Autistic Hedgehog

Well, maybe you need to grow the fuck up then, you ableist asshole. You copy people too; you just don’t realize it. 

For clarification, this is in regards to this post.

That's exactly it, and it’s done with a lot of behaviors you see in every child on the planet, regardless of whether they’re autistic or not. All children learn by mimicry (echolalia), for example, but autistic children may start this behavior much later than allistic children. Even if it goes away (whether it does or not is dependent upon the individual and circumstances) it’s still looked at as a symptom and as something “abnormal” when all it really is, is just a bit late. 

(Incidentally, even if echolalia doesn’t go away in an autistic person, this isn’t anywhere near as strange as “experts” want to make it out to be, because it doesn’t technically go away fully in allistic people either. Although most of them never realize, they will continue to echo people who are around them constantly, picking up on said people’s mannerisms and speech patterns, throughout their entire lives. They’ll even do it at times with people they’ve just met: for example, it’s a perfectly normal (and instinctual) thing for someone to mimic the sitting position of someone they’re talking to if they’re interested in that person. Pfft to you, “experts.”)

So yeah, us being “different” makes people pathologize our behavior regardless of how actually normal it in truth is. I explained it to my husband like this:

If an allistic child shows a keen interest in serial killers, people will assume they have a future as a profiler for the FBI.

If an autistic child shows a keen interest in serial killers, people will assume they have a future as a serial killer. 

That’s just utter bullshit, but it doesn’t stop people from treating us like it’s true. 

In regards to this post.

I think this was supposed to have a second half? IDK.

Although allistics (non-autistics) have assigned the classifications “high-functioning” and “low-functioning” autism, those really don’t work very well for what autism actually is. Autism is a spectrum, and no individual sits firmly on one spot of that spectrum. Even people who appear “higher” or “lower” functioning tend to sort of…slide around, I guess you could say. 

It’s all dependent upon the situation. In a normal situation where I’m perfectly comfortable, a lot of people would never tell I’m autistic. Start piling on certain stimuli and the like, though, and that can change. I’m terrified of needles and when I have to get bloodwork, we (my husband and I) usually instruct people to handle me as if they’re handling a small child. I hate that, it’s humiliating, but it seems to be the only thing people understand. (And incidentally, last year I ended up with even worse trauma than before, because something got lost in translation and I ended up surrounded by three people who stuck me with a needle roughly half a dozen times.)

Beyond functioning labels there really aren't levels of autism. There’s a spectrum and symptoms and individuals; that’s it. And a number of actually autistic people don’t care much for functioning labels.

P.S. For any allistics reading this: Absolutely DO NOT go around treating autistics like small children because you think something might be upsetting or overstimulating for them. That is a precaution I choose to take to protect myself, and one I wouldn’t have to take if there wasn’t so much ignorance about autism spread around. 

Continued: it was written for a time-sensitive prompt. And the allistic did research but only found the Wikipedia article and tried to be respectful to the inaccurate depiction. And afterward has done research from autistic-written sources. She developed good autie characters and some are really creative and others are geniuses because of the particular setting’s limitations about who would be there. She was uninformed but really respectful and is educating herself. I no longer support my memes.

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I’ve been thinking about how to deal with this for a while. I didn’t have context when I chose those memes to publish; I didn't need context, because I know most of us have experienced these exact circumstances (as evidenced by the amount of notes each meme got). I didn’t know there was a context, because this looked like ordinary, generalized stuff.

In fact, anon, had you never said anything, no one would know. No one would suspect. And I doubt anyone now could easily figure out what author and story you’re talking about, because the internet is large and this stuff happens all the time. 

So now I have a dilemma. I’ve sworn in the past that I would remove memes if asked, but at the same time, I’ve got a lot of people who related to those memes. Just because you don’t stand behind them, anon, doesn’t mean they didn’t mean something to someone else. After all, none of us knew they were specific. So if you want them down, you’re going to have to say so. I’m not going to make the decision for you because, frankly, I’m done making decisions for people and there’s going to be some changes to how I do things here. 

That’s sort of a tricky question, because sometimes stims intersect with other things, and there are a lot of things that count as stims.

Simplified, a stim is a repetitive motion or action (it might be making a sound rather than moving) and it can be an expression of a number of emotions: fear, happiness, contentment, anxiety. It can also be a way to calm fear or anxiety, or to ground one’s happiness.  I don’t think a long period of repetition is necessary for something to be a stim (I sometimes make a small string of sounds along the lines of “nif nif nif” which I tend to do in stim-like situations) but over all it’s something that repeats. 

Using my own as an example:

• I rock when agitated, hurt (as in injured) or in other ways upset, though sometimes this only makes me more agitated.
• I sway (which is more rhythmic than rocking) when happy, content, tired or some mixture thereof. 
• I flap, but very little. Usually I flap my entire arms, and the motion is connected to a very particular anxiety, like when I’m asking for permission for something. 
• I rub on smooth textures (like satin ribbon) for comfort in situations where I’m anxious or want to feel extra content.
• I make small chains of sounds, like the “nif nif nif” I mentioned earlier, often as an expression of feeling good or feeling silly.

You can see there’s sort of a pattern of how those connect. There’s another thing I do that I don’t consider a stim, though. I bite the skin around my fingernails. While I do it more in times of increased anxiety, I always do it regardless, I have a tendency to hurt myself doing it, and it doesn’t really make me feel better in any way. I just can’t help it. That’s where I draw the line.

Some things are unquestionably not stims, but for the most part, you need to find your own personal guidelines for what a stim is to you. If something falls outside those guidelines, then odds are good you’re not doing it for stimming purposes. 

As the person who submitted the meme put it:

Why is it that everything and anything an autistic person shows interest in, or proficiency for is a “Special Interest”? I know the difference between my perservations and my hobbies and general interests, thankyouverymuch.

Basically, the problem is that autistics aren’t really allowed to have hobbies. If we like something, it all tends to get classified as a “special interest” and while that may seem like the same thing, it’s not when it’s applied to us. 

For us, a “special interest” is a marker of our autism, which is why the term “special interest” gets used rather than “hobby.”  Everything we like must be a symptom in the eyes of certain allistics, and I believe that’s what the OP meant. That it’s frustrating that we can’t enjoy something without it being inextricably linked to our autism by other people. 

We do have things we fixate on and yes, that can be related to the autism. But some things really are just hobbies and classifying them as “special interests” is a way a number of allistics (especially psychologists and psychiatrists) Other autistics.