I will be upfront about this. I like it when people write things that I agree with. I disagree with a lot of this article from one of the Dulocks. There are reasons for this. Anyone who expects me to agree that the “voices of parents are important” is kidding themselves. A parent’s voice is never important until it agrees with the objectives of the autistic. And even then, it is but a whisper in a flood of genuinely evil voices at present.
But the more I think about the future, the more I wonder. If someone were to contact me by any means as say “(insert child’s name here) has. autism.”, what am I going to say to them?
No child grows to adulthood without learning a particular way to see themselves and the world around them. And you can quickly discern who has had the strongest hand in teaching them simply by asking who they have spent the majority of their time around during childhood. Small wonder then that I hit my eighteenth birthday feeling I was only worthy of being abused unless I could smack the shit out of any potential abuser (or worse).
I have also commented that we do not live in a vacuum. The choice that we make now will have lasting repercussions for not only us, but others. Including people not yet born.
One moron from Queensland (yes, I know I am being redundant by calling a Queenslander a moron, bear with me) persistently told me that her constant calling of me a “person with autism” was because, and I quote, they like to “put the person before the disability”. I am sorry, but no. It does not work like that. Lisa Egan explained why it does not work like that from the perspective of a woman in a wheelchair in this article that made me clap and cheer.
But it has long been the position of the autistic civil rights movement that making a person “not autistic anymore” is essentially taking a person, ripping out their brain, and replacing it with someone else’s. Or murdering the person, in other words.
Two things should be evident now:
- It is not acceptable to call an autistic individual a “person with autism”, or say that they “suffer from autism” under any circumstances.
- People who say otherwise are at best horribly misguided or at worst actively attempting to spread the idea that autism is a separate thing from autistic people.
I am going to share with you a story that also ties into the struggle that I am having with the wonderful little department called Housing NSW. Presently, I am having a very big argument with them that revolves around the behaviour of one individual called Garcide. The crux of my case against him and Housing NSW revolves around the fact that the latter cannot decide definitively whether he really is employed by them or not.
During my last conversation with an employee of Housing NSW about this matter, I began to scream my lungs out and tell them, very strongly, to stop moving the goalposts. That I was tired of this crap, and that I felt I had no options other than to self-immolate. And this much is true. I do not feel I have many other choices. I think it would also be a good way to shift the balance of discussion concerning how autistic people are treated.
Well, a few hours later I found myself with a pair of police officers in my home, and a story to tell. One of whom, early in the conversation, used the words “suffer from autism”.
When a police officer does a double take because you are violently shaking and trying to reign in your emotions whilst explaining to them that what they have said is a terrible slur, something is up.
This begs a lot of questions that I feel the assholes I refer to as person-firsters should answer.
First of all, reread what I said above. I responded to a police officer using this kind of language with me as if I was trying to physically restrain myself from assaulting them. And police officers in the Central Western Sydney area are not like your light, vain little country police. They deal with all kinds of aggressive, violent, and sometimes stronger than them folks. Why would they respond as if they are unsure whether to shoot or take other defensive measures in response to my reaction to their use of such language?
Person-firsters tell us constantly that their so-called person-first language puts the person before the disability. This is what they want us to believe, so there can be no fairer way to analyse the situation. Please forgive me a bit of outsider statement, deaf people of the world, but I cannot possibly think of a more profound disability than being deaf. It would deprive me of the ability to enjoy such songs as Jesus Hitler:
It would leave me at the mercy of anyone wanting to sneak up behind or beside me. It would also make the assholish behaviours of people like my parental units even more unbearable. It would make communicating with other people, already an ordeal because my life has demonstrated that just because two people both speak English does not necessarily mean they are speaking the same language, a living hell.
Why then do deaf people reject person-first language? (Yes, this is a serious question that deserves an answer based on the perspective I have just outlined.)
