I Never See People Talk About Having Middle Support Needs. I Am Super Smart And Can Mask Really Well.

I never see people talk about having middle support needs. I am super smart and can mask really well. I can make friends easily and fend for myself for a few days. I can go places by myself and figure out when I need to leave. I can defend myself and make sure I'm not putting up with things I shouldn't. But I also can't shower bc of sensory issues and executive dysfunction and have regular meltdowns because I can't get comfortable enough to sleep. I have extreme difficulty talking about things that aren't special to me. I overstep constantly. I have trouble making my own food, I need it prepackaged or prepared. I can't do the dishes or the laundry unless I have an especially motivated day. I stay in bed for hours on end if I don't feel like I need to move. I can't drive or ride a bike. (TMI next) I can't tell when I need to use the bathroom and my executive dysfunction is bad enough anyway that I regularly end up peeing myself. But I'm still as independent as a 13 year old in a lot of other regards. It's really hard asking for "middle" support especially with things like this. I can function for the most part in public, but in private? Completely different.

GUYS I JUST SAW THIS ON TWITTER AND I AM DYING

My dear lgbt+ kids,

If you want a conversation to keep going, you have to keep giving them something to reply to.

A (super oversimplified!) example for not doing so:

Person A: "How was your weekend?"

Person B "Good."

Person B may give such a short reply because they don't want to annoy Person A by stuffing too much info into their response or because they don't want to embarrass themselves by getting too personal right away. But short, closed-off replies like that are often seen as a sign of disinterest or even annoyance. Person A is likely to assume that Person B doesn't want to talk more about their weekend (or even that they do not want to talk to them at all) and won't ask further questions.

This type of reply cuts off the flow of the conversation. Many people make the (subconscious) assumption "Well, if Person A really cares about me, they will keep asking". But from Person A's point of view, asking more questions after a closed-off reply likely seems like prying, like crossing a boundary and bothering Person B with unwanted conversation - which they avoid because they care about Person B!

You may think now "Yeah, makes sense but I don't want to launch into a huge monologue and embarrass myself! What if I give a detailed answer and it turns out they just wanted some quick small-talk?" Those are good points - a detailed description of everything you did over the weekend would not always be the appropriate answer, either (and if your natural response tends to be on the shorter side, you wouldn't feel comfortable doing that anyway, so that'd be useless advice).

So, what to do instead? The important part is to open up your reply. It can still be short - just try to put in one little thing Person A can reply to.

This can be as direct as a question:

Person A: "How was your weekend?"

Person B "Good, thankyou. How was yours?"

Or it can be a statement they can reply to:

Person A: "How was your weekend?"

Person B "Good, I went to the beach!"

As you see in these (again, very oversimplified) examples, you don't need to give a long speech or put in lots of private details. You don't force Person A to do so, either. You just give them something to reply to if they want to do so. They can choose to deepen the conversation by telling you details about their weekend now or asking about your beach trip - and if they really just wanted to exchange some pleasant small-talk, they can go that route and give a shorter, more superficial answer.

In either case, you signaled interest in a conversation by giving an open reply and are likely to leave a positive impression on them!

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

i am allowed to identify however i want.

each autistic person is allowed to identify however they want.

even if that identification have been used by ableist society to harm autistics.

because autistic individuals who identify THEMSELVES that way are not the problem.

—particular more marginalized members of the autistic community. because we have been pushed aside, ignored, and policed by the dominant, most visible members of the autistic community for so long.

as an apraxic semispeaking autistic of color with mid-high support needs, the language used by the online autistic community frequently does not include experiences like mine. sometimes they are not coined, defined, or used with us in mind.

we are allowed to identify however way we want without being accused of “just having internalized ableism.”

allistic neurotypical society forcibly reducing autistic people into “high functioning” and “low functioning” to either deny our access needs or take away our agency is the problem. THAT is what we are fighting against.

someone who grew up being labeled as “low functioning” who finds this term more accurate for themselves than any of the terms deemed more acceptable by the online autistic community, who does not use functioning labels on others who don’t identify as that, people like that are not the problem. they should not be your enemy.

psychiatry defining us only by our deficits and the burden we place on our family, education system, and the rest of society is the problem. them creating a moral hierarchy based off of that is the problem.

autistics who rather label themselves as “level 2” or “level 3” as per the DSM-5 rather than levels of support needs are not.

the same for those of us who still choose to call ourselves “moderate,” “severe,” or “profound.”

this is not the same as someone insisting on saying they have asperger’s even though they know the bloody, loaded, violent, and eugenic history behind the diagnosis. aspie supremacists refuse the term “autism” because they want to separate themselves from “those people”—those of us who are more visibly autistic, who have higher support needs, who are seen as more “severe” and thus “shameful.” they believe they are superior.

those of us marginalized autistics who choose to use these terms for ourselves: we are not pushing these labels onto other autistics who don’t want them. we are not saying these terms aren’t problematic when weaponized by the ableist institutions in our society. we are not saying we are superior than autistics who don’t label themselves like we do.

we are, however, asking the more visible members of the community to listen to us and uplift us instead of gatekeeping and debating with us about our own experiences—experiences they may not have even though they are also autistic.

dear the more visible members of the actually autistic community: you do not create these community narratives with the more marginalized autistics like us in mind, yet you deem them as the only acceptable terms that are allowed to be used. yet you insist on us using them. yet you police our language. you say autism is not a monolith, yet when we does not fit into your narrow understanding of what autism is—white, mostly verbal, late diagnosed, can live independently, low support needs, and so much more left unsaid—you ridicule us and see us as a stereotype, shameful, problematic, or simply does not exist.

will that really bring you liberation?

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tl;dr: semi/nonspeaking, high support needs, autistics of color, etc., marginalized autistics are allowed to identify however they want even if it conflicts with how the most visible members of the autistic community views autism.

you may also find this essay on my wordpress blog (linked) and my instagram (linked), please go support me!

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(note: language is really confusing for me. i am weirdly simultaneously hyperlexic. the way i write here is the most accessible way for me to write long paragraphs. i apologize for any accessibility issue, i tried to alleviate that by bolding important parts and including a tldr.)

Dildo Generator

Online 3D experiment by Ikaros Kappler which is described as a “Extrusion/Revolution Generator” ….

Created with three.js, you can alter the bezier curves and angle of the form, and is designed with 3D printing in mind (models can be exported and saved, as well as calculated weight in silicone).

Try it out for yourself (if you wish) here