Fellow autistic folks. We need to fucking talk.
First off: Whoever keeps selling us the assumption that all of us, not some of us, but all of us were diverted into âGifted childrenâ programs needs to be held accountable. Whoever continues these memes, needs to be given a gentle reminder that placement in these programs is entirely contingent on being autistic in a Certain Way. This weird idea that all of us under the same umbrella are some kind of Intellectual Ăbermensch is seriously, seriously fucking disturbing and is starting to give some kind of weird, community-dividing supremacy vibes.
Which is exactly why I included the second picture in this series, from the same Mastodon account.
This isnât emphasizing neurodiversity, this is outright declaring one specific strain of autism as the Correct and Culturally Acceptable Kind.
I wasnât the Gifted Child autistic. I was the âI broke the rules and Iâm going to have a meltdown in classâ autistic. I was the âCanât really recognize certain kinds of patternsâ autistic. The socially-awkward but absolutely fucking struggled with mathematics and still struggles with computer coding concepts autistic. The âgets too many emotions from fictional charactersâ strugglesâ autistic. I continue to be the âWhy canât we just figure this shit OUT autisticâ and I do my damndest to make sure we CAN figure stuff out.
I took that âGifted Child testâ god knows how many times and never made it in. In fact, I didnât really start succeeding until about⌠third year of high school, when I started dual-enrolling in community college courses, something I absolutely believe everyone, and I do mean everyone, should have a chance to do. âGiftedâ or not.
Folks, I assume that a lot of you have either graduated or possibly even dropped out from K-12, but this âWe Were All Actually Gifted And Superior Childrenâ shit needs to fucking stop. Itâs not a good thing we should be encouraging, at all. Itâs not just giving Cringy Reddit Vibes, but superiority vibes that we should be better than attempting to express.
Look. I know society infantilizes us, but this insistence that weâre Brainlord Ăźbermensch is not the way to compensate. It leaves a lot of folks who donât have the same experiences as you are behind, and, speaking as a white, male-coded autistic individual, that should be saying something. I encourage others who donât share my background to share their own issues that they see and have experienced.
In short, this âWeâre actually secretly supermenâ is gonna give off some weird fucking socially-stratifying almost culturally fascistic vibes and yâall need to fucking stop and consider what others have experienced. Just because you think it gives you a one-up against your oppressors doesnât mean that it isnât smacking back against others who donât share your same, culturally-acceptable-in-the-face-of-your-disability traits.
Thank you.
All of this, yeah. 100%.
Some additional thoughts I think really aren't as important but which I nonetheless feel like bringing up:
There's also a serious problem inherent to trying to make the case for autistic people being valuable because we'd be useful to the economy if we just got lined up with the right kind of work, or because we're exceptional at some things, or whatever the hell.
This problem is most acute with respect to, and most dangerous to, the many autistic people who are never going to be employable. The ones who can't put on a show of being acceptable to neurotypical sensibilities whatsoever. The ones who are most aggressively excluded from public life because they can't handle society as it exists today unassisted, or because they can't communicate verbally (or, in some cases, verbally and textually), or because they also have "scary", "dangerous" mental health complications alongside their autism.1
But even aside from the areas where this kind of exceptionalist outlook is the most exclusive, dangerous, and honestly traitorous against the people who most need help from those of us on the spectrum who are usually treated mostly like we're more or less people by most people off the spectrum,
we'd still be screwing ourselves over by taking this kind of line.
Hinging the value of autistic people on being exceptional is a problem for every average, or unremarkable, or even mediocre autistic person. "hire us; we're absolute geniuses at certain tasks" is going to hurt the many autistic people who don't have that particular strength. "we have (insert desirable personality characteristics here)" ends up implying that it's fine for us to be held to a higher standard in terms of self-regulation and everything than people off the spectrum.
Like, the goal shouldn't be reframing and rescripting a few stereotypes to open up jobs for a few more percent of autistic people, at the cost of aiming even more violence at those who don't meet the new, higher standards. The goal should be dignified treatment for all of us, period.
1 Related to this, people with fairly uncomplicated mental health situations aside from being on the spectrum engaging in any kind of "people with (diagnosis) are dangerous to autistic people" talk is definitely a phenomenon that needs more pushback wherever it arises. Like, congratulations on coming out of the trauma of living as an autistic person in an ableist society without having any Ontologically Evil Diagnoses or whatever the hell, but people with said diagnoses don't need additional fearmongering against them, and you're probably also signalling to tons of other people on the spectrum that you're an unsafe person.
