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by Joe Biel (Editor)
The first time that I met my favorite autistic mentee, she walked right up to me, declaring "you don't look like prey!" We had discussed at length how we are both consistently perceived as vulnerable from our appearances, body language, and mannerisms. I had never thought about this as a trait of autism until I began to research the relationships of crime statistics and autism to find that we are frequently victims. When I looked up the meaning of "getting taken advantage of," I had a starting discovery. The phrase has two components, someone using you unfairly for their own benefit and you being complicit and accepting in this dynamic. So being robbed on the street is not being "taken advantage of." While everyone experiences these types of encounters, it seems that so many neurodiverse people are taken advantage of because they are easily fooled into being complicit in these exchanges. This zine is a forum of advice and stories to explain the neurodiverse experience so that we can be seen as real, whole people. One theme that kept coming up in conversations with neurodiverse people as "being taken advantage of." Every neurodiverse person seems to be a survivor of abuse, whether that be emotional, financial, sexual, physical, or mental. These stories humanize those experiences and provide context, humor, and real solutions for how to overcome them. Ultimately, living in our society it becomes difficult not to internalize ableism and see ourselves as lesser, rather than just different.
Author Biography
Joe Biel is a self-made autistic publisher and filmmaker who draws origins, inspiration, and methods from punk rock. Biel is the founder and CEO of Microcosm Publishing, Publishers Weekly's #1 fastest growing publisher of 2022. Biel has been featured in Time Magazine, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Art of Autism, Reading Glasses, PBS, Bulletproof Radio, Spectator (Japan), G33K (Korea), and Maximum Rocknroll. Biel is the author of People's Guide to Publishing: Building a Successful, Sustainable, Meaningful Book Business, Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life & Business on the Spectrum, Manspressions: Decoding Men's Behavior, Make a Zine, The CIA Makes Science Fiction Unexciting, Proud to be Retarded, Bicycle Culture Rising, and more. Biel is the director of five feature films and hundreds of short films, including Aftermass: Bicycling in a Post-Critical Mass Portland, $100 & A T-Shirt, and the Groundswell film series. Biel lives in Portland, Ore. Find out more at joebiel.net
