12:43am April 26, 2014

andromedalogic-every-time-a-person-is-like

lisaquestions:

allies-person:

andromedalogic:

[every time a person is like ‘well i’m not autistic so i might be intruding but i completely understand what you’re talking about, sorry, sorry if i’m overstepping my bounds or appropriating’ and i just want to SCREAM (not at them, it’s not their fault, but at the strange…

YES, with the addition that some autistic people are themselves very invested in a very pernicious form of gate-keeping which insists that no other experience could possibly be even slightly approximate to being autistic. There are some legitimate reasons for this, such as the fact that non-disabled people are oftentimes resistant to acknowledging that autism and other brain-based disabilities are actually a thing. But over the long haul, I don’t think it does us much good to buy into “autistic people are from Mars and non-autistic people are from Venus” kind of thinking. Which usually is super-medicalized and not actually respectful of autistic people at all, big surprise.

Part of the problem also, IMO, stems from clumsy attempts to translate the concept of “cultural appropriation” to disability. Disability may have associated cultures, but the medicalized terms are not, in and of themselves, a cultural practice which can be appropriated.

So, yes, enough with all of the “I’m not autistic, but can I say that I have sensory overload” or “Am I appropriating by flapping my hands?” The answers to these inquiries really should be obvious, and I’m kind of disappointed that we’ve reached the point where that’s not the case.

I don’t mind empathizing, but I do mind being told that something I experience is just like something else that is not like what I experience.

Also, the “I think everyone deals with that” is often not helpful.

But I appreciate attempts to empathize.

Definitely. Empathizing is one thing, minimizing quite another. :(