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[–] 207 points 2 months ago (65 children)

Yeah, you kinda have to say it. Some of us are old and out of touch...

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  • [–] 35 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Toe walking is a fairly common childhood autistic trait and one of the main things researchers associated with it early on.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    I even ran on my toes, never was diagnosed. It's funny (not actually) reaching adulthood and everything start making sense.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

    Running on the balls of your feet is a sprinting technique. It’s what a lot of people do. So not a definitive trait of autism.

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  • [–] 100 points 2 months ago (54 children)
  • [–] 80 points 2 months ago (53 children)
  • [–] 119 points 2 months ago* (52 children)

    A common quirk of autism is putting pressure on the fronts of your feet (though rarely as high as this) while walking.

    I do it a bit, but the only sign that I am is that my shoes wear down on the front faster than other people, while the heel generally stays intact.

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  • [–] 109 points 2 months ago (14 children)

    I really need Lemmy to stop pointing out things I didn’t notice I have been doing forever and then telling me it’s an autism thing.

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  • [–] 114 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    Do you eat food... Cause its a known fact that 100 % of autistic people eat food!

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  • [–] 25 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    I know some who forget to do that

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  • [–] 18 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Eat? Autism.

    Forget to eat? Also autism.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    There's been information coming out that indicates having autism is quite common among ADHD people, and is significantly under-diagnosed, especially for people who got their ADHD diagnosis a long time ago.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Depends. How are you eating? Are you meticulously separating your food and eating it in a particular order? Do you break apart your tator tots into tiny bits, or do you pull the chocolate chips out of your muffins to eat them separately? Maybe you eat all the green veggie straws, then all the yellows, then all the orange ones, never deviating from that pattern?

    It’s fascinating looking around the lunch room in a school for autistic children.

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  • [–] 48 points 2 months ago

    I think people like to take any symptom related to autism and just claim that anything similar is also a symptom. Like, "autistic people do X a lot so if you ever did X you're probably autistic". Not how it works.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago (21 children)
  • [–] 41 points 2 months ago (20 children)

    There can be a few reasons. Sensory, coordination, neurological... Usually it simply feels more natural.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    …pretending to have digitigrade legs…

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    to walk like animals who walk on their toes

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)

    I do not believe that is as relevant as you think it is.

    There is a certain overlap between autistic people and furries/therians, but that is very much not usually the reason for this behaviour.

    EDIT: usually

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    I don’t walk like this, but it is more natural. We would walk like that barefoot. Heel first is a shoe thing

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    That is simply not correct. The development happened when humanity started walking upright. It had nothing to do with shoes. So it is not more natural.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    You are right. I was also talking about which part of the foot hits the ground first

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    Man, even that was a sign!? Is everything I've ever done just textbook autism?

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    If you're as old as me the only thing books ever mentioned on [behavior now correlated with autism] is that some kids do it but they'll "grow out of it."

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I "grew out of it" when I got too fat to stay on the balls of my feet all the time. However I still do every so often; and when I sit, I often tuck my feet under the chair so that I'm resting on them.. so maybe not entirely grown out of it..

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    I do that, too, when I'm in a shared chair. I think it's because my feet don't reach the floor in chairs that aren't adjusted for my height. Also, I'm autistic, hyper flexible, and have poor proprioception, so sitting on my legs gives me good feedback on where my limbs are.

    My office chair is a kneeling chair, and I tend to sit with my feet where the knees should go. (I swap into office slippers, so it's not outside shoes on my chair.)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

    This is what the doctor said when my kid was newer to walking and, well, the kid did. I didn't do anything to intervene and, to the best of my knowledge, neither did my wife.

    edit: Add missing gerund.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    That's awesome! Nobody should have to endure 10+ years of being called "twinkle toes" on the account of an unconscious behavior.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Of course not! So long as it's not physically endangering them in any way (for example, if it damaged tendons; or I might discourage doing it on the stairs, though I don't think that ever came up) or otherwise causing them problems, then I want them to be who they are. That includes whatever manner is comfortable for their walking.

    If it had been, for some reason, necessary to push for it to change, the way to do that would be through whatever treatment was needed (presumably with at least the help of professionals), not through mockery.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    Not necessarily a sign; just a common quirk to have with the condition.

    Not all toe-walking is related to autism: it can also be musculoskeletal or related to other psychological conditions; and at the same time, not all autistic people walk like this.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    My shoes get worn down similarly because I have high arches and long ass toes, "tingers". The middle arch never touches the ground.

    Finding the right shoes suck ass. I'll get holes in the top and bottom of the front unless I have proper arch support.

    Plus side I'm very silent when I walk because there is less contact. So I've spent a lifetime scaring the shit out of people on accident.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    I do this but only when I'm wearing sandals or am barefoot, if I'm in my boots I walking notably more on my heel. Seriously I have to swap the padding on them every once in awhile because I bore a hole in the damned things. I think it's a balance thing.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Huh and here I just did it cause my house was creaky and my step-dad was a light sleeper. If we woke him we would get screamed at or worse. Walking toe/heel made me quieter in the dark.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    Basically anything someone divergent does is instantly unique to them and needs to be screamed all over Lemmy as their personality.

    In reality, people walk on their toes, heels or the balls of their feet. They often switch depending on context (walk on your heels in a hurry, in the balls of your feet rather than stomping etc.) No one really cares or feels special about it.

