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Positive Autism Awareness

fango pango

You're My Man Of War
Most definitely. What are your guys thoughts on autistic people being able to get help and housing when their parents pass away?

Why would my opinion be anything other than "autistic people should get the accommodations they need, including independent housing, regardless of the health of their parents"? Like, why would anyone's opinion be something other than that?

Well I once vaccinated then later when I had Gluten my stomach felt like **** and didn’t do that before so it had to have been the vaccines

Bad point made poorly. You can gain allergies later in life than birth. I have had hayfever since I was like 19, I don't blame vaccines on that? Regardless of the vaccines you'd have ended up having this issue with gluten. However, in one case you're vaccinated, and in the other you're a moron.

I think that she's trying to draw awareness to issues with vaccines. Don't see what's wrong with her doing so.

She's bringing awareness to it in a harmful way. "Vaccines can give people bad reactions and be harmful, and sometimes even deadly" isn't her point. "Vaccines are bad and they cause autism" is. Of course there's an issue with vaccines in that they can trigger ill effects in people, but y'know what has a worse effect on more people? Not getting vaccinated. Vaccinate yourself

Out of curiosity, has anyone here faced discrimination based on their autism?

I've been discriminated against in the typical ways like at school etc, and I think that it's caused me a deal of grief in life due to some of the issues with understanding what people say. Also is it just me or is it an issue when people won't tell you the shitty things you've done to your face? I'm living with my partner & she's living with a few others right now, and they keep telling each other and her problems they have with me without telling me. I'd like to think I'm not a terrible person to approach, and it's just hard to consider how I could improve unless they tell me what I've done?
 

Weavy

I come and go suddenly
There absolutely should be positive autism awareness; I'm sick of seeing it being thrown around as an insult! I'm autistic myself so I can relate to wanting to see more awareness. Yes, people like us may need more help than some (I find it difficult to look after myself personally), but if people give people like us a chance, they might find they might be some of the best people for the job. I hope one day, more people will understand autism and not bully others because of it.

Out of curiosity, has anyone here faced discrimination based on their autism?

Yes. I was frequently picked on when I was back in school because I'm autistic. I still remember those times like it happened yesterday. I was picked on so much I felt ashamed to be autistic.
 

Eldegoss

Pollinate me.
I've been discriminated against in the typical ways like at school etc, and I think that it's caused me a deal of grief in life due to some of the issues with understanding what people say. Also is it just me or is it an issue when people won't tell you the shitty things you've done to your face? I'm living with my partner & she's living with a few others right now, and they keep telling each other and her problems they have with me without telling me. I'd like to think I'm not a terrible person to approach, and it's just hard to consider how I could improve unless they tell me what I've done?

I'm sorry you were bullied during your time at school. Seems like it is human nature - even in children - to try and harass and single out anyone that doesn't fit a traditional norm.

That seems more like an issue with your partner's friends/roommates than anything else. I hate people that don't have the backbone to discuss their issues with the person in question.

Yes. I was frequently picked on when I was back in school because I'm autistic. I still remember those times like it happened yesterday. I was picked on so much I felt ashamed to be autistic.

I'm sorry you had to go through that experience. I felt the same way at school when I was bullied for being gay - it really creates a pain that never really goes away. I hope you are doing better nowadays though!
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
I've been bullied, but I don't think it was because I was autistic, but because I had such behaviors.

Edit: For vaccines, you have to listen to the science. My cell biology professor (aka the one who would know), said that you should take your vaccines.
 

bobjr

You ask too many questions
Staff member
Moderator
There’s literally no proof vaccines cause autism, in fact the last big study found that unvaccinated kids had significantly higher autism rates. It mostly comes down to autism being diagnosed more effectively now and vaccines becoming more common, so people think the correlation equals a relationship when no direct evidence exists.

But to expand on that part of how things are improving is due to what we’ve learned over the past few decades. Remember in the 90’s it was ADD and basically experts trying to figure out how to drug kids to where they would be “normal” rather than encouraging them to learn in their own way. You can even go back further with disorders like dyslexia, where it took time for people to understand that you literally see the letters wrong. Sadly things can’t change overnight, but we are moving to a point of acceptance that 20 years ago wouldn’t have been a thing.
 

fango pango

You're My Man Of War
I've been bullied, but I don't think it was because I was autistic, but because I had such behaviors.

