In search of a truce in the autism wars

One issue that impacts this debate is the general trend that only severely impaired people self identify as disabled. People who are able to get adequate accommodation to function in life without such labels tend to distance themselves from such labels.

My ex husband had severe handwriting issues. He was a cis het white male with a serious career. He was able to use his favorite pen, among other things, without needing a label -- like dysgraphia -- to qualify for accommodation.

Both of our sons were labeled as having dysgraphia. They needed the label to get accommodation in public school.

We eventually pulled them out and homeschooled. I have formal diagnoses for some of their issues in part because of the time they spent in school. But I don't have formal labels for everything, in part because I no longer needed a formal label to accommodate a thing while homeschooling.

Their dad did everything in his power to insist his problems were not like the problems his children had. I saw this in other parents who had children with labels.

I recently posted a thing to HN that got no traction. Some years ago, Microsoft did a study designed to investigate limitations without using words like disabled or handicapped. It found that about 60% of respondents had difficulties with day-to-day tasks if you just asked about tasks without using stigmatizing labels, like disabled. In contrast, only 15% to 20% of people self identify as disabled.

Findings:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090423084415/http://www.micros...

People who self identify as disabled get very up in arms about "normal" people using, for example, "Spoonie" language. So both those who self identify as disabled and those who don't are equally touchy about such things. They want some clear dividing line that may not genuinely exist.

I'm "Twice Exceptional." I'm gifted and disabled.

Various groups, such as gifted students or men able to claim male privilege, are able to get a lot of accommodation for their preferences with a non stigmatizing label. Their position of privilege gets them the best of both worlds.

I strongly suspect that a lot of people use privilege to demand accommodation for mild to moderate disabilities while side stepping the stigmatizing label of "disabled."

I think there's a lot of other stuff going on, more than I'm going to fit into a single comment. But, in a nutshell, if we lived in a world that more consistently let you go with your personal preferences without needing a justification, we wouldn't battle nearly so much over such labels.

(Yes, I know: Sometimes it's important for things to be done X way. But it often really isn't and what happens is privileged people wind up free to do whatever and underprivileged people get their lives turned upside down on silly excuses, basically.)

Daily stand-ups are a torture for just about everyone.

Therr is this fallacious thinking amongst autistics that 'normals' just breeze through social events without stress or angst. That's completely wrong; most people find social engagement tiring and difficult ( hence the resort to alcohol or drugs as a 'social lubricant' ). We just don't have a diagnosed excuse for avoiding it or acting in a manner seen as rude.

A stark reminder that not only do people who think like this exist, they express it freely in public. While there is a discussion to be had around eugenics, that attitude is not it.

I’d argue that it’s only autism if it’s severe. During the 1980’s being socially awkward wasn’t a clinical medical condition.

If you disrupted class in the 1980’s, you got taken out of general population, and put into special education with a high ratio of teachers or aides, and received a proximity of attention as needed, and that was your generalized clinical marker for genuine problems. The consensus of the elementary grade day-care center we call kindergarten through fifth grade in public schools resolved who was incapable of participating at a reasonable level.

Meanwhile, being a weirdo with eccentricities and preferences wasn’t something that demanded medication and diagnosis and labels and highly precise rules for what’s normal and what’s not. You could be awkward. It wasn’t a big deal.

Now, that is no longer true. People are keeping score starting at five years old, boxing kids into limited futures of medication and unrelenting demands for strict behavioral protocols.

So, what changed? The schools. The doctors. The kids didn’t change. The adults did. The trend was to demand more from children, and thus force them into tighter constraints in adulthood. The trend was to try and force a society to do more with less, and to weed out the weak.

Kids have to do homework in kindergarten, and that is bullshit. They shouldn’t have homework until middle school, really. They should just be kids. They shouldn’t have anxiety about grades when they’re little. They should be permitted to exist as tiny little humans, getting a first look at a gigantic world. Up until age ten, they should just be exposed to what it means to be a person. By ten, their personality is developed, and with puberty around the corner, a few short years to tighten up the basics would work, if public schools were competent. Big if.

But, when it comes to “spectral autism” the premise is a joke. If you can brush your teeth, comb your hair, tie your shoes, and iron and fold clothes but choose not to then you aren’t autistic. If you’re capable of working at McDonald’s but choose not to then you aren’t autistic. If you could theoretically wait tables or tend a bar, as a capable server but choose not to then you aren’t autistic. If you can drive a car across town, you aren’t autistic.

Ain’t no spectrum about it. Either it’s debilitating pathology or it isn’t. People aren’t suffering from syndromes at unprecedented scales. The rules of society changed in the late 90’s, and judgement is passed with greater scrutiny than ever before.

"Do we have nothing better" does sound like a judgement.