Stimpunks is created by and for neurodivergentNeurodivergent, sometimes abbreviated as ND, means having a mind that functions in ways which diverge significantly from the dominant societal standards of “normal.”Neurodivergent is quite a broad term. Neurodivergence (the state of being... More and disabledThe label "disabled" means so much to me. It means I have community. It means I have rights. It means I can be proud. It means I can affirm myself... More people. We provide mutual aid, learning opportunities, human-centered research, and living wages for our community. We presume competence, and we believe in self-determination.
We, Stimpunks
👏🧷⏰ Stimpunks in a Minute (or less)
Stimpunks Foundation challenges the typical approach to helping people who are neurodivergent or disabled. We know what it is like to live with barriers and what it means to not fit in and have to forge our own community. Stimpunks knows that neurodivergent and disabled people have human needs. We offer a humane approach to help our community thrive.
Through Stimpunks Foundation, we:
- Offer financial and mutual aid;
- Hire our community members as consultants;
- Provide a learning space designed for our community; and
- Support our community’s open research efforts.
One in four U.S. adults have a disability. However, our community receives only 2% of US grant funding, and only 19% of us are employed. We can’t just let that be the truth. We have to challenge the norm and change the narrative around people who are neurodivergent or disabled.
Stimpunks Foundation seeks to do just that with our four pillars.
⛑📚 Our Pillars 🗂🧰
Mutual Aid
Real help against the onslaught. Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society.
Learning Space
The place where we belong does not exist. We will build it. Anti-ableist space for passion-based, human-centered learning compatible with neurodiversityNeurodiversity is the diversity of human minds, the infinite variation in neurocognitive functioning within our species.NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS Neurodiversity is a biological fact. It’s not a perspective, an approach, a... More and the social model of disabilityThe social model of disability is a reaction to the dominant medical model of disability which in itself is a functional analysis of the body as machine to be fixed... More.
Open Research
Digital sociologyBut, there is something sociology must do. It is our disciplinary imperative to understand societies. Just as communication studies understands forms of communication, sociology must understand the social. If we... More, neurodiversity studies, disability studies, and syncretism, in the open. Improving science by restoring the humanities.
Services
Stay relevant in a constantly changing world. Dismantle ableismA system that places value on people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normality, intelligence, excellence, desirability, and productivity. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in anti-Blackness,... More in your spaces. Enable dignity through access.
Respect due to learning with an arsenal of permanent pillars Piercing through the surface of artificial services Life Commits by Swamburger
Stimpunks is gently debugging society.
The charity protects, helps and comforts individuals, while pointing out library-level flaws in some of the concepts that end up harming those individuals.
This help is profoundly wonderful, morally and functionally coherent to great need, and as true as a pure circle in its cause-and-effect form.
AJ Wool
Thank you so much @stimpunks for supporting & believing in me & my artwork.
It’s okay to be you. It’s okay to be different. It’s okay to have a disability. Never give up on yourself.
Jasmine Slater
If y’all care about me, read what @stimpunks is saying.
Liana McCrea
Huge thank you to @stimpunks for this generator so if we lose power, the oxygen concentrator can still run! I can’t thank you enough!!
Karrie Higgins
Artist: Jasmine Slater
Our four pillars rest on the four pillars of the ADA.
- Equal Opportunity
- Independent Living
- Full Participation
- Economic Self-Sufficiency
In 1990, the ADA, which today remains the cornerstone of disability civil rights law in the United States, established four goals for disabled Americans: equal opportunity, independent living, full participation, and economic self-sufficiency.
Economic Justice Is Disability Justice
☂️ Our Umbrella: Are You a Stimpunk?
Disability and neurodivergenceNeurodivergent, sometimes abbreviated as ND, means having a mind that functions in ways which diverge significantly from the dominant societal standards of “normal.”Neurodivergent is quite a broad term. Neurodivergence (the state of being... More are broad umbrellas that include many people, possibly you. The neurodivergent umbrella includes a diversity of inherent and acquired differences. Many neurodivergent people don’t know they are neurodivergent. With our website and outreach, we help people get in touch with their neurodivergent and disabled identities. We respect and encourage self-diagnosis and community diagnosis. #SelfDxIsValid, and our website can help you understand your ways of being.
