Episode 156: Autistics Unmasked and the BIPOC autistic experience – with Ky Kennedy, CEO of Autistics Unmasked

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share the extraordinary stories of neurodivergent people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

Welcome everyone to this special live episode of Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share stories directly from neurodivergent people. And I’m the host of the podcast, Carolyn Kiel. A little bit about me: I’ve been hosting Beyond 6 Seconds for a little more than four years. I was diagnosed autistic last year, and starting this year, I decided to refocus my podcast to feature neurodivergent and disabled entrepreneurs, creators, advocates, and more, and really share their experiences around life and identity. So, my guests’ stories will shatter misconceptions. They break stigma and really showcase the vibrance and diversity of this community. And you can find all my episodes at Beyond6Seconds.net or on your favorite podcast app under Beyond 6 Seconds.

Before we get started, I just want to mention that this podcast episode is part of the Intersectional Infinity Summit, a Neurodivergent Infinity Network of Educators’ multi event virtual summit, featuring autistic and other neurodivergent presenters, panelists, and guests from all around the world.

And if you’re listening to us live right now, remember that you can still register for the summit and catch many of the earlier summit events, which have been recorded, as well as the remaining events occurring up until Saturday, April 2nd.

Okay. So on today’s episode, I’m speaking with Ky Kennedy. Ky is a mother, lactation consultant, author, and autism advocate. After seeing a need for an autistic founded and run organization, Ky and their sister founded Autistics Unmasked, also known as AU. Now Ky and the rest of the team at AU are well on their way to providing educational resources to schools, employers, and family members of autistic people across the nation. Ky, welcome to the podcast!

Ky Kennedy: Hi, I got all teary-eyed as you’re reading that because I, I’m just so excited to be part of this summit to begin with, but just being able to talk about the work that we’re doing at AU and talk more about my experience as an autistic person. Like this has just been so incredible for me. So yeah, I definitely teared up a little bit as you’re reading that.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, wonderful. Yeah, it’s been, it’s been a really great summit and I’m so excited to, to talk with you, and I’m glad that the summit brought us together so that we can have this conversation.

Ky Kennedy: I’m very, yeah, I’m very, very, very blessed that Karen has honestly brought me together with so many people from this community here. And specifically you, because this is incredible, and I’ve listened to a few of your other episodes, so I’m excited to be a kind of a part of your, your lineup here.

Carolyn Kiel: Fantastic. Yeah. Wonderful. So great to have you here. So as we kick off, I wanted to learn a little bit more about your own story and what it was like growing up autistic. So I guess, when did you get your autism diagnosis and kind of, how did that happen?

Ky Kennedy: So a story that I think is, is not unlike a lot of others is I, I don’t have a clinical autism diagnosis. I’m self identifying, as I say. And I’m also, I guess, what would be considered late identified, in that I just learned this about myself about a year or so ago. So it’s been the majority of my life experiencing the world the way that I do as an autistic person and not realizing that that was the reason why I was experiencing the world this way.

And in hindsight, I can see all the many ways that my autistic characteristics showed up. You know, in school, in social settings, in other educational or professional settings. Just any, any situation that I was in, I can look back now that I know what I know, and kind of see where my autistic traits were and how they presented. And I’ve been able to, to do that and learn more about myself as I continue down this journey of figuring out what it means for me to, to be autistic.

Carolyn Kiel: It is interesting to look back on life and really see how things manifested. So, yeah. I’m curious. What was your experience like in school?

Ky Kennedy: So school was very much, I don’t think I mentioned yet in this space, but I have in previous ones that I also have ADHD. So I’ve got the two kind of working in tandem and also sometimes against each other.

But in, in school, it was very difficult, because I always felt this kind of pressure to perform. I didn’t understand why so many of my peers seemed to just get it, whatever it was. Whether it was, you know, how to act at the school dance or how to, you know, like walk in the hallway a certain way, or what you were supposed to do at your locker. I remember in middle school, I had this like wild idea in my head that like everyone like had to act a certain way when they went to their locker to get through their books. Like, there’s so many, like little things like that, where I was just observing all my peers, trying to figure out like, okay, everyone seems to get it. Like what am I missing? What’s going on?

