i think some linguistic drift has happened with the word "stim" to include "motions i can't not make" and this has gotten kinda frustrating bc it coincides with a general awareness in the disabled blogosphere that stimming is also something autistics choose to do to self-regulate
so there'll be posts that include stuff abt what stims are acceptable vs what are breaking public boundaries, or like advice on how to choose stims that are acceptable around others, or stuff like that, but then simultaneously some things referred to as stims are involuntary and those things get seen as voluntary within disabled spaces and we reproduce a lot of ableist stuff wrt trying to control peoples bodies as a result?
like ive seen head-banging during meltdowns/overloads referred to as a self-injurious stim, frex, but thats definitely not a thing most autistics who do it can choose whether or not they're doing. on a smaller scale, like, i have a lot of involuntary movements due to bad brain-body wiring, and some of them will b things referred to as stims by other autistics (hand wringing, frex, or like, finger tapping, or my legs jerking/bouncing, or just like where im putting my fingers and how they move, idk how to describe it), and sometimes they will be done on someone elses body if we're cuddling or hugging or sitting next to each other, and thats not rlly controllable bc i cant control that im doing them to begin with (although ofc im happy to move to a different chair or the other side of the room or whatever if you ask).
(im aware that these are definitionally not tics bc ive been told by people who tic that tics are specifically not regulatory in nature, and cannot be used for self-regulation, whereas a lot of autistics have a more in-between experience of involuntary movements that still regulate our bodies, but we can't like, choose to do them when we're doing bad, and they also happen when we don't need regulation and they're not serving any purpose)
anyway im wondering if theres vocabulary for involuntary movements that might be self-regulatory in nature but can't be stopped or started at will like a stim can? bc i think we'd really benefit from using that more specific vocabulary.