12:17pm June 13, 2012

Why I find the general DD community much easier to take than the autistic community.

And more welcoming.

It seems like the DD community is much more representative of the actual population. As in, it’s not so strictly white middle class. And the range of disabilities represented, and the range of people within each disability category, is wider. It feels much more like I could possibly fit there.

(I know I’m considered important in the autistic community. That’s different from feeling like you fit in. Sometimes it even makes it harder to fit in.)

It’s also far less petty. I’m not sure the reason exactly. There’s not this pressure to prove you’re really disabled, or the dissecting of prominent figures in the community to see if they’re really disabled or not. It’s not like DD people in general are less petty so I’m not sure the whole reason behind this.

I think though that it might be partly because we come from a more unified experience of oppression than we do. Er the first we is DD community the second we is autistic community. And we are put forcefully into a context where on an immediate level it’s easier to identify who is oppressing us and what we want done about it. Autistic people as a separate group don’t have that so much so we are more kind of scattered.

Anyway just wanted to say that. I’m not sure if that explains all of it or not. The autistic community just seems narrower and more hostile between each other.

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