Hi besties!! So I tweeted a couple days ago asking if I should make a thread about autism for my non-autistic moots and a lot of people said yes sooooo here it is. I’m basically just gonna cover some common questions and then give some information about it. Now, of course,

a lot of this is gonna be based on my own life and how autism as affected me but some of this can apply to lots of autistic people. It is just good to remember that we’re all different and it affects everyone in a different way.

So, the first point that I want to make is that autism is a life-long disability/disorder. It basically means our brains are wired in a slightly different way. So, we think differently and interact differently. It is not an illness, it cannot be cured (also it shouldn’t be seen

as something we would ever want a cure for, it’s not something to be ashamed of). You are born autistic and you have autism your entire life. However, some autistic people may need support with certain things in their life, especially during education.

Autism is a spectrum, everyone with ASD is different. And with this, the level of support autistic people need in their life varies from person to person.

The most commonly used term for people with autism is ASD (Autistic spectrum disorder). There are some other terms used such as Asperger syndrome, which is used to describe “high functioning” autistic people but these have a very ableist and just not nice background,

so it is better to just use ASD. I was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when I was 5, but I don’t think it’s diagnosed like that anymore, I believe it’s just now an ASD diagnosis.

It’s not currently clear what causes autism, if there even is a cause. However, it has been proven to run in families, so it’s possible that if you are autistic that your child could be autistic too.

Now, I’m gonna cover some of the most common autistic traits;
-Avoiding eye contact
-Stimming (a response to intense emotion which can be something like rocking forwards and backwards or flapping hands. There are loads of ways people stim and these vary from person to person.

Some autistic people do not stim at all, some stim a lot)
-Repeating phrases or actions over and over again.
-Struggling with social situations
-Being irritated by certain senses such as taste, smell or sound (for me a lot of textures irritate me as well as the feel of

clothing tags and loud noises)
-Failing to understand jokes and sarcasm
-Not being able to understand other peoples emotions or their own emotions
-Struggling to express their emotions.
-Special interests.
-Seeming blunt or offensive without intending to

Of course, every autistic person is different and will have different traits.

Autism is believed to effect men more than women, however it is a lot harder for girls/women to be diagnosed with autism due to masking. Masking is when an autistic person hides their traits to try to “fit in” with the rest of society.

This means a lot of the time women are dismissed as being anxious or something similar when they actually have autism. This can cause issues in life because they are unable to receive the support they need. Men can mask to, but it is more common in women.

One of the important things to remember is that a lot of autistic people fail to understand sarcasm and jokes so it is important you tone tag sarcasm (/s) and jokes (/j). This can also be useful for anyone really, as it's not just autistic people who may fail to understand jokes.

Also, a lot of the time we struggle to understand hidden messages, so if you are trying to tell us something please just tell it how it is instead of trying to make us guess. We often take things literally so you need to tell it how it is. And please remember, we don’t need

“babying”, we don’t need you to talk in a different tone of voice. Just talk to us normally, like you would talk to anyone else.

That’s about it, that I can think of for now. I may have missed some things so if you have any questions please feel free to ask me or DM me them and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability, but again, this is mainly based off of my own life so it will be different for others

I just remembered, I'm gonna add a bit about special interests.
These are basically things that autistic people are very passionate in. They're very important to autistic people and we will probably talk about them a lot. So please don't make us feel bad for repeating things.