Okay, I was wondering when I was going to end up writing this.
Okay abled bodied parents of disabled children/children with disabilities, listen up:
We’ve got some problems between you and the disabled community.
Let’s start with the fact that you’re dominating the discussion on disability and this is wrong. Unlike us, you don’t personally have to live with the decisions to advocate for “on our behalf”. Nor do you have to live with the language choices you promote.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have a seat at the table, but we need to be leading the discussion and it is very clear we aren’t. Part of the problem is you either infantize us or claim that we must not be disabled if we can perform some arbitrary list of tasks your kid can’t do (some they might be able to do if you actually accommodated their needs in a way that was actually respectful).
Let’s talk about those language choices. I get you want to see your child “first”, but that isn’t actually how the world works. Society can (and does) use people first to deny your child accommodations, especially when they’re adults. Again, you don’t have to live with this language structure, we do. Let’s try not being allergic to the word “disabled”. That would solve a lot of problems right there. Also, the euphemisms are even worse than people first. Your kid will resent you for calling them special needs, differently abled, or anything of that sort.
Also, none of this actually addresses any of the actual societal issues that we face. You know, the things you benefit from via abled bodied privilege like having a society built for your needs, normalizing apdative tools and tech to make them less costly, dealing with the entire SSI/SSDI/Medicare/Medicaid system when it comes to disability, especially for adults 21+, prevelant forced poverty due to said systems and/or extreme unemployment and underemployment. The sub minimum wage is another issue that we could really use help addressing.
The final point is that with you dominating the conversation, you’re creating a false narrative that certain disabilities are only in childhood and stop at 18/21/what other magical made up number we all know doesn’t exist. Autism doesn’t stop at 18, neither does ADHD, any learning disability, cerebral palsy, etc. But due to this false narrative, getting services and medical care as a disabled adult is more difficult as there are doctors who literally believe we don’t exist. And guess what- your kid has to grow up and deal with that and you don’t have to directly live with it.
Abled bodied parents and others are free to reblog this but those who leave rude responses or try to make it about themselves will be ignored since they’re proving my exact point.
It’s a bittersweet concept, seeing characters in fiction tackle the symptoms of mental illness/neurodiversities with such tact, when we don’t often witness this in reality.
I’ll read a story with a well-rounded character, who is written with an accurate portrayal of Autism, by an Autistic author. And it’s kind of… heartwarming? To see the others in said story react with understanding, to things such as sensory overload, or meltdowns, or to finally see someone be so encouraged to speak on a special interest. All the while, they never infantilize this individual, nor do they mock him. They don’t make him out to be weak, unintelligent, or less than. He has many other aspects to his personality. He is smart, witty, caring, and independent.⁽¹⁾
Because he is a person. He is an adult. He just so happens to have Autism and ADHD.
I’m in the same boat, and despite those moments being fiction, reading them makes me feel justified in existing as me.
Maybe it’s some deep-rooted, internalised ableism I still have towards myself. But whenever I experience those negative symptoms, all I receive from my family is ridicule and taunts. I don’t feel like a valid person struggling with my own conditions. I feel like I need to get over myself. (/nav)
It makes me wonder, how many others are in the same boat?
We shouldn’t guilt people over things they can’t change. It will only make things worse. Besides, it’s not that hard to be supportive. Or, at the very least, not to be a dick.
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(⁽¹⁾Note:You don’t have to be “independent” to be a rational person, or an adult, or anything. I was only describing this character. There is nothing wrong with needing help, or having a disability that does not allow you to care for yourself.)
One of the really, really frustrating things about being autistic is that you feel like you spend your life trying to reach some sort of unattainable middle-ground:
- We’re criticised for not making enough conversation, but when we do actually really get in to a conversation we are told we’re ‘too intense’.
- We’re often trained to maintain unbroken eye-contact during conversations, yet in reality too much eye-contact is called ‘staring’ and makes people very, veryuncomfortable.
- We’re encouraged to ‘express’ ourselves more, yet our actual, genuine emotional reactions are usually deemed ‘innapropiate’ or ‘unnescessary’.
- We’re told to be friendly and confident when approaching new people, but are then warned that we ‘come off too strong’.
- We are told to try and make interesting conversation, but are also taught that speaking about our interests will only ever annoy other people.
- We’re asked to explain our difficulties and anxieties, only to be told that these explanations ‘make no sense’ or that our worries are unrealistic and invalid.
- We’re expected to force ourselves in to social situations that feel overwhelming and draining yet still somehow remain friendly, good-tempered and pleasantly sociable.
- We are encouraged to develop good self-esteem, while at the exact same time being taught that everything about us is wrong.
I don’t hate having autism - I’ve never hated having autism. But I do hate living with the never-ending pressure to attain this mythological ‘perfect’ level of social interaction that simply doesn’t exist in my case.
-We are told to use coping mechanism when we need them, but when we implement them we’re told to stop, act appropriately, and push through the situation “normally”.
