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Embracing Identity: Nurturing Acceptance Over Seeking Cures
If you identify as autistic or queer, you will know what this article is about. If not, it might enlighten you.
Many of us have moments or ongoing feelings that we don’t fit in. It can be the way we think, look, feel in our bodies, eat, and react to situations, smells, or noises. Maybe you can’t concentrate or sit still for as long as others or get overwhelmed with anxiety while others sail happily along.
For far too long, anyone who looks, behaves, eats, acts, dresses, talks, thinks, moves, plays, walks, or has sex differently to some arbitrary norm has been hidden from view, imprisoned, institutionalised, medically or psychologically abused. The list could go on. I think you get the picture. I am pretty cross about this.
The binary way of looking at people suits the white patriarchy. If you roll your eyes at this statement, just think about it. Slavery would never have had any traction if there wasn't binary black-and-white thinking from white men. This thinking gave them control, power and money.
Queer acceptance
There was a death penalty against Gay men from the reign of Henry VIII until 1835. After that, Gay men were imprisoned or given invasive medical or mental health treatment.
The noted computer scientist, mathematician, and war-time code-breaker Alan Turing (1912–1954), convicted in 1952 of “gross indecency”. Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce his libido. He accepted chemical castration via oestrogen hormone injections
The message was clear: there was something wrong with homosexuals, and they needed to be executed, contained or cured. This attitude is very pervasive and still held by some. Since the year 2000, there has been legal acceptance of the gay community, but we still have a way to go for social acceptance.
