A small (re)introduction

Welcome, everyone! This is my new blog, named because I love wordplay, and because my attitude towards life is, through the eyes of many, overly idealistic. I feel it's just coloured by the radically romantic ideal that I, as an autistic woman, am deserving of my own voice to speak with. My language, mannerisms, and ideals are filled with flourishes of dreams and thoughts.

Before I get started, I want to make my reasons for starting this project clear.

Ask yourself this: If you are neurotypical, think back to all the stories on autism you have seen in the media actually featured an autistic person or interviewed someone who was autistic? How often did stories on autism portray it as a tragedy, a nuisance, or a horrible epidemic? Or, on the other hand, how many portrayals of autism display autistic people as savants (Savant syndrome differs from autism, though in some individuals, like Daniel Tammet, they overlap) with near inhuman abilities?

I do not have superhuman abilities. I cannot count cards like Rain Man. I am not an object of pity or sickened by vaccines.

Other autistic people will note similar experiences of seeing an extreme dearth of representation and accurate portrayal in the mainstream media. We're almost never asked about our own opinions on our conditions and life, the opinions of our doctors and our parents are sought, while we are pushed out of the way and only pulled into the limelight again when the story calls for us to be seen but not heard.

Well, this blog is my way of being heard, even if it only reaches an audience in the single digits. I have lived for nearly a quarter of a century as an autistic person. In this lifetime, I have come across some horrifying and unacceptable experiences and statistics that are the norm in how people like me are treated. To add insult to injury, many autistic people are denied the chance to explain their experiences, either because we are assumed incapable of doing so, or because our truth is uncomfortable for neurotypicals to hear. It shatters their back-patting self-assurance that disabled people now live comfortable privileged lives, and forces them to confront their own prejudice. We need to keep chipping away at that façade until it's blown away like so many motes of dust.

My blog is my chance to fight against that forced ignorance and silencing. My weapons are ten knobby fingers and a keyboard. I'm going up against a mighty enemy of forced ignorance. I hope you enjoy it.