Edit: For vaccines, you have to listen to the science. My cell biology professor (aka the one who would know), said that you should take your vaccines.

Have you considered your behaviours could come down to your autism?

It may not be as obvious as "They're autistic? Shun them!" Sometimes it's "They have an interest in something bizarre" or "They act funny" etcetc.
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
Have you considered your behaviours could come down to your autism?

It may not be as obvious as "They're autistic? Shun them!" Sometimes it's "They have an interest in something bizarre" or "They act funny" etcetc.
That's what I was trying to imply, yes.
 

Leonhart

Imagineer
I empathize with people who have autism and I actually know a few people at my university who are autistic, and they're really quite nice. But at the same time I have run into a few people with autism on several other sites that I've never been able to relate with. I think it's somewhat ironic because I've heard that people with autism are difficult to approach in real-life, yet I've only had problems befriending them online.
 

jaden767

Amphetamine
I'm not trying to sound rude or mean but I don't click with autistic people. I don't think I've ever met someone with autism in real life but I've encountered many online and on Pokemon forums especially and I will just say that I tend to avoid people who have this affliction since we have nothing in common and starting conversations with them almost always leads to nothing productive in my case.

But that said I don't condone bullying whatsoever so I pity people who have been bullied just because they're different.
 

Joycap

The Smogonites' personal George Orwell
Well I'm probably going to get bollocked for this stance, but someone needed to say this:

Only just saw this thread, and apparently before it went MIA, some "anti-vaxxers" came home to roost. So as someone on the spectrum myself, and as an individual with a knack for the politics of this sort of perception (in this case, the supposed 'Autism-Vaccine' links), I can (to paraphrase RAZORFIST) feel confident planting my flag in the sand, and boldly proclaim aloud...

...Kinda?

OK, this one is complicated, and what makes me willing to state my case is because of a recent and rather enlightening conversation with an acquaintance I have on both Gab and Discord. Before I get to the meat and potatoes, I'm going to start with a personal story about something that happened to me when I was around 5 years old, and it is in fact to do with vaccines. The MMR booster, in fact:

(tl;dr C/Ped from discord chat):

Basically I'd just come off the back of my MMR School leavers boosters (this was when I was around 4 or 5), when I noticed a rash around my backside.

A few days later it had developed into full blown body scars etc., and I couldn't breathe. Apparently I was also administered steroids, but they came too late and didn't do sh*t.

Next thing you know I was in A&E, and if one of the doctors hadn't found the condition I was in, I would have been found dead in a 6 hour waiting line.

That's the tl;dr. Damn traumatic, for what it's worth.

Oh yeah and my mother thinks it was Tetanus, but I hadn't taken that booster and that element couldn't have been separated from DTP, so her side doesn't really add up.

EDIT 14/8: Turns out I HAD taken the DTP, and it was antihistamines I was administered, not steroids.

In fact, before I go any further, I want to make sure we're not tripping on any kind of strawman. When people say 'vaccines cause autism', are we absolutely certain that subset of people are saying "vaccines are the only thing that ever causes ASD and nothing else"? Or is it a slapdash way of saying 'yep, that person definitely shows the *ahem* damages found in the most severe, lower-functioning forms of ASD'. I'm leaning towards to the latter, and while I'm willing to give someone like Dr Buttar the light of day (someone wikipedia smears as a 'pants on fire conspiracy theorist'), I do think he's fallen into this trap one too many times. I say this because it's obviously fallacious for a hospital or institution to administer, say, 100,000 doses of any one kind of the same vaccine (remember, there are brands behind this), and for only a small fraction to come out with anything resembling autism (or any of it's associated conditions, mind you). I use '1 in 100k' specifically because, in the many conversations with my parents, I seem to have been THAT kid, and no one else experienced the damage from the jabs that I did at the time.

