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1:13am May 17, 2012

swive:

okay

okay

okay so i know how this is going to come across but i’m going to ask anyway

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I don’t know why anyone else does. I just know why I do. 

I was really treated like crap for looking weird. For me that included both moving in ways other people don’t move, and failing to move in ways other people do move.

And so I’ve made a point of stimming openly, publicly, and shamelessly.  And talking about it. Because I don’t want the people who hate me for it to win. And because I want anyone born now to be more able to do it without feeling the way I have about it. And because I want to make other people who see it feel less ashamed of themselves.  And I know I’ve already had that effect because people have written to me about it over the years. 

Some of the things you describe confuse me too. Like I don’t know what it’s like to decide to get into a stimming mood or whatever.  I rarely decide to stim, except in situations where I know a certain movement helps with something. If I have any choice at all it’s in the opposite direction. My body wants to stim and I tell it not to. Although I’m not great with that.  If it happens it happens, for the most part. Generally when I make a video of stimming it’s after it starts happening or after I have stopped suppressing it. 

But. I don’t care if someone decides stimming is cool. Better than a lot of the alternatives. I don’t even care if someone whose brain is not inclined to stimming does it on purpose, as long as they’re not making fun of anyone. 

Also a lot more people are talking about it because of the Loud Hands Project, which among other things has collected videos of people stimming. The name comes from something a lot of us were told, “quiet hands”.  Disobeying people who taught us our natural body movements were something we were supposed to hide, is quite important.

I could say a lot more but I’m tired.