#mel baggs

[frail-and-freakish]

today, april 11th, is the anniversary of Mel Baggs' death. Mel Baggs was one of the early founders of the neurodiversity movement and believed that no one was too disabled for human rights, something that modern nd movements fail to understand to this day. sie was so instrumental to my understanding of literally everything. sie died from medical ableism and neglect during the beginning of the pandemic. we would be nowhere fucking near where we are now without hir. i've decided to make a masterlist of some of my favorite posts of hirs, organized into different categories.

(some of these are listed in more than one category because they overlap so much)

here are some of the "essentials" (what you might have already read by hir/should read first):

hir memorial site hosted by ASAN:

In My Language

the oak manifesto

There is ableism at the heart of your oppression, no matter what your oppression might be

Getting The Truth Out (many pages, parody of bad autism awareness campaign called "getting the word out")

the meaning of self-advocacy

what makes institutions bad

aspie supremacy can kill

here are some of hir beautiful writings on perceiving/communicating with hir environment as an autistic person, and on communication in general:

up in the clouds and down in the valley: my richness and yours

distance underthought

the naked mechanisms of echolalia

empty mirrors and redwoods

the fireworks are interesting

hir tumblr tag #sensing (@withasmoothroundstone)

on personhood and who has the authority to take it away:

being an unperson

what it means to be real

empty mirrors and redwoods

on institutions and the I/DD service system:

caregiver abuse takes many forms

"i don't know that person's program"

what my home means to me

dd service system tag

god help the critic of the dawn: glamour and its fallout

what makes institutions bad

post on the JRC

outposts in our heads

on online social justice communities/their inaccessibility:

Your politics have a problem when they contradict the real-life experiences of the people they're supposed to be about.

politics, ethics and mental widgets

hir tumblr tags #outside the wall and #little packages (@withasmoothroundstone)

misc:

The Bones My Family Gave Me

Please violate only one stereotype at a time

My sort of people, just as real as theirs.

Reviving the concept of cousins

gender tag

this is hir poems and creative works:

this is hir writing on autistics.org:

may hir memory be a blessing/revolution.

#mel baggs #z”l #autism #actually autistic #autism acceptance month #autism awareness #disability #disability rights #disability justice #mushroom.txt #actuallydd #autism acceptance #actuallyautistic #tagging this in All The Tags so people see it #autism awareness month #autistic #autistic spectrum #autistic things #asd #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #i/dd

[librarycards]

"Good" Institutions

The visitors came and talked today About how wonderful this place was No bars on the windows of this cage Sparkling walls showed no shit or blood

They said everyone was treated well The food was fresh and tasty too The people could walk outside if they want And then get better and go home

They extolled the virtues of this place In language amazed and sickening For it held its secrets, just as dark As any torture chamber you’d know

How do I know this? Because I heard It all from my table in the back room Chained and drugged — invisible — For the comfort of visitors everywhere

Mel Baggs (2004).

#giving feedback to some incarcerated poets n introducing them to mel.... sie was right every time #mel baggs #words #mine #institutionalization #ableism #saneism

[autisticarchive]

So there’s a saying I’ve seen go around that goes something along the lines of, “high functioning means your needs are ignored, low functioning means your assets are ignored”. It’s something Laura Tisoncik aka Muskie is credited (or usually is) credited with saying. After doing lots of digging, I couldn’t find any of her work where she says this exact quote. However…

I did find this

Theres one particular thing she says in this interview that is basically the same thing, though it’s much more nuanced and actually doesn’t say anything about HFAs having their needs ignored-but on a side note, people considered low functioning very much have their needs ignored too, and Muskie knows this. This is what she said:

“There is the fact that a great many of those "low-functioning" folks are being underestimated intellectually, and they're certainly not crazy (but you know even if they were...) I do suspect that a large number of folks would be saying "We're not like them." It's both, you know if you're talking about a situation where you've got your usual professional sitting there taking so-called low-functioning people, failing to offer them a reasonable assortment of possibilities for communicating, and then dismissing their ability to make decisions about themselves, I think a statement to the effect of "We're not 'r****ded'" is meaningful here. But then it's also possible to wave that around as "We're not like those people.”

So what Muskie was saying here is that the problem with functioning labels is how they harm people deemed low functioning the most. How calling certain ACs low functioning (or calling someone high functioning) is really just a way of saying that you’re “not like those people”. Is it possible that I simply haven’t found the exact quote yet but it exists somewhere I haven’t looked or can’t access? Yes. If I find it, I will amend this post. However, this particular quote makes a lot more sense given who Muskie is and her history as a survivior of institutionalization, and it also is very similar sentiment that autistic people like Mel Baggs, who is interviewing Muskie here, and Amy Sequenzia, also have about functioning labels. And they’re right.

It’s common for things people said to be distorted and shortened on the internet. Even in the modified form, I mostly agree with the quote about functioning labels-but frankly, I much prefer what Muskie really said.

[image description: a grayscale picture of Abraham Lincoln, with the quote “the problem with quoted found on the internet is thay they are often not true” -Abraham Lincoln]

Stay tuned for later this week. To commemorate what should have been Mel’s 43rd birthday, August 15th, I am publishing a blog post on how great and important of a resource Autistics.Org was. Think of this as the appetizer for that.

