probably gonna get slammed with anon hate for this but like…
much of the ableism towards Autistic people doesn’t happen “because we’re Autistic,” it happens because we’re weird.
now consider that… and now consider what some of the most common insults are here on tumblr.
weird, gross, embarrassing, cringeworthy… all insults based on that same idea of “you are different and we don’t like you.”
and now consider the constant mocking of “just trying to be special” and “Not Like Other Girls™” that is constantly seen on tumblr.
from early childhood, we are taught and conditioned to know that any deviation from the norm will be punished. for Autistic people, who make up a big portion of what is usually thought of as tumblr’s userbase, this conditioning is often increased tenfold by coercive “therapies” such as ABA and Social Thinking.
the fact that so much of tumblr’s culture is based on strict deviation from the norm– often citing “weird, embarrassing, cringeworthy, just trying to be special” as offenses– is regressive. and as an Autistic person, I would go so far as to say that it is at least somewhat rooted in ableism.
if you’re Autistic and you do this, especially if you’re a survivor of coercive behavioral and social treatments designed to make you “normal,” please think about why you take part in this treatment of others. I know you’ve been hurt, and overcoming internalized ableism is hard. I’m here to help.
if you’re allistic and you do this, please stop. just stop. we’ve already been through enough.
also yes, allistics can reblog this. please do, in fact.
This is absolutely true, and something I’ve been too unsure how to articulate, so thank you.
Yes, don’t mock other people’s special interests. But also don’t mock people who don’t seem to do anything but watch Minecraft youtubers, or talk to you for hours about, I don’t know, MLP or their favorite wrestler.
Yes, don’t mock people for sensory issues or for stimming. But also don’t mock the middle schooler who still sucks his thumb, or that kid who shrieks every time there’s a loud noise, or anything you haven’t necessarily diagnosed in your head as autistic.
It’s as simple as not mocking “weirdness” that isn’t harmful.
Don’t mock people for being autistic, yes, but don’t make it “it’s okay for them to be weird, as an exception, just because I know they’re autistic. This is acceptable because it’s autism.” Maybe, instead, question why it was ever unacceptably “cringey,” and why you needed to know.
Don’t make exceptions for us in “cringe culture”: create a culture in which (aside from any genuinely harmful difficulties/behaviors, I have some, that’s different) we’re not weird.
This is such an important post! I won’t judge anyone who doesn’t, but if you have room for it on your blog, please share; it would improve many of our lives materially.
I hope it’s okay to add to this as an allistic, but I was talking about something similar in regards to being disabled the other day. Someone in a group I’m in posted about a special phone holder, it kind of looped around the neck and was adjustible and you could use it hands-free. The first person who commented was obviously woke enough to know this would be a really great tool for disabled people but implied that for ableds it was lazy or cringe.
I had to say something in response. Because the stigmatisation of certain behaviours or certain tech or assistive devices with a caveat that it’s fine for Those People because poor them or whatever, it still trickles down into the disabled communities. Lots of disabled still feel that shame that their needs are lazy or embarrassing. Lots of people aren’t immediately recognisable as disabled, they might exist on the periphery of our socially defined concept of disability. And they feel paranoid about being targets of shame for using assistive tech or using certain coping mechanisms. I see people putting off using wheelchairs a lot because of this kind of trickle down shaming. They push themselves to extreme pain or risk numbness or dislocations or extreme fatigue because they want to avoid the scrutiny or criticism they risk from others.
The “but not those guys” attitude still very much makes it to us. The trick is to not pay it any mind if this shit isn’t effecting you in any way. If an abled is using a hands free phone holder who cares. If an allistic wants to talk endlessly about their favourite obscure comic character like why does it matter if they’re neurodiverse or not? Stop judging and let people be.
This is the first time that an addition to one of my posts has begun with “as an allistic” and been good.
Published
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 