One of the standout story lines on The Pitt is that of Dr. Melissa King. She and her sister both have autism, and while the sister requires extra care, she's, well, a doctor. Early in the series it's probably not even obvious that King is a lot like her sister, but through a series of events and patient encounters, it's clear. What I love about this is how it demonstrates the, er, spectrum or range of capability of folks. I might even say that it shows how labeling people as "on the spectrum" is largely meaningless. I suspect that there are aspects of every person that could put them there, even in the narrowest of ways.
Why does this matter? Aside from every annoying hot-take on the Internet (now adding mine!), it's the stupid shit that RFK says, or the insane false statistics about employment rates, relationships and such. Contrary to Kennedy's nonsense, I'm married (twice!), have worked lucrative jobs and I'd like to think that I contribute to society in various ways. With that in mind, I also understand that there are people, especially kids, who might not even be verbal.
Now, what I'm about to say is with the experience and journey of not being diagnosed until I was 40-something, watching my kid grow up with so many similar personality traits and my observations about advocacy groups. What I see is that advocates see accommodation as the same thing as being "seen." I'm not a fan of this. I totally appreciate the desire to see people for who they are, but it doesn't mean that we don't help by making learning unnecessary. Let me explain.
I understand now that I've developed a great many coping skills to work in a neurotypical world. No one decided this, it was just necessary for my survival. I wasn't even diagnosed. These skills, I think, have served me well, even though I've had a tough time with relationships of all kinds, personal and professional, and I still have blind spots. Life has never been easy, but if endless shortcuts were provided for me, I suspect life would be even harder.
What I like even less is people who talk about "masking." This is the suggestion that people are inauthentic in order to fit in. For better or worse, there are certain social contracts we value, regardless of neurodiversity. I'm not talking about difficult eye contact or proximity discomfort, I'm talking about you don't kick people, you express kindness and just generally try not to be an asshole. (Apparently you can be elected countering all of these.) Autism does not inherently make you an asshole, so what exactly are we talking about with regard to masking? If you're perceived as weird, you know, let your freak flag fly. ASD or not, it's not up to others to put you in a box.
I advocate being empathetic to people who find their flavor of autism causing difficulty. It's not that you have to accommodate them, just be empathetic. Empathy by definition is being seen. Yes, sometimes in a loud room or in a crowd, I need to GTFO. I need short breaks from parties. The key is being honest about what I'm experiencing, and telling others. They're generally empathetic. I don't have to mask anything.
There is some icky stuff out there. At home we've been fighting the accommodation versus accountability problem quite a bit, because in retrospect there were so many shortcuts provided. Surely there's a better way to find a balance. I also think they need to get back to some delineation of symptoms and capability, because so much is piled into "ASD" that it's hard to have good conversations about how best to help people, or even decide how much help they need. We also need to ask neurotypical people to stop prescribing solutions that don't make sense.
Ugh, I'm just ranting. It's not easy to organize my thoughts at the moment. So many things going on. I think this is just me letting Internet randos get to me.
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