#neurotypicals are a different breed

[satanfemme]

[guy who's definitely autistic voice] huh I wish I knew why I don't understand popular things in the slightest, not even "universal" things like empathy, pop culture, or common jokes. oh well, I suppose the explanation is simple.... I must be some kind of creature. or a beast perhaps. temporarily residing in human skin yet without being human myself, obviously. no other reason ^_^

#(in defense of my continued reluctance to use the label btw. it's cause I can still... not say for sure all my traits aren't just -- #-- from other stuff. and being the anti-psych I am ofc I don't Actually think its healthy to treat diagnoses like fixed breeds of -- #-- viruses or something. but still. can't help suppressing the thought when it's just as likely imo I wasn't born this way. #like either my neurotype was created autistic and that's why autistic resources help me #or my neurotype developed this way at a young age (and continues to do so) making it so that *functionally* I've got an autistic brain #& that's why autistic resources help me #.. the technical difference should be SUCH a non issue to me when the outcome is the same. and yet. #anyways this got WAY off topic I didn't even directly label myself in the op 🤦 maybe I'm working thru some things here lol #) #(or maybe there*is* a way to definitely conclude these things one way or another. in which case I wouldnt mind being told bout that lol hi)

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

NPD culture is hating the fact that it’s called “supply”, it makes it sound like we’re parasites or something. I know it’s called supply for other personality disorders, but it feels odd. I feel there is a better way to describe the need to regulate self esteem, etc., in personality disorders. To be honest, there’s a lot of ableist language that describes personality disorders in the DSM-V; they describe us like we’re animals, especially from what I’ve seen on Wikipedia. I remember seeing one article talking about “breeding” those with ASPD (but referring to them with ableist terms), it was fucking disgusting. We shouldn’t be seen as inferior and less than Neurotypicals (and Non-Cluster-Bs) for having Cluster B disorders, we are not parasites for having higher support needs. I’m sick of being seen as a burden just because I got dealt a bad hand in my life and now I need extra support because my brain works differently. Accommodations for other disorders like anxiety, depression, autism, etc., are not called supply. They’re support needs and accommodations. So why can’t they be called support needs and accommodations for Cluster Bs then (since that’s what they are)? I understand that some people prefer to call it supply and this isn’t targeted at them, I just don’t understand why it’s called supply. Of course I don’t expect people to bend over backwards for me and do everything for me, but some accommodations and boundaries would be nice, you know? I’m sick of being seen as inconvenient and needy for having basic needs, for needing more support and help than others, for being different. So many people are unwilling to bond and connect with me because I’m too “intense” or I’m “needy”. It’s not my fault I was messed up in childhood, and it’s not their fault either. But if it’s socially acceptable to give those with “acceptable disorders” accommodations, then Cluster Bs (and other stigmatized disorders) should also receive appropriate support. For example, those with anxiety can be given accommodations such as a safe place to go when they’re overwhelmed or fidgets. Support needs are different for everyone, but for a Cluster B it could maybe look like people asking before giving constructive criticism and feedback (they should technically already be doing that), etc. Fuck, I’m rambling again. I guess that’s my way of saying I’m sick of being seen as less than other people and a burden on society just because I was traumatized!

.

#^^^ #npd culture is #npd #actually narcissistic #actually npd #narcissistic personality disorder #cluster b

[fedorahead]

pretty tragic how society fights to kneecap autistic kids by forcing conformity practice rather than just letting us develop a little slower and learning to unleash our own real potential

reminds me of fruit in grocery stores. they force grow them, make them ripe before they have enough sugars, and the strawberries end up ok but tasteless, the nectarines are inedible, and the avocados are all homogenized and the wrong fuckin breed (fuck large hass)

meanwhile fruits grown on the plant until they're ready, taken care of and let flourish, taste like a totally different thing

forcing autistic kids through the cheesegrater that is the public school system that ALREADY fucks up neurotypical kids leaves us neurotic messes, fighting to be accepted as just like all the other ones when we'll never be like them and everyone can already tell anyway

what would happen if autistic kids weren't forced to conform to societal expectations in terms of timing and order of development? what if we were allowed to develop our social skills when our brains were ready for it? what if "i don't get it" was met with patience and building more foundational knowledge rather than punishment and rote memorization and practice when we demonstrably do not learn that way?

what if life's milestones weren't treated as benchmarks to fail to reach in time?

