Other Autistic People Taught Me What Autism Means (Video)

Oh look a video.

Transcript, though captioned (fairly) accurately:

Rough transcript, captions should be listed at some point on the video.  I wrote in my own and it’s setting the timings?

This is an address to parents and people who care for and assist autistic people.

I have been feeling *more* autistic lately, if that makes sense – just using echoes more, realizing scripts more, thinking about things I do. I mean, I flapped at a cat for five minutes the other day.

To other Autistic people…

I stim more, I am more open… and I that’s because I follow so many people on Tumblr and talk on Facebook a lot with people.

Being around other Autistic people is important.

Being around other Autistic people lets you know you can do things with them and also on your own, when situations permit. It gives you almost an internal permission to let go. When I started the k-pagination blog, I was like “Will only write activism posts and reblog activism posts. Serious stuff.” And now it’s just… I need the joy of being Autistic. I will write posts that might seem a bit silly. I will start tagging with the echoes I always had in my head and never used.

Being around other Autistic people is important.

If you’re a parent or caregiver, reading this, let your autistic kids and adults (if you have legal guardianship or something), be around other Autistic people. Don’t isolate them from neurodivergence. That in of itself can be as harmful as a physical seclusion room.

This is not my usual, long and flowing eloquent and bit detached activism. This is an autistic person asking for people to respect lived experiences. I was like your child.

I climbed trees, I ran around shrieking and screaming all the time, and even if I did now, it wouldn’t make me less than. I did a lot of things in those alarmist documentaries. I am worthy of dignity and autonomy. So are your kids and relatives, whether nonspeaking or speaking or need aides and what level of supports they need.

And other Autistic people are the ones who taught me self advocacy and activism. It was just a label before I met Autistic people I talk to and call friends and acquaintances and respect. Though psychiatrists and psychologists can be useful, other Autistic people taught me what autism means, not them.

And to Autistic people watching this, you have the right to be around other Autistic people and talk and share your experiences, and have validation.

Autistic Pride and What you Need to Know

[TW: Includes links to the abuse of Autistic people and violence against them, as well as "quiet hands" and seclusion.]
 
Autistics Speaking

Our methods of communication may not be what you are accustomed to. Sometimes we use assistive technology or just flapping intermingled with words to get the point across. But we all have things to say. Listen.

Pride

We can be proud and often are. We are proud of our neurodivergent brains. And have you ever seen a room of Autistic people flapplauding happily? Have you ever seen the joy we feel when stimming, which isn't just a negative response? Or just the pride in our ways of thinking and doing.

Being Autistic can be hard. Being Autistic can lead to more challenges in the world, but so many of those are based in a society which values spoken/verbal communication and an education system which views it as a compilation of deficits.

More importantly, autism is not something you can change about a person, or something you can cure; it is part of our neurology, hardwired into our brains, so why not be proud?

Also, have you ever seen someone's face light up when they get on their special subject? The way they communicate and move and they are the expert and they want to share? It's beautiful. I can tell you everything about cats, I can explain to you my dragons on Flight Rising, or describe every aspect of eugenic history: I can recite eugenics books in my sleep (almost), name top eugenicists, describe the way they described people, tell you what state passed the first sterilization law and when, who first came up with eugenics in the U.K. and that he was a cousin of Charles Darwin, inform you of how it made its way to Nazi Germany and that American eugenicist Harry Laughlin was later honored by Heidelberg University and he accepted it with pride.

Nightmares: Open Your Eyes to the Things that Happen

People have nightmares all the time. Being locked up in rooms, not knowing how to get out or when they ever will. Violent nightmares where they're at the hands of someone who wants to do them harm. A lot of us live these nightmares in seclusion rooms. We get punished for flapping or making a noise or dropping a pencil or moving in the wrong way or if we argue with someone we get put in a room, locked in. These things happen where we're supposed to be safe, places like schools, places where we're supposed to be able to get an education.

Some of us are afraid, not so much from random strangers on the street but from the people who claim to love us. Some of us are the victims of violence and abuse that's either called self-defense or therapy, like Issy Stapleton, whose mother called her violent and tried to kill her. Some of us don't make it out alive, like Alex Spourdalakis, drugged and stabbed to death. These things happen when we're supposed to be safe, places like our homes, places where we're supposed to be loved and supported.

Most people can wake up from nightmares, but some of us can't. We hold a vigil every year for the victims of violence. We unite to try and put an end to these things.