And WikiHow and Google became like my best friend during school where I would just Google everything and anything, and Wiki, Wiki how to talk to a boy, Wiki how to, you know, raise your hand during class, how to get the confidence to raise your hand during class, things like that. Because I couldn’t, could not understand why so many of my peers just seemed to naturally be able to do these things. And I was like, I just, I mean, I kind of people, I was always observing them. I always felt like I had to study my peers in order to fully, or even attempt to start to understand what interactions were supposed to look like and feel like, and act like.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I think that’s something I hear a lot from my autistic guests, especially when they were younger, is really sort of studying other people’s behavior. And just trying to figure out, like, what is the right way to work and act in this particular situation? Did you feel like you had to mask a lot growing up or were you aware of masking at that time?

Ky Kennedy: I think I did, for sure. More recently on my Twitter. I shared two different videos of me within the past year or so, and I kind of like prompted my, my mutuals to see if they could try to figure out like which one I was masking and which one I wasn’t masking in. These were videos that I had posted on TikTok and brought them over to Twitter. And, and in watching both of them myself side-by-side before I shared them to Twitter, I immediately realized where I had previously said, you know, I’m so good at masking. I’m so good at masking. And I’m really not as good as I think. It’s just that people don’t know what autism looks like.

But I do remember feeling like I had to mask a lot growing up. It mostly looked like creating routines that weren’t natural for me. So like, for example, if I went to a sleepover with a friend, I would brush my teeth like a minute or two longer than I usually would, because I thought that’s how you were supposed to, you know, you were supposed to brush your teeth for a certain amount of time. And yes, they do teach kids that, you know, you’re supposed to sing the ABCs, but for me it was like that wasn’t a natural thing. Like I had to over-perform almost because my natural state was just, I brushed until they feel clean. Not necessarily, I brush my teeth for five minutes and wash my hands, you know, an extra three minutes. And like, you know, I always felt like I was performing, and would sometimes even pride myself on saying like, “that was a really good day. Like I performed really well today in front of my, all of my friends and family.” Like I remember like praising myself for feeling like I had done, like I’ve done all the things properly. I’ve followed all the rules. I studied it well enough for that day. Every day felt like a pop quiz and I would praise myself for you know, performing well on that pop quiz for that particular day.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, being so aware of behavior and and just changing it to the situation. Absolutely. Wow. So, yeah, so I would love to learn more about Autistics Unmasked now. So how did you get the inspiration to start Autistics Unmasked?

Ky Kennedy: There was a viral TikTok creator who was participating in an event that was supposed to be donating to one of the other large autism organizations that it was previously known to be a good one. Right? It’s ran by autistic people for autistic people. However, it was later found out that that organization plagiarized from an indigenous autistic creator here on Twitter. And so there was kind of like this uproar about it and the people who were involved, the other autistic people who were involved in that organization or in the, I guess, it was similar to the summit, an event. The people who were involved with that didn’t go about it the right way with you know, identifying that this was racism at play and things like that.

And so my sister and I got together and we were kind of just like, this has to stop. Like at that point, I didn’t realize that I was autistic, but we, she had already gotten her clinical diagnosis. My youngest brother has been diagnosed since he was younger. So, you know, like autism was not like necessarily a new thing to my family. But I just, I knew I was neurodivergent at the time. I had already self-identified ADHD and we kind of were just like this, this has to stop. There’s not an organization, even the ones that we think are the best ones that are ran for and by autistic people, it seems like these super marginalized voices, so BIPOC and queer autistics specifically, are still being overlooked, are still being spoken over, are still being taken advantage of. Like, we have to do something about it.

And so we kind of just put our minds together. And there were many, many late nights at my house, at my mom’s house, you know, back and forth having meetings just between the two of us, my sister and me figuring out, you know, how do we do this. What’s our name going to be? What are our colors? What is, you know, our logo going to be? And just kind of trying to figure out like, what’s our mission here?

And so we put together a survey and we sent it out on Twitter. And the survey just basically asked a bunch of people, whether they were clinical or self identifying autistic to answer these questions. And some of them were, what’s your gender? What’s your sexuality, your special interests, your favorite color? And then more in depth, we asked questions like, you know, what do you want somebody who isn’t autistic to know about you? What do you think the world should know about the autistic community? What’s important about an autistic organization? You know, what things do you look for an organization to support? Things like that.

