
No title available
One Nice Bug Per Day
No title available

Product Placement

pixel skylines

blake kathryn

ellievsbear
No title available
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year

Kaledo Art

Discoholic 🪩
wallacepolsom
Sweet Seals For You, Always
taylor price
DEAR READER

Kiana Khansmith
Today's Document

tannertan36
Jules of Nature
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
seen from United States

seen from Germany

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
@fidgetcubist
I always wonder, is Tumblr THAT gay or am I just following all the gay people?
listen, i once had a straight friend over and she opened her tumblr and i didn’t even recognize the website i’m not kidding
I think about this a lot
“Everything the light touches is our kingdom.”
“What about that shadowy place?”
“That is straight Tumblr, Simba, you must never go there.”
WISE WORDS FROM MUFASA
How do you know which tumblr you’re on?
I assure you, you know if you’re on gay Tumblr
Today I learned there is a straight Tumblr.
reblog if you think sign language should be taught as a language in schools.
Hi! I've been thinking I might have autism for awhile now - I stim, I've gone nonverbal, I have hyperfixations and special interests, I infodump, etc. I'm just worried about self diagnosing bc I feel that I'm being disrespectful to people that have been diagnosed. Plus, my psychiatrist just laughed at me when I brought it up (although i dont really like him). Basically, I don't feel "autistic enough" if that makes sense. Do you have any advice?
Hi! Thank you for your question. I don't think that self-diagnosing is disrespectful to the people who have been professionally diagnosed. The autistic community tends to be very accepting of self-diagnoses from what I've seen so far (although there are unfortunate exceptions to this rule...*cough* /r/aspergers *cough*). Fact is, getting a professional diagnosis is hard. It can take a lot of time, money and effort. It's not accessible to everyone. Not to mention women and minorities tend to be underdiagnosed. Getting a professional diagnosis is also a very personal decision and I don't think anyone is less valid or has less of a right to call themselves autistic for lack of it.I'm sorry your psychiatrist was so dismissive. That's unfortunately pretty common. One psychiatrist told me I wasn't autistic even though I had a report from a neuropsychologist that said that I was, which she knew about. I've heard similar stories from friends and people in autistic online groups.If you do want to go through with a professional diagnosis, I would either find a new psychiatrist, or be persistent with your current one. Show him the diagnosis criteria, explain how you fit. Don't be afraid to bring notes. If you've taken online self-assessment tests, you can also bring your results. You could also see a neuropsychologist to get an assessment. The process won't necessarily be the same depending on where you live, so I would do some research about getting a diagnosis in your country specifically. I hope this helps.
You didn’t lose a child to autism. You lost a child because the child you waited for never came into existence. That isn’t the fault of the autistic child who does exist, and it shouldn’t be our burden. We need and deserve families who can see us and value us for ourselves, not families whose vision of us is obscured by the ghosts of children who never lived. Grieve if you must, for your own lost dreams. But don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real.
Jim Sinclair, “Don’t Mourn for Us,” Our Voice, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1993
Autistic Voices: A Masterpost
Here is a list of resources about autism, with a focus on actually autistic voices, divided by topic. You will find articles, websites, videos, Youtube channels, etc., most of them created by autistic people. If there are resources you would like to contribute to this post, or if you have other suggestions, don’t hesitate to let me know.
What is autism?
Nick Walker: What is autism?
Autistic Self Advocacy Network: About Autism
Autisticality: Inclusive autistic traits
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic: What is Autism?
Neurodiversity
Identity-First Autistic: The Neurodiversity Paradigm
Nick Walker: Neurodiversity: some basic terms and definitions
Nick Walker: The Neurodiversity Paradigm and the Path of Self-Liberation
Nick Walker: Throw Away the Master’s Tools: Liberating Ourselves from the Pathology Paradigm
Elisabeth Wiklander: Neurodiversity — the key that unlocked my world
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic: What is Neurodiversity
Identity-first language vs person-first language
Autistic Self Advocacy Network: Identity-First Language
Nathan Selove: Autism ACTUALLY Speaking: Person First Language
Autistic Hoya: The Significance of Semantics: Person-First Language: Why It Matters
Social model of disability vs medical model of disability
Identity-First Autistic: Understanding Disability Models