[feralsimp2005]

BEE-LZEBUB RANT + THEORIES + HEADCANNONS

Rant

I hate how people hate her the same way they do for Stolas— going off what they misunderstand by seeing and believing. Like how her design is not accurate to how the original is described, which a lot of media does this with many mythical creatures and deities. Which Vivziepop has addressed the issue and even explaining why she had to improvise since most of how they're described is time consuming to draw

Headcannons :)

• Bee would check in with every single guest she invites to make sure they're having a fun time

• Possibly has a whole other section/room where Introverts and/or people with sensory issues can have their fun in a little party so it's not overwhelming and scary

• Possibly does gossip to other demons/sinners about the people they hate just so they can have fun even if she does or doesn't agree with it but doesn't talk bad about others naturally by her own

Theories(NOT CANNON JUST MY THOUGHTS)

So ever since I saw Loona seemingly being aggressive / showing discomfort in the party and Bee was trying to help her out I tried to figure out why she could be like that besides her trauma causing her to have trust issues around others naturally. I started to notice that other hounds were different breeds of dogs such as poodles, cocker spaniels, pugs etc. My theory is that Loona is a wolfdog which naturally they are aggressive to others even if they are just friendly, wolfdogs have been mostly known for being more aggressive than regular wolves, which can explain why Vortex is more bubbly personality with Loona since he's a wolf and he understands how to follow orders from higher-ups like a normal wolf pact does. But there's a big possibly Loona has severe trust issues and severe social anxiety which I relate to, since people are scary and never can trust them so it's just that and not by the breed of dog.

I also found how Bee seems to show similar behaviors to people I see who have Autism and ADHD, relating to her on things such as taking things the wrong way just by the attitude if someone but immediately regretting it once I start to realize they didn't mean it and I snap at them for no reason. Which she has done with Loona by accident which I'm glad she realized she didn't mean it. I also can see how she's aware of others without people realizing it similar to how ADHD people feel which neurotypical people don't realize themselves til the ADHD person points it out to them so where sometimes it can be where they're hyper and full of energy but they can have opposite behavior to that, which Bee knew Blitzø was having troubles without Blitzø expressing it or noticing it quicker than Loona could— but loona is living and working with him so she has a point in that argument with Bee before she said something in a certain tone which set off Bee by accident. I do have Autism Spectrum Disorder so again this could be one of my autistic traits and this not being real and something my mind tries to relate in order for me to escape reality into my fictional world where I even go down before I can start overthinking and overstimulating myself

Edit-accidentally put suffers from which sounded bad but didn't mean it that way I apologize

#bee lzebub #helluva boss beelzebub #helluva boss #helluva boss theory #helluva boss headcanon #helluva boss rant #wheres the neurodivergent characters viv #:(

[beetlebuggy01]

Todays “serious talk” with my mom ended with me being happy about being Autistic and I feel like I should share it with tumblr.

Like I said Today’s “talk of the day” with my mom was about autism because it was on the news and at the end I brought up how I love how I’m autistic, bc it makes me me. Like if I were to go into some magically scenario where I could see ANYTHING and I asked to see me but without autism I feel it’d be a different person entirely! Like if I was me just magically without my chronic illness it’d still be ME. but me without autism I just can’t see it being the same person? Like when it comes to earlier this morning my mom got a letter, and I was TRANSFIXED by the envelope bc the stamp has a shark on it. And when my mom asked what I was doing I I told her excitedly “Mom look! You got a letter and the person who sent you it put a shark letter sticker on it!” And immediately going into the different breeds of hammerhead without prompting. Which I gave the letter to my mom and said I wish I could keep the cool shark stamp! afterwords my mom tore the corner of the envelope with the stamp off and gave it to me. And then me getting excited at the idea of putting the stamp on my water bottle! In which my mom helped me gently peel the stamp off the paper and stick it to my bottle, and even helped me cut a perfect peice of tape to keep it on so it wouldn’t fall off and after getting said shark stamp to stick onto my water bottle I literally got so happy I DANCED AND SANG. That interaction is so inherently me and I can’t imagine having done that if I didn’t have autism. or other stuff like going to museums or aquariums and telling my mom a million fun facts I know about the exhibits! Or getting so happy I cry bc I found a pretty pebble and I can identify the material it is! If I were to imagine myself without autism I honestly can’t see myself doing those things, and those things make me fundamentally me yknow? Like the version of me without autism realistically would probably still be me, but to visualize it in my brain feels like I’d be a greyscale “WRONG” version of myself? Like some kind of dissociative experience or version of Uncanny Valley where I’m looking at my face but it isn’t ME. All my character all the parts that make me, me. Just gone? I just love being autistic honestly, and to be a little narcissistic? it makes me such a wonderful individual and fun and cool and awesome! I have fun facts and knowledge about such fun silly things! And I know so much and thrive on learning more! and without it without autism like I said I can’t imagine being the same person without it! Like getting happy over stamps that have sharks on them and in the end when I get it on my bottle I DANCE and SING from joy! Or being excited to listen to HOURS LONG video essays on topics I like, crying out of joy because I see a cute cat or I find a pretty rock or feather, it’s so inherently me, but also the fact that autism isn’t quantified by like “this is something because of autism this is ‘the real u’” (there is no such thing/way to do such. every part of me is because of autism and also the real me.) So therefore all the things i love that make me, me, are BECAUSE of the autism, and I love the person i am so therefore i love being autistic yknow?? This is really just a psudeo post on how i love being autistic, and how awesome and unique it makes me. I love being autistic <3

