neurowonderful:

youneedacat:

The words of a group of autistic people who learned to type using the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) — what Tito Mukhopadhyay was taught by, except it doesn’t involve hitting people anymore (which is actively discouraged by the same woman who did hit Tito in the course of his “training”).

I always notice that parts of the autistic community that are more connected to the general developmental disability community, and are more likely to have been labeled as intellectually disabled as well as autistic, and those made up largely of those labeled low functioning, are far more racially and ethnically diverse than the “AS/HFA communities” (in name or in practice) that I’ve found online and offline.  The diversity in this video mirrors the diversity in my special ed school.  I don’t know what it is about the “high functioning” communities that attract so damn many white people and shut out so many people of color, but the “low functioning” autistic communities don’t have that problem.

Also please note that nobody is obligated to enjoy being autistic, especially if their main experience of being autistic is being trapped and unable to communicate their thoughts for years or decades when they have thoughts as complex to communicate as any “high functioning” person.  Lots of people who’ve gone years or decades with no communication system are highly ambivalent about their autism at best, and with good reason.. Not everyone, mind you, but that is a serious hardship to have to take on, and it’s not the same as having your speech shut down sometimes.  It’s never, ever being able to say anything important, even when it’s super important, even when it’s life and death.  And the people in these videos are the lucky ones for whom RPM was successful.  There are plenty of people who won’t ever learn to type or speak, and some of them are okay with that and some aren’t (judging from the words of people who were once in that category for a long part of their life and then came out of it).

Anyway, I’m glad this video was made.  All the words in the video are printed, not spoken.  They’re either superimposed on the screen, or writteon on boards.  So it’s not blind-accessible, and I don’t have the spoons to make a transcript.

And I’m reminded once again why autistic communities comprised mostly of nonspeaking people and people who’ve been in the DD system, tend to be more welcoming to me than other communities:  They’re more diverse.  Racially, ethnically, class, sexuality, gender, everything.  And that makes it so there’s a much wider space for me to make into my own, in these communities.  Even if they’re still not quite ‘home’.  And even if I still don’t quite fit because my life story isn’t the one people expect of a nonspeaking autistic adult.  But still.  Things like this make me ache for community.

Just where I can fade into the background.  That’s what I wish I could do.  Fade into the background, not be a big name, just be me, just be me around people who can mostly read me even when I’m not typing.  I’d love to find a community where nobody spoke and nobody typed for certain periods of time, whether they were ever capable of it or not, and nobody saw it as “Oh no people are overloaded we have to Do Something about this, it’s bad!”  People would just see it as “Words are tiring and we’re not made of words and we want a break from words.”

Of course RPM often doesn’t allow that, at least during training sessions.  They’re very big on not allowing autistic people a moment to process things, just shoving them to the next level as fast as they can.  And it works, and I know exactly why it works, and many autistic people would gladly take that temporary tradeoff in order to learn to communicate in words.  But many autistic people also need time away from words and that needs to be respected too.

TL;DR:  I like this video.  It’s by several nonspeaking autistic people who learned to type using the RPM (Rapid Prompting Method).  I have my misgivings about the RPM but it does get results and those can be life-changing for those it works for.  I miss communities (like AutCom) that form around autistic people who mostly haven’t been considered ‘high functioning’, there’s a definite difference in diversity and in how welcoming they are to someone like me, versus the less diverse and less welcoming “AS/HFA communities” (whether they call themselves that or not, that’s what they are).  I guess the perfect community for me would be the “I fluctuate between categories and eat their remains for breakfast” community but I haven’t found that one yet.  Love the video.  Keep them coming.  All the words were written by autistic people.  Until someone makes a transcript, this is Deaf-accessible but not Blind-accessible.

I like this video. I like seeing autistics who found a thing that works for them. I like how the video was honest about how unimaginably frustrating and isolating it has to be to not be able to speak at all. I’m functionally verbal about 80% of the time, so even at my most frustrated or in my greatest struggles, I’ve never experienced what non-verbal autistics do.

That being said, I also like that this video also wasn’t a sob story. I love that the actual autistic people were the focus, that even in the scenes where they were working with RPM clinicians/facilitators/I don’t know the right word, there wasn’t that insiduous “able gaze”, no use of camera angles or lingering shots to frame the autistics as pitiable, small, young, or helpless and the non-autistic people as these towering angels acting on the bodies of autistic people. That happens a lot and it sucks, but this video was really good.

I think that, when it comes to verbal autistics, or autistics who would receive a “high-functioning” or Asperger’s diagnosis, there is a real lack of diversity in the community in large part because of the intersection between racism, classism, and inaccurate stereotypes about what autistics look like. Like, many people know that autistic girls/women are under-diagnosed, and the same goes for POC. I have heard from many, many autistic adult and teens who non-autistics would label as “high-functioning”, and if they are any race but white it seems like they are way more likely to recieve a misdiagnosis (I hear ODD or ADHD a lot for brown people, and schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder for black people quite a bit) or to be shot down entirely in their pursuit of an ASD diagnosis. This is totally unscientific, just coming from what I’ve heard and read others in the community saying and the messages/e-mails of people who contact me, but I think it happens, and happens a lot.

So when an autistic POC can’t talk or they look obviously disabled in “classical autism” way, I’m thinking an ASD diagnosis is more easily forthcoming, since professionals just can’t make that person fit into any other boxes, than in a case where an autistic POC can talk with their mouthparts. Those autistics can be more easily pushed into a category that professionals, influenced by the very pervasive racism and classism in the medical community, can feel better about.

I feel like the other large thing contributing to lack of diversity of in AS/HFA communities is racism coming straight from the community. Just straight up gross sentiment and behaviour from autistics, which is awful. Or thoughtlessness and being unintentionally closed off or uninviting. Like, it is not enough for white autistics to just not be racist, there also has to be an effort towards being inviting and welcoming to autistic POC, and purposefully moving over to make spaces for them.

But of course I’m part white, so I have white passing privilege and all that entails. Any autistic POC please feel free to correct me on anything I said here. And if you want to or feel comfy doing so, please chime in. Why is the HFA/AS community so darn white?