EVERYBODY OR NOT?
I have just finished reading a nonsensical article by a right-wing person who claims to be autistic that is critical of the neurodiversity movement. A criticism that they have of us is that we wanted autistic people to be on boards of organisations such as Autism Speaks and that our push against a cure for autism is wrong and that according to a French Canadian academic, autism will disappear within ten years as the distinction between autistic and non-autistic people will vanish.
I have always said that, although I'm opposed to tokenism, in a country's Parliament, the Minister for Women should be a woman (in Australia, we had the ignominy of that role being filled by a Catholic man who was vehemently opposed to abortion and who used his position as Health Minister to try to stop Parliament from taking control of access to RU-486 away from the Health Minister and hold women hostage to his beliefs. He is also vehemently against LGBTIQA rights and claimed that he was a feminist because he has three daughters) and that the Minister for Indigenous Affairs should be indigenous. And by indigenous, I mean, native. If you watched the slop that commercial television stations have the temerity to refer to as current affairs, you would have seen Australia's most racist and most ignorant politician oppose the closure of Uluru to climbers and then her claim that she was Indigenous. To be an Indigenous Australian, you cannot simply be born in Australia, to Australian parents, you have to have at least some birth connection to the Indigenous peoples of Australia and refer to the land in tribal terms, such as Goomeri, or Wiridjiri, not as in Queensland or New South Wales. While it is permissible for people to claim to be Indigenous, if they have one Aboriginal grandparent, great-grandparent or even great-great-grandparent, and some people who identify as Indigenous may indeed be fair-skinned, if your ancestral connections are to England and Ireland, and your DNA is European with four percent being Middle Eastern, you cannot identify as Indigenous Australian. You can say Australia is your native country, but that is not the same as being Indigenous.
So, just like it makes sense for the Minister for Women to be a woman and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs to be indigenous, it makes sense that organisations that claim to be for autistic people should be run, or at least have people on the boards, who are autistic. Neuro-typical folks should not be purporting to speak for autistic people.
We accept that you will never have complete agreement on anything amongst a group of people, hence, at political party conferences attendees take a vote. Us autistic advocates or self-advocates accept that not every autistic person is going to agree with every single thing we say, and we don't purport to speak for every autistic person, but to criticise us for wanting a voice, or a seat at the table is just ridiculous!
Many people, when they think of autism, tend to think of people with a low IQ, who are non-verbal and who are locked in institutions. The 1988 movie, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man, was indicative of older attitudes towards autism, not autism itself. Yes, some say Dustin Hoffman's character had savant syndrome, but, there again, Rain Man, given that name because he couldn't pronounce his real name, Raymond, had the ability to count cards and memorise decks but was locked away in an institution and not even spoken about.
If we compare autism with multiple sclerosis, many people, when they think of multiple sclerosis, think of champion Australian athlete, Betty Cuthbert, now deceased, who was wheelchair bound, yet there are cases of people with MS who can still walk (in some cases, albeit with a cane). So, just like there are functioning levels of people with MS, for which you can't apply a label, as a person with relapsing-remitting MS may appear okay when in remission but be disabled when relapsing, autistic people vary greatly, too, and functioning labels are not accurate. You may have an autistic person in the right environment who is capable of functioning well, yet, when in the wrong environment, cannot function.
Contrary to what some say, too, we are not in the midst of an autism epidemic, rather, the diagnostic criteria for autism has broadened.
If we compare autism to the need for a gluten free diet, we see some things here. Firstly, a gluten free diet is NOT a treatment for autism. Some autistic people may have coeliac disease, BUT, for a parent to say, "Little Johnny/Mary is autistic and has had terrible meltdowns but since I've taken gluten out of their diet, they've been fine," is inaccurate, as the reason for being more placid is that they're no longer in pain. When it comes to gluten-free, I know some non-coeliac people might do it with one or two foods because they like the taste, while others read something about gluten and see it as a poison that must be avoided. Some people, however, claim that there is an autism bandwagon, and nothing could further from the truth.
Autism is not a condition that needs to be cured. Those of us who are opposed to a cure are not advocating that, if we draw a comparison with MH17, that a plane carrying scientists researching it, meet the same fate as that aircraft, but what we are saying is, those of us who don't want it, should be respected and the facilities that are provided for autistic people are retained. We also accept that some may take a different view, but we also say that organisations that purport to support autistics should NOT assume that we are suffering and that we want to be neuro-typical. And if those organisations don't have a consensus, then they should be ignored.