Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Autistics speaking day-things you don't want to hear

The title of this is misleading. This isn't just things you don't want to hear--it's things you don't want to hear about things you don't want to hear, and about leaving me alone to speak truth to power while you wait out the storm inside and recycle what I said six months later, or put a richer accent on it, or both.

Specifically, I am going to tell you that which I have told you multiple times. About my own vincibility and vulnerability. Maybe if I say it on Autistics Speaking Day you will make a pretense at listening. Gods know you never have before.

I really don't know what gave you the impression I'm impervious to the verbal abuse heaped on me as I say things parents don't want to hear and you nod and hide. Is it that I've been there before? That's crap and we all know it. Not a single one of you would think that I developed an immunity to bleeding because I've been cut before.

Wait just kidding. So many of you leave me to weather the physical threats and attacks alone as well. Apparently you do think I no longer bleed! Neato! I haven't. I would not have scars if I had. I still bleed.

So, autistic community, I need you to remember I have human psychology and physiology. I don't draw fire off you for funsies. I don't do it because it has no effect on me. It digs into the C-PTSD wounds that you know about and conveniently ignore. I do it so that the next generation will have it better. I am a Gryffindor. I am good, not necessarily nice, and I am brave to my own detriment. Stop making me be brave alone. I've lost my faith in most of you, for using me.

I'm really over being the meat shield for dozens and dozens of people, many of whom have more resources than me. You are hiding from physical, not just emotional, attacks behind a 5'4" woman with adrenal insufficiency. I need you to think about the implications of that. You're willing to knowingly put me in fatal danger to keep yourself relatively safe.

You steal my words.
You steal my ideas.
You splain tactics that have failed a decade ago like they're new.
And you hide behind me from things that will literally kill me far more easily than they will kill you.

That's some bullshit, autistic community.

Parents, you need to fix your house in this regard too. I see you sitting there while your cohort abuses us. Must be nice to be able to hide while people already hurting fight for your kids & you can basically stay out of it. It must be nice to ignore that this will never not be raw for so many of the Warriors.

Don't think I don't notice you using my and other autistics for our activism credentials and then holding to the parent supremacy line the moment things get heated. Don't think I don't see it.

Maybe you're afraid. That's a luxury not afforded to all of us. It must be nice to be allowed normal human vulnerabilities.

I wouldn't know. I've been assumed too used to it for it to matter since before I can remember. Others decided I don't have those anymore. And y'all use that excuse too.

I'm not as strong as you lie to yourselves & pretend I am. I value justice more than I value my own safety, as do many people who've been where I have. Taking advantage of that is still cowardly. You need to be better.