I have a long and harried history of people claiming they’re trying to help when, in fact, they are making things worse. I was thinking about it all again- and why this is a problem- today after this read.
“It is because of the systemic ableism that is ever present in our lives, because we are seen as not human enough. Even as I am very conscious of that, I still refuse to comply and please people who don’t value who I am.”
– Amy Sequenzia
[Me]: The mindset that someone is less than human- that someone’s essential nature needs to be fixed, repaired, changed, or cured; that someone adult is childlike and infantile; that someone’s differences make them more of a robot, a savage mindless animal, a hollow shell, a ghost or shadow, alien and forever unreachable, other, criminal, evil, or possessed by the devil- is hateful and destructive to both the people it is directed against and the people who wield it.
We are all human and any help (advice, therapy, treatment, support, accomodation, policy, law, etc) not grounded in that reality is not a help but a means of controlling the deviant others.
Saying that an autistic person must have ABA (etc) or end up being institutionalized is, in fact, saying that an autistic person must learn to conform to and appease the neurotypical world or the neurotypical world will lock them away.
[Emily Dickinson]:
Much Madness is divinest Sense –
To a discerning Eye –
Much Sense – the starkest Madness –
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail –
Assent – and you are sane –
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain –
a coherent heart 