#autism #history #neurodiversity #functioning labels #muskie #laura tisoncik #mel baggs

[addamatic]

To My Friend Who Is Hurting

If I visited you right now

I would not say a word

I would confuse the TSA agents

By filling my suitcase

With soil and dead redwood needles

And chunks of granite

And when we met

I would hand you

A sturdy piece of granite

Straight from the Sierras

But I would not talk

I would not type

I would not say a word

I would find a place

By the side of the road

Full of rocks and debris

I would sit with my legs

Splayed apart like a W

And arrange the rocks

On the sides of my knees

And stack them

In the perfect order

And then I would arrange more rocks

In front of me

And you would be there

And we would start handing rocks

Back and forth to each other

Trusting each other

To put them in the right arrangement

And if any cats came by

We might photograph them

Or sniff their noses

(If they allowed us the courtesy)

And always respect

Their fundamental catness

I would have bought you

A bag of blue marbles

Somewhere along the way

And I would hand you the bag

And look away

As the sky turned to twilight

And perfectly matched

The blue of the marbles

And I would never speak

And I would never type

And I would never say a word

You speak my language

Do you know how rare that is?

For anyone who speaks my language

And does it so well

I would travel to the ends of the earth

With a suitcase full of soil and granite

And spend the whole day

And never have to type

Not a single word

I would stand outside your borders

With rocks in my hands

And you would stand outside my borders

With rocks in your hands

And somehow

The rocks would exchange hands

And somehow

We would build

A sculpture of rocks

In between us

That said everything

That no word

Ever could

If you wanted

I would cover you in rocks

As you lay in the dirt

So that you could feel

The rocks weighting you down

Tying you back to the earth

Under its protection

Away from the things

That are hurting you

But only if you wanted

These are the languages
I know how to speak best:

I speak Rock

I speak Tree

I speak Redwood Sorrel

I speak Soil

I speak Lichen

I speak Moss

I speak Dirt

I speak Mud

I speak Water-and-Earth

I speak Creek

I speak Fire

I speak Autistic (some dialects)

I will speak any of these languages

And more that I have not named

If any of them

Will make you feel better

I may not always be a good friend

I may not always remember you exist

I may go months forgetting about you

But when I remember

I will do anything

If it will make you feel better

What I lack in memory

I make up for in loyalty and love

I can’t guarantee that I will always be there

But I can guarantee that when I am there

I will be there — all the way there

And I will be there for you

To the best of my ability

Because that is what being a friend is about

And I will not speak

I will not type

I will not utter a single word

Through a keyboard

Or a PECS symbol

Or anything else

You don’t need more words right now

You need experiences

You need ties to the sensory world

You need rocks, lots of rocks

You need friends who don’t condescend

You need to see cats

You need people who speak your language

We can hand each other rocks

I can help you arrange them

In a style that blends both of ours

And shows

To anyone with eyes to see

(Which is almost nobody, mind you)

That we are friends

That we have collaborated

That the work is a blend of both of us

And that is our language

For any bystanders

Who may be confused

Reading a poem

About the language of rocks

As spoken by
Two autistic people

Each rock that we arrange

Has a place, and a meaning

We know these rocks inside out
W

e know where the rocks want to be

And we put them there

It becomes a collaboration

Between you

Between me

Between the rocks

Between the ground

And in the end

It is more than it was

In the beginning

After we are gone from that place

Some people will see a bunch of rocks

Some people will see art

Some people will see sculpture

A very few people will see

Two friends

Collaborating with rocks and the earth

To show all the connections

We can’t show to others

If they don’t speak Rock

And I would not speak

And I would not type

And I would not use picture symbols

And I would not use sign language

And I would not use words

And I would not use ideas

But exchanging rocks

And making rock piles

Would tell us each

More about the other
Than any words

But I can’t fly

And I don’t have enough granite

For my suitcase

And all of this

Is just a dream

Of what I would do for you

If I could

So I have to type

I have to paint a picture
Using words

To show you what I would do

If I only could

To show you that I care

About your happiness

To show you that

I can speak Autispeak

When I need to

And most of all

To give you a break

From all that is harming you

So that when you face it again

You will face it with renewed energy

Renewed resolve

To face it in whatever way you want to

Not just the way they corral you in

I would give you lapis lazuli

And tiger’s eye

And black tourmaline

And moss agate

And amber

And granite

Rocks in your pocket

And rocks in your hand

Will tell you more about

Your place in the world

Than any group of people

Will ever be able to tell you

Rocks in your pocket

And rocks in your hand

Will dance with you

And sing to you

In words only you can hear

They will give you strength

That only rocks can give

Remember to listen

Hear them singing

To the rocks in the ground

And the sand that once was rocks

They sing of things

That only rocks know

And when you face the people

Who condescend to you

Even about the rocks

Who see you as an adult-size child

The rocks in the pocket

Will weigh you down

So the people can’t push you up

Into the air

Without your permission

I can’t give you rocks

I can’t make rock sculptures with you

I can’t sit in the dirt by the side of the road

And find rocks everyone has forgotten

And stack them in towers on my knees

These are things I can’t do with you

But I want to

And that should count for something

I hope it’s enough

Even if just barely enough

For you to know

I want to do these things

I want to speak our mutual autistic languages

I want to leave words behind

Just for a time

I want to show you

What can be possible

And that is what I would do

If I could do it

But maybe just writing about it

Will have to be enough

And most of all
I want to create a sanctuary

Where you don’t have to talk

Unless you want

And you don’t have to let anyone in

Unless you want

And you can take the love of our friendship

Back out into the world

With the rocks in your pockets

And the rocks in your hands

And know that the rocks

Will love you

And protect you

In the way only rocks know how

Mel Baggs

#actuallyautistic #actually autistic #mel baggs

[bandofchimeras]

the muteness of the beast

PDA - pathological demand avoidance/AuADHD self disclosure rant related to Mel Baggs' self advocacy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

with long covid, autoimmune shit, repeated traumatic experiences, and autistic burnout....i'm at this point where masking is hardly accessible. its the most i can do to barely keep on top of "boring adult stuff" and texting back a few days later. picking up my phone and making words hurts my brain. i don't know how to tell my friends this without losing them again. i know my friends' interests, but not enough energy to gift them things or bond. occasionally i send a meme that reminds me of them. its all very surface. i don't really have any interests of my own, well i do but nothing i can say i know much about, or things i do. i haven't joined a class or stuck to a hobby in years. i don't understand how people deep dive into things, my brain won't let me hyperfixate on anything besides my own fears or other people/living beings, or a singular thing I like at the time ( like a jazz song, but not jazz as a genre or playing jazz).

