this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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neurodiverse

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What is Neurodivergence?

It's ADHD, Autism, OCD, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, bi-polar, aspd, etc etc etc etc

“neurologically atypical patterns of thought or behavior”

So, it’s very broad, if you feel like it describes you then it does as far as we're concerned


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1.) ableist language=post or comment will probably get removed (enforced case by case, some comments will be removed and restored due to complex situations). repeated use of ableist language=banned from comm and possibly site depending on severity. properly tagged posts with CW can use them for the purposes of discussing them

2.) always assume good faith when dealing with a fellow nd comrade especially due to lack of social awareness being a common symptom of neurodivergence

2.5) right to disengage is rigidly enforced. violations will get you purged from the comm. see rule 3 for explanation on appeals

3.) no talking over nd comrades about things you haven't personally experienced as a neurotypical chapo, you will be purged. If you're ND it is absolutely fine to give your own perspective if it conflicts with another's, but do so with empathy and the intention to learn about each other, not prove who's experience is valid. Appeal process is like appealing in user union but you dm the nd comrade you talked over with your appeal (so make it a good one) and then dm the mods with screenshot proof that you resolved it. fake screenies will get you banned from the site, we will confirm with the comrade you dm'd.

3.5) everyone has their own lived experiences, and to invalidate them is to post cringe. comments will be removed on a case by case basis depending on determined level of awareness and faith

4.) Interest Policing will not be tolerated in any form. Support your comrades in their joy!

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RULES NOTE: For this community more than most we understand that the clarity and understandability of these rules is very important for allowing folks to feel comfortable, to that end please don't be afraid to be outspoken about amendments and addendums to these rules, as well as any we may have missed

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Autists will be one of the first in the camps it seems. In fact, getting out of America should strongly be considered

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[–] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 93 points 1 week ago (2 children)

go into autism death camps thread

people are mostly discussing the finer points of the personal noun form of the word autism

:classic:

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 47 points 1 week ago

An hour from now:

go into autism death camps thread

people are mostly discussing people discussing the finer points of the personal noun form of the word autism

[–] Thordros@hexbear.net 18 points 1 week ago

Hexbear, famous home of people who don't care about others' (pro)nouns?

[–] Jabril@hexbear.net 69 points 1 week ago (8 children)

The first people have already been sent to camps and they are Latin Americans.

Side note, how do people with autism feel about the word autist? I feel like I've only seen it used by terminally online people as a sort of slur

[–] Maotist@hexbear.net 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I'm not going to dox myself, but I am an autism activist and we all pretty much use the term autist. If you read Unmasking Autism, a good book btw, it will show that Autist is the preferred nomenclature

[–] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago

Autist is the preferred nomenclature

for who, the author? many autistic people dislike the term. IMO we don't really even need a noun for autistic people. adjectives work fine.

[–] Jabril@hexbear.net 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I appreciate the insight from everyone here, I have a friend who taught kids with autism and told me that they were taught to say "person with autism" so I've always gone that route since then.

[–] Thordros@hexbear.net 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I have a friend who taught kids with autism and told me that they were taught to say "person with autism" so I've always gone that route since then.

"Person with autism" is something neurotypical researchers cooked up to describe our "disease" that we need to be "treated" for. Like we're a person with the flu, or a person with asthma. It implies that we're fundamentally broken in some way. It's very common in clinical or educational circles. Your friend probably didn't know any better, and the kids they were teaching didn't, either.

"Autistic" or "Autist" is how we talk about ourselves. Autistic folks aren't sick or broken—we're whole people. Being autistic is who we are.

[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I'm fine with "autist" tbh and describe myself as such. I've gone so far as to call some of my behavior when I know I should mask and don't for tactical reasons "weaponized autism". Honestly one thing that a lot of NTs don't understand is that some of us like that our neural patterns are autistic. I don't want to be NT, I like myself, I like how I think. Is it annoying that I get sensory issues? Sure, but I don't want to trade for the "benefits" of being an NT.

I'm also a Jew. People have used "Jew" as a slur before as well. Did getting hung up on saying "Jewish" or "person of Judaism" ever help prevent the Holocaust ? Did it help Jews get into a college other than Tulane before 1964? Whether someone respects you as a person isn't going to be changed through their language. They're just lying.

