Burn Brighter, Faster, Do More, and Don’t Stop: On Activist Culture

What drives me to go to work (an advocacy job), go home, and write blog post after blog post about the work I do, share more news of oppression, and sometimes try to stay up later than I should and over-caffeinate, and not set aside time for myself? If you guessed, “Activist culture,” either from experience or the title of this blog post, you are correct. Recently I came to the startling conclusion that taking time off was, in fact, necessary to prevent me from going into total burnout at some point. An article in the Journal of Human Rights Practice notes “Social justice and human rights (SJHR) activists, whose work renders them susceptible to emotional and physical exhaustion (Maslach and Gomes 2006), need tools to tend to their own well-being.”

Working so hard that someone makes themselves physically and emotionally exhausted does not make them more virtuous, it makes them physically and emotionally exhausted. As I requested PTO from work, during which I plan to not write any advocacy-related blog posts, but maybe work on my magical realism novel, and visit a friend in another city, I felt incredibly guilty. But I need it to prevent activist burnout. The same article notes, “The combination of the emotional toll of SJHR work and the culture of selflessness can hasten ‘activist burnout’, a condition, described in more detail later, which often results in people scaling back on or fully disengaging from their SJHR activism.” This is a polite, academic phrasing of “imploding” for the most part. Many activists do not end their advocacy and activist careers well.

Further, not only can trauma travel down generations, it is still occurring to marginalized people. Discrimination can also impact mental health, and activists have a higher rate of mental illness (I recommend two posts in particular; Larkin Taylor-Parker of Traveling Show wrote a two-part series on Talking About Suicide and Healthier Advocates in which all of this is discussed, along with links and methods for self-care).

Activist culture perpetuates the late nights, and the lack of self-care; it calls upon the idea that the only ones worthy of virtue are those who sacrifice everything. The causes of activist burnout, according to 22 interviewed activists in the article, were: Infighting and tense relationships within activist communities, deep sensitivities to injustice, and lack of attention to burnout and self-care in activist communities.

For example:

Eight of the participants cited disharmonious or hostile environments in their SJHR activist organizations or movements as a primary cause of their activist burnout. They felt that the politics within their activist communities were often cruel and deleterious to themselves and other activists.... Several participants shared how they had been ‘bullied’, ‘attacked’, and ‘undermined’ by fellow activists.’

Further:

 One factor that distinguishes SJHR activist burnout from other forms of vocational burnout is the stress and self-inflicted pressure that comes with a deep awareness of injustice and exploitation (Kovan and Dirkx 2003). Eleven of the participants noted how their sensitivities to injustice, and the related stress and pressure, contributed to their burnout, especially as the injustices they were battling appeared too ‘unwieldy’.

Finally:

…all of the activists interviewed for this study experienced some level of activist burnout that required them to leave their activism at least temporarily. Other than one participant, none found in their activist organizations or movements mentoring on coping with burnout or opportunities to have open, honest conversations about burnout. Many of the activists attributed their burnout to the absence of these opportunities.

I have not seen a functional discussion about activist burnout in the disability and autistic communities save for private discussions, Taylor-Parker’s posts, and a slightly irritated post I made in 2015 that got backlash for things it never said. Perhaps there are discussions that I'm not seeing. Or they're just not happening.

Again: someone working themselves to emotional and physical exhaustion is a thing that should be discouraged, not praised. We need to stop encouraging people to sacrifice themselves to movements and burn out quickly. We need advocates that can sustain this long-term without burning out and keep movements going, and grow to become community leaders and elders.

Community Organizing: Part One

Community Organizing: Part One

I have decided to blog about building up a support group with the eventual goal of advocacy for people with mental health needs, like my friend is doing about building a disability community at UGA. Fresh out of the hospital for mental health issues, I couldn't find a self-advocacy group for mental health in DC. I thought about starting an advocacy group straightaway, but thought that seemed a bit hefty to start out with – and made a Facebook support group page instead. It has eight members so far, and we are planning a meetup sometime next week or weekend.

I worry about the culture of tear-down-everything, and I worry about the seeming lack of direction sometimes in various communities. I hear some people talk about destroying things, and in the same breath admit they don't know what they'd build. I also hear some people talk about what dreams they have for change and organizing, and don't have the conceptualization of how to do so yet. Like my friend, I am documenting the building of my group to help give people a framework for maybe building their own group if they want.