reading about PDA was the first time i've felt my experience with this superficial social connection was accurately described. PDA kids can be observed pretending to play on a playground, masking that they are part of the game while not understanding.

i'm not doing this masking because i'm a narcissist who thinks i'm better than everyone, its that i truly do no understand the mechanics of how most people bond and have friendships. what comes naturally to some feels foreign to me. i don't know what the bonds are made of. if i wanted to bond with others we would touch eachother, touch things around us, listen to the world together, bite, pounce, and wrestle. we would squawk and make up our own language together and look at pretty objects together. we would not talk about our jobs or hobbies.

the best i can do is pretend and as a consequence a fair amount of people like me, but i don't feel like we really connect, like its real. in fact, nothing feels real and it hasn't most of my life.

i live in a kind of permanent dissociation, and touching down into reality is excruciatingly emotionally painful. the only way i can cope is by having my adrenaline triggered, or playacting, or throwing a fit so i can discharge enough of that pain to follow directions. or by being so in my body with pleasure and joy, i can only smile and wriggle and flop like an idiot. dancing also helps, but only if its emotionally expressive. i've yet to meet another person with the same level of avoidance to their knowledge and interests aside from other hopelessly lost adults on PDA forums, and my own brother who has similar difficulties.

most people have a few things they love to do or are interested in that don't change, that they come back to time and again, and build on with discipline. without that i don't know how to build my self esteem, so its extremely low. i don't want others to boost it with words, as that feels fake. i would like to find a way to create my own, but struggle with many basic skills like transitioning between tasks, social understanding, staying with a routine, staying present, reading comprehension. i assume some of this is trauma-related and will improve with therapy but some of it is inarguably part of my personality. honestly, i want and need to be trained like a horse, or a bear, with lots of treats and love. i have to be kept, but still respected as a dangerous thing. (the movie Nope really jiggled my jimmies on this concept). i like the concepts of many things but can't engage beyond that lovely feeling of infatuation with a concept, or a possibility, or if i do, none of it "sticks" to my memory recall. i like the emotional 'tone' of things, their atmosphere and the emotional impression they leave on me, and their specific characteristics feel elusive to remember. for instance, if i love a movie, the actors and actresses don't stick in mind, or the composer for the soundtrack. i just love that movie a LOT and want to stay in its experience. same with songs. from what i understand, this is a very childlike manner to navigate the world. aka underdeveloped.

i can feel a tree's presence and communicate with her, and feel patterns in rocks and surfaces. i am less like a human than a finely tuned seismograph of surrounding energy, a barometer. again this could be trauma, but i've always felt like a vessel or an instrument, something to be filled or played, yet only for very specific usage. i behave terribly for people who do not know how to read or play me, like a violin being attacked by a toddler.

so yes, i am fussy and picky and difficult but can't help and imagine, played well, i would make beautiful music, its a matter of meeting someone who can learn me, who i can trust to handle me with care and appreciate my tones. i am trying to learn how to play myself but i don't think that's how it works, i need to be part of a community and have a role, be set free to do whatever this mysterious thing i am shaped for is, or else i feel scary, useless, evil, abominable, like an alien technology dropped into a backwards society that fears and abuses it, or leaves it to rust in a field. i don't enjoy any learning that gets routed through my conscious mind, it is painful and scary, all i can think about is how much i do not know, how all the words feel like knives carving strange symbols into my forehead, like viruses, intruders into my quiet singsong mental processes. when i do things or remember things, its through an unconscious process of my body remembering them, its emotional.

i do not know the names of stones, or plants, or birds, or how strawberries grow or how geology works, or how the body works, though I'd like to. i don't sew or design or make art consistently or read anymore, or write, or bake, or sing or dance except when in the spur of the moment i feel emotional weight towards doing so.

it can't be fear of commitment, because I'd really love to be committed to something, some fandom or book or even my own creative process. i want to connect. but something in me always stops. its happened so many times i am legitimately suicidal, and exhausted.

i don't think i will ever be able to live the kind of life i want to live, my actions are emotional and impulsive, and to act against them requires almost complete dissociation. it is a little easier to do things on ADHD meds but then my body is filled with anxiety and i don't enjoy food or sex or colors or anything that makes me me. anything that feels real and enjoyable exists in a silent, energetic plane - why psychedelics are so pleasurable, they bring me deeper into that place of Experiencing.

i can get things done sometimes if i am completely allowed to do it how i want - make breakfast naked playing music, dancing at sporadic occasions, putting my face close to the food to smell and taste it. as i grow older i have less and less control over my body - dyspraxia - in situations that aren't inherently motivating. i think this is because fear-based motivation has exhausted my physical body to a point of permanent burnout. its like selective mutism, which really isn't selective so much as situational. my body takes back control, it says you will not speak, or you will not act, now.

i can, or used to be able to, experience incredible sensual sensory details. i can experience unadulterated, distilled joy from the smallest things.

sharing this joy through art, however, is a minefield of processes that stop before they start.