You can hate me, I can't change that. But make it easy on me and don't lie about it, I have a hard time with social cues. I prefer self describing as "autist" and it being a "bad word" for NTs. It makes it very clear not only who is autistic but how an NT feels about you as an autistic person. For others I typically use autistic because I know some autistic people don't like autist and it helps create that signal that's gonna make it easier for me to tell who to stay away from.

RFK's bullshit is very closely tied to the ideology of orgs that pretend to be focused on the needs of autistic people but actually and actively cater to caregivers of autistic people and their inherent ideology of "I have been saddled with this annoying child and someone needs to fix it." These orgs such as Autism (Caregivers) Speak are already genocidal in their talking points about autism, RFK is mainly catering to these people who believe we're broken and taking their ideas to their logical conclusions that we should not exist in our current mental states.

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[–] ComradePupIvy@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Its standard nomenclature, I can as an autistic person go on an hours long rant at how that is stupid and only shifting the problem to later

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[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 22 points 1 week ago

I like the word, but a lot of autistic people dislike it so generally I don't use it much

[–] HuntressHimbo@lemm.ee 20 points 1 week ago

Context dependent for me. First person "as an autist" etc I generally find funny. Third person "Autist's be like" I generally dislike

[–] other_platypus@hexbear.net 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

i do not like autist as ive only ever heard it used as a slur at me and others. the matter is far from settled and there is no "preferred nomenclature." you're supposed to ask people individually, which is great unless you're in a group - i think maybe "autistic" is fine, like "autistic people" but that's just my preference. if someone opened with "autists" i would absolutely tense up and probably not engage with what they were saying

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[–] kristina@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Specifically Latin Americans with tattoos I think?

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[–] HalfSalesman@lemm.ee 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm autistic, I've used autist when I'm being mildly self depreciating, but also when I wasn't. It really depends on context & intent. If its being said verbally, your tone also matters.

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[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 48 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I had looked into autism diagnosis as an adult and there are basically no upsides. It's expensive and you'll have to fight doctors for it, and you'll be given a piece of paper that doesn't mean anything to anyone. There are no real resources (the ones gated by neoliberal austerity that require the paper) for autistic adults in the US from what I've seen. For adults it seems to be "just be thankful your support level is low".

Nobody is going to check your papers and kick you out of a support group or meeting for not having them.

[–] medium_adult_son@hexbear.net 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Having an autism diagnosis has already been a hurdle to approval for adopting a child. If that existed, to me it meant neurodivergent people would be a target in the future.

[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah I'd almost never disclose ND status regardless of what it is and to what bureaucracy, it's almost always bad, and it's almost always on me to fight for any kind remedy regardless of disclosure. The liberal rules around disclosure esp. in the work place are effectively meant to make ND people more vulnerable. The standards protect only those with visible physical disabilities to a extremely minimal degree.

The only things protecting us have been HIPAA. That's actually the worst part about RFK's database, given that the government just leaked Abrego Garcia's wife's address to their stochastic psycho contingent.

[–] Tabitha@hexbear.net 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

IDK what I have, as far as the full spectrum of neurodiversity does, and I'm definitely suffering in some way as a result, but I'd expand this to far more than autism, I think if they have any success sending people to death camps for autism, they'll probably start picking up everyone else without even making an announcement. In fact, it would not surprise me if suddenly they start picking up random US citizens and just declare them autistic.

[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

In fact, it would not surprise me if suddenly they start picking up random US citizens and just declare them autistic.

I have my doubts about this because they are already doing this through ICE and they have said they are going to do it for people who disagree with the President regardless of their citizenship status.

RFK's HHS is not going to out-compete ICE to create a general gestapo model, it already exists, has for a long time, in multiple different modes. It's just that it was much more polite before.

I'm much more scared about keeping my passport up to date, and being denaturalized than I am about RFK's goofy autism caregiver based genocidal ideas.

[–] GeneralSwitch2Boycott@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

RFK already said he wants to create work camps for autistic people, so it'll probably be a way to get cheap labour from the white population as they deport the non-white population.

[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah he has. I am 50:50 on if he actually believes that or it's shoe horning stuff into Trump's policy agenda. I think he literally believes that we cannot work so how would labor camps even work? His whole "wellness farms" stuff was funny because bringing back RFK Jr. designed sanitoriums during a fascist austerity government after Regan happened is a nonstarter. I do not believe that RFK is going to be able to put together a network of camps and the mechanisms to round people up into them. ICE under Trump is less effective than under Biden/Obama but is more brazen. There's like several steps that here that aren't going to be easy, and it's a game of numbers not just if you'll get got by the RFK HHS but also if the RFK HHS will be able to get you at all.