Regardless, I believe 'exacerbation' is a much stronger argument than 'cause', and I think this is where both sides trip over themselves. There's more than one way to skin a cat, let me put it that way. 'Grass is greener' and all that. Oh, and as a disclaimer... I hate vaccines, and I'm most certainly going to avoid any COVID vaccine for the simple reason that fast track is one of the most novice mistakes our health apparatus can make (and if all that about microchip implants, 5G, RNA and aborted stem cells are true, well... that's just more fuel to add to the fire, isn't it? And yeah I think Bill Gates deserves his spot in a bodybag). HOWEVER - I am not anti-vax, in much the same way as someone not wanting to be diddled in a back alley is not necessarily anti-sex, or someone that doesn't want to have their entire movements tracked by a police state or those stupid 'contact tracers' is not in any way anti-technology. I respect it's place as another avenue in the health of a nation, but in much the same respect as Dave Cullen and other associated conservatives / the C. Right, I am a believer in bodily sovereignty, and awareness of the foreign substances you are more than likely putting into your body (as a result of preservation of metals, or so I've been told). I have said this to others before, actually:

SentToPine.png


ThatKindofvoice.png

btw I never took my secondary boosters at 16. I'm 20, and lived to tell the tale. So there's that lol.

Anyways, got all that? Bitchin'

With all that said - my acquaintance noticed the condition I was describing, and linked me to this:
https://www.webmd.com/lung/qa/what-causes-a-cytokine-storm

A cursory glace at the description for cytokine storm sounds precisely like what I ended up with. Quote:

"The symptoms of a cytokine storm are high fever, swelling and redness, extreme fatigue and nausea."

The swelling/redness is most definitely what I ended up with. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't even cough / dry heave without incredible pain in my throat.

Earlier in the conversation we were having, he also linked me to this on ASIA (no, not the country), which means 'autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants':

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20708902/

When he mentioned the links between this, neurological conditions and vaccines, I literally said to him "So when people mention autism-vaccine links, this is their magnum opus?" He said yes, it is, and here's where there's a kicker or two:

Firstly, he mentions a slight of hand with 'studies' that consider them safe, where they conflate every single type, brand and deviation in vaccine, and that positive rating they give is a vague way of saying 'it's *mostly* safe'. No mention of individual cases, no saying where the side effects come from down to the letter... nothing, and it's crappy science to say the least.

And I can already hear you typing "well all this talk of chemicals in the body and conflated terms is all well and good, but what has this got to do with autistic people? Isn't the condition neuro-developmental?"

Well to all of that above, yes and no. Check this out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysexecutive_syndrome

When I mentioned autism as a spectrum to him, he mentioned the overlap between the ASD's spectrum's diagnoses and this Dysexecutive syndrome. Just from a cursory glance, there is a LOT I recognise, considering both conditions' presence in the brain, and autism's tendency to be less sociable individuals (see Emotional / Behavioural sections). This is important, as what can be seen to be traits and behaviours in an autistic person (and their individual signs being applicable to basically anyone with enough of an argument) can be conflated with other people with other excess underlying or neurological / developmental conditions. Tugging on that last string for a beat, who is to say that 'developmental' cannot be interpreted in half a dozen different ways? That it can't be conflated with the conditional or environmental or chucking yourself down a flight of stairs? And given how chemical imbalance can effect the mind (the entire reason ASD is considered neurological), who is to say that those impacts cannot be applied to the rest of the body?

So if you think that the only reason that someone is autistic is because they were 'that kid' in the corner of nursery / kindergarten, quietly lining up toy trains from smallest to largest, and got his diagnosis without being stuffed full of enough gunk to turn him redder than Jim Sterling's politics, then someone call the fine folks at FRANXX APE! Because I think I just found your latest generation of test subjects!

Speaking of...

There’s literally no proof vaccines cause autism, in fact the last big study found that unvaccinated kids had significantly higher autism rates. It mostly comes down to autism being diagnosed more effectively now and vaccines becoming more common, so people think the correlation equals a relationship when no direct evidence exists.

Citation, your honour? Because I'm about to blow the mind of everyone in this room.

Remember how earlier, I mentioned cytokine storms, and how I was the unlucky one in that exchange? Well...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3554862/

Quote:
"Further, cytokine profiles change dramatically in the face of infection, disease, and toxic exposures. Therefore, imbalances may represent an immune response to environmental contributors to ASD."

