Jigsaw
Because you know, its a website about autism so there's got to be the obligatory jigsaw reference!

Tuesday 28 February 2017

"If you prick us, do we not bleed?" - Autistic people are not aliens!

The other day this blog entry appeared and it seemed to get parts of the autistic world in quite an upset although its been around a while:

Quote intro:
"Autistic authors often describe themselves as aliens from outer space, but remarkable new research by Antonio Benítez-Burraco, Wanda Lattanzi, and Elliot Murphy suggests that people diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) might more accurately be described as less domesticated members of our own, self-domesticated species."

I am no natural scientist so I am not going to attempt to critique the article from that standpoint because I am only armed with a CC grade at Double award GCSE Science! I think it best to leave that to those who know what they are talking about... however....

The article was dismissed instantly by some and I can agree that the author used ableist language and some of it was offensive but it did get me thinking.

I don't personally go along with the whole "I am an alien/from a wrong planet" line. There's a brilliant support website called http://wrongplanet.net/ for those with Asperger's Syndrome but I do find the name increasingly irritating. I dislike the overemphasis of the differences between the neurotypical and autistic when actually we share a lot of common ground in feelings, functions and experiences. 

That 'focus on the difference' view just further punctuates the line of being "the other" and how helpful is that when there's so many similarities with those with autism and those who are neurotypical? We end up making ourselves out to be something unique when we aren't. Many people share some of our autistic characteristics in terms of their own medical and cognitive challenges and we certainly don't have the full ownership of sensory overload. 

If we keep pushing this agenda that we are alien and from another planet and keep underlining the point we are different, don't then get offended when the neurotypical people then agree! We can help to foster this kind of view. For example, where a child has a very healthy interest in a minority sport, the child may be criticised for it but their neurotypical peers may have the same level of depth and fascination in another sport, but its the socially acceptable one of football, they are not. This repeated restating that autistic people are significantly different from the neurotypical person can have damaging impact so that we end up marginalising ourselves. 

I take exception regarding the position that my lens in which I look through at life is so fundamentally different to the neurotypicals (excuse the generalisations here!!) that I am actually another species, at least cognitively speaking. At times people won't get me but all humans go through that, right?!?

So if we call ourselves aliens from outer space, don't then be surprised if others refer to us as being animal like and undomesticated because actually we invited that criticism in when we overstated our differences.
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

As stated by Shylock in Act III, scene I
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Ok, perhaps not the last but autistic or neurotypcial, we are all one species.

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