And we got a pretty good response from people. It was, it was close to, I think, like 150 or so people responded. Yeah. So, I mean, for two of us, you know, at the time, I didn’t really have many Twitter followers. She didn’t have very many Twitter followers. So I mean, it was clear that the community was begging for an organization like this. And we’re very happy to learn that we had you know, initiated that sort of I guess, initiative, for lack of a better word. You know, we were the ones to kind of like start this. And I’m sure there are other organizations out there, but it seemed like the people, you know, we left a space open in the survey for, is there anything else you’d like us to know? Open-ended response. And many people were just like, “thank you so much. Just thank you for starting this. We need this, we need this. Thank you. How can I donate?” You know, before we had even officially became an organization. This was just like, you know, “where do we start” sort of thing, so we pushed the survey out.

And so from there, things just blossomed. We started putting out, you know, tweets and, and TikTok videos, looking for an administrative team for our social media accounts. We put out listings or ads for our leadership team, for our research, or for our education team. And slowly but surely, people started coming in and now we have the most incredible team. A few of them are here today, live with us. I see their little icons down below. We have the most incredible team now who they are all, all autistic. We are all autistic here. Many of us are queer and many of us are, are, you know, BIPOC. And it’s just been just wild to see from what started last April into now. So it has not even been an entire year yet, and we’ve already got… yeah, I know, I think about that. I think that might be the first time that I said it out loud. It has not even been one full year since we just had the conception of the idea for AU, from where it was to now, where we are in contact with school districts in Boston to speak at their, at their, you know, Autism Acceptance Month events and things like that, where we’re participating in this Intersectional Infinity Summit. Where we’re, you know, having like parents from everywhere are emailing us, asking “what do I do about my school with my autistic kid, they’re being horrible. Can you help me?” You know, just so many things. And the research team is like going above and beyond with creating this really comprehensive guide for someone who wants to self identify as autistic and not get a clinical diagnosis or maybe go on to get one. And there’s so many things like, I don’t want to occupy too much of the time talking about what we’ve done, because we did do a live Twitter Space on it, which is part of the Intersectional Infinity Summit. So if you want the recording for that, you can reach out to the organizers of the summit. But it’s just so incredible, if you say out loud, I think for the first time to hear that it’s been not even a full year, and there are already so many incredible impactful things in place and things just keep rolling.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. That’s amazing what you’ve been able to accomplish in less than a year. And it sounds like there’s such an enormous need for a group like yours, that really represents. I’m always a little nervous to support charities that are dedicated to autism, because I feel like I have to research them deeply because like, okay, is this, what are really their motivations? And are they really, you know? And I think I know the organization you’re referring to. That was shocking to hear that that happened. So, yeah. Yeah. So I think it’s really wonderful that you’re able to bring this together and accomplish so much in less than a year.

Ky Kennedy: Thank you.

Carolyn Kiel: And how did you pick the name Autistics Unmasked?

Ky Kennedy: So I think that it actually came as a recommendation. One of the questions on our survey was, what should, what should our name be? And it wasn’t Autistics Unmasked, but it was something similar. It was like unmasking autistics or something like that. And so we kind of just switched it around a little bit. But we have this sort of philosophy and we’re still working on our website and perfecting it.

But one of the things that we’ll be putting on there is kind of our organization wide philosophy on unmasking, which is as it stands that everyone should safely be able to, but now we’re starting to work with someone who’s, I don’t, I don’t want to give her name out because I’m not sure that she wants to be identified quite yet, but someone that we found on TikTok has made this video about how the unmasking movement as it is, is a great start, but it’s not quite there yet. And what we really should be looking at is how people who need to mask, like how they can give themselves that accommodation. How they can, for the extra spoons or energy that they need to be able to mask, how they can assess where they’re going to have to mask versus where they can unmask, like things like that.