If you are wondering whether you are AutisticAutistic ways of being are human neurological variants that can not be understood without the social model of disability.If you are wondering whether you are Autistic, spend time amongst Autistic people, online and offline. If... More, spend time amongst Autistic people, online and offline. If you notice you relate to these people much better than to others, if they make you feel safe, and if they understand you, you have arrived.
A communal definition of Autistic ways of being
Though our direct aid focuses on neurodivergent and disabled people, anyone can be a Stimpunk. All neurotypes welcome. All abilities welcome. All bodymindsBodymind: A term used to challenge the idea the body and mind are experienced separately (Descartes). Written in various ways, Bodymind or Body-mind, this usage foregrounds the understanding that experiences... More welcome. Allies welcome!
To face the challenges of the future, we’ll need the problem-solving abilities of different types of minds working together.
The Best Autism Books, recommended by Steve Silberman
Whether neurodivergent, disabled, or an ally, being a Stimpunk means reframing.
We center the edges in service to all bodyminds.
Join us!
Asking for help is a wonderful way to build community & engage in meaningful collaboration. In asking for help you also uplift others who want to show up for you.
JUST A REMINDER THAT ASKING FOR HELP IS A CONTRIBUTION
🫀🧠🖼 We Reframe
Challenge the norm and change the narrative by reframing.
Reframe these states of being that have been labelled deficiencies or pathologies as human differences.
Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences
Content note: Our website includes music, lyrics, writing, and art that address ableism, eugenics, exclusion, mental health, depression, dysphoria, behaviorismUltimately behaviorism provides a simplistic lens that can’t see beyond itself.Why is the doctrine of behaviorism still being used, at all?How can ABA be the gold-standard for autism when it... More, abuse, chronic pain, and death. There are a few swear words in quoted materials.
Also included is an outpouring of neurodivergent and disabled perspective, culture, and joy.
Ready, Punk? Rock onward!
Intro
Art and Announcements
About Us
Mutual Aid
Featured Artists
Human-Centered Learning
Space
Research
- Stop, Hammer Time
- Get a Dose of Social Science
- Confirm Autistic Common Knowledge
- Change Your Language
- Are You Qualified?: Don’t Confuse Your Lecture with Our Life Experience
- Science Is Not Static: Reframe
- The Medical Model Is Essentially Individualist
- Shift the Discourse: Toward a Biopsychosocial Model
- Say You’re Sorry
- Check Your Gaze
- Is Your Training from the 1940s?
- Are You Really Evidence-Based?
- Are You Disregarding Harm and Profiting From Our Misery?
- Are You Feeding White Supremacist Ideology?
- Useful Research
- Research-Storytelling
- Bookmarks
- Glossary
Services
We serve our loved people so we can keep on livin‘ through the onslaught.
Help us and join us by reading on, and reframing.
Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society…
DISABILITY VISIBILITY: FIRST PERSON STORIES FROM THE 21ST CENTURY
This is your time, this is your life and
You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!)
Gotta keep on (Keep on livin!)
You gotta keep on (Keep on livin!)
Disability justice (and disability itself) has the potential to fundamentally transform everything we think about quality of life, purpose, work, relationships, belonging.
DISABILITY VISIBILITY: FIRST-PERSON STORIES FROM THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Access
- ✊ Enable Dignity
- 🫀🧠🌍 Perceptual Worlds
- 🌈🤲 Quick Low Cost Things to Make a Difference for Autistic People
- 🌈♿️🎪 How to Make Your Events Accessible to the Disability Community
- 🌏🏗 Universal Design
- 🫀🧠💥 Neuroception and Sensory Load
- 🤢 In Our Own Words: The Complex Sensory Experiences of Autistic Adults
- 🎪 Sensory Environment Checklist
- 🧰 Adapting the Environment
- 🌈 Checklist for Autism-Friendly Environments
- 💬 Identity First Language: Thinking differently requires speaking differently.