i wish i could just touch people and they could experience the beauty and joy and emotion i sense in the world.

i wish i was not trapped in myself by whatever this monster is that keeps me from coming out and completing tasks, from teamwork and cooperation and humanity itself. i wish i could find someone to grok and understand life together, who did not see me as a project to improve or an insult to their desire to be known and loved.

i wish i could be an amoeba, or a fern, or something that simply feels and grows. it is so painful to be a human being, i don't understand cruelty and mind games, but i do understand blind rage, animal instinct, avoidance, fear, i understand how to lock on to a target and never let it go, i understand how to pounce and bite and growl and fuck and the raw, terrifying power in my body and yours.

i don't know if i am less than human, or more animal, but i do know that when a therapist says to be yourself it does not make sense because my self is a lunging, deadly, lawless animal that feeds and fucks and fights without forethought, and it is that animal that has been caged, prodded, neglected, and starved while my mind grew out of bounds like a cancer. you see i think most people's minds and bodies connect, somehow, they control their body by thinking and they do things that they are told, or that are good for them, by willpower. there's a malfunction in mine, the mind is a mask, a parasite, an AI parroting back what others say. its not connected o my real self except in rare, divine occasions where the monkey mind experiences a stronger force that goes SHUT UP and a poem or a drawing come out of me. my ego and conscious mind have little ability to control the languid beast that is my body, and resort often to manipulate, or interceding with other people to manipulate it for us. see, there is that split, that lack of identification.

i've made a conscious choice not to date anyone for awhile because i can't handle the guilt of not remembering their birthday, special occasions, their favorite color, and so on unless i develop an unhealthy dependent obsession with them that is kind of scary. like an eldritch beast dragging a dead deer out of the forest to lay on the lap of their terrified human they've decided to love.

otherwise the knowledge will not click.. i know that they will not feel loved or cared for no matter how my heart wants to love and care for them, to do so will require a fixation that, if not reciprocated, drains me of every ounce of willpower i need for basic survival.

i don't think i am alone in feeling this way, but being on social media feels very lonely because it is so much engagement with our minds, words, favorite media....it overwhelms me. think having said all this, it is my desire to belong to the pack that causes so much mental anguish. i am scared to love any craft, hobby, fandom with the full force of my emotional body because i have been so often judged for being over enthusiastic while having little depth of understanding. no matter what i will likely feel silly, and alone. to summarize this self-narrative, i feel like a non-human. I feel like an overexcitable, clumsy beast being ridden by an anxious little mosquito like Remy from Ratatouille, who constantly chatters trying to distract travelers on their path from the hulking reality of the Beast. very clever yet they always spot him and scream and shout and run away or he gets mad and they sense he is a great Threat and a danger and an evil they must drive from their town.

of course when people see me they see a normal dude for the most part and this makes it even odder because i feel expected to perform Normal Guyhood and simply Do Not Want to so severely my instinct is to run and Hide

#mel baggs #autism #adhd #pda autism

[darthfoil]

"From my perspective, there’s two main ways that oppressions collide with each other. One is horizontal. One is what I’d call vertical or embedded...

"Horizontal oppression works more or less like this: Sexism and homophobia can go together because lesbians exist, who are both gay and female. Racism and transphobia go together because there are trans people of color. Etc. The connection is a side-to-side one.

"Vertical oppression works more or less like this: Sexism and homophobia are connected vertically, because sexism is embedded within homophobia: You can’t have some of the core aspects of homophobia, without also having sexism. This applies not just to lesbians, but also to gay men. Because a large element of homophobia against gay men involves comparing them to women, and applying many of the same sexist attitudes towards gay men that would normally be attributed to women. That’s where you get the idea that there’s something wrong with gay men because gay men are sissies, effeminate, possess feminine attributes, etc. They’re first equated with women and then degraded in ways that have to do with women. You can��t have homophobia minus the sexism and have it take anything like a recognizable shape. It depends on sexism. That’s the big difference between horizontal and vertical oppression. Another big difference is that horizontal oppression is symmetrical (sexism + ableism = ableism + sexism) but vertical oppression is not (sexism is embedded in homophobia but homophobia is not embedded in sexism).

...

"People really should pay attention when we say this. Because when you have another form of oppression embedded within your own, you can’t possibly address your own oppression without addressing the other. Not because of a horizontal connection that only exists in certain circumstances. But because of a vertical connection that you can’t possibly get away from: Your oppression would not be the same kind of oppression without that other oppression stuck very close to the center. If you’re gay and you truly want to end homophobia forever, you can’t get away from having to deal with sexism. You can’t. You can pretend that you can, but you can’t actually do it."

Source: There is ableism somewhere at the heart of your oppression, no matter what your oppression might be.

#Mel Baggs #opression #ableism #sexism #racism #homophobia

[clatterbane]

Just reminded of this one again. Because I really don't think my language learning abilities have actually gone downhill since I started learning German as a kid (with a lot fewer resources available then, beyond formal education).

I think it's more of the kind of situation Mel was talking about making this frustratingly slower and harder. Along with so many other things in life. Years of rolling burnout and physical health problems really haven't been helping, and I have definitely been spending the past couple of years since we moved to Sweden in its own subset of this. Thankfully nowhere as severe and frankly life-threatening as the 10 years before that, when I really couldn't see any good way through everything.

Beyond that (if such a thing makes sense), it doesn't seem like the less-usual ways my brain approaches language have really changed that much since I was picking up English to begin with. That doesn't even really feel like my native language, though I did pretty quickly bootstrap my way into being a surface-hyperverbal little shit who has rarely shut up since then.

