amorpha

Found this post the other day by Meowser of Fat Fu, All we are saying... is not what you're saying we said, about claims mainstream feminists often make about fat acceptance. And it gave us an idea to do an autism or general disability-related version. Because although we don't experience that situation wrt our weight (though we've found ourselves lately confronting having more society-influenced ideals about what our body "should" look like than we realized, since the medication we need to keep a semi-regular sleep schedule has made us gain some weight), we're way too familiar with the generalized situation of saying something again and again and again, and having people continually respond to... some strange illusion of you. Which is not saying anything like what you actually said. Or even remotely close to it. And doing this over and over again with every single person in a given place who tries to repeatedly make a certain point.

(by the way, feel free to add your own here)

We say, "Autistic people can have a place in society as they are, without attempts to make them non-autistic."
They hear, "Autism is not a disability and autistic people don't experience any difficulties or challenges whatsoever."

We say, "Autism is not like having cancer/AIDS/diabetes/etc."
They hear, "People with life-threatening illnesses should be denied medical treatment."

We say, "Autistic people should not be locked up in institutions or marginalized into special ed classrooms."
They hear, "You should make no attempt whatsoever to help your child or provide them with accomodations and leave them to rot."

We say, "Many of the behavioral and pharmaceutical 'therapies' and 'treatments' commonly used on autistic children are actually harmful and have caused harm to many of us."
They hear, "You are a bad, terrible, horrible, evil parent who doesn't love your child and should die."

We say, "Even though we experience many disability-related challenges, it does not mean we want to be made non-autistic-- we would rather live in a world where our accomodations are built into society the way yours are."
They hear, "Autistic people do not experience any disability-related challenges."

We say "I do not consider myself low-functioning/high-functioning, because I do not believe functioning labels are meaningful."
They hear "I am low-functioning/high-functioning."

We say anything at all.
They hear "I am not autistic, because I can speak/write and advocate for myself!"