So while we are, you know, in, in support of everyone being able to unmask the way that they feel like they can. I’m moving into more towards a narrative of being able to identify that it’s just simply not possible for some people. It’s necessary for some people to mask. And, and being able to spread information through our website and through courses that help autistic people understand what is masking for them, what is not masking for them, and then assess how much energy they need to mask and then assess how they need to conserve their energy, to be able to mask for the situations that are necessary to mask for.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, absolutely. It would be great if we could be unmasked in that, you know, if we could be free to do that, but you know, it really depends on certain situations. And I imagine that, you know, certainly Black people, people of color, BIPOC people have you know, certain situations and challenges that, you know, white people don’t have in terms of unmasking where the stakes are higher.

So yeah, I would love if you could tell us a little bit more about some of the challenges that BIPOC autistic people face in society and kind of how you help spread awareness of those and support people through that.

Ky Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. I think we might’ve done quite a few Twitter Spaces on AU’s account about this particular topic, because it’s, of course, it’s just never ending.

But there are so many different levels to what masking can look like for you know, I’ll speak personally as a Black woman, you know, I can say BIPOC, but speak specifically to my community as a Black woman.

There are so many levels to masking that people don’t realize that comes with not just masking outside of your own race. So we talk about like code switching and masking are sometimes synonymous and sometimes not, to where code switching might be where you speak more in African American Vernacular English when you’re with your fellow Black peers, versus you speak a more traditional white American vernacular English when you’re with white or other ethnicities. You know, that might be considered code switching.

But with masking there’s like a whole, like a whole ‘nother, like element to it because of the fact that like, we’ll take, for example, in a, a situation where a Black man might be pulled over by a police officer, and maybe this situation is overwhelming for him, so he begins stimming. But if he starts to stim and his movements are erratic from the perception of a white cop, that could put his life in jeopardy. So there’s just so many aspects that people have to be aware of where, you know, we need to spread to these people who are like first responders and, you know, like doctors and police officers and things like that. That just, just taking one, because I can go on and on, but just taking one aspect about stimming alone, you know, where we are stimming to help ourselves get through what is a stressful situation, right? I’ve only been pulled over once in my life, and it was because my headlights weren’t on and it was a rental car, but, you know, there are other situations I’m sure where it might’ve been, you know, like a traffic violation or run a red light or whatever, and Black people just being pulled over alone is nerve-wracking and potentially life-threatening. And then to add that extra element of being autistic or otherwise neurodivergent and feeling like you have to stim in order to be able to stay calm in the situation. But if you stim, you’re moving, you’re a threat, your life has ended.

And so this is why it’s so, so important for us to be able to kind of spread this information of what autism looks like across the board and intersectionally through different cultures, different, you know, race and gender and sexuality identity, is because we talk about it being a spectrum and it’s not linear, but there are aspects of somebody’s identity outside of being autistic that can impact or change how these characteristics not just show up, but are perceived by the society on the outside. Because stimming is stimming is stimming. You know, we all do it different ways, but it’s still just that, it is stimming. Whereas the situation where I described, if a Black man is pulled over, his stimming becomes you know, potentially threatening behavior. And then that’s, that’s where we have issues with police brutality.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, it’s something that I think a lot of people, or a lot of white people maybe don’t realize or think of, is that really there are extra layers and, extra layers to masking, extra issues that have to be really addressed. Especially with first responders, police, even in schools, because it really carries over to all of those situations.

I know you mentioned first responders, police, et cetera. Does Autistics Unmasked work with those groups to help educate them on this or, or train, or how are you working with that?

Ky Kennedy: So that’s the goal. So right now our education team is kind of in the preliminary stages of creating a curriculum that’s going to be given actually to my daughter’s school as our kind of test subjects for educators to learn about autistic traits and how they show up in small children, how to identify them and then accommodate them, especially if that child doesn’t have an IEP. My daughter goes to a private Montessori school, so they’re not part of a public school district, so they have their own way of dealing with neurodivergence. And her school is actually brand new. They just opened in November and she just started in January. So she is presumably their first autistic student that they’re aware of. That’s not to say that none of her peers are autistic. We just might not know. And they were very open, receptive to, they wanted to actually, when I told them that she’s autistic, I’m autistic, my husband’s autistic, and you know, I run an organization, the head of the school was like, “can we please take your course? I want to be the first ones to take your course.” Which was incredible to hear somebody to say that they want to do it. But we hadn’t even started working on it at that time. It was just, I had assigned it to the education team. They knew it, knew it had to be done by a certain time. And so I kind of had to push that schedule up a little bit for them. And I was like, “Hey, so here’s the deal. You know, we’ve got the school that wants to take this course. We might have to expedite it just a tad bit.” And so they’ve been working on it. I know that they’re working hard. I actually see Opal, who is our head of education, here in the live space. And I know that their team has been just working hard on putting together a slideshow presentation and then further training people to be able to give the presentation to these educators.