Remember what I said about conflation of factors, and distinguishing between cause and exacerbation? That '1 in 100k' I mentioned? Yeah, this is it. Some (biologically) react to the needle differently, and while those that react to those that poset the idea as 'disgusting anti-vaxxers' or 'conspiracy theorists' or 'take the jab, bigot' are understandable in pointing out the lack of logic in a condition being injected into our very being (there has to be something already there or out of place, hence my previous citations), it's still a kneejerk reaction to the disenfranchised. And that's not to say those written off as 'anti-vaxxers' or 'anti science' have been perfect on this one either (RFB comes to mind, when he mentions 'no cases above 30/40/50 years of age' (if he means life expectancy, Satoshi Tajiri says hi)). Point is, both side have been trying to put the circle in the square hole for a while (myself included), and as pretentious as it sounds, I'd be honoured to clear the air on this.

I know what I said earlier about 'being that unlucky 1 in 100k', but I'm also lucky that all of this happened to me, and I'm still high functioning enough to tell you in extensive detail.

Tl;dr:
- Exacerbation =/= cause.
- Cytokine victims are the most notable cases of an autistic individual, but are not the only examples due to interpretation of spectrum (ASD / Dysexecutive etc., take your pick). Hence greener grass.
- Terms and conditions that can be conflated WILL be conflated.
 
Last edited:

Gamzee Makara

Flirtin' With Disaster
Well I'm probably going to get bollocked for this stance, but someone needed to say this:

Only just saw this thread, and apparently before it went MIA, some "anti-vaxxers" came home to roost. So as someone on the spectrum myself, and as an individual with a knack for the politics of this sort of perception (in this case, the supposed 'Autism-Vaccine' links), I can (to paraphrase RAZORFIST) feel confident planting my flag in the sand, and boldly proclaim aloud...

...Kinda?

OK, this one is complicated, and what makes me willing to state my case is because of a recent and rather enlightening conversation with an acquaintance I have on both Gab and Discord. Before I get to the meat and potatoes, I'm going to start with a personal story about something that happened to me when I was around 5 years old, and it is in fact to do with vaccines. The MMR booster, in fact:

(tl;dr C/Ped from discord chat):

Basically I'd just come off the back of my MMR School leavers boosters (this was when I was around 4 or 5), when I noticed a rash around my backside.

A few days later it had developed into full blown body scars etc., and I couldn't breathe. Apparently I was also administered steroids, but they came too late and didn't do sh*t.

Next thing you know I was in A&E, and if one of the doctors hadn't found the condition I was in, I would have been found dead in a 6 hour waiting line.

That's the tl;dr. Damn traumatic, for what it's worth.

Oh yeah and my mother thinks it was Tetanus, but I hadn't taken that booster and that element couldn't have been separated from DTP, so her side doesn't really add up.

EDIT 14/8: Turns out I HAD taken the DTP, and it was antihistamines I was administered, not steroids.

In fact, before I go any further, I want to make sure we're not tripping on any kind of strawman. When people say 'vaccines cause autism', are we absolutely certain that subset of people are saying "vaccines are the only thing that ever causes ASD and nothing else"? Or is it a slapdash way of saying 'yep, that person definitely shows the *ahem* damages found in the most severe, lower-functioning forms of ASD'. I'm leaning towards to the latter, and while I'm willing to give someone like Dr Buttar the light of day (someone wikipedia smears as a 'pants on fire conspiracy theorist'), I do think he's fallen into this trap one too many times. I say this because it's obviously fallacious for a hospital or institution to administer, say, 100,000 doses of any one kind of the same vaccine (remember, there are brands behind this), and for only a small fraction to come out with anything resembling autism (or any of it's associated conditions, mind you). I use '1 in 100k' specifically because, in the many conversations with my parents, I seem to have been THAT kid, and no one else experienced the damage from the jabs that I did at the time.

