askchapo

So I guess I would be considered to be low support needs now. But really I've always existed on the cusp.

I consider my autism a disability with benefits, but I acknowledge that those benefits will never be supported in a capitalist system for the majority of autistic people and that my experience is a function of the privilege I grew up with.

Here's an example: I am doing a PhD in engineering. A few weeks ago, I delivered a technical presentation about my research to about 20 other researchers. I was 1000% in the zone. I was just being my authentic self the whole time and it was great. Research and teaching others is one of the few things I was put on this shithole planet to do.

The real challenge of that presentation was... showing up on time, being a normal, personable, fellow human being, smelling nice, doing small talk (because who gives a fuck about the weather, I just want to talk about your research and my research and what books you're reading!)... the "easy" stuff.

Thankfully, one of my special interests happens to be useful to capital. (PM me for more details on my research, but in short: my research would be equally valuable in a communist or anarchist society...and it's not defense. Fuck defense.) Unfortunately, most of my special interests are not useful to capital, and some are worse than useless for capital (i.e. anarcho-communism). I suspect that most autistic people are in the latter two bins. And frankly, so was I for the vast majority of my life.

For me, it's very difficult to motivate myself to do things that don't benefit my special interests. I.e. I only eat because cooking is one of my special interests. The things I do choose...I do them hard. Which, in my opinion, is a benefit...but that doesn't mean I'm not disabled in any ways. For example, I'm just kinda lying in bed sad and overheated instead of doing literally anything productive because my body really wants to be cold and until it's cold, nothing's gonna happen.