as small as a world and as large as alone

10:55pm June 23, 2014

karalianne:

andromedalogic:

freezepeachinspector replied to your post: “is using stim toys if you’re…

Clarification: hyperconcern with appropriation, and the fact that this person has been informed or has otherwise internalized that they couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic, are the two big things wrong on the internet?

no, actually! i’m sorry, i struggled to specify my problems with the thing and eventually gave up, so it was bound to be misinterpreted

imo, the things that have gone wrong:

a) a definition of ‘cultural appropriation’ that makes no sense and often glosses over instances of real culture-stealing, while criticizing stuff that is harmless

b) the idea that accommodations designed for people with disabilities are exclusive to them — the idea that You Must Be This Disabled To Ride This Ride — which is actually kind of an ableist idea, i.e., ‘if you can walk AT ALL you shouldn’t be using a wheelchair’. in this case: everyone stims. autistic people happen to stim more. disabled people who push for accommodations are often pushing for universal design, which means, all our needs are seen as being on the same level — if a nondisabled person sees the value of an accommodation, that’s a GOOD thing.

c) i’m not sure if, at this point in time, Autistic culture is enough of a thing that you could appropriate it? OP has ADHD and as such, their stimming is pathologized as well, so even if appropriation were a concern here, i don’t think they need to worry about it. and just — i also think the watering-down of the definition of ‘appropriation’ takes the focus off large-scale efforts by white/Western people to steal, make money off of, and wipe out indigenous/non-western/like, MOST OF THE WORLD’s cultures. and applying the same term to a person using stim toys is deeply disturbing.

d) ????? SO MANY THINGS.

Dear everyone who wonders about stimming and non-autistic people doing it:

Read this post. And then go check out this tag. And this one.

To my mind, ADHD fidgeting is really low-level stimming. We distinguish between the two on the blog because a lot of people don’t understand the term “stimming” and/or don’t like applying the term to themselves. But so many more are just so happy to have a word that describes what it is they’re doing and to know they aren’t alone.

I never once thought of using these terms as “appropriation” because I was introduced to the concept of stimming by autistic people, realized that I stim too (heck, I even flap when I’m really excited about something, and I go up and down when I’m upset and side to side when I’m happy), and was never told that the word was only for autistic people when I started using it to describe my own stims. Because for goodness’ sake, call a spade a spade. Be blunt and all that.

Also the word stimming – originally – doesn’t come from autistic people, and is not specific to autistic people.  It was used for DD people and ‘psychotic’ children alike, which included autistic people but lots of other people too.

61 notes