If you want to learn about autism, the best way is to read the people who are autistic. Not people imagining what it’s like and writing about it. So for world autism awareness/acceptance day, a list of autistic authors/artists/writers/bloggers. This will obviously not be comprehensive, please feel free to add your own favourites in the comments.

(Note, amazon links are affiliate links.)

I read and reviewed Rachael Lucas’ The State of Grace last year and loved it. I highly recommend it for getting an insight into life as an autistic teenage girl. Buy at amazon.

M is for autism (review) and the sequel, M in the middle were written by a group of girls at Limpsfield Grange School, assisted by their teacher. More good titles for the teenage insight. Amazon here and here.

Corinne Duyvis, On the Edge of Gone is fantastic YA SF with a thoroughly believable autistic character in a very tough situation. Again reviewed last year, and available at amazon here.

Last fiction book I’ve read is Colin Fischer by Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz. I didn’t like this one so much, which is probably why I’ve failed to review it so far, I found it a bit too stereotyped/ cliched in its portrayal of the main character Colin. But it’s the only fiction book by an autistic author I’ve come across so far featuring a male lead, so needs including I think. Amazon.

You can find reviews of other books with autistic characters on Disability in Kid Lit, a site well worth bookmarking.

Titles I haven’t read but would like to: Jen Wilde, Queens of Geek. (Amazon.) I’m very much excited by the idea of Stim:an autism anthology edited by Lizzie Huxley-Jones, currently crowd funding on Unbound. Also hoping that I’ll get some new suggestions from this!

On memoirs, I’m waiting on Katherine May’s The Electricity of Every Living Thing, which is out in a couple of weeks time. It sounds fascinating, and right up my coastal path. Check it out on Amazon. Also Laura James’ Odd Girl Out is now available in paperback (I *will* review this soon!). Amazon, and there’s Fingers in the Sparkle Jar from Chris Packham (another one awaiting review). Amazon.

I’ve also read and reviewed a number of other memoir books, some of which include helpful tips — here are links to my reviews (which have their own Amazon links within). Nerdy Shy and Socially Inappropriateby Cynthia Kim, Pretending to be Normal by Liane Holliday Willey and A Pony in the Bedroom by Susan Dunne. A slightly different focus in From here to Maternity: Pregnancy and Motherhood on the Autistic Spectrum is very helpful on how to manage your encounters with medical personnel through pregnancy.

Yet to be reviewed The Reason I jump by Naoki Higashida (99p on kindle today) and the sequel, Fall down 7 times, get up 8. (Amazon)

On slightly more academic rather than personal texts, there are some excellent titles available from Sarah Hendrickx (link to Amazon author page) who is also an excellent trainer and speaker. Another well respected author is Dr Luke Beardon (slightly embarrassed to admit I haven’t read any of his yet, must rectify) with a good range of titles. Author page

If autistic artists or bloggers are more your thing, I recommend checking out Sonia Boue and Jon Adams (soundcube) via twitter in the first instance. For gems like this.

https://twitter.com/soundcube/status/980553962112929792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Twitter is a great place to find autistic writers and bloggers. We tend to use #ActuallyAutistic when we’re sharing our own work (please don’t use that to talk about people who are autistic though. It’s for self identification) so that’s a good place to start looking. There’s also a massive list of autistic bloggers here, I’ve no idea how current it is though.

I’ve no doubt left out lots of useful links and titles, and for that I apologise (I didn’t realise when I started how long compiling a list like this would take!). Please do feel free to suggest extra resources/ titles in the comments — if you’re a first time commenter your comment will be moderated, but I’ll keep checking so that I can release them into the wild.

Originally posted on liveotherwise

Back in my 20s, while doing a lot of martial arts (up to 5 2 hour sessions a week) I started getting problems with my knees. And sometimes my hips. And I had them checked out by doctors, had tests for arthritis (runs in the family) and no one could find anything wrong with them.

Fast forward through 20 years of hip and back pain, sciatica, physiotherapy and so on, and finally an antenatal physiotherapist calmly noted that my legs are different lengths, which twists my pelvis and back and causes a multitude of problems. She prescribed a raise, that I wear pretty much all the time, and it solved the problems. I’ve had very few issues since, and I’ve even managed to take up running, and run a 10k.

My hips, knees and back aren’t the only problems I’ve had all my life.

I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and depression many times. I’m frequently (nearly always) lonely. I don’t get people, in person. I can’t follow conversations where lots of people are talking, I constantly miss the subtexts. (I have some peculiar sensory things going on. Please don’t wear velvet near me.)

I’ve just been diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum. Given my intelligence level and ability with words, the most appropriate diagnosis is Asperger’s Syndrome.

How do I feel about this?

It fits. In the same way that discovering the leg length difference explained all those physical issues, this explains oh so very much of everything else. I feel a sense of relief, along with a nagging irritation at all the people who dismissed the difficulties I experience with comments like “oh, everyone feels that way”. You know what? I don’t think they do.

