2:12pm June 5, 2015

And as for living up (or down) to others’ expectations, especially the expectations of professionals.

You don’t know how many autistic people I have talked to, who have said “Everyone thought I was retarded, so I learned to act that way.” I even led a panel one year entirely on this subject at an autism conference. Everyone on the panel had done something like that. Only I had, within the autistic community, been singled out for bullying because of it.

If your main misdiagnosis is intellectual disability, you’re going to most times learn to act as if you have one. If your main misdiagnosis is schizophrenia, you’re going to most times learn to act as if you have it. Failing to put on the act has severe negative consequences in all of these situations.

I even know of a non-autistic guy who pretended for decades that he was too severely intellectually disabled to understand what staff were telling him, because the only time they talked to him was to boss him around. So he pretended that, being deaf and intellectually disabled and without the ability to sign, he just couldn’t possibly understand what they were writing to him.

(Yes, he eventually got out of that situation.)

I find it very interesting that whether you are inside or outside the autistic community, autistic people who try to pass as normal are praised or at least understood, but autistic people who try to pass as intellectually disabled or crazy, are thought of as doing something horribly beyond the pale. Even though we’re doing the exact same thing, just with a different standard of behavior.

But if you have ever. Ever. Tried to pass as crazy rather than passing as normal. (A common thing among those who can’t pass for normal.) Then expect that if you’re ever targeted for cyberbullying, that’ll be one of the first things they pick on you for.