Hey everyone! Welcome to this week's episode of Rapid Fire Answers.
Where I answer your questions, hopefully briefly.
[theme music]
First question is from anonymous on tumblr,
and they ask:
"Is it acceptable to refer to oneself as autistic without a diagnosis?
"I don't feel ok with not having an assessment and definitely want one
"but given that I can't get one right now,
"I feel like I have a potential way to explain the way I am to some others
"but not enough confirmation to use the word."
Hi anonyomous,
I totally get where you're coming from.
It's a sad fact that autism assessments for adults are expensive.
And they can be hard to get to.
And, a lot of the time, insurance won't pay for them.
So, yes. I totally understand when you have barriers
in your way to getting an assessment,
but you're pretty sure you are autistic,
you've self-diagnosed, you've done all your research,
and there are some people in the community who are against self-diagnosis
but I think that's super silly and I'm not one of them.
I am all for informed, careful, thoughtful self-diagnosis
because if I hadn't self-diagnosed with sensory processing disorder,
I would've never stumbled upon information on autism
and if were to have never self-diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder,
I would've never known to pursue an actual official assessment
and so I would
not have my official diagnosis now if a couple of years ago I hadn't
self diagnosed from what I was reading on the internet and books from the library.
I feel 100% that if you are autistic,
you are a part of the community
and I feel like you should definitely
feel free to use the word autistic to describe yourself,
if that's what you are
and maybe just, to be transparent about it, when you're telling people,
do mention that you are self diagnosed
and that you're pretty sure but you're still working on the professional assessment.
If anybody gives you any grief, point them in my direction and I'll tell them what's what for you.
Second question was actually
basically submitted twice by two different anonymous users on tumblr
Same question, similar wording,
it is:
"Hi Amythest, I love your blog and videos,
"but there's something that confuses me,
"you tend to write 'a/Autistic' with a lowercase slash uppercase "a"
"and I don't quite understand what that means
"Do lowercase 'a' and capital 'A' represent different meanings for the same word?
"Is it an individual identity thing?"
Second anonymous user asks:
"Why do you write 'a/Autistic' with a capital 'A'?
"I've not seen that before."
First anonymous, you are right.
It is an individual identity thing.
Just as some in the Deaf community prefer to be refered to and refer to themselves as
Deaf with a capital 'D'
to indicate culture and community and identity,
I feel the same way about being Autistic.
Sometimes in my writing I'll use a lowercase 'a',
to refer to just general autistic people,
sometimes I'll use a uppercase 'A' or lowercase 'a' slash uppercase 'A' a/Autistic
just to include all autistic people
including those who might not identify as capital 'A', community culture Autistic.
For me though, I am Autistic with a capital 'A'
and I'm very proud of my community and the cool Autistic culture that we have built.
Third question comes from Diane Shush(?)
Shush...
Shush? Diane Shush on tumblr
and they ask:
"Were you symptomatic as a child?
"If so, why didn't your parents react."
There's a couple of assumptions going on here.
First, I prefer not to use the term 'symptomatic' to refer to autistic traits
and tendencies
in childhood.
Because autism isn't really a disease, or an illness that has symptoms,
it really is neurological or developmental traits.
But yes. I've been autistic my whole life,
I've always had these autistic traits and tendencies
and when I ask my mum or we look back together and think about what
my teachers were saying about me and what my experiences were like with other kids,
it's very obvious that I always had these autistic traits and tendencies. Like,
flapping my hands or special interests or trouble with communication or motor dyspraxia.
The second assumption here seems to be
inherently that I had two parents which, I didn't. My mum was a single mum
and that my parents would've been non-autistic
but that's not the case either.
Part of the reason I went undiagnosed for so long is the fact that
I come from a literal autistic family.
My mum is autistic.
She recently got her professional diagnosis
at 42 years old.
Go mum!
Proud of you!
And my brother, who is a year younger than me, is also autistic.
So,
when I was growing up and my mum was raising me,
things that other people would've picked up on right away as being different,
weren't different for us.
We were all autistic.
It was our normal.
I think for a long time,
we were kind of under the assumption that the world was weird.
So yes, I've always been autistic.
At times very obviously so,
even though I did try to pass as neurotypical as a child
and my mum noticed
that I was different or that I was like her
but she didn't know the word for it
and she didn't know to be looking out for developmental disabilities.
She just though I was very sensitive and quirky and kinda strange.
Ok, last question is from anonymous on tumblr.
They ask:
"What music are you into, if any?"
Now I listen to a lot of different things
but I think this is a cool question so if you guys
want to see what I'm listening to lately, what some of my favourite bands are,
I'm going to list them in the video description
cause it would take a really long time to list them all and I'd probably forget a bunch
and then feel bad
So check out the video description for what I'm listening to lately.
Thanks for watching!