Devon Price Quotes

When we discuss the weight that stereotyping and Systemic Shame carry, it's hard not to contrast the lives of marginalized people, who are under nearly constant attack, and the lives of the comparatively more privileged, who carry the mark of Systemic Shame far less visibly. For the groups directly targeted by systems of oppression such as anti-Blackness or homophobia, the strength and stakes of Systemic Shame are undeniably more extreme. Yet it is also true that the varying degrees of isolation, self-blame, and societal condemnation that we all experience under Systemic Shame are of the same piece and that this massive social sickness of Systemic Shame will get better only once we begin to realize that we're all affected by it.

To this day, all of the assessments that we use for diagnosing autism, even in adults [are] still based on how to identify it in white cisgender boys, usually very young ones," Price explains. "So what that means is, if you're, let's say, a young autistic black boy, you are far more likely to get diagnosed with something like oppositional, defiant disorder. You're more likely to be seen as a behavior problem...If you're a girl, if you're a person of color, if you're gender nonconforming, you're more likely to be seen as a problem to be contained. (2022)

When people run out of energy or motivation, there's a good reason for it. Tired, burned-out people aren't struggling with some shameful, evil inner laziness; rather, they're struggling to survive in an overly demanding, workaholic culture that berates people for having basic needs. We don't have to keep pushing ourselves to the brink, ignoring our body's alarm bells and punishing ourselves with self-recrimination. We don't have to deny ourselves breaks. We don't have to fear laziness. Laziness does not exist.

I think laziness really is this canary in a coal mine kind of emotion that tells us when our values are out of step with our actual lives. A lot of times we pour so much energy into being impressive at work, satisfying all the demands of our friends and family and just trying to overachieve in every possible way that we don't really listen to that inner voice that tells us, "Here's what matters most to me in my life. Here's what I really believe in and value. And here's how I really would live if I wasn't just setting out to satisfy other people."

When a masked Autistic person lacks self-knowledge or any kind of broad social acceptance, they are often forced to conceive of themselves as compartmentalized, inconsistent parts.

By happily delving into our special interests and reveling in our Autistic capacity to hyperfocus, we can help retrain our brains to see our neurotype as a source of beauty rather than a mark of shame.

Most of us don't have that ultimate freedom to walk away from things that are exhausting to us and just work at a much slower pace. Unlearning the hatred of laziness isn't another thing to beat yourself up for not doing correctly, because most of us are in a situation where our freedom and our choice is pretty restricted. If you're in a workplace where you aren't kind of trusted to self-motivate and you aren't given the room to set limits, you are really in a coercive environment that's going to keep running you down. A lot of times it comes down to looking into things like unionizing, documenting problems as they occur, demonstrating how when one person leaves the company, all of their work is just dumped onto someone else instead of replacing them.

True solidarity building requires that we acknowledge people's struggles as legitimate-even while upholding that some people's struggles intersect in far more ways, and some who suffer hold the power to make others' suffering worse.

You might get to thinking that the challenges you're facing are not as legitimate as other people's. But it's this very feeling of isolated helplessness that actually binds you to the majority of humans living on this planet.

People imnitate Autistic hand flapping when they want to imply a disabled person is stupid, annoying, or out of control. Donald Trump famously did a cruel imitation of hand flapping during his 2016 campaign, while criticizing a physically disabled reporter.

for Autistics seeking to achieve widespread acceptance and justice, unmasking represents both an essential step forward, and a way to stay sane while the world remains unjust. I've witnessed firsthand how much an Autistic person can socially and psychologically blossom once they escape an unsafe situation and find an accepting community. I've gone through that exact process myself. We will never be able to build a more neurodiverse society if we do not name our common struggles, form community ties with one another, and loudly declare that our way of functioning isn't broken or bad. Much of the neurotypical world still wants to "cure" us of our difference, using genetic therapies and screening tools that would prevent more of us from being born, and abusive therapeutic methods that train us, like dogs, to become more compliant. Even those of us who have not been forced through formal Autism treatment are still manipulated and pressured, day by day, into becoming smaller, softer, more agreeable versions of ourselves. To unmask is to lay bare a proud face of noncompliance, to refuse to buckle under the weight of neurotypical demands. It's an act of bold activism as well as a declaration of self-worth. To unmask is to refuse to be silenced, to stop being compartmentalized and hidden away, and to stand powerfully in our wholeness alongside other disabled and marginalized folks. Together we can stand strong and free, shielded by the powerful, radical acceptance that comes only when we know who we are, and with the recognition that we never had anything to hide.

The Laziness Lie has three main tenets. They are: 1. Your worth is your productivity. 2. You cannot trust your own feelings and limits. 3. There is always more you could be doing.

I want every Autistic person to feel the massive relief and sense of community I found by recognizing myself and beginning to unmask...We must demand the treatment we deserve, and cease living to placate those who have overlooked us.

I think animals help us remember that we shouldn't have to earn our right to exist. We're fine and beautiful and completely lovable when we're just sitting on the couch just breathing. And if we can feel that way about animals that we love and about, you know, relatives that we love, people in our lives who we never judged by their productive capacity, then we can start thinking of ourselves that way, too.

After researching Autism privately for about a year, I discovered the Autistic self-advocacy community. There was an entire movement led by Autistic people who argued we should view the disability as a perfectly normal form of human difference. These thinkers and activists said our way of being wasn't wrong at all; it was society's failure to adapt to our needs that left us feeling broken. People like Rabbi Ruti Regan (author of the blog Real Social Skills) and Amythest Schaber (the creator of the Neurowonderful video series) taught me about neurodiversity. I came to recognize that many disabilities are created or worsened by social exclusion.