2:52pm May 12, 2013

Note to doctors diagnosing me

I told you that I know autistic people, and you said that was almost certainly a narrow range compared to what exists.

I don’t get why you’d assume that.

Autistic people live in the world. The same world I live in. All of us.

So why assume that the only autistic people I’ve met are all highly verbal and in a range of social oddness?

That’s not anywhere close to true.

What I hated was coming into the autistic community and people treating me like I’d never been around autistic people before, and was supposedly having all these emotional reactions I wasn’t having, all because I’d supposedly never been around autistic people before. And when I tried to object, they told me I didn’t understand, that I hadn’t been around autistic people like THEM before, or hadn’t experienced social contact with autistic people that happened in autistic ways. And none of it was true. None of it was true at all. But still they told me this over and over and told me what I was thinking and feeling until I edged away from all of them. It was really off putting.

And yeah I’ve known a huge range of autistic people. Both a huge range in terms of what I see as a huge range. And also a huge range in terms of what your doctors would see as a huge range. And the idea that a person wouldn’t have… It feels the same kind of WTF to me as the assumptions autistic community people were making. Although in a different way.

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