And this is the starting point. This is where we’re starting. The goal is to get to middle school, high school, college, employers, you know, and, and doctors, first responders, police officers, the mailman, like every and any, just everyone. You know, librarians, anyone who interacts with an autistic person, who is everyone. Everyone interacts with autistic people, they just don’t know it. And so the goal is to, you know, take this preliminary course and then adapt it to other situations, expand where need be, where maybe medical situations might need a more, you know, more expansive information. First responder information, or first responder courses might need more expansive information, et cetera. Like this is kind of like the preliminary, the starting point for these courses.

And hopefully within the next year or two is where we’ll be able to really push this out for everyone. It seems like we can’t do it fast enough, because we’ve got so many parents that message me on, on a weekly basis, you know, through our email saying like, “Hey, can we take this course? Can my family do the Zoom, can do it through Zoom? Is that available through Zoom?” And I’m like, “I am so sorry. We don’t have it yet. We just don’t have it yet.” And I feel so bad because it’s, it’s very clear, like, there’s a need for it. These people, I mean, the fact that these parents, you know, like I said, we’re less than a year old, and these parents find us and they are so quick to ask for help. They want the education, they want the help and it’s not out there apparently because they’re coming to us and we don’t even have it yet.

You know, we’re working on it. But, you know, we are still awaiting our official non-profit status. So, you know, while we are an official organization, we don’t have our tax exempt status yet. So until that happens, we can’t really apply for any grants or things like that. And people who do donate, they can’t write it off as a tax write off. So we’re kind of at this standstill where, until we get that officially gone through with the IRS, we can’t get any sort of grants or anything like that. So we can’t fund these projects that we’re working on. And everyone is volunteer at AU, if I haven’t said that already. Because these people just care that much about the work. And, you know, eventually the goal is to be able to pay everyone, but at the moment that’s not possible. So, you know, while we do want to reach those first responders and police officers and doctors and you know, everyone, we’re probably still about two or so years, is my best estimate, out from being able to really push that out in like a mass way.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, it takes time. And sometimes it even just takes time to get your nonprofit status, because I know those government wheels turn slow sometimes.

Ky Kennedy: Yeah. They, they are, and they’re backed up too. I keep, I read it, I checked the website and it’s like, “if your application has been submitted after March 7th, we haven’t assigned you an official person yet to go through your application.” So we actually just missed the cutoff. We put ours in March 17th. So we’re waiting for that update. So fingers crossed, I’m hopeful that we’ll get it at least by the end of Autism Acceptance Month, the end of April. But for sure, I think we’ll get it by the end of summer.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. I think it’s awesome that there’s, you know, clearly a need, but not just a need, that there’s actually a demand.

Ky Kennedy: A demand, yup.

Carolyn Kiel: People recognize that they need this. And this is exciting that they want it from, they actually want to hear from autistic people and listen to our expertise, which is really, really awesome.

Ky Kennedy: It’s like very validating. Because I, I joke sometimes, but it’s true, that probably about once a week I text my sister and I’m like, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” And she’s like, “it’s too late. We’re too far in.” And I’m like, I’m like, “you’re right.” And not because, you know, not because I don’t like it or, you know, whatever. It’s like, sometimes it does feel like, are we even doing anything here? Like, are we even making a difference? Does anyone even care? We’re doing so much work and we’re not getting compensated for it. You know, burnout is very real. And on top of the fact that I have AM, I’m also a mother. I have a full-time nine to five. And so I’m, I’m doing a lot on top of, you know, just everything else that’s going on in the world. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic. And, not to mention, personal family issues. Like there’s just so much going on. And so sometimes when I get a little bit of like pushback on Twitter or on TikTok or whatever, it sends me down this spiral of like, okay, well, no one wants this. And then I get a couple of emails from parents and I’m like, okay, people want this. So it’s, it is very reassuring and validating to know that, like you said, not only is there, you know, a need for it, but there’s a demand for it.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Again, you’ve been able to accomplish so much in, in less than a year, and it’s just really exciting to see all this coming along.

