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2:42am June 16, 2013

Reply to survivorwaver

The tumble client don’t let me reply directly so this is about experiences in AS-dominated places where they didn’t like or believe in people with certain difficulties.

Yeah when I tried to talk about difficulties I had, in some places like that, they couldn’t believe anyone could have such problems.

“But that’s easy!”

“Why don’t you just…?”

And worse. When I talked about very severe perceptual and motor planning problems resulting in starvation:

“I have no sympathy for anyone who would allow themselves to starve within two feet of food.”

“You must have been secretly suicidal and deliberately starved because nobody could do that except on purpose.”

“You are so full of self-pity, get over yourself. Only a self-pitying person would allow that to happen to themselves.”

I tried to explain there are autistic people who can’t even scratch an itch on command let alone feed themselves, and they didn’t believe me. (!!!)

They told me they could do all these things, so I could too.

They told me that I only use my language issues as an excuse to get out of responsibility for what I say. (Because they would tell me what I was feeling and thinking when I write something. I would say they were wrong. They’d say anyone who wrote this thing meant that thing. I’d say I had language issues. They’d explode with hatred.)

I took to explaining my areas of difficulty and strength in great detail around them. Just so people unaware of people like me, would understand we existed. Also so those like me would feel less alone.

They told me I was self-centered and obsessed with my “issues”.

It obviously became intolerable. There were decent people in some of these places. But so many people insisted that I meant everything except what I meant, that communication eventually felt pointlessly draining. Nothing I said seemed to get taken at my word, despite them all claiming to take everyone literally.

And there seemed to be serious lack of understanding of anyone with any of the following (except for variants that went with being a stereotypical aspie):

Severe receptive language problems

Severe expressive language problems

Severe sensory-perceptual issues

Severe motor issues besides coordination/clumsiness

Severe self-care problems

Severe cognitive issues

Sometimes inability to work (as opposed to inability to get through job interviews or handle social parts of work)

Anyone who needed support staff or lived in institutions

Inability to talk and/or write

Inability to do anything at all that most of them could do easily


I saw many people leave these communities due to the scorn heaped on us merely for not being able to do things they could do. Especially people with very obvious language problems, such as people who couldn’t write coherent sentences or spell or etc., were out of there fast. Even when there wasn’t scorn there was a lack of understanding for any but a narrow range of autistic people.

I didn’t have every one of the problems they dissed people for having. But I had many. And I witnessed it happen to others. And it was awful.