Autism Blog: The Dark Side of Autistic Pride
 
Autistic Pride has its sane moderates who see the positive, wonderful aspects of autism, and it has it’s extremists. This article addresses only its extremists. Be warned, it’s not PC.
So there’s Autistic Pride and “I’m an Autistic” and the fashion to claim most great artists, inventors and innovators as autistic, there’s even the view that without autistics nobody could have invented fire or the wheel (apparently the rest of the human race would have been too busy socialising and communicating).
Then there the reduction of those not on the spectrum to their brain function in calling them (often with disdain), ‘NTs’ (neuro-typicals… although those on the spectrum don’t reduce themselves to NAs… neuro-atypicals… no, they prefer to be far more interesting, positive, they are the ‘neuro-diverse’).
There’s slogans like ‘a good NT is a dead NT’ and making autism-friendly non-spectrum people ‘honorary autistics’ or even ‘peer-diagnosing’ them (yes, a friend can now peer-diagnose) as Asperger’s-Lite. And there’s the baser references, that non-spectrum people are not just neuro-typical but ‘mundanes’ (hence presumed expendable) or even ‘Muppets’ (mindless nattering hand puppets).
Non-spectrum people are sometimes disdained by the most militant in the Autistic Pride movement as ‘breeders’ overpopulating a world of scarce resources, the makers of wars, bullies, narcissists and stereotypically selfish (and surely some are, and SOME people on the autism spectrum are too and I’d not want to arm them and rely on their empathy).
Yet, if you are diagnosed with autism and don’t chime in with these party lines, you may even be deemed by a militant as the enemy, a renegade, a ‘black-face’, not a ‘real autistic’. You have deserved to be ‘put back in your place’.
This is underpinned by belief is that ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ (quoting GWB of all people!) on the basis that if you’re not a ‘culturalist’ you must be with their nemeses, the ‘curists’. The curists, for the non-initiated, are thought by the culturalists to represent or support the makers of shock adverts full of dehumanising, pathologising, tear jerking moments of desperation that those ‘afflicted’ with autism in this ‘autism epidemic’ be cured now so families can ‘get on with life’ and their child can be ‘happy’ (I have a song ‘All Be Happy’ which is about this).
But what if one is neither culturalist or curist? What if there’s actually the position of Gadoodleborger, a bridgekeeper between worlds, a translator of alternative normalities, a diplomat, an anthropologist, a die hard egalitarian (person fiercely committed to equality) and relativist (seeing both sides) with an individualist bent (we are all unique, not one-size-fits all) and non-conformist soul?
What would the egalitarian’s slogans be then? For fun, here’s a few:
- “I’m funky but wierd”
- “My normality is relative”
- “Love me, love my quirks”
- “Labels are for jam jars. See the person before the diagnosis”
- “I’m more than a walking brain, don’t reduce me to my neurology”
- “I refuse to live up to stereotypes”
- “I’m deeply uncool, now buggar off ;-)”
- “I don’t want to impress you, because then you’d stay”
- “Don’t need Einstein. I’m chummin’ it with the unfamous”
- “Don’t join my club, or I’ll leave”
- “Genius is overrated”
- “I’m embracing diversity – EVERYONE’S”
- “I’d rather embrace a human than a label”
- “Equality can’t be achieved through separatism”
- “I refuse to hate the common people”
- “Nazis did hatred, so I won’t”
- “I don’t need to be above you if I desire to sit across from you”
- “Look hard enough and we’re all wierdos”
- “We all have autistic moments”
- “Some or the greatest inventions ad creativity were the end product of social contact”
- “I refuse to invalidate 99 in 100 people”
- “If you see only typicality, you’re blinkered by stereotypes”
- “I don’t think I’d have invented the wheel, but I could fart you a good tune”
🙂 Donna Williams
author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter
http://www.donnawilliams.net
I knew this one man on YouTube who was a die-hard culturalist. He seemed to hate all non-autistic people because of abuse he suffered at their hands and thinks that the government is required to take care of him, even though he claims to have no dehabilitating symptoms (then why was he diagnosed with AS? Not sure, but that’s not really my business, I guess.)
It never seemed to occur to him that now that he 26 and away from home for many years that it’s time to realize that not alll NTs are bad people, that not everyone thinks like you, that it’s time to move on from your past and try to make a positive life of your own.
He thinks that no one EVER needs to be cured or treated for autism, regardless of their situation, and that to admit otherwise is to betray autistics. It never occured to him that if a cure or treatment were available, it could be OPTIONAL, and that not everyone’s autism is like his. He also has been known to verbally skewer those for whom autism actually is a disability, even if they are die-hard proponents of neurodiversity. He claims that he doesn not want them on the same planet as him, that they are inferior.
He spends a lot of his time issuing death threats and threats to beat people up to ANYONE who disagrees with him in anyway, and compares portrayals of autism as a disability, even if the portrayal occurs in a context that is favorable to the autistic’s existence, as the sort of propaganda used by the Nazis in the Holocaust, and of course, the rest of us are accomplices.
He is very aggressive and insulting over the most minor things. And he doesn’t even seem to realize that most autistics are embarassed by behavior like this, including myself. And that he doesn’t do us any good by doing this, especially if he claims this behavior is just part of being autistic, which I know it’s not.
I am VERY proud to be who I am, but I know a lot of fantastic non-autistic people. I accept them, and they me. It really does take all kinds to make the world go ’round, and I have better things to do than hate everyone and hold grudges over everything.
