Neurodivergent Pride

Anecdotal skillshares to understand the lives of autistics and the nonsensical world we all share The R-word has been used against us as hate speech for decades. Neurotypicals have tried to dictate our motives, experiences, and words without stepping back to look at how taking the word away does nothing to take away their attitudes behind it. While leftist culture has abandoned the word "retarded," we are still treated with the same hatefulness and discrimination implicit in that word. It's time to own this word for ourselves. Queer punks were told that they would be accepted as soon as they acted like straight people. Autism now occupies a similar place in the public consciousness at this moment: no one understands it and The Borg demand our assimilation! Don't Be Retarded offers exposition on neurotypicals' neurophobia and the frequent claim that they are supportive of #ActuallyAutistic people...as long as we act like they do. These stories of overcoming and disputing myths will become the roots of the new autistic pride movement and the people who have suffered under the R-word should own it. Featuring work by Temple Grandin and others. One Good Trouble reviewer mentioned that she couldn't believe that there wasn't a radical zine community on the forefront of Autistic theory...so I decided to start one! The inspiration for the title lies in the homocore roots of punk and Don't Be Gay in the 1980s.

Neurodiversity occupies a similar place in the public consciousness as gay rights did in the 1970s: most people on the outside don't understand it and The Borg demand our assimilation! A necessary contribution to the dialogue around neurology, this zine features advice and exploratory narratives about how to accept the neurodiverse experience. Even the less divergent can understand us and see us as real, whole people. Featuring comics, narrative, advice, and origin stories that all teach how to better interact/collaborate/interface with us, this zine is the beginning of a social movement towards a future where people can be treated like, well, people. We find neuroatypical people inspiring and we think you could learn from our stories too!

The first time that I met my favorite autistic mentee, she walked right up to me, declaring “You don’t look like prey!” We discussed at length how we are both consistently perceived as vulnerable from our appearances, body language, and mannerisms. I had never thought about this as a trait of autism until I began to research the relationships of crime statistics and autism to find that we are frequently victims. When I looked up the meaning of “getting taken advantage of,” I had a startling discovery. The phrase has two components, someone using you unfairly for their own benefit and you being complicit and accepting in this dynamic. According to this definition, being robbed on the street is not being “taken advantage of.” While everyone experiences these types of encounters, it seems that so many neurodiverse people are taken advantage of because they are easily fooled into being complicit in these exchanges. This zine is a forum of advice and stories to explain the neurodiverse experience so that we can be seen as real, whole people. One theme that kept coming up in conversations with neurodiverse people as "being taken advantage of." Every neurodiverse person seems to be a survivor of abuse, whether that be emotional, financial, sexual, physical, or mental. These stories humanize those experiences and provide context, humor, and real solutions for how to overcome them. Ultimately, living in our society it becomes difficult not to internalize ableism and see ourselves as lesser, rather than just different.

The R-word has been used against us as hate speech for decades. Neurotypicals have tried to dictate our motives, experiences, and words without stepping back to look at how taking the word away does nothing to take away their attitudes behind it. While leftist culture has abandoned the word "retarded," we are still treated with the same hatefulness and discrimination implicit in that word. In the third installment of this zine series, contributors muse over the interactions between autistic people and authority.