SENIOR AUTISTICS.
Three months out from my 45th Birthday, I have had cause to reflect upon my life and memories of 1981 being The Year Of The Disabled, 1982 being The Year Of Trees, 1994 being The Year Of Families and 1999 being The Year Of The Older Persons. The message put out was that we don't get old, just older and that we rely upon the older people to lead the way.
I can remember having a discussion with my mother when former ironman competitor Trevor Hendy said that he wanted to go into sports commentary where I said that he'd have to go to university and she said, "What?" My response was, "Well, where, in the 1960s, to be a journalist, you needed a Year Ten education and a cadetship with a newspaper, today, you virtually need a university degree in journalism before you can get a cadetship." Her response to that was, "But some of the university graduates may be well-spoken but don't have a clue what they're talking about."
It is easy to conflate education with intelligence, and in Australia, we have had a leader who was a Rhodes Scholar who couldn't string three words together and who spoke such nonsense it was embarrassing, and a senator who left school at 15 yet is an even worse speaker and believes such deluded nonsense as to climate change being a UN conspiracy and what REALLY made me angry was her ill-informed attack on autistic kids in schools and policies of inclusion.
If television channels typically have former cricketers commenting on cricket games, and former footballers football games, it makes sense to consult autistic people on the types of education strategies are needed for autistic kids.
By now, any intelligent person knows that it is not the measles vaccine that causes autism, and that we are not in the midst of an autism epidemic, rates of autism are the same, but more people are being diagnosed. One of the most misleading statements I heard was from a woman who said, "When cigarettes were healthy." If you were a convict who was transported to New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land, after 1820, you would have done far better than if you were sent over in 1787, as you would have been issued with clothes and even a tobacco allowance. Cigarette smoking was never healthy, but people smoked and died and the reasons why were not understood. Similarly, in wars, a cigarette was placed into the ration packs of soldiers and they weren't ordered to smoke them under the direction of their commanding officer, rather, if you were injured or had some battle fatigue, they'd give you a cigarette and say, "Here, have a puff on this and you'll feel better."
So, if we shouldn't listen to right-wing populists, we should also be a little more judicious about who were do listen to. The most obvious place to start with autism is from actually autistic people. Those of us who had to struggle through years of schooling with bullying, being labelled by teachers as "too lazy," (some of us may have done well in some areas, I did well in spelling at school, my Grade Two teacher even told me I was a good speller, but struggled with maths, and some of my teachers thought I was lazy, when what none of them twigged to is, yes, he has a brain for literature and he may have a preference for certain numbers, but he doesn't get maths as easily as he does spelling) are those who should help direct policy. We need firm anti-bullying policies, and they come down to safe areas at schools for autistic kids to eat their lunch without fear of being abused, integration assistants for autistic kids, earlier identification of learning strengths and weaknesses and adjusting teaching accordingly.
Just like we say that the older people lead the way, older autistics should lead the way when it comes to autistic strategies.
And above all else, unlike where we have events, such as Daffodil Day, or Biggest Morning Tea, to remember cancer patients who've died and to try to find cures for cancers, on Autism Acceptance Days, it's NOT an occasion to push for a cure for autism to remember autistic people who may have tragically committed suicide. Rather, it is a day to observe how far we have to go to improve services for autistic people and have it that the goal is NOT to cure autism (eugenics doesn't have to involve killing people, the gen part of eugenics is about genes) but to help prevent suicides of autistic people from societal attitudes. During the twentieth century, we saw, in the 1950s and 60s, the Black Civil Rights Movement, started by Rosa Parkes who refused to give up her seat for a white man and continued by Martin Luther King Junior, which was replicated with the freedom rides in Australia. We saw people protesting about the Vietnam War, we saw the Whitlam Labor Government abolish race as a criteria for immigration (the Liberals had made piecemeal moves at demolishing it). In 1973, we saw homosexuality removed from the DSM as a mental illness (not a moment too soon, either, as the aversion therapy that many were subjected to was dehumanising and barbaric) and the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney, in 1978. Now, we need to fight to stop the dehumanisation of autistic people and fight for us to have the same rights as the LGBTIQA community and non-white communities in predominantly European countries.
So, for autistic people and our allies, I wish to borrow the statements of two men I admire, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama. "I Have A Dream." I have a dream of a world where autistic people can be viewed as a simple neurological divergence, just like blue or hazel eyes, instead of brown. I have a dream of a world where autistic people are treated with the respect we deserve. Can we make it happen? In the words of Barack Obama, "Yes, we can."