Not-autistic people use this line a lot when trying to devalue the statements of autistic people that they deem as “high functioning”.
So, as one of those “low functioning” people they point at as counter-examples, I am standing up and saying “yes they do.”
I do not speak, I do not understand when you speak. Remember you said “those people who cannot speak” as evidence of the label.
I need help going potty. I am not proud of it, but it’s a fact of life. I need to pee just as often as you do, but my body doesn’t tell my brain that, so sometimes my pants get wet when I remember to put them on. That makes me low functioning by your standards. Remember – you said “those people that need help going to the bathroom” as evidence of the label.
I cannot make reasonable decisions about finances. I spend hundreds of dollars a month on an Internet site that gives me a virtual world in which to have friends because in the physical world people scare the poop out of me (see previous point about why that is a bad thing). Remember – you said “those people who can’t handle finances for themselves” as evidence of the label.
I need 24/7 care so I don’t hurt myself by accident because I forget what I am doing while I am doing it, such as cutting an onion with a sharp knife and wave my hand with the knife still in it. Remember you said “those people who need round the clock care” as evidence of the label.
Yup – I fit your bullet list of low functioning.
I don’t post arguments against your ableism and attacks on autistic people. Not because I agree with you but because fighting hurts me. When you claim I need to be “cured”, I do not call you out and say mean things about you because being confrontational hurts me, not because you are right.
You are not speaking for me in my silence, you are speaking over me. I want to tell you what an ass you are but my head won’t let me fight because it HURTS for me to argue.
While your head lets you be an ass and say untrue things, my head won’t let me. I must always be honest AND I must also maintain calm or I might get violent. This does not prove your point, it only silences me. Silencing me does not mean you are right, it only means you are more willing to be an ass than I am.
The “high functioning” autistics that argue for rights for me DO speak for me. In ways I cannot fight they defend me. In places I cannot go because of my fears, they stand for me. In groups that scare the poop out of me, they clean up the mess for me and stand for me.
You, who are not autistic, do not stand for me. Do not tell those that are capable of fighting your hate that they do not speak for me. They do.
Fun fact: the anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews having lots of money/being greedy/cheap began in the Middle Ages thanks to Christian laws.
The Christian church began forbidding Christians from having professions that involved lending money, banking, or pawn work. It was because the church believed that money was ultimately unclean so although it was considered a necessity, Christians were instructed to deal with it as little as possible.
But someone still needed to run all of those money-based businesses. So these societies which were already run by Christian leadership basically made it a rule that these businesses had to be run by Jews since they were already “unclean”. Furthermore, due to other restrictions on Jewish people in these areas, these money-based positions were pretty much some of the only jobs Jews could legally hold.
This eventually led to numerous stereotypes involving Jews and money. And the acidity of these stereotypes grew when Christian people and leaders became resentful of the livelihood Jews were able to achieve for themselves with these jobs.
So to sum up: Christian society forces Jews to hold down money-centered jobs since, according to the church, Jews were already going to Hell. Then, once they made lives with these roles they were forced into, Jews were mocked and hated for being successful.
History major here, just want to add details to emphasize how damaging these stereotypes are, even to a modern audience. To do so, I need to quote the introduction to “The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous” by Asa Simon Mittman.
In his class, Mittman was teaching his students about the negative portrayals of Jewish people in medieval works, specifically “Demons, Saracens and Jews” which depicts them as literal monsters. Hooked noses, fangs, grimaces, the whole she-bang. He then recounts this anecdote.
“One of my students raised her hand after this discussion, with a look of confusion and anger on her face. She said that she did not understand what I was ‘trying to get at.’ She said, with a quaver of emotion in her voice, that I was making too much out of nothing, since this is what Jews look like, more or less.
And anyway, she continued, the Jews are Christ-killers. She then screamed out the text of John 19:15, saying “the Jews shouted, ‘Kill him! Kill him! Crucify him!’
She was quoting, interestingly, from the “God’s Word Translation,” the most violent English translation i have been able to find, since most read ‘take him’ or ‘away with him,’ where this one reads ‘kill him.’ […] The resulting impression, conveyed by my student, was that the Jewish monster was real. The impact of these imagined monsters has all been too real, form the middle ages onward.
I was struck temporarily speechless, but as I soundlessly worked my jaw to formulate a reply, I saw in the eyes of all the other students a shocked recognition that, in essence, answers the question posed at the outset: all of this matters. All of this is relevant. I was trying to show how medieval images were designed to allow medievals to confuse one group of Jews from the first century with all Jews in their own day, and here, in twenty-first-century America, my students saw this same notion quite alive.
one time my animation lecturer said that betty boop was an lgbt icon and i asked him about it afterwards because i was like “i didn’t kno betty boop is gay?” and he said that she wasn’t gay but was like adopted by gay culture basically and i cannot fucking believe that in like 30 years time some fresh faced film student is gonna have to walk up to their lecturer and say “i didn’t kno the babadook is gay?”
