Friday, January 25, 2013

IDing as autistic: not your 'get out of trouble free' card. Stop that shit.

I thought I had written this post yet. Apparently I hadn't. Don't make it about you if it isn't about you. If it's about you, maybe try something new & examine why you feel so defensive and guilty. Learn from it instead of rushing to indignation. It'll be a change of pace.

There's this troubling newish silencing tactic going around. Parents-and yes, it is fucking always parents-are behaving badly, bullying us in ways they'd presumably never allow their children to be treated, and someone has the audacity to call them on it! How terrible! And then at least one of these parents behaving badly decides to come back with "I'm autistic".

No you fucking aren't. How dare you? How fucking dare you appropriate my cultural identity in so self serving a manner? How fucking dare you?

Unbunch your socks. I didn't say you don't have autism. Maybe you do. I find the timing of these revelations suspect, and how we never hear of the revealer's autism ever again mightily suspicious, but I am not your doctor. I don't know your neurology. But I do know my community, and you sure as shit are not part of it.

You may not use a supposed commonality to justify abusing us. Fuck no. I will not stand for it. You may not use us that way. And you should not either. It hurts your children every time you do it. And, frankly, it proves every "asshat, selfish, self centered, short sighted parent" stereotype and generalization absolutely right. This is the utter embodiment of that! All it takes is one person doing this, abusing our identity this way, gaslighting us so they can keep bullying us, to undo the what parents who have earned some trust have done. This behavior is that abusive, that selfish-enough so that it tears down any trust we can have for your entire community.

Coming out Autistic is not a get out of trouble free card. Haven't you been paying attention to the media, to the attitudes of your peers? Shit, to your own behavior before you decided this was a fun new way to win arguments? Once you are wearing the scarlet A, nothing you say gets taken seriously unless you are saying what parents and professionals want to hear and you wrapped it up nicely first. Autistics are treated like shit, and you damn well know it (and, likely participated in it. Did I mention I'm not pulling punches? I'm not pulling punches. Shitty behavior is shitty). Accepting the label of Autistic is far more a "jump into trouble" launchpad than anything else. It paints a target on your back that you will never really escape.

Coming out Autistic is a radical act, not something to do on a whim to try to get away with treating another person poorly. Do not cheapen the very real danger we live with every day. Do not minimize the fears that Autistic parents live with, fears they have written about far more eloquently than I ever could. Do not minimize the hostility that you and yours create for us every day by trying to appropriate our cultural identity when it suits you and then trying to use it to justify perpetuating more hostility upon our culture. Fuck no. You may not do that. I will not stand for it.

This is not how my community behaves towards it own. We do not need that extra bullshit from you. Your pile is high enough already. If that's how your community acts, that's fine, but that is not what we do.


11 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have always found that people who proclaim themselves autistic in order to try to negate my objections to their positions are about as autistic as my left nut. But physically proving that is something else. I truly believe that the second someone says "I am autistic" in an effort to shut an actual autistic person up, they should be made to either produce reports from at least two different psychologists saying they are, or be made to apologise. Even made to compensate. Because many of the people who are saying it is not okay to bully and abuse can meet that very simple criteria, where as those who say it is okay generally cannot. (Some work would have to be done on whose word for it we take on who is autistic or not.)

Unknown said...

Heh. They have no idea how easily unraveled this is.

Curebie: You don't get to talk about autism because you're not really disabled. The poor parents tsunami trainwreck argle fark etc.

Autistic: But you're not autistic at all, what do you know about it?

C: I *am too* autistic! Am too! Am too! Why do you assume I'm not?

A: Hmmm. Well, you know, I've met and corresponded with probably hundreds of autistics over the years, and you don't trip my A-dar at all. Not even a little. So either one of two things is true: 1) You have the greatest passing-for-nondisabled skill set I've ever seen in my life, or 2) You're trolling me. And for your sake, I actually hope it's the second thing, because if it's the first, your argument makes even less sense than it did before. Because if you are an autistic with MORE passing privilege than me, then according to your own standards, you know even less about it than I do.

Unknown said...

Heh. This is Andee. For some reason, Google thinks I'm "unknown."

Unknown said...

But these parents are SOOOO high-functioning! How could they possibly know what being Autistic is REALLY like, living with it day in and day out? They're obviously Not Like My... um, Self, so they can just butt out and leave it to the real experts! [/sarcasm]

BiolArtist said...

Would it help to spread their revelation as far as possible? Then they'd either have to deal with the consequences of the Scarlet A or admit they were making shit up.

BiolArtist said...

Would it help to spread their revelation as far as possible? Then they'd either have to deal with the consequences of the Scarlet A or admit they were making shit up.

Neurodivergent K said...

It would certainly do something.

BiolArtist said...

Sorry to post duplicates. Glitch. Feel free to delete one.

Anonymous said...

@Unknown
A similar argument applies if they're completely bullshitting. "Oh, I'm not autistic enough? Well, let's say I'm a hundredth of one per cent as autistic as your kid. You're... oh, you're not autistic at all! Guess I still win!"

Sandy said...

Yeah...that one lady was being all kinds of abusive and THEN when radically confronted...claimed..I'm Autistic, no one understands me. Then tried to play victim and act as if I attacked her and she was being misunderstood. She had appropriated the "language" in order to escape responsibility for the sadistic, TOTALLY sadistic POS she was. It was NUTS!!! And she kept popping up all over the place. K, you remember her? She got banned, eventually. I PM'd you about her. I hope it wasn't her again. That bitch was a complete sadistic psycho, who took pleasure in hurting Autistic people. It was AWFUL!!! I was ready to commit a physical assault...seriously, it was that bad. People who think people don't do this...oh wait!!!

Anonymous said...

Speaking on my experience of autism, I've been told my autism-parents to go away and educate myself about autism. Specifically, I was talking about how being an autistic adult is easier in some ways, because having some control over food, clothes, activities etc. is much easier than having the parental god-figures drag me from A to B with seemingly no reason.

I was shouted at that autism was a LIFELONG condition and I should go educate myself...

Only situation in which I pull the Autism thing... sadly the response is nearly always Not Like My Child.