spacelazarwolf:

katisconfused:

discodeerdiary:

redinstead-ocs:

A well informed autism self diagnosis is just as valid as a psychiatric diagnosis. Additionally, under the given circumstances it is safer, most probably less expensive and you don’t need to wait for any appointment.

10 screenshots from a twitter thread by @devprice with white text on black background.

The thread reads as follows:

I hear from many trans & nonbinary people who are actively seeking an Autism diagnosis. My advice is RETHINK THIS. Restricting Autistic people’s access to gender affirming care is a major TERF talking point. As legal attacks on trans healthcare mounts, a psychiatric dx is a risk

The high overlap between Autism & transness was one of the main “concerns” JK Rowling rose in her “TERF Wars” blog post. Numerous fearmongering anti-trans articles influenced by TERFs have raised the issue since. if youre trans now is not a good time to seek a formal Autism dx.

An Autism dx does not unlock access to any beneficial therapeutic treatment, bc there is no “treating” Autism. Formal diagnosis makes us vulnerable to legal & psychiatric control and gets our competence challenged – you dont need to subject yourself to this. diagnose yourself

I am close with dozens and dozens of Autistic people, and I have no idea who has a diagnosis and who does not. It does not matter. There is no reason to ask, no reason for others to care how someone identifies and how they arrived there – all that matters is community support.

also if you cannot afford to pursue a lengthy & expensive lawsuit, it’s unlikely a formal diagnosis will actually protect you from discrimination at work, in school or in housing. if you have the means great, but most don’t. disclosing disability can be more risk than its worth.

if you need a dx to access resources such as disability benefits or extra test time, by all means go for it, but be cognizant of the potential costs. you could be denied for surgery, lose control of your assets, be found legally incompetent, lose custody of your kids…

Tweet replies to this thread:

By Greysquirrel @/treerat93

My autism dx was forced on me at age 2 and kept me out of the military in my 20s. It’s been nothing but destructive. I was beat up in sped and believed myself to be stupid my entire life because of it. I can’t even buy life insurance.

By Emily Johnson @/emily_rj

In some states, people with autism face being denied organ transplants, are at higher risk for forced sterilization and/or denied contraceptive and reproductive care, and have a higher risk of police brutality I considered this and decided informal diagnosis was best for me

By AK Faulkner is sweet and…

In the UK, an autism diagnosis is already a significant barrier to gender-affirming care. The GICs automatically try to discount dysphoria as autism during your initial assessments with them. If you arrive pre-diagnosed with autism they write your dysphoria off as that.

I’ve frequently encountered people who are like “well I want an autism diagnosis because I’ll be more comfortable calling myself autistic if I have it confirmed officially” and while I’m not going to tell other people how to live their lives (I strongly believe in letting people make their own risk/reward decisions even if they choose what I think of as the foolish option) I do want to caution anyone who thinks that way to please check to make sure these feelings aren’t bleeding into the way you treat other self-diagnosed autistic people

This is something to keep in mind with diagnoses in general. Having official recognition is important in cases you are seeking accomodations, disability, or certain treatments. But a lot of cases are like this where there aren’t treatments, or the treatments are over the counter/diy friendly.

Sometimes if you have a good doctor they’ll even let you try medication without it! My PCP was actually willing to let me try meds for ADHD without an official diagnosis! I am really grateful for that, especially since they ended up not working out, so if I had gotten the diagnosis just for the sake if trying them, I’d be subjected to additional ableism with no positive trade off! Not everyone will be that lucky, but it’s worth a try before resorting to painting a target on your back.

missouri’s trans healthcare ban specifically stipulates that someone needs to be screened for autism. fake it. mask as best you can. lie. do whatever you need to avoid a diagnosis unless you absolutely need accommodations to live.

Some really important considerations these days, which I wish were not necessary.

cesium-sheep:

jo reblogged a [video] about pullups from a blog called hybridcalisthenics and someone was talking about how nice it is that they’re completely nonjudgemental about starting from actually-zero.

I poked around their page cuz I enjoyed the video and they actually have an entire [video] that’s just about hey it’s not normal to be tired all the time, the solution is different for everyone and sometimes it’s not simple or easy but it’s important to remember that being tired isn’t just normal. and that fuckin rules? that fuckin rules. that is an absolutely incredible degree of awareness and empathy from like, anyone? especially someone who’s running an entire fitness blog.

so that’s cool! nonjudgemental fitness blog that actually does break down exercises to a degree that if you’ve got most of the associated limbs you would probably be able to at least try it.

(they haven’t posted since november but they also have a youtube channel they occasionally link to.)

crippled-dad:

crippled-dad:

Ok so at this point I’ve had two people roll up to me in manual wheelchairs, well, one of them was somebody pushing somebody who was nonverbal at the time, but it still counts. They asked me why I had zip ties around my tires.

It’s winter where I’m living and we have really bad snow. And the snow plow people are really bad at their jobs probably because there aren’t snow plow people who clean sidewalks. As a solution I got to thinking about how I could increase the traction on my wheels. And the most redneck thing I could think of was taking a bunch of zip ties and tying them around my wheels. They last surprisingly long, and work surprisingly well. It’s basically the same premise as chains for your tires during the winter.

I chose to space them out pretty evenly so there’s about one for every spoke. You could probably do more or less depending on how many you want and how much traction you get but I wouldn’t go more than three per spoke. I realize that it’s a bit later in the winter, and I probably should have made a post about this sooner, but I came up with it about a week ago. So please share this, even if you’re not disabled, because there are tons of people I know who are stuck in their houses because they can’t get around in the snow. A pack of zip ties costs about $5, which compared to $200 knobby snow tires is a big save, and if you want to invest you could get colored zip ties.

Image ID:

First image: a picture of a wheelchair tire from above. The wheel has five white zip ties spread out mostly evenly. The zip ties are situated on top of the tread.

Second image: A picture of the same wheel from the side. The zip tie knobs are pointing down towards the ground. They have been trimmed down.

Third Image: A picture of the same wheel, from a top down side point of view. There are zip ties all around the edge of the wheel, and knobs of the zip ties are all positioned to be on the inside of the wheel, away from the edges.

Here are some pictures for those that are asking! You wanna make sure that the zip tie knobs are facing to the inside of the wheel otherwise you WILL cut up your hands trying to move.

@spacecripple Wanted to make sure you saw this!

@bangtansboyfieyfies I’m not sure with a power chair but depending on the kind of wheels you have, you might be able to use larger zip ties. Anything can help! If you have an extra set of wheels, I know that some bikers will install their own studs (essentially screws) into their wheels, which might be useful for you!