#aba mention

[aro-culture-is]

Autistic aro culture is not fully understanding why people treat cheating like it should get the death penalty.

I remember when John Mulaney was caught cheating on his wife that there was a huge outrage about it, with people going as far to boycott him and, at least from what I've heard, literally wishing he was dead. Like yeah, cheating's a shitty thing to do and he really should've just talked to his wife about what problems he had in the relationship, but I've always felt like the reactions it was getting from people was incredibly extreme.

as an autistic aro who used to feel this way, the main thing is the trust and communication of boundaries. it's not about the monogamy - it's about the major, explicit/implicit boundary being broken, which begs the question of how many boundaries they are actually following. you don't know if they are telling you the truth about any boundaries they agreed to if they break a major one.

think of it as someone befriending you, being fairly aware of an nice to you about being autistic, and then learning that they send their autistic child to ABA therapy. you thought they were nice and trustworthy, but that's a hugely awful thing to learn about them. you'd be reevaluating a lot of your interactions. you'd wonder what makes you different, you'd have questions, you'd probably be pretty damn upset.

in the case of John Mulaney - iirc the intensity of the response was significantly more about the whole can of worms that came out with the news of his cheating. it seemed that he maybe had been making jokes about his wife being Jewish that she didn't like or appreciate, it seemed that he'd lied about having that consent to cultivate a public personality. it turned out he also struggled with addiction, and while I think it's inappropriate to act like that's a personality flaw, a huge amount of people do, and the public outcry was a combo of all of those coming out at once. also, he was a celebrity - people with huge amounts of fans are likely to have more extreme opinions expressed about them than the everyday person.

i have more thoughts - like how it's an everyday trauma that a lot of people have not processed, and therefore likely to promote more trauma-based reactions - but broadly, it's not about the cheating as a function of exclusive, monogamous relationships. it's about a boundary that was understood by those in a relationship being violated in ways that make you question your trust in their intentions, and how many parts of their life that lack of respect for boundaries might have been occurring.

[jackdaniel69nice]

More tokoyami bird mutation traits because he deserves it.

Birds have the ability to sense the electromagnetic poles surroundings the earth and they use it to know where they’re going. The most common instances of this are a pigeons “homing” instinct and migratory birds knowing what direction to go in when they well…migrate. Tokoyami (and hawks) has this and it’s immensely useful when flying through the city, he never gets lost.

unihemispheric slow-wave sleep is the ability to turn off half your brain and allow it to sleep while the other half remains alert. Birds can use this to keep an eye out for predators or stay in flight while migrating. Tokoyami is the master of sleeping during class (joking). Seriously Tokoyami’s brain is already weird enough having to share his head space with dark shadow and apparently he can, in theory, just turn off half his brain. This would be immensely useful for patrols and stake out missions. He probably also uses it to keep an eye on dark shadow at night if he has a feeling they are going to be rambunctious. Also bird don’t always sleep like this, they are perfectly capable of full sleep as well so don’t worry toko only uses this when necessary.

The metabolism of a bird is insanely fast in order for them to keep up the energy needed for flight. Hawks has the fastest metabolism which is why he’s always eating during patrols. Toko still has a fast metabolism and needs to eat much more than someone his size would normally consume. There is argument that dark shadow could be stealing some of his energy but it’s negligible. Toko is very thin, like momo he can never seem to put on weight, he is also very small which could be a mix of genetics and not getting enough nutrition growing up. I’m saying his genetics play a role because even without wings birds need to be lighter for easier flight so most avians are on the smaller side coughhawkscough

Tokoyami can do bird calls, or at least he used to be cable to. This hc gets a little specific but because of how embarrassed he is about his bird traits I feel like he was taught by people to suppress them (like he was taught to suppress his emotions). He was probably put through speech therapy as a child or even the MHA version of ABA therapy (because I am autistic and love using metaphors, like certain quirks being a metaphor for mental illnesses). Either way his unique baritone is actually unnatural to him and even harmful to his vocal cords, he gets sore throats and can’t yell or talk for to long before it hurts and he gets laryngitis. He knows sign language for this reason as well. Anyhow now that he’s in a supportive and loving environment he might be able to relearn these skills for mental health reasons and use his voice for practical purposes. Dark shadow was never directly forced to stop chirping which is why their voice is more squawky. They can imitate sounds very well from whistles, alarms, and instruments to peoples voices. They also know how to “throw” their voice so they can use it to confuse their prey the enemy. Tokoyami might learn how to do this too one day. Yes tokoyami can sing and while he sounds amazing he hates doing it.

