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10:40pm August 8, 2014

genderblinditem:

I was thinking about this today even before I read this essay from a queer person with drawfism but it reinforced some stuff I was already thinking and I want to try to tease some of those thoughts out from my brain. 

My family was always ready to accept me being queer. Like, it was never a question in my mind that they would love me no matter my gender identity or sexual orientation. My mother in particular was always very careful to make this clear. 

But at the same time, it has been a long struggle to get my family to accept that I am autistic and that this disability forms a core part of my identity. Like as in I’ve been fighting that battle for 10+ years and they’ve only recently come to a place of acceptance about it. And that struggle delayed me feeling secure and safe enough to publicly embrace other parts of my identity. 

And not having support for my autism absolutely delayed me coming out as queer. Not to myself, but to everyone else. I never felt safe being openly queer growing up because I never felt safe expressing a sexuality at all. Having a disability that impacted my communication and verbal abilities, especially under stress, coupled with a lack of a supportive adult in my life, made me feel like no romantic or sexual activity was safe. 

I knew I was autistic and I knew I was queer but I didn’t feel able to be one without the other and I only had the backing of my family with one of those identities. And that’s had a huge impact on my ability to embrace all parts of myself and integrate both identities into my day to day life. 

I don’t really have a conclusion for this but it felt important just to write it down. Hopefully other people will understand and be able to relate. 

I have extended family who are absolutely accepting of my autism, to the point it startled me a good bit because I look very autistic and they didn’t even bat an eyelash the first time they met me.  They’re used to autism, I guess, and other neurological oddities.  They seemed very accepting of neurodiversity in general, without ever knowing or caring about the word or any of the diagnostic terms.  But they are also racist, even though that part of the family is also apparently multiracial, go figure.

I will never understand situations like that.  But I wanted to say I understand being in a situation where your family is amazingly accepting of one thing and totally unaccepting of something else.