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Sid Ghosh (@downlikesid) is a teen nonspeaking autistic poet with Down syndrome. He is a “levitator of language, meandering through the rivers of Down Syndrome, gilling himself through poetry.”

Sid’s writing at the poetry foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/sid-ghosh?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaZbWW-i9xNqaGdrB9YJrZuP1BbQYmCL_sfqWzSe8KmDCdLrKZVGjWT-qok_aem_RRMfbboZjlfP4evOnyGWRA

And some instagram posts: (image descriptions coming soon)

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Damn

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happy autism acceptance month. this month, regardless if you're abled or disabled, allistic or autistic, try to consider if you really do accept people with autism. all aspects of autism. people who:

without volume control

talk to themselves or make sounds (seemingly) at random

have huge screaming meltdowns

stim any way, including smearing body fluids

only talk about one subject and will never "move on"

stare inappropriately

struggle with personal hygiene

are unemployed

who left education early ("dropped out")

has a carer and will always need one

don't use mouth words to communicate

have comorbid intellectual disability and don't want to separate that from their autism

autism acceptance month can't truly be about acceptance if we don't broaden our understanding of autism and confront our internal biases. these things listen above are normal parts of autism. sometimes very common. there's stigma around them, but that's stigma we can actively fight.

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Never being able to live alone makes me kind of sad

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“idk what am mean but definitely not mean that” n “idk how say what am mean but definitely not that” some of worst experiences ever

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People who self harm only for attention are just as valid as people who self harm for any other reason.

Seriously.

Parents often make the mistake of dismissing their child’s self harm as “attention seeking” when it’s otherwise.

But what always gets me is that, even if a child is harming themselves solely to get attention, that is a huge problem they need help for!

If a person has to go as far as to cause physical harm to themselves in order to gain what they feel as the proper amount of attention, that is someone who needs help ASAP.

No matter the form, no matter the severity, no matter the reason, self harm is a sign of severe distress that deserves immediate, intense attention.

And no one will ever convince me otherwise.

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New tic: barking

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I genuinely hate when people start harping on slow walkers.

Sometimes, there’s a reason we’re walking slow. Some of us have cerebral palsy, some of us have chronic pain, some of us are walking slow so you don’t notice our gait ataxia.

SOME OF US ARE DISABLED AND ARE PHYSICALLY UNABLE TO WALK ANY FASTER.

Whatever the reason, taking 5 more seconds to wait for the person to get to where they’re going is not going to kill you. Chill out, suck it up, and learn to not be so impatient.

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Barbie collectors: wow this doll has such a pretty face :) ok time to perform surgery and give her A New Body

Monster high collectors: does anyone have a 2011 g1 scaretastic cuntacular freak off circus lagoona

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Moderate support needs but in the same situation

sometimes when u high support needs developmentally disabled without intellectual disability you get put in really awkward situations bc there program for people w intellectual disability & there program for autistic children at best under 18 but also many times under 10 n so you not eligible for help but you need help so you kinda sit there n be like. “?”

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It will never not be frustrating to me that amputees appear in fiction ALL. THE. TIME. and yet they're almost never acknowledged as such. The Cyberpunk genre is especially guilty of this: amputees and prosthetics becoming a normalised part of life are a defining part of the genre/aesthetic and yet no one even consults with any amputees about how we get represented there. Most writers in those genres don't even consider that giving your characters cybernetic arms and legs means they're an amputee.

CW: Ableism, dehumanisation

This makes it REALLY uncomfortable to engage with stories in the genre because another common aspect of cyberpunk is the idea of losing yourself and becoming something distinctly not-human anymore because you have too many cybernetic augmentations/implants. Shadowrun even has mechanics for this, which state if you get too many prosthetics, which is what cybernetics are 9 times out of 10, your character becomes a monster. These mechanics and discussions surrounding "how many robot bits make you not human anymore" are really, really uncomfortable when you remember this isn't something that's unique to a far-off future setting. Those people you're discussing the humanity of already exist. They're called amputees. If you reframe the question as "how many amputations can you have before you stop being a person" I hope you can see why an amputee like myself is not going to feel safe around you or in your fandoms.

And it's a shame, because I REALLY want to like Cyberpunk. I really, honestly do. I love the aesthetics, I love the idea of big corporations being the villains and the anti-capitalism at the heart of the genre, and I love the idea of prosthetics being not only destigmatised, but desirable. When written from a disability-inclusive lense, it honestly has the potential to be an incredibly uplifting and empowering genre. but as the genre stands right now, it's actively hostile to the very folks who are usually the stars of its stories: amputees, all because people just refuse to acknowledge us.

Cyberpunk isn't the only genre guilty of this, it's common all throughout sci-fi as a whole, but Cyberpunk is the only one where it starts becoming a serious issue due to its rampant dehumanisation of a real group of people. In other sci-fi settings, it's just kind of annoying and while it can be a form of erasure, it's not usually harmful, just...frustrating. Fantasy does it on occasion too, think pirates with a hook and a peg leg, but nowhere near as much.

If you, as an author or creator, use any of these words to describe a character or their tech in a sci-fi setting:

cybernetics/cybernetic enhancements

bionics

robot limbs

cyborgs

augmentations

You are probably writing an amputee. Please, at the very least, acknowledge it, and be mindful that those are real people who actually exist, not just a fantasy group you can speculate about.

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the "F" on my ID stands for faggot

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[gets down on on knee] oppa…marriage style?

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"Masculinity is rewarded" have you ever spoken to a transmasc or a butch or a tomboy or any masculine woman/person perceived as a woman. Have you ever spoken to a gnc transfem.

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I see a lot of posts explaining how scary it is for a wheelchair user to be pushed without their consent and I think people assume able bodied people / people who have never used a wheelchair know one fact that they actually don’t:

It’s pretty damn scary to be pushed with your consent too.

I’ve been in situations where I’ve been pushed consensually because I was unable to push myself and that was scary. I’ve been in situations where I’ve been moved unexpectedly and that was scary. I’ve been in situations where I was taken from someone pushing me and taken to an unfamiliar location without either of our consent and, yeah, that was terrifying.

I think a lot of people think ‘oh, it’s just like being pushed by someone you trust but it’s a stranger’ and that is true but they’re fundamentally missing the understanding that it’s not just the strange that’s scary. When you’re consenting, you’re saying ‘this is really scary but I am trusting you to keep me physically safe and to support me during this scary experience.’ With a stranger, not only do you have to trust them to keep you physically safe, but you have to trust them to support your fully which they will never even think of.

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AAC users like me, who are able to convey their thoughts and feelings, arent the majority. I think people have to realize that.

The majority and the most marginalized of people who use AAC are those who cant always convey their thoughts. Who use AAC infrequently. Who prefer pointing, spelling on a letterboard, who use PECs. That is the people that many people don’t see because they often don’t have access to the internet, and cant use the internet like we can. And their caregivers aren’t sharing their stories because they have other things to worry about.

It’s frustrating when people don’t realize that those people ARE around, and they’re the most marginalized. We need to talk about them more. We need to make their voices known, and heard. No matter if they can efficiently communicate or not. Every part of them deserves to be seen while respecting their own privacy and autonomy.

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Brain found it fitting to have a meltdown on world autism awareness day