There is only one problem. No one has invented a raise for the brain, so I can’t just wipe out 20 years of emotional difficulties in the way I did the back pain.

But. Another thing.

These aren’t only my problems. This is partly to do with societal expectations. There is this idea that it’s necessary to be the life and soul of the party, to be able to laugh, and joke, and carry on in a crowd. Not everyone can. Not everyone wants to. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I would very much like to enjoy some social occasions. They don’t have to involve hundreds of people and lots of noise. If they do, I can pretty much guarantee that I won’t remember half of the people that I meet. I’ll smile and say (hopefully) appropriate things — but I won’t necessarily make a great deal of sense. And if I make it through the whole day, I may be silent for hours afterwards, and feel a need to go and stare at the sea.

I love the sea. It grounds me. I miss my running — I haven’t been running since the Thing. I think I might start walking — walking should be OK, shouldn’t it? Is running OK? I’m waiting on test results. The likelihood is that the Thing was just a faint, but it’s come on top of all of this diagnosis process and it’s just made everything that much harder to deal with.

That’s life, right? We all have our Things, someone told me that the other day. It made a great deal of sense at the time, but I can’t now remember who it was. Sorry.

But yes, overall, relief. This is me. Some bits of me are different to lots of you. But I’m still the me I was before you started reading this post. If you didn’t know me before, how will you think of me now? Autism doesn’t show. I pass for normal (whatever *that* may be). I’ve worked. Held down responsible jobs. I can talk, look you in the eye, make appropriate responses.

But behind my eyes? Yeah, just a little different.

If you want to learn more about all the parts of my life, my blog is here. And if you’d like to read about my experience of the diagnosis process, you can find that here.

Back in January there was a petition to the European Union about basic income, and it set me off on a quest to learn more about this bizarre idea, in which everyone receives a living income for nothing, without condition. Sounds completely mad, doesn’t it? But is it, or is it the answer to the widening inequality we’re seeing in the western world?

The petition was to investigate basic income, not to actually start it, but it’s the first step, and one that I increasingly think needs taking. It’s an idea I’ve been exploring for a little while, as an alternative to things like minimum wages or living wage. Sounds a bit ridiculous doesn’t it, just giving *everyone*, regardless of their financial situation, enough money to live on. And surely we can’t afford it?

But I’m beginning to think what we can’t afford is going on the way we are.

Austerity appears to mean pushing money at banks and rich people (in the form of quantitative easing and tax cuts) while cutting benefits for people with next to nothing. (Bedroom tax. Benefits sanctions. Welfare changes.) And each pound cut from those with little means less money going into the economy as people cut back on food. Heating. You know, luxuries like that.

What would it look like instead if we put money into the system from the ground up? Can you imagine it? What would you do if you had an income of £10,000 a year? (Note, this figure pretty much plucked from thin air. I would assume some actual maths would have to be done to work out how much people reaaly need, but this is more than the bottom benefit level for a single person.)

It’s not a lot, is it, £10,000. It wouldn’t be luxurious living. But you could get by on it. You could study. Start that business you’ve already dreamed about. Work hours that fitted around the children if you wanted or needed to work for a top up. And you wouldn’t have to accept just any old job, so I think employers would suddenly find that they’d have to make working for them a bit more attractive and respect their employees.

Wouldn’t the system fall apart though, if people didn’t need to work?

Here’s the thing. When pilots have been done on this kind of system, people do still work. People like working. They like being busy, feeling important, achieving something. And they like extra money. Yes, some people stop working, or cut down their hours (which turned out to be mainly mothers with new babies and teenagers), but that might mean that the people who want to work can find jobs, and the people who don’t don’t have to do the whole benefits rigmarole that costs a fortune to implement anyway.

And what’s more, educational outcomes improved. (Teenagers aren’t out scrabbling for jobs to help support their family — school attendance rates improved.) Crime levels drop, health levels improve. (Which means lower costs for emergency systems and so on — it’s convoluted working out how this all interacts, but I think the overall is positive.) There have been a number of trials around the world of various sections of this system, and they are, as far as I can tell, positive. (Obviously the reactions to the trials haven’t been positive, or we’d already have basic income, and I think the question as to why we haven’t is an interesting one.)

One of the things that I think would make a huge difference, is that women could be far more independent even while having children. You would be able to stay home with your baby if you wanted to. Or work flexibly. I think the implications are immense — although I haven’t been able to find any articles focussed on this aspect.

What I do find though, is articles discussing the moral aspects of the system. Shouldn’t work pay? Isn’t it better to be gainfully employed — a striver, not a skiver? Our coalition government and media in the UK is full of this kind of assertion, and it seems to me that it isn’t based on anything other than fear and control. Money is given away all over the place already, and we don’t know where half of it is going. Let’s be up front about it, accept that all people deserve to live in dignity and explore what basic income could do for society. It’s got to be worth a try.

For other articles on basic income, see my blog where the original version of this article first appeared.

Could basic income solve our welfare problem? was originally published in Basic Income on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.