12, 18, 19, 20, 24? (I will try answer the ones you sent me soon!)
12: What are your hypo- and hyper-sensitivities? - for hypo-, I’m not sure... my family are always saying I have a very high pain threshold. I’m not sure I fully understand what counts as hyposensitivity, though. As far as hyper- goes, definitely smell and sound. Everything else I think is kind of stimulus-dependent.
18: If you could make one accommodation universally available and 100% accepted, which would you choose? - ugh I don’t know... a big part of me wants to ban all food in all public places, but I know that wouldn’t be practical and would conflict with other people’s needs. It’s a bit of a general answer, but probably AAC.
19: What, in your opinion, is the most ridiculous autism myth or stereotype? - In current times, probably the ‘everyone’s a little bit autistic’ thing.
20: How would you describe autism to someone who knows nothing about it? - It would depend on the context, but in general I’d be emphasising abilities over ‘abnormalities’.
24: Are there any internalised ableist ideas that you struggle with? - Oh, absolutely. My parents were in denial for a very long time, and would always tell me there was nothing wrong with me/I was just making things up/I had to ‘get over’ my difficulties. Not only did this make me feel terrible about myself, but because I obviously had a lot of things in common with autistic people I heard/read/saw talking about themselves, I would kind of project those ideas onto them, as well. So because I thought I must be just making it up, exaggerating, etc, I would get angry at other autistic people for talking about their problems, as I assumed they were also exaggerating or making it up. Though I have a diagnosis now, and plenty of validation/confirmation, a big part of me is still somewhat in denial and angry at myself for the difficulties I have and not being able to simply ‘get over’ them, as well as jealous of other autistic people who seem to find it much easier to talk about their difficulties and openly describe them in terms of autism.