Not everyone has the time or energy to build organizations and groups up, and it doesn't always give one the same rush as poking holes in people's arguments on the Internet and “destroying” opponents, but a built from the ground up organization or group can counter common narratives of oppression. It can give people attainable goals to work toward. It sustains community. It is something concrete you can do and know that change is happening, however incremental – and while incremental change might not feel good enough, when combined together, incremental steps form a leap forward. 

This Is What They Think: Protesting Autism Speaks

The ASAN-Atlanta chapter recently protested an Autism Speaks GA 5K Run.

“Would you like to hear what autistics have to say about Autism Speaks?”

They kept walking. They said no. They flipped us off. They told us to go home. One person told us they knew everything about autism already because they had autistic children and had “full acceptance for them.” If one is running or walking for an autism cure, it means you only have acceptance of what you want your children to be. You're accepting of a vision, not the people right in front of you.

This was with the exception of about twenty folks. They took flyers, which I really hope they kept.

An Autism Speaks staff member approached us and started condescending to us about how much Autism Speaks *actually* helps autistic people. The person condescended and acted like we did not have a complete story about Autism Speaks. The person also completely forgot Autistic adults existed in their spiel. “It's so great that you're out here, Autistic voices are integral to the conversation about autism!” Sappy and dripping with fake admiration, forgetting advocacy is not cute. Autism Speaks also really is not that interested in autistic voices. They have no autistic leadership anywhere. Their only autistic member of prominence, John Elder Robison, resigned in 2013.

Finally: “I'll keep on loving,” the person declared, as if we did not also want the best for their children. As if we did not love anyone or anything.

At least it showed that we made somewhat of an impact. They wanted to placate us, lower our guard, not come back next year.

***

The children broke my heart the most. One person's child tried to look at our signs. The parent physically turned them away.

This is what many of them seem to think. Autistics cannot think for themselves. Autistics cannot possibly disagree. They do not seem to want their children to grow up with the hope for anything other than a cure and being “indistinguishable from peers.”

To look at our signs and have them realize there are autistic adults who share a neurotype and who are protesting the event that their parents are at would be heresy. To start accepting themselves would be treachery and, to many, the appearance of giving up (it's really not). Many of these parents think that a cure is what society needs to do to help autistic people. They appeared bewildered and angered at our presence.

I really think most of these people do want the best. But they've been told over and over again, by society and since 2005 by Autism Speaks: Cure autism. At the least, make them indistinguishable from peers. It's a disease. A burden.

I flapped at their children. It was the only way to say, “I am like you and you are okay as you are.”

***

Other Sources on Autism Speaks

• The Caffeinated Autistic's Masterpost
• ASAN & other disability rights groups Joint Letter to AS's Sponsors
• Compilation of Anti-Autism Speaks Posts by Boycott Autism Speaks

Defining Ableism

Defining Ableism

Note: This is U.S.-centric

***

Sometimes it feels hard to define ableism when it is all around us and everywhere and so much more than language. Language contributes to, and perpetuates, ableism. Ableist acts can include language.

But I keep thinking of the time in Fall 2013 when I started having seizures from a medication interaction. The seizures were atypical. No one knew what they were, least of all me, too out of it to tell that something was actually terribly wrong.

What I most vividly recall is not even the night I had my worst episode, but the day after, when my friend and I talked about it and she'd been terrified to call 911 because of the way I was presenting. Because I was slurring incoherently like I was having some sort of non-neurological or physically based episode, and she knew what happens to people in the psychiatric systems if they go wrong. She knew the way I was presenting would land me in the psych ward.

More drastically, I think of the man who ended up in the mental health system during a crisis, and the state of Maine put his cat down and sold his home.

When we have to be so afraid of our psychiatric system...? That's the result of ableism.

Sometimes I think about all the dead and murdered people too, like Dustin Hicks, a recent one close to home. My chapter just had to write a statement on it. The news outlets declined to even reply to my encouragement to publish all or part of the statement. One news report discussed his mother and reasons why she might want to kill him. None mentioned that he deserved to live, or that his death was a tragedy. We know almost nothing about him.

When we have to issue statements over and over again urging people to report responsibly and call our deaths, not our lives, tragedies? That's the result of ableism.