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  • [–] 86 points 2 months ago (11 children)

    Is there more to it than just Spiderverse Gwen having a background in ballet and the artists coding her mannerisms around that (e.g. her costume using ballet shoes)?

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  • [–] [S] 41 points 2 months ago (9 children)

    It's an autism/ADHD coded behavior.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Also, there are serious textural references to her being trans, and well…

    Let’s say I’m aware that there are neurotypical trans people out there but there’s definitely a certain correlation.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago* (5 children)

    I don't think the trans themes in the movies(the color of her dimension mirroring the trans flag/etc) are literal, more that her journey is an allegory for the trans journey.

    Her arc involves discovery herself, losing friends, hiding who she is from her parent, being abandoned when her true self is revealed, finding a found family, and finally reconciling with her parent when they finally accept her.

    Its a trans arc, but is more shared experience that makes it roots clear than a literal statement of gender.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    considering she literally has a trans pride flag hanging above the door in her bedroom, i'm gonna say it's a little bit more than just allegory

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

    Being cool doesnt mean youre trans, but I get your point.

    I'm happy either way, but I personally don't see it. There isn't enough of the day to day of that journey in the movies, especially with how heavily shes featured in the 2nd one.

    We know a lot about her life between the 2 films, and besides her being fucking awesome, no elements touch on her being on puberty blockers or having gone on that specific personal journey of discovery. With how intensely emotional and human these films are, and how focused they are on family, I just can't see them hiding all the literal trans moments to just have allusions and allegory instead.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    bear in mind that no matter how progressive the filmmakers are, the Spider-Verse movies are still mass-market movies, and the corporate studio overlords would never greenlight anything which they deem "controversial" and could hurt the film's reception. in the West, gayness is sufficiently widely accepted that the entire MCU was able to get away with a single canonically gay character who says one throwaway line (which is totally inconsequential and can be easily dubbed over for less progressive markets). on the other hand, even in the "progressive" West, the mere existence of a trans person is enough for some people outside of the alt-right to raise a huge fuss - there's no way any major studio would allow an open discussion of a character's transness in one of the most hyped franchises of the past few years, let alone one of the main characters¹. veiled hints and nods are the best you're going to get.

    that said, while i sorta understand your skepticism, i think there's enough times throughout the movies where it's just aggressively in-your-face without explicitly saying it that i have no doubt that the writers intended her to be trans. off the top of my head:

    • she has a trans pride flag in her room. this could just mean she's a cis ally, but there are almost certainly fewer cis people flying the trans flag than trans people
    • her entire color scheme is white, pink, and blue. could be coincidental, but considering how intentional so even the most minor visual details are throughout the series, i refuse to believe that they didn't consider the potential implications of that choice when deciding on the color palette for one of the main characters (and her entire universe)
    • her dad has a trans pride flag on his police uniform. again, he is a cop. with very few exceptions, cops simply are not trans allies, and certainly not to the point that they'd show it off on the job - unless, perhaps, maybe one of their family members is trans...
    • having your hair turn into the trans pride flag while having a heartfelt speech about having to hide half of yourself from the people you love is about as subtle as a brick

    again, considering these movies have so much thought put into the most minute graphical elements, i simply cannot imagine a way that they could've managed to accidentally surround a character whose entire story is a clear trans allegory with so much blatantly obvious trans imagery. of course there's no way it could ever be said out loud, but what they've done with Spider-Gwen goes very far beyond the usual "transcoding" or "queercoding" of characters in media.

    ¹ unless the character being trans is portrayed as a joke in and of itself, in which case it's apparently totally fine!

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    I think we are viewing the same tells with a different levels of impact. I can see where you are coming from, but I still disagree. I'll say its at least an allegory, maybe more.

    Personally, I still think the universe colors/her suit/flags/pin all point to the same allegory, and aren't individual tells hinting at her being trans. I can see it as a "the writers wanted to, but the suits shut it down" situation, which is maybe the same thing, but if its not there, its not there.

    Again, cool either way with me, I just dont see her as trans in canon.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    There is some lorebook tug of war to be sure, but if you take Across the Spiderverse as a stand alone work and don’t consider any of the public back pedaling after the fact, even the literal interpretation is defensible.

    More defensible than “she’s def autistic because the ballerina character is en pointe in a few panels”. Yet here we are.

    That said: cis or trans, ND or NT, spiderverse Gwen Stacy is the best thing to happen to the Spider-Man franchise in over a decade.

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  • [–] 77 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Also ✨trauma✨!

    Tiptoeing around your parents so they don't notice you 🥰 (but I am also the 'tism)

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  • [–] 38 points 2 months ago*

    TIL another reason to get myself tested for that.
    Who knows, maybe I could upgrade my ADHD diagnosis to AuDHD.

    Or as I think of it since having read it around here, ADHD Gold^TM^

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  • [–] 37 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Its to increase posterior chain strength in her calves and plantar fascia to help with explosiveness as spider-woman.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 months ago

    tippy toes to avoid being loud even when alone at home ~

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  • [–] 30 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Wait, does neurodivergence cause short calf muscles?

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Walking on toes is associated with autism. Maybe because it's less impact force and also less noise so generally less stuff to deal with.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Well, that is interesting. I used to do it a lot as a kid and sometimes still do, but it's just physically comfortable for me. My ankle rests in a tiptoe position and I get tons of calf cramps.

    Now that's got me wondering the causal relationship here

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    cerebral palsy

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