12:27am April 1, 2015

It would be wonderful if…

Every autistic person who wrote about themselves, in any capacity, told the whole truth. As much of the truth as is safe to tell, anyway. I have watched trends in autiebiographies over the years. I’m watching them now, rereading them now. And while the earlier ones had a lot more freedom to say what they thought of their own autism than the later ones, they still had their own ways their experiences were kept in check, sometimes brutally.

Until we can tell our stories as they are, really as they are… people will continue to believe that we don’t differ from each other very much, that we all fit one of a couple uniform patterns, etc.

I am all for autistic people standing up and saying “This stereotype doesn’t fit all of us. It doesn’t fit me. And I’m still autistic.”

But it’s not always safe to do that, so I’m far from ordering anyone to say anything they don’t want to say. I’ve gotten more flack for telling the truth about my life than I have from lying by omission. Which is strange because the people who insist I am a liar, are the ones who have driven autistic people’s real experiences underground. Speak up only if you fit a certain mold, or can pretend to, they say. It makes me sick.

Notes: