Awareness and understanding for the Autism community. We need it, we want it. The right thing to do would be to give it to us.
However just because you want something doesn’t mean you deserve it.
It makes me so upset when I hear how those of us with Autism ‘deserve’ everything from Heart Transplants to jobs and housing.
This is not true. We don’t ‘deserve’ anything.
Before you get upset and start calling me names, finish reading please…
If you are robbed you deserve compensation. If you are raped you deserve justice. If you are lied to you deserve the truth. If you work for someone you deserve to be paid.
You only ‘deserve’ something if you are a victim or if you earned it!!
How can anyone say people on the Autism spectrum are not disabled but different-able, then play the victim card?!?
That is contradictory at best, hurtful to the cause of Autism awareness at worst.
We need to change our message. We need to push for awareness without making ourselves out to be victims. Nothing is owed to us just because we work a little different than others.
When we play this victim card, we belittle ourselves. We paint ourselves as poor little victims. If we are victims then we are to be shown pity. And if we need pity then we are less than whole, less than perfect…broken in some way. Do we really need or want a pity party from the world?
Please don’t get me wrong. My son has an IEP and he gets help in the classroom. Not because he deserves it. No, because we made the school AWARE. Dose this help my son? Yes. Does he rank above other kids because he deserves this help in school? No!
What are we teaching the very world we want to make aware, once we start being the victims? Are we teaching them we can work and hold jobs? Are we teaching them we are worthy of love and respect? I don’t think so.
Would we like understanding and awareness? Yes. Is it owed to us..? Not at all.
We spend so much time and energy promoting awareness to the world about Autism.
This is one of my (many) issues with groups like Autism Speaks. They spend so much time painting Autism as a victimization rather than as uniquely different. I won’t even go into the ways they victimized the families of Autistic people. Painting such a tragic picture of those poor families having to deal with Autism. Whatever…
Maybe we need to spend a little time promoting awareness about our OWN actions and words.
The following was posted on twitter by @GiftsofAutism
“What if the awakening of autism required a critical mass of the world embracing us as God’s Great Gift to them? What might happen if the seal of disapproval on autism was removed? What might happen if for just one day, we could exist in an energy field devoid of negativity, hatred, and anger against the very form of our being?Better yet what might happen if we were treated with great respect and honored as future teachers in the making? What if people started to actively support this process of freedom? Not freedom from our autism, but freedom from the negative thoughts and feelings projected toward autism and those of us who wear this label? What if being a person in autism was seen as exceptional, unique, a person capable of great wisdom and healing powers?”What if??…..Imagine
What IF we saw ourselves the way we wish NT’s would see us…?
Do we want to see ourselves as victims?
We are not victims. We haven’t been wronged. And the world doesn’t owe us anything.
We owe it to ourselves to show the world that we are NOT victims.
I do deserve. And I am a victim. And you can bite me if you don’t like it.
I deserve to be treated like a human being. I deserve EQUAL access to jobs, education, housing, relationships. I DESERVE the supports necessary to make the former happen. My son DESERVES a free appropriate public education. He DESERVES the funding necessary to make this happen. He deserves a bully free experience.
We are all victims. Every time Autism Hate Speech is used, we are victims. Every time one of us is killed by a parent and the parent gets a slap on the wrist for it, we are victims. Every time we are bullied, we are victims. Every time we are discriminated against in job interviews, in school, in LIFE, we are victims of discrimination.
And we deserve justice. We deserve fairness. We deserve a press that treats us like human beings. We deserve people actually asking us about our lives, rather than our parents. We deserve living our lives not to be seen as Inspiration Porn. We deserve reasonable accommodations for any and all needs.
We DESERVE a world that isn’t AWARE. We deserve a world that ACCEPTS.
I am disabled in the current NT world. I am a victim of bullying, discrimination, erasure, gaslighting. I’ve been emotionally abused, physically abused, and sexually abused in my life, and yes, often as a result of being Autistic.
Here’s some numbers for you:
From [The MA government](http://www.mass.gov/dppc/abuse-recognize/prevalence-of-violence.html):
More than 90% of developmentally disabled people will be sexually abused.
54% will be sexually abused 10 times or more.
Developmentally disabled adults have a 4-10 times greater likelyhood of being physically assaulted.
3% of these crimes will be reported.
And look, no one is saying Paul DESERVES a heart transplant. What they are saying is he DESERVES the right to be on the transplant list like everyone else, with his autism diagnosis not being the reason to stop him from being on the list for available hearts. Period.
Ok. I will over look the bite me comment.
You said you deserve education, jobs, funding. Let start there. By what means did you EARN those things? Because you have Autism ? Did you work for them? Did you pay for them?
Or is just want them so bad that you FEEL you have a right to them?
Appropriate education, not starving to death, the ability to work, not being homeless, adequate health care, these are HUMAN RIGHTS, not “autistic rights”. Every adult human being, with the capabilities of working, DESERVES to work, and not have their disabilities used to keep them from contributing to the workforce.
EVERY HUMAN BEING *deserves* an education, especially in first world nations where we have the funding and capability of providing it.
EVERY HUMAN BEING deserves adequate health care.
This is not an “us vs them” thing. This is an “Autistics are demanding their BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS” thing.
This is not based on my “feelings” or “wanting something really bad” (which is degrading as hell, btw).
This is based on the bare minimum standards acceptable for human beings.
Now you are playing the human rights card and getting totally off point.
Again I will ask: by what rights, due to Autism does some one deserve a job, education or help care? How are those owed to you? What did you do to earn them?
