we don’t experience ableism all the time as well. It’s as if these fake “activists” don’t care about us.

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but whatever.

Why can’t autistic women live in peace on Reddit?

Reddit in general is super ableist, especially towards autistic people, but it’s way worse for autistic girls. I saw a thread yesterday with an autistic activist reacting to the Mark Rober eugenics fundraiser, and her explaining why it was wrong. The entire comment section was filled with hate for her, accusing her of faking autism to be “quirky”, making fun of her appearance, saying she was too “high functioning” to have an opinion about the fundraiser, saying that if she kept up her activism and kept her personality, no one would want to date her, and calling her crazy. Several of them went to her profile to try and prove she was “faking it”. (Spoiler alert: She wasn’t.) Her reactions and what she was saying was being torn apart in the comments as well- a lot of comments were criticizing her for saying that eugenics is bad, and infantalizing autistic activists, saying they didn’t know what they were talking about, that parents are the real victims and that autistic activists are mean, and that ABA is a good thing.

Autistic boys on Reddit rarely have this happen to them. Autistic boys face ableism too, but they aren’t frequently accused of faking it. They aren’t called crazy for it.

Even on autistic subs, there’s still misogyny towards autistic women. We’re still accused of faking it to be quirky. We’re not allowed to be human. Every aspect of our identity is nitpicked as proof we’re faking our autism for attention. If we’re bubbly and happy, we’re not “autistic enough”. If we’re depressed and lonely, we need to “get over it.” If we’re involved in neurodiversity, we’re “making light of autism.” If we’re verbal and chatty, we’re “too high functioning.” If we’re nonspeaking, we’re either “faking it” or “don’t understand what we’re doing.”

Will we be respected anywhere?

Will this ever stop?

For context I will make it clear that I am ADHD and Autistic - as such smells and sounds are horribly unpleasant to people like me. I had escaped from an abusive situation very recently thanks to the generosity of a couple friends of friends of friends who have been letting me stay with them for the past few months rent free while I find permanent housing, with the promise I would take on a third of the rent if I failed. I am grateful for the opportunity, having tried for months to get out. With that said, I cannot stand the people themselves.

For starters I made my neurological issues clear before moving here. Despite that, their home is filthy. They own a bird, and there is bird waste staining the furniture, food piled in the kitchen floor corners rotting, used TP in the restroom, and there is a constant stink of rot. They also have poor personal hygiene themselves and do not shower. Beyond that, they whistle constantly, which sets me into terrible panic, despite my numerous protests.

I tried to reason with them. I started out only amicable, almost nervous to mention my concerns, asking politely that they clean up a bit more to help me out. This was met with the two nearly on the verge of tears claiming I had insulted them and their home. They agreed to it anyways, but didn't change a thing. I bought air spray to try and help, but as its toxic to birds threw it out at their request. I've been trying to meet them half way constantly, and their reaction of hurt has left me unable to ask anymore. I've tried to clean it myself, but there's just so much! I've spent hours wandering the city because being there gives me terrible sensory hypersensitive migraines. I've grown to resent them, but I haven't directly insulted them once. The only thing I may have said was muttering "disgusting" after stepping in bird waste after coming home from work late one night, to which I was yelled at for.

There is also the matter of personal space. I must emphasize; I never knew these people until two months ago. I took a big risk coming here. We're also intrinsically different types of people, and while I am kind in conversation they seem to have been under the impression we would be best friends within a week of knowing each other. The first thing they said was "think of me like your mother or big sister" which should have been a big red flag. I'm not opposed to being friends, but I'm fricking Autistic! I can't simply open up and get coffee with total strangers. With my re

Hi! I know theres alot of these surveys but I would really appreciate it if you could fill mine out I'm running a little behind on my major piece.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdAa6l98aRUhq5RITKYPDTV9mCxbAP__SThsL_px_NGN8ej5Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

(I've sent it on this subreddit before but I've since amended the questions)

Rational wiki just deleted another autism rights article. In the discussion the person who nominated it for deletion said they want to delete all the other autism pages written by the articles author. That user is autistic and was bullied off the site recently.