The usual assertions about learning this stuff being so much easier for kid brains has never made much sense from the way my own seems to want to behave in general. But, a lot of that does indeed seem to be unusual, including the susceptibilities toward burnout.

#personal #language learning #actuallyautistic #burnout #overload #gnu mel baggs

[lavcommunicatez]

figure out who FC troll anon is. it’s @/goingnotsurpassing. saw from message they sent to someone else and apparent forgot to go on anon lol. please block block them for your own safety if you nonspeaking autistic or other disabled person on here.

#they fucking terrible and spread lies about communication method that work well for many people #and accuse people of either faking or being “take advantage “ by FC #ableism #also say that people who go through late regression not real autistic??? include mel baggs in this somehow and deadname hir which bad bad #discourse #That One Guy #lav talkz

[cryptocollectibles]

Sweatshop #1 (June 2003) by DC Comics

Written by Peter Bagge, drawn by Peter Bagge, Stephen Destefano, and Bill Wray.

#Mel Bowling #Sweatshop #DC Comics #Etsy #2003 #Peter Bagge #Stephen Destefano #Bill Wray #Comic Books #Comics

[noster-tempus]

What does it actually mean to be an autistic cousin?

Recently I’ve seen a lot of discourse about the relationship between the ADHD and autistic communities, and I wanted to point something out.

The TL;DR version is that “cousin” was not originally meant as a word for the connection between autism and ADHD. It was supposed to apply to any neurodivergent person who was not autistic but felt at home in the autistic community.

The term “autistic cousin” was initially coined by an autistic activist named Xenia Grant at an autism conference. She was talking to a man with hydrocephalus. He was not autistic as far as he knew, but he had found that he had a lot in common with autistic people and enjoyed hanging out in the autistic community. So she declared him a “cousin”. For a while, “cousin” was widely understood in the autistic community to mean any person who was not autistic, but had certain cognitive or sensory or social things in common with autistic people which made the autistic community a comfortable place for them.

At some point, the term fell out of use. Fast-forward to Tumblr in the mid teens, where social justice discourse became fond of drawing hard boundaries around identity groups. A common point of disagreement was whether people with ADHD were allowed to use the term “special interest.” Non-autistic neurodivergent people would often ask if they were “allowed” to stim, and while I think the answer was usually yes, I would not be surprised if there was controversy about that too.

Mel Baggs, who had been active in the autistic community back when “cousin” was still widely used, was quite frustrated by this trend, and made several posts attempting to revive the concept:

Reviving the concept of cousins Cousins, ACs, Autistics and Cousins, Autistic Cousins, etc. I’m a cousin too (about how delirium can be seen as a cousin of psychosis)

Basically, Mel wanted to bring back the concept of autistic cousins, and sie also wanted the concept of cousins to be applied to other neurodivergent conditions, so as to avoid implying that autism was the “central” way to be neurodivergent.

Some time in the late teens, Tumblr as a whole became frustrated with the rigid policing of the boundary between ADHD and autism, and we seem to have swung a little too far in the other direction. “Neurodivergent,” which really means “has any sort of disability involving the brain,” was increasingly used as a shorthand for “autistic and/or ADHD.” I’ve seen “autism/ADHD” used to describe things that I was pretty sure were just autism things, with no explanation of how they applied to ADHD; it was just a given. I’ve heard complaints of ADHDers speaking over autistic people, and that the constant emphasis on similarities between ADHD and autism ignores the experiences of nonverbal autistic people, and other autistic experiences that don’t have any sort of ADHD equivalent.

By this time, the word “cousin” was starting to crop up again. I suspect that was due to Mel, although I can’t prove that. But it’s not like all of Tumblr suddenly read the posts I linked to. More like, Mel started using the term, then people sie interacted with started using the term, then people they interacted with started using the term, and eventually it spread. And somewhere in there, it got distorted so that rather than becoming even broader, as Mel had hoped, it started to be applied only to the overlap between autism and ADHD.

There are still people who talk about being autistic cousins in the original sense of the word, but I’ve also seen people say things like “autism and ADHD are cousin conditions” as though they have some sort of special connection. Whereas in the old days, “cousin conditions” might sometimes be used as a shorthand for conditions that often made someone an autistic cousin, but it was understood that no particular diagnosis automatically made someone an autistic cousin--it was all about what made sense for any particular individual.

I think it might help us to avoid overstating the similarities between autism and ADHD if we remembered that “autistic cousin” is a group that also includes people with hydrocephalus, Tourette’s, OCD, intellectual disabilities, schizophrenia, and many more conditions. If you’re making a post about autism and aren’t sure whether to also mention ADHD, you could say “autistics and cousins” and avoid making any unfounded claims about ADHD while also potentially including a lot more people. Similarly, if you’re making a post about ADHD and aren’t sure whether to mention autism, you could say “ADHDers and cousins” and avoid generalizing about autistic people.

I really don’t think we need a specific term for “autism and ADHD, collectively.” There is nothing unique about the relationship between autism and ADHD. Sure, there is some evidence that there may not be a firm distinction between the two conditions on a neurological level. But it hasn’t been proven, and even if it’s true, that doesn’t mean ADHD is the only condition that blurs into autism.

(Please don’t take me as an authority on any of this. I’m attempting to explain a community norm that was pretty much gone by the time I was old enough to go online unsupervised; I could easily be misrepresenting something. I’m also exactly the sort of person who is sometimes allowed to take up too much space in these conversations: an ADHDer who’s probably not autistic. My goal here is to expose people to an idea that seems like it’s been forgotten, not to tell anyone what terms to use.)