- Interaction Access
- Education Access
- Healthcare Access
Mission
- We Pay, We Exist, We Believe, We Create, We Serve
- Keep on Livin’
- Let Us Be Our Real Selves
- Be Good, Be Loud
- Creed
- Philosophy
- Code of Conduct
Give
- → Give: You to Us
- ← Give: Us to You
- 🤲 Volunteer: Load-share the Friction of Our Existence
- 🙏 All Together Now
We exist as friction. The work that we do; it’s wildly painful.
We Reframe
We reframe out of the confines of the medical model and pathology paradigm and into the respectfully connected expanse of the biopsychosocial model and the Neurodiversity paradigm. We reframe from deficit ideology to structural ideology.
We, Stimpunks
You think you know me? No, you don't know me Don't fence me in, I wanna be big I wanna be part of everyone and everything No fence around me No, you can't limit me I'm in-between, your set of rules Don't even come close to applying to me Bah! Binaries It's all make believe I wanna be part of everyone and everything --Dont' Fence Me In
We reframe to live proudly.
We are marginalized canariesAutistic man Freestone Wilson suggested in the 1990s that autistic people are functioning as the “miners’ canaries” of civilisation. When the air in the mine is poisoned we do not... More in a social coalmine and Rawlsian barometers of society’s morality. It is deeply subversive to live proudly despite being living embodiments of our culture’s long standing ethical failings.
Our non-compliance is not intended to be rebellious. We simply do not comply with things that harm us. But since a great number of things that harm us are not harmful to most neurotypicals, we are viewed as untamed and in need of straightening up.
THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: ON HANS ASPERGER, THE NAZIS, AND AUTISM: A CONVERSATION ACROSS NEUROLOGIES
Don’t know about you but I, I wanna see this through Wouldn’t it be nice To believe In yourself --I Wanna See This Through by Aubrey Hays
We reframe to be our real selves.
Abuse and silencing is a constant, pervasive theme in the lives of autistic people, and for many people it is best expressed by that old, familiar phrase from special educationThe word “special” is used to sugar-coat segregation and societal exclusion – and its continued use in our language, education systems, media etc serves to maintain those increasingly antiquated “special”... More: quiet hands!
Loud hands means resisting. Loud Hands means speaking, however we do, anyway—and doing so in a way that can be very obviously Autistic. It means finding ways to talk and think about ourselves on our own terms.
There is room for all of us to play our part. And whatever we do, however we do it, we can do it with ‘loud hands’ and ‘loud voices,’ and loud whatever else we need, in whatever way that works for us individually or collectively. Let us be our real autistic selves, loud and proud, and show the world what we truly are.
Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking (p. 8, 125). Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Disability’s no longer just a diagnosis; it’s a community.
Liz Jackson: Designing for Inclusivity
How did I do on your little test?
Get my brain to reset (Reset)
‘Cause everything you say is static
Do I make a good pet? (Good pet)
Obey the commands or get the back of the hand
‘Cause the world wasn’t built for a brain like mine
Change my mind, change my mind, change my mind
This construct
Was built and can be dismantled
We stand together
We think apart
We reframe to build community.
…the central tension of punk rock: it was built on individualism and an anti-hero ethos, yet expressed itself as a community. The motivation for punk was individualistic artistic expression, but the glue for the subculture was the experience of finding like-minded misfits.