Autistic Hoya: You are not a burden.
Nathan Selove: Autism ACTUALLY Speaking: Models of Disability Discourse
Nathan Selove: Creating A Social Model of Autism Ari Ne’eman at Emory University: Autism and the Disability Community: The Politics of Neurodiversity, Causation and Cure
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #16: Is Autism a Disability?
Functioning labels
Identity-First Autistic: Identity-First Autistic’s stance on ‘functioning labels’
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic: What about Functioning Labels?
autisticliving: What’s Wrong with Functioning Labels? A Masterpost.
Nathan Selove: Autistic ACTUALLY Speaking: High Functioning versus Low Functioning
AUTISTIC WEREWOLF: WHY LABELS EXPECIALLY HIGH & LOW FUNCTIONING AUTISM IS ARE A LOAD OF CRAP! (cw: use of the R-word)
Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: The Problems with Functioning Labels
Autistic women
Reese Piper: ‘I Thought I Was Lazy’: The Invisible Day-To-Day Struggle For Autistic Women
Fabienne Cazalis: The women who don’t know they’re autistic
Aspergers from the Inside: Female Diagnosis and Self-Advocacy with Geraldine Robertson
Purple Ella: DIFFERENCES AUTISTIC BOYS AND GIRLS
Seventh Voice: The Gas-lighting of Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum
Suicide
AutisticNomad: Speaking to Suicidal Autistics
Science Daily: Coventry University: People with Autism at Greater Risk of Attempting Suicide
Dan Jones: Autism: Diagnosis Saved My Life
Empathy
Rebecca Brewer and Jennifer Murphy for Spectrum News: People with autism can read emotions, feel empathy
Nathan Selove: Autism ACTUALLY Speaking: Empathy
Luna Lindsey: Double-Standards: The Irony of Empathy and Autism
Intersectional Neurodiversity: New Research Suggests Social Issues Are Down to Neurotypicals More than Autistics
Self-advocacy
Nathan Selove: Autism ACTUALLY Speaking: Self Advocacy
Amythest Schaber: Autistics Speaking: Self-Advocacy in a Culture of Cure
Autistic Hoya: What is Self-Advocacy?
Executive function
Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: Executive Functioning Problems: A Frustrating Aspect of Being Autistic
Reese Piper: ‘I Thought I Was Lazy’: The Invisible Day-To-Day Struggle For Autistic Women
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #25: What is Executive Functioning?
Aspergers from the Inside: Executive Function (a response to Ask an Autistic)
Purple Ella: AUTISM AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
Special interests
Musings of an Aspie: What’s So Special About a Special Interest?
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #13 - What are Special Interests?
Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: Autism and Intense Interests: Why We Love What We Love and Why It Should Matter to You
Stimming
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #1 - What is Stimming?
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic: Living Atypically - Self-Injurious Stims
The Artism Spectrum: Stimming 101, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Stim
The Artism Spectrum: The Dark Side of the Stim: Self-injury and Destructive Habits
Meltdowns
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #15 - What are Autistic Meltdowns?
Unstrange Mind: The Protective Gift of Meltdowns
Purple Ella: DEALING WITH MELTDOWNS
Shutdowns
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #20 - What are Autistic Shutdowns?
Unstrange Mind: Autistic Shutdown Alters Brain Function
Passing
AUTISTIC WEREWOLF: ANOTHER WAY AUTISTIC WEREWOLVES HIDE IN THIS NEUROTYPICAL WORLD!
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #2 - What is Passing?
Autistic burnout
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #3 - What is Autistic Burnout?
Musings of an Aspie: Autistic Regression and Fluid Adaptation
Autisticality: Burnout
Autism Information Library: “Help! I seem to be Getting More Autistic!”
Inertia
Autisticality: Inertia
Divergent Minds: A Look at Autistic Inertia
Alexithymia
Unstrange Mind: Alexithymia: I Don’t Know How I Feel
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #27: What is Alexithymia?
What not to say to an autistic person
Autistic Hoya: 15 Things You Should Never Say To An Autistic
Radical Neurodivergence Speaking: What to say, and not to say, to an autistic adult
Nathan Selove: Top 5 Well Meaning Things People Should Stop Saying to Autistics
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #12 - What Shouldn’t I Say to Autistic People?
StimNation: S#!T Ignorant People Say to Autistics
Actually Autistic: 10 Things Not To Say To Autistic People
BBC Three: Things Not To Say To An Autistic Person
Autism and people of color
The Autism Wars - Mrs. Kerima Çevik‘s blog
Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: Black and Autistic – Is There Room at the Advocacy Table?
Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: Autistic, Gifted, And Black: An Interview With Mike Buckholtz
Autistic Hoya: I, too, am racialized.
AUTISTIC WEREWOLF: AUTISM: Growing Up BLACK In A NEUROTYPICAL Legal System!
