this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
22 points (95.8% liked)

Autism

6829 readers
98 users here now

A community for respectful discussion and memes related to autism acceptance. All neurotypes are welcome.

We have created our own instance! Visit Autism Place the following community for more info.

Community:

Values

  • Acceptance
  • Openness
  • Understanding
  • Equality
  • Reciprocity
  • Mutuality
  • Love

Rules

  1. No abusive, derogatory, or offensive post/comments e.g: racism, sexism, religious hatred, homophobia, gatekeeping, trolling.
  2. Posts must be related to autism, off-topic discussions happen in the matrix chat.
  3. Your posts must include a text body. It doesn't have to be long, it just needs to be descriptive.
  4. Do not request donations.
  5. Be respectful in discussions.
  6. Do not post misinformation.
  7. Mark NSFW content accordingly.
  8. Do not promote Autism Speaks.
  9. General Lemmy World rules.

Encouraged

  1. Open acceptance of all autism levels as a respectable neurotype.
  2. Funny memes.
  3. Respectful venting.
  4. Describe posts of pictures/memes using text in the body for our visually impaired users.
  5. Welcoming and accepting attitudes.
  6. Questions regarding autism.
  7. Questions on confusing situations.
  8. Seeking and sharing support.
  9. Engagement in our community's values.
  10. Expressing a difference of opinion without directly insulting another user.
  11. Please report questionable posts and let the mods deal with it. Chat Room
  • We have a chat room! Want to engage in dialogue? Come join us at the community's Matrix Chat.

.

Helpful Resources

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
22
Anyone know of any interesting resources about autistic/neurodiverse intentional communities or cohousing? And how do we feel about this movement? (kbin.social)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

On a quick search, I found this Forbes article and this article from Autism Housing Network. The Autism Housing Network appears to be a treasure trove of resources about this very interesting idea in general.

However, I'm honestly still a bit skeptical to the movement for autistic intentional communities as it stands. I found out about this movement earlier today, when I correctly figured while writing an essay that somebody else had probably already come up with that exact idea. However, while the extant communities are improving people's lives, they don't really seem like the sort of radically by-of-and-for-us type of neurodiverse communes that I was imagining while writing my essay. Rather, these extant communities feel like a sort of more status-quo-y liberal housing development with a neurodiverse flavor.

In my essay I had even written about all sorts of pipe dreams of cybernetics and e-democracy to connect different intentional communities together, but I guess that's all it is: pipe dreams.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

My instinctive response is that it's a terrible idea. While having no expectation to mask is great, it seems to me that gathering a group of people who generally struggle to take care of themselves and their environment and who have very low tolerance for certain environmental stimuli and a deep need for other environmental stimuli is a recipe for chaos.

I attend a local autistic adults zoom group every other week, and it's great for support and understanding, but if I had to be in the same room as one of the other members their stims would give me a meltdown. I over-empathise emotionally, an autistic friend has almost no emotional empathy, as a result some of our interactions do not go as intended. Multiply these kinds of issues with having to effectively live with eachother and I just don't see it going well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Agreed. As someone who's probably not on the spectrum (but still ND) married to someone who is, I can't see it going any other way than failing spectacularly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It seems like it goes more or less fine in practice, and I reckon this is probably because these communities end up being self-selecting to some extent. That the type of autistic person who thinks this sounds like a great idea would also be the type who'd have an easier time in this type of community, while the type who thinks this sounds like a terrible idea wouldn't move to that type of community to begin with. And that even of the former group, that different intentional communities would end up dominated by different types of autistic people who tend to get along better. You wouldn't just move in without any idea of who your neighbors are.

Speaking for myself, I've attended a monthly local autistic adults group in person, I've lived with my autistic brother for most of my life, in my time in public school I had special classes with other ND students and had a few ND friends, and I even spent a year at a dorm school that teaches independent living for ND folks. So for me the idea of living with other autistic people of a diverse variety seems pretty doable. There would obviously still be a number of problems that I'd need to solve with regard to interpersonal interactions or hypersensitivities, but that would still be the case if I lived in a predominantly NT community anyways.