7:53pm May 21, 2014

And yes there is an unspoken division and hierarchy in the autistic community.

There are people who thrive in an environment steeped in critical theory and its attendant buzzwords and ideologies. Who somehow manage to keep track of an ever-changing list of the good words that you have to say, and the bad words that you should never say. And a similar list of ideas that are important or even sacred, and ideas that are sacrilege. And who not only do well in this environment, but actually thrive in it, enjoy it. It fits in with their particular patterns of strength and weakness, somehow.

Then there are autistic people who are able to keep up with these things, more or less. Who want to, or at least think they probably want to, or at least are afraid not to. But who have much more trouble with it, and always feel as if they’re falling behind. Their minds feel as if the world is speeding past them, and they are rushing to catch up, dodging and weaving to avoid saying and doing the wrong things, to keep saying and doing the right things. Always with an element of fear in the background. Always with this feeling like their mind is on the verge of falling apart. Always with other areas of functioning, areas that might be more important to day-to-day survival suffering.

Then there’s people who can’t keep up. Or who could, barely, keep up, and know better than to bother trying because of the havoc it would wreak on their own brains. Or who size up the whole situation and refuse to play the game.

Somehow, usually, the first ones are always the Good Guys. The second ones are conditionally Good Guys as long as they can keep up – they may be passing as the first ones, at times, but if they slip up too much, they may become suspect. And the third ones are quite often Bad Guys Who Aren’t Trying Hard Enough.

Often the existence of the second or third groups is actually ignored entirely, because everyone should have the skills to do the things the first group thrives on. The abstract thinking, the specific kinds of ideology, the lists of good and bad behavior and language.

But people in the second and third groups exist. We might even outnumber the first group. And somehow we’re usually on the bottom of the hierarchies.

This isn’t the only hierarchy in the autistic community, but it’s one I’ve noticed a lot lately. I notice that when people link to writing by autistic people, it’s usually from people who fit that first category really well. A very small in-group of people get credited with all the best autism writing. And many of them do great writing, and I don’t want to see less of it. I just also want to see more of others. More of others with diverse life experiences, varieties of autism, opinions, and so forth.

There are amazing autistic self-advocates that very few in these online communities have heard of. They have done a lot towards securing important rights for autistic people. The problem? They desperately want to be cured. Cure has become “you’re with us or against us”, so have abstract words like ‘neurodiversity’ that mean different things to different people. This causes people to overlook some truly amazing advocates.

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