Purged articles

National autistic society (seems to be the british version of autism speaks british autism charity)

To siri with love (awful book by a mom mocking her autistic son)

Autism uncensored (another awful book by a parent of an autistic child)

In a different key (book portraying parents like that as heroes)

Actually autistic (about the autism rights movement)

Hi y’all,

I wanted to share with you all a bit of a breakthrough I had today that I’m hoping encourages the rest of you as much as it is me.

First, the bad news. There was a LOT of awful ableism in my textbook. Part of this post will contain examples, but it’s not the whole post and I hope you will scroll past those examples if they cause you anxiety and skip to the end.

I’m in a psychology class right now called lifespan development. Last night I had to read a chapter in which adhd was addressed at length. I can honestly say it was some of the most harmful things I’ve read in a textbook about this sort of thing, and it just hurt. I hurt for myself, and for the larger community. Contained within the chapter were points made from outdated sources, pseudoscience, stereotypes, generalizations, and horrifically overstated claims. They said (and I quote) “children with adhd are burdens to teachers and parents”. They also literally only addressed boys / children who are boys. There’s zero mentions of adulthood adhd, nor of adhd in folks who aren’t little boys.

They also claimed that we are over diagnosed to an extreme - like practically 90% of the time.

They claimed that ALL people over the age of 8 or so fabricate symptoms to get an adhd diagnosis so they can fuel an addiction. They mention the addiction thing a lot.

They also mentioned that mothers and female teachers are biased against little boys and therefore pathologize normal young male behaviors out of a place of hate/ignorance.

I can go on, but I think you get the point. It claimed to represent “both sides” of the “argument” meanwhile they literally did no such thing and made sweeping generalizations that are harmful.

I talked to my boyfriend about it, and I told him a part of me felt I should say something to my professor but I was anxious/didn’t know if I was overreacting.

He encouraged me to do it, and I did, despite the lightweight panic attack I had to fight.

This morning, I got replies.

She expressed overwhelming support for our community, and made it very clear that her and I are absolutely on the same page. She went further to note why she felt I was correct and how wrong it all was. She went on to suggest that she help me take this to the publishers/authors of the textbook to make an even bigger impact.

She then said she was going to make a new module for the class to address adhd, pseudoscience, ableism against adhd, etc and share resources so that the whole class beco

Got called a rtard (I'm disabled lol) because someone thought my £10 shirts were overpriced and now depop warned me for calling them a cnt. Ableist slurs are fine tho. Really hating depop people atm 😓😅

Mods feel free to delete this if this isn’t allowed, but I felt I needed to say it.

In a now-deleted thread I made a comment intending to condemn certain fundie parents for using their disabled daughter as a pro-life prop and for casting a blanket judgment on all parents in similar situations who choose to terminate their pregnancies. This comment was extremely poorly worded and opened the door for a very disturbing discussion to take place, with people advocating for euthanasia of a living child who deserves nothing but the best medical care and respect as a human being.

I should have spoken up more quickly but failed to call this out. I’m truly sorry that my comment helped facilitate this discussion and allowed pro-eugenics rhetoric to infiltrate the sub. Again, that was not my intention, but that doesn’t erase the harmful impact. There should not be a place for that kind of discussion here.

after starting to take care of myself a little bit, by not constantly masking at work. but i can completely detect the differences in people's approaches to me when i am not making an effort to be neurotypical. especially my boss, it seems like there is so much value for 'soft skills' which are not really part of my job as a researcher but are important in their evaluation of you. the positive comments about work are drastically down even though i am doing the same amount of work.

i cannot go back to what i was doing before, because i was getting burnt out v rapidly.

i understand a certain level of masking may be necessary in workplace situations. but how do i deal with people focusing on other aspects even though i keep handing in the same quality of work? in other words, it makes me feel bad! how do i reduce how much it gets to me?

disclosing i am autistic is not an option as i am not in a country where this would be viewed in any way which would result in positive outcomes for me.