I think RFK's average case success scenario for this is having some high profile arrests and claiming mission accomplished.

Remember that these systems were actually made effective or outright built by competent technocratic ghouls during the Democrat run government years. Bush's war in the middle east was a failure, Obama mechanized it and turned it into a success (politically speaking because he removed American troops from the political equation). Biden adopted Trump's border policy and made it work effectively and proved it out in the stats and Democrats were complaining that the evil fascists of the GOP weren't giving them credit for being good effective fascists.

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[–] ElChapoDeChapo@hexbear.net 38 points 1 week ago

Waaaaay ahead of you there, my paranoia about the rise of the 4th reich is why I never sought diagnosis for over a decade of thinking I may be autistic

[–] doug@lemmy.today 29 points 1 week ago

I literally got my diagnosis two months ago. 😔

[–] un_mask_me@hexbear.net 28 points 1 week ago

They're making a list🎵 We're paying the price🎵 It's not a surprise🎵 Since they came for Trans Rights🎵 Black triangles'🎵 Cominnnn, to townnnnnnn🎵

[–] mrfugu@hexbear.net 22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I can’t get past how strange of a hill this is to die on. Though I have to imagine this rhetoric is completely based on optics and mob preference (just like the latin xenophobia). Either that or the state is afraid of us because we don’t fold to social norms and traditions.

Like I get parents being scared of having disabled kids for the financial strain if nothing else, but like afaik most autistics can be self sufficient and independent with the right developmental help. Compared to a serious physical disability or developmental/degenerative neurological disability it seems kinda silly. I would guess my parents paid more for me to play hockey as a kid than it would cost to provide assistance to the average autistic (with money left over for the kid to be into less expensive activities).

If we’re looking for preventative mental issues how about we worry about american football first.

[–] BeamBrain@hexbear.net 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)
  1. If capital cannot profit off of you, it will kill you. Autistic people tend to be bad at the wage work capital demands of us - hence why so many of us are chronically unemployed.
  2. It is impossible to overstate the extent to which neurotypical people see us as objects of disgust and contempt. It's super-common even for progressive and allegedly leftist spaces to treat us as subhuman. I don't expect them to put up much resistance on our behalf and presumably neither does capital.
[–] ClimateStalin@hexbear.net 11 points 1 week ago

Re: 1

But we also tend to be very good at doing the work capitalism demands of us. Thats why at 6 years old they pulled me aside in class to give me harder math and say “You should be an engineer” a thousand times.

It’s not even a problem of capitalism, it’s a problem of distribution and not putting autistic people in roles they can perform well.

[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If capital cannot profit off of you, it will kill you. Autistic people tend to be bad at the wage work capital demands of us - hence why so many of us are chronically unemployed.

This is an important point. We should remember that this means that the most realistic worse-case model they have to cleanse us en masse is corporate private prison contracting where some Trump friendly dipshit gets $25k/per body a month from the Fed to warehouse us in a concrete tomb.

They cannot kill us cheaply and we aren't actually a balance sheet problem because there is realistically social spending for the majority of us. They'll starve all disabled and poor people before they single us out in any effective way. We might be a trial balloon, but it's extremely unlikely that we'll get it nearly as bad as migrants.

Autism is just a political talking point for their shit for brains NT base who doesn't want to be shown anything on the TV except their own shallow world view, and for the people who they talk about the TV with in public to never tell them the TV is wrong. We're just a means to an end, effectively to get society to agree to the fact that kids should die of measles.

America in 2025 is utterly incapable of mega-projects like Japanese internment, the government has been too hollowed out. They spent $1.1 billion in 2025 dollars in the 1940's just to build the camps alone using the US Army Corps of Engineers, the CCA and WRA. They were mostly public works. Doing something of this size is going to be a major in-fight between oligarchs on who gets this money, and it won't be $1.1 b done over a year, it will balloon to hundreds of billions and be stuck in development hell because of all the inefficiencies.

A single prison today typically costs $1b. For example Indiana is currently building a new prison for $1.2 that holds 4,200 people. They started in 2023, they're expected to finish in 2027.

Don't get me wrong people will be hurt, but we are so laughably incapable of 20th century style population transfers.

[–] Ericthescruffy@hexbear.net 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Like I get parents being scared of having disabled kids for the financial strain if nothing else, but like afaik most autistics can be self sufficient and independent with the right developmental help.