We accept you, one of us?: punk rock, community, and individualism in an uncertain era, 1974-1985
ANI launched its online list, ANI-L, in 1994. Like a specialized ecological niche, ANI-L had acted as an incubator for Autistic culture, accelerating its evolution. In 1996, a computer programmer in the Netherlands named Martijn Dekker set up a list called Independent Living on the AutismAutistic ways of being are human neurological variants that can not be understood without the social model of disability.If you are wondering whether you are Autistic, spend time amongst Autistic people, online and offline. If... More Spectrum, or InLv. People with dyslexia, ADHDI'm not a fan of the “ADHD” label because it stands for “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” and the terms “deficit” and “disorder” absolutely reek of the pathology paradigm. I've frequently... More, dyscalculia, and a myriad of other conditions (christened “cousins” in the early days of ANI) were also welcome to join the list. InLv was another nutrient-rich tide pool that accelerated the evolution of autistic culture. The collective ethos of InLv, said writer and list member Harvey Blume in the New York Times in 1997, was “neurological pluralismANI launched its online list, ANI-L, in 1994. Like a specialized ecological niche, ANI-L had acted as an incubator for Autistic culture, accelerating its evolution. In 1996, a computer programmer... More.” He was the first mainstream journalist to pick up on the significance of online communities for people with neurological differences. “The impact of the Internet on autistics,” Blume predicted, “may one day be compared in magnitude to the spread of sign language among the deaf.”
The neurodiversity movement: Autism is a minority group. NeuroTribes excerpt.
Autistic people have built many niche communities from the ground up—both out of necessity and because our interests and modes of being are, well, weird.
Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity (p. 218)
We reframe to demonstrate agency.
It is also important to recognise that autistic people inevitably change the structures they inhabit in a unique way because they are autistic and despite any neurotypical attempts to kerb their tendency to do that. If their autistic disposition were not what it is, the neurotypical world would not try to manage and control it. Existing as an autistic person, therefore, is almost a forceful demonstration in agency.
Frontiers | A Critical Realist Approach on Autism: Ontological and Epistemological Implications for Knowledge Production in Autism Research | Psychology
Welcome to our nutrient-rich tide pool of like-minded misfits, with loud hands.
Reframe with us.
Stimpunks combines “stimming” + “punks” to evoke open and proud stimming
Self-stimulatory behavior, also known as stimming and self-stimulation, is the repetition of physical movements, sounds, or words, or the repetitive movement of objects Stimming - Wikipedia Autistic adults highlighted the importance of stimming as... More, resistance to neurotypicalization, and the DIY culture of punk, disabled, and neurodivergent communities. Instead of hiding our stimsSelf-stimulatory behavior, also known as stimming and self-stimulation, is the repetition of physical movements, sounds, or words, or the repetitive movement of objects Stimming - Wikipedia Autistic adults highlighted the importance of stimming as... More, we bring them to the front.
Everything that was normally supposed to be hidden was brought to the front.
PUNK SUBCULTURE – WIKIPEDIA
The First Rule of Punk: Be Yourself
Our Second Rule of Punk: Reframe
When we reframe, we perceive others such that they too can be themselves.
Autistic ways of being are human neurological variants that can not be understood without the social model of disability.
A communal definition of Autistic ways of being
When we reframe, we stop silencing ourselves and others.
I have loud hands. I must, since I use my hands to communicate. I type what I want to say. But that’s not the only reason why I have loud hands. It is because I finally learned that I cannot be silenced, I will not be silenced.
Loud Hands: I Speak Up With My Fingers
Selling yourself short tames the vision How you're depicted can change the sentence Innocent by Swamburger
If we have learned one thing from the civil rights movement in the U.S., it’s that when others speak for you, you lose.
Ed Roberts
When we reframe, we enable ecologies of care.
Those who are the most sensitive and traumatised and have not lost the ability to extend trust constitute an enormously rich and diverse repository of insights and hold many of the keys needed for co-creating ecologies of care.
Autistic people – The cultural immune system of human societies – YouTube
Reframing purposefully centers the edges.
I center the marginalized and the different. I center edge cases, because edge cases are stress cases and design is tested at the edges. I center neurodivergent experience in service to all bodyminds.
Creed – Stimpunks Foundation
Because design is tested at the edges, and we are the original life hackers.
People with disabilities are the original life hackers because our motivation is so high. If we don’t hack we often go without.
Liz Jackson: Designing for Inclusivity – 99U
We design from the edges to co-create ecologies of care.
The most important message I got from punk, was the DIY ethos. The DIY ethic. It’s inherently part of surviving.
