Rainbow brain icon on a black background with white text that reads: NeuroQueer Timelines: Conversion Therapy, Queer History, and ABA - The Pains of Watching History Repeat Itself - Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Ivar Lovaas conducted experiments using rewards and punishments to shape "desirable" or "normative behaviors" in gender nonconforming and Autistic children.

NeuroQueer Timelines: Conversion Therapy, Queer History, and ABA – The Pains of Watching History Repeat Itself

Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, Ivar Lovaas conducted experiments using rewards and punishments to shape “desirable” or “normative behaviors” in gender nonconforming and Autistic children.
Continue reading NeuroQueer Timelines: Conversion Therapy, Queer History, and ABA – The Pains of Watching History Repeat Itself

Queer, Trans, NeuroDivergent, Autistic: The Human Need for Authenticity

I knew, at the age of four or five, that I wasn’t a girl, but I couldn’t articulate what I knew, and the world told me I was a girl, and I had to get used to that somehow.

I also knew, around the same time, that I was not like other kids, but not knowing I was NeuroDivergent, also meant not having the language to describe that experience either, and falsely believing that I was an inferior, lazy, NeuroTypical child, and then, eventually, a inferior lazy NeuroTypical adult. I held myself to those NeuroTypical standards, even to my own detriment.

I forced myself to fit into their boxes, at the expense of my own mental and physical health.

I held myself to CIS heteronormative standards, often feeling like I was living a lie and pretending to be someone I wasn’t, for the comfort of other people.

I hit for safety, to blend in, and not make waves. I hid to avoid being the target of bullying and harassment, though bullies still managed to find me. That’s what happens when you grow up in a violent, hostile place, where you don’t feel you’re safe, and you are forced into the peripheries of society.

Being invisible was safer and preferable to standing out, so I did my best to be invisible, and it almost killed me.

Eventually, I got to a point where I couldn’t do it anymore. I came to a place where I could no longer maintain the complex social mask that had protected me for most of my life, and when it all fell apart, I found myself in a place of crisis and was diagnosed Autistic at 29. Continue reading Queer, Trans, NeuroDivergent, Autistic: The Human Need for Authenticity

Image description: The Intersections on The Spectrum podcast logo is a rainbow gradient word cloud in the shape of a person with outstretched arms. An image of Lyric looking up and towards the distance. Lyric is a white passing person of mixed heritage with brown eyes and arched eyebrows. They have a tuft of emerald green hair poking out from under a black hat.

Intersections on the Spectrum: Lyric Holmans

Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed for the Podcast Intersections on the Spectrum. In episode of Intersections on the Spectrum we discuss my identities, lobbying against ABA, open relationships, and living in an RV. Continue reading Intersections on the Spectrum: Lyric Holmans

NEW Blue, Pink, black polyamory flag with white circle in the middle, containing a pink heart and blue infinity

Is Polyamory a Choice? – Polyamorous People and Polyamorous Relationships

Polyamorous relationships and polyamorous people are two different things. Just like being in a Queer relationship and being a Queer Person or two different things. A Polyamorous person “is someone who can date, commit to, and/or love more than one person.” Polyamory/Polyamorous Relationships “involves being in multiple relationships with multiple people and building connections, feelings, and commitments with more than one person.”

Continue reading Is Polyamory a Choice? – Polyamorous People and Polyamorous Relationships