And you know what? It’s not just my identity; it also is *gasp* a disability for me…one that I’m not ashamed of and has abilities.
I don’t feel like a moderate, because that makes it sound like I am in the middle ground between people who believe autistic people are superior, and people who believe autistic people are inferior. I’m not in between them. Their views seem identical to me, just flipped around backwards.
With my view of all people as equal in value, I am off somewhere else entirely, not even on their map at all. Autistic supremacy doesn’t seem like the dark side of autistic pride to me, it seems like one of the many dark sides of a very common belief that some people are better than others.
hmm, interesting though.
many people presume moderate means wishy washy
I think it has two meanings
one is wishy washy
the other totally separate meaning is non-radical, as in, hopefully logical, grounded.
I aspire to this second one.
I try not to be a radical, try to be logical, grounded
but my feelings, no doubt are very strong, not wishy washy at all.
and yes, supremacy in any form is a dark side of humans.
I’m hangin’ with you Luke 😉
“Radical” also has several meanings I’ve heard. It can mean, “out of control, wild, and dangerous,” it can mean “extreme in relation to what most people think,” it can mean “cool” or “uncool” in certain circles (whether or not it actually fits any of the other definitions), and it can mean, “getting down to the root of a problem and trying to solve it”. Often it’s used in combination. So someone who is “radical” in the sense of “getting down to root causes and trying to solve them,” can also be “hopefully logical, grounded”.
Moderate and extreme I always think of as in relation to different viewpoints. A moderate (as in, in the middle point between the most common views of the time period) view on racism when slavery was legal in America, would be considered extremist and racist today. An extremist viewpoint then (such as that slavery is wrong) might be considered so moderate today as to be taken for granted except among extreme racists. I rarely use the terms “moderate” and “extreme” because they’re so often used entirely in relation to a specific social norm, and the meaning can change based on what most people think, and that gets confusing.
then perhaps I’m simply an egalitarian who prefers diplomacy to war.
I feel I have achieved more by listening than by just ranting.
If others feel you don’t care about their perspective and where it’s come from
they close off completely to hearing your side.
I’ve found that by being receptive to their stuff, however much I may disagree,
they have become curious to know where I stand.
Then I try and find a way of phrasing my stance which will not disrespect theirs.
Many who have ‘agreed to disagree’ have later then come back, having at least explored my view.
And they come back because my door appears relatively open, relatively unthreatening.
And in my view that if fertile ground for diplomacy.
I still feel that those like Ghandi and Mandela stood by what they believed but sought not to alienate those they wished to influence and ultimately this grace did them well.
I’m not saying I have that, but for me it’s something to aspire to.
Warmly,
Donna *)
I’ve noticed that when I talk about valuing my interactions with people regardless of whether they disagree with me or not, there are some people who assume I am saying that everyone’s opinion is equally accurate. (I guess that’s the ‘wishy-washy’ stereotype you’ve run into.)
The reality there is more like…
…I value hearing ideas I might not have thought of or heard elsewhere. When people only spend time with people who agree with them, there’s a sort of …complete lack of change… that doesn’t seem healthy to me. It’s too easy to amplify each other’s prejudices in that way, and not to take in outside information.
…I value people, regardless of whether they agree with me. It’s very rare that disagreement alone would cause me to completely shut a person out of my life. It would have to be something far more major than I normally encounter.
…Nobody is right about everything all the time. All anyone can be is right about some things some fo the time. And if I’m not going to totally write myself off for being wrong about things, then certainly I’m not going to write anyone else off for being wrong about things. Nor am I going to assume that my own judgments in a situation are infallible.
…Connecting with someone can happen on so many levels, and any opinion is just one piece of one of those levels, it’s not all of them.
I used to assume more often, that opinions different from my own (at least in some areas) would mean I could never get along with someone. For a long time, I believed this of you, for instance.
I was also at the time living in something my friend calls “battle mode”, where everything was evaluated and responded to according to how much of a threat I perceived it to be. And you completely freaked me out in that regard. And I was near-totally unaware that I was doing this, or that there was any other way to live. At that time, I felt like I was torn between identifying strongly with, and enjoying, many parts of your writing, and totally disagreeing with or disliking other parts. But eventually I figured out it doesn’t have to be a choice between one and the other. That’s how battle works, it’s not how people in general work.
Anyway, things have changed. And there are still a huge number of things I might never agree with you on. But I’ve learned since then that you don’t have to dislike a person just because you dislike some or even many of their ideas and actions.
And I guess another part of that is, you don’t have to agree with someone all the time or approve of all their actions just because you like them, either. I’ve noticed that because I write to you and link to you, some people think that I agree with everything you’ve ever said and done. Which is more than a little confusing.
As far as I can think, I have never disliked any human being because they don’t believe in what I do.
I’m one of those people who is interested in difference and when other people are not the same as me
it only clarifies for me more about who I am by contrast
and I value that greatly.
Saying that I did yearn for a mirror, someone ‘just like me’. I then worked out mathematically that there are probably in the entire world’s population only around 660 people who would roughly have the same combination of personality traits as me enough to have any change of seeming ‘like me’.
I did feel I’ve met a few ‘like me’ along the way, but in the end, I find to my joy that I prefer to be around those who are not much like me at all, as long as they are Donna-friendly.
My father was like this. He befriended all and none.
At my core, I remain someone who largely likes people
but who is a social phobe and highly solitary
My parents were oil and water
and I am the resulting walking contradiction.
😉