Rachel
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rachelneedsanap.bsky.social
Rachel
@rachelneedsanap.bsky.social
Religious Studies & Hebrew Bible PhD student📚/Jewish✡️/ADHD & Autistic🎧/Myth & Religion Nerd🏺/Recovering Attorney ⚖️/Perpetually Sleepy💤
(she/her)
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A little about me:

I’m an #Autistic #PhD student in #ReligiousStudies, researching myth & ritual in the Hebrew Bible. I was an attorney for 10yrs, until I hit autistic burnout & decided to build a new career around my special interests in myth & religion. Nice to meet you all!
Reposted by Rachel
Christians I beg you please stop naming your organizations Hebrew words

like, you have a whole tradition & language(s) & religious culture that's your own

our traditions broke up a long time ago

you have a lane? This is not it?

and it's v confusing for me personally when I click on stuff, ok
November 25, 2025 at 1:47 AM
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They sometimes say I’m “privileged.” Apparently, if I think autistic people should exist, if I think we have any redeeming value at all, it proves I don’t have REAL autism. REAL autistics, like their kids, are wretched 24/7 & obviously unworthy of life. 🙄😡
November 26, 2025 at 5:10 PM
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A lot of goyische lack of understanding of antisemitism seems in large part rooted in their impression of Judaism as a religion like Christianity, rather than an ethnicity and a culture as well as a religion.
November 26, 2025 at 4:01 PM
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Your yearly reminder that “holiday” celebrations that only include Christian traditions are not, in fact, inclusive even if you don’t use the word Christmas, so tbh I’d rather you just say it’s Christmas.
Until a few years ago, ugly holiday sweaters didn’t exist. They’re ugly Christmas sweaters, with some generic Jewish iconography to be “inclusive.” But the truth is, when I have to buy one to wear to a work party, I feel like I’m in another culture’s drag.
November 22, 2025 at 8:11 PM
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Like, it’s pretty rich to hear “everyone has interests like that” when “restricted interests” are STILL a diagnostic criterion for autism in the DSM! #Autistic people are othered, mocked, pathologized & put in intensive therapy for this trait that “everyone” has.
September 22, 2024 at 8:57 PM
I keep getting these people! It doesn’t matter how clear I am or which words I use. If I say it’s wrong to screen #autistic people out of the gene pool, some parent WILL jump in to tell me about their benighted child who they apparently wish didn’t exist.
Me: Eugenics is bad.

Autism Mom: You need to remember that not all autistic people are as high-functioning as you are. Your comment doesn’t take into account people like my nonverbal son.

🙃🙃🙃
November 26, 2025 at 4:40 PM
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I think it’s time to put this one back out into the ether, friends

Come and learn about how the tropes undergirding anti-Jewish hatred and conspiracy theories as they exist today came to be…
The Antisemitism Post (tm)
Gotta get the history to know where the tropes live in the discourse today.
www.lifeisasacredtext.com
November 25, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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It’s pretty funny how often this thing happens where some dogmatic Christian wanders into the replies of a Jew posting about Judaism, says something dumb, gets corrected by numerous Jews, and concludes Jews are just bitter nasty bullies who are too close-minded to understand them.
November 25, 2025 at 11:55 PM
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You can look all day for environmental reasons to “blame” for autism but I have never met an autistic kid who didn’t have at least one autistic parent or parents w traits
Not knowing you’re autistic doesn’t make you less autistic; thinking it’s “bad” makes you less likely to want to know it
November 25, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Rachel
DUDE 💀. As someone in the comments said: Parents not realizing they're, in fact, autistic.

We *need* to make people aware that autism is genetic. 😭 we exists because other autistics reproduced 🤷‍♀️
Guys I have terrible news - this post has gone viral on Facebook, promoting hundreds of rage-filled comments from people who have taken it very seriously indeed. And, most annoyingly, the Autism Parents have found it!!
Mary Walker, 9, who has always displayed autistic traits, was miraculously fixed by her parents insisting that she stop it at once. 

Read this and other exclusive articles on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/119410...
November 25, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Rachel
Guys I have terrible news - this post has gone viral on Facebook, promoting hundreds of rage-filled comments from people who have taken it very seriously indeed. And, most annoyingly, the Autism Parents have found it!!
Mary Walker, 9, who has always displayed autistic traits, was miraculously fixed by her parents insisting that she stop it at once. 