Which, I’m going over the ‘good’ parts of autism, I’m not going over the developmental disability part of the developmental disability, the sensory issues, the disconnect between how different neurotypical people think are taught and how I have to be taught and how I think. The things I just DONT and sometimes CANT and never will “get” about the world etc. I’m skipping over all of the genuinely “negative” parts of autism, which I just don’t believe you can label it as bad or good parts? it’s all just autism it isn’t some morality thing where parts of it are morally inherently good and some morally inherently bad. It’s just autism it’s “a force of nature” there is no moral badness to the wolf for killing the deer there is no moral badness to the different traits of autism, it’s just the way it is and you and the people around you (and the world) just have to learn how to live in a world where people are autistic/neurodiverse/disabled and accommodate it, not try to change or “fix” or right it bc it’s wrong yknow? Because it ISNT wrong. There is no good autism or bad autism traits it’s all just autism, at best morally neutral But that’s besides the point. I technically skip over those parts of it before, which the “negatives” are just as much a part of being autistic as the “positives” but I’m still happy to be autistic, because it’s still me, “negative” and “positive” traits alike! And I love me! I love being me I love the way I think and speak and work things out and everything about me! And I love me. Even still with all the parts of autism I love being autistic because autism is every part of me as I am me and I’m PERFECT the way I am. And yes I skip out the “bad” but still. I love being autistic because being autistic means I’m being me <3

Again like I said this is just really a “autism/neurodiverse positivity post/thought” yknow? It’s not really in-depth thought out or some essay I’ve proof read, it’s just me putting how much I’m me and how I love being me on the metaphorical page. And i guess it’s about Being happy with yourself and loving yourself with the “good” and the “bad” parts bc it makes you you and your beautifully you in every way you are <3

#autism #actually autistic #autistic things #autistic adult #autistic experiences #self love #self care #positivity #positive mental attitude #be happy with yourself your perfect #I promise you your perfect #your not wrong or different/neg or weird/neg #your exactly who your supposed to be<3 #autistic community #autistic spectrum

[th3p0rtalmaker]

Ao3 Author Stats: Th3P0rtalMaker

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

A) Purely my own, 4.

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

A) 230,650 (including my own fics and the one I co-authored)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

A) Just Tangled the Series right now. But in the past I've written for Ice Age, The Librarians (2014), Kung Fu Panda, and Stuart Little.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

A) Not including the one I co-authored:

1 - "Cardamom Cream" - 16 Kudos

2 - "Incarnate" - 12 Kudos

3 - "Fall for the Family" - 6 Kudos

4 - "Mission: Party Fowl" - 1 Kudos

5. Do you respond to comments?

A) YES! I love interacting with people in the comments!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

A) "Fall for the Family", which was requested by @batata-doce-com-farofa , is gonna have a very bittersweet ending in it's unabridged version.

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

A) Honestly I think my drabble "Cardamom Cream", which was requested by @kazoosandfannypacks , has the happiest ending I've given to any fanfic. 

8. Do you get hate on fics?

A) Not yet, but there's a first time for everything.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

A) I don't currently write smut, but I think if I ever started it would be purely for myself.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

A) I haven't written a full one yet, but I do dabble in them! I have a little HtTYD au starring the Brotherhood; they received the power to turn into dragons from the Moonstone (as reward for their service). The species/breed of dragon they can turn into is essentially chosen for them by the Moonstone, but based on certain charactersitics that they already have. Hector's knighthood ceremony was tainted by the fact that he was given the ability to turn into a Deathgripper, which the Dark Kingdom considered dangerous and untameable. 

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

A) Not that I know of, but a couple of my old Ice Age fics got adopted after I lost interest in them.

12. What's the longest you've spent working on one fic? And the shortest?

I've been workin on "Incarnate" for 2-3 years now (I just started posting chapters this year), so I think that would count as the longest. The shortest amount of time would be for "Cardamom Cream" - I think I wrote that in just a few minutes and went back later to edit/proofread before posting it.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A) Yes! I co-authored "Blood of My Brother" with Amax76. But she only recruited me during the last 10 chapters or so. 

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? From all fandoms?

A) Ember and Wade from Elemental are probably my all-time favorite romantic ship. I identify very strongly with Ember's struggle as a fire-being living in a city that caters to every element except her own. To me, it feels very much like a metaphor for disability, especially Autism and ADHD (which are both conditions that I have). The concept of Ember and Wade navigating a romantic relationship in spite of their differences is exactly what I think a romantic relationship between me and a future partner would look like, especially if the guy is neurotypical. (I cried so hard after watching that movie.)

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

A) Honestly not sure.

16. What are your writing strengths?

A) Dialogue, emotions, long-form writing, certain forms of symbolism, physical descriptions/actions

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

A) Short-form writing

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? 

