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greenstormOk. Autism. It's the day or month or whatever when folks post about this. I'll be posting a bunch, and I'm going to start with some context.
There are two ways to look at autism: as wrong stuff people do based on what people around them are annoyed by (the social deficit/medical model) and as a cluster of ways of experiencing the world and the self (the correct way, sorry folks).
A lot of autistic folks don't learn they're autistic until a lot later in their life, if ever, because they are really good at acting-- at treating social situations as a play, and memorizing or guessing at their lines and then performing them. Even if they don't do this perfectly some of them they aren't annoying people around them often enough to be captured as autistic under the medical model -- which is, remember, based on how much they annoy folks.
But those folks still have a different experience of the world, and hiding that different experience of the world is exhausting and sometimes they slip up and the stigma around autism tends to lead to punishment. Knowing you always have to act or you'll be punished is hella alienating.
And they don't know what's wrong because autism isn't properly understood as some different ways of experiencing the world, those different experiences aren't publicized, the internal experience isn't publicized. So folks don't understand that there's a huge community of people that share their ways of thinking and of experiencing the world. They don't feel like they're allowed to take joy in their essential selves. They just feel like a really bad or flawed version of a person, rather than feeling like a valuable, interesting, and lovable person who is not typical of the folks who set the culture.
This is a really big problem. A huge number of people feel broken and awful and incorrect just because our public information on this topic is wrong. The difference is stark: read the diagnostic criteria for autism, then read people's personal experiences with it. One of these is much more human, if not directly relatable to you then easier to imagine as someone's experience of the world.
This is where the #actuallyautistic movement comes from.
One of my personal points of belief is that everyone has valuable things to contribute to society and that it's society's job to maximize its ability to use those contributions-- it's not the individual's job to warp themselves to try to contribute a limited set of things society thinks it wants. Another personal point of belief: being seen and accepted for who you are is a source of great joy and fulfillment and should be available to everyone. I consider the silencing of these voices, and the misdirection of the experience so folks can't find validation, to be a significant failure of our society.
Start to fix it by reading or listening to some folks' stories this month. I'll be sharing some, and the hashtag up there has a ton of content.
There are two ways to look at autism: as wrong stuff people do based on what people around them are annoyed by (the social deficit/medical model) and as a cluster of ways of experiencing the world and the self (the correct way, sorry folks).
A lot of autistic folks don't learn they're autistic until a lot later in their life, if ever, because they are really good at acting-- at treating social situations as a play, and memorizing or guessing at their lines and then performing them. Even if they don't do this perfectly some of them they aren't annoying people around them often enough to be captured as autistic under the medical model -- which is, remember, based on how much they annoy folks.
But those folks still have a different experience of the world, and hiding that different experience of the world is exhausting and sometimes they slip up and the stigma around autism tends to lead to punishment. Knowing you always have to act or you'll be punished is hella alienating.
And they don't know what's wrong because autism isn't properly understood as some different ways of experiencing the world, those different experiences aren't publicized, the internal experience isn't publicized. So folks don't understand that there's a huge community of people that share their ways of thinking and of experiencing the world. They don't feel like they're allowed to take joy in their essential selves. They just feel like a really bad or flawed version of a person, rather than feeling like a valuable, interesting, and lovable person who is not typical of the folks who set the culture.
This is a really big problem. A huge number of people feel broken and awful and incorrect just because our public information on this topic is wrong. The difference is stark: read the diagnostic criteria for autism, then read people's personal experiences with it. One of these is much more human, if not directly relatable to you then easier to imagine as someone's experience of the world.
This is where the #actuallyautistic movement comes from.
One of my personal points of belief is that everyone has valuable things to contribute to society and that it's society's job to maximize its ability to use those contributions-- it's not the individual's job to warp themselves to try to contribute a limited set of things society thinks it wants. Another personal point of belief: being seen and accepted for who you are is a source of great joy and fulfillment and should be available to everyone. I consider the silencing of these voices, and the misdirection of the experience so folks can't find validation, to be a significant failure of our society.
Start to fix it by reading or listening to some folks' stories this month. I'll be sharing some, and the hashtag up there has a ton of content.
