I accept cash for free

If it costs you your mental health, its not worth it.

— (via thequoteuniverse)

— Sue Fitzmaurice (via quotemadness)

“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”

We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”

Or “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” That happened a lot, too, especially before the 19th century.

Or, backing up FURTHER

and lots of people think this very likely,

“Oh little Sionnat has obviously been taken by the fairies and they’ve left us a Changeling Child who knows too much, and asks strange questions, and uses words she shouldn’t know, and watches everything with her big dark eyes, clearly a Fairy Child and not a Human Like Us.”

The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost textbook depiction of autistic children.

To this day, “autism warrior mommies” talk about autism “stealing” their “sweet normal child” and have this idea of “getting their real baby back” which (in the face of modern science)  indicates how the human psyche actually does deal with finding out their kid acts unlike what they expected.

Given this evidence, and how common we now know autism actually is, the Changeling myth is almost definitely the result of people’s confusion at the development of autistic children.

Weirdly enough, that legend is now comforting to me.

I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. I’m only a little bit autistic; I can pass for neurotypical for short periods if I work really hard at it. I have a lack of talent in social situations, and I’m prone to sensory overload or you might notice me stimming.

But here’s the thing: life is louder, brighter and more intense and confusing than it has ever been. I live on the edge of London and I rarely go into the centre of town because it’s too overwhelming. If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.

I’m not trying to romanticise the past because I know it was hard, dirty work with a constant risk of premature death. I don’t actually want to be a 16th century farmer! What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. When you make people more disabled, you start to see more people struggling, failing at school because they’re overwhelmed, freaking out at the sound of electric hand dryers and so on. And suddenly it looks like there’s millions more autistic people than existed before.

“…disability exists in the context of the environment.”

Reblog for disability commentary.

That last paragraph is absolutely important.

“How come nobody ever heard of ‘dyslexia’ until widespread literacy became a thing?”

— (via be-cold-as-ice)

Finding someone who thinks you’re interesting enough to talk to you every day, whether they’re a friend or a lover, is one of the best feelings ever.

Shaykh Mohammad Aslam

neglect often looks like parents who just refuse to actually Parent like they provide shelter/food but do none of the emotional work of parenting 

I firmly believe that not only should we raise the minimum wage, but we should also create a maximum wage. There is no reason in which an orthopedic surgeon, which is the highest paying doctor will make an average of $464,500 a year, while the top 10 CEOs earn well over $33 BILLION a year. If we even so much as cap their earning potential at $1 billion, which is more money than anyone should really need to live a happy fulfilling lifestyle, then it would force them to put that money toward the company or be punished. This means giving their employees better health insurance, giving them more vacations, better wages, paying for their college or their children’s education, creating more jobs, and improving the functionality of their companies. Perhaps even force them to invest in the communities they are serving. 

For those of you who are still skeptical… let me put it this way… the highest earning CEO “earned” $156,077,912 in 2014. Let’s boil this down. There’s about 52 weeks in a year. Let’s say that he works 40 hours a week. So a total of 2,080 hours a year. That’s $75,037 an hour. The median HOUSEHOLD income in the US is $50,502 per year. He’s earning 1.5 times the amount per hour than the average household makes in a year. That disparity is absurd. To put that even further into perspective, the average NEUROLOGIST earns $219,000 a year according to a 2014 statistic. Every single one of the CEOs on the 100 highest paid CEOs earn at least 93 TIMES the amount that a NEUROLOGIST makes. 

Something needs to change. People shouldn’t be starving for the sake of someone else’s greed.

3 am thoughts (via suspend)

This might be my favorite post hahaha

I WAS LAUGHING SO HARD YO BECAUSE DON’T THEY KNOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE THERE???

And those who, when they commit an immorality or wrong themselves [by transgression], remember Allah and seek forgiveness for their sins - and who can forgive sins except Allah? - and [who] do not persist in what they have done while they know.

Qur'ān | 3:135

I️ just read a quote that said “Never be the reason someone asked God for peace” and wow. God forgive me for the times I’ve been the toxic person in someone’s life.

Shaykh Mohammad Aslam

— Kahlil Gibran

I just got one of those door-to-door evangelists, and I’ve gotta admit I kind of feel sorry for them - their pitch is, like, hilariously ineffective because they just don’t seem to realise that most folks have no point of reference on what they’re selling. It’s like watching someone try to convince people that they should play Pokémon, except they’re operating under the unexamined assumption that everyone everywhere is already familiar with the basics and just can’t decide which generation is best, so they’re standing there banging on about the finer points of the type matchup grid to an audience whose knowledge of and interest in the franchise begins and ends with “the monster goes in the ball”.

I once completely stumped an evangelist when I was a kid because he asked me if I knew who Jesus was, and I said ‘no’.

“No?” the poor dude repeated, looking dubiously at his companion.

Me being myself, I immediately doubled-down.

“No,” I repeated. “Who’s Jesus?”

This summoned up a long silence, followed by the evangelists asking to speak to my mother or father.

“They’re not here,” I said. Technically also a lie, but my father was sleeping from working nights, and I wasn’t going to wake him up for this.

“Well… um… so Jesus… Jesus Christ? Our Lord and Saviour, Who is the Son of God?” the chatty evangelist tried, looking at me like I was some kind of alien puzzle.

“You mean Hercules?” I responded, for some reason. I still don’t know why.

Another long silence. We were clearly off-script. The chatty evangelist started trying to go through the ‘died for your sins’ spiel, and for some reason, all I could think to do was roll with the angle that I was legitimately unfamiliar with even the concept of Jesus, and had somehow reached the age of nine or ten with only a thorough education on Greek Mythology to serve me in a religious context.

I think the second guy was well aware that I was full of shit, because he kept covering his mouth like he was going to laugh, but the first guy was just caught somewhere between horror and a weird kind of excitement. Like he’d been waiting to finally meet someone who didn’t know ANYTHING about Jesus, just so he could be the first to explain the whole Christianity deal.

Anyways long story short I ended up just trying to tell them all about the Trials of Hercules, like we were just exchanging fun facts we knew about demigods, while the first guy was just adamantly trying to be like ‘no that stuff is made up, but the Jesus stuff is true’, until his friend finally was just like ‘thank you have a good day’ and closed the door and made him leave.