Ten Random Facts Meme, nomnomnom.

[shamanicshaymin]

Greetings to all my new friends from the Multifandom Friending Meme! I hope you enjoy your stay here. Here's some random facts to help you get acquainted:

1. I'm an English major who's just starting the fall semester! After several years of trying and being pushed back by prerequisites, I'm finally in a Creative Writing class. Booyah!

2. I've inherited my sister's chinchilla, Ryuichi, after she went to SCAD to earn her master's degree. Since neither of us are into "Gravitation" anymore, I've taken to calling my little gray fuzzball "Ryu" for short, like the dude from "Street Fighter."

3. I was diagnosed with autism when I was around 12-15 months old (I can never remember) by my father, who's a clinical geneticist. I also deal with depression, which really fucking sucks to live with. Thus, I do not take ableism lightly, neither do I tolerate people who "self-diagnose" themselves through the Internet or toss around autism or mental illnesses like it's something trendy. I'm virulently against Autism Speaks and hedgehog hiss at the mention of it.

4. I may or may not be a gray asexual; sometimes I'm interested in sex and have a drive, but I'm not easily attracted to people unless I get to become close to them, and sex is not my #1 priority of things to do in a relationship. I'm still confused about my sexuality, hence I immerse myself heavily in the LGBTQA crowd and am a strong supporter of equal rights and representation in literature, movies, etc.

5. My dream is to finish and publish novels so that I would go down in history as a classic author (or at least gain a massive and lasting cult following). A book I'm procrastinating forever on writing is about ragdolls, plushies, and toys, and lots of scary and horrible things happen to them. By scary and horrible, I mean Nightmare Fuel Acid Trips like in RPG Maker horror games. I'm a bit of a Nightmare Fuel fetishist, in case you couldn't tell. <.<;;;

6. My favorite Pokemon are Togekiss and Shaymin, with Sylveon as my favorite Eeveelution, and Fairy as my favorite type. My Digimon Crest would be Love. If I were sorted at Hogwarts, I'd be Ravenclaw, followed by Hufflepuff. If I was a Final Fantasy class, I'd choose between Black Mage and Summoner. My mains in Smash Bros are Lucario, Jigglypuff, Ness, Lucas, and Ice Climbers. My favorite Disney princess is Belle. My favorite color is purple, especially dark purple and lavender. In Choir, I'm a Soprano I. My dream roles for musical theater are Christine Daae (Phantom of the Opera), Belle (Beauty and the Beast), and Johanna (Sweeney Todd). I'm an Earth Dragon, Leo, and my soul troll is Nepeta Leijon.

7. I love magical girls, so stuff like Sailor Moon brings me glee. I'm also fond of dark/psycological shoujo/magical girls, such as Utena, Princess Tutu, and Madoka. More action-oriented stuff like Escaflowne and Rayearth is good too. :D

8. I'm an enormous animation nerd who will fight the Animation Age Ghetto with the biggest boxing gloves imaginable. From the Disney animated canon to Don Bluth, to Pixar and Dreamworks to Studio Ghibli, to more obscure fare (ex. A Monster in Paris, The Secret of Kells) to movies practically nobody has heard of (ex. Ringing Bell, The Sea Prince and Fire Child), I'm there.

9. My favorite characters in no particular order are: Shadow the Hedgehog, Geno, Toadette, Vivian, Luigi, Yoshi, Homura Akemi, Mami Tomoe, Meta Knight, Mewtwo, Lucario, Fluttershy, Loid, Jeff Andonuts, and um... many more.

10. My great-aunt, Flora Roberts, was Stephen Sondheim's agent. :D

Comments

[tropicsbear]

Out of curiosity, why don't you like Autism Speaks? (Despite having a younger brother with autism, I've never of it until now. Probably because I'm in a different country.)

[shamanicshaymin]

Autism Speaks is an ableist organization disguising themselves as a charity. Here's a small list to show how shady they are:

- There's no autistic people on their board. This is the equivalent of having a Women's Rights organization run entirely by men.
- Only 3% of the money donated to them is used to help families and autistic people.
- They want to cure autism, and they treat autistic people like they're diseased non-entities who ruin the lives of neurotypical people.
- They never talk about the experiences of autistic people, only neurotypical parents who "suffer" with having autistic children. And I emphasize children; autistic adults don't exist to Autism Speaks, apparently.
- They were behind the "I Am Autism" public service announcement video, which goes into the HORROR and EVIL and TRAGEDY of autism and "what autism stole" from families of autistic children, complete with narration by a disembodied voice. While it's been removed from their Youtube channel, neither Autism Speaks or the director of the video (Alfonso Cuarón, who also directed the third Potter movie) have apologized for it.
- "Autism Every Day" is even worse. Their former vice president considered driving off a bridge with her autistic daughter, but decided against it because, 'cause oh no, she also had a non-autistic child waiting for her at home! She says this to the camera within earshot of the autistic daughter in the room on screen.
- They're allied with the Judge Rotenberg Center, an institution that frequently uses electroshock on autistic people as punishment for even minor infractions.
- There's tons of cases where Autism Speaks has turned their backs against the very people they're supposed to help (including even neurotypical moms!), listed in the link that I'll provide below.

