#turnleftaticela

turnleftaticela:

April 20th: What are your thoughts on terminology? (ie, high functioning and low functioning vs high support needs and low support needs, nonspeaking vs nonverbal, person first vs identity first, etc)

Utter bullshit

An autistic person is an autistic person

My least favorite one is “low intelligence” because it’s just not fucking true

Any “low intelligence” autistic person I’ve met has been a million times smarter than any allistic person I’ve met and I’m not just saying that to be corny I genuinely fucking believe it

I would be considered “high intelligence” by these definitions and yet the times I feel most intelligent are when I’m experiencing the world in the same ways that “low intelligence” people I’ve known have expressed that they do

To me the “spectrum” of autism is only a spectrum of masking

That’s it

How much are you able to mask and mold yourself into fitting this world

I’m not fucking kidding when I say any “low intelligence” or “high support needs” people I’ve met are what I would be like if I wasn’t trying to change and adapt and translate myself

If I could just be me as I naturally am

That is what I would be

There’s no such fucking thing as intelligence there is only OH PERFECT THERE

THERE

FUCKING THERE

“LOW MASKING” AND “HIGH MASKING”

THAT’S THE TERMINOLOGY I’LL USE

FUCKING THERE

If “low intelligence” or “high support needs” people find it useful and/or empowering to use that language I get it

It’s nigh impossible to convey what our experience is like to allistic people and I highly doubt that there will be widespread understanding of it in any of our lifetimes

They’re always just gonna see an allistic person with deficits

Maybe even an allistic person with deficits and talents

But they will never understand how we perceive the world and how much more fucking rich and complex our experiences are than we’ll ever be able to communicate

So if you need to tell someone something like “Listen to me I am fucking stupid I am less capable than you I will never meet your expectations no matter how hard I try I am genuinely just not good enough” in order for them to allow you not to hurt yourself

I totally fucking get it

But I just hope you know that you’re infinitely smarter than they’ll ever be

Genuinely

Not in a corny way or like “oh they’re so wise they only care about the simple things in life I wish I was like that!”

No

Genuinely

You see shit that is more complex than they will ever fucking understand

I’m telling you once they invent Doctor-Who-forehead-bump-style telepathic communication autistic people are going to change the fucking world

As for autistic person vs person with autism I really don’t fucking care

Words are meaningless they’re little more than a tool to manipulate allistics into giving a shit about us since they won’t take us seriously any other way

I think autism/autistic is kind of shitty terminology to begin with and I think we should invent new ways of talking about it to better convey our experiences

Autism should not be a noun it is not an object

Autistic is better especially because there’s allistic as an equivalent

But I think the terms should say more about what the experience actually means

Allistic’s etymology derives from nothing but “not autistic”

Zero specificity to what it means for them and thus zero specificity to what it means about our differences

I think we should work on summing up how we each experience the world and finding a term to represent that

Even if it’s scientific like the brain differences or something

White matter connectivity vs white matter separation or something

SOMETHING to express concisely what it ACTUALLY means to be autistic

Because for all the research they’ve done, still nobody on this earth seems to fucking know

Also nonverbal misses the point too

Like out of any of the terms listed here it’s probably the most accurate

But it’s still not enough

It’s more like

GOT IT “high translating” vs “low/non translating”

There we fucking gooooooo aaaaa aqkwgqisgqqisjqiqhsiqiwjsnshyqqijsqgqujdjfnff

This shit is so common sense and so fucking easy if only people could just understand what the fuck was actually going on in our lives

Aaaaaaaaa akqqgsiqgwidgqoswgqoxhqosgqqoxhqosyaqiwvziqvazohqoxbqizbqizbqisnqiwnziqiqjwnsfg

Personally I would consider myself semi- to high-translating on a good day

Never ever 100% ever

And I am very very easily dysregulated into a low- or even non-translating state

How the fuck am I supposed to have the energy for translating in a state where my literal entire experience of the world is incorrect and painful

Anqvqgqgqqfqgwksjqdqhh do skacqfqjsbacfqqkavxqdqhqcqdqcvqvbbqqgqqcqbqbqbqnqqq

So yeah words aren’t real and we need to come up with better ones that are defined by our own experience and not just allistic people fucking guessing

.

Oh and if it wasn’t already understood, “high/low functioning” is the worst one of all and needs to be eradicated because it’s literally just fucking eugenics