A) I love including languages that I don't speak in my own fics, but I do recognjze that it takes a certain level of translation work to make sure I'm being as accurate and respectful as possible. I'm currently trying to make sure I only use it in spurts during "Incarnate."

19. First fandom you wrote for?

A) Ice Age

20. Favorite fic you've written?

A) So far "Incarnate" is shaping up to be my favorite!

#ao3 #ao3 author #ao3 stats #author stats #fanfic writer #creative writing

[tikobithelich]

Random Shigaraki Headcanons

Because I can...on

I mentioned this once and I’ll say it again, Shigaraki has ADHD. There is no way this man is neurotypical.

Believe it or not, his diet is actually pretty decent. He’ll eat his veggies and keep decently healthy mindset in mind if he’s ordering food or thinking about what’s being made for dinner.

The problem is that he’s not that good at knowing when to eat.

The other problem is that he’s not a good cook. He likes watching people cook, but he nervously sweats when he tries to make popcorn.

He owns so many gaming systems and AFO suggested he could get rid of the older systems, but Shigaraki still vehemently plays everything he owns and takes good care of them.

50$ says he for sure owns and still plays with a wii that has far too many stickers on it.

He’s not...bad at taking care of himself, he just kind of goes through the motions. He’ll shower and wash his hair but it’s like the most bare minimum things.

You could very easily swap out his typical shampoo for shampoo that takes better care of his hair and he will not notice and not care.

Shigaraki is extremely intelligent...he just isn’t wise.

If you put a cup upside down on a table with a sign that says “there is nothing under this cup”, he will still pick up the cup to see what’s under it. And throw a fit and probably dust the cup and the table.

He probably has no favorite game, but he likes game systems that have a separate screen (playstation, xbox, anything with a connecting controller) because there’s less of a risk.

Probably knows way too much about different dog breeds. Not just corgis, but just dogs, it’s his hyperfixation. He’ll stop someone, brave through social nerves, and ask to pet their dog and go on a 20 question marathon.

Shigaraki was probably coddled to an extent, but the first time he did an actual “chore” by himself was doing laundry when he was around 15.

It’s now his favorite chore and he likes to load the washer, grab his switch and sit on the washer until it’s done.

Dabi: “Hey, can I throw something in the washer?”

Shigaraki: “You should have thought of that before I got up here. I literally told you I was doing laundry 5 minutes before I did it.”

“...”

“...”

“...So is that a yes?”

#tomoura shigaraki #tenko shimura #bnha #mha #boku no academia #my hero academia #bnha shigaraki #mha shigaraki #mha headcanons #bnha headcanons #shigaraki headcanons

[penig]

Loki is on his best behavior, but you just know he's sizing up Rosalind as competition/potential breeding stock for his own kid, Gunther, when he lets her out of the high chair. Everybody loves Rosalind, though. Her twin brother Franklin is relatively neglected, but that's part of why Vidcund is so determined to teach him all of the toddler skills. Laszlo's daughter Marie (not pictured) is the youngest and most likely to ask for attention rather than getting stuck in on a toddler toy, and Pascal's Tycho...

Tycho is a problem. He will not only get so stuck in on a toddler toy that he neglects his needs, he insists on playing in the pet food bowls even when he's not hungry! I started off with Laszlo and Nervous not fussing about the bowls while Pascal, Vidcund, and Crystal were horrified at the thought of the kids eating pet food, but in practice I've had to get really strict with Tycho about it regardless of who is around, and call him off my own self rather than having someone go put him into a high chair. Not only does he get filthy and require bathing more than once a day, he keeps depleting the bowls so that the pets go hungry, and that is not on!

One can't judge alien hybrids by the same standards as humans - there's no reason to think that their brains are wired the same way humans are to begin with, and behavior that would indicate neurodivergence in a humaniform sim may be neurotypical for aliens. But between the way he gets stuck on the toddler toys, and the pet food play, and the way he interacts - I think Tycho got more alien wiring than humaniform.

Or maybe slight differences are standing out more due to the conditions of his upbringing. Between overcrowding, benign neglect, all those adults, and smart milk, this is not a typical toddler environment.

#1960s strangetown #Curious

[dantesicestorm]

Random Stuff about my Mystreet Rewrite that i just wanna ramble bout

It’s all just creative arts stuff but that beside the point

- None of them were neurotypical from the beginning, but it’s more noticeable here

- Zane, Garroth, Ein, Blaze, were all band kids

- Dottie, Rylan, Daniel, and Gene were all orchestra kids

- Katelyn and travis,.,,...,. obvious theatre kids duh

- Well Trav was an art kid with Aph but then he was like “this sucks and i cant draw :(((” so he joined theatre and actually liked it

- On top of just generally being band kids, Zane, Ein and Blaze were all jazz band kids(Totally not me projecting)

-  Aaron, Dante, Teony, Ivy, Kim, and Sasha were choir kids. Its just that slight repressed gay gifted kid energy that every choir kid emulates yknow??