I think of all the various intersections we have between other identities, too. We are not a monolith. I think of the many, many people of color with disabilities who face racism and ableism, sometimes with deadly or injurious consequences. I think of the #FreeNeli campaign, and how long it took many of us white folks to start tweeting on it after the initial call for tweets. I think of Neli himself, unjustly incarcerated for being black and autistic, in isolation. The governor finally did issue a conditional pardon.

I think of Kayleb Moon-Robinson, one of the many students of color and students with disabilities disproportionately referred to law enforcement. An eleven-year-old charged with a felony. The school to prison pipeline is real...

I think of those of us who hold many identify facets, like being LGBTQ+, a person of color, a religious minority, as well as being disabled.

When we have those intersections meet in a dangerous way, amplified by multiple marginalized identities, the ableism and other -isms and -phobias become intertwined, and not the result of purely ableism. These intersections matter.

I think of how someone got kicked out of their house by their roommates for being autistic.

I think about the story they ran on Minnesota and its group homes, the people trapped in the facilities.

I think of history, too. I think of the sordid history of locking people with psychiatric disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and developmental disabilities in institutions...

I think of the nasty history of eugenics. (The .pdf is American and German history of eugenics only, as I lack a college library to find the other physical sources. Also, there's a typo at one point where I meant to say “Indiana passed the first sterilization law in 1907.”). How it affected so many with disabilities (and other intersections).

I think of how nowhere was physically accessible, how Ed Roberts couldn't go to school unless he lived in the infirmary.

I think of activists crawling up the Capitol steps to protest and demand the ADA's passage. Don't let the black and white photographs in the coverage of the Capitol Crawl let you think that this was long-gone history. We only just hit 25 years of the ADA.

I think of the long, long history ableism has. Ableism is not new.

***

Could I go on? Yes.

I fear being too depressing. I fear a lot of things. Mostly, I am sometimes frightened of the world.

We could stand to be gentler of people still learning the new words that change so much. Ableism is far more than a list of words and we need all the good hearts we can find. Clumsy language on the part of someone who is trying (and who may have communications-based disabilities!) is something to be less concerned about than the dead and wounded around us. Clumsy language on the part of someone who is trying should, perhaps, receive calling in, not calling out.

Ableism seems insurmountable, and there will never be a great sweeping moment where we crush it entirely. But I think we're making a dent. We've come 25 years since the ADA. Seattle has some crappy curbs that Disability Rights Washington is taking them to task for. Ableism still goes on and on. But we're making a dent. The largest non-profit in the nation dedicated to eradicating autism had its donations drop. Their president is resigning, though this may have been a planned move. We are producing documentaries of our pain and sorrow, of our challenges and stories, of our hopes and dreams.

We have people among us becoming lawyers and professionals and influencing that way. We have others in grassroots advocacy and policy advocacy. We have those whose advocacy is for themselves only, fighting to survive and be heard and respected (and that's okay). We want our brethren to survive. 

Autistic Pride Day 2015

For Autistic Pride Day, I want to look at where we've been. I want us to move forward together. 

*This is formatted to be linked to on Tumblr, hence talking about Autistic Tumblr.*

Where We've Been

Read this. It's where Autistic Tumblr has been.

Autistic Tumblr has been around for quite some time, starting small, growing ever larger. Of course, Autistic Tumblr is not the extent of activism in general, but I'm posting this on Tumblr, so I recommend reading it. @iamthethunder was actually there, so read that. I can't write to the history of Autistic Tumblr very well because I only popped up in 2013.

I also know that Tumblr isn't the beginning or end of activism, so. There are so many things we have participated in off Tumblr with people who are not on Tumblr. The history of autistic self advocacy as we know it tends to go back to 1993.

Autism is a particularly interesting part of neurodiversity. I don't say this just because I'm autistic. Neurodiversity was born out of the autistic community's desires to separate itself from a parent-based movement in the 1990s. I would argue that's a movement for a modern age, one that needs to be embraced.


“This is important, so take a moment to consider it: Autism is a way of being. It is not possible to separate the person from the autism. Therefore, when parents say, “I wish my child did not have autism, what they're really saying is, “I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.”

Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure.”1 Jim Sinclair penned these words in 1993, and presented them at an autism conference as part of a larger piece entitled “Don't Mourn For Us.” It is largely considered the foundation piece of neurodiversity and the autistic self advocacy movement. Sinclair described the experience of being displayed at autism conferences “a self-narrating zoo exhibit,” where parents of autistic people would pepper them with questions about autism and not expect self advocacy. When Sinclair wrote Don't Mourn for Us, this surprised parents and created anger. Sinclair and others infiltrated listservs, conferences, and met other autistic people, and started talking for themselves. There was great controversy about this – they got kicked out of spaces quite frequently for being self advocates and activists.

Sinclair also created Autism Network International, a group comprised of listservs, forums and a print newsletter, with resources for autistic people, and also for parents of autistic people. ANI also hosted Autreat for many years, a space for autistic people to meet in person and have workshops.

ANI marked a fundamental split between parent groups at this point. Previously, advocacy work for autistics had been done under a cure culture mindset and by parents.

If one considers the larger disability rights framework, autistic self-advocacy developed particularly late, three years after the ADA was passed, in 1993. A group for autistics run by autistics that worked for change in public policy did not develop until 2006.

An example of when autistic advocates took a fight against cure culture occurred in 2007; Joseph Kras analyzed the response to the NYU Child Study Center’s attempt to raise negative awareness about autism and other psychological, psychiatric and neurological conditions. He writes that the “campaign consisted of several ransom notes posted on large billboards, ion kiosks, and at construction sites in New York City and published in Newsweek and New York Magazine.”2 The messages existed as dire warnings of what autism and the other conditions would do to people’s children. The Ransom Notes campaign response came swiftly, Kras notes, not in the form of lawyers arguing over whether it existed as a publicity stunt, but by a “grass-roots internet protest led by self advocates.”3

The president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), Ari Ne’eman, posted a petition, emailed list-servs, garnered attention from multiple disability rights organizations, posted a sample letter on the ASAN website and distributed contact information for NYU and its board of directors. The arguments Kras describes them as using based themselves on concepts seen in Mel Baggs’ work in the 90s and again later, in the 2010s, after the Ransom Notes affair: that the ads stigmatized disabled people along with creating a sensation of doom that would not encourage parents to seek supports for their children, with the implication that disabled people should not be stigmatized but accepted and all disabled children and adults should receive the proper supports to navigate a world not made for them. 

It has largely been marked as the time when neurodiversity came of age.

Social media has been integral to these movements. This is a movement which is perfect for my generation and newer generations with ever expanding networks. 

Where Do We Want To Go?

Inclusion and intersectionality, in my honest opinion, have to be key components of anything moving forward (I do have a section for it on my Resources page). Autistics of color have routinely been shut out of leadership positions in the broad disability rights movement, but not because they have nothing to say. There is a reason why you don't hear about the Black Panthers working during the 504 sit-ins with disability rights activists, and it is difficult to locate autistics of color in the birth of the neurodiversity movement. They may have been relegated to lesser positions or denied opportunities to speak. Autistics of color are also misdiagnosed frequently, which could be another reason.

However, disability rights organizations in the United States are also starting to pay more attention to the regular mistreatment of Autistics of color. I credit autistics of color themselves for pushing for it. I look to see the day where marginalized communities can figure out a really great approach to intersectionality. Oppressions tend to layer within one another, from LGBTQIA and queer oppression to racism to ableism. I want communities to build up, and up, and up.

I also look to having a close-knit community.

As @iamthethunder said, “ I hope it starts to feel small, though, and that people here are never content, always reaching for what comes next.” Cohesive action will be the name of the game in forging new paths of autism acceptance. Caring about each other and working to put differences aside will help. I am already proud of Autistic Tumblr and being Autistic.

On this Autistic Pride Day 2015, I challenge you to not only have pride in being autistic (if you can't, that is OK too. I am not blaming any autistic person for how they feel about their autism), but to think outside the box in regards to forming a thoughtful, progressive community. I want communities to build up and never stop. I never want this community to be in a position where one loose Jenga tile can send it all falling down.





1Jim Sinclair, http://www.autreat.com/dont_mourn.html

2 Joseph F. Kras, “The “Ransom Notes” Affair: When the Neurodiversity Movement Came of Age,” Disability Studies Quarterly 10, no. 1 (2010).

