as small as a world and as large as alone

5:58pm August 12, 2012

josiahd:

passionz:

#autism (Taken with Instagram)

Are you teaching non-autistic people to improve their social skills so that they can stop inadvertently hurting autistic people?

Are you teaching them how to respect the humanity of people who flap their hands, have few words, and otherwise appear odd to them?

Are you teaching them how to tell whether someone who communicates atypically is consenting or objecting to something? Are you teaching them to respect that? Are you teaching them that it’s wrong to manipulate an autistic person into cooperating with something against their will? Are you teaching them that autistic people, like all people, are allowed to have personal boundaries and that it’s wrong to violate them?

Are you teaching them that some people don’t make eye contact, and that it’s wrong to demand eye contact as a precondition for talking to them?

Are you teaching them that flapping hands and other stimming has a functional purpose, and that demanding that it stop often prevents us from thinking or communicating? Are you teaching them that we use it to avoid overload and meltdowns? Are you teaching them that it’s immoral to force us to adopt neurotypical body language?

Are you teaching them that they need to learn how to communicate in text, and to respect communication in text?

Are you teaching them how to notice when autistic people are dehumanized, and how not to participate in that? 

Because that’s awareness I could get behind. People aren’t aware of this. They need to be.

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