Autism Acceptance and Destroying Misconceptions
It’s April 2, a day that I, and I think many autistic people like me, have mixed feelings about.
April is Autism Awareness Month, and April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day. These are strongly associated with the organization Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks encourages people to “Light It Up Blue” on April 2 by wearing blue and displaying the color in other ways to raise awareness for autism.
And a lot of autistic people hate that.
Not because we hate awareness, but because Autism Speaks has a long history of treating autism as a family-destroying disease, comparable to cancer, when it’s not that at all.
You may notice the hashtag #RedInstead to combat Autism Speaks’ #LightItUpBlue campaign. #RedInstead, and similar campaigns to wear different colors, are more in-line with what autistic people have now deemed Autism Acceptance Month.
Because we get it. You’re aware. Now just fucking accept us.
So in honor of Autism Acceptance Month, here’s some things about autism that you may not know.
- It’s okay to use identity-first language.
You may have seen or heard neurotypical people tout “Person-First Language” as the only way to talk about disabled/neurodivergent people. Person-first language means referring to someone as “a person with a disability.” So for example, you might refer to someone as “a person with autism” instead of “an autistic person.” The reasoning is that someone is not defined by their disability and that the latter implies that.
It’s bullshit.
First of all, because I am defined by my disability. Autism is a part of who I am, it’s shaped everything about me. It’s part of my identity (hence, identity-first language).
Second of all, because demoting autism and other disabilities to this secondary position creates a negative implication. “Oh, I would never call them autistic because that’s bad.” It treats autism as something that people shouldn’t want to be associated with. And that sends a pretty hurtful message to autistic people. It tells them straight-up that there’s something wrong with them, something that they shouldn’t want.
But autism isn’t like cancer. It’s not going to kill you. It’s just a different way of seeing and interacting with the world, and the main thing that makes it “bad” is how allistic (non-autistic) people treat it.
We don’t talk about “people with homosexuality” or even “people with brown hair.” We usually say “gay people” and “brunettes.”
Hell, even if we’re getting on the train of negativity, we say “cancer patient” all the time, not “patient with cancer.”
Not to mention, people use this language policing to talk over autistic people. After I had written this section, I reblogged this post on Tumblr.
[Image description: A Tumblr post with two reblogs. The original poster’s name is blocked out by a red box. They say “Wtf do people even mean when they “raise money for autism”. Autism doesn’t float around in the air, autism isn’t an object, you need to raise money for AUTISTIC PEOPLE. We need the right support to succeed in a world full of neurotypicals. We need acceptance not awareness. Instead of silencing us and speaking over us, why don’t you actually listen and make our voices heard?”
The two reblogs are by the same person, whose name is blocked out by a purple box. They say
“Also we need to raise money to give TO autistic people cuz I need the moneys.
Can we have a tradition where people give money to autistic people in April? Especially autistic adults/teens/college students/wise badass elders?”
And their second reblog says
“It’s April tomorrow. Be sure to give money to your local autistic instead of Autism Speaks.
Please. I’m broke.”
End image description]
Note that while I blocked out their URLs, both of them contain the word “autistic” and the users make it clear in the content of the post that they are autistic.
After I reblogged it, another Tumblr user reblogged it from me and added a comment.
[Image description: The last comment from the previous picture ending with “Please. I’m broke.” It is followed by a new reblog. This person’s username is blocked out by a green box. They say
“Please use person-first language when speaking about people with disabilities. It’s more respectful. They are people first and foremost.
Ex. “Person with autism” not “autistic person”
End image description]
So recap…OP said, “Instead of silencing us and speaking over us, why don’t you actually listen and make our voices heard?” The second person tongue-in-cheek suggested giving money directly to autistic people, particularly themselves because they are broke.
And this last person spoke over them and attempted to silence their voices by policing the way that they were speaking about themselves.
And this third person’s “They are people first and foremost” makes it clear they are acting under the assumption that nobody in this conversation actually is autistic, even though the users above made it clear they are. So this person didn’t fully read the post, ignored the point about not speaking over autistic people, assumed that autistic people couldn’t even be involved in this post about autistic people, and decided they needed to be a part of this conversation.
Hmmm. Okay.
2. Autistic adults exist.
And they can make posts about themselves on Tumblr! I’m one of them!
When people think of autism, they usually think of kids. (Usually white boy kids, but that’s a whole other issue.) But autistic kids grow up to be autistic adults! In fact, many people aren’t diagnosed as autistic until they are adults. I had known for a long time that I was autistic, but wasn’t officially diagnosed until I was 22.
These late diagnoses are partly because many children are just labeled as trouble-makers or weird, and aren’t given the proper identification and support they need to thrive. Some people display lesser-known autism symptoms and their caretakers don’t think to seek out any sort of diagnosis. And for many autistic adults getting diagnosed today, it was just more difficult to get a diagnosis when they were a kid, either because of their family’s situation or society’s overall treatment of autism at the time.
