9:15am July 1, 2013

➸ "You don't need this junk. You need a cat.": Lower functioning than thou.

adelenedawner:

youneedacat:

There are autistic people who get most of their self esteem from being the lowest functioning person in the room. Many feel threatened by the presence of a person who can’t do things they can.

There was this woman I knew who basically could function on her own. It was exhausting, so she needed…

Actually, that particular example sounds suspiciously like me when I’m deep enough into long-term overload that I’m having trouble with cognitive skills, like keeping hold of the idea that other people do in fact have needs beyond what’s obviously visible.

Which isn’t to say that the purely ego-driven version of that pattern doesn’t exist, or even that that’s not what was happening in that case. Just, that’s not the only thing that could have been happening there, and I don’t like seeing it presented as the only possibility to consider - I’ve been on the wrong side of that kind of assumption way too many times myself. :P

It was what was happening. I didn’t give the whole story. She would do anything to be considered the most severely disabled person in the room, even if it meant lying or hurting people. It was a long standing pattern. Not an assumption made over one incident, or even lots of incidents of one thing.

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