1:34pm February 22, 2012

“First they want to put us in institutions because we can’t talk. Then when we learn to talk, they want to put us in institutions because of what we say when we do talk!”

An autistic person who’ll stay anonymous for now, who actually had people talking about locking them up for these very reasons.

I’ve noticed time and again that people see some autistic people as really unusual because we do weird things before we learn to use words to communicate. Then, when we do use words to communicate, we are often much stranger than anything they expected. Because generally we are different inside and out, not just because of our actions.

(Although often autistic people who have been subjected to some of the most intense stereotyping will emphasize the stuff that isn’t different.)

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