Thursday, April 30, 2015

BADD-Blogging Against Disablism/Combatting Negative Media Messages

Good riddance to my first April as an Autistic person.  Of course, it's not my first April as an Autistic person.  It's just the first April that I knew I was Autistic.  The ableism cuts deeper when you know they're referring to you.  It wasn't too many years ago that I didn't have much of an idea what autism was.  My first intro to autism for real, where I thought it might be close to me, was when a pediatrician casually mentioned the possibility at a doctor appointment.  My son, (now 11 years old,) was 9 months old and not yet laughing.  I went home and immediately googled autism.  This was my introduction to the ableism.  The images, anecdotes, and articles all painted such a horrific picture of autism that I blocked the thought out for several years.  The ableism that runs rampant in the media told me things like, if my son "had autism" he would never be able to tell me he loved me.  He would never live an independent life.  He would never have real friends.  "People with autism," as they love to "respectfully" call us, lack empathy and fit the profile of a psychopath, the media says.  A quick google search will tell you page after page about what is wrong and broken, never to be fixed, or worse--we have the magical cure if only you...  So I logged off and shut the idea out of my mind.  I could have been getting him help.  We could have used the help of an occupational therapist to address his sensory needs, if I wasn't so busy pretending they didn't exist.  We could have used the help of a speech pathologist to help him communicate.  But no, any help we might get wasn't worth selling my soul. Ultimately though, I couldn't ignore it any more.  Lucky for me, by this point I did know some actually Autistic people, and I knew that I liked them.  I knew that they didn't fit the descriptions I had read about.  So my son got his diagnosis and the help he needed. Now I know that I'm Autistic too, and I've learned a lot about what that really means in the last 10 years since this journey began.  The thing is that all the messages out there, in the form of "Awareness" do so much harm to actual Autistic people.  For us it meant waiting to get real help, because we thought it meant admitting this terrible, bleak future.  Now it means fighting the stigma day after day.  It means that I am an Autistic wife, mother, and teacher, but very few people know I am Autistic because it is unsafe.  I have proven myself to be a great teacher, capable and caring; and yet, if my colleagues knew I was Autistic, they would look for my flaws instead.  They would assume me incapable of certain tasks. That's because of the ableism disguised as awareness so common these days.  No, I wasn't caused by vaccines.  Yes, I do think autism has its benefits.  Yes, my son and I are great, nice people with some weird quirks.  No, going for a walk and talking about my deficiencies does not help me, and no I don't prefer person first language.  I want Autistic people to be treated as the real people we are.  Support us when we need it, but also recognize what good we bring to the table.  Lay the negative, disabling rhetoric aside.  I want a different world for my son and for myself, and your "awareness" isn't helping.

4 comments:

  1. For last year's Blogging Against Disablism Day, I wrote about awareness campaigns and to illustrate my post, I trawled through the various gifs that folk put on Facebook or Tumblr to supposedly raise awareness. I have to say the autism ones were the worst - almost always framed as if only children are autistic, lots of missing pieces of puzzle, or wording that suggested that an autistic child is somehow more difficult to love. It's bad enough when this is a general perception, but absolutely heart-breaking that some people could regard their own family members this way.

    I'm very happy for your son that you know his future is far from bleak and that you're there to help make sure of it.

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    1. Thank you. It is sad how much negativity is out there. I am so grateful though, for the Autistic community that welcomed me in and showed me the way, even before I knew it was my community too.

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  2. My local news had been running ads for a piece they were doing on autistic people aging out of services at an 'alarming rate'. And, while I think the topic is vital and something wholly worth covering, the way they were covering it - from an abled parent's perspective, usually; generally with a ton of fear-mongering and worst case scenarios, I basically wanted to punch something every time the commercials came on. I just don't understand why it's so difficult to ASK THE PEOPLE YOU ARE REPORTING ABOUT what their concerns are, instead of coming at it from the outside. So frustrating.

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    1. I so agree! You would never claim to be a women's organization supporting women, and never get a woman's opinion. How is it that people see nothing wrong with this when it comes to disabled people? I see this over and over again even with disabled people speaking up and asking to be included in the conversation, and they are told no. It's just ridiculously ableist and frustrating, yes.

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