Devon Price Quotes

“Almost every Autistic person I spoke to has found that in order to build a life that suits them, they’ve had to learn to let certain unfair expectations go, and withdraw from activities that don’t matter to them.

It’s scary to allow ourselves to disappoint other people, but it can be radical and liberating, too. Admitting what we can’t do means confronting the fact we have a disability, and therefore we occupy a marginalized position in society — but it also is an essential part of finally figuring out what assistance we need, and which ways of living are best for us.”

“Autistic people are constantly having to invent our own unique ways of getting things done. We use extensive research, digital tools, and a variety of little sneaks and cheats to brute-force our way through activities that NT people don’t even think about.”

“For Autistics, this level of scripting and pre-planning is normal. It gives us a comforting sense of mastery and control. However, when neurotypical people figure out we’ve put this much time and thought into activities that are 'basic' to them, they tend to find it very off-putting.

So for masked Autistics, blending in isn’t just a matter of figuring out the right hacks. We also learn to hide the fact we’re relying on such hacks at all.”

“I noticed that there were clear patterns in which kinds of Autistic people succumbed to this kind of fate. Autistic women, transgender people, and people of color often had their traits ignored when they were young, or have symptoms of distress interpreted as 'manipulative' or 'aggressive'.

So did Autistic people who grew up in poverty, without access to mental health resources. Gay and gender nonconforming men often didn’t fit the masculine image of Autism well enough to be diagnosed. Older Autistics never had the opportunity to be assessed, because knowledge about the disability was so limited during their childhoods.

These systematic exclusions had forced an entire massive, diverse population of disabled people to live in obscurity.”

“I started hanging out with group members outside of the group itself, and found I wasn’t ashamed to be a visibly identifiable member of a 'weird' crowd anymore. Instead, I felt accepted.”

“Interestingly, adults are only shamed for having an obsessive interest if that interest is a bit too 'strange', and doesn’t come with the opportunity to rack up a lot of achievements or make a lot of money.

People who routinely complete eighty-hour workweeks aren’t penalized for being obsessive or hyperfixated; they’re celebrated for their diligence. If an adult fills their evenings after work learning to code or creating jewelry that they sell on Etsy, they’re seen as enterprising.

But if someone instead devotes their free time to something that gives them pleasure but doesn’t financially benefit anyone, it’s seen as frivolous or embarrassing, even selfish.

In this instance, it’s clear that the punishing rules imposed on Autistic children reflect a much broader societal issue: pleasure and nonproductive, playful time are not valued, and when someone is passionate about the 'wrong' things, that passion is discouraged because it presents a distraction from work and other 'respectable' responsibilities.”

“It’s neurotypicals who categorized autism as a social disorder. Autistic people don’t actually lack communication skills, or a drive to connect. We aren’t doomed to forever feel lonely and broken.

We can step out of the soul-crushing cycle of reaching for neurotypical acceptance and being rejected despite our best efforts. Instead, we can support and uplift one another, and create our own neurodiverse world where everyone—including neurotypicals — is welcome.”

“Many masked Autistics are sent to gifted education as children, instead of being referred to disability services. Our apparent high intelligence puts us in a double bind: we are expected to accomplish great things to justify our oddness, and because we possess an enviable, socially prized quality, it’s assumed we need less help than other people, not more.”

“Many neurodiverse people suffer from Autistic inertia. The same heightened focus that makes us so good at studying our special interests for hours also makes it challenging for us to get off the couch and attend to the overflowing trash.

To an external, neurotypical observer, it doesn’t look like we’re struggling. It just looks like we’re being 'lazy'. Almost every neurodiverse person I’ve spoken to has been deemed 'lazy' numerous times by exasperated parents, teachers, and friends.

People see us sitting frozen, incapable of taking action, and assume it’s because we don’t care or lack willpower. Then they admonish us for being apathetic and unreliable, which leaves us feeling even more paralyzed by anxiety.”

“Masking also obscures the fact that the world is massively inaccessible to us. If allistics (non-Autistics) never hear our needs voiced, and never see our struggle, they have no reason to adapt to include us.

We must demand the treatment we deserve, and cease living to placate those who have overlooked us.”

“Most of us are haunted by the sense there's something 'wrong' or 'missing' in our lives – that we're sacrificing far more of ourselves than other people in order to get by and receiving far less in return.”

“Much of what we call maturity is a silly pantomime of independence and unfeeling, not a real quality of unbreakable strength.”

“Neurotypical people are obsessed with functioning levels. If you tell a nondisabled person that you’re Autistic, but you’re able to hold a conversation or maintain a job, they’ll immediately start gushing about how functional you are.”

“One of the major ways abled society dehumanizes the disabled is by calling our maturity into question. Adults are supposed to be independent, though of course no person actually is.

We all rely on the hard work and social-emotional support of dozens of people every single day. You’re only seen as less adult, and supposedly less of a person, if you need help in ways that disrupt the illusions of self-sufficiency.”