We won’t agree and that’s ok. However you are proving my point. By demanding these things under the auspices of Autism, you are degrading the message that we are not less than normal. You are instead perpetuating the myth that we are all incapable of being a productive part of society.
By what rights did the other NT children/adults EARN those things?
Okay, so what I like most about having met you during this whole blogging experience is that I feel that you make me think and when I attempted to respond to this earlier, I actually ended up writing an entire blog entry about how I felt regarding Paul Corby. Which I think may be one of my most-coherent! So, thank you. And now: the comment:
I agree with a facet of this [and we have been discussing this frustration much of the last five days] and think this was written in a way that makes a great point [and obviously a great discussion]. We [being individuals with autism or other "diffabilities"] need to remember that part of how we get treated is a direct reflection of how was “ask” to be treated by what we say and how we say it. Just as we expect others [non-autistics] who are messaging/advocating on our behalves to remember that even the things they say [about us] only during the times when they are upset/frustrated are still heard and make an impact; so must we remember that what we say [and how we say it] makes am impact on how we are viewed by everybody. [Which is complicated for those of us who have deficits understanding the NT social interactions.]
But then again, I think your stance against not being a victim is maybe more of not WANTING to be a victim. I know I have been a victim. I was the victim of my family’s ignorance [and still continue to be]; I am the victim of hundreds of small social misunderstandings/miscommunications every day [that no matter how good my intentions or how much I try to explain what I mean always get "read" by a playbook that I do not even understand]; and I was a victim of my workplace.
When it came to the heart transplant of [specifically] Paul Corby he did *deserve* equal consideration.
[and I will not post the entire thing here – I did say I ended up with an entire blog entry which can be found here: http://plentifulpluck.blogspot.com/2012/08/paul-corby-denied-heart-transplant.html%5D
I think every citizen pending a decision to be placed on a transplant list deserves the equal privilege of consideration.
I may not agree with all of your terminology that you used, but I do agree with your overall point. I do see AS/ASD as a disability, not just a difference, but not one that affords us all to just get the world handed to us. Yesterday, I wrote about my 10 yo old mildly autistic son and his issues with waiting in line with everyone else at the end of the day. Somehow, he had gotten it in his head that he was entitled to just leave the room ahead of everyone else and when the teacher corrected him he had a meltdown. When he was calm I explained to him how he had to follow the rules just like anyone else does. He was taken aback and quite upset when I told him he was not better than anyone else, nor was anyone better than him. He felt that he deserved to have special treatment just because. He does get special accommodations when needed, but that’s borne out of a need, not out of a consequence that he has earned. I’m not a victim of society and my boys aren’t, either. I’m strong. I’m an advocate. I rely on myself to get what I need and to find help with what I can’t do. I refuse to sit and complain about how this isn’t the way it should be, or that someone did this or that injustice. This takes energy away from more positive things I could be doing with my time and life. When we see ourselves as victims, we automatically put ourselves in the one down position. I don’t want to give away my power like that. I also, am careful not to go too much the other way, which is where I proclaim pride in my autism. No, pride is for something you’ve earned. I’ve not earned my autism. It just is.
You may not agree on the exact words I used, but your comment summed up exactly what I was trying to say.
Thanks for all the commets.
You have made a lot of good comments. It’s so sad that the first comment line was infighting and it seems like it could have been avoidable. I think you weren’t really so different in thinking patterns rather than differing in perspective
Andrew, wrong live in a world full of very different opinions. The person who posted the first comment sees things different than I do. I always welcome debate and dialog as long as it is respectful. ( a closed mind never learns )
I am glad you liked the post.
I am an NT parent/spouse and I am hoping you can shed some light on a similar topic for me. I tend to agree with you about the victim concept and am trying to ‘advocate’ the same mindset with and for my family. I want my son and my husband to take control of life and do what they can to make it great – not rely on special treatment, special accommodations (such as not having to wait in line, etc) or a level of acceptance from the world (that many groups don’t get simply because the world is not great at accepting differences no matter who they are). As we embark on this journey though, to live successfully with AS, what frustrates and confuses me is the two-sided conversation I seem to hear from the Aspie community. On the one hand, I hear a constant refrain of “accept us the way we are”, “we just think a little differently”, “it’s not wrong thinking, just different”. But on the other hand, the same bloggers or AS community members will spell out all the things that they struggle with due to their AS. Communication, focus, organization, relationships – the list goes on. My family struggles with it intimately so I know the thought patterns and the idiosyncracies that trip them up. But it feels like the two notions are incompatible. You can’t simplify everything down to “I just think a little differently, accept me the way I am” but then acknowledge the whole host of challenges that go with AS. I am not trying to be confrontational at all here, because we are on the same team – I want what’s best for my family and will fight to the death to provide it for them but right now I am really struggling to understand this dichotomy. Why is it so wrong to just say, “we have issues with x, y, z – it’s something that comes with AS and we are trying to work on it”. But I worry about ‘defending’ their AS as ‘just differences’ because it feels like that is the thing that will lead to the entitlement and victim mindset. And ultimately, they will just feel anger and resentment because the so-called NT community isn’t accepting them the way they are. I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Honestly. I am not trying to be combative at all – this is a valid question and I am interested in responses.
Thanks
You make an interesting point.
What if you remove the word Aspergers and put in another word? Don’t NTs say the same thing? Don’t you as an NT have issues you struggle with? At the same time don’t you want to be accepted for who you are? In spite of your struggles?