an art product. a machine. just observing this cruel and dark world. not she, not he, not a boy, not a girl & most of the time not friendly at all. [they/them/their]
When I get into an airplane, I don’t turn into a bird.
All assistive technology is like that.
Airplanes are not wings, and wheelchairs are not legs. Rolling is different from walking, and it’s ok that it’s different. Typing is not speaking, it’s typed communication. Reading braille isn’t seeing with fingers, it’s tactile reading. And so on. Assistive technology is important, and worth respecting.
Airplanes are amazing. I respect them without pretending that they are wings. Likewise, other people respect me as a competent human being without pretending that an airplane has turned me into a bird.
Assistive technology enables people with disabilities to do more things. It does not turn us into nondisabled people — and it doesn’t need to. We do many things differently, and that’s ok. Respecting us means respecting us as we really are, including acknowledging that our assistive technology exists and matters.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to The Girl Who Didn’t Know How To Be. ❤ Published one year ago, The Girl Who Didn't Know How To Be is a picture book about neurodiversity and the struggle to survive in neurotypical world. Now is the perfect time to buy The Girl Who Didn't Know How To Be as a Christmas present for your loved ones! Autism is often only discussed by neurotypical people. Missing from the conversation is the perspective of people who are actually on the autism spectrum. Sharing The Girl Who Didn't Know How To Be with your friends, family members or colleagues would not only support an independent artist, but it would also spread a unique and vital message about neurodiversity from an autistic person. Thank you! 💙💙🐦 Message me here or email at info@ AIWS.LT or visit http://www.aiws.lt/AS #art #aiws #illustration #disability #neurodiversity #picturebook #christmaspresent #christmas #present #quirky #autism #autistic #neurodivergent #octopus #graphic #ink #graphicart #actuallyautistic #watercolour #veganart #comic #comicbook #asperger #artist #aquarelle #picture
A few of my artworks at @vevolution_ If you'd like to support my work, you can do it by becoming my #patron : Www.patreon.com/AIWS #art #illustration #artwork #aiws #illustration #vegan #vevolution #exhibition #London #sheep #veganart #veganism #ableism #cat #penguin #graphic #graphicart #octopus #ink #pig #owl #cat #artforchange
It’s a brand new picture book about neurodiversity written and illustrated by AIWS (aka Milda Bandzaitė). By supporting this book you will be sending the message that it’s ok to just be the way you are! To find out more about the project please visit the Kickstarter page.
Hope you will consider supporting the Kickstarter campaign and help us make this book a reality. We would also appreciate your sharing the campaign with friends, family and colleagues.
Support living artists (like me!), because the dead ones don't need your money! So if you like my art, you can help me continue to create more by giving me a dollar (or even more - aaahhhh!!! ❤) every month. I would be incredibly grateful. If you don't have any $ you'd like to give to me, you still could share with your rich friends! here we go: http://www.patreon.com/AIWS #art #patreon #artist #support #illustration #aiws #selfie #instaart #neurodiversity #drawing #illustrator #vegan #veganart #queerartist #queer
A proposed oil pipeline is set to begin construction on tribal lands in North Dakota. Members of various Native American reservations gathered Monday to try to stop it.
Riders from the Standing Rock, Rosebud, and Lower Brule Lakota reservations came together on horseback to push back a police line that had formed between a group of protesters and the entrance to the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site.
Last week, the federal government gave final approval to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will run for 1,172 miles to transport crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oilfields to Patoka, Illinois.
Hundreds of protesters, primarily Lakota and Dakota from Native American reservations within a several-hundred-mile radius, convened over the weekend at the edge of the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota to voice their anger.
The pipeline would travel through lands sacred to the Lakota people, and cross under the Missouri, Mississippi, and Big Sioux rivers.
A possible spill, which can occur with pipelines, would mean contaminating farmland and drinking water for millions.
After a series of tense interactions with North Dakota state police on Monday, the protesters succeeded in temporarily halting the beginning stages of construction.
Protesters stand at the front barricades of the protest zone, holding signs that read “Water is sacred” and “Mni Wiconi” (“Water is life” in Lakota).
Horses and riders from the Rosebud reservation arrive to support the Standing Rock community. The horses are in traditional Lakota regalia.
Protesters congregate next to a construction site for the Dakota Access Pipeline on Monday morning, as a crew arrives with machinery and materials to begin cutting a work road into the hillside. The flag in the foreground belongs to the American Indian Movement.
North Dakota state police form a line between the protesters and the entrance to the construction site as a tank truck turns into the property.
A protester is arrested for standing on the outer layer of barricades that separate the protest site from the police line and construction zone on Monday morning.
A protester is arrested for standing on the outer layer of barricades that separate the protest site from the police line and construction zone on Monday morning.
Two young Lakota boys watch as construction machinery drives onto the Dakota Access Pipeline construction site, just over a mile from the banks of the Missouri River
After the protesters disrupted the construction site and shut down work for the day, a group marched up to the main gates.
