Skip to main content

I get pissed off by a tweet


This is by no means the worst thing I've read about autism:
Nevertheless, it struck a nerve, and pushed me over the line from 'maybe I should write a blog' to 'yep, definitely need to start writing a blog'.

 Over the past year, I've found myself increasingly assertive in opposing misconceptions and lies about autism wherever I find them. At the heart of these, so often, is the idea of autism as a disease - one you can catch, one you can perhaps cure. When this rears its head, you'll often find scientifically-literate folk fighting back - and I'm glad they do, it's important work. However, there's a personal perspective that I always want to add, something very simple yet so often overlooked:

 I am not a disease.

 Look at that tweet. It's not shouty and crazy, it's not full of woo. In a very level and apparently considered (if scientifically nonsensical) manner, it presents autism as a dreadful condition that one can catch from a particular diet. Moreover, autism is a terrible thing, although SIDS is even worse: if we rank terrible things that can happen to a child, death is at the top, but autism is just behind.

 I am not a tragic mistake.

 I was born autistic, I will die autistic. I am autistic, just as I'm tall, blue-eyed, balding, tending towards overweightness. I didn't develop some horrible condition from drinking milk or being vaccinated or standing outside under a waxing gibbous moon whilst the owl cried thrice. I'm just like you, dear reader, except that my brain doesn't work in the way that society expects brains to work (yet it nonetheless works well, in its own way).

 I am not to be feared. 

Autism is not some horrendous nightmare. It is not the bogeyman with which you should seek to scare parents away from whatever it is you've set your mind against. If you are ever inclined to say something about causes or cures of autism, please, remember: you are talking about human beings, with feelings (also, frankly, don't say whatever you were going to say, not without peer-reviewed evidence). If autism is the bogeyman, I am the bogeyman, we autistic folk are all the bogeyman. We are demonised, we are less than human.

 This is not a road that any of us should be walking down. It ends in a very bad place.

 I'll finish with a couple more tweets. First, my reply to the above:

And finally, a very wise response by James Wong (follow him, he's great, I plan to make one of his indoor ponds) on the subject of 'causes' of autism:

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I've not been able to write much lately

Hello. I know I've not added anything to this blog in a while. It's not been by choice. My brain has, for want of a better term, collapsed. The best I can do is to get out of bed at some point during the day, to eat, to breathe, to hydrate. Work - and some other daily life stresses, including my parents' health, but primarily work - has completely overwhelmed me. I can't do it any more; for one thing, there's been far too much of it, I've been covering three jobs for six months now, but there's also the strain of being in a work environment, the sensory overload, the masking, the unpredictability. What has been exhausting before has now become highly debilitating. My life has just... well, it's broken. I can't do anything. That, in itself, is saddening (I love to walk and to cook, and these have been taken from me of late), and being all sad and woe-is-me about that just serves to pile on to the underlying problem. Underlying problem being: autist...
Post a Comment
Read more

The employment gap

Here's a link: http://www.autism.org.uk/get-involved/media-centre/news/2016-10-27-employment-gap.aspx Think a moment about the stat. 16% of autistic adults in full-time work. Sixteen percent . That is desperate and shameful - and it doesn't even consider how many of those lucky sixteen percent are able to fulfil their potential and develop their career. Another link: https://www.wearethecity.com/nine-ten-uk-companies-not-considering-neurodiverse-candidates/ If only 10% of workplaces make accommodation for neurodiversity, that inarguably presents an obstacle to autistic and other neurodiverse people, it will contribute to the employment gap, and any proposals to address the problem should be both welcomed and encouraged However, it only gets us so far. Before adjustments can be made to help an autistic person in the workplace, they have to be in the workplace . Granted, very few people enjoy interviews and assessment centres, whether neurotypical or not - but for aut...
Post a Comment
Read more

SMARTIES, in tubes, like they used to be

I loved Smarties as a kid. Of course I did. Every kid did. They used to come in a tube, like this:   And the little plastic cap had a letter on it - educational sweets! But now, they come in, oh, something else, I don't know, I'm old. Anyway, for those outside the UK and Ireland and wherever else they may be sold, Smarties are like M&Ms. Just a bit bigger, and a bit better. Small chocolate sweets with a coloured shell, that's the point here. Imagine a bowl of them. A big bowl. No, a vat. Lots of them, all poured in together. Every one is a different aspect of a human - a personality trait, a skill, a strength, a weakness. This one means you enjoy swimming, this one that you hate noisy parties, this one that you're good at sculpting, this one that you can't stand the taste of prawns. And so on. You're going to take a mug, scoop up a mugful of Smarties, and all those distinct human details, they will come together to make up you . Everyone gets the...
Post a Comment
Read more