We had dinner with some friends this evening -- five of us in total. After discussing it with Helen earlier in the week, I came out to them as autistic.
I got an interesting set of reactions. Angela (a former headteacher, who I thought knew more about autism) said: "but you're so social." So I said a few words about masking and learning to spend time in company. Lesley replied: "you should have known him when he was young. He was really quite odd." (No, it's fine, we have that kind of relationship.)
I told Angela I thought she'd known for years, and she said she'd suspected it, but only because of my unusual walk. So, if you really want to pass as NT, you need not only to avoid ticcing and stimming, and make eye contact, and say the right things at the right speed, and pull the right faces, but also to get your walk right. Who knew teachers specialised in gait analysis?
@nddev@riggbeck@actuallyautistic No, a woman, but she has a son who was walking on his toes too last time I saw him and is an adult and definitely #ND.
As was the way back in the day, my walk was commented upon when I was 18 and the word 'wiggle' was used so pretty much ever since I've been extremely self conscious of how I walk and have possibly subconsciously adjusted it. I've never been a toe walker though.
I totally can’t play any games where I have to control character movements(especially first-person) by WASD, arrows, gamepads, joysticks etc. Point and click is my everything. Is it something #neurodivergent people often struggle with, or is it my personal problem? If #nd - is it something more typical for #autism or #ADHD? Or should I check some other flavor? @actuallyautistic
Which flavor of #neurodivergent is inability to feel belonging to any group? I think, I finally got why I don’t get that #gender thing. Basically, a gender is just another cohort, with some assumed properties. A group one feels belonging to. And I have never felt as a part of any group. I never fit in. Each cohort is supposed to have certain properties, and I just never have all. I just feel like impostor in any, including any gender/sexuality groups, including #agender#queer#nd#AuDHD
The Mad Scholars Anthology Project is finally happening.
Mad Scholars: Reclaiming and Reimagining the Nuerodiverse Academy
Edited by Melanie Jones and Shayda Kafai, this book contains chapters by numerous Mad Academics, including myself.
Published by Syracuse University Press
"...one of the most timely, conscious, and robust contributions to the field of Mad Studies that I have yet to encounter. The world needs this book, and it needs it right now." - Syracuse Reviewer
My chapter is called "The Subject is Mad" and flits about through various vignettes of madness from Academia to childhood, and explores how madness informs practices of reading, writing, speaking, and percieving.
Of my own chapter, a reviewer wrote, "It’s beautiful; it also gestures toward a variety of Mad epistemological interventions while leaning heavily into Mad stylistics. I appreciate the way they emphasize Mad community and ancestry."
Contributors:
SAV SCHLAUDERAFF
SHAWNA GUENTHER
REBECCA ELI LONG
JESS L. WILCOX COWING
SYDNEY F. LEWIS
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARSINHA
MELANIE JONES
CACHÉ OWENS
SARAH CAVAR
RUA WILLIAMS
KELAN KONING
LIZ MILLER
SAMUEL Z. SHELTON
PAU ABUSTAN
A-M MCMANAMAN
JESSE RICE-EVANS AND ANDRÉA STELLA
SARAH SMITH AND GRACE WEDLAKE
SARAH ARVEY TOV
KIMBERLY FERNANDES
DIANE R. WIENER
HOLLY PEARSON
SHAYDA KAFAI
@FractalEcho wow - the above future publication about neurodiversity in academia will be of interest to the @actuallyautistic and also the @actuallyadhd and other ND folks, I believe!