So yeah. So you were talking about schools, and it seems like a lot of the demand right now is coming from schools and parents of autistic children in school. I would love to learn more about some of, and maybe these are some of the things that you will cover in the training, but some of the certain challenges that BIPOC autistic children might face in schools or things that really teachers and other school administrators really need to be aware of.

Ky Kennedy: Yeah, so it, I mean, it is more or less the same as the, as you know, the scenario that I described earlier with the police officer where there is, oh gosh, I can never remember exactly what the name for it is, but there is a diagnosis that, that Black boys get fairly often. Oh my gosh.

Carolyn Kiel: Is it ODD?

Ky Kennedy: That might be it.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Oppositional Defiant Disorder?

Ky Kennedy: I think. Yeah, where they’re just labeled as bad kids. They’re just labeled as bad kids. They get this diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which I’m still not even entirely, like I haven’t done nearly enough research on what that actually is and where it came from, and if people other than little Black boys are getting diagnosed with this, right? Like these are things that we need to definitely dive more into with our research team.

But you know, we get, we get these diagnosis or, you know, little Black girls will get, we’ll often get like ADHD. We might get ADHD. Or we might not get anything at all and just be called quiet and weird, or, you know, extra chatty . I remember on some of my report cards growing up, you know, it’s saying like, you know, “Kylia is a great student, but should probably not talk so much.” You know, things like that, especially when I’m in, into like my special interests and things.

So teachers, like, people want to know, you know, how can we accommodate or how can we be cognizant of how these characteristics show up differently for people of color and, and Black people and indigenous people. But it’s not how it shows up differently, it’s how the world perceives us. Because the characteristics essentially show up the same. You know, selective mutism is selective mutism. Stimming is stimming, you know. Eye contact difference is eye contact difference. But it’s a matter of because of how society perceives a little Black boy versus a little white boy, that’s what makes the difference in whether or not they get the same care, whether or not they get any attention or care at all, any attention, any recognition for the fact that they are neurodivergent. Like, that’s, that’s really where the issue is. So it’s not a matter of, you know, how do these traits present differently? It’s why as a society are we viewing the same traits differently in these people based on what their ethnic or racial background is? That’s what the main issue is.

And so once we start to, you know, acknowledge that here’s the baseline of autistic traits. Limited eye contact or eye contact differences, you know, situational mutism, stimming, special interests, et cetera, et cetera. Here are the autistic traits. Okay, so this little Black boy, he’s not being disrespectful by not looking at me. He’s just autistic. He’s not paying attention when he’s not looking at me. He’s just autistic. Like the hyper-focus of certain activities over others doesn’t necessarily mean he’s disinterested in his schoolwork. It means that this has presented to him in a way that’s more appealing. Like, you know, however it is, it’s attributed to being autistic.

And when society realizes what the baseline for the autistic traits are, then they can start to identify them in everyone, regardless of their ethnic background or race, and then start to be able to give everyone the accommodations that are appropriate for their support needs based on the day, you know, the circumstance, whatever the case is.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And I think that that type of training can really help: one, if the people involved know that the child or the adult is autistic, and two, even if you don’t. Because that’s another challenge is, I guess probably more so with adults who just didn’t realize they were autistic.

Ky Kennedy: Right.

Carolyn Kiel: Because of the way that diagnosis is and all that stuff. It sounds like it’s not necessarily on, you know, the first responder or the teacher to know, we’re not asking them to diagnose and guess who’s autistic and who’s allistic, but it’s just sort of bringing that awareness. It’s sort of questioning that unconscious bias that you might have because of child’s race or a child’s background or something, and be like, okay, maybe this is not what I think it is. It could be something else, and I need to be more open-minded and grounded in how I work with this person.

Ky Kennedy: Exactly.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s really a lot of great and powerful work. So what are your goals long-term for Autistics Unmasked? Like where would you really like to

Ky Kennedy: Oh yeah!

Carolyn Kiel: Lead the most change?

