A Kind Gesture And I Want To Rip The Earth From The Earth, Colored Pencil On Paper, 16 X 20, 2017

a kind gesture and i want to rip the earth from the earth, colored pencil on paper, 16″ x 20″, 2017

The hard truth about autism acceptance that a lot of people don't want to hear is that autism acceptance also inherently requires acceptance of people who are just weird.

And yes, I mean Those TM people. Middle schoolers who growl and bark and naruto run in the halls. Thirtysomethings who live with their parents. Furries. Fourteen-year-olds who identify as stargender and use neopronouns. Picky eaters. Adults in fandoms. People who talk weird. People who dress weird.

Because autistic people shouldn't have to disclose a medical diagnosis to you to avoid being mocked and ostracized for stuff that, at absolute worst, is annoying. Ruthlessly deriding people for this stuff then tacking on a "oh, but it's okay if they're autistic" does absolutely nothing to help autistic people! Especially when undiagnosed autistic people exist.

Like it or not, if you want to be an ally to autistic people, you're going to have to take the L and leave eccentric, weird people alone. Even if you don't know them to be autistic. You shouldn't be looking for Acceptable Reasons to be mean to people in the first place. Being respectful should be the default.

SEULGI | 28 Reasons (Official Album Trailer)

not to oversimplify an extremely complex discipline but if i had to pick one tip to give people on how to have more productive interactions with children, especially in an instructive sense, its that teaching a kid well is a lot more like improv than it is like error correction and you should always work on minimizing the amount of ‘no, wrong’ and maximizing the amount of ‘yes, and?’ for example: we have a species of fish at the aquarium that looks a lot like a tiny pufferfish. children are constantly either asking us if that’s what they are, or confidently telling us that’s what they are. if you rush to correct them, you risk completely severing their interest in the situation, because 1. kids don’t like to engage with adults who make them feel bad and 2. they were excited because pufferfish are interesting, and you have not given them any reason to be invested in non-pufferfish. Instead, if you say something like “It looks a LOT like a tiny pufferfish, you’re right. But these guys are even funnier. Wanna know what they’re called?” you have primed them perfectly for the delightful truth of the Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker

Maybe tumblr isn’t the best news source, but it is the funniest

“Almost everything is imitation… The most original minds borrowed from one another… It is with books as with the fire in our hearths; we go to a neighbor to get the embers and light it when we return home, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone.”

— Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques