this was a comment on one of my post from a recent live event. it was photos of joyful queer buckaroos celebrating together and proving love is real through creation, community, and a trot of love. most important I AM LITERALLY IN PHOTO AS A REAL FLESH AND BLOOD HUMAN
it got me thinking about how DEEP AND VICIOUS the irony poisoning of these early internet communities goes. the way buds like this cannot fathom someone just being a sincere person unrelated to their OWN old days of cynical posting. it is fascinating, and i will admit, sad too
despite a DECADE of work, countless live events, 350 tinglers written well before large language models were a thing, there are still people who cannot imagine someone like me could exist. it is a strange place to be. not just part of me, but my entire EXISTENCE is often gatekept
it is easy to say ‘well chuck your art IS strange’ but honestly i think it is more than that. magical realism is common. there are stories about dinosaurs and bigfeet and unicorns. this scoundrel reaction is about two unspoken things: my art is neurodivergent, and my art is queer
heres the thing: I WILL BE FINE. what concerns me is not an issue of MYSELF, it is a concern for the other young outsider buckaroos who see comments like this one and think ‘is that what they will say if i express MY unique way? will i be dehumanized like this at every turn?'
i will be honest, i cannot say that WONT happen, but i CAN say this: for as deep as this irony poisoning goes, it is slowly dying. the way i was treated at the start of my career is LIGHTYEARS DIFFERENT from the way i am treated now. there is a massive shift towards sincerity
BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY. to young artists trotting up, the things that i am harassed over and doubted for and made fun of for are NOT tangental to what has made me successful, THEY ARE LITERALLY THE SAME THINGS THAT HAVE MADE ME SUCCESSFUL. YES I AM STRANGE, WHAT OF IT?
the things that you tuck away for fear of a review that says ‘there is a PROBLEM with this art because it has always been done another way’ THOSE ARE YOUR SUPERPOWERS. the gatekeepers want you to tuck those parts of yourself away because THEY TUCKED AWAY THOSE PART OF THEMSELVES
never forget that your unique way is PURE UNFILTERED 100 PERCENT ROCKET FUEL. it will stick out (maybe, if you are lucky, scoundrels will even say that someone like you could never actually be real), but sticking out isnt so bad when you are waving the flag of love.
in fact, when youre waving the flag of love, sticking out is pretty dang cool. what are flags for, after all? LOVE IS REAL BUCKAROOS. thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed this long post then please consider preordering BURY YOUR GAYS.
LETS TROT
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disabled people who are lifelong, permanent dependents, i love you. you are my friends and my lovers and my siblings and you are me and i am you and i love you.
i'm really despondent sometimes over the ways society sees us. how conservatives see us as burdens and drains on society, yes, and also how liberals mock our lives, how the idea of being an adult dependent is seen solely as the result of poor life choices, how everyone all across the political spectrum sees things like "getting an allowance from your spouse" and "relying on one person for housing" as cause for mockery, jokes to make, nothing but a conceptual stick with which to beat people into performing well in work and school. still others see us as childish, as pitiable, perhaps not as worthy of mockery but definitely not as worthy of being treated as a social equal, never someone you could invite into your social spheres and make an effort to include--they're just not independent, no offense to them, it just makes them so childish, i can't have an adult friendship with them.
but we persist anyway. we're here. i'm lucky to love the people i'm dependent on, i'm lucky that they respect me as a person and would never leverage their power over me, i'm lucky that they're willing to constantly self-check to make sure they're not accidentally using that power. i hope to g-d you're lucky in the same ways, because i love you. and if you're not, i love you. i'm holding your hand and i'm standing with you and i'm going to try to make a better world for both of us.
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I've reached 35 responses! They're very interesting, but the sample size is still small, and I don't think it's at all representative of the Tumblr autism community. If I can't reach at least 100 responses, I don't think I'll be able to analyze Tumblr community views on support needs in depth. I'll still post descriptive statistics for the overall sample, but I won't have the statistical power to do anything else.
I'd really appreciate if everyone could help by taking the survey and reblogging this post to their followers!
As a reminder, the survey is meant to understand how people use support needs labels. For example, what makes someone low support needs and not moderate support needs? The survey also helps show what the community is like in general in terms of demographics and experiences!
A summary of the current survey results are under the Read More. Again, especially if a community that you're in is under-represented, please help by spreading the survey link! I'd especially love to hear from more people AMAB, racial/ethnic minorities, people who are not yet diagnosed or were diagnosed as adults, and higher support needs individuals!
Age: Most participants are young; 60% are under age 25%, and 20% are under 18.
Gender: Over half of the sample is AFAB nonbinary, almost 1/3 is trans men, and almost all of the remainder (14%) is cis women. Only 2 people who are AMAB have taken the survey.
Race/Ethnicity: Non-Hispanic White people are very over-represented, making up 82% of the sample.
Diagnosis: 57% are professionally diagnosed, 20% are informally or soft-diagnosed, and 14% are seeking a diagnosis. Only 9% are neither diagnosed nor seeking a diagnosis.
The most common diagnoses are ASD with no level (33%), level 1 ASD (25%), and "mild autism" (13%).
16% were diagnosed before age 8, 24% between ages 9 and 15, 32% between ages 16 and 18, 12% between ages 19 and 25, and 16% over age 25.
Autism Support Needs: The most common self-identified support needs label is "low-moderate" (43%), followed by low (23%) and moderate (14%). Most would benefit from but do not need weekly support (31%), only need accommodations and mental health support (17%), or rarely need any support (6%).
Autism Symptoms: On a severity scale of 0 (not applicable) to 3 (severe), the average is 1.7 overall, 1.8 socially, and 1.7 for restricted-repetitive behaviors. The most severe symptom is sensory issues (2.1), and the least severe are nonverbal communication and stimming (both 1.5).
83% are fully verbal, and 97% have no intellectual disability.
38% can mask well enough to seem "off" but not necessarily autistic. 21% can't mask well or for long.
Most experience shutdowns (94%), difficulties with interoception (80%), meltdowns (71%), alexithymia (71%), echolalia (69%), and autistic mutism (66%). Very few experience psychosis (14%) or catatonia (11%).
Self-Diagnosis: 20% think it's always fine to self-diagnose autism, 29% think it's almost always fine, 31% think it's only okay if an assessment is inaccessible, 71% think it needs to be done carefully, and 11% think it's okay to suspect but not self-diagnose.
15% think it's always fine to self-diagnose autism DSM-5 levels (including if the person has been told they don't have autism), 15% think it's fine as long as autism hasn't been ruled out, 21% think it's almost always fine, 18% think it's only okay if an assessment is inaccessible, 36% think it needs to be done carefully, and 36% think it's okay to suspect but not self-diagnose.
26% think it's always fine to self-diagnose autism support needs labels (including if the person has been told they don't have autism), 29% think it's fine as long as autism hasn't been ruled out, 37% think it's almost always fine, 29% think it's only okay if an assessment is inaccessible, 43% think it needs to be done carefully, and 6% think it's okay to suspect but not self-diagnose.
Disability: 71% feel disabled by autism, 17% feel disabled by another condition but not autism, and 11% are unsure.
Comorbidities: The most common mental health comorbidities are anxiety (68%), ADHD (62%), and depression (56%).
The least common mental health disorders are schizophrenia spectrum disorders (0%), bipolar disorders (3%), tic disorders (6%), substance use disorders (6%), personality disorder (9%), and OCD (9%).
The most common physical health comorbidities are gastrointestinal issues (29%), connective tissue disorders (29%), autoimmune disorders (24%), neurological disorders or injuries (24%), and hearing/vision loss (24%). All others are below 20%.
Overall Support Needs: When considering comorbidities, the most common self-identified support needs label is moderate (37%), followed by low-moderate (31%) and low (17%).
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hey everyone! i want to first off thank everyone for your support bc it's meant a lot to me throughout this whole shitshow <3 in better news too, for everyone following the last 4 months of my life and how shitty those have been, i've been grinding my butt off over on twitch and i'll be eligible to get paid next month! not an insane amount, by any means, but enough to cover some bills which i'm so excited about because it means things are turning around.
as of right now, shit's still pretty rough and there's no way to get an advanced payout so i'll have to wait until the 12th for that. i've sold pretty much everything i could sell that i own, and i've been doing some odd translation jobs but it just hasn't even remotely come close to something livable for me. i have around 20€ to my name and that's because a friend was kind enough to help me.
i have to show up at everyone's doorstep on tumblr dot com standing at the doorway, but i know in a different time i would've urged anyone to ask for help every single time they needed it so i'm taking a page out of my own book and putting this out there in case anyone wants to help <3 it'd mean so much to me if you could reblog, but either way thank you for letting me step on my soapbox and have a beautiful day!
this is my p*ypal <3
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