Autistic in NYC

Resources and new ideas for the autistic adult community in the New York City metro area.

Longterm visions for the autistic community

Based on my experiences in the LGBTQ+ community (I'm bi) and in various oddball subcultures, I have a lot of ideas on how the autistic community could become much better organized and more useful than it is now.

Hopefully this website, for example, will eventually feature lists of local autistic-friendly workplaces and autistic-owned (or co-owned) businesses. I plan also to be involved in creating an interactive website intended to help various kinds of groups get started in the NYC area and elsewhere.

A well-developed autistic community ("community" in the sense of organized subculture) would also include many more autistic peer-led groups than now exist. The kinds of groups I think are needed include, among others:

Of course, by the very nature of our common disability, most of us find it hard to handle a lot of in-person socializing. So, other than the local neighborhood-based support groups, it would probably be easiest for most of the above-listed kinds of groups to exist primarily online (though in a locally-focused way), with occasional in-person get-togethers.

In addition to -- or perhaps instead of -- holding their own events, some groups (e.g. the career-oriented groups and the hobby groups) could organize excursions to larger, NT-dominated gatherings as well. (For example, members of Autistic Techies of the NYC Area could attend some New York Tech Meetup events together.) Attending these larger events together could help us feel more comfortable there, and would also make it much easier to ask for accommondations if needed.

For some discussion of how to build groups of autistic people, see the Wrong Planet thread Starting and leading autistic peer support & social groups (See also the older thread Building the autistic community?.)

We also need to find other ways that we, as a community, can make it easier for all of us to make friends, which is something most of us struggle with. I have some ideas for possible ways to do this, including a possible forthcoming interactive website.

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