Larre Bildeston
@larreau.bsky.social
920 followers 1.1K following 7.9K posts
Writer, artist, parent, carer. Autistic and acespec. Australia via Aotearoa, (soft) atheist. Agender. Pronouns: I want to say “any” since I’m collecting A words. (they/them actually).
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larreau.bsky.social
In the 2010s I wrote a short novel for children (never published). Eventually I realised it wasn't a children's story after all, and rewrote it for adults.

But when it was still #kidlit I did some illustrations for it, inspired by John Burningham. I'll share some below.

First, the adult cover:
Full paperback cover for The Space Ace of Mangleby Flat by Larre Bildeston. The colour scheme is mostly purple, like the asexual flag. The illustration on the back is a falling-down shack in the Australian Outback. It is night time and the moon is full and prominent. There's green shade cloth hanging from the veranda. Chickens walk around the yard. A very old utility vehicle is parked next to the shack.
larreau.bsky.social
Locals: modu-acre
White non-locals: mo-chew-acre
Correct: Motueka

I moved from "Modu-acre" to Nelson as a kid & was reviled by a new (white) teacher for saying "Modu-acre" (she considered it crass.)

Note: With massive effort, this seems to have gotten a lot better since I left my home country.
larreau.bsky.social
It’s weird coming from Aotearoa New Zealand because the (mostly white) locals will often pronounce a place name incorrectly whereas Māori is correctly and respectfully pronounced exactly how it is spelled.

So you’re either not local or being respectful, or both.
merriam-webster.com
What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?
Reposted by Larre Bildeston
audhd-psychnp.com
how many people have been wrongly accused of murder simply cuz they didn't grieve the way the cops expected?

how many of those people were in shock, alexithymic, flat affect?

how many Autistic people have been scapegoated for murders they didn't commit?

Rhetorical. It's more than we'll ever know.
larreau.bsky.social
If you’ve ever been a woman in a meeting you probably do actually know how this feels even though you’re not Autistic.
theautisticcoach.bsky.social
It’s not that autistic people don’t know how to join a conversation.

It’s that people stop listening the moment we do.

We become background noise in our own lives.

Until someone else repeats what we've said - louder, safer, non-autistic.

Then it's "brilliant".
larreau.bsky.social
While we’re at it, it’s possible to be both asexual and bisexual in fact many aces are bi+

And many aces in the wider queer community stick to the allosexual-coded identity label and only tell asexual researchers about their aceness pretty much, just ask the asexual researchers.
tassja.bsky.social
I need more people to understand that men can be bisexual because so many guys who are obviously hardcore BISEXUAL MENACES get labelled gay the moment they look at a guy after dating some women
larreau.bsky.social
Wouldn't it be great if new studies included asexuals.
larreau.bsky.social
Yes she assured me it hadn’t been used, not that I was thinking that.

I said, “So it hasn’t come pre-urined” but as usual no one watches the same shows as I do so she didn’t pick up I was riffing on Cousin Greg from Succession.
larreau.bsky.social
Took my son for his six monthly bloodwork.

Nurse: “Is he allowed lollies?”
Me: “Sure.”
My son: “Are these jellybeans in a… urine sample container?”
Nurse: “Uh, yeah, that’s all I had. I thought this was better than a poo sample one… Ah, anyway no one has actually noticed that before.”
larreau.bsky.social
I just looked up Channing Tate (turns out I can’t remember his name for more than one second) and I’m not kidding he looks like every second white Australian dude I’ve ever seen in my life.

In 1998 my mother was horrified I didn’t know who Brad Pitt was.
Reposted by Larre Bildeston
leftistlawyer.com
I need people to stop referring to conversion "therapy" as something that's been discredited or doesn't work. That's like saying torture is "discredited" or doesn't work. That they don't work for their stated purpose is secondary to the fact that they DO work for their REAL purpose:
Reposted by Larre Bildeston
larreau.bsky.social
Yes there’s a case for using all of them. But I don’t trust family members to look at them. They do look at the (calendar on the) fridge.
larreau.bsky.social
I’ve gone back to paper. Day planner and wall calendar.
larreau.bsky.social
If you’d like to check it out, it’s the episode called “Invisible Illness”.

(Once the woman with the Kiwi accent starts talking, there’s no point continuing.)
Watch Invisible Illness: Insight
Watch Invisible Illness for free with SBS On Demand, your ultimate destination for diverse entertainment. Stream now!
www.sbs.com.au
larreau.bsky.social
The 2025 SBS insight episode is problematic for its focus on a woman who claims she healed from MEcfs due to her positive mental attitude.

There’s another woman featured earlier who is a far more typical example of MEcfs. She got no govt help until her late identified Autism diagnosis.
larreau.bsky.social
Content note for medical trauma at the beginning.

I didn’t notice this article mention Autism. But here in Australia, ppl with debilitating things like MEcfs, HSD etc. sometimes finally manage to get disability pension after their Autism diagnosis, even when Autism is not what prevents paid work.
Reposted by Larre Bildeston
laminda.bsky.social
Polar explorer Ernest Shackleton called his ship one of the strongest to ever visit Antarctica; he blamed its sinking on rudder damage from pack ice. In my latest for @cnn.com, new analysis of records and journals suggests that a structural flaw may have doomed the Endurance from the start 🧪
Ernest Shackleton’s doomed Endurance wasn’t built to handle polar ice — and he knew it, new analysis finds | CNN
When explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, got trapped in pack ice, a broken rudder was blamed. New analysis suggests structural weakness caused the sinking.
www.cnn.com
larreau.bsky.social
From the memoir I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sante, writing about her gender transition.

(I’m listening to the audiobook, read by the author.)

www.penguin.com.au/books/i-hear...
I don't actually know any better than you what is male & what is female when it comes to the subjective. I suppose,
really, there are two kinds of humans.
Aggressors and resisters you might say,
that those categories very loosely
overlap with the gender division as it has been understood.
larreau.bsky.social
There’s nothing like seeing a distant kangaroo in the mist to make me feel the age of the landscape.
A very large kangaroo bounds across a grassy plain. Barely visible due to morning mist.
Reposted by Larre Bildeston
amockingbird.bsky.social
Just so no one tries to say that viewing Silence of the Lambs as transphobic is new, there were protests at the 1992 Oscars in part because of it. We discussed the outrage against it in a film theory class I took in 1994. The only thing new is that more people are aware of transphobia.
larreau.bsky.social
Oh I recognise some of these names. This is good. This is very good.
assignedmedia.org
6 Oct 2025 -- 16-person Aussie team publish a killer take-down of The Cass Review in the prestigious Australian Medical Journal titled, Cass Review Does Not Guide Care for Trans Young People ("lacking expertise & compromised by implicit stigma & misinformation..." @rikiwilchins.bsky.social
Cass Review does not guide care for trans young people
Good medicine is guided by the values of the patient, not those of a clinician, politician or commentator. The Cass Review, lacking expertise and compromised by implicit stigma and misinformation, doe...
www.mja.com.au
Reposted by Larre Bildeston
fionatribe.bsky.social
“Low achievers” are often “high achievers” once you know the wider context of everything they’ve been through.

“What’s wrong with you?” → “What happened to you?”

~ Gareth Thomas
Reposted by Larre Bildeston
histoftech.bsky.social
happy sunday, remember that you are completely expendable to your employer and that when you die they will forget you ever existed within weeks and easily replace you
Work really hard and one day this can be you (followed by graffiti of a headstone that says “RIP worked really hard” on it