Don Letts, SHOWstudio: Stussy – Talking Punk with Don Letts and John Ingham
Reframing is self-care and social change.
Punk rock is a living thing.
It’s about turning problems into assets.
Don Letts, Rebel Dread
The long-term well-being and empowerment of Autistics and members of other neurocognitive minority groups hinges upon our ability to create a paradigm shift – a shift from the pathology paradigm to the neurodiversity paradigm.
THROW AWAY THE MASTER’S TOOLS: LIBERATING OURSELVES FROM THE PATHOLOGY PARADIGM
Learn more about us and how we reframe for care and build niche communities after some art and announcements.
👏🧷🎨 Announcement: Stimpunks + PunkFlowers
Stimpunks has allied with PunkFlowers, a neurodiverse artist coalition led by neurodivergent and disabled people. We join them in collaboration and mutual support. Between Stimpunks Foundation, Stimpunks Philanthropic LLC, and PunkFlowers, we can do some cool stuff that impacts community.
We are happy flappy about this.
Let’s stimSelf-stimulatory behavior, also known as stimming and self-stimulation, is the repetition of physical movements, sounds, or words, or the repetitive movement of objects Stimming - Wikipedia Autistic adults highlighted the importance of stimming as... More dance in celebration.
I'm dancing on my own (dancing on my own) I make the moves up as I go (moves up as I go) And that's what they don't know, mmm-mmm That's what they don't know, mmm-mmm But I keep cruising Can't stop, won't stop grooving It's like I got this music In my mind Saying, "It's gonna be alright." Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake I shake it off, I shake it off --Shake It Off
Let’s get unapologetically, autistically wild.
Let’s bolster against stress and pass survival knowledge down.
…flamenco is in itself a ballistic activity with its own built-in reward system that can then bolster the brain against traumatic stress.
…not only can traumatic knowledge be passed down, so can bodily survival knowledge-knowledge about how to survive the debilitating effects and symptoms of PTSD.
If your “threat to life” responses are being re-associated on a regular basis with flamenco responses, slowly, like polishing stone, flamenco has the potential to be an asset for people who are working through PTSD.
Because We Have To: Flamenco as Survival Strategy against Detrimental Effects of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder
sensory pleasure (which could be viewed as almost the opposite feeling to anxiety) can be one of the richest, most delightful experiences known to the autistic population – and should be encouraged at any appropriate opportunity.
Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Children: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing
There are so many unexpected movements that live inside my body. So many different shapes and motions that never get to come out during day to day life. There’s something so liberating about being able to explore all of these things I didn’t even know lived inside me.
torktorktork
Let’s bliss.
Stimming is beautiful.
“We call ourselves Warriors and Weirdos.”
I’m a very emotional person. I have to use everything I’ve got to sing those songs.
Aurora Aksnes
🎨 PunkFlowers Artist: Heike Blakley
Heike Blakley is a self-taught, emerging artist working with a wide array of mediums such as acrylic, oil, watercolor, pencil, charcoal, pastel, mixed media, pen & ink.
Also specializing in resin art, jewelry making, woodwork, clay sculptures, fabric art and poetry.
Using her creativity as a form of learning and for meditative purposes, she is determined to, “absorb as much “collective knowledge,” as she is able to grasp in one lifetime and effectively communicate understanding through art.”
Home | Heike Blakley, Heike Vogt (@hblkly) • Instagram
🙌 We’re Fundraising: 20K for Community
Join Our Donor Wall
Anonymous
Rudy Klecka
Jeff Newman
Kyle Duce
❤️
Heike Blakley
🎨 PunkFlowers Artist: Adriel Jeremiah
The artist hopes to convey this: that the universe is given forth folded and unfolded. Although explicit understanding helps, it is too cumbersome, and should only provide refinement to something already greater that exists.
That greater thing is what was given to the artist first by the practice of origami. An enlivening of the intuitive mind, experience with a universe of many dimensions, and the promise of creation revealed when one folds a flat square into the likeness of a higher dimensional thing. That inspiration reaches a young mind in a powerful way.
