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Autistic Thoughts
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Below are the 3 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Autistic Thoughts" journal:
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03:04 pm
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In which I am a person with opinions
( Reposted from disabled_rage with slight edits for context and clarity )
Current Mood:  exasperated
Current Music: Heather Dale- "Mordred's Lullaby"
Tags: disability rights, do-gooderism, language
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05:08 pm
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In the end, who is it who silences our voice?
If anyone's been following this journal, they may have noticed that slowly but surely I'm accumulating a set of communities and interests to associate myself and this journal with. One by one, I'm looking at communities who share the interests that this journal is centered around, seeing what their membership and message is about, and deciding if they or any of their listed interests are something I want to partake in.
I've found a lot of good communities. I've also found a lot of unrelated communities, and a few bad ones. Today, for the first time so far, I found something that truly angered me.
One of those communities was entitled "We Have Autism", which is designed to be a place for, not autistics themselves, but people whose family members are autistic. Apparently there are definitions of the word "have" which neither I nor my dictionary are aware of.
This alone would have barely risen above the level of frustration and annoyance, except that one of the most recent posts was a poem with the repeated line "The autistics still had no voice". It started off deceptively well, decrying Bettelheim and snake oil treatments and the attitude that it's courageous not to kill disabled children... and then it went on to accuse "eccentric but normal" people of falsely defining themselves as autistic, "plagiarizing their cause", and turning the autistics away as curebies. And the only response was an agreement, in boldface.
As if no one could be truly autistic and disagree with the idea of cure. As if being autistic (or otherwise disabled) is so horrific that no one could conceivably be happy as they are and not want their entire existence changed. As if blatantly autistic activists like Amanda Baggs are just geeks co-opting someone else's cause to justify themselves. As if these non-autistic family members who "have autism" are more capable of acting as the voices of autistics than people who truly do have autism, no matter how mild or severe.
"We Have Autism".
"Autism Speaks".
"Voice of the Retarded".
Who is it who's really silencing the voices of the developmentally and cognitively disabled?
Current Mood:  disgusted
Current Music: The Dresden Dolls- "Girl Anachronism"
Tags: ablism, autism, cognitive disability, community, disability rights, do-gooderism, language, self-advocacy
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06:50 pm
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*Bury This Story*
Lately, I've found myself thoughtlessly using the word "lame" as an insult, something I've normally made a point of trying not to do. It may not have the same force behind it as "half a person","cripple", "gimp", or "retard", but it's still a slur, and it's still as pathetic an insult as using "gay" as a synonym for "pathetic", especially from someone who's actively trying to fight against the idea that physical disability and mobility impairments are inherently pathetic.
On reflection, I think this bad habit is probably a consequence of my presence on the newsfeed site Digg. I am on there regularly, digging up stories and comments championing the basic human rights of the disabled and digging down articles and comments expressing bigoted or just plain scientifically inaccurate views about us. Comments are buried without any need to give explanation, but burying a story allows you to inform the site's algorithms why you think a bit of news doesn't deserve visibility. Was it a duplicate of an article already posted? Was it spam? Was the headline, description, or article inaccurate? Or is it just "OK, This is Lame"?
Every time I read the explanations to myself as I bury someone for repeating scientifically disproven and debunked theories about the causes of autism, or insisting that there's nothing wrong with disowning your Down's Syndrome child, or insinuating that a pair of wheelchair users suing an inaccessible store must be in it just for the money, or saying that the disabled are just burdens on society and should be aborted... I wind up repeating to myself, "OK, This is Lame".
Every time I bury them, I am semantically equating the people who society describes as "lame" with those bigoted pieces of human garbage. And that's just pathetic.
Current Mood:  chagrined
Current Music: Scooter- "Don't Let It Be Me"
Tags: ablism, internalised ablism, language, media
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