It is not mere semantics.

Where do you people come from? Seriously, I want to know. And yes, I mean “you people” in the most derisive sense. No, wait, what I really mean when I say that (I know my co-GM would raise an eyebrow if she saw me writing those words that way) is “you [are not actually] people [to me]“.

Let us get this out of the way first. If you do things with regard to autism and the civil rights of the autistic that curebies think are good, you become one of them. It really is that simple.

Earlier, I had the privelege (picture me rolling my eyes) of catching one of the Brandenbergs’ writings. Or should I say the pizzle passing as autism coverage that is written by people with the name Brandenberg? I guess it does not matter what I call the articles, as I am talking about only one of them. One in which the dreaded phrase “with autism” was used. Whilst I have not had contact of any kind with Lydia Brown for a while because of her problems with the idea that some people might consider political correctness a counter-productive waste of time, I will use her name in order to make it clear to the Brandenbergs: if you think I am alone in my hatred of person-first language, you are sorely mistaken.

I have written a number of statements concerning all of the problems with person-first language when it is applied to the autistic. Any one of these problems, taken on their own, utterly invalidate the Brandbergs’ argument to me that this a matter of semantics. It goes far, far deeper than that. I have no problem arguing that if the slave traders who built several nations on the backs of people born in the wrong class or with the wrong colour of skin would have invented person-first language if they had thought of it at the time. Because whilst threatening a person with physical harm can cow them in the short-term, nothing quite makes a person or a group of people compliant like changing their expectations out of life. So when you call me “person with autism” (or call anyone else that, for that matter), you are basically going down the same road as a slaver.

I was a slave once. Oh, I do not mean that people put me in chains and smacked me with a horse-whip when I failed to comply with expectations. That is an obvious form of slavery. The kind I refer to is far less obvious, and thus more difficult to defeat in a meaningful fashion. Essentially, my parents (through unknowing cooperation), my teachers (through ignorance), and my medical authorities (through not caring) pushed an identity upon me that was not only incompatible with the one I had for myself, but also destructive to me.

Oh, I fought it. I fought it hard. But whilst the statement that experience makes you wise is not necessarily true, it does make you savvy to what people try to do, how they try to do it, and why they try to do it. I was a little boy when it started, and whilst I tried to fight, I can also tell you that one important reason why so many black Americans persist in adopting an identity that is destructive to them is simply because they are able to fit it comfortably into themselves. That is, they stick with what they know. Tell a child that he is “baaad” enough times, and he will either start to believe it or, if he is an unusually intelligent child, start to reason to himself that if he is going to get told this without regard to what he actually does, he may as well give them some justification that fits.

I hope that this is making some sense to my sister when she reads it, because believe me, this is a part of one of the many challenges she has volunteered for by becoming a mother. (Peter, the same applies to fathers, as I am sure I do not really need to tell you.)

I hate to invoke the name of Adolf Hitler when writing in favour of my own rights, but I think the comparison fits here for a specific reason. You see, whilst people are free to disagree with me, I think that a major reason why Hitler’s attempt to divest Europe of its entire Jewish population failed is because no matter how much pain and fear he brought down upon then, they refused to give up. They hid, they ran, and in some cases that have been the subjects of films made as recently as a couple of years ago, they started shooting back (Defiance, a 2008 film starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber, is one but one of at least several dozen examples).

I invoke Hitler’s name in this context for another reason, too. The difference between him and Suzanne Wright, the public face of Autism Speaks and thus the whole curebie movement, is not one of ambition but rather the means to carry said ambition out.

And that is kind of the point here. The Jews of Europe refused to give up. They refused for a number of reasons. First of them being that by the time Hitler was dead, they had endured thousands of years of persecution by one enemy or another. Second, they had been living in a culture of being hated by this or that power for so very long that even the effort by the Gospel authors to absolve the Romans of any blame for the alleged execution of Jesus and place it upon them was hardly a surprise.

But what if Hitler had attempted a mis-education programme to make the present and future generations of Jews think that they deserved to be persecuted for being Jewish, and that the manner in which the Nazi party was treating them was perfectly just? What if he had been successful? Would there be any Jews remaining in Europe come 1945? Whilst there were many who escaped and fled to other countries, and there were also many who miraculously survived the concentration camps (amongst them, the exceptionally controversial director Roman Polanski), between 1935 and 1945, the only options for Jews in most of Europe were fight, hide, or die. Like Russia, a nation that handed Nazi Germany their (that is, Nazi Germany’s) arse numerous times during the 1940s, the Jews did not regard resisting as an option. They saw it as their sacred duty, to quote one film about the subject.

But what if someone had talked the Jews into thinking that resistance was folly, and only something that the most extreme and Germany-hating amongst them were doing? What then? That Jewish boy you know and call such a nice lad might not even exist today. I am deadly serious.

The passive, pro-cooperation camp in the autism civil rights “debate” would have you believe that our situation differs from that of the Jews who fought the Nazis and won by sheer determination. They could not be more mistaken. The ultimate goal of curebies is our extermination. They outnumber, outgun, and outrun us in many ways. They convert people to their cause who should know better, but walk around in the public eye parroting their line that they really are not all that bad in spite of what those nasssty oh-so-bad extremists like the author you are reading now have to say. Because they figure that if they cannot make all of us stop regarding resistance as sacred duty, they damned well can make the people around us regard those who will fight to their last breath as wrong.

I am a person who suffers from diabetes. I suffer from a cancer that has not been fully investigated growing in the side of my face. I suffer from chronic and worsening respiration problems because an asshole who has drunk the curebie kool-aid thinks nothing of keeping me in my present housing forever. But if you are going to try and tell me that I have autism or that I suffer from autism, you had better be damned sure you are capable of dealing with the consequences.

I will keep this one relatively short, and offer a point that I really wish idiots like the Brandenbergs would stop to consider. You might think identity-embracing language is only a preference. I do not. In one writing, I have described my proxy character, Kronisk, using a power on one Halfling who thinks Halfling women should have no future other than being baby factories that causes said Halfling to feel as if worms of faecal matter are burrowing through his skin. Where do you think I got the inspiration for such a power? This is not a trick question.

That is right. It is based on the feeling you give me when you call me a “person with autism” or try to tell me to call myself such. Take that as a big hint by the way, Donna Duncan. My skin twitches and crawls to a point where, if I were not aware it was a purely psychological reaction based on years of psychological torture, I would be scratching at my skin so hard I would be tearing chunks of it off.

So, person-first assholes, have fun knowing you are a big part of the inspiration for the arcane power I refer to as “shitskin”.