Trigger Warning: Discussion of abuse, murder of disabled people, silencing
There
is this double standard I keep seeing. Autism Speaks is allowed to
threaten to sue a minor who makes a parody site. They're allowed to
use the work of an autistic person without getting her permission
(and apparently without getting the publisher's permission, since I
am more willing to believe the publisher than Autism Speaks,
honestly. I don't have evidence of the publisher being a liar.) They
are allowed mess up the attribution when they do so, calling her an
Aspie who found the autism spectrum at eighteen instead of an
Autistic diagnosed at age three, several years before Asperger's was
even a thing. They're allowed to lie. They're apparently allowed to
pretend that I am Autism and Autism Every Day never happened, and that a parent can say they have fantasized about a murder-suicide, killing their autistic kid and themselves without needing to apologize for this. They
get to bully autistic adults into silence any way they can. They get give a person money for a personal project and have us expect that his self-advocacy organization isn't going to kowtow to them or silence autistics. (I have specific instances of saying silencing things, and no, intent isn't magical. Alex, you don't hear the end of it unless you stop doing silencing stuff and apologize for the silencing you've already done, even if you can prove that there is absolutely no link whatsoever between you and Autism Speaks, which I doubt since there is.)
And
what do we get? We get told not to even look at a walker's
dog when we go protest their walk.
We get all the "this fighting between autism organization is
sickening" on our
articles, our pages,
our groups, and none
on theirs. We get told that we need to be nicer to parents and maybe
they'll see us as human (doesn't work.) We get to answer all kinds of
invasive questions about "our individual experiences as people
with autism" from people who don't listen to our requests that
we be called Autistic people or Autistics instead of people with
autism, and we had better well consider it an honor, we ungrateful
lot. We get to be oh so thankful to the parents who simultaneously
say they would not kill their child and that they understand the
other parent who did because an autistic child is just so hard to
deal with, that we shouldn't judge. (I will judge anyone who thinks
murder is not judging-worthy almost as harshly as I will judge
someone who actually murdered, thanks, so don't go telling me not to
judge the killer unless you want to be judged next.)
They
can do whatever they want and still be saints, near enough. Having to
deal with raising one of us gets you that title as far as most of the
world is concerned. And you know what? It just isn't so. A parent who
abuses their child isn't somehow a saint just because the child they
abuse is autistic. A parent who killed their autistic kid may well
have been overwhelmed, but killing your kid kind of disqualifies you
from sainthood, last I checked. Telling autistic adults that "the
parents are important too!" every time we remind them that
listening to autistic people isn't saint-like; it's silencing. But
they still get the title. If we even explain nicely
why that's a problem or why something they did isn't OK, we have a
tone to be policed, and it's totally not OK because we couldn't
possibly understand.
This
double standard needs to stop, yesterday. Or maybe before it even
started?