#neurodiversity #neurodivergent #autistic cousins #adhd cousins #actuallyneurodivergent #actuallyadhd #actually an autistic cousin #r.i.p. mel baggs #orig

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Blacklight 2022

#Blacklight #Liam Neeson #Aidan Quinn #Taylor John Smith #Emmy Raver-Lampman #Claire van der Boom #Yael Stone #Andrew Shaw #Zac Lemons #Gabriella Sengos #Tim Draxl #Georgia Flood #Caroline Brazier #Mel Jarnson #Sunny S. Walia #Linc Hasler #Anthony J. Sharpe #Cam Faull #Jasper Bagg #Joe Petruzzi #Todd Levi #Alex Cooke #Damien Bodie #Andriana Williams #Yesse Spence #Anita Torrance #Irene Chen #Luka Sero #Dailin Gabrielle #Rodney Miller

[librarycards]

Hello, do you have any books on children's rights and patriarchy to recommend? 🥺

this is very much a category in-progress; children's rights discourse has advanced a great deal in the last few years (and will almost certainly continue to)! here are a few texts I recommend [with the caveat that these generally address children's rights but have other foci]:

Jules Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child (also, Jules's substack!!)

Eric Stanley, Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable

Stanley & Smith, eds., Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex [in both, Stanley / Stanley & Smith track the process by which youth, particularly queer/trans youth of color, are rendered unpersons)

Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption [discussion of adoption –– in many cases, explicit child trafficking serving christofascist ends –– is inextricable from children's rights and is far too often ignored]

I have learned perhaps the most about children's rights and youth liberation from queer/trans disabled & Madppl. Remi Yergeau's Authoring Autism as well as Eli Clare's Exile & Pride have been pivotal here. Samuel R Delany's Heavenly Breakfast also has an incredible set of passages on youth liberation, harm reduction, and substance use.

Finding blogs like (now-inactive) We Are Like Your Child have been transformative, as have Mel Baggs's (z"l) body of work, which I discuss in more depth here. One final shout is to Parenting Decolonized, who call attention to the entanglement between racial capitalism, ableist cisheteropatriarchal white supremacy, and the oppression of children, incl. its reproduction via the nuclear family form.

#hope this helps! #ask #anonymous #book rec #youth liberation #autonomy

[autisticarchive]

The Brilliance of Autistics.Org

Back in 1998, the Neurodiversity Movement was still in its very early days. Autism Network International was established, and Autreat was an annual tradition. There were also a handful of email lists related to autism, some of which being primarily by and for autistic people. Other than that, there really wasn’t much “movement” to this movement just yet. The autistic community that existed was pretty small and was mainly connected through those lists. The internet was just evolving from only being networks of emails to the World Wide Web. So web design was in its infancy. There were some autistic people-namely Laura Tisoncik-who decided to make her own website that would act as a central hub of information for this emerging movement, as well as a way to help mobilize said movement in unprecedented ways. This website was known as Autistics.Org. It is now only available via WebArchive, though it was chronicled quite thoroughly by it, so thankfully it has not been completely lost to time. Mel Baggs, Phil Schwarz, and Joelle Maslak would later join as collaborators.

Autistics.Org was connected to the server for ANI’s website, along with a loosely connected ring of other sites, since owning a server for a website was harder and more expensive than it is now. Laura Tisoncik, also known as Muskie, had prior activity in other progressive movements-namely the Fair Housing Campaign and a Chicago area working class movement known as Rising Up Angry among others. She had experience with the LGBT community as a lesbian, and they did a lot of on the ground activism in the late 20th century as well. She was involved in the #autism IRC (Internet Relay Chat) where she encountered some conflict with several parents, motivating her to create her own IRC #AutFriends. The owners of #autism were not thrilled with this, especially since it was becoming popular, and one of their associates asked Laura to shut hers down. This gave her the drive to create Autistics.Org. Their tagline was “The Real Voice of Autism” which was a direct parallel to Autism Society of America’s slogan at the time, “The Voice of Autism”. The site was active from 1998 to around 2011, with most of its activity being in the early 2000s. 

The site had many sections and functions. It promoted books, mainly those written by autistic people, and even included some fun facts about said books. They had an entire section called Institute for Study on the Neurologically Typical (ISNT), which was an in-depth parody of the common autism institutes that study autism and are staffed entirely by non-autistic people. Autistics.Org also had some cute greeting cards and funny cartoons, as well as forums. Most importantly, in my opinion, was their Autism Information Library. It included several essays about autism written by autistic people about many things that would become key concepts within the movement. Topics such as ABA, burnout, opposition to a cure for autism, self-diagnosis, and the problem with the Asperger’s distinction. A lot of these are also really great articles that have aged quite gracefully. The library has a few sections dedicated to specific campaigns that Laura and Mel used the website to amplify. Autistics.Org also had a presence on the life simulator game Second Life, which acted as a virtual gathering space for a number of disability activist groups. There is a lot of good content on Autistics.Org that is well worth exploring for yourself. What I really wanted to examine, though, is why this website was so great and how it really helped get the ball rolling for the Neurodiversity Movement.

