thank you for this.

I’ve been experiencing a particularly /intense/ flare-up as of late and have been pretty demoralized as my own internalized ableism fights my broader desire for inner acceptance of my ever-changing capacity;

but thanks for the reminder that softness is also our strength. 🌻

e.g./ rigid thinking, need for sameness/routine, sensory overwhelm;

all of which can /also/ be found amongst allistics, but the amalgamation of many of those traits occurring in tandem at the levels that autists experience /daily/ is what distinguishes them as being exclusive to autism to me [2/2]

apologies - brain fog has been real.

by “autistic-exclusive”, I meant to infer that such traits, although *also* observable in the allistic population, generally don’t affect them to the same extent (re/ no ‘tangible evidence’ showing clinically-observable impacts on someone’s day-to-day); [1/2]

I think when we try to normalize autism/autistic folks when we, as a marginalized/weaponized/oppressed community are not actually receiving meaningful care or support by way of actionable, concrete endorsement/solidarity *as well*, then we’re still clearly being exploited, weaponized, and othered.

a big asterisk I often remind myself of is: some traits /are/ more commonly observed in the autistic population, but not exclusive to; inversely, because autistic people are still…people, whatever behaviours you observe in us are bound to be noticed in others as well

(ie: autists are human too)

I find that in the name of progressive thinking + destigmatizing autism/autistics + normalizing autism, we might actually be doing a greater disservice by trying to draw unnecessary connections to/with people about commonly-shared autistic tendencies/patterns in comparison to that of allistics

Richard Hanania was *already* an open racist when Substack decided to promote him on their house podcast earlier this summer.

I'll remind authors that buttondown.email is an excellent alternative to Substack. I've had nothing but great experiences with Buttondown's customer support.