Children play in the Missouri River, a mile from the proposed construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
A4 prints are availiable. £20 each (plus shipping), message me to order or for more info WWW.AIWS.LT #whale #fatshaming #feminism #oppression #illustration #artwork #art #ink #aiws #artist #vegan #veganart #graphics #graphic #graphicart #drawing #bodypositive #pencil
Printed #zine for Shani this morning. Now thinking that i should print more & take them to Sweden because fucking hell i forgot the story was so good. #art #illustration #cat #doodle #aiws #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #autism #drawing #diy #artwork
come to my exhibition in Sweden at @kaos_skola_2016 WWW.AIWS.LT/ERASED #aiws #art #artwork #graphic #graphicart #illustration #erased #drawing #ink #print #pencil #war #person #veganart #exhibition #mouse #war #painting #draw #artist #sweden
I had this girl in my class and she was considered to be like really dumb. She’d ask a ton of doubts and questions in class, which everybody would consider to be “stupid"and “silly” and even the teachers would often taunt her but she’d never stop asking. But the thing was that she’d almost always top the class examinations and everyone was like???? They all thought she was cheating and stuff and obviously even the teachers were very biased because she wasn’t so ‘smart’ in class, and she was regularly accused of cheating. But nobody could prove that she was actually cheating but the whole class and teachers totally believed that she did. I’m pretty socially awkward so I never really talked to her, but she was leaving school this year and I was genuinely curious about how she was so good during exams and how she didn’t let everyone’s remarks affect her. She always used to sit and hang out with only one girl, and she told me that that friend of hers was severely socially anxious and she’d lag in studies because she couldn’t bring herself to ask doubts in class or ask for help from others. So they had this system where during lectures her friend would write down any question she had, and she would ask them for her. And I was just so touched??? Idk but it really changed the way I looked at people?? This girl endured taunts and jeers and borderline bullying for being “stupid” when she was actually really smart and could easily have refused to ask such doubts for her friend but she did?? And brushed off everything others would throw at her for her friend?? I was just, idk it just really changed me in some way.
Can you talk more about Elle Woods being autistic in Legally Blonde? :)
Elle strictly follows the traditional rules of femininity as dictated by southern californian culture, with special interests in the color pink, fashion, and her parter. She is extremely trusting and takes people literally when they are kind to her which is OK when she “stays in her place” as gender norms dictate, but as she leaves her familiar habitus in which she has cultivated social, cultural, and symbolic capital through careful study and adherence to these social norms, she finds herself ostracized and abused. Even though she is hyperlexic and has a high IQ (as traditionally defined), she has difficulty reading social cues in new environments. She also copes with transitioning into new circumstances by falling back onto familiar routines of personal hygiene and filling her personal space with familiar items. She is also extremely ethical to her personal morals which gets her into difficulty when social norms dictate being flexible with one’s ethics. She also does not privilege human companionship over other species.
damn…. I should write an article on this. This was fun. Mostly because I’m the Elle Woods flavor of Autistic in many ways.
Elle Woods is the kind of Autistic that most neurotypicals can’t recognize because she is camouflaged in “socially acceptable” practices, but to someone who is also Autistic is clear that the way she approaches these practices is neuroatypical. Many Autistic women survive and ‘blend in’ by making traditional feminine norms their special interests, and their neuroatypicality can often become disabling only when they change habitus, which means the circle of people and environment and all the culture and practices that go with it. They spend a lifetime getting “good” at one habitus and fitting in, but suddenly stand out as “different” when their habitus changes. Autistic women are also often extremely trusting, and when they are “attractive” by traditional feminine norms they don’t question when people are kind to them. They assume people mean well unless they say otherwise, making them highly susceptible to abuse and bullying, often by fellow women. Many Autistic women have above average IQs (by traditional definitions) and apply these abilities to traditional feminine practices such as fashion, art, homemaking, pop culture, etc. So they don’t fit the stereotypes of the “absent minded professor” which is extremely gendered male and white. As many Autistic people often feel that other people, often partners, are their special interests, some Autistic women are camouflaged by their focus and dedication to a boyfriend or husband, because gender norms literally normalize this as an acceptable, desirable practice. Practicing their ethics with strict black and white rules, they can appear to be extremely “pious,” religious, and “dedicated” wives and mothers, which again is normed by gender practices and camouflaged. If they experience OCD qualities, these are often practiced in homemaking-related skills like cooking, cleaning, and personal hygiene, again… all camouflaged by gender norms as simple being a “good girl” and a “good wife and mother.”
Never again... Today (June 14) is also the Mourning and Hope Day also known as the Day of Mourning and Commemoration or Day of Remembrance for Victims of #Soviet #Terror. I grew up with the stories told by my grandmother. Stories others see only in the films or read about, but for her it was reality. She told me how she and her family were deported in railway carriages built for cattle to Sibiria. How people including other children died during the long journey and were just thrown out and left on the railways...how rough and difficult was her, her mum and siblings life in the middle of nowhere, how she would go miles though dangerous woods to trade the last things they had for some bread and potatoes... Thousands of people were sent to forced settlements in remote areas of the Soviet Union. At least 130 000 people, most of them women and children including my family were forcibly removed from their homes, transported to labour camps or deported to remote regions of Siberia. Many died from famine and diseases had to live in miserable condition with no hope to return to their homes.... Around 150000 people (who were political prisoners (like my great-granddad who was tortured and killed in the prison), partisans, etc.) were deported to #Gulag extermination/prison camps. #mourning #lithuania #sovietunion #remembrance #SSRS #occupation #history #siberia
ERASED... some of the stuff i was working on... Also: if you have some spare money & feel like supporting a starving artist, you can do it here <3: https://www.patreon.com/AIWS #aiws #art #graphic #illustration #artist #pain #drawing #artwork #ink #pencil #person #vegan #veganart #graphicart #war #pig #mouse #bird #person #rabbit #animal #erased #forgotten
