I think a lot of the autistic and autism communities have this idea that… there’s a type of person called aspie. And those people aren’t ~real autistics~, they just are really good at academic geekery and bad at knowing that people are real.
But there’s this notion that *that* kind of autistic person isn’t really disabled, especially if they can pass.
And there’s a real cognitive subtype that actually *is* associated with receptive language problems, being good at academics and other abstracty things, and being able to pass if you push yourself in certain ways. But those people are disabled too.
And I think – those of us who have been pushed to see ourselves as that subtype when we’re not, when we’d never in a million years be capable of that, often end up being somewhat repulsed by people who *do* have that particular cognitive configuration.
And it’s not ok. Because the ableism we face isn’t their fault, and they’re no more free of it than we are. And we need to not be part of the problem.
The aspie hate things people say are not accurate descriptions of *anyone’s* cognitive type.
This is true and valid and I agree we need to stop eating our own.
Though I want to say something about the aspie subtype. As someone who benefited from that label (and no long IDs as an aspie), I’ve always felt that non-autistics and neurotypicals tend to value one subtype over the other. They usually are the once that sort of enforce this schism. Aspies are portrayed as goofy, cute, white boys who just want to fit in. People see they stereotype of them being good with math and computers as marketable. They seek out IT type aspies. Whilst everyone else gets passed over. The problem is many of them that are articulate, passing and have enough social reading, they end up buying this well constructed lie that they are far more valuable than non-speaking, chronically ill or non passing autists. So they end up throwing us under the bus.
This is not a new phenomena. Nevertheless it’s still fugging awful. My problem is not aspies but the NTs and the allistics that enforce and build this massive schism up. They want us in-fight, they want the aspies to talk over us over issues, they want the resentment. This hierarchy is artificial and awful and we need to destroy it.
So yes, they are disabled, but they also benefit a great many privileges too they need to realize themselves that we’re all drowning.
I have no problem personally with the term ‘Aspie’ or people who identify as such, but I stopped using it to identify myself because I realised that it came with baggage. Functioning label baggage. ‘Asperger’, for people who even know the term, tends to be equated with ‘high achiever’. It tends to imply that the person will go far if they find the right career, will succeed in academia if they find the right specialty. It implies a level of competence that I consistently failed to be able to live up to.
Now, my diagnosis was for Asperger Syndrome plus a handful of other things, and don’t get me wrong, I don’t think any diagnostician would diagnose me differently. I am highly verbal, highly literate, and as a child I learnt to pass to a degree and I live with that privilege/curse every day. But I failed out of my last year of high school and four further education attempts because the social stresses and expectations pushed my anxiety through the roof and into burnout so severe I was housebound. I had a handful of minimum wage jobs, one I know I was fired from because of my (then un-dxed) autism, and two that I probably stopped getting shifts from because of my short-term memory issues and my failure to grasp things at times that seemed easy or common sense to those around me.
‘Aspie’, with its connotations of competence behind a quirky, eccentric shell, made those around me – family, social workers, employment case managers – think that I just wasn’t trying hard enough. And that was crushing.
I realised when I started reading about other autistic people, that I always seemed to find more in common with ‘autistic’ rather than ‘Aspie’ autobiographers. Even if our actual life experiences were very different, ‘autistic’ authors seemed to write more about problems I faced, and seemed to more often have a world view closer to my own.
‘Aspie’ began to seem very limited, while ‘autistic’ encompassed the whole of my identity and disability. It had the flexibility I needed to cover my experience.
Add to that, I have a running tally for how many people I once loved and respected who have made the ‘arse burgers’ joke to my face when I disclosed. The first time was a very old and dear friend at my birthday dinner, a handful of months after my diagnosis. At the time, only a few people close to me knew. Every time someone makes that joke it catches me unguarded, and every time it hurts. I will never understand why people think that making that joke when someone is in such an incredibly vulnerable place is acceptable. Every time, it’s as if they think they’re the first person to think of it, and that they’re hilarious. At least the word ‘autistic’ gives me one less vulnerable place than if I use the word ‘Asperger’.
knitting in the dark 