It can be difficult to get diagnosed as an adult, because so much of the diagnostic criteria and the support systems in place for autism are designed with children in mind.
People don’t think of autistic adults as existing. They assume that they were diagnosed as children and are so “low-functioning” (functioning labels are bullshit but I don’t have time for that) that they must still live with their parents and need everyday care. And this is true for some autistic people, but many can also live by themselves and have jobs.
And, hate to break this to many of you, they can even get married and have kids of their own! That’s right, autistic people can have sex.
(Not me, I’m asexual, but ya know, other autistic people. Because not all autistic people are asexual. We’re just as varied when it comes to gender and sexuality as allistics.)
We cook, we drive, we write, we make art. We’re everywhere doing everything!
But just because an autistic person can do all these things, that doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes need help. We’re still moving through a world that doesn’t accept the things that make us different.
So if an adult tells you they’re autistic, don’t question it, accept it.
3. Nonverbal autistic people can still communicate.
Going off of my last point, autistic adults are often treated as children, and this is especially true for nonverbal autistic people. They are often treated as though because they can’t talk, they can’t communicate or understand the world around them at all.
But that’s bullshit!
Nonverbal autistic people can totally communicate! Have you ever heard of this handy thing called writing?
I know sometimes it’s easy to fall back on Socrates’ whole belief that writing was a pointless exercise that would essentially turn us into mindless zombies because the written word couldn’t possibly capture the full breadth of human knowledge, but we might want to start considering that Socrates was wrong. After all, we only know that he thought this way because Plato wrote it down for us.
So yeah, nonverbal autistic people can write. They can use pictures. They can point but that’s a little demeaning. (They can also use sign language, which I only put in parentheses because I know how difficult it is for people to be confronted with both people who use a different language AND Deaf/hoh people, so oh boy, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to deal with autistic people at the same time.)
Oh, and they can hear too. So there’s no need to talk about them like they’re not in the room. They can have ideas and opinions. We just have to make an effort to communicate with them.
4. Autistic people can be empathetic, outgoing, and charismatic.
We’re so grown up that we can make friends!
A stereotype of autism is a guy who doesn’t understand any social cues, is rude and a little stuck-up, and can’t make friends to save his life.
But many autistic people are the opposite of that! They’ll surround themselves with big groups of friends who love them, and they’ll talk to you about anything (especially their special interest). Your biggest problem might not be that your autistic friend doesn’t talk, but instead that your autistic friend won’t shut up. Take the time to listen to what they’re saying!
Sometimes autistic people can come off as rude because we don’t understand the right thing to say. We don’t (usually) mean to be mean! But if we’ve said something to truly upset you, the best thing to do is calmly talk to us about it. We may not instantly understand that we’ve hurt someone’s feelings unless they tell us. And then let’s talk it out!
And yes, we have empathy. We aren’t just emotionless monsters. Though it can be difficult for autistic people to understand and regulate their emotions — especially in a world that rejects the way we do prefer to regulate them — we are often even more empathetic than the allistic people around us.
Don’t confuse our occasionally cold exterior for not caring. We are probably caring a lot! We just might care about different things, or not know how to show that we do care. Emotions are hard, dude.
5. Autism is not a disease, it’s not curable, and we don’t grow out of it.
Autism Speaks, and organizations like it, talk about finding a cure for autism. But there is no cure for autism. It’s not a disease, it’s a disorder, and you’re either born with it or you’re not. It’s not caused by something later on in someone’s life, and it’s definitely not caused by vaccines.
It’s just part of who someone is. Part of their identity. There’s no need to be afraid of it. While yes, it is a disability, and it certainly doesn’t make life easier, I wouldn’t trade my autism for the world, because I have no idea who I would be without it. I would literally be a different person. And that would suck. I’d have to learn everything about myself all over again? God, that’s terrible. No thank you.
And this is why we talk about acceptance. Because being aware of autism and seeking to cure it is not acceptance. It’s rejection. It’s rejecting me and the people like me and seeking to destroy us. It’s finding our existence uncomfortable and hoping that someone will find a way to make us go away. Trying to “cure” or otherwise repress someone’s autistic traits is no better than gay conversion therapy (and a lot of that is still going on so…yikes). It’s eugenics and it’s wrong, and the reason that it’s still such a persistent accepted point of looking at autism is because allistic people aren’t listening to autistic people.
We are talked over, ignored, locked out of our own organizations, denied resources, made fun of, etc. And then people talk about us as some sort of Other who they need to represent because we aren’t able to represent ourselves.
But we are able. We want to represent ourselves. We want to help others understand us. But it’s tiring to get turned down every time we step up. It is only with good communication that we can all learn to live with each other.
So I hope everyone keeps these things in mind during April and the rest of the year. But if you only take one thing out of this article, please take this: The first step to acceptance is not awareness, it is listening.
