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3:15am June 29, 2013

derring-dont:

In the past week or so I’ve seen at least two “high-functioning" autistics complain that they don’t like that media representations of autistic people are often “low-functioning.“

There are a lot of problems with media representation of autism, but I don’t think that including people who can’t pass as allistic is one of them.

Ugh I hate that.

The worst thing was that when I was in the media, people frigging analyzed me as if my life (or the mess the media made of it) was a media representation.

Lots of people said I was bad our even embarrassing because I was too low functioning.

And some people said I was bad because I could communicate and was therefore too high functioning.

There was no winning.

(Think of this when you respond to news stories about real people. We are actual human beings, not media representations. And we have no control over what story the media tells about is or even how true it is to what we told them. They can make up whatever they want. Emphasize whatever they want. Don’t blame us.)