(Sorry about the angst but quite frankly it’s overdue, tokoyami is an edge lord after all)

[system-of-a-feather]

Maybe when I get my PhD Ill research long term effects of "good and modern ABA" and burn it to the ground Round 2 Electric Boogaloo /hj

[sensostimmer]

The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain by Thomas Armstrong

3.5 stars

[vaspider]

Prefacing this ask with a warning that I’ll be elaborating on mistreatment of mentally ill ppl in different parts of the world. I don’t go into explicit detail, but if you’re in a bad state of mind rn, proceed with caution. I don’t wanna get in on that post you just responded to, but I do gotta say it feels weird to hear about the kind of medical treatment described under that specific framing when my country still uses a term for autism that was created as a tool for the genocide of mentally ill ppl and currently has a growing movement in favor of implementing ABA. A friend of mine in america who also has adhd has had pharmacists lie to her about being out of meds, because they felt her diagnosis was probably invalid. I have had psychologists lie to me and tell me it would be illegal for them to diagnose adhd in adults.

Another friend of mine who has bpd had to go off meds cold turkey after moving because she moved out of the area of the clinic where she got diagnosed and all the waiting lists of psychiatrists are so full that they don’t even put you on them anymore, but just tell you to try again in a year.

Meanwhile in spaces where ODD is treated as an actual thing, mentally ill kids are being diagnosed with “not a submissive little angel” disorder that sets them up for abuse by any authority figure by calling every criticism or attempt at protecting their boundaries a symptom of “child psychopathy”.

Ppl with addiction problems are imprisoned all over the world because their mental health is treated as a moral deficit. People with personality disorders, or psychosis are branded as dangerous at all times and basically subhuman, with every desire for autonomy being seen as a violent tendency. Being suicidal, or having eating disorders can have people instantly revoke your legal right to freedom and have you imprisoned in many places.

You can be given medication against your will if doctors deem you unfit to decide for yourself, and there is no obligation to care about the consequences. (I have a friend from the UK who could tell you so many horror stories about the shit that happens in mental institutions there especially).

Again, ABA exists and is wildly normalized and accepted in many places.

I could go on, but I really don’t want to feel like I have to. Abuse and discrimination do not abide by clear lines in target demographics.

Yes.

[birdofmay]

I am autistic but have severe trauma due to masking (I’m an ABA victim) and so unmasking has been difficult. Lately I’ve been more open and learning that I don’t need to respond to something if I don’t know how to respond to it. A lot of times it’s “I apologize your words affect me deeply I just don’t know how to respond to that :(“ and I genuinely feel terrible that I can’t find my words or find the way to appropriately connect my feelings to a response. Before this I used to be like “I’m appreciative of that, thanks.” Or “I don’t really like that…” but things have become more complicated and now I don’t want to use the default template response because it doesn’t actually connect to how I really feel. Is there some term for this? What is it? I don’t think it’s nonverbal or nonspeaking I mean I can talk and such, I just don’t know what to completely say to people or what genuinely feels ok to say that is satisfying to how I feel internally. A piece of me feels a little restricted with only learning one language (english) and I feel that other languages out there have better ways to articulate and connect how one internally feels.

I tried to reword your ask and if I understand you correctly, what you're basically saying is

"I used scripts all the time, and now that I'm not scripting anymore I realised that I don't know how to express myself and my feelings"

did I get that right?

If so, I think it's very common to struggle with that in the process of unmasking. Once the reliable scripts are gone, you have to figure everything out yourself, and of course that's confusing and frustrating. But I don't think there's a special term for that.

I'd like to hand this ask over to autistics with similar experiences, no matter if you're a follower or not, feel free to comment whatever comes to mind! ☝🏼

[rudjedet]

"(...) reduce challenging behaviours (like tantrums)" absolutely fuck you for phrasing it that way you rotting walnuts. A meltdown is not a fucking tantrum. And "challenging behaviours"? ABA is based purely on making "life with autism" easier on the neurotypicals who "have to deal with" the autistic.

[arovaricious]

Filtering out jack black content now bc. The pedestal hes been placed on is so much more obvious now that i know that fuck supports autism $peaks and aba shit