Category: Blog Posts
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I’m available for hire! Need help with improving your understanding of autism and neurodiversity?
Hello, me again! Many of you reading this will know me from either my writing on this blog or my various posts about being an autistic ADHDer on social media. Alongside my writing and social media posts, I have provided support for fellow neurodivergent people and their families, and designed and delivered training related to…
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What being autistic taught me about people’s obsession with resilience
Something we see a lot of in today’s society is an obsession of resilience and demands from people to ‘be more resilience’; particularly so from people with power over others. E.g. a school teacher telling a child’s parents that ‘they need more resilience in the classroom’ without considering why a child may be struggling at…
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Weird Barbie and Autism, Let’s Talk.
If you are unfamiliar with the concept of autistic masking, I would recommend my previous blog post about autistic masking before reading this one ‘Autism and Masking’ A few weeks ago I posted a meme after watching the Barbie film, comparing Stereotypical Barbie’s character as representing autistic people masking with Weird Barbie representing autistic people…
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Why Subgrouping Autism is Dangerous
It’s a debate that has been going on for decades, more or less since autism has been described as a spectrum. This debate has recently come up again since a recent article was posted about the Autism Europe conference earlier this month ‘It’s time to embrace ‘profound autism’ However, subgrouping can lead down a dangerous…
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BBC Panorama and autism: identifying the dots, but who is connecting them?
I don’t often watch BBC Panorama, however recently a few of their documentaries caught my eye ,as they either relate to my work, my lived experience or both. The 3 Panorama documentaries in particular I’m referring to here are Autistic people (or close to someone who is autistic) are unlikely to be surprised that young…
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Autism day/week/month. What’s the point?
April has always been a difficult time for the autistic community because of autism awareness and acceptance days, weeks or Month (referred to as ‘autism month’ going forward). To the average person this may seem like a confusing statement, as they assume that this month is for us and “raising awareness” of the issues we…
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A Brief Overview Of Simon Baron-Cohen’s Autism Research
*Please note this is a critique of Simon’s research and published work and not personal character defamation. As I have never met Simon, I cannot comment on his character* Simon Baron-Cohen is arguably one of the biggest names in autism research. Unfortunately, his research has negatively impacted autistic people for several reasons. However, this can…
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“Suffers from autism”
Quite often I tend to tweet things in the moment if I feel a strong emotional reaction to it. This isn’t always wise but the nature of my neurodivergence means this happens from time to time. However, recently I tweeted about autistic people suffering from ableism rather than autism itself. Again this was an in…
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Autism and Masking
What is masking? Masking (sometimes known as camouflaging) is when autistic people adapt their behaviour to hide their autistic qualities to fit into a neurotypical world (non-autistic world). Below are some other autistic people’s descriptions of masking. Why do autistic people mask? How long is a piece of string? There are many reasons why autistic…
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My actually autistic perspective on ‘Paddy and Christine McGuinness: Our Family and Autism’
*This blog post is not parent shaming. It’s critiquing the documentary* This Wednesday on BBC one, there was an incredibly high-profile autism documentary in the UK. Naturally, being an autistic person living here, I was curious but extremely cautious about the documentary. I was cynical before watching it, as autism is frequently misrepresented in the…
Sarah Boon 