Individual perspectives on autism & disability | Embrace Autism
embrace-autism.com
In this article, we share how some of us at Embrace Autism identify with and relate to the concept of disability.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.divergentparenting.space/post/29407

Take a moment and imagine that someone calls you disabled. Ask yourself, do you agree or disagree? What feelings come up for you? Based on your lived experiences, like your interactions with family, teachers, doctors, friends, and society more generally, how has your relationship with the concept of disability been shaped?\n > \n > Even though many governmental organizations officially recognize autism as a disability, this doesn’t mean that all autistic individuals identify as being disabled. Members of the autistic community have such varied lived experiences, which contributes to whether we each identify as being disabled or not. Moreover, how we relate to the concept of disability differs as well.

  • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    A bunch of different thoughts.

    Eva: (…) Additionally, I always felt I excelled in other areas, so I am reasonably able to compensate or specialize to such a degree that I don’t feel less able than others on the whole. (…) What I just wrote remains true, but I function well with a lot of structure and guidance from others. Now that I am my own boss and no longer have a lot of structure and guidance, I actually feel a lot more disadvantaged than I used to (…) some people feel they are inherently disadvantaged, while others feel disadvantaged based on how society is structured

    Remember that a mere change of 2 degrees in the global temperature is provoking a mass extinction of species. Requiring a particular environment to thrive is natural for animals. A lot of neurodivergent people just happen to come upon the issue that their environment has been built giving more importance to the wants of neurotypicals than to their own needs.

    Natalie: I do not think of myself as disabled. I was diagnosed with PTSD by age 5 and attributed my challenges to that.

    There are a lot of symptoms attributed to ASD on the DSM-5 that you could inflict on any neurotypical kid with enough trauma. I think we need to pay attention to the possibility that a lot of autistic kids are turning out disabled not because it is the natural development of their phenotype but because they get raised in an environment too disruptive to their needs even before they’re capable of expressing them.

    You can’t unblind somebody, or un-autism or un-ADHD someone.

    Please do not do this shit. Not being able to see is objectively a disadvantage. You could find or create environments where the harm is reduced or even negated, but there’s going to be virtually none where it’s good without buts. It’s great that some communities of blind people feel proud of their own culture, but many of those are cultivating this extremely toxic tendency to disavow the possibility to cure blindness even for those for whom it is possible because they dogmatically latch onto an identity.

    Equating autism and blindness in this way gives a legitimacy to these attitudes that they do not deserve and is fairly disingenuous about what autism is.

    • Saplith@discuss.divergentparenting.spaceOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      There are a lot of symptoms attributed to ASD on the DSM-5 that you could inflict on any neurotypical kid with enough trauma. I think we need to pay attention to the possibility that a lot of autistic kids are turning out disabled not because it is the natural development of their phenotype but because they get raised in an environment too disruptive to their needs even before they’re capable of expressing them.

      I think there is some merit to this, just from observing people parent NT children. Many parents don’t seem to think of their children as people and aren’t willing to be inconvenienced in any way for them. Trauma and neglect definitely don’t do any child favors. I don’t think that 100% catering to a child doesn’t them any favors either, but compromise is necessary for living with literally anyone.

      Please do not do this shit. Not being able to see is objectively a disadvantage. You could find or create environments where the harm is reduced or even negated, but there’s going to be virtually none where it’s good without buts. It’s great that some communities of blind people feel proud of their own culture, but many of those are cultivating this extremely toxic tendency to disavow the possibility to cure blindness even for those for whom it is possible because they dogmatically latch onto an identity.

      Equating autism and blindness in this way gives a legitimacy to these attitudes that they do not deserve and is fairly disingenuous about what autism is.

      I think there there is an inherit disadvantage in not being typical. I’m not ND, but I do have several invisible afflictions that doctors acknowledge, but don’t have a label for because well premies should be glad to be alive. I can’t change my many many afflictions due to having been born early. It definitely was and still is a disadvantage and there is no cure. It’s just how I am. I won’t say that there aren’t toxic people in let’s say the blind community who cling to their afflictions, but I think it’s important to know that sometimes you don’t get a cure. You’re just how you are. Premies born after me don’t suffer the same disabilities as the premies I know who are my age because they get better care in the hospital and outside it. Great, but that does nothing for me who has perfect vision technically, but can’t see so many things. or a great many things I’m just stuck with as an adult.

