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3:07pm June 29, 2014

dendriforming:

The most important thing about AAC isn’t that we can use it to prove people don’t have intellectual disabilities. That’s not the point. Communication gets people’s needs met.

Everyone deserves to communicate.

Responding to the tags:

#not saying I’m absolutely certain of anyone’s motives#but I see so many red flags from so many people

I’m absolutely certain of some people’s motives because I’ve heard them say it.  Outright.  And they say it in really ugly language, too.

They say, “AAC lets us prove that autistic people aren’t retarded.”

And when you ask them what “retarded” means to them… it gets even uglier.  They basically think that “retarded” means having no thoughts, no feelings, and no experience of the world.

And by “they” I mean both professionals and, sometimes, actual autistic people who are AAC users.  Some autistic AAC users have been some of the most bigoted people towards people with actual intellectual disabilities that I have ever met.

This is why when people call me “retarded”, or various epithets for it, I refuse to distance myself from the term.  I don’t try to prove I don’t have an intellectual disability.  I tell them something like “yeah and I’m proud of it” or “rather be [whatever the word they used] than a bigot like you” or something like that.  It doesn’t matter that I’m technically 15 IQ points too high for such a diagnosis, what matters is that I try to convey to them that what they’re accusing me of is not a bad thing or something to be ashamed of.  

I think too many people spend too much time proving they’re not intellectually disabled, or trying to prove that other people are not intellectually disabled.  And while… I mean getting things accurate in some contexts is an important thing?  I don’t get the sense that accuracy is the main reason they’re doing this.  I get the sense that prejudice is the main reason they’re doing this.  And that seems really obvious when I talk to them about what they think an intellectual disability is.  And they basically think it means being an empty shell.  

I’ve even seen some professionals who take it to an extreme that scares me.  They want everyone with an intellectual disability to use AAC, through typed communication in particular.  Everyone.  Even people who have excellent spoken language and no literacy skills at all – people who would do really badly with typed communication.  They believe that if all people with intellectual disabilities typed to communicate, they could prove that nobody actually has an intellectual disability at all.  Anywhere. 

People have said all that to me.

As I said, it really frightens me.

Everyone I know with an intellectual disability just wants to be seen as an ordinary person.  An ordinary person who struggles in certain areas, but mostly just an ordinary person.  

You don’t have to prove you don’t have a disability, to be an ordinary person.  But a lot of professionals are pushing the idea that you do.  And these are the sorts of professionals who try to hijack self-advocacy groups for their own ends.

I’ve rarely met a person with an intellectual disability who wants to prove they don’t have an intellectual disability, though.  I mean it happens with every disability, there’s always a few people in denial.  But it’s not most people’s priority, regardless of what disability they have, to prove that they don’t have whatever disability they have.  People with intellectual disabilities are no different in that respect.  It’s professionals in the field who are terrified of intellectual disability, and try to teach us their terror.  I don’t know what it is about intellectual disability in particular that so many professionals in the field find so damn frightening, but they’re seriously scared out of their minds.

Most people with intellectual disabilities, though?  Just want to prove that they're people.  Because that’s the biggest barrier most DD people (including ID people) face – not being considered part of humanity.  On a fundamental level.

And I think that honestly the reason that so many professionals want to distance so many people from the idea of being intellectually disabled?  Is because they can’t accept that people with ID are people.  

Notes:
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  10. thehousewelivein reblogged this from autisticadvocacy and added:
    Yesssss.
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  20. soilrockslove reblogged this from into-the-weeds and added:
    There’s a tendency to go from “this person can’t speak, so we know they can’t really have anything to communicate" to...
  21. madeofpatterns reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone and added:
    *nodnod* There’s also a form of cognitive ableism that’s about aspie hate? Like, making up these imaginary people called...