- Vylad, Melissa, and Lucinda are all piano kids,,,,, an elusive breed(again totes not projecting)

- Dante just knows how to play tenor sax, he has no reason to, he just does

- Aaron plays guitar for the jazz band on occasion

- Ein threw a trumpet at someone once(It wasn’t even his trumpet)

- He did not pay for it

- Aph jokes that Travis only joined theatre to try and get more attention from girls(specifically Katelyn), this is only a half-truth

- Eric, Sylvanna, and Zach had a band when they were younger

- Laurence refuses to be a creative arts kid, no matter how much everybody else pesters him to join their respective program. He thinks they’re all weird for different reasons, yet still hangs out with them on a consistent basis

- Cadenza almost forced him to join choir, but that failed cuz he just can’t sing

#aphmau #aphverse #mystreet #rewrite #mystreet rewrite #I finally post about my rewrite again yippee #i swear i just be forgettin about it sometimes #i do apologize #but anyway #back to my lil hidey hole i go

[random-thought-depository]

I've finished Echopraxia. Validating to see Peter Watts noticed the same fridge logic issues with Blindsight vampires that I did:

"Pretty good hack right?" Admiration mingled with fear in Sengupta's voice. "Can you imagine what those fuckers could do if they actually could stand to be in the same room together?"

He shook his head, amazed, trying to take it in. "That's why we made sure they couldn't."

"Made? I thought they were just you know. Really territorial."

"Nobody's that territorial. Someone must've amped their responses to keep them from ganging up on us." Bruks shrugged. "Like the Crucifix Glitch, only - deliberate."

"How do you know that I haven't seen that anywhere."

"Like you said, Rak: it's the only model that fits. How do you think the line could even breed if their default response was to eviscerate each other on sight? Call it the, the Divide and Conquer Glitch." He smiled bitterly. "Oh, we were good." - Echopraxia.

Yeah, not just how they'd even breed if they were like that, but as I kind of touched on previously, "how did any vampires survive their childhoods?" is a huge fridge logic issue with the "vampires kill each other on sight" thing. It makes no sense for a highly intelligent hominid species to kill each other on sight because humans are possibly the most intensely K-strategist animals on the planet and we're like that because we're smart; human babies are extremely vulnerable and dependent because of the big infant head problem and human children need a long period of learning and lots of attention for that extended phenotype of culture to be passed on. Vampires would need a huge exception to the "totally selfish and super-aggressive toward each other" rule just to explain how any vampire survived their childhood, let alone to explain how they managed to develop and maintain any culture (like that click language they supposedly had), and having culture is one of the primary advantages of being smart. And if vampire children were at all like human children I can't even really see it working with just a mother-child bond, for the first years at least there's probably going to need to be at least one other "parent" (father, grandmother, aunt, whatever) to hunt while the mother is stuck with the extremely dependent young child, so that implies that cooperative relationships between adult vampires were possible and common.

Really, the implication is right there even in Blindsight itself, in the part where it speculates that ancient vampires had a language and specifically a language designed to imitate natural sounds so they could talk to each other while sneaking up on prey and you can hear traces of this in modern vampire vocal tics. That implies ancient vampires hunted cooperatively, talked to each other substantially, and had their own culture!

The book suggests this was a genetic tweak (the index mentions alterations to facial recognition mechanisms), but I think it would make a lot of sense if a lot has to do with differences in upbringing. This is the way Echopraxia describes the social environment modern vampires are kept in:

Every vampire ever brought back from the junkyard: scrupulously isolated from their own kind, every aspect of their environment regulated and monitored. Hemmed in by crosses and right angles, mortally dependent on precisely rationed drugs to keep them from seizing at the sight of a windowpane. Creatures that, for all their terrifying strength and intelligence, couldn't even open their eyes on a city street without keeling over.

...

He shook his head. "They'd never have met. Vampires are hardly ever allowed in the same wing of a building at the same time, let alone the same room. And if they did meet they'd be more likely to tear out each other's throats than draw up escape plans."

So, modern vampires have been raised entirely by people with a radically different neurotype (humans) who have no idea what parenting styles a vampire child would respond well to, in total isolation from any members of their own species. This sounds to me like a recipe for profound social and psychological maladjustment.

Imagine you're a member of a species with low-trust social intuitions and you've been raised by weak, slow, stupid, timid people you intuitively recognize as prey and who are very obviously afraid of you, and then you meet a member of your own kind; a stranger as fast and strong and smart and fierce as you who can credibly look at you and think "I can take them." I bet you'd feel really threatened!

So, yeah, I think plausibly the primary reason ancient vampires weren't so psychotically aggressive toward each other is they had their entire childhoods to get acclimatized to dealing with people with about the same capabilities and mindset as themselves and develop emotional and psychological resources for that.