It's basically been a long running joke in my family that back in my father and grandfather's day we didn't have people with autism. We just had engineers.

[–] Wheaties@hexbear.net 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I know there's a lot of benefits from having the term, and a community around it. But sometimes I do wonder if maybe we lost some of the benefits that come with the old approach of "some people are like that, it would be a funny old world if we were all the same".

[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago

The old approach has a lot of downsides esp. for our more visible comrades who need support.

[–] Mallow@hexbear.net 21 points 1 week ago

I don't think I can get it taken off my records so I am very nervous.

[–] StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I am still undiagnosed and not in the US, but this sort of thing and employment evaluations are still the big reasons I haven't pursued it.

We have the tech broyi big data medical records where I live, if I had the diagnosis, it would be so easy to pick me up from the records. The surveillance that people have just willingly signed up for cover all medical records nbd diagnoses on a national level. They are just ready to be exploited for when this country gets to where the US is now.

I am so worried for our US comrades tbh.

[–] Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I see camps being less likely and more the old “lunatic asylum” system being resurrected. Whoever remembers how to do lobotomies will be making a lot of money in the near future.

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Let's be real, whoever can claim to know how to do a lobotomy — it's the type of surgery you can literally learn to perform from a five-minute YouTube video, it takes ten minutes to do, and if it goes wrong-er than usual then that's "all the better" for certain parties.

Incidentally, I'm just now learning about Howard Dully, one of the youngest survivors of a lobotomy and co-author of the memoir My Lobotomy. He apparently died in February of this year at the age of 76. He had two YouTube channels, apparently the one channel was made to try to raise support for making a feature film based on his life, which evidently never came to fruition; the other one has much more varied content, including interestingly enough a lot of pirate uploads of shows from his childhood. It is in any case very striking to hear a lobotomy survivor in more or less modern times talking about his life in a very lucid manner — because he got the procedure so young and was otherwise very fortunate for a lobotomy survivor, brain plasticity allowed him to with time regain a lot of function.

[–] getoffthedrugsdude@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 week ago

I received an email from the place I got diagnosed saying they would never share diagnosis results voluntarily, and would not give access to those results, without a legal battle. Their stance is that their patient's rights fall under HIPPA and applicable state privacy laws, making them confidential. They sent out a statement saying they do not support any kind of registry that lacks full informed consent, and that they stand with the neurodivergent community.

Based on the wording the hitlerites in the gov't are using to describe how they'll get our data, it might actually be through medication, vaccination status, and disability claims on medical records, but don't quote me on that (and please fact check me if I'm incorrect, I'm pretty tired rn).

It scares me that no mention of protecting minors' privacy and safety are being mentioned much. I can't imagine how scary this must be for younger folks right now. Stay safe out there, and keep your wits about you.

[–] BountifulEggnog@hexbear.net 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Pretty sure as a trans person I'll already be one of the first in camps. After immigrants obviously.

[–] SovietBeerTruckOperator@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Okay I'm curious, are autism diagnosis kept on any kind of central data base? I get there's some of that with other medicinal records but aren't most cases of autism diagnosed by childhood psychologist and therapists, do they have a central database? Aren't a lot of people self-diagnosed?

[–] boboblaw@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago

At the state level only, until now. I think there were like 8 US states that kept a registry with mandatory reporting.

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 29 points 1 week ago

They're putting together a database with all the autistic people in the US. It doesn't exist but its construction was announced today.

[–] homhom9000@hexbear.net 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

When I got diagnosed the psychologist kept a record for herself and game a copy to me. I haven't even told my primary care doctor, so I don't know how they'll find it unless they go to every testing center and request all diagnostic documents

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[–] ComradePupIvy@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 week ago (4 children)

They are not centralised so far as I know, but the NIH is demanding all records

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[–] ZWQbpkzl@hexbear.net 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is this based on some recent news that I'm missing? Something other than the shit RFK Jr said.

[–] Maotist@hexbear.net 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's a response to the news that they are collecting our medical records to make a registry of everyone with autism. And also RFKs desire to create "wellness" camps

[–] Comrade_Mushroom@hexbear.net 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

hitler-detector oh my god this thing is going bananas!!

[–] ClimateStalin@hexbear.net 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I swear it must be broken, it’s just been an uninterrupted beep for months

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 9 points 1 week ago

inshallah-script it's the empire flatlining

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