Misrecognition, Mislabeling, and the Structural Landscape of Harm

An Autistic Autoethnography of Alcohol, Trauma, and Public Stigma

The hat says what my nervous system has taken years to learn: don’t collapse yourself to make someone else feel right. Don’t hand over your story to people committed to misunderstanding you. And don’t let a stranger’s projection outweigh your lived reality. “Don’t be a little bitch” means: hold the pen, keep the truth, stay sovereign.

📣 Author’s Note

Hi, I’m Sher Griffin (they/she), an Autistic, neuroqueer writer, educator, and doctoral student in Transformative Social Change. I also hold an M.A. in the same field, with an emphasis on peace, justice, and systems-level transformation. My work lives at the intersections of trauma, autism, communication, ecological belonging, and the politics of misrecognition.

This piece is both personal and scholarly. It weaves autoethnography with empirical research; lived experience with structural analysis; and liberatory frameworks drawn from Black feminist thought, disability justice, and critical social theory. It is not written from distance. It i…