The artist wants the viewer to see proof of what their intuitive mind already knows is true, the universe is a multidimensional phenomenon and the ability to understand its nature already exists within us each.
The artist hopes the viewer will be inspired to seek the understanding of freedoms available to the individual inspired by the exposure to artistic expressions, and of a nature of dimensionality unimaginably greater than the object presented here.
Adriel Jeremiah Wool
🫀 We’re Presenting: Conference to Restore Humanity
To be hosted by Ryan Boren, Inna Boren, Chelsea Adams, & Kristina Daniele of Stimpunks. Stimpunks combine “stimming” with “punks” to advocate for neurodiversity and push back against systems that restrict our humanity and harm our unique identities.
Behaviorism is dead. Despite that, Behaviorism won. And neurodivergent and disabled students lost. Behaviorism is everywhere. The All Means All of public education is made meaningless by the bipartisanship of behaviorism. The neurodiversity and disability rights movements well-understand the ubiquity of behaviorism, and its tremendous costs. This course fights against behaviorist practices in the classroom.
Conference to Restore Humanity
July 25 – 28, 2022
Conference to Restore Humanity! is an international invitation for K-12 and college educators to engage in a human-centered system redesign: centering the needs of students and educators toward a praxis of social justice.
Conference to Restore Humanity
🎨 PunkFlowers Artist: Kyle Duce
Raised between the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and a small farming community in Wisconsin, Kyle gained an appreciation of the land, wildlife and the beauty of nature. Kyle grew up as a 3rd generation artist, his grandfather was an oil painter and his mother ran a stained glass business out of their home in Wisconsin. There was no shortage of art projects, outdoor activities, hunting, fishing, camping and gardening. Post college, Kyle traveled and moved back to Colorado, Seattle and now Austin. He has been living in downtown cities since college. The clash of these two timelines reflects the duality expression in most of his work. This duality can also be seen through his passion for the skate, snow, music, tattoo and architecture world.
Custom Artwork | Cryptic Creative | Austin
Kyle Duce (@cryptic_creative) • Instagram photos
👏🧷 About Stimpunks
Stimpunks Foundation sponsors and employs neurodivergent and disabled creators and amplifies their work to our clients and throughout society. We exist for the direct support and mutual aid of neurodivergent and disabled people.
Our research initiative focuses on the sweet spot of digital sociology, neurodiversity studies, disability studies, and syncretism, in the open. We want to improve the scientific experience for the disabled and the neurodivergent by restoring the humanities. We want to bring voice into empirical constructs and translate voice into academic comprehension.
We also help businesses and organizations increase their knowledge and practice of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) by analyzing company practices and coaching leaders to dismantle ableism in their spaces. According to the Harvard Business Review, “There are more than one billion people worldwide – around 15% of the population – living with a disability. As workers, they can ease talent shortages and add to the organizational diversity that drives better decision-making and innovation.” Neurodiversity-friendly forms of collaboration hold the potential to transform pathologically competitive and toxic teams and cultures into highly collaborative teams and larger cultural units that work together easier and with more success.
Our additional services include digital and physical accessibility audits, sensitivity reads, and other offerings that focus on increasing DEI in the workplace. Client services are how we live our mission to employ neurodivergent and disabled people as well as how we raise capital for grantmaking.
We have to challenge the norm and change the narrative around people who are neurodivergent or disabled.
Here’s how.
⛑📚 Our Pillars 🗂🧰
Mutual Aid
Real help against the onslaught. Staying alive is a lot of work for a disabled person in an ableist society.
Learning Space
The place where we belong does not exist. We will build it. Anti-ableist space for passion-based, human-centered learning compatible with neurodiversity and the social model of disability.
Open Research
Digital sociology, neurodiversity studies, disability studies, and syncretism, in the open. Improving science by restoring the humanities.
Services
Stay relevant in a constantly changing world. Dismantle ableism in your spaces. Enable dignity through access.
⏭ First Pillar: Mutual Aid
The story continues with, “⛑ Mutual Aid: Real Help Against the Onslaught”