Nathan Selove: Autism ACTUALLY Speaking: Interview Anthony Adams
@nyarutheve - Twitter account
Autism and LGBT+
Maxfield Sparrow: Autism and Gender Variance: Is There a Cause for the Correlation?
Alex Forshaw: The Intersection of Autism and Gender
Evil Autie: Being Trans in Autistic Space
AutisticNomad - Maxfield Sparrow’s Youtube channel
Non-speaking autistic voices
Amy Sequenzia: Non-speaking, “low-functioning”
Amy Sequenzia: “Autism Awareness Month” Awareness
Non-Speaking Autistic Speaking - Amy Sequenzia’s blog
Mel Baggs: In My Language
Mel Baggs: Don’t ever assume autism researchers know what they’re doing
Mel Baggs: Captioned Reply to GRASP/Autism Speaks Articles
Lysik'an: You don’t speak for Low-functioning autistics
Deej - documentary film
Sue Rubin’s website
Autism $peaks/Light It Up Blue/Puzzle Piece
The Caffeinated Autistic: New Autism Speaks Masterpost (Updated 4/4/17)
The Caffeinated Autistic: Autism Speaks *still* does not speak for me
Autistic Anthro: Enough with the Puzzle Pieces
Autistic Anthro: Autism Awareness Month
Amythest Schaber: Ask an Autistic #6 - What’s Wrong With Autism Speaks
Nathan Selove: Autism ACTUALLY Speaking: Lighting Up Blue
John Elder Robinson: I Resign My Roles at Autism Speaks
Autistic Hoya: Co-Opting the Movement: Autism Speaks, John Elder Robinson, and Complicity in Oppression
Autistic Hoya: Responding to Autism Speaks
Mel Baggs: Captioned Reply to GRASP/Autism Speaks Articles
Amy Sequenzia: “Autism Awareness Month” Awareness
When autism parents don’t listen
Jim Sinclair: Don’t Mourn For Us
Autistic Hoya: They keep publishing these violent articles
Autistic Hoya: Why we must #BoycottToSiri / An open letter to Judith Newman
Amythest Schaber: #BoycottToSiri
Susie Rodarme: An Open Letter to HarperCollins about TO SIRI WITH LOVE
Kaelan Rhywiol: Why I Believe 'To Siri With Love' By Judith Newman Is A Book That Does Incredible Damage To The Autistic Community
Aaron Kappel: When You’re Autistic, Abuse Is Considered Love
Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: Autism Uncensored: A Dangerous and Spirit-Crushing Book
Service dogs and autism
Nathan Selove: Service Dog Tales
In French
Super Pépette - Julie Dachez’s Youtube channel
La Fille Pas Sympa - Julia March’s blog
Growing up autistic often involves not being believed. Your experiences of being tired, stressed, and overwhelmed are constantly minimized. "How could you be tired? You haven’t done anything all day." "How could you be stressed? You’re eight." "Look at the other children, how much fun they’re having. If we go home now you’ll miss out on all the fun!" If you find certain tasks particularly challenging, you are told it really isn’t that hard, you just have to [brief and unhelpful description of task].
There are no upsides to denying or minimizing someone’s pain, except that it frees the person doing the minimizing from having to deal with it. Even if the child is "only doing it for attention", worst case scenario they give their child attention. What’s so terrible about that? Because the alternative is that they are teaching their child not to value and trust their own experience, and that is immensely damaging. It can mean the child might not recognize when they’re being emotionally abused. It can lead to mental health issues, burnout, and many other problems.
Not everyone responds to a given situation in the same way. If someone tells you something bothers them, just because you’re not bothered by it doesn’t mean they’re lying or exaggerating.
When we put extra effort into accommodating neurotypicals, they don't even notice we are doing so. To them, it's normal, expected. They don't see that we do all this work in part because we care about their feelings, because we don't want to hurt them. We accomodate them, even if it hurts us every day. Still, we are told that we are uncaring, weird, awkward. We don't get invited to parties, or included in conversations, and above all, our needs are rarely accommodated. Instead, we are regarded as fussy and oversensitive. Our needs are unusual, so in the eyes of neurotypicals, they don't deserve to be accommodated. Then they go on to act entitled and hurt when they feel that we are failing to meet their needs (like by not saying hello in the "right" way, or not making the "proper" amount of eye contact). Yet they benefit from living in a society that is built around their needs. We autistics are not so lucky.
I really wish people wouldn't take my autistic behaviours so personally.
If I look bored or uncomfortable at your social gathering, it's not because your social gathering is boring and uncomfortable. It's not because I don't like you. It's because I get overwhelmed easily and the environment is not one that is accessible for autistic people (for example, there is no designated quiet room).
If I don't say "good morning" with the appropriate tone of voice and facial expression, it's not because I dislike you. It's because sometimes faking a neurotypical demeanor takes more spoons than I currently have.
