Note For Anyone Writing About Me

Guide to Writing About Me

I am an Autistic person,not a person with autism. I am also not Aspergers. The diagnosis isn't even in the DSM anymore, and yes, I agree with the consolidation of all autistic spectrum stuff under one umbrella. I have other issues with the DSM.

I don't like Autism Speaks. I'm Disabled, not differently abled, and I am an Autistic activist. Self-advocate is true, but incomplete.

Citing My Posts

MLA: Zisk, Alyssa Hillary. "Post Title." Yes, That Too. Day Month Year of post. Web. Day Month Year of retrieval.

APA: Zisk, A. H. (Year Month Day of post.) Post Title. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/post-specific-URL.

Monday, October 21, 2013

T21 Blog Hop: Disability Acceptance

So Down Wit Dat hosts a blog hop on the 21st of the month for three days (3x21) and despite the name, it's not actually just for Down's. It's for any disability stuff. So I'm doing a thing! I'll add the linky list at the bottom of this post once it actually exists.
Because this post also fit the October 2014 theme, I put it in again, here's October 2014's hop.

Trigger Warning: Ableism

Anyways, disability acceptance is my topic of the day, because people seem to mix up what that is. It's not leaving disabled people/people with disabilities (I'm just going to go with "disabled people" for the rest of the post but yes you count even if you use different language) without education. It's not a sense of "I accept that you're not a real person and I love and care about you anyways." It's not using the fact that we can't do certain things (what those things are depends on the disability and the person) or that certain things are harder to learn/do (ditto) as an excuse to never let us become adults. It's understanding a few things.
  1. Some of us think "Disabled" and/or some of our specific disability labels are defining factors in who we are. Not the only ones, but among them. Some of us don't. We're the ones who decide that about our own disabilities.
  2. We're real people with thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams. Some of us have different dreams than you might expect. Some of us enjoy things you might find weird. Strange as some of them might seem to you, if we say we enjoy something, that probably means we enjoy it, and you shouldn't be feeling sad about the time we spend doing it instead of doing things you think we should enjoy.
  3. There will be things we can't do. Disability kind of implies that. It's not "letting our disability win" or whatever other loads of nonsense people come up with when we admit that. Finding workarounds, accommodations, and good technology is the way to go.
  4. There will be plenty of other things we can do. Some of these may be things where you'd expect our disabilities to be a problem. Others won't be.
  5. Not letting us try a thing because you think our disability will make it a problem is not OK.
  6. Similarly, not providing proper education because of our disability is not OK.
  7. Neither is insisting we just try one more time for a skill that it's clear we just don't have. Clear to us is sufficient. Most of us have limited energy, and proving one more time that we are, in fact, unable to do certain things (see item 3) takes up energy that we often can't afford to spend.
  8. Sometimes we have the ability to do a thing, but it's hard and takes up more time and energy than we think it is worth. Getting help with such things is appropriate and not "Letting Our Disability Win."
  9. There will also be things we just don't like doing. This may or may not have anything to do with our disability. Sometimes it just has to do with item 2: we're real people.
  10. Telling us we're using the wrong language to refer to our own disability is rude. Letting us know that Specific Person X has expressed a different language preference for themself than the one we used describing them is not rude, so long as Specific Person X actually has the preference you're saying they have.
  11. The following phrases are almost always used in ableist or otherwise bad ways and you should be aware of this:
    1. "Not Like My Child." (Yes, we are.)
    2. "Letting Their Disability Win"
    3. "High Functioning" and "Low Functioning" (Seriously the whole concept is nonsense)
    4. "Does Not Communicate"
    5. "Noncompliant"
    6. "Using Their Disability as a Crutch/Excuse"
    7. "Mentally age x"




    3 comments:

    1. Excellent, as always.
      Thank you for the shout out and for sharing this with the hop. :D

      ReplyDelete
    2. I really agree with all of this. As an Aspie I have tried "not to let my disability win" all my childhood and adolescence (without know what disability it was). It just about broke me and yes, the disability "won". And I love the rest of the post too.

      ReplyDelete
    3. My disability is not something to be defeated in the first place, so how can I let it "win"?

      ReplyDelete

    I reserve the right to delete comments for personal attacks, derailing, dangerous comparisons, bigotry, and generally not wanting my blog to be a platform for certain things.