Read this and other exclusive articles on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/119410...
November 25, 2025 at 10:40 AM
Reposted by Rachel
November 25, 2025 at 10:55 AM
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oh and to add to this: i DESPISE how everytime i try to look up something about executive dysfunction and pda and how to deal with it, MOST OF THE RESULTS ARE ABOUT CHILDREN AND FROM "AUTISM MOMS" WHO RECORD AND UPLOAD THEIR KIDS'S MELTDOWNS AND SEE NOTHING WRONG ABOUT THAT
mannn sometimes i hate my adhd so fucking much. i literally can't do anything!!! the thing i really don't want to do? not doing it! the thing i oh so desperately WANT to do and have been wanting to do for a few weeks now? I AM NOT DOING IT, IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY
November 25, 2025 at 2:24 PM
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being black and autistic means always being labeled as combative whenever we clock logical fallacies or ask pressing yet standard questions 🤗💓
November 25, 2025 at 2:21 PM
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I find that allistic people advocate for autistic people to unmask until we do unmask. Then they find every reason why who you are is a problem for them without the mask.
The rules apparently are:
Don't be logical and present it clearly because it feels like you are arguing with me.
November 25, 2025 at 2:31 PM
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They focus so much on the "cause" in the same way they do on trans youth. That if there's some cause they can identify, they can eliminate that population by preventing it. It's eugenics disguised as concern trolling.
November 24, 2025 at 1:16 PM
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That's what this is about. They spoke a lot to the parents of autistic children but almost never to the children themselves. It centers the perspectives of allistic people instead. They absolve themselves of this problem by focusing on high needs autistic children they claim they can't speak with.
November 24, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Rachel
The NYT claims diagnosis is a problem despite substantial improvements in detection and early intervention. The problem for them is that there are low needs autistic people who can advocate for themselves and push back against dehumanizing rhetoric like this against those on the spectrum.
November 24, 2025 at 1:14 PM
I raised my dose of lupus meds. Maybe I’ll feel better in a few days? More awake & sharper? Please?

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, הַנּוֹתֵן לַיָּעֵף כֹּֽחַ:
November 25, 2025 at 12:32 AM
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People always admire my patience, but the truth is I'm just completely time-blind.
November 24, 2025 at 11:15 PM
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WOW! Autism Society of America, The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, the Autism Science Foundation, the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network and Autism Speaks put out a statement denouncing the CDC changing its website on vaccines
autisticadvocacy.org/2025/11/lead...
Leading Autism and Disability Organizations Statement on CDC's Vaccines and Autism Page
As national organizations dedicated to advancing the well-being of autistic individuals and partners across the disability and public health sectors, we are deeply disappointed by the latest update to...
autisticadvocacy.org
November 24, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by Rachel
You are created in the image of the immortal God.

So am I.

We are not the same.

#BigThink #InChrist #NorGreekNorHebrew #NorSlaveNorFree
November 24, 2025 at 11:44 PM
It’s the same playbook. Also, a lot of those guys think trans kids are #autistic anyway (& therefore too confused & naive to know their own gender). In their minds, it may actually be the same group of kids being “duped” into both, so the rhetoric is interchangeable.
The story told here--one where anecdata suggests agency and autonomy have run amok and nameless activists are to blame--certainly rhymes with the NYT's disastrous panic about trans kids. Then you realize it's literally being written by the same author.
Autism rates have increased in recent decades, but the reasons are more complicated than what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has presented. Hear more on today's episode of "The Daily." nyti.ms/480eqtm
November 24, 2025 at 10:21 PM
Reposted by Rachel
The story told here--one where anecdata suggests agency and autonomy have run amok and nameless activists are to blame--certainly rhymes with the NYT's disastrous panic about trans kids. Then you realize it's literally being written by the same author.
Autism rates have increased in recent decades, but the reasons are more complicated than what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has presented. Hear more on today's episode of "The Daily." nyti.ms/480eqtm
The Autism Diagnosis Problem
Autism rates have increased in recent decades, but the reasons are more complicated than what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has presented.
nyti.ms
November 24, 2025 at 9:36 PM
I need advice from fellow #ADHD folks. My husband & I both have ADHD. Several times, we have run into the following problem: He goes off to some appointment or event, & I have no idea where he is. Later, when confronted, he’ll swear he told me about it in advance, but I don’t recall him telling me.
November 24, 2025 at 6:53 PM