I feel like this is wrong which is why I’m posting it here, to hopefully hear another side to it.

But isn’t ableism just saying that having a disability is worse than no disability? I’m just confused as to why this is a bad take.

Like someone I saw in another thread said autism is bad, And then they were called an ableist.

I understand the idea to create an environment where disability is not looked down upon. In fact, I love that idea! However that doesn’t mean we need to ignore the fact that a disability is, in fact, a disability.

I’ve always loved blue, from a very young age. Half my clothes are blue, I adore my blue eyes, and I always try to incorporate blue into avatars. It’s unfortunate, then, that such a disgusting company chooses to use such a beautiful, calming colour, the colour I identify most strongly with, and therefore corrupt it into the official colour of autistic-based ableism.

But I won’t let them win. And you shouldn’t, either.

If you’re using a symbol to encompass the concept of autism, then a rainbow colour scheme (seems like there’s usually a deliberate leaving-out of blue, unfortunately but understandably) with an infinity symbol is totally the best way to do it. Wanna express yourself? Use whatever colours you like. Wear blue, or pink, or green, or purple, whatever you want to use. If you feel bad about liking blue, don’t. I’ll be damned if I live in a world where we shun the most uncontroversially (though not universally) beautiful thing which every single person on this planet, human or otherwise, has gazed upon:

A bright blue sky.

That’s supposed to be the limit, right? In our lifetimes, we’re highly unlikely to end up colonizing other planets, so for now we’re stuck here. Meaning that everything you can do is encompassed by the sky. Every action or inaction you take, every thought you have, or career you choose, every single person you will ever meet. All under one sky.

Uniting.

Universal.

Blue.

Happy Autistic Acceptance, stay safe out there

So growing up I always knew I was different, and I wasn't raised in the safest environments for being different. I started to mask and part of that was becoming friends with popular, "normal," successful girls. I always connected with the weird kids way better, but I put most of my effort into gaining proximity to the popular, NT-seeming girls because I thought this would somehow hide or maybe even cure my differences. Of course it didn't really work and it only brought me pain and loneliness. (Not to mention a TON of falling outs, friend breakups, and ghosting). Now I'm 28 and I fear I still have this instinct to protect myself by being near NTs. It's so ingrained in me that I fear I've almost lost my ability to connect to other ND people. I noticed that I feel uncomfortable and threatened around people with autistic traits? It's as if my brain thinks becoming close to them will expose me to the world and make my autistic traits impossible to hide. This is a pretty heart breaking and shameful realization and I really want to work on this. I want connection to other autists so badly, but I've spent my life trying to distance myself.

A co-worker of mine belittled me for being lazy and not working enough, and for not having a college degree. She verbally used me as a punching bag. I made a complaint to HR but she is hiding behind her identity as a brown-skinned Latina. I am Latina myself, however very light-skinned white-passing. I fully acknowledge the impacts of racism and also feel that classism and ableism toward me are unjust. HR explained that this person exploded at me because they have trauma from racism (that did not involve me) and that She is refusing to apologize or work on her communication skills because she feels that is tone policing. I don't want to be her verbal punching bag to explode at. I'm not sure how to respond to stand up for myself. I think it is really unreasonable to not even get an apology. The fact that I am seen as so worthless that I can be a verbal punching bag is ableism. I am a visibly disabled wheelchair user, I couldn't leave the space last time this happened I was cornered. When I have tried to request access needs she says "no one wants to hear it everybody struggles" She constantly talks about how stupid and slow I am or how many degrees she has. I don't know what to do

Hello, I am looking into graduate programs and am torn between the fields of psychology and classical studies. My biggest concern is whether or not I will be taken seriously as an applicant or candidate. You see I am Autistic with limited speech and I communicate through a texting communication app. I know there is a lot of sexism and classism in academia which will also be a hurdle to overcome for me. Is there any chance of me being taken seriously as an academic?