Yes, exactly. We can’t learn to be like them and they can’t learn to be like us, our brains just work differently. But they can try to understand us a bit more. It won’t be easy, but it’s the only real way for both sides to meet in the middle.

Looks really interesting. It might be a good one for my daughter, who’s nearly 13. She’s neurotypical but has been reading up on autism to understand more about me, her sister, and her cousins.

Many of us have voices that go unheard.
If progressive politics wants to live up to its name, it needs to understand us, not just speak for us.
We appreciate the advocacy.
Now we need the understanding. 2/2

@ross-greer.bsky.social @gillianmacmsp.bsky
@scottishgreens.org @alex.scotlibdems.org.uk

The result?
Less masking. Less burnout. More trust.
A society shaped by genuine understanding, not forced performance.

It’s time we stopped expecting autistic people to only speak “their language”
and started encouraging everyone else to learn ours. 6/6

Imagine a world where directness is clarity, not rudeness.
Where silence is thinking time, not discomfort.
Where honesty is respected, not treated as a social mistake.
Where autistic ways of speaking are understood, not corrected. 5/6

Yet society puts all the responsibility on the autistic person.
Mask. Perform. Decode. Fit in.
Never the other way round.

So what if we flipped it?
What if we aimed for Neurological Bilingualism, where neurotypicals learn our communication style too? 4/6

The Double Empathy Problem explains it:
Communication breakdowns are mutual. Autistic and neurotypical minds understand the world differently, neither side is defective, just wired differently. 3/6

That constant translation is the real source of autistic burnout.
Not autism itself, the neurological labour of performing, decoding, and second guessing every interaction. 2/6

😜

Autistic adults exist.
Autistic parents exist.
Autistic workers exist.
Treat us like the adults we are. 10/10

If you really want to support autistic people, start by respecting autistic adulthood.
The struggles didn’t vanish at 18.
The responsibilities didn’t disappear.
Only the support did. 9/10

We’re not oversized teenagers.
We’re adults.
We carry heavy loads.
We deal with things most people never see.
We deserve to be understood as adults, not permanent children. 8/10

And it completely erases autistic parents.
We’re out here raising kids, sometimes autistic kids, while navigating adult life with the same challenges we had as children, only with higher stakes. 7/10

Infantilising autistic adults gives systems an excuse to pretend we don’t need help.
Or worse: that we’re just refusing to “grow up” or “be normal.”
It’s the same old stigma, dressed up as cute. 6/10

When autistic adults are portrayed as “youthful,” “naive,” or “eternally childlike,” it becomes easier for society to dismiss our needs.
And when you turn 18, support drops off a cliff.
Benefits are slashed.
Services vanish. 5/10