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Category: Masking

Stimming Freely and Me

Stimming Freely and Me

Allists tap their fingers, but autists self-stimulate (abbr., stim). Put another way, as autistic author melanie yergeau writes, being diagnosed meant that “my hand and full-body movements became self-stimulatory behaviors”. But everyone stims(!), with contemporary (but nascent) research suggesting that “autism traits” are “distributed normally” throughout the entire human population (as discussed here). Semantics aside, stimming has been “re-claimed” (read: claimed) by actual autists (e.g., #StimFreely) as a means of taking pride in our bodies. This post, then, is meant to…

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A Brief Pause for Raisons D’être

A Brief Pause for Raisons D’être

My pragmatic language is not a problem for me. It becomes a problem when society values attention over (and as an assumption of) intent. In addition to my ability to make consistent eye-contact (despite finding it uncomfortable in certain contexts), i have an impeccable ability to interpret others’ levels of comfortability and attention based on their body language. For example, i was greeting dogs properly since i was a child; their fear of direct eye-contact/approach and comfortability with indirect eye-contact…

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A Movie Changed My Life

A Movie Changed My Life

Content Warning: trauma, suicide, death, drug use, abandonment, spoilers I have a vivid memory of the first time i watched the 2009 Australian claymation film Mary and Max. I had recently turned 18, and one of my great friends had died suddenly earlier that year from health complications they were unaware of. Mary and Max played on a relatively old CRT-TV in the basement of the house of a friend (whom i didn’t care too much for). I sat watching…

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Myself. My-self. My Self.

Myself. My-self. My Self.

I’m an alien from inner space.– Jamila Woods Things stick with me. When i wash my hands, the line from the HBO series Westworld about the mechanicality (i also love making up words) of soap inevitably manifests in my mind. When my dog kisses me, i am inevitably (and immediately) reminded of Cat Stevens’ I Love My Dog, which begins to play inside my head. When i am given a play-by-play, i recall from the film 13 Going On 30 the (hilarious) line, Do whatever you…

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