I like the idea that, like, ancient vampires were profoundly not nice people (for one thing they literally ate people, for another thing given Siri's emotional reaction to Jukka's mannerisms I really doubt most of the ancient vampire DNA in humans got there consensually), but modern vampires are like a Flanderized parody of them with a lot of their worst traits amped up to eleven, because they're kind of like feral children. Like, if an ancient vampire met Jukka or Valerie they'd be like "oh my God, you poor messed-up feral child, what happened to you?"

#Blindsight #Echopraxia #vampires

[shmorp-mcdurgen]

How can you look at any of the alts and think "yeah theyre neurotypical"

Impossible.

They’re a different breed of neurodivergent. Like some of them have mental disorders not known to man

#asks are neat #like. what’s going on in Ruth’s head.

[autisticwomen]

What are the Differences in Autism in Men and Women?

First, we should talk about gender, and how it differs from sex. 

Gender is what a person identifies as and it is very much a spectrum. A person can be a man, a women, something in between, or both. It really depends on the person.

Sex is biological. It’s what genitals you have and what chromosomes you have. A lot of people think of sex as binary, but that’s not the case. There are people who are intersex, which means that they were born with or develop sexual organs or chromosome patterns that do not fit under the binary definition of male and female.

When I am talking about men and women in this post and other posts, I am talking about people assigned male at birth (amab) and people assigned female at birth (afab). The reason for this is that the societal expectations for afab people differ from amab people, which is most likely a part of why autism is different for men and women.

There’s a really good video discussing this topic, as well as what I am going to be going to discuss for the rest of this blog, that I am going to link here. There is also a link to the transcript below the video if you’d rather read the content than watch it.

With that discussion out of the way,let’s get on to the differences in autism between men and women.

Difference Number 1: The drive to be sociable

Similarly to neurotypical (non-autistic) women, women with autism have more of a drive to be sociable. While they still may have problems with being social, they have a general tendency to try to be social more. 

This difference is one of the main reasons for autistic women to be misdiagnosed. Although being social is a challenge, some women with autism have become so adept at being social that, from the outside, they seem to have no trouble with being sociable.

Difference Number 2: Types of interests

When people think of autism, they tend to think of someone who is obsessed with things like trains or technology. That can be true, but is more true for men than women. Men with autism may be extremely interest in collecting things and gathering information about objects or categories of things.

Girls with autism tend to be obsessed with similar things to girls of the same age, like a certain celebrity or horses, but to a different degree. A girl with autism might memorize as many facts as she can about her celebrity crush, or know all the breeds of horses there are as well as stastics about each breed.

Difference Number 3: Camoflouging, or Masking

Because of women’s drive to be social, women tend to be able to camoflouge, or “mask,” better then men are. Masking is a technique used by everybody, but especially neurodivergent people, to seem “normal” in everyday conversations. This behavior includes forcing themselves to make eye contact, developing scripts for potential converstions, and doing their best to not talk about their interests so that they don’t show their “unnatural” fascination with the subject.

For example, I (a woman with autism) have catalogued what is appropriate and not appropriate to say to people. I used to believe everyone would appreciate total honesty, I drove people away from me because they believed I was insulting them. As such, I changed my behavior. Although I don’t like looking people in the eye and I don’t naturally smile unless I’m happy, I look people in the eyes when I’m talking to them and smile without being happy because it makes a better impression on people.

My cousin (a man with autism) has no desire to do that. He is honest to a fault and doesn’t see any problem with that, even if it drives people away. He does have a drive to be social, unlike some men with autism, but is unable or unwilling to change his behaviors to suit that desire.

This is another reason why women with autism go undiagnosed. They become so good at masking that their problems with social stimuli goes undetected. However, the more a person masks, the worse their mental health is. Depression, anxiety, suicidality, and eating disorders have been linked to near to constant masking.

So why are these diffences not well-known? For that, we’ll have to look at the history of autism and how, like most of medical history, women were left out of it.

Sources:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-autism-spectrum-disorder/202104/how-men-and-women-experience-autism-differently

https://neurodivergentinsights.com/autism-infographics/womenafab-and-autism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwGiCPbqYgM

[bisamwilson]

I’m sorry my ask annoyed you. I honestly wasn't trying to, I was asking after your opinion and thus shared my viewpoint on it as well. I don't think that to be discourse starting. It wasn't a guise. I wanted it to be an exchange of different opinions/viewpoints between two people because not everyone shares the same views and I sought to hear more details from someone else’s perspective. I wanted you to share yours so I shared mine, that way you could understand where I was coming from and then I could read your viewpoint and understand yours if you replied. I wasn't asking for justification or an argument. I only wanted to hear why you shipped them and how you saw them together. Which you provided. Thank you.

