I’ll wear my rainbow another day
My pride’s a riot, it’s not a parade.

Laura Jane Grace & Laura Jane Grace in The Trauma Tropes – Wearing Black Lyrics

With society dismantling our rights as queer, neurodivergent, and disabled people, I’m feeling ornery on this Autistic Pride Day. They’re coming at us on all fronts, stripping our ability to live in community and forcing us into institutions.

The right to live in community is being dismantled, and the legal tools to defend it are being dismantled alongside it.

Community Living Is Being Dismantled on Every Front at Once – Stimpunks Foundation

The endpoint it keeps arriving at is the institution.

Community Living Is Being Dismantled on Every Front at Once – Stimpunks Foundation

The forces of neuronormativity feel overwhelming in this age of mass behaviorism and unvarnished eugenics.

…mass neurodivergent disablement and constant, widespread anxiety, panic, depression, and mental illness, combined with systemic discrimination of neurodivergent people, is a problem specific to the current historical era. Hegemonic neuronormative domination, in other words, is a key problem of our time.

Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman

We’re tired. So very tired. Even during Pride Month, our stories are drowned out.

Autistic people have been spoken about, written over, and pathologised for far too long. Our lives have been turned into case studies, symptoms, behaviours, and ‘outcomes’. We have been flattened, squashed into diagnostic criteria, and dissected through checklists and things like social skills programmes built around what we are perceived as lacking. These narratives have been written about us, but not for us in a helpful way, and certainly not with or by us.

Autistic Pride: Restorying & Unknowing Autism | Autistic Realms

Despite it all, we choose to live proudly.

It is deeply subversive to live proudly despite being living embodiments of our culture’s long standing ethical failings.

THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: ON HANS ASPERGER, THE NAZIS, AND AUTISM: A CONVERSATION ACROSS NEUROLOGIES

Let’s be proud in a world that soaks us in shame.

And that is what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate.

The closet can only stop you from being seen. It is not shame-proof.

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette

For this Pride Day, I’m going to shake it off.

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

Today, I’m going to stim and glim with my people.

Let’s get down. It’s hootenanny time.

Hey, hey, hey
Just think, while you've been gettin' down and out about the liars
And the dirty, dirty cheats of the world
You could've been gettin' down
To this sick beat