as small as a world and as large as alone

2:23am September 18, 2014

softautism:

[image: a rainbow oil puddle on asphalt with dripping pink text that reads: “don’t use functioning labels on me”]

don’t use functioning labels on anyone, at all, ever, really, but this is addressed to allistics.

~follow for more passive aggressive autism~

Seriously.  Don’t.  Not unless you want me to find some really creative way to make your life hell.  Or at least unless you want me to sit around imagining creative ways to make your life hell.  Because functioning labels make my life hell.  All of them.  Especially when applied to me.  This includes when people like me or Amy S. get tokenized by other autistic people in a form similar to “See, that person is low-functioning and he agrees with us!”   Like it’s one thing to point out that lots of nonspeaking people hold the same views on cure, etc. as lots of speaking people.  But it’s another thing when you only bring up that person as an example of a “low functioning” person who agrees with you, and you never talk about our ideas for their own sake – just only when it suits you to have people know that some “low functioning” people don’t want to be cured.

But… yeah.  Don’t call me low functioning. Don’t call me mid functioning.  Don’t call high functioning.  And don’t ignore all my ideas (including “functioning labels”, a phrase I coined, for that matter) most of the time, but then use me as an example when you need to tell people that some ‘low functioning’ people agree with you.  (And don’t do that to anyone, it’s tokenizing and obnoxious.)

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