Yavari discussed this about six years ago in our now-defunct group account, and Vova and Jamie have discussed this on our anonymous public blog. And it is now my turn.
We refuse to have all our personality traits and abilities attributed to autism. This was forcibly done to us growing up. It is triggering. It is infuriating. And we can't do it any more. It's not because we're ashamed of being autistic. It's because it's reductive, insidious bullshit that objectifies autistic people and puts them on a pedestal; tries to jam people with overlapping, but not identical, experiences, into an 'autism box'; and treats autism as a monolithic construct.
Unfortunately, we've come across several autistic people online (often on Tumblr and The Site Formerly Known As Twitter) who have a tendency of attributing their intellect, creativity or sensitivity to autism. We used to do this for a few years as well, mostly when we were on Tumblr. We mostly moved away from this in 2018, but we sort of backslid in 2019–2022. Some people, for instance, will describe their facility with words as 'hyperlexia', even though there are squillions of verbally gifted people outside the autistic community who do not apply diagnostic labels to themselves. (Also, hyperlexia refers specifically to the ability to decode the written word rapidly.) We saw someone posting on Facebook who seemed to think that using rare words was an aspect of neurodivergence (with the subtext being autism, of course), rather than a good education or an interest in words. We see this time and again, but we don't know how to respond to it without raging. Our wounds are still fresh, and we do not want to take this out on anyone else; they don't deserve that from us.
This is a suffocating, totalising view that combines a number of questionable—and often disablist—ideas that ought not to be taken as gospel truth: that autism confers extraordinary abilities on all who have the condition; that extraordinarily intelligent, sensitive and creative people must necessarily be autistic, and for them to say otherwise means that they are 'ashamed' of the developmental-disability community; and that it is acceptable to shunt people's diverse experiences under a single label without acknowledging the heterogeneity of the population it includes.
( Cut for length. )
For me, the better way to frame the relationship with autism and abilities is to say that someone is creative, intelligent or sensitive in an autistic way. For example, an artist may use recursion and repetition that draws from their experiences with perseveration, or a researcher may home in on specific, seemingly minute aspects of their discipline, or someone may get an ineffable joy from exploring their intense interests. Creative, intelligent and sensitive behaviour is no longer attributed to autism; instead, autism is seen as a prism through which these attributes are reflected.
I can't control how other people see themselves. If they want to treat their intellectual, creative or mechanical faculties, or their emotional sensitivity as part of their autism, it is their right. But that doesn't mean that their views are universal.
We refuse to have all our personality traits and abilities attributed to autism. This was forcibly done to us growing up. It is triggering. It is infuriating. And we can't do it any more. It's not because we're ashamed of being autistic. It's because it's reductive, insidious bullshit that objectifies autistic people and puts them on a pedestal; tries to jam people with overlapping, but not identical, experiences, into an 'autism box'; and treats autism as a monolithic construct.
Unfortunately, we've come across several autistic people online (often on Tumblr and The Site Formerly Known As Twitter) who have a tendency of attributing their intellect, creativity or sensitivity to autism. We used to do this for a few years as well, mostly when we were on Tumblr. We mostly moved away from this in 2018, but we sort of backslid in 2019–2022. Some people, for instance, will describe their facility with words as 'hyperlexia', even though there are squillions of verbally gifted people outside the autistic community who do not apply diagnostic labels to themselves. (Also, hyperlexia refers specifically to the ability to decode the written word rapidly.) We saw someone posting on Facebook who seemed to think that using rare words was an aspect of neurodivergence (with the subtext being autism, of course), rather than a good education or an interest in words. We see this time and again, but we don't know how to respond to it without raging. Our wounds are still fresh, and we do not want to take this out on anyone else; they don't deserve that from us.
This is a suffocating, totalising view that combines a number of questionable—and often disablist—ideas that ought not to be taken as gospel truth: that autism confers extraordinary abilities on all who have the condition; that extraordinarily intelligent, sensitive and creative people must necessarily be autistic, and for them to say otherwise means that they are 'ashamed' of the developmental-disability community; and that it is acceptable to shunt people's diverse experiences under a single label without acknowledging the heterogeneity of the population it includes.
( Cut for length. )
For me, the better way to frame the relationship with autism and abilities is to say that someone is creative, intelligent or sensitive in an autistic way. For example, an artist may use recursion and repetition that draws from their experiences with perseveration, or a researcher may home in on specific, seemingly minute aspects of their discipline, or someone may get an ineffable joy from exploring their intense interests. Creative, intelligent and sensitive behaviour is no longer attributed to autism; instead, autism is seen as a prism through which these attributes are reflected.
I can't control how other people see themselves. If they want to treat their intellectual, creative or mechanical faculties, or their emotional sensitivity as part of their autism, it is their right. But that doesn't mean that their views are universal.
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