- We’re told to pursue our creative passions, because according to diagnostic stereotypes we’re not supposed to have them, but when we prove adept and imaginative at making art, we’re dismissed as having unreasonable fixations, escapist tendencies, and wasting our time on producing content that has no value in capitalist terms. And even if we do make some money off our creative pursuits—unless we’re one of the infinitesimal percentage of creators who make millions—we’re told it’s not and never will be a real job.
…this is so depressingly true that I’m going to sit here, read it again, and pout autistically for a while. Until my ADHD brain sees something shinier.
I mean… I try so hard and get so far, but in the end it doesn’t really matter… and if I said anything more I’d be a whole Linkin Park song. But I try, I really do. It just doesn’t work out unless the people I’m interacting with are either part of a neurotribe or at least understand the issues.
idk who needs to hear this but autistic people are nottools to be used so your allistic main character can look like a perfect sibling or saintly parent or patient friend. we are nottragic we are notpitiable we are notbabies we are nota joke we are not‘inspirational’ we are notmonsters we are nota fucking burden
I think I’m gonna do a sequel to that fic where Al is autistic and has a moment with his Uncle Percy because he feels strange
In this one it will feature Harry being more understanding and Ginny less so. Although it’s not meant to bash and make her the villain. Shes not like purposely mean to him. Just confused and unsure of what to do next
I just binge-watched the whole series (8 episodes) in a day, and I wanna say I really got into it. I’m not going to say it’s my favorite show (Barry from HBO still has that spot), but it was really a good watch.
Spoiler free short review: I loved that every autistic character is played by an autistic actor, and there are even a few neurotypical characters played by autistic actors, according to an interview I’ve read from the cast.
Some of the situations depicted in this show won’t speak to everyone, but I was myself deeply touched, cried a few times and recognized myself quite a lot in this show.
I’m really hoping for a second season to help some characters to be a bit more nuanced and maybe to help me like some of them (because, without going into detail, there are definitely a few characters I hated, but the narrative didn’t necessarily treated me as being in the wrong for that).
More than anything else, I loved the little details that helped to make the show highly relatable. For example, you’re gonna see that one of the characters is sleeping with a weighted blanket, and their stimming is also quite noticeable and feels natural.
It’s definitely a show I would recommend for autistic representation, if just for the fact that the main cast is autistic and visibly gave their input about a lot of things. I feel like it could have used some LGBT representation as well, but who knows, maybe in season 2?
Now, onto the spoilers:
Throughout the show, I was terrified that they would have Violet leaving to the treatment care center. I recognized myself quite a bit in this character (except in the sexual side of her, because I’m ace myself), and one of my biggest fears has always been to lose the independence I spent so long fighting for.
Violet has been infantilized by her brother most of her life, and it shows. I really hated the brother sometimes, and I wanted to knock some sense into him, because he really didn’t allow Violet to shine on and find her place in the world by treating her like a child all the time (taking her phone away, preventing her from meeting guys etc.).
Worse, it definitely let her know that she shouldn’t trust him with her secrets, keeping things from him until it was too late and he was warned by someone else.
So, I was incredibly relieved when he finally realized that he needed to let Violet figure her things out, and decided not to send her to the center. Violet was visibly distraught over it, and she wouldn’t have been happy if she had been forced to be there.
I loved following everyone’s stories and finding myself in quite a few scenes, stims, ways of communicating. It’s so rare to find shows where I can actually fully relate to something and understand it, and it was the case here.
Like I get why Harrison got overly attached to Mandy, why Rick tried to have everything under control when he learned his dad got cancer, and why Violet was so upset that her brother didn’t trust her on her own. It’s familiar. It’s relatable.
Among the neurotypical characters, Nicole, Harrison’s sister, is definitely the MVP. From the get-go, she wants to treat her brother like the adult that he is, is mad that her parents aren’t honest with him, and she’s delighted to have him at her graduation party.
They could have portrayed her as a teenager/young adult being ashamed to have her autistic brother around, but no, she was always great, and I hope we’ll see more of her in a future season.
I don’t quite know what to think about Mandy. On one hand, she was definitely caring, and I loved her moments with Violet, but I wasn’t too interested in her romantic side stories and I feel that she’s a bit too condescending sometimes with the main trio?
Like in that cheerful way that people working in the autism field tend to be around autistic people? I don’t know, I’ll have to see more of her in the next season to really form an opinion about her.
Same about Douglas, Violet’s love interest. Like, sometimes, he’s really sweet, but he also seems too insisting and even creepy at times (the way he just sighed when Violet held him against her during the trust exercice, not liking it), and I don’t know. The way they got together at the end seemed too fast, not natural enough. I’ll have to see more of them in the next season to judge that.
All in all, it was a really nice show. I would love to watch more shows featuring autistic characters in a story that doesn’t necessarily focus mostly on autism (like an adventure or fantasy show or whatnot), but I still think it’s important to showcase this kind of represensation, given how far behind we are towards autism acceptance, even to this day.
One downside I would mention is how insistent they are with using first-person language, but I managed to overlook it after a little while.
I would love to see a nonverbal character in the next season in the main cast, played by a nonverbal autistic actor. To show how different we can be, and how communication doesn’t have to be verbal to be listened to and valued.
