On Organic, Autistic Space

It’s important that Autistic people spend time together just for fun.

There are unique joys to gath­er­ing with oth­er Autis­tic peo­ple in a set­ting that isn’t run by neu­rotyp­i­cals and isn’t designed with change, improve­ment, or growth in mind. Autis­tic chil­dren, youth, and adults who have only ever encoun­tered oth­er Autis­tic peo­ple in sup­port groups, social skills train­ing, or sim­i­lar set­tings are miss­ing out on friend­ship, a greater sense of self-deter­mi­na­tion, knowl­edge of com­mu­ni­ty norms, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to divorce the idea of gain­ing real, func­tion­al social skills from that of try­ing to be indis­tin­guish­able from neu­rotyp­i­cals. These are safe places for peo­ple who may be tired of pass­ing to prac­tice being open­ly Autis­tic before they come out to the world.

For peo­ple expe­ri­enced with Autis­tic cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty, the impor­tance of organ­ic, Autis­tic space goes with­out say­ing. It is one of the assump­tions on which the whole community’s exis­tence is pred­i­cat­ed. There is noth­ing inher­ent­ly wrong with sup­port groups or oth­er orga­nized meet­ings of Autis­tic peo­ple who want to gain new skills, with or with­out neu­rotyp­i­cal help. These groups can be ableist depend­ing on how they are run, but they aren’t inher­ent­ly ableist. Some Autis­tic peo­ple find them use­ful. The con­text of neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty is not inher­ent­ly at odds with gain­ing skills, try­ing to improve and grow as a per­son, and bend­ing a lit­tle to meet the world.

That said, time and space that aren’t about self-repair or self-improve­ment are cru­cial parts of a worth­while life. Autis­tic adults fre­quent­ly express con­cern about chil­dren who are in var­i­ous ther­a­pies for the equiv­a­lent of a full-time job every week and get birth­day and hol­i­day gifts select­ed from lis­ti­cles of toys with per­ceived ther­a­peu­tic val­ue. The think­ing is that rest and at least some amount of real time to play are prob­a­bly good for chil­dren. What is less dis­cussed is the way in which autis­tic adults, par­tic­u­lar­ly those whose expo­sure to the Autis­tic com­mu­ni­ty and neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty par­a­digm has been lim­it­ed, strug­gle to break out of sup­port groups and into organ­ic, Autis­tic space.

Read more…

Originally published at autisticfuture.com on February 12, 2018.