You can find more information here. I'll close this off with a quote from this post why "curing" me of autism is so problematic for me:

Autism Speaks would have you believe that we are living tragedies waiting for the day when we can be cured, when nearly every Autistic person I know does not want to be cured and does not believe in this concept of a cure. Curing me of autism conjures the same mentality as the idea of curing me of femininity; it's so fundamentally perverted and disturbing that words fail to describe how appalling and horrific the idea of severing an essential part of our humanity is to us. No, being Autistic is not sunshine and rainbows. But it is as much a part of who we are as our other attributes.

[tropicsbear]

I just want to comment on the "curing autism" thing. I'm aware that there are high-functioning (not quite sure if this is the proper term) autistic individuals, but TBH I've never met one before.*

My brother's thirteen, but can't speak in full sentences, still babbles nonsense words and can't communicate clearly (either written or non-verbal or verbal), pretty much wouldn't know how to take care of himself if left alone, and has violent tantrums if he doesn't get what he wants. All the other students I've met at his clinic/school are the same.

So, yes, I agree that people who have autism aren't diseased non-entities, but I can see why there are families who're looking or hoping for a cure.

*EDIT: I hope the comment didn't come across as offensive. I poked around the links you gave and just finished reading the one about functioning labels. "Severity" doesn't seem like the right word either.

Also, I'll be honest and clarify that I'm not quite sure where I stand with regards to a "cure" for autism. For those individuals who can't communicate, who have stims that end up hurting them, or who are end up accidentally hurting others, I can understand where their families are coming from.

IDK if you read/saw it, but in an entry a while back, I wrote about a tantrum that my brother threw. We didn't know why he suddenly got angry, but he started throwing around things in his room, pinching and kicking and biting my parents and sisters and I when we tried to calm him down.

He couldn't tell us why he was upset and we couldn't figure it out and it was an emotionally draining two hours before he finally calmed down. So I'm not going to lie and say I didn't wish that there was some sort of way that we could help him.

"Cure" isn't the right word, because autism is not some disease to be horrified of, but what the word represents is what I'm talking about.

[shamanicshaymin]

There's organizations that help autistic people with communication and socializing, and helping them with things that come naturally to neurotypicals. I certainly don't object to that at all! imo, this is where the money and autism research should be going to, as opposed to punishment by electroshock therapy and whatnot. My brother's also autistic and is "lower down the scale" than I am, so to speak, but after plenty of schooling and working with disability programs, he's able to talk (though his way of phrasing sentences still isn't perfect) and express himself better, and now has a paying job at Peter Piper Pizza.

Animal Assisted Therapy has recently been discovered as a great, healthy way of helping kids with autism. :)

[tropicsbear]

My brother's enrolled in a sped school/clinic right now and while there are difficult days, he's come a long way since he was younger. I will never understand why electroshock therapy is still a thing. Wasn't this disproven years ago?

I've heard about animal-assisted therapy, but I'm not quite sure if there are any places like that here.

[bobojungle]

Hmmm. I think the nature of self diagnosis is a pretty complex situation. I do understand why it’s not a good idea to diagnosis yourself based on sources such as Wikipedia because those sources don’t have enough information on the condition and they don’t include people’s experiences either.

However, I think they are many reasons why someone may choose to self-diagnose themselves. Getting a diagnosis can be pretty expensive and transportation may be an issue. Also, autism diagnoses are based off on the doctor’s judgement of whether or not someone should get services. If the doctor thinks someone is coping well, they won’t get an official diagnosis. Doctors also have a chance of being wrong, too. Most doctors use criteria that’s only effective in diagnosing cisgendered white males, and not really cis women, transgendered, or people who are racial minorities.

Seeing how Autism and other mental illnesses are badly stigmatized, the people who claim be Autistic for attention or as excuses are a minority. Even if there are some people who do it, I don’t think it’s fair to judge people who self diagnose because there are barriers for getting a proper diagnosis.