Person-firsters also seem unable to recognise that there are disabilities and there are disabilities. As the above few paragraphs make clear, I cannot imagine any circumstances in which being deaf would not be disabling. Nor can I imagine any circumstances in which asthma, diabetes, paralysis, or epilepsy would not be disabling.
Imagine what would happen if the ratio of autistic to normie folks were inverted overnight. Autism Speaks For Normie Asshole Nazi-Wannabes would be disallowed from existing. Its members who were not willing to leave the organisation and apologise to the new autistic majority would be hunted down and killed by the Powell types. Powell types would go to places where autistic people have been bullied or otherwise marginalised, and put some foot to arse. Many actions against autistic people such as deceptive advertisings would be made illegal. And these are just the things I can name that directly affect autistic people. The truth is that if the ratio of autistic people to the rest of the world were the opposite of what it is now, the world would be profoundly different, and in a good way.
Person-firster assholes therefore face challenges of a proportion that they themselves clearly have never experienced before in explaining why autistic people would ever want to think of their neurology as a separate entity.
There is also the question of why autistic militant types like myself refer to misguided autistic idiots who proclaim a preference for so-called person-first language as “neurological house niggers”.
Simply put, no matter what way you slice it, the proclamation of putting “the person before the disability” is a load of thoughtless politically correct (yes, I know I am being redundant by calling politically correct people thoughtless) dog shit.
Autistic people all over the world need a lot of things. But the universally-shared needs include the rest of the world to stop thinking of autism as something that just latched onto us at some point in our lives and refuses to let go. That is how I think of my diabetes, and believe me when I tell you that I would kiss the very ground that the people who found a cure for diabetes walked on.
It is also interesting to think of what Autism Speaks For Normie Nazi-Wannabe Assholes want. They want the rest of the world to think of autism as something that latched onto us at some point in our lives and refuses to let go.
Autism Speaks For Normie Nazi-Wannabe Assholes want us to use so-called person-first language. That alone should provide sufficient reason to reject it out of hand.
But the end run is that even if Autism Speaks For Normie Nazi-Wannabe Assholes were to stop existing right now, there are just too many difficulties with so-called person-first language for it to be tenable as a way of designation.
I like to refer to the day that a rehabilitation consultant told me that she thought I was autistic as “diagnosis day”. There are the days prior to that day, and the days after. The days after have brought new levels of despair and hopelessness to my life. You can learn a lot about people, groups of people, by how they treat you when you are at your worst. If my parental units are the worst people in the world, then Queenslanders (or Cuntslanders as I often call them aloud) are the people who taught them to be that. And when I say that people who tell me that they should be allowed to call themselves, and thus me, “people with autism”, I have no trouble picturing them raping children, understand my meaning.
Whilst I grow tired of the circumstances that prompt this, I will never tire of telling you that referring to my autism as if I would rather not be autistic is unacceptable. If you really feel obligated to spit dummies on the basis of that, then I must question who the fukk you think you are.
It really is that simple.
And when I say that people who tell me that they should be allowed to call themselves, and thus me, “people with autism”, I have no trouble picturing them raping children, understand my meaning.
I have no problem with people deciding to call themselves ‘people with Autism’ myself, but if they decide I should be called the same thing, then I call them Autistic people, disregarding their choice of self-identification just as they disregard mine. Simples!
One of the problems is that by doing this in front of a crowd of people who are not aware that we do not want to be “cured”, those sheep get the impression that this is acceptable and that the people who have a problem with it are wrong. I certainly hope that one day, people can be made aware that it can be incredibly frightening to have one of your most vital characteristics referred to in front of you as if it is a separate thing to you. It ruins friendships, relationships of all kinds…
Why then do deaf people reject person-first language? (Yes, this is a serious question that deserves an answer based on the perspective I have just outlined.)
Because, just like Autistic people, Deaf people feel that their condition is absolutely integral to them and cannot be separated from their persons without changing who they are. This is especially true for people who are born deaf, and is sometimes true for those who gradually become deaf.
It is a hard concept for me in one sense because being made deaf would make my life unliveable. More so, I mean.