3 Ibid.

Acceptance Is (Autism Acceptance Month 2015)

Acceptance Is (Autism Acceptance Month 2015) 

cross-posted on Tumblr

I just re-read the story of Jess Wilson and her daughter Brooke with Brooke's grandfather (Jess's father). How he did not make Brooke give him a hug until she was ready.

(I can understand why parents and relatives want hugs and kisses and touch and verbal affection. It is society's normal, and it is not their fault that everyone expects it).

But acceptance is respect. Acceptance is knowing that even if you want it, an Autistic person's dignity and autonomy and right to choose what kinds of affection to display is more important. Acceptance is knowing that a nonspeaking person doesn't have to say “I love you” out loud to communicate the sentiment.

Some would say acceptance is not fighting to save an Autistic person, accepting defeat. But quack cures and forced exposure to unpleasant, painful stimuli and compliance training will not, because these inverventions can do much harm, and an autistic person does not need to be saved from autism.

(I can understand why a culture that tells us being autistic is wrong can have an impact on people, and the professionals will tell people that 40 hours of ABA is necessary to have an impact).

But I would argue that acceptance is love and love is what nurtures anyone. Acceptance is love and respect. Acceptance should show with people's actions. It's not enough to say you accept someone and then try to change them into someone they are not.

For instance, extinguishing stimming because it's “embarrassing” or forcing them to look you in the face or forcing someone to look in other people's faces would not be acceptance. Some good examples of acceptance include what Brooke's grandfather did, above; actively working to dispel myths about autism; listening to someone's behavior instead of dismissing it; listening to Autistic people and boosting their voices; and working to raise a generation of Autistic people respectfully.

Acceptance is also hoping there will be more generations of autistic people instead of an attempt at preventing us. We should be here. The world would lose part of its diversity without us. And we have a right to exist.

Other Autistic People Taught Me What Autism Means (Video)

Oh look a video.

Transcript, though captioned (fairly) accurately:

Rough transcript, captions should be listed at some point on the video.  I wrote in my own and it’s setting the timings?

This is an address to parents and people who care for and assist autistic people.

I have been feeling *more* autistic lately, if that makes sense – just using echoes more, realizing scripts more, thinking about things I do. I mean, I flapped at a cat for five minutes the other day.

To other Autistic people…

I stim more, I am more open… and I that’s because I follow so many people on Tumblr and talk on Facebook a lot with people.

Being around other Autistic people is important.

Being around other Autistic people lets you know you can do things with them and also on your own, when situations permit. It gives you almost an internal permission to let go. When I started the k-pagination blog, I was like “Will only write activism posts and reblog activism posts. Serious stuff.” And now it’s just… I need the joy of being Autistic. I will write posts that might seem a bit silly. I will start tagging with the echoes I always had in my head and never used.

Being around other Autistic people is important.

If you’re a parent or caregiver, reading this, let your autistic kids and adults (if you have legal guardianship or something), be around other Autistic people. Don’t isolate them from neurodivergence. That in of itself can be as harmful as a physical seclusion room.

This is not my usual, long and flowing eloquent and bit detached activism. This is an autistic person asking for people to respect lived experiences. I was like your child.

I climbed trees, I ran around shrieking and screaming all the time, and even if I did now, it wouldn’t make me less than. I did a lot of things in those alarmist documentaries. I am worthy of dignity and autonomy. So are your kids and relatives, whether nonspeaking or speaking or need aides and what level of supports they need.

And other Autistic people are the ones who taught me self advocacy and activism. It was just a label before I met Autistic people I talk to and call friends and acquaintances and respect. Though psychiatrists and psychologists can be useful, other Autistic people taught me what autism means, not them.

And to Autistic people watching this, you have the right to be around other Autistic people and talk and share your experiences, and have validation.

The Problem Isn't "Infighting"

Recently, I posted “Polarization” and “When You're Not Loud and Angry Enough” on here, and on Tumblr. Discussions have sprung up, and I hope they continue, because the way the Autistic community treats other members of the community needs a fair amount of addressing. The discussions that have been started on Tumblr following those posts are not “in-fighting,” as I've seen the discussions called. I'm going to get more specific here and less jargon-filled than those posts and also add on extended commentary to reactions I've seen to the posts.

