Week 7 Blog Post

Chapter five of this reading discusses Tisoncik's affiliation with the autism community and how it has changed her life after finding out that she autistic herself. She describes how the autism community is a relatively oppressed and disadvantaged community, practically seen as outcasts in society and having their autistic identities as something they should be ashamed or scared of. Tisoncik went on to be the founder of the #autfriends channel on Starlink INC. after having been banned from the #autism channel. The #autfriends channel was then attacked by the owner of #autism, ordering her to close down #autfriends and telling people to rejoin #autism. This attack on the #autfriends channel was what pushed Tisoncik to create autistics.org, a site that is used to support and provide resources for autistic adults, in contrast with #autism, who only provided resources for parents with autistic children. In the face of backlash, autistics.org would go on to be very influential in the autism community. In regards to backlash, Tisoncik states, "Never fear an opponent who goes too far. It is at times like this, when one's opponents overreach, that they grant you power, much as when an attacker lunges at a judoka, the force of that attack becomes the power the judo player can use to defeat the attacker."

Chapter seven of this reading covers Seidel's experiences with autism and neurodiversity after her youngest child got diagnosed with autism in mid-2000. She conducted a ton of research on autism in order to best understand her son's needs and be able to articulate those needs to his teachers. During this research, she stumbled upon the word "neurodiversity", a word that she loved for its inclusivity and compassion. It is also during this research that she came to notice autistic traits in every interaction she had with her father, her mother reinforcing that recognition. Seidel states that, "I gradually recognized that I, too, lay somewhere along the banks of the 'broader autistic pheno-type': intense focus; bluntness; anxiety and occasional sensory overload; fondness for collecting, organizing, and diving deeply into subjects that interest me." Seidel went on to create Neurodiversirty.com, using information from the database she collected and implementing it all into a website. With this website, she gained massive publicity, being featured in newspapers and attending conferences.

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Both of these women have been able to use the internet to debunk and correct misconceptions about autism and educate those who were uneducated or researching information on autism and neurodiversity. The Me Too Movement has gone about doing this as well, specifically in regard to the topic of sexual assault. Sexual assault is sometimes seen as a taboo topic, survivors afraid to share their stories in fear of how they'll be perceived in the public eye. Several misconceptions about sexual assault have made over the years, most of them involving victim-blaming. Examples of these include asking the victim what they were wearing, saying they should have fought back, saying they should have known better. The movement strives to empower these victims and reassure them that what happened to them was not their fault and that they should not be shamed for what has happened to them. The movement can even show victims who may not have known that what they went through was sexual assault that it was indeed sexual assault and that was happened to them was bad.