A Guidebook for the Non-Autistic: Things You Need to Recognize

• Presumption of competence, believing in our ability to learn and understand, will bring us farther than any abusive therapies.
• We are marginalized, but we're still here and we will not be quiet; listen to us about things that concern us.
• Behavior is communication; do not assume behaviors have no reasons behind them, and do your best to understand.
• The same goes for watching us in public; we may look weird and different to you, but we have reasons and should not be shunned.
• Representation in the media is not accurate.
• We can provide valuable information on our disability and autism, and you should listen.
• The value of our lives are not less regardless of the level of support we need. We have the same rights to life, love, education, jobs, and living conditions as anyone else.
• Listen.

~
Kit Mead
Autistics Speaking Day 2014

When You're Not "Loud and Angry Enough"

We clearly need to figure something out, as a community. When the Autistic community has scared a good amount of Autistic people into not being able to say things, what has it become? I was one of them, for a while. I’m not going into direct confrontations on Facebook (I don’t have spoons to deal with the arguing that would happen), but I’m writing this post.

The goal of a community is to not echo-chamber itself into only allowing certain ideas and viewpoints into it, which, frankly, has been a lot of what I’m seeing. People are attracted to the ideal that explosive, sometimes abusive behavior is okay when you’re part of an oppressed group. We as a community have dealt with a lot of pain. We’ve lost a lot of children, teenagers and adults to caretakers, and we’ve been abused in the name of therapy. I would not deny this community anger at things that have been done and are still being done.

The echo-chambering I’m seeing, though, is that if you’re not loud and angry and constantly scouring the bits of the Internet to confront and call out people, you are too polite and constantly want to make nice. The echo-chambering I’m seeing is permitting the silencing of some Autistic people through fear while saying that you’re being silenced when someone has a different opinion than you or wants you to stop yelling.

The dynamics of a community, the fabric of its being, does not rely on explosive techniques. The explosiveness I can no longer be quiet about drives potential allies and newly diagnosed Autistic people away as an unsafe space, and more importantly, many Autistic people may look at this community and wonder what is getting done, wonder if they even want to be part of it, and credibility is damaged. And what will we tell the people who aren’t privy to our conversations and are not able to join in, who may rely on us to help enact change in the community and society? What then?

We had to pick a topic for our Speech class

and we have to present a two minute thing on the topic we have chosen. Of course I picked this:

Topic

A History of Autistic Self-Advocacy to Now

• Context: Domination of Parent-Based Advocacy and its roots
• Roughly when did the self-advocacy movement begin after years of being dominated by parent-based advocacy?
• What struggles did they face?
• What struggles do we still face?
• When did the movement, along with the neurodiversity movement, “come of age?”
• How has it evolved into its modern form?
• The Modern Platforms

Reasons for selecting topic

I am an Autistic self-advocate and activist. I believe in promoting the acceptance of disability, abstaining from the attempted normalization “treatments” forced upon many of us, including us on decisions that involve us (and not just as token representation), presuming competence of disabled people, and supporting fellow disabled people.

Why it should matter to everyone

The rights of Autistics and of the disabled in general are harder to attain because of ingrained discrimination in society. People fail to include us in policy-making, advocacy, and in our own lives. Organizations like Autism Speaks would try to speak for us and try to force us into normalization or cure when the majority of us oppose such treatments and cure research. We are human; we have autonomy. As people, and as the marginalized, our rights are civil rights. As the old adage of the disability rights movement goes, Nothing About us Without Us!


My sources will include

• Books written by early researchers of autism, such as Bruno Bettelheim (to provide context for the birth of the parent-based advocacy movement).
• Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking edited by Julia Bascom: a recent anthology published in 2012 by Autistic people on their experiences, advocacy work, the discrimination against Autistic and other disabled people, and our history.
• Posts written by parent-based advocates and the website “charity” Autism Speaks who tend to oppose the idea of Autistic self-autonomy and try to force their children into normalization.
• Web archives from prominent first self-advocates such as Jim Sinclair (author of "Don't Mourn for Us" and "Why I do not like person-first language," and founder of Autism Network International) and Mel Baggs, especially in the 1990s
• Current posts from Autistic self-advocates around the web, including myself
• The Autistic Self Advocacy Network's webpage and their updates (ASAN is a self-advocacy based nonprofit based out of Washington, D.C., run by Autistics for Autistics)

• Notes I took during my Autism Campus Inclusion program in Washington D.C., sponsored by ASAN, which took fifteen Autistic college students to D.C. with various speakers and sessions to learn about history, advocacy, and action, including people such as the Executive Director for The National Council on Disability.
  

 ... is that enough