3:44am September 16, 2014

➸ The difference slot - elmindreda - autistic history

There is no doubt that lot of people seem to have a hard time accepting that someone they know has a disability. This is easily proven by the endless amount of hasty, ignorant, misinformed, uncaring and downright malicious things both said and done to people with disabilites every day. Most of the people I spend my time with nowadays for the most part aren’t like that. However, many of them, even though they seem superficially informed about basic disability issues, seem to belive in thedifference slot.

The basic idea is that each and every person has their difference, and that it should be respected. Note the singular form, however. When they learn of my autism, which is usually the first major difference to come up in conversation, they seem to think “oh, so that’s her difference”. They then proceed to fill in my difference slot in their mental table, and everything is as it should be.

Or, so they think.

Then, a little while later, I happen to mention some other thing that makes me very different from most other people, and their belief system collides head-on with reality. Usually, it’s another one of my disabilities that triggers it. This is when they almost invariably go ”…” for a while, only to finish with “you have that too?” In other words, “your difference slot is already filled, and you can’t have another one”.

(Click on the above link to read elmindreda’s full article on The Difference Slot.)