      I’d like my kid to be typical. I want to be typical even now. It’s easier. She’s left handed and that sucks. It’s harder to be left-handed. If it were possible to give her a pill to make her magically right-handed I’d give it to her. As it stands, her chance of death is elevated for no other reason than she was born left handed. Accommodation is cool and all, but all of society has an assumption about handed-ness. This neurodiversity. I wish I could give her a pill to make her neurotypical. Shit I wish I could take a pill that could make my brain process things right like it would have if I was physically okay at the right times. But… I don’t think that will happen for me or her and I think it’s okay to accept that. It’s okay to take a fix if it ever happens too.

      • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        Your claim about left-handedness sounded pretty weird to me, so I looked it up, and

        https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23988352

        Surprise, surprise, it turns out that it’s around the same degree of bad science as the people who muddy the facts around transgender people to deny them healthcare.

        You have assumed that being atypical is intrinsically negative to the point that you don’t demand the right for you to have equal dignity, rather than demanding a bigoted society that pushes you down to stop mistreating you, you have assumed that the solution to your woes is to no longer being different, as if the solution to racism was people of color painting their skin white.

        You are torturing yourself in your own pit of self pity, and I have no respect nor compassion for that.

        • Saplith@discuss.divergentparenting.spaceOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I think there there is an inherit disadvantage in not being typical

          That is what I said. I ascribed no value to being atypical. That’s you and it might reveal what you think.

          I read your link and it’s basically like “I mean that was bad then, this is now. I don’t have any data to prove it, but left handed people totes don’t die younger” C’mon, that’s a ridiculous article that’s all conjecture about how it used to true before that left handed people died young, but now it’s totally different. They don’t provide any hard evidence that it’s different, but it totally is!

          Let’s say you’re right because honestly I don’t feel like arguing this point, but it’s not my greater point at all. Let’s say that left-handed people suffer no physical afflictions from being left-handed. Very cool, except every left handed person I know has suffered from being left handed and had to “mask” and accommodate the world being right handed. My point is that realistically, you cannot be accommodated all the time 24/7. It’s all great and shit to say that you should be accommodated, but in reality that doesn’t happen. Sometimes it doesn’t happen because people are callus but sometimes it doesn’t happen because it’s not actually a thing that is possible.

          For example, realistically when I was in grade school and the internet didn’t exist how was someone going to accommodate my visual and auditory processing issues? When I was in college, most of the US had dial up and smartphones weren’t ubiquitous. How was I supposed to be accommodated and also lead an independent life because those were my choices. Being shadowed by an able bodied person or sucking it up. There was no actual way for me to be accommodated beyond the experimental therapies that I have no fucking idea how my mom found before the age of the internet.

          Being typical is easier. If you are 7ft it sucks. if you are 3ft and an adult it sucks. The world is not made for you. And you have to pay in ever time or money to get a great many things that other people effortlessly get. I would wish that on my kid. I don’t care whatever fucking super power you think she’ll get. I want her to spent her time at the park with her friends instead of at doctor’s offices. I want her to hang to go to summer camp without me worrying if whatever aid will quit and then she’ll have to come home. I want to spend my money to sent her to her fancy ass school and not worry that they’ll tell me that she can’t have the best education because she’s too much trouble and she can go to the public school where she’ll be accommodated all day long and isolated and miss out on so much.

          Fuck that. I want my kid to be typical. I don’t want her to need any kind of accommodation. I don’t even want her to need glasses or braces or any other acceptable kind of accommodation because that’s living life a little harder and what parent wants that for their kid? That’s my point. I don’t want it to be harder. And when you need accommodation, it’s harder. Even something as minor as needing glasses for the rest of your life is harder than never needing them at all. If you can’t understand that point, then you’re just delusional.