–

There are no such thing as good Autistics and bad Autistics, to be explicit. If good Autistic people are accused of sucking up to NTs and non-autistics and bad Autistic people are the heroes who actually call out people, how on earth do you expect solidarity within a community when people are trying to strike a divide? I know people who, on Facebook, Tumblr, elsewhere, who have been told that they are just goody-goodies and that they have no place in activism. It could have been me.

When you talk about a community, you take into account everyone. The people who feel guilt because they pass as neurotypical, the people who don't take pride in being Autistic, the people who maybe even want a cure, the people who feel guilty because they don't always have the capability of fighting every battle, the people who need accommodations, the people who need support staff, the people who need neither, and the list goes on.

You take into account the people who disagree with you.

The original posts were never about allies, and I did write it as a semi-response to the TPGA debacle – but not from the perspective of ally worthiness. I see people taking it that way anyway. The posts were about that there is often no room for disagreement in this discourse, and more importantly, that the way people are treated (like me, and others) when we disagree, people yell at us.

I should not have to constantly remove myself from Autistic spaces because people are being abusive with their language and treatment of other people, Autistic or neurotypical, to be clear. This is not tone-policing, as someone told me it was. It is not tone-policing to request a stop to the endless barrage of explosions and abusive language. And abusive language doesn't even have to be in all capital letters, to be honest: it comes in the form of “you disagree with me, so here's why you should screw off.”

The problem isn't the “infighting.” The problem is the continued mantra that asking people to stop being flat out mean and abusive is silencing, but yelling and intimidation are not silencing, and if you say they are, you are tone-policing.

When You're Not "Loud and Angry Enough"

We clearly need to figure something out, as a community. When the Autistic community has scared a good amount of Autistic people into not being able to say things, what has it become? I was one of them, for a while. I’m not going into direct confrontations on Facebook (I don’t have spoons to deal with the arguing that would happen), but I’m writing this post.

The goal of a community is to not echo-chamber itself into only allowing certain ideas and viewpoints into it, which, frankly, has been a lot of what I’m seeing. People are attracted to the ideal that explosive, sometimes abusive behavior is okay when you’re part of an oppressed group. We as a community have dealt with a lot of pain. We’ve lost a lot of children, teenagers and adults to caretakers, and we’ve been abused in the name of therapy. I would not deny this community anger at things that have been done and are still being done.

The echo-chambering I’m seeing, though, is that if you’re not loud and angry and constantly scouring the bits of the Internet to confront and call out people, you are too polite and constantly want to make nice. The echo-chambering I’m seeing is permitting the silencing of some Autistic people through fear while saying that you’re being silenced when someone has a different opinion than you or wants you to stop yelling.

The dynamics of a community, the fabric of its being, does not rely on explosive techniques. The explosiveness I can no longer be quiet about drives potential allies and newly diagnosed Autistic people away as an unsafe space, and more importantly, many Autistic people may look at this community and wonder what is getting done, wonder if they even want to be part of it, and credibility is damaged. And what will we tell the people who aren’t privy to our conversations and are not able to join in, who may rely on us to help enact change in the community and society? What then?

Polarization

Polarization

 

I am sometimes afraid of “Autistic spaces.” I get afraid of the fact that hey, if I don’t like the fact that people are yelling about things because I have trauma in my past related to intense anger/yelling/emotional abuse… I’ll be told I’m tone-policing, that I’m a goody-goody with the neurotypicals and non-autistics.

“If you don’t like our anger, just leave, if you don’t like our anger, you’re trying to silence us.”

I am not trying to silence anyone.

There is a difference between explosive anger and righteous anger.

There is a difference between calling someone out and completely lambasting them into the next century with an explosion.

I’m trying to navigate a world of activism where if I disagree with someone, I might get yelled at – by other Autistics, of all people. I’m trying to tread a line between telling someone to stop triggering me and tone policing.

You can’t claim to want a safe space for Autistic people, then summarily explode at other Autistics who disagree with you because yes, we have other opinions, and no, it’s not because we just want to suck up to neurotypicals and non-autistics. Sometimes we have other methods of activism that still include calling people out.

It has a polarizing effect on the community. When people accuse us, the less angry-sounding, of being textbooks for neurotypicals, have you considered: maybe we don’t always have the energy to fight every battle? Maybe we don’t have the energy to yell and scream? Maybe we also don’t feel like triggering other people with explosive language?

I should not feel unsafe in Autistic and autism community spaces both from neurotypicals/non-autistics and other Autistic people.