If I don't reply to your text message promptly, it's not because I don't care about you or dislike you. Maybe I don't have the spoons or the time to think about an appropriate reply, which takes more time for me than it would for a neurotypical person.
I could go on...
Why I believe in labels
Do you ever hear people say things like “I don’t believe in labels” or “Why put a label on yourself?”
The whole point of language is to communicate more effectively and efficiently than if we had to just point at stuff. Generally, the more precise the word, the more effective and efficient the communication. Instead of saying "the straight, hard, brown thing with green stuff around it", we say "tree". "Tree? I don’t believe in labels. Every straight, hard, brown thing with green stuff around it is different from the others. By calling it 'tree' you are erasing its individuality." Does that sounds like nonsense? Yes, it does. It might very well be that if one sees trees all the time, one might stop seeing the individual trees, and will simply replace every tree with a vague notion of tree-ness. "There is tree-ness over there". Thus the brain can focus on actual novelty, such as unusual sounds that might indicate a predator. Or it could be that one becomes so caught up in one’s concept of "tree-ness" than one refuses to acknowledge the specific characteristics of an individual tree. Still, these potential inconveniences do not arise out of labeling trees as such, but rather out of our brains' tendency toward efficiency.
Why should labels like "autism" be any different? Autism is another word, like "tree". Refusing someone the "autism" label — either out of ignorance, or the belief that labels are useless or harmful — is to refuse them a community, a goldmine of information about their disability, a framework for understanding themselves, for communicating their needs, for finding people they can relate to. I will grant that it is a stigmatizing label. But so are labels such as "queer" and "gay", yet the LGBTQ community has been reclaiming them. After all, what is the alternative? For LGBTQ people to call themselves "straight", or to not call themselves anything at all, thus participating in their own erasure? Of course not. The same goes for autistic people. If the label "autistic" is stigmatizing, the solution is NOT to stop using it. The solution is to de-stigmatize the label. Autism is a disability. To let someone struggle through life with a disability without knowing they have one, leaving that person to figure out on their own what has taken the whole history of the human race for us to begin to understand, is cruel. It robs the person of agency, support, understanding, community, and more...
"I've known you your whole life. Don't you think I'd know if you were autistic?"
"I've been your therapist for a few years now. I think I know you pretty well. I don't think you are autistic."
Ok. So you know me. But do you know autism? Because you could know me better than I know myself, but if you don't know what autism is, there is no possible way you could provide a valuable opinion on whether or not I'm autistic. You might think you know what it is, but chances are pretty high that you don't. So how about you forget everything you think you know about it, and open yourself up to the possibility of learning something new?
(turns out the first person I quoted believes vaccines cause autism, and the second person believes that autistic people don't feel empathy, among other things. She also said things like "we're all on the spectrum anyway")
The framing around autistic people not wanting to do things because their autism makes the things unpleasant is really fucking weird.
I don’t like going to nightclubs.
The main reason I don’t like it is that the noise causes me to meltdown.
And allistics see this as this huge, evil thing.
“Omg, poor Lucy, how will she ever live?”
And I’m just like,
Bitch, if you don’t like spicy food, because you were born with a low tolerance for spicy food, no one’s crying their fucking eyes out like
“Poor baby, how ever will she cope with only being able to order mild curries?”
People don’t like shit.
People don’t have to like shit.
And this weird thing where if the reason I don’t like something can be seen to be to do with my autism, I MUST BE FORCED TO ENJOY IT is fucking annoying and needs to stop.
If you don’t get a message back,that too is also a message.
But it's a pretty ambigous message. Is it "I'm too depressed to reply" or "I've been thinking and obsessing about the right way to reply and therefore I haven't replied" or "I don't want to be your friend so I'm ignoring you"?
me: Okay, I really need to focus right now.
ADHD:
Wanting not to be touched doesn’t make you a mean person. Wanting people to respect your personal boundaries doesn’t make you annoying. You shouldn’t have to put yourself through things that hurt or upset you just because other people think they are harmless.
*doesn’t show affection* oh no, I’m making things awkward!!
*shows affection* oh no, I’m making things awkward!!
Hahaha this is me.