“People with so-called 'female Autism' may be able to make eye contact, carry on a conversation, or hide their tics and sensory sensitivities.

They might spend the first few decades of their lives with no idea they’re Autistic at all, believing instead that they’re just shy, or highly sensitive.”

“Recovery is predicated on aligning your life with your values, and you aren’t going to be able to align anything until you know who you are.”

“Refusing to perform neurotypicality is a revolutionary act of disability justice. It's also a radical act of self-love.”

“Research shows that most Autistic people have a reduced sense of the body’s warning signals, or interoception.

Most of us tend to feel like our bodies are not really our own, and struggle to draw connections between the external world and how we feel inside.”

“Since Autistic people do not process information intuitively, we don’t see 'obvious' answers to things, and have to carefully break the question down instead.”

“Since we can’t openly stim or engage in other repetitive behaviors, some masked Autistic people reach for flawed coping strategies to help manage stress.”

“Since we can’t openly stim or engage in other repetitive behaviors, some masked Autistic people reach for flawed coping strategies to help manage stress. We’re at an elevated risk of eating disorders, alcoholism and drug addiction, and insecure attachments to others.”

“The genderqueer group’s rules and procedures also seemed to be tailor-made for Autistic people and our communication needs.”

“The idea that Autism is a boy’s disorder goes all the way back to when the condition was first described at the turn of the twentieth century. Hans Asperger and other early Autism researchers did study girls on the spectrum, but generally left them out of their published research reports.

Asperger in particular avoided writing about Autistic girls because he wanted to present certain intelligent, 'high-functioning' Autistic people as 'valuable' to the Nazis who had taken over Austria and were beginning to exterminate disabled people en masse.

As Steve Silberman describes in his excellent book NeuroTribes, Hans Asperger wanted to spare the 'high functioning' Autistic boys he’d encountered from being sent to Nazi death camps. Silberman described this fact somewhat sympathetically; Asperger was a scientist who had no choice but to collude with the fascist regime and save what few children he could.

However, more recently unearthed documents make it clear that Asperger was far more complicit in Nazi exterminations of disabled children than had been previously believed. Though Asperger held intelligent, 'little professor' type Autistics close to his heart, he knowingly sent more visibly debilitated Autistics to extermination centers.”

“The label neurodiverse includes everyone from people with ADHD, to Down Syndrome, to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, to Borderline Personality Disorder. It also includes people with brain injuries or strokes, people who have been labeled 'low intelligence', and people who lack any formal diagnosis, but have been pathologized as 'crazy' or 'incompetent' throughout their lives.

As Singer rightly observed, neurodiversity isn’t actually about having a specific, catalogued 'defect' that the psychiatric establishment has an explanation for. It’s about being different in a way others struggle to understand or refuse to accept.”

“The term neurodiverse refers to the wide spectrum of individuals whose thoughts, emotions, or behaviors have been stigmatized as unhealthy, abnormal, or dangerous.”

“The traits that inconvenience or weird out neurotypical people are the very same ones that define who we are and help keep us safe.”

“Therapy that is focused on battling 'irrational beliefs', such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), doesn’t work as well on Autistic people as it does on neurotypicals.

One reason for that is many of the fears and inhibitions of Autistic people are often entirely reasonable, and rooted in a lifetime of painful experiences. We tend to be pretty rational people, and many of us are already inclined to analyze our thoughts and feelings very closely (sometimes excessively so).

Autistics don’t need cognitive behavioral training to help us not be ruled by our emotions. In fact, most of us have been browbeaten into ignoring our feelings too much.”

“They don’t rely on memorized conversational scripts, and they don’t have to carefully parse every single piece of data they encounter to make sense of it. They can wing it.

Autistic people, on the flip side, don’t rely on knee-jerk assumptions or quick mental shortcuts to make our decisions. We process each element of our environment separately, and intentionally, taking very little for granted.

If we’ve never been in a particular restaurant before, we may be slow to make sense of its layout or figure out how ordering works. We’ll need really clear-cut indications of whether it’s the kind of place where you sit down and get table service, or if you’re supposed to go to a counter to ask for what you like.

Many of us try to camouflage this fact by doing extensive research on a restaurant before setting foot inside. Every single light, laugh, and smell in the place is taken in individually by our sensory system, rather than blended into a cohesive whole.”

“Though masking is incredibly taxing and causes us a lot of existential turmoil, it’s rewarded and facilitated by neurotypical people. Masking makes Autistic people easier to 'deal' with. It renders us compliant and quiet. It also traps us.

Once you’ve proven yourself capable of suffering in silence, neurotypical people tend to expect you’ll be able to do it forever, no matter the cost. Being a well-behaved Autistic person puts us in a real double bind and forces many of us to keep masking for far longer (and far more pervasively) than we want to.”

“Unmasking isn’t a universally positive experience; sometimes when we put ourselves first, we will frustrate and disappoint others, maybe even leave them feeling triggered or upset.”