A famous quote attributed to Susan B. Anthony (who probably, like most feminists of her time, had atrocious views on disability, among other things, but oh well):
Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standing never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
Some sources say “social standards,” others say “social standing”.
I’ve seen a several blog entries lately that seem to express a high degree of concern and disturbedness about the fact that there are differing opinions in the “autism community,” and that said “community” is so often divided along these lines. There is a lot of emphasis on finding our common ground. And I sense a lot of equating opinions strongly presented with hostility, and opinions strongly held with dogmatism, without apparent recognition that a strongly presented, strongly held opinion may be nuanced, may be non-hostile in nature, and so forth.
All I know is that as long as autistic people are presented day in and day out with the idea that we need a cure, or at least to be more like non-autistic people, in order to be happy…
As long as various forms of institutions and involuntary segregation are presented as a good thing for people…
As long as people go on being tortured in the name of treatment…
As long as we are viewed in a highly medicalized way all-around…
As long as we are taught to be ashamed of who we are…
As long as murders of people like us keep being excused…
As long as when we die people say we’re better off...
As long as people are forcing dangerous or harmful things onto us in the hope that we will “get better” and saying it’s all worth it...
As long as our existing or potential communication systems and learning styles go almost totally denied…
As long as we’re shut out of most people’s conception of a contributing member of society unless we can manage to run ourselves ragged participating in a broken system…
As long as we hold no power or only token power in organizations that claim to represent our interests…
As long as the only ones of us who are considered acceptable are those who toe the party line of people who most certainly do not represent our best interests…
As long as there are people working to make sure that people like us are prevented before we’re even born, possibly before we’re even conceived, because it would just be oh-so-horrible to have more of us in the world…
As long as we are considered merely a drain on the more worthwhile members of society…
As long as we are routinely brutalized from childhood to adulthood with very little recourse…
And as long as the most powerful people support most of the above things in regard to us and get away with it…
…then opposing even one of these things (let alone more than one) in any remotely powerful way is going to be considered by many to be mean, hostile, hateful, disgusting, in poor taste, infighting, snobbish, self-righteous, destroying unity, whiny, ignoring the needs of low-functioning autistics (as if people in that grouping don’t need rights), and many, many other terms that I have heard both autistic and non-autistic people use to describe autistic people who go against the status quo.
…then there will be people who will insist that in order for us to get along with each other, we must try not to oppose any of these things too loudly.
…then there will be people who will insist that when we oppose these things that we are destroying real unity, instead of a mere illusion of unity brought on by the fact that we are silenced.
…then autistic and disabled people will continue to have a really crappy place in the world.
…then I and many others will continue to speak out against these things and for a world that is better, and we will continue to fight in any reasonable way we know how for this to happen, and many of us will continue to do this out of love (not the emotion, something else) rather than out of any of the things that people are always claiming.
Sure, I will sometimes make alliances with people who don’t agree with me, when working on specific issues. That’s life. But I will continue to try to discern what the right thing to do is, and do it, rather than be led by the allure of social acceptance in the form of being considered neutral or impartial. Some people will assume this means I won’t associate with people with differing opinions, and that’s not the case, but, that’s just one more false assumption to join the list above. And there are more important things in the world than avoiding doing the right thing because you’re scared people will make assumptions about you.
The “autism community” may or may not have various things in common. I don’t even believe it to be one community. But I know that if I were to do what it would probably want of me in order to be accepted by the most currently politically powerful people in it, I would simply be swallowed up by it and be one more voice that didn’t get heard. That’s what happens when your voice is one of dissent and you allow it to be silenced: you just get sucked into the majority view by default.
Ballastexistenz 