Call for Contributions: Quotes from Autistic Adults Wanted for New Workbook
Want to be featured in the Autism, Identity and Me workbook for adults? - Autistic adults: Submit your wisdom for our new workbook for a chance to be featured.
After our first collaboration (Autism, Identity and MeA Practical Workbook to Empower Autistic Children and Young People) was a hit, Rebecca and I are looking for Autistic adults who would like a chance to have their thoughts and words of wisdom featured in our next workbook (Autism, Identity and Me: A Practical Workbook to Empower Adults, release date TBC).
SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED!
A HUGE thank you to everyone who responded to our call for submissions.
After putting out the call, we were quickly flooded with hundreds of pages of responses from Autistic people all over the world.
Now Rebecca and I must sort the responses, and we will let those who are chosen know whether they can expect to be featured via the email provided in the form.
Thanks again!
Almost all of the questions are optional.
Only two questions, after you enter your email address (which we will not share and will only use if we need to reach out to you for additional information), are required (to confirm eligibility and to grant us permission to use your words).
We do NOT expect anyone to answer every single question.
After confirming eligibility and giving us permission to share your words of wisdom in our workbook, you can fill out any questions you like and feel called to answer.
You can fill out all of the questions, some of the questions, one of them, none of them, or only the questions that resonate with you.
We ask that you answer only questions you feel comfortable with us publishing your answers to and that resonate with you personally.
Please DO SKIP any questions you’re uncomfortable answering, that you would not want us to share your answer in our book, or that stress you out (or if any of them just don’t inspire you to answer).
I filled out the questionnaire, and now I wish I had saved my responses. The questions caused me to think about and write about things that I think I should also publicly blog about.
While the questions were focused on Autism, I believe my experience of finally accepting that I'm autistic in my 50's is very tied to North American settler-colonial culture, and my experience of that culture as a White (Scottish, Irish, French descent) cis-hetero (enough) male who turned out to be Autistic.
I rejected the possibility/probability I was Autistic because, in this culture, any divergence from what is subjectively determined as "normal" is pathologized and ostracized. I didn't think of myself as "flawed", so I didn't see what this alleged "disorder" had to do with me. I lost so much of who I could have been by trying to present as something that I'm not.
The eugenics mindset, which primarily grew within the dominant North American (Canada + USA) culture, has only rebranded itself and never went away.
One of the questions related to what I wished the rest of the world knew about Autistic people.
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The term "rest of the world" is a bit confusing to me.
I wish the dominant North American settler culture was more open to diversity, and that includes recognizing that Autistic people exist and are being forced by this culture to pretend to be something other than what they are in order to not be attacked as an "other" in some friend-enemy binary divide. While some people only attribute that friend-enemy distinction ideology to German jurist Carl Schmitt, I believe it is a core to North American settler-colonial identity, values, and culture which predated what happened within Germany.
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Note: This is not a partisan issue in my personal lived experience. It is not like the performative progressive we see within the dominant self-identifying "left" are all that different than the more direct, open and honest "right". As an Autistic person I actually appreciate the honesty of the self-identifying "right" as I know where I disagree with them, rather than the "saving face" performative social lying on the self-identifying "left".