Regardless, I believe 'exacerbation' is a much stronger argument than 'cause', and I think this is where both sides trip over themselves. There's more than one way to skin a cat, let me put it that way. 'Grass is greener' and all that. Oh, and as a disclaimer... I hate vaccines, and I'm most certainly going to avoid any COVID vaccine for the simple reason that fast track is one of the most novice mistakes our health apparatus can make (and if all that about microchip implants, 5G, RNA and aborted stem cells are true, well... that's just more fuel to add to the fire, isn't it? And yeah I think Bill Gates deserves his spot in a bodybag). HOWEVER - I am not anti-vax, in much the same way as someone not wanting to be diddled in a back alley is not necessarily anti-sex, or someone that doesn't want to have their entire movements tracked by a police state or those stupid 'contact tracers' is not in any way anti-technology. I respect it's place as another avenue in the health of a nation, but in much the same respect as Dave Cullen and other associated conservatives / the C. Right, I am a believer in bodily sovereignty, and awareness of the foreign substances you are more than likely putting into your body (as a result of preservation of metals, or so I've been told). I have said this to others before, actually:

SentToPine.png


ThatKindofvoice.png

btw I never took my secondary boosters at 16. I'm 20, and lived to tell the tale. So there's that lol.

Anyways, got all that? Bitchin'

With all that said - my acquaintance noticed the condition I was describing, and linked me to this:
https://www.webmd.com/lung/qa/what-causes-a-cytokine-storm

A cursory glace at the description for cytokine storm sounds precisely like what I ended up with. Quote:

"The symptoms of a cytokine storm are high fever, swelling and redness, extreme fatigue and nausea."

The swelling/redness is most definitely what I ended up with. It had gotten to the point where I couldn't even cough / dry heave without incredible pain in my throat.

Earlier in the conversation we were having, he also linked me to this on ASIA (no, not the country), which means 'autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants':

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20708902/

When he mentioned the links between this, neurological conditions and vaccines, I literally said to him "So when people mention autism-vaccine links, this is their magnum opus?" He said yes, it is, and here's where there's a kicker or two:

Firstly, he mentions a slight of hand with 'studies' that consider them safe, where they conflate every single type, brand and deviation in vaccine, and that positive rating they give is a vague way of saying 'it's *mostly* safe'. No mention of individual cases, no saying where the side effects come from down to the letter... nothing, and it's crappy science to say the least.

And I can already hear you typing "well all this talk of chemicals in the body and conflated terms is all well and good, but what has this got to do with autistic people? Isn't the condition neuro-developmental?"

Well to all of that above, yes and no. Check this out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysexecutive_syndrome

When I mentioned autism as a spectrum to him, he mentioned the overlap between the ASD's spectrum's diagnoses and this Dysexecutive syndrome. Just from a cursory glance, there is a LOT I recognise, considering both conditions' presence in the brain, and autism's tendency to be less sociable individuals (see Emotional / Behavioural sections). This is important, as what can be seen to be traits and behaviours in an autistic person (and their individual signs being applicable to basically anyone with enough of an argument) can be conflated with other people with other excess underlying or neurological / developmental conditions. Tugging on that last string for a beat, who is to say that 'developmental' cannot be interpreted in half a dozen different ways? That it can't be conflated with the conditional or environmental or chucking yourself down a flight of stairs? And given how chemical imbalance can effect the mind (the entire reason ASD is considered neurological), who is to say that those impacts cannot be applied to the rest of the body?

So if you think that the only reason that someone is autistic is because they were 'that kid' in the corner of nursery / kindergarten, quietly lining up toy trains from smallest to largest, and got his diagnosis without being stuffed full of enough gunk to turn him redder than Jim Sterling's politics, then someone call the fine folks at FRANXX APE! Because I think I just found your latest generation of test subjects!

Speaking of...



Citation, your honour? Because I'm about to blow the mind of everyone in this room.

Remember how earlier, I mentioned cytokine storms, and how I was the unlucky one in that exchange? Well...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3554862/

Quote:
"Further, cytokine profiles change dramatically in the face of infection, disease, and toxic exposures. Therefore, imbalances may represent an immune response to environmental contributors to ASD."

Remember what I said about conflation of factors, and distinguishing between cause and exacerbation? That '1 in 100k' I mentioned? Yeah, this is it. Some (biologically) react to the needle differently, and while those that react to those that poset the idea as 'disgusting anti-vaxxers' or 'conspiracy theorists' or 'take the jab, bigot' are understandable in pointing out the lack of logic in a condition being injected into our very being (there has to be something already there or out of place, hence my previous citations), it's still a kneejerk reaction to the disenfranchised. And that's not to say those written off as 'anti-vaxxers' or 'anti science' have been perfect on this one either (RFB comes to mind, when he mentions 'no cases above 30/40/50 years of age' (if he means life expectancy, Satoshi Tajiri says hi)). Point is, both side have been trying to put the circle in the square hole for a while (myself included), and as pretentious as it sounds, I'd be honoured to clear the air on this.

