Divide and Conquer
I really wish autistic people who can talk and live on their own would stop trying to distance themselves from the autistic people who can't do those things... It frustrates me that they're still kind of buying into the idea that "I'm autistic but it's okay because I'm smart"... because that buys into the idea of ranking people's worth by their abilities.
I want autism rights to stop emphasizing our talents or our disabilities, and start talking about what we want, what we need, what our lives are really like. It just makes me really sad when I hear somebody say, "It's okay that I'm autistic, but I wouldn't want to be one of Those People who needs diapers and has intellectual disability and needs a group home; in fact, they're probably not really autistic at all because autistic people are smart"... It just makes me sad.
We can't shut them away. We need to stick together with those who can't communicate or who need a lot of help. We need to defeat the fear-pity-hate thing altogether instead of trying to wiggle away from it and leaving the "low-functioning people" to deal with that stigma alone.
I want autism rights to stop emphasizing our talents or our disabilities, and start talking about what we want, what we need, what our lives are really like. It just makes me really sad when I hear somebody say, "It's okay that I'm autistic, but I wouldn't want to be one of Those People who needs diapers and has intellectual disability and needs a group home; in fact, they're probably not really autistic at all because autistic people are smart"... It just makes me sad.
We can't shut them away. We need to stick together with those who can't communicate or who need a lot of help. We need to defeat the fear-pity-hate thing altogether instead of trying to wiggle away from it and leaving the "low-functioning people" to deal with that stigma alone.