welcome back for another monthly post (even if July was a very busy month for posts, so monthly might be the wrong word there.)
I legitimately wasn't sure what to write about tonight, but eventually, after an... enlightening discussion on my twitter account with a stereotypical England football fan (incredibly toxic and harasses minorities of all sorts) it reminded me of a topic I have never covered that is too important to ignore. How ableist stereotypes shared mostly by neurotypical people can hurt the public opinion of the Autistic community, and also how said stereotypes can hurt the Autistic people they're used against.
(before this starts, there will be screenshots from this conversation and other recent tweets of this user. While I have reported this user on twitter, and I suggest others do too, do not under any circumstance send any hate towards this person. We are better than he is, and by attacking him we only stoop to his level.)
TRIGGER WARNINGS: EXTREME ABLEISM, DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MINORITIES, MENTIONS OF SUICIDE, EUGENICS.
let's start with stereotypes not connected to this lovely human being.
Autistic people are all superhumans
a common media stereotype, and also an extremely harmful stereotype (even if it may not seem like it) is the "superpowers" stereotype - this is the idea that Autistic people are superhuman for living with our disability. According to this idea, we are all incredibly intelligent and practically organic supercomputers and our Autism shouldn't burden us but is instead the magical super power that makes our lives worth living.
why is this a harmful stereotype?
it pushes the idea that Autistic people should never suffer, and that we are greater than other people, just for the fact we live with our disability. We're made out to be superheroes when in reality we just need our support requirements to be catered to, not to become what is known as "inspiration porn" (inspirational stories about disabled people oriented only to the fact that they are disabled to inspire people)
Inspiration porn is often used to motivate people to work harder, try harder, etc. since, if the disabled person can do it (this is definitely way more common with physical disabilities, but it does exist with hidden disabilities like Autism as well) why can't you? - unfortunately this comes at the cost of often underplaying the struggles of a disabled person.
For example:
the quote on this image states that "the only disability in life is a bad attitude" - the problem with this statement is that there are so many struggles a disabled person will face and now people can just claim "it's all a bad attitude, just try harder"
now that we're off the inspiration porn & superhuman stereotype, let's move on to the extra harmful ones, many of which were used against myself during the previously mentioned twitter conflict.
I must again before this bring up the trigger warnings from the top. This guy was likely a troll but has zero filter, and has said many things about groups other than just Autistic people. There are messages on his profile about cancer patients, football fans from other countries, etc.
DETAILED TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THE FOLLOWING SECTION OF THIS POST:
MENTIONS OF SUICIDE - this guy has literally told Autistic people to kill themselves
EXTREME ABLEISM - this user believes and demonstrates many stereotypical beliefs about Autism, including that Autistic people will never amount to anything in life, should be treated like children, etc.
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MINORITIES - on his profile there are attacks against LGBT users, Autistic users, and likely more if you go further, but his profile makes me physically sick, so I am not digging any further.
continuing:
this user appeared on a months old thread related to the #ColorTheSpectrum incident from April, in which a famous content creator hosted a fundraiser for a charity that supported finding a cure for Autism.
This thread has been quiet since April when the controversy originally began, until I randomly got a notification a few days ago that someone had replied to it again
this is what I recieved:
this was one of MANY tweets he sent within a 10-odd minute period to pretty much every message that had the # for ColorTheSpectrum on it.
we also had this one (perpetuating the "autistic people need to be treated like children" stereotype, which is the idea that because many of us communicate differently, or develop lacking social skills, we need to be treated like we're 4 in order to understand what people are telling us. We don't. We need to be treated like human beings, which we are, and with the basic respect you would show other people - though clearly this guy doesn't have much respect for anyone)
eventually these tweets went from basic insults to flat out implying that Autistic people should all kill themselves.
somehow, this Twitter account has not been banned, even though I've reported over 50 tweets, and have encouraged my followers to do the same.
I am also encouraging you here to do the same thing, report this account and its tweets, whether you want to report the tweets targeted towards LGBT users, or the tweets towards Autistic users, there's enough here to ban him if enough people report him.
I will confess, I believe tonight's post got sidetracked, but I needed to cover the kinds of pathetic stereotypes and imbecilic beliefs some neurotypical people especially hold regarding Autistic people and our capabilities as human beings.
Ableism is a serious problem, even within the disabled community. We are forced to listen to people passing these ableist beliefs for all of our lives, as they are the commonplace beliefs (Autistic people need more care and therefore must obviously be dumber & less capable, etc.) and they become ingrained, hence why internalized ableism is such a problem for us.
Many of us are made to hate ourselves by ignorant neurotypical people such as the twitter user in all of these above tweets.
Autism isn't a superpower
Autism isn't a disease
Autism will not kill you
Autism will not ruin your life
Autism will not ruin the lives of your loved ones
Autism will require people to check their privilege and ableism, and be just a little bit more accepting.
Autism will require the same love and attention as a neurotypical child
this really is not that hard. In 2021, why do we somehow still have people who believe any forms of diversity are even remotely problems?
We live in a world where anyone can choose to identify as anything, hidden disabilities are diagnosed more now than ever before, and even with steps backwards like the JRC, we're fighting hard for our basic human rights to be honored where they previously would not have been.
Yet people like this continue to be allowed on social media platforms, and messages like those are acceptable enough that Twitter has flat out disregarded my reports.
THAT is the problem here. Not Autistic people.
I apologize if tonight's post came off more like a rant than a post, but I needed to say this, and I'll likely have more posts through August if anything comes to mind. Until then, that's it from me.
Stay safe everyone
- Josh.