I’ve read things literally my whole life. Hold up. Let me rephrase that. Actually, let me point out how that is a perfect opening statement for this piece I’m trying to write about life as a literalist. Everything is wrong with this sentence, if I pick it apart. Not literally everything, though the case could … Read more
How do we talk about repair, and who’s capable, in 500 characters? “All autistic people can learn to be accountable for their actions, and to say otherwise is infantalizing and ableist.” Many variations on this theme are making their way through the platforms currently. While on the surface it appears well-meaning and affirming, it’s worth … Read more
Population as Organism: Epigenetics, Neurodiversity, and the Problem of the Individual The Western neuroscience community has recently taken to saying that autism is genetic — a corrective, and a welcome one, to public claims, made from positions of real institutional power, that environmental exposure is the primary driver of rising diagnosis rates. The rebuttal leans … Read more
Articulated as personal responsibility — what I hold myself to, not a standard imposed on others. The online public space serves overlapping, non-competing functions — information exchange, community formation, identity articulation, advocacy, and low-cost contact for people otherwise isolated by geography, access, or circumstance. No single function is the “real” one that the others distract … Read more
A Reading List in the Spirit of Tōjisha-Kenkyū · 当事者研究 Within Tōjisha-kenkyū lies the potential of rearranging the relationship between the tōjisha (the person with lived experience of the condition being studied) and the specialist — in other words, between experienced knowledge and specialized knowledge. . . . The mutual respect from the tōjisha and … Read more
ever since i was young, i’ve felt like i was from a different culture, and was dropped into this one by a stork. somewhere along the way, i decided to stick by this, and honor the integrity of my original culture, and not get too deep into this dominant culture that i still feel like … Read more
peers, autists, human companions: lend me your cognitive architecture (ears are not enough). what we now call “autism” originally described a way of thinking that its own framers acknowledged that everyone experiences. If “autistic thinking” is something that everyone experiences, where is the line drawn between “everyone” and the autistic person? Is everyone temporarily autistic … Read more
The adaptation-to-pathology pipeline, pt 1 This series explores human traits and behaviors that are pathologized in the modern Western office-industrial complex, with the intent to spark cross-cultural discussion, and reassessment of what it means to be divergent. Two gait strategies, same anatomy, different verdicts—depending on what the ground is asking of the foot, and who’s … Read more
I’m a bi-gender person—masc and femme together in parallel unison. Like a Tootsie Roll, a Twinkie, a Ho-Ho, or a KitKat, I have a more brittle, masc outer layer; and a creamy, femme inner core. The femme part of me has been surprised when I have proposed activities to femme friends that I think of … Read more
There’s a mindset I keep seeing—in Buddhist sanghas, autism advocacy, establishment political discourse. I call it ‘cognitive centrism’—inhabiting a kind of middle ground, not because one felt their way there, but because they computed it. Like cognitive empathy: decode, then perform the answer. Here’s what it looks like: Someone defending an argument gets confronted with … Read more