Autistics.Org existed during a much simpler time for the Neurodiversity Movement. Since there were few autistic spaces that existed dedicated to this particular movement, and the ones that existed were relatively small, it had a more “come as you are” feel to it. There were still rules people were expected to follow, but most of the infighting came later down the line. There were certainly still disagreements and factions and the like, but compared to how autistic spaces are now, there was much more levity given to things that would be taller hills for newbies to climb in today’s world. Which one may argue is not entirely a bad thing-it potentially shows that harmful ideas are less tolerated-though it also may mean that if someone uses terminology or espouses ideas seen as harmful, there may be less benefit of a doubt given to them than what would have been in the email lists of yore. This is natural for a progressive movement, and was arguably inevitable as the movement continued to expand. The focus was largely on building the momentum we see now with the movement, so people were allowed to experiment with ideas and explore discourse while still getting featured on the site. Many of these ideas would go on to become very common talking points within neurodiversity discourse. They didn’t necessarily originate on Autistics.Org, but having a website with essays about these subjects readily available to anyone with an internet connection was a huge deal. So even if someone was not subscribed to the private mailing lists, or ANI’s newsletter, they could still get a taste of what they likely were discussing on there. Autistics.Org kind of feels like a zine, something Muskie likely had experience with as an organizer within radical movements. A zine is basically a grassroots version of a  magazine, produced “by the people” rather than being published by a major company. They’re often made with basic materials as a result and are quite stylized. Mouth Mag and A Ragged Edge, two disability related magazines also had this feel to them. It had a great blend of both informative writings, calls for action, and even some humor along the way. It was a very important step to take after ANI already established Autreat as an annual conference where people presented about topics the autistic people involved considered important. Autistics.Org was where the rubber met the road with these ideas and this movement. 

There were pins for sale that said things like “I am not a puzzle, I am a person”, which became a pretty ubiquitous saying within the Neurodiversity Movement, especially during protests against Autism Speaks or the use of the puzzle piece in general as a symbol for autism. There was a pin with the puzzle ribbon Autism Society of America created, saying “here we are silenced, parents don’t speak for us”. This appears to be where opposition to the puzzle piece symbol really got its start. Two key incidents had sections dedicated to them on the site. The first was a protest to a rally in 2000 known as “Hear Their Silence” hosted by Autism Resource Konnection (ARK). It took place in Washington D.C. and featured people like the infamous Bernard Rimland, to talk about the way autistic people supposedly suffered in silence. This was clearly an ignorance of the growing voices of autistic people advocating for themselves. Several advocates, including some non-autistic parents, wrote a series of letters to ARK that were posted on Autistics.Org, known as “Hear Our Voices”. It doesn’t seem like it really did anything to prevent the rally or change anything about it, but it showed the tendrils of autistic people campaigning against the idea that autism was a horrible disease, and more importantly, against the idea that some autistic people were voiceless. Another incident they gave a dedicated section to was the incident surrounding Canada-based researcher Michelle Dawson and her critique of behaviorism that she presented before the Canadian Supreme Court for their Auton v. British Columbia decision. Her speech and essay were known as “The Misbehavior of Behaviorists”. After she delivered this speech and published it online, a parent of an autistic son known as Lenny Schafer published a section in his quarterly Schafer Report called “In Defense of Behavioral Treatment for Autism'' where he and several behavior analysts wrote a series of essays absolutely skewering Dawson for daring to have something to say about Applied Behavior Analysis that wasn’t a glowing endorsement. They questioned her diagnosis as well as her credentials, among other things. In a lot of ways, they proved the point Dawson made. Several of Dawson’s friends came to her aid, including on an online forum and with a series of essays hosted on Autistics.Org with rebuttals to what was said in the Schafer Report. The court decided that the right to ABA/IBI was not protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, setting the precedent that access to ABA and similar interventions would need to be decided on the provincial level rather than federally guaranteed. This really showed how fiery discourse surrounding ABA was in the autism community, especially now that the Neurodiversity Movement was speaking out against it. It was one of, if not the first, massive mobilization against behaviorism from this particular movement and helped establish that opposition to ABA would be a major sticking point of the Neurodiversity Movement. 

As the movement continued to grow, it would grow beyond what Autistics.Org established. Nonprofits like Autistic Self-Advocacy Network would get their start and take the work of the Neurodiversity Movement to unprecedented levels (though ASAN was all-volunteer for its first five years). Autistics.Org was never the only bastion of organization among neurodiversity activists, though it was a very important development, and is definitely one of its best initiatives to this day. This is being posted on what would have been Mel Baggs’s 43rd birthday. Mel did a lot of things to mobilize the Neurodiversity Movement, Autistics.Org simply being one such example. It’s where Mel got hir start in the neurodiversity sphere. The site is also 25 as of this year. A lot of the content barely feels like it has aged a day. Having a central resource like this that was entirely community-based and community-funded, run by people who had experience in previous movements as well as experience in facing some very real discrimination, was genuinely a gift.

For more on autistics.org, here is a chapter Laura wrote in reflection on it in 2019 for the Autistic Community and Neurodiversity Movement textbook

#autism #history #neurodiversity #mel baggs #laura tisoncik

[crippleprophet]

genuinely the #1 most helpful frame shift in terms of both not feeling like shit about myself & developing more robust sociological analysis was throwing out the idea that health is good. set it on fire, shred it to scraps, toss it in the wood chipper, compost that shit: i am sick and that is not a bad thing to be.

& then, as follows the work of mel baggs (z”l), everything else unravels. there’s nowhere else for assimilationist impulses to go. being queer is a disease? being fat? being non-normatively sexual? being a drug user? great. anoint me the patron saint of contamination. suddenly everyone has to have a stronger argument than (their) dis/ease; everything falls apart after your “yes, and?”

especially because once you begin to pick at it – why do you want me to want to be healthy, anyway? – the answers are all the same. to work, to make someone else money. to have healthy white babies who will do the same. to peddle the ultimate eugenicist fantasy, that of eternal health in heaven, to everyone around me so they will do the same.

of course, this exposes the shallowness of many leftists’ arguments, too – stop telling me capitalism is a cancer or landlords are parasites or homelessness is an epidemic. stop relying on sound bites that are entirely founded on the assumption that there can be no good in my body. only then can we talk about real harm.