I know what I said earlier about 'being that unlucky 1 in 100k', but I'm also lucky that all of this happened to me, and I'm still high functioning enough to tell you in extensive detail.

Tl;dr:
- Exacerbation =/= cause.
- Cytokine victims are the most notable cases of an autistic individual, but are not the only examples due to interpretation of spectrum (ASD / Dysexecutive etc., take your pick). Hence greener grass.
- Terms and conditions that can be conflated WILL be conflated.

This is the EXACT OPPOSITE of this thread's intent. You are a damn Kapo regarding the rights of the neurodivergent by posting crap like this.

1. Your experiences do not speak for everyone. Cytokene "victims" are not that as common as you clearly think. You are the exception, not the rule.
2. Your trauma doesn't disprove that that quack admitted the VACCINES-AUTISM **** was fake years ago as a scheme for money and fame.
3. Appealing to nature is a fallacy. It weakens your argument heavily.
4. Big Pharma is a conspiracy theorist term.
5. Jim Sterling is irrelevant to this discussion. If you don't like that he said games and/or business and whomever are problematic, that's probably because you took it personally.
6. You literally are quoting well-known right-wing conspiracy theories with that Gates/Soros crap. That makes you a conspiracy theorist.
7. Cytokene storms have no actual link to Dysexeutive disorder except by quacks and people like yourself.
8. You're a trauma case who should probably see a therapist regarding your cytokene storm-induced physical and mental trauma that lead to your right-wing, anti-medical, extremist, paranoid tendencies
9. I know where that second screencap came from. You being on there doesn't help your case at all.
10. You're not being positive at all. And you're hijacking a thread about positivity with anger.
11. That ASIA site and its science is way out of date...
12. Exceptions do not prove rules. And the fact that you clearly live in a country where plagues unrelated to COVID are rampant and are easily prevented in the West shows that your anti-vaxxer POV is Western-Centric, not accounting for other areas and how vaccines extend lives more than whatever you're going to say works.
13. If you fear "BEEG PHAWMUH" so much, you'd be surprised what else some of those companies make, use, are related to or are in their supply chain that aren't vaccines and natural enough/you'd have to go without if you're so pure of body.
14. I think that you are just angry in general.
15. What other conspiracies are you in to? I hear QAnon and Gamer/ComicsGate are holding auditions for "Worst people online" auditions!
16. Autism and other neurological disorders are not brain damage in the sense you're pitching.
17. You don't like needles full of stuff being put into you, but that doesn't mean any of the stuff you said above.
18. You clearly just have an axe to grind against your trauma, not Bill Gates, BEEG PHAWMUH, George Soros or anyone else. Stop deluding yourself.
19. The fact that you bring up Soros tends to indicate antisemitism. I'm surprised you didn't name the Rothschilds.
20. Neurodivergent Rights, buddy. Learn it and love it.
 

NPC

sleep researcher
I think as a society we are reaching a much more comprehensive medical and cultural understanding of autism and what it means to be "on the spectrum." For decades the only media depictions of autistic people were as aliens, robots, or emotionless savants who at best deserved our pity. Today the average person seems to have a much more empathic and also more realistic understanding of what it means to be neurodivergent. There's also much more awareness that tons of people are somewhere on the spectrum, and go most of their lives undiagnosed.

With that said, I think government policies and aid programs need to be focused on people with "less functional" levels of autism, which prevent them from--for example--holding most jobs, living on their own, etc. I think that as "being on the spectrum" becomes a more common and normal occurrence, the stigma of neurodivergence will be ameliorated (if perhaps never entirely vanish). Ultimately, a lot of people who in previous eras were called "eccentric," "antisocial," and worse, were most likely on the spectrum, and the point of diagnosing them as such will be to orient them towards the resources they need to live full lives. The rest will take care of itself, even if social acceptance is slow and non-linear.
 
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