If only all on the autism spectrum who seek equality know with their entire soul that non-autistic people are as diverse as they are, and deserve more than reverse prejudice…. If only all on the autism spectrum recognise non-autistic people are not neurotypical, we are all neurologically diverse… that non-autistic people are not ‘mundanes’, … some on the autism spectrum too can be ultra mundane. If only all on the autism spectrum recognise that non-autistic people are not boring or average…. Exceptional warm hearts, or high IQs occur on and off the spectrum. If only all on the autism spectrum recognised that non-autistic people are not ‘just breeders’…. Those on the autism spectrum have had plenty of babies to prove they breed too and around 30% of non spectrum adults in Western society now choose to not have children…. Then…. then…. maybe ‘autistics’ can claim to be evolved.

It’s time to hate hatred, to combat new stereotypes as well as old ones. So acknowledge with grace, humility and gratitude those without autism who walked respectfully along side of us not just vent and fixate and politicize about those who did not.

Why is it that people are so self interested they only think of their own equality and don’t see that one can’t ask for it and then in striving for it deny or put down the equality and recognition of others? I don’t think many can imagine how ill that makes me feel… it actually makes me feel ill. Sometimes the reverse prejudice makes me feel so ill I want to withdraw from contact with anyone who reveres pride over true equality (which is not one upmanship). I don’t feel kin with anyone like that. I don’t feel those like that have a hope in hell of bringing peace to this world. I don’t feel those like that are an evolutionary step anywhere we haven’t already been as a human race. I can’t feel the joy of reverse prejudice as ‘my culture’. IQ is nothing without EI (Emotional Intelligence), nothing.

Emotional Intelligence without IQ is still kindness, generosity of spirit, an inability to feel anything but equality as stable and natural. Emotional Intelligence doesn’t need to prop itself up with pride. My IQ is not genius, not even over 70. But my EI makes up for it. I would rather have high emotional intelligence and lack IQ than build a shaky ego upon inflated worth of my high intellect. The ability to connive and conspire, to compete and destabilise, if that is IQ then keep it. I want to be impressed by people’s hearts, not selfish, self interested hearts, but open ones which are as open to those not like themselves as those only in their own team. And I AM impressed by people’s hearts, but I have found more open hearts in strangers who are not autistic than I have amidst those highly visible in the autism community by virtue of grand investment in autistic identity and its associated politics. Human to human who cares what kind of human I am? Those not invested in what condition I have or they have, who see each other human to human, that’s who.

Donna Williams, BA Hons, Dip Ed.
Author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter.
Autism consultant and public speaker.

http://www.myspace.com/nobodynowherethefilm
http://www.donnawilliams.net
http://www.aspinauts.com