Ky Kennedy: Absolutely. So I say all the time, and I don’t want to mention the big organization’s name that is like the number one no-no organization that I’m sure we all know of, but my goal is to become bigger than them. My goal is for you know, when parents of autistic kids or just autistic people, you know, family members, whoever, when they find out that they’re interacting with or that they, they learn that someone they know, or even just regardless, that autistic people exist, that we exist, that the first place that they go is to AU to find out: what do I need to know? Where can I take classes? What resources are available for me, or my loved one? You know, et cetera, et cetera.

We have so many plans and again, if you are participating in the Intersectional Infinity Summit, or haven’t yet, you know, identified where to go for it. There’s lots of links on my page. But the recording for the Twitter Space that was done on Sunday from AU, where the title was The Future is Autistic. We gave lots of information. We pretty much announced every project that we’re working on as of current, as well as we opened the floor up for people to ask questions. And so we got some really good people proposing ideas and questions and things like that. So if you haven’t listened to that, or you weren’t in the live, definitely head down on my profile and the recording is there, or if you have the information for Karen, who is the organizer for this summit, she can give you the recording. But we, we have so many plans. We have like, you know, and these plans are very tangible. Like they’re, they’re so close and it’s like, we’re just waiting for this official, you know, tax exempt status to go through, so that we can start to get grants in and you know, get funding for these projects because they’re so tangible. We have like the framework for so many of them. It’s just a matter of getting the funding for it.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s fantastic. Yeah, there’s really a lot of change that you can affect. And I certainly hope that you become like much bigger than many of the other big organizations that are around, especially that one that we won’t talk about.

So, in the meantime, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with Autistics Unmasked so they can learn more about it or maybe even get involved?

Ky Kennedy: Yeah. So we are on all social media. So we’re on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Tumblr as well. And we are @AutisticsUnmasked for all of them. So you can message us on any of those platforms. We are also autisticsunmasked at gmail.com, so you can email us. Or you can DM me directly as well. And these are all great ways to get in contact with us. Our website is AutisticsUnmasked dot org. And on our website, we do have a page that says join, you know, meet us, meet our team, and then join our team, and it gives information on any open applications that we have. And then also highlights the fact that if we don’t have a position that you think you’re interested in, we are always open to adding to our organization.

So for example, I work for a company that teaches Black people to care for their hair, and then teaches hairstylists how to care for Black hair in a salon setting. And so one of our alumni from our professional side of the program contacted me, and she is autistic and wanted to know if AU would be open to collaborating with her on creating a program specifically geared towards tighter texture, kinkier curled clients who are autistic or otherwise neurodivergent who might have trouble with executive dysfunction or, you know, whatever it is that makes it difficult for them to manage their hair in a way that is healthy for themselves and for their hair.

And so she came to me and was like, you know, this is something that I really see a need for. And I was like, yup, we’re on the same page. I 100% agree as someone who does struggle with that exact thing of having executive dysfunction and also, you know, kinkier texture of hair that is difficult to keep up with sometimes if I don’t do it on a regular basis or I don’t wear my bonnet or, you know, whatever the case is. And styling can sometimes be a little bit, you know, time consuming. So I’d love to partner with you. So not only does AU have the page there for people to apply for positions that we have open, but also has a disclaimer that if you see a need, if you see something that we’re missing and you think that we can be the ones to make that happen, just kind of like, shoot your shot for lack of a better word. And let us know where, where you think that you can add to our organization in a way that the autistic community needs.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, it sounds like there’s just so many different possibilities and a lot of opportunities for people to get involved if they have something that they’re passionate about.

Ky Kennedy: Absolutely.

Carolyn Kiel: Very cool. Thank you Ky for being a guest on my show today, and for sharing your story and telling us all of the great things that Autistics Unmasked is doing and has planned in the near future. I also want to thank Karen for organizing the Intersectional Infinity Summit and scheduling the session. And thanks everyone for tuning in to listen today.

Please follow me on Twitter. I’m at Beyond6S. And follow Ky at plscallmeky: PLS, C A L L, M E, K Y. And if you enjoyed this episode, you can find more interviews with autistic and other neurodivergent people on my website, which is beyond6seconds.net.

Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help me spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend, give it a shout out on your social media or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of my episodes and sign up for my free newsletter at beyond6seconds.net. Until next time.