5:40pm October 25, 2014

“In an article written by Oliver Sacks in The New Yorker, I was quoted as saying, “If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am.” In contrast, Donna Williams says, “Autism is not me. Autism is just an information processing problem that controls who I am.” Who is right? I think we both are, because we are on different parts of the autism spectrum. I would not want to lose my ability to think visually. I have found my place on the continuum.”

Temple Grandin, Thinking in Pictures, 2006 edition

Liking the fact that she’s showing the diversity of opinions autistic people have about being autistic. Not so much liking that she’s tying it to what type of autism a person has. There are people just like Donna who want to remain autistic and see it as an important part of who they are, and people just like Temple who don’t want to remain autistic and see autism as interfering with who they want to be in life. Basically in every type of autism, you can find every opinion about autism, so people should be careful equating someone’s type or degree of autism with their opinion on autism. I get pretty mad when people make assumptions based on things like that, about me. Like they’ll say that if I want to remain autistic, my problems must be mild, or they’ll say that since my problems seem severe, I must want to be cured. They don’t have room in their brains for either the complexity of my autism or the complexity of my opinions about autism.

I do like that this shows that same difference I’ve been talking about – autism as an inner, cognitive/emotional issue, versus autism as an input/output sensory/motor issue.

42 notes