I was hoping to do my own take on this but between being quite busy and the combination of temperatures of 30C and above and the accompanying humidity, my energy has been even more depleted and limited than ever. The mix of high humidity, and fibromyalgia and ME, is not a good one.
Short explanation: It's a campaign being run by advocates Kieran Rose (The Autistic Advocate), Hannah Molesworth (Do I look Autistic Yet?), Sara-Hane Harvey (Agony Autie) and Christa Holmans (Neurodivergent Rebel), and supported by the autistic activist/advocate community. This is a campaign by and for autistic people on the problems of masking, and is aimed at reducing the need (or the perception of the need) to mask our true autistic selves and replace them with a "mask" of neurotypicality. Here's the link to more details about the campaign: http://www.theautisticadvocate.com/2018/06/takethemaskoff.html
In lieu of my own article on the subject at this point (hopefully I will be able to catch up at a later date), this entry will be a collection of links to the many fantastic and informative posts written by other autistics, many of whom are friends of mine and who are fantastic people. For ease of use, I'm listing them in alphabetical order. If there are any I've missed, I will edit this post to include them.
Adriana L. White: #TakeTheMaskOff week 1
AutieFortyAndFAB: Some Thoughts on #TakeTheMaskOff
Autism Education: What is Masking?
Autistic Science Lady: Accepting my Autistic self
Autistic Superhero: Autism Unmasked
Autistic Zebra: What is Masking
Autistic Zebra: More on Masking
Autist Stuff: Why I keep my mask in my pocket
Blogging Astrid: What is Masking
Cambria's Big Fat Autistic Blog: My Relationship with the Mask
Cat Amongst Wolves: What is Masking
Comments From the Pecan Galelry: What is Masking
Eve Reiland: When The Mask Was Donned
Finally Knowing Me: Wasting Energy
Hannah Molesworth: Sky News interview about #TakeTheMaskOff
Inside The Rainbow: What It's Like to Wear the Mask
Libby's Autism Blog: What is Masking
Live chat between the 4 campaign launchers
Luciane Hatadani
Peter Wynn: Stop Masking It
Rosie Writes: Pass my Mask, I need to leave the house...
The Asian Aspergirl: Understanding Aspies #TakeTheMaskOff Challenge
The Autistic Advocate: I am not OK
From prior to this campaign - not part of #TakeTheMaskOff but highly relevant to it:
Ryan Boren - Autistic Burnout: The Cost of Coping and Passing
Understanding Autistics: transitioning from being a lost 'neurotypical' to a happy autistic
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 July 2018
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Autism Acceptance Month 2018 Day 3: B is for Blogs
BSL: blog
B is for Blogs
B is for Blogs
Blogs are an amazing resource for learning about autism from autistics. I generally avoid NT-run Autism Parent™ blogs because they tend to be about garnering pity, sympathy and attention for the parent, and it's all about them rather than the autistic, all in the name of "the reality of autism", with intimate details about things such as toileting habits, generally without the consent of the autistic.
Autistic-run blogs are a wealth of information about all aspects of autism, from a huge variety of people. They cover pretty much every topic you can think of, sometimes in great detail, and these provide the best insight of what it is like to be autistic and how autism affects people, from a first-hand perspective. The best thing? Because they are autistic-run, you can be sure that these things are being written with consent. And consent is crucial because a lot of the Parent blogs don't have that. In addition, such blogs are frequently from an outside perspective, so the internal things (emotions, thoughts, etc) are not clear are visible. With autistic-run blogs, the inner thoughts, feelings, etc can be written about accurately.
They're a great way of communicating our experiences. A lot of us find written communication easier than spoken - it allows more time to think, we can structure and rearrange as we see fit, it affords the opportunity to carefully select precisely the right wording, it's far more likely to be coherent, it's a great way for those with speech difficulties and who are nonspeaking to express themselves and their experiences, they add our voices to the autistic community, they can help us realise that we are far from alone in difficulties, experiences and so on, and entries can be revised and edited before anyone ever views them.
Blogs are easily accessible on a variety of devices, they can be really easy to set up and they can be nice and easy to personalise.
Your best resource for insights into and information on autism is those of us who are actually autistic. We live it, we experience it; we are the experts.
Although not comprehensive, here is a list of blogs (alphabetical order by blog name) by autistics that I recommend, a number of whom I consider as good friends. Many of them also have corresponding Facebook pages and some, like Giraffe Party, are more active there than on their blogs, so if you're a Facebook user, look for them there, too!
Emma's Hope Book (joint with her mother)
Hello Michelle Swan (formerly Michelle Sutton Writes)
The Autism Wars (mother of autistic children)
Watch Well (Cal Montgomery)
You can find a much more comprehensive list here (both active and defunct), compiled by An Autism Observer:
I don't know which ones on the comprehensive list are good blogs and which are bad, pro-Autism $peaks, pro-ABA, ableist, etc. At some point when I get the chance I'm going to check them all out one by one!
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