#mac.txt #cripple punk #leftism #embracing abjection #stay sick

[disabledunitypunk]

There is a troll going around trying to sow discord in the disabled community.

If you see this message in your inbox:

[Image ID: An anon ask reading "It is deeply irresponsible of you to promote the neurodiversity movement. The founder of the movement - a certain Japanese "Baedell" trans woman (one of those denyers of transandrophobia) named Kasaine - is a petulant destructive asshole who has torn apart numerous autism conferences, alleged murder and anti-epileptic or anti Asian sentiment or whatever simply for conferences refusing to browbeat a severely autistic nonverbal young man into turning off his flash camera. (Never mind that she could have just you know looked away.) I have spoken to countless Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians and others who also disagree with Kassaines utter petulance, as well as that of those like Amanda Baggs (a blatant faker/liar who I refuse to call by her "trans name" but you might know her as Mel.) She was also making the patently false claim that she had Rett syndrome. She also is deeply anti-physical disability, believes the abled can be cripples and believes that there is no difference between any disorder that affects the brain. I tried talking to (blog name is crossed out) about this and she sent me to your blog, let her explain her deep deep misconceptions." /end ID]

First of all, the term neurodiversity was coined by Judy Singer in 1998.

Secondly, I'd like to point out that even if the flash camera statement was true, epileptic seizures can cause severe brain damage and even death. There is absolutely no reason that an autistic person using the flash on their camera, regardless of support needs, should take precedence over someone's own life. If an autistic person refused to stop using it, ideally they would have been separated, but in the end the epileptic person would have a higher priority support need!

"She could have just looked away". Could she? How dark was the room where this was occurring? How reflective was the environment? How bright was the flash in contrast to ambient light? How willing to risk her life are you?

Thirdly, the transphobia. "I refuse to call [them] by [their] trans name". Translation: I think it's acceptable to deadname and misgender trans people if I don't like them.

Finally, the ableism of calling neurodivergent people who reclaim cripple (for reasons including but not limited to: being physically disabled as well; feeling their neurodivergence physical disables them despite not having a strictly physical diagnosis; acknowledging the long history of usage of the term against neurodivergent people including in medical literature and refusing to erase their own experiences being attacked with it; for rejecting the false dichotomy of mind-body dualism and understanding that the brain is a physical organ that is heavily integrated with every other physical organ and can therefore not be separated from it; and so on).

Note the dogwhistle: "believes the abled can be cripples". The anon does not even attempt to dress it up as "the physically abled". They openly state they believe neurodivergent people are abled, without even the caveat of "except those who also have physical disabilities". Even with that caveat, however, neurodivergence can and often is disabling. Sometimes it is severely so.

This further contributes to the erasure of high support needs neurodivergent people, aside from being inaccurate to the vast majority of neurodivergent people. While nondisabled neurodivergent people exist, they are the minority, and disability is an opt-out label for neurodivergent people, not an opt-in one. Meaning, if you are neurodivergent, you are disabled by default unless you identify out of it for whatever reason (usually for reasons like nondisordered plurality or finding the framework of the social model of disability most fits your experiences).

This is even aside from the actual discourse about who can reclaim cripple. Calling all neurodivergent people - even all neurodivergent people who do not identify as physically disabled, "abled", is abject ableism. I don't care what you think about cripplepunk discourse. If you absolutely feel you must debate the subject with the mods of this blog (both of whom are physically disabled, and who have made our position exceedingly clear), please do so off this post. True to the nature of this blog, solidarity and unity in the face of an ableist harassment campaign is necessary.

Let me also be very clear. The person being referenced in the crossed out part is the victim of a harassment campaign and has never sent anyone to any of these blogs. This ask is being sent in mass to blogs - seemingly blogs belonging to disabled people, possibly those who post in the neurodivergent or neurodiversity tag. They have nothing to do with this. I have censored their name anyway to attempt to preserve their anonymity, but if they wish to make a statement about this, we are happy to platform it on this blog to reach more people.

If you receive this message, please delete it. We hesitated about whether or not we might be making a mistake by platforming it, but figured that as it is making the rounds anyway, informing people was the better option.

Tagging any applicable tags for reach.

#neurodiversity #neurodivergence #neuropunk #cripplepunk #unitypunk #disability #ableism #autism #dyspunktional #mod stars #harassment

[doberbutts]

It is deeply irresponsible of you to promote the neurodiversity movement. The founder of the movement - a certain Japanese “Baedell” trans woman (one of those denyers of transandrophobia) named Kasaine - is a petulant destructive asshole who has torn apart numerous autism conferences, alleged murder and anti-epileptic or anti Asian sentiment or whatever simply for conferences refusing to browbeat a severely autistic nonverbal young man into turning off his flash camera. (Never mind that she could have just you know looked away.) I have spoken to countless Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians and others who also disagree with Kassaines utter petulance, as well as that of those like Amanda Baggs (a blatant faker/liar who I refuse to call by her “trans name” but you might know her as Mel.) She was also making the patently false claim that she had Rett syndrome. She also is deeply anti-physical disability, believes the abled can be cripples and believes that there is no difference between any disorder that affects the brain. I tried talking to @chavisory about this and she sent me to your blog, let her explain her deep deep misconceptions.

...are you sending this longass weirdly transphobic revisionist history to anyone with a popular enough blog that says they're neurodivergent?

And why are you randomly harassing someone who has never interacted with this blog and has posted multiple times in easily-findable format that they are not sending you to anyone and you're just being a weirdo in people's ask boxes?