Hey lookie an autism rant.
May. 20th, 2007 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kippurbirdSo, the curse of the roommate continues. This time I got someone who seemed to be genuinely interested and I met and she was nice. She turned out to be the sister of some one I went to undergrad with. I really liked her brother, so I was thinking this is all very cool. She sent back an email saying that she wanted to get to know me better and a couple of questions about the apartment arrangements. Then she asked, about talking to some of my doctors about my diagnose and what have you. We sent back saying that well, if she wanted to know those sort of things, she should talk to me. Her reply was, if I can't talk to the doctors, I don't want to do it.
This seems to be a popular theme. And I'm not talking about my curse, but instead the fact that once you have a label, all rights of privacy are apparently vacated. At least that's the way it seems to the non-labeled people out there. For years now, since I was diagnosed with autism/aspergers/what have you, people have been wanting to know things about me that no one would dare ask if I didn't have a label. Some of these things would break the doctor/patient confidentiality agreement and other things were just private.
One time my mom was asked to speak about problems my brother and I had. My mom refused because we were nearly adults and it wasn't her place to talk about our problems and things that we found difficult. The person who asked her to speak was flabbergasted that my mom wouldn't want to speak about such things, the idea that we might want to keep them private completely foreign to her. Why? Because we were autistic. Which make us, apparently, less than human.
This is a true fact. I don't know about other people with labels or disabilities; I imagine it must be the same, but autistic people are constantly treated as sub-human, once the diagnose is discovered. It's as if a switch is turned on in the non autistic person's head that says "Oh this person is disabled, I must treat them differently. And since they're disabled, they're less than me". We become like animals that need to be studied. That need to be treated differently.
While, yes, we may have different needs than a non-autistic person, we still should have the same rights as them. A right to privacy and happiness. A right to live a fulfilling life, to have a job and sustain ourselves. A right to an education. A right to learn how to maneuverer within society. It may take longer, or with different methods than non-autistic people, but we still should be allowed to learn these things and have these things.
One of the things that my mother instilled in me and my brother, is that we should have goals and we should try to do things. We may not always succeeded at them, but at least we tried. A lot of other parents seem to be afraid to let their children try anything because they might fail or because they're autistic so they might not want to do anything. They just pat their children on the head and say things like, "Oh it's okay, you're autistic, you don't have to do anything. You can't learn anything, I'm just going to allow you to wallow in your world as you are and not help you grow." Stagnating is not something that my mother allowed us to do. She constantly pushes me and my brother to grow and to learn and to do things. Sometimes, she says, that it might have been easier if she had just let us be, but I always tell her that yes, my life maybe difficult, but I'm happy and more independent than I would ever have been if she had just let me be.
I guess, what I'm trying to say, in a very long and ramblingly way is that even though we have different needs, we should still be treated like human beings.
This seems to be a popular theme. And I'm not talking about my curse, but instead the fact that once you have a label, all rights of privacy are apparently vacated. At least that's the way it seems to the non-labeled people out there. For years now, since I was diagnosed with autism/aspergers/what have you, people have been wanting to know things about me that no one would dare ask if I didn't have a label. Some of these things would break the doctor/patient confidentiality agreement and other things were just private.
One time my mom was asked to speak about problems my brother and I had. My mom refused because we were nearly adults and it wasn't her place to talk about our problems and things that we found difficult. The person who asked her to speak was flabbergasted that my mom wouldn't want to speak about such things, the idea that we might want to keep them private completely foreign to her. Why? Because we were autistic. Which make us, apparently, less than human.
This is a true fact. I don't know about other people with labels or disabilities; I imagine it must be the same, but autistic people are constantly treated as sub-human, once the diagnose is discovered. It's as if a switch is turned on in the non autistic person's head that says "Oh this person is disabled, I must treat them differently. And since they're disabled, they're less than me". We become like animals that need to be studied. That need to be treated differently.
While, yes, we may have different needs than a non-autistic person, we still should have the same rights as them. A right to privacy and happiness. A right to live a fulfilling life, to have a job and sustain ourselves. A right to an education. A right to learn how to maneuverer within society. It may take longer, or with different methods than non-autistic people, but we still should be allowed to learn these things and have these things.
One of the things that my mother instilled in me and my brother, is that we should have goals and we should try to do things. We may not always succeeded at them, but at least we tried. A lot of other parents seem to be afraid to let their children try anything because they might fail or because they're autistic so they might not want to do anything. They just pat their children on the head and say things like, "Oh it's okay, you're autistic, you don't have to do anything. You can't learn anything, I'm just going to allow you to wallow in your world as you are and not help you grow." Stagnating is not something that my mother allowed us to do. She constantly pushes me and my brother to grow and to learn and to do things. Sometimes, she says, that it might have been easier if she had just let us be, but I always tell her that yes, my life maybe difficult, but I'm happy and more independent than I would ever have been if she had just let me be.
I guess, what I'm trying to say, in a very long and ramblingly way is that even though we have different needs, we should still be treated like human beings.
