Ask Autistic Advocates is an interview series that celebrates autism and how it enhances our lives.
Each week, a new interviewee gives readers a glimpse into what makes them, them, and how autism has helped shaped their lives. Today we’re getting to know Molly Smeele (aka @magical.autistic).
1. Tell us a bit about yourself
My name is Molly Smeele, I am 16 years old and live in Aotearoa New Zealand.
For the past two years, I have had a special interest in climate change and climate action. I’m apart of several climate activism groups in my community. Becoming involved in these groups and being able to make a difference about something I’m passionate about has had a massive positive impact on my life. It has allowed me to step up and become more comfortable with who I am and what I believe in.
I am also very passionate about education. I believe that every individual should have access to a quality education that works well for their learning style. In our current education system, this is impossible. Many students are left behind because schools do not have the resources or understanding to help them. To solve this issue we must change the curriculum, so it is inclusive for all student, no matter their learning need, give schools more funding and hold education to a higher impotence in every part of or lives.
I have also recently developed a special interest around Dungeons and Dragons, the tabletop role-play game, and play bi-monthly games with my friends 
2. Why and when did you start advocating?
I started actively advocating in March of 2019 when I created my Instagram account @magical.autistic. I was struggling with who I was and what being autistic meant to me. So I decided to look online for resources about autism.
Most of what I ended up finding was people trying to sell bullshit ‘cures’, mommy blogs, where they talked about having an autistic child ruined their life and memes that didn’t really have anything to do with autism at all.
Eventually, I discovered the #actuallyautistic hashtag and was able to find a small community of autistic individuals. This small community and the content they created, educational videos, memes, antidotes of their experiences as autistic people, helped me understand myself better.
I wanted to help other autistic people in the same way the community of people helped me and create a space online where I felt comfortable being myself and sharing that with others.
I hope that my online presence as an autistic advocate has helped other autistics find the wonderful online autistic community and access the support and educational resources this community provides.
3. What do you love most about being autisitc?
The part of being autistic that I love the most is being able to see and understand the world differently to non-autistic people.
I can often find solutions to problems that neurotypicals don’t recognize or understand. This can be incredibly helpful in every aspectof my life. Whether it is school work, organizing climate-related actions or playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, I am known for thinking up ideas that other people haven’t considered.
This is not because I’m more intelligent than neurotypical people. I simply see the world differently. My brain is wired to understand different concepts and recognize different patterns. I like to think of it as I am seeing the world through a microscope, and other people are looking through binoculars. They are both useful, but they give you access to two very different sets of information.
I find that there are many times in life when it is essential to study the world through both binoculars and a microscope. Which is why working together, communicating and allowing autistic people to share their ideas and take part in dissuasions is so valuable, not just to autistic people but to everyone.
Related: Ask Autistic Advocates: Allie Mason
4. What was the biggest challenge you’ve faced and how did you overcome it?
There are a lot of challenges that come with being autistic in a society that is made for neurotypical people, such as sensory overload and communication difficulties. However, my biggest challenge has been my struggle to accept and support myself and get acceptance and support from people around me (especially in school).
I was taught from a very young age that being autistic was shameful and bad. These words were never said to my face, but I got the message regardless.
I was relentlessly bullied by other children when I was young, mostly for being ‘weird’. When I told teachers about this, I didn’t get much support. One teacher said to me that if I stopped acting like an “idiot”, I would have friends.
That same teacher would regularly yell at me in class for not understanding what he was explaining or not paying attention. To set the record straight: I usually was paying attention; apparently, the idea that I might need to fiddle to be able to process information was a little too advanced for him to understand. Then when I became overwhelmed from the yelling, he would yell at me for crying and mock me in front of the entire class. Sometimes I wonder where those kids learnt that bullying behaviour from… (sarcasm).
This lack of support and acceptance and continious bullying throughout my primary school life lead me to be ashamed of my autistic traits and try my best to hide them. I have never had a problem telling people I am autistic because that is not what I was bullied for.
I was bullied for flapping my hands, not understanding jokes and taking everything too seriously. I now to hide the fact I’m autistic so well that most people don’t believe me when I tell them I’m autistic this makes it incredibly hard to have my opinion taken seriously on subjects regarding autism and getting the allowances I need like permission to wear noise-cancelling headphones at school.
I wish I could stop hiding my autistic traits and take off the neurotypical mask. It is terrible for my mental and emotional health, leaves me physically exhausted and makes it harder for me to build meaningful relationships. Unmasking is not simple or easy, and I have not yet overcome this struggle.
I hope one day that I can be conformable being autistic in public. At the moment I try and move closer to this goal by surrounding myself with people who accept me, interacting with other autistics, and trying to love every aspect of myself even the ones I’ve been taught to hate.
5. What myth would you like to bust?
The myth that autistic people don’t have any empathy is one of the most common myths about autism and one of the most untrue. Autistic people are some of the most empathetic people I have ever met. I know for me personally, I am incredibly empathetic, and I count it as one of my greatest strengths.
The idea that autistic people have no empathy comes from us expressing emotions differently and not understanding the way neurotypicals show emotion. This doesn’t mean we don’t feel anything or are unable to understand how others are feeling. It is just that we are speaking different emotional languages, this can make life hard for all parties but is easily solved with clear and constant communication.
Hearing people talk about how autistic people have no empathy makes me quite angry and incredibly sad. This belief that autistic people are incapable of empathy is not only untrue but dangerous. It is a way to dehumanise us and make us seem like cold, unfeeling monsters (even though people with low or no empathy are not these things anyway).
We see everyday autistic people being abused and murdered by police, teachers, support workers, parents and guardians. When these things happen, the life and pain of the autistic person are often ignored. Instead, people sympathise with the struggles of the abuser because people have this preempted ableist idea that autistic people are so emotionally inept.
6. If you could go back in time and ask your younger-self one thing, what would it be?
I would tell my younger self to be kind to myself and others.
When I was younger, I was too busy trying to be better and more interesting than everyone else instead of focusing on being kind. I was often cruel to myself and unnecessarily harsh in my judgment of others. I don’t believe I was ever a bully. Still, the years of bullying I experienced made me treat everyone like the enemy, including myself.
