Do you ever feel that autistic traits are exploited?

Post Reply New Topic

I've been thinking this for a while, and I need to get it off my chest.

Recently, I was made aware of this business: http://auticon.co.uk/

Frankly... am I wrong for being incredibly offended by this?

I just... it's every single stereotype of autism being played up, it reads like a blaxploitation script transposed to autism and played with complete sincerity. It's exploitative. I don't know what else to say. I feel like it's belittling the individual experiences of people with autism, and promoting a view where people with autism are only seen by the value of their traits rather than being considered as human beings. Do you see what I mean?

Hear me out. In general, society prescribes to a view that people have a form of will, or control, that stands above all circumstance as the thing that defines us. People with disabilities are an exception, but people with autism are not seen as an exception. This is often carried out to a ludicrous extent, such as the whole CWC thing, where a male with a clearly heavy learning disability has been hounded for years over the internet, with many stating this his disability isn't genuine (despite it being the entire basis of their attacks). Let me be clear, too; people with autism are not necessarily disabled, but we are ABSOLUTELY disabled in relation to how we are treated by society. We all have extra needs, particular needs, which society doesn't want to meet. In my case, I was brought up in a place where I was considered "ret*d", and I imagine many of us were, too. There are so many different things that have made us who we are. The simplistic notions of 'free will' have very little weight in front of our own experiences, and any sort of sociological evidence about the impacts of such an upbringing

Yet we're in a position where exploitative people are attempting to reduce us to our most basic positive values, in order to steal value from us. People see this as positive; they see the word 'autism' and think that we're being enfranchised by these people! Let's stand up together against people who want to exploit us!

To be fair, it does say that "autism-specific strengths are highly individualistic but frequently include" the things they look for in employees. I suppose it's fine if the autistic people who work for them are okay with it.

If only more employers would do this

"Auticon employs specially trained job coaches, offering individually tailored support to consultants and acting as a ‘safety net‘ in the background. Job coaches facilitate the communication between consultants and clients and become active whenever either party needs help or advice. Depending on each consultant’s individual needs, job coaches may also facilitate workplace adjustments. Our approach embraces the notion of self-empowerment, which is why our job coaches provide as much assistance as needed but always as little as possible."

So many times on this forum we hear about job situations that could be so much better with just a few inexpensive adjustments.

If the company pays thier employees below the market rate for their skills because they figure autistics are desperate for jobs so they can get away with it,then they are exploiting them otherwise they are not.

Blaxploitation films are for pure entertainment, the video is for public relations so I find it hard to compare them.