Traveling Show

1.  

   I am very tired and sad. Tired of my world and universe. Tired of the contraction of life that surrounds me. Tired for the sake of tired. And because I am fighting fatigue and because I fight depression I am sad.

                                       -Aspergers4Life

Autism discourse is dominated by despair. Children and teens are bullied. Adults are unemployed. Bloggers insult political opponents with our label. Schools begrudge us an education. Many who claim to help us shout over us. We are called changelings, inferior replacements for children stolen from our parents. The society that consigns us to its fringes in youth welcomes us, during working hours, if we grow up and gain skills it can exploit. If we are unable to have a conventional career without supports, it calls us useless, accuses us of draining its prolific resources, and throws us away. Those of us who fought through our own deficits, low expectations, parents who misunderstood us, teachers who considered us ineducable, and sometimes violence to reach the professions carry scars nothing can erase. We are the lucky ones.

The less-fortunate are dead, languishing in institutions, living with parents into middle age. We have escaped their suffering by means ranging from our own cleverness to mother tigers. Stripped of those means, we would suffer as they do. If their circumstances are unacceptable for you, they are unacceptable for everyone. They are a sign of change to make. Our rage festering on the Internet would make an anthology, but it amounts to a few things:

Our Demands

“You calling me sick or stupid will prompt me to ask if you are a doctor.

If you are not I will simply dismiss your ‘diagnosis’ of me as misinformed and prejudiced nonsense.”

-Adastraperasperger

We will have a realization of the promise that arose from the Enlightenment to fuel centuries of spreading democracy. As citizens of the resultant societies, we demand their cornerstone: Locke’s natural rights of man. Our bodily freedom and security deserve protection. We must be allowed to work, study, buy, sell, and improve our lives. We want our birthright in the shaky, somewhat mythic meritocracies of our respective nations: equality of opportunity. Regardless of deficits, we are made in the image of the same god or offspring of the same primordial slime as everyone else. We are not less human, less deserving. We will not be silent or content until we have:

• Education

  • Special education students must have at least equal classroom time.

  • There must be safeguards like video recording where there is concern that students might not be able to report mistreatment.

  • Schools should do more to prevent bullying by building supports around victims.

  • Teachers and others should welcome autistic students to participate in school functions.

• Protection from Quackery

  • All medical procedures have risk.

  • Parents who subject children to medical procedures with no conceivable benefit are abusers.

  • There must be no refuge under law for anyone who takes a minor abroad for quack treatments.

  • Medical professionals in our home countries who supervise these practices should lose their licenses.

• Justice When we are Harmed

  • Legal definitions of abuse must be strengthened.

  • The legal, moral, and cultural definitions of murder must stand regardless of the identity of the victim.

  • Society’s chosen punishment for an offense should stand regardless of the identity of the victim.

  • Autistic people must be taken seriously when we report mistreatment.

• Opportunities in Adulthood

  • Employment should be the normal state for working-age, autistic adults as it is for our allistic peers.

  • Autistic people can form friendships and need access to individuals with common interests and open minds on and off the spectrum.

  • Autistic people must be educated in the safe, acceptable expression of sexuality.

  • Autistic people require access to recreational activities and communities of faith.

• Our Voices Heard

  • Our understanding of our own experience is definitive.

  • Any other perspective must be acknowledged as an outsider’s, inherently less valid.

  • People who do not speak can communicate through other means.

  • Individuals who are nonverbal must be offered the various technologies that may help them communicate.

  • Communication-by-behavior is communication by definition. It must be acknowledged as such.

  • Confiscating assistive technology that facilitates an individual’s communication as punishment is abuse.

  • No one who shouts us down, declares our perspectives invalid due to individual characteristics, or suggests we do not know our own minds is a friend or ally.

Making the Change

“Someone at uni wrote on my desk ‘Shay is a fucking retard’.

And on the wall where it said ‘autistic and awesome’, they crossed out ‘awesome’ and wrote ‘retarded’.”

-Alphabetboy

We face unique challenges and a prejudice that few outsiders understand. Our successful adults took on the world before coming of age. No one could begrudge us quiet lives, but our right to continue as ourselves is up for debate. Will you let allistic people decide your future or your child’s? Comments on the recent New York Times article about autistic teens said independent living is a waste of public money. When they suggested institutions for “people like that,” they meant you.

If your story is proof of our worth, speak up. If you survived especially cruel practices in special education, tell someone. What you revisit in nightmares could give children born today a better life. Wearing our labels in public will expose us to bigotry. We know the weight of that burden. Will we leave it to children and people with the most significant deficits? There is only one way to stand with them: we who can pass as neurotypical must stop. When we who can speak or write claim the term, we reduce its stigma.

If struggling, challenging, individuals are grouped with us in the public eye, society will care about them. Allistics need those they describe as Asperger’s or HFA. Even their own stereotypes remind them who programs their computers. If they see that fate of those individuals is tied to ours is inextricably linked with theirs, they will pass the laws and fund the programs. If people they call LFA slip through the cracks, some of us will, too. Morality aside, young, technologically-savvy people with no stake in society are dangerous.

Those of us in early adulthood now should be especially involved. Passing offers some protection to a fledgeling career, but we will regret it when we have children of our own. Unless we own up to what we are, they will suffer at least as much as we did. If you feel unprepared to change the name on your blog or announce it on Facebook today, tell one person. Work your way up to it. When they know we are their friends, coworkers, and neighbors, allistic minds may open. Rip off the band-aid of secrecy or pull it slowly as you like. Expect it to be painful either way.

Come out for the man who is non- or semi-verbal and, more importantly, your friend. Come out for a woman, whose twenty-second birthday is tomorrow, facing early retirement in a rundown group home. Come out for the latest youth shot by untrained police. Come out for whatever vestiges remain of the child you were, for what that person might have been in a kinder world. Come out for your own child or the one you want someday. Whatever your reason, tell someone. As soon as you can, tell everyone. You can write a line of text, send an email, or whisper in another person’s ear even if you feel too young, old, busy, or poor to do more. This is not an end to the hard work of making a way in the world for ourselves, but it would accomplish one of the most necessary tasks we face. If we can face the people whose opinions actually matter, those we love and respect, we can face anyone.