“But lots of them are autistic!”

Autistic people aren’t children. We have our own minds and opinions, and we don’t need neurotypicals to tell us what to think. I certainly make use of friends’ and colleagues’ neurotypical brains to help me work out what I’m missing in the world, but I don’t need them to guide me as if I were a child. I’m not a gullible idiot: or if I am, it’s all on my own account and not a result of autism. But “the person saying that is autistic” is still used as a reason to dismiss an opinion, and that’s actually really hurtful as well as unfair. This is a difficult blog to write because what sparked it is deeply emotionally resonant to me and also in a way not my issue at all – a very complex combo. Let me attempt to explain.

My autistic sense of justice means that I will argue fiercely in support of what I think is right, which includes others’ right to be themselves, even if I don’t personally share a particular characteristic with them. This has happened a number of times recently about a particular characteristic which has become colossally toxic and discussion of which I don’t want to derail what I’m trying to say here (because it’s not something of which I have lived experience).

What I do want to talk about is the occasions when the person arguing (in perfect good faith I’m sure) against the rights of a given minority has used as part of their argument “but lots of them are autistic!”. I interpret that to mean “but X is clearly a cult because it’s preying on vulnerable, gullible people who need to be protected.” The logical extension of what’s implied is “autistic people are vulnerable, gullible and need to be protected and therefore their opinions can be discounted“. I suspect the people making such arguments to me have either not noticed, or temporarily forgotten, that I’m autistic myself. But it still doesn’t feel great being told to my face that what I think or believe isn’t worth much because of how my brain is wired (=how I was born).

But personal considerations aside, there’s a really difficult point here about how much to protect autistic people and when. Part of what we autistics struggle with is the stereotype of autism as a childhood thing. Probably everyone in the UK now knows one or more autistic children, because diagnosis rates have gone right up this century. Diagnosis was much less common in the twentieth century so the people who were children then are much less likely to know they’re autistic, and they also hide autism because of fear of stigma. The result of which is that you’re much more likely to know autistic children than you are autistic adults, though that may change over time. So you’re likely to associate autism with childhood, and when someone says “autistic” you probably visualise a comparatively helpless young child who (rightly) needs to be looked after. Which is really bad for autistic adults.

It’s all too common for autistic adults to be treated like children – something that has happened to people with all kinds of disabilities in the past. You might think it would be nice to be protected from some of the difficulties of the world, but it doesn’t feel like that from my side. In the early twentieth women were “protected” from many aspects of the world including from having to vote, and we all know now that that wasn’t a good idea.

Being autistic is a huge part of who I am and although I sometimes hate the trouble, stress and suffering it causes me and others, I’m not sure who I’d be without it. In particular I’m pretty sure that I don’t need to get rid of it in order to be an adult. And I don’t want it used as a reason to screen out anything I might have to say. As I’ve mentioned, it’s great when people are allies, but it’s not great when others seek to be “parents” almost – to speak for us, to say what we ought to think, to interpret what we ought to want, and not to listen to us. So the point I’d like to end on is that the fact that lots of autistic people subscribe to X, Y or Z does not mean X, Y or Z is wrong or dangerous. Argue with us if you like, but don’t decide that we’re children who are beneath your notice.