Thread by @UndercoverAutie

A few gentle reminders (thread):

1. Neurodiversity is not ‘extremist’, it simply means humans have a variety of brains

2. Autistic people who celebrate autism and don’t want to be cured can (and do) consider autism a disability. They are not mutually exclusive views.

3. The #ActuallyAutistic hashtag means the person tweeting is autistic. That is all. This is also not ‘extremist’. (NTs please don’t misuse it - if you want our attention use #AskingAutistics 🙂)

4. If an individual, or even a few individuals, tweet abuse and they are part of the neurodiversity/ actually autistic community... they are just individuals tweeting abuse. They do not represent me or the group at large. You cannot extrapolate and conclude we are all abusive.

5. If you think someone is tweeting ‘abuse’, check that it actually is abuse. Sometimes autistic people will have opinions that are confronting (like not wanting to be put into ABA training programmes that destroy our autonomy...) - this in itself is not ‘abuse’.

6. We do not tend to appreciate functioning labels. This does not mean we do not believe people have different needs or levels of support of difficulties. We ‘believe’ in ‘severe autism’, we just don’t call it ‘severe autism’. There is lots written about this already.

7. We do not think we have ‘superpowers’. We are just people.

8. We do not think we are ‘better than everyone else’. We are like any other minority or oppressed group in that we want equality and autonomy. If that looks like superiority to you, that’s on you.

9. Celebrating autistic traits and LIKING OURSELVES doesn’t mean we think we’re better than everyone else.

10. Autistic people are just people trying to get on with their lives, like you.