But I realize my ask was unsolicited and came out of nowhere which isn't right. I should have led into the conversation rather than just dump all of that into one single ask. It was a lot all at once. Thank you for replying nonetheless and for sharing your views on the ship. I’m sorry I caused you to be annoyed/irritated. That wasn't my intention.

gonna start this out by saying i don't plan on answering another ask about this after this one

a conversation here ALSO would not have been appreciated bc the last thing the vast majority of anyone who ships anything wants is someone starting a conversation with them with plans to eventually tell them why they don't actually like the ship you ship.

you might not have been around my blog long enough to remember me posting about this stuff when st*cky shippers started coming into the s*mb*cky tag (blocking the name out just bc i don't want this showing up in the tag, as it's not about the ship, even though i adore the latter ship) and talking shit about the latter ship because they just "didn't see the chemistry" and "didn't understand how people could ship it when st*cky were so obviously meant to be soulmates" or whatever the fuck, but i really did not take kindly to that, and wouldn't have even if it wasn't ship wars based. i might clown on ships on my own personal blog (always blocked out so nothing shows up in tags) or with my friends that i know have a similar opinion, and i might even really dislike a ship to the point that it makes me want to block every instance of it and all the people who regularly post about it, but i'd never start a conversation with them with the intentions of telling them all the reasons i personally actually really disliked it, unless they started shit first

like, i understand you were trying to understand, which is fine. again, if the first ask had simply been, "what do you like most about phee and tech?" or "what made you ship techphee in the first place?" i would have been happily gushing about the chemistry i see between them, i'm sure. but if that conversation you think you should have led into at all included your opinion on disliking tech and phee together, i can assure you i would have been just as mad because, quite frankly, i did not ask. i did not plan on asking. i do not want to know. i am not particularly sympathetic to your opinion, and even less so now, and all i wanted was to be left alone to be happy about the ship i thought was cute getting screen time of them being soft and flirting with each other

but the fact of the matter is that saying things like "as if it's 'funny/cute' to watch someone who doesn't understand social cues or needs time to adjust to interactions be thrown for a loop" (implying that the ship is problematic as it's a way to make fun of a neurodivergent character) and "their line of overused tropes that more so appeal to the masses of heterosexual neurotypical viewers" (to someone who is very much not heterosexual, by the way, and is very vocal about that) is going to be taken as inflammatory and discourse-starting, because it is. those are highly charged things to say, with a lot of negative emotional weight behind them, which is the prime breeding ground for discourse, especially when tacked onto an ask whose purpose is to ask why i don't think that way. it felt very "well i see that this ship is problematic for x and y reasons, why do you not see it?" nothing in that ask read like it was asked in good faith and, even with this added on explanation of intent, it still is hard to ignore how charged your (once again, unsolicited) reasoning for disliking the ship was. it felt almost accusatory, which is why it felt like a demand to explain myself

like i said, i don't really want to keep going with this conversation. i mostly just wanted to answer this second ask to say please don't go out looking for a conversation partner with the express intent of eventually offering your viewpoint, which is essentially shitting on a thing that they like. ask people why they like the ship if you want to know, and end the conversation there. keep your opinions on your own blog, and i'm sure you'll eventually find someone who shares them to talk about it with, but like keep your negativity about it from the people who love/like/enjoy it. i can assure you they do not want it, and they didn't ask.

#just like. don't be negative about a thing someone likes bc you personally want dialogue about it #it's going to upset them having to defend a thing they enjoy to cater to your wants #and there are tons of ways to ask and get their opinion without letting them know you don't share it #especially when they've done nothing to start that negative dialogue in the first place #star wars #the bad batch #mak rants #ask #anonymous

[leophnyx]

I'm having a lot of complex feelings surrounding the p-shifter callout post

A couple of months ago, maybe nearly a year, we made a callout post for LycanthropeBorn and her pack of followers. Idk, the post has never sat right with me since due to the way I called her out? Like, her pack is a cult, they do deserve to be called out and I have no guilt over that, it's just that the way I did it was kinda haughty and mean in comparison to what I was going for

Originally I was upset that she was trying to recruit in otherkin tags. We know otherkin and shifters aren't the same and at the time we were trying to keep our shit separate so we didn't get called abusers for basically existing. She ruins that a little when she claimed otherkin could just shift if they tried hard enough, or that blacking out is full-blown proof of being a werewolf (dangerous claims.)

When she and her mermaid beta started attacking us for being endogenic, that was a new low-we won't deny that psychology doesn't say much about being endogenic, but that's because it isn't DID and hasn't been documented much in clinical psychiatry because of that. Even then, you have to be able to see the difference between having a new neurotype, and claiming to shift into a mermaid-one is inherently more provable than the other, and that is why we denied they were shifting...not to mention all that shit with the covert racism and Aquaticaquamarine essentially insisting that shifting was real in the same way DID was real...you can see why I got a little mad.

At the time I was getting most of my info about shifting from Angel and a few others- I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with everything they say anymore, but I still find their words to be of value. I don't believe LycanthropeBorn to be a shifter, because she defies several natural laws while shifting and doesn't seem to get how pulling her breeds from a book ruins her credibility.

And then the anti-shifters on that post, eww. I think some of the people didn't notice that the point of my post wasn't to name and shame a big name p-shifter, it was to warn people of a legitimate cult. P-shifters are fine, as long as they're not purposefully trying to mislead others. I've always stood by that.

I guess I just didn't want anybody reading to get the wrong idea? We didn't want someone to think we were some big infiltrator or changing our tune when our posts said otherwise. Here's a big explanation of that situation from before, and what happened.

#shifting #tw: cults #abuse tw #person: soul

[lunarsilkscreen]

Neurodivergence and Fitting In

Look, I keep seeing videos trying to explain "neurodivergence" as the reason they're not fitting in with the crowd.

I've said before "there's no such thing as neurotypicality" but there IS such a thing as "the good ol' Boy club". This club is basically the cool guys, the in crowd, the clique. Whatever. They exist everywhere, even in Neurodivergent groups.

Colorblind people exist and make a significant portion of the population. Being colorblind makes them unfit for foraging. But people without that limitation are the best at discerning minutiae that can kill you.

I think this might be partially the origin of the "two spirit". Some people can do one thing or the other that is gendered, but others can do both. That doesn't mean those things should've been gendered nor do they indicate a person's gender.

At school I was taught "Men hunt, women gather". This is what I mean by that. "No never trust Dave not to pick the berries that give everybody diarrhea. He thinks he's picking the cranberries, but they are never cranberries."

"Fitting In" is a social hierarchy, people good at the skill of being social, or even social manipulation excel at this. While people who do less of that and more work are more prone to being nitpicked.

A scale of work big enough is ripe for being picked through for every single missed thing. Especially if higher management starts acting like you need to do more work.

This isn't neurodivergence. Because it starts from a place of discrimination. It starts with how you look that's different from others, may extend to actions, and then "who am I not friends with?"

And that's why, in the military, there are regulations banning "fraternization". Especially between officers and enlisted. Because if you start preferring certain workers over others based on who you're friends with, you lose the ability to keep an objective view of those people.

"At the top you have no friends."

Because of that loss of objectivity, you can run the risk of promoting people less deserving, and overlooking those more deaerving.

In the military, the officers tend to rate other officers and leave enlisted to rate enlisted. Which makes it a bit more muddled. The closer you work with somebody, the more likely you are to know more than you should. And familiarity breeds contempt.

If you go golfing with a buddy from work every weekend, and you pass them up for promotion, but they think they deserved it. Now you've lost a buddy.

Or, what if you pass up somebody more deserving because you go golfing every Saturday with that guy?

In the business world, it's pretty acceptable to grease elbows this way. In fact, that's one of the "big tips" on getting jobs or promotions, becoming friends with somebody higher up.

Basically, an attack on their objectivity, and that can work out, or backfire incredibly. That's another reason why we have etiquette and professional behavior guidelines. To avoid hurting that objectivity, because a loss of objectivity is bad for business.

This isn't a neurotypicality thing. Etiquette was created because we think and act differently, and the guides help us get on the same page.

Blurring those lines simply makes the person who stands out a bigger target.

Like the tallest guy of an opposing army. The archers have a pool on who hits him first.

[unladielike]

❛ can you believe some people meet each other and just hit it off right off the bat and just… date??? and fall in love? ?? that sounds fake ? ? ? ❜ // from Daniel

           POPULAR TEXT POSTS PART 4. » still accepting!

    “I know, right? See, this is why I can’t relate to normies, Danny - they are all able to effortlessly fall in love and move on faster than a male protagonist from a harem-themed anime,” Vivian soon rolls her eyes. As far as she’s concerned, Daniel was totally right and he should definitely be saying it; then again, neurotypical people and normies had always been a different breed, so she isn’t surprised they were easily able to attain friends or significant others.

   “Seriously, some would have experienced six relationships within the span of a single year, and I’m just like, ‘Are you sure it wasn’t just lust at first sight but love at first sight when it came to your previous exes?’, ‘cause with me, it’ll be a whole year before I even find myself catching feelings for another three dimensional person... then it all goes downhill from there, but that’s a story for another day - either way, I agree it sounds fake.”

@enterthestratosphere​

#enterthestratosphere #║▌ ⧼ ⸢ ʚɞ ⸣︳m̲o̲d̲e̲r̲n̲. ⧽ ― ENTER THE MANLY HEROINE OF JUSTICE. #⸾ ❖︎ ⸾ ( PUBLISHED ) ⤹ •• 𝕒𝕤𝕜𝕤. #⸾ ❖︎ ⸾ ( QUEUED ) ⤹ •• 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕥��𝕖 𝕝𝕚𝕓𝕣𝕒𝕣𝕪. #[ thank you for sending this in! ] #[ IF YOU'D LIKE you are free to turn it into a thread ]