Most of how, as an autistic, I DON'T want to be treated

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This is the revised version of my document about how as an autistic I do NOT want to be treated. If it says "this site" instead of "this thread" in places, it's because I pasted it from my blog.


The anti-autism people

Traits anti-autism people may have



They get your assessment wrong, assuming you did something for this reason when it’s really another reason, not asking you for clarification even when they go by the word of one or more witnesses who got it wrong and are not you.





They blame everything you say/think/feel/do on your ASD. This is an insult. Why? Because they are saying we all have certain bad characteristics that they say is the ASD.





They think your ASD or ASDs in general are bad (especially if you identify as autistic rather than having autism… so you’re bad then?)





They think all autistics have the same one or more symptoms.





They say your ASD is not your fault but punish you for your symptoms. Even from their view it doesn’t make sense. The wonderful compensation they think someone disabled should get is cruelty and punishment?





They try to take away your coping mechanisms thinking that will take away the core symptoms.





They think your fitting in is more important than your coping mechanisms and your being yourself (example: they tell you to stop rocking, but you don’t know any other form(s) of stimulation that is good enough to replace it).





They think you are not responsible for your actions due to your ASD (ASDs are not stupidity, nor are ASDs not knowing or not knowing how).





They think you have autism when actually you are autistic, or vice versa. (Having autism is when your mind takes a boarder. Being autistic, or part of you being autistic, is different.)





They think you are less capable due to your ASD rather than capable of the same size load but a different load of things, or when they think you are different in some way due to your ASD but you are actually more normal than that.





They think they know you better than you know yourself, or when they think they know better than you what is good for you. Especially if they say it’s due to your ASD.





They think we shouldn’t be allowed to do certain things due to our ASD, when as a matter of fact our population is no more dangerous or incompetent than the mainstream population.





They think we shouldn’t reproduce (we are no better or worse than NTs).





They think it’s okay to use aversives on us, or that it’s okay to use aversives on autistics but not others. It’s hard enough not to be understood. When they give up on us due to not understanding us, it sucks… and when they torture us because they don’t understand us, that’s a form of giving up.





They think we don’t know or understand something just because we can’t or won’t communicate it or communicate that we know it.





They think it’s harder to deal with/raise/know/befriend an autistic than to do so to/with a non-autistic.





They think your ASD is more or less severe than it actually is.





They think you “improved” due to their or anyone’s help when ypou actually did it either on your own or with a different party’s help.





They lie intending to get you services you need but that often turns into help you don’t need which is often painful/humiliating.





They won’t let you speak for yourself about your autism.





Some of them write ambiguous things about autism and some more of them then interpret it in the most doom-filled, hateful way possible.





They rush to give you a false diagnosis, just so that someone can have closure, even though it’s the wrong diagnosis, which causes you to be treated in a way you dislike because it’s the incorrect way.





They expect us to always be the ones to change or conform, suffering for the majority, while the majority gets to be themselves and have an easy time.





When they call our interests privileges for when we’re “good” and act like NTs, while NTs’ interests are accepted as rights, and sometimes think it is ethical to do something that they know hurts an autistic just because it wouldn’t hurt a NT child.





They say we are just in a combative mood or oppositional, but we actually care about our points very much and genuinely believe in them. This is both insulting to us, and bad for our points that we are trying to express.





They punish us (it doesn’t work because it’s cruel)—one learns to be nice from others being nice to them, one gets suspicious when you focus on how you need to be forced in a negative way to do something, so they think you think it is bad for them because you think they would never do it on their own. So they get scared when you try to force them or say they need to be forced.





They think we SUFFER from an ASD. What we suffer from is times people think that because we are autistic we are pathetic or dangerous or stupid/crazy/bad.





They think that all autistics have the same skills or lack of skill in something (example: that all of us can fix a radio but none of us can read facial expressions).





They think you have one ASD when really you have another (I was insulted by my Asperger’s diagnosis, just because it wasn’t true. I didn’t have enough of the problems they said I had, though I did have some extreme. I was eventually diagnosed with PDD-NOS to replace it.)





They think you can’t have another disorder besides the ASD, so they let you suffer.





They believe false negative crap about all autistics or one or a few autistics, and then treat one, some or all of us accordingly.





They think all autistics are the same (that we all have the same personality, for example quiet and scared, or aggressive and oppositional, or worse yet, just a normal kid waiting for a cure).





They think we are hopeless, can’t learn, etc.





They say what we love must be controlled because it’s a perseveration, but what NTs love is love and must be encouraged. (Example: some of us may see feelings in animals that others don’t see, we see intelligence and rights.)





They say we can’t or don’t love when we just express our love differently, or have love that is triggered by different things, or simply happen to love when they aren’t looking.





They try to make us fake it and think that will make us feel better, when it will actually make us feel worse because we are lying and it doesn’t even work.





They contradict themselves about autism and/or various autistic traits.





They tell others who do not understand autism (even if they think they do) that you are autistic, without an explanation of what you really are like (many people mistakenly think we’re hopeless).





They make assumptions about autism (example: that we’re all hopeless at conversation).





They think autistics are more dangerous than NTs (we have just the same concentration of danger or dangerous people. Just like Jews, blacks, any ethnic group at all. Just because some blacks get sickle cell anemia, does that mean they need to be cured of their BLACKNESS, all blacks need to be cured of blackness?).





They assume that if they treat the autism all the other problems will go away (I’d get MORE depression from them thinking autism is a disease. Also, we have the right to have feelings independent from autism.)





When they think the reason we don’t understand something is due to our ASD when actually we have another reason or other reasons for not understanding.





When they force treatment on autistics (the autistics could lose coping mechanisms to a cure, or feel broken or like the anti-autistics think they’re broken due to them forcing a cure on them, etc).





They get off easily in the justice system for killing us because we’re “punishment enough”. (We have bad times where NTs have good times, but we can also have good times during NTs’ bad times… and too often this gets seen as lack of empathy too!).





They don’t take us seriously because we are autistic (we have the same concentration of intelligent, sane people as NTs do!)





They don’t care about our feelings/our thoughts/how/why… but they do care about our behavior.





They say we have no feelings, when actually we express their feelings in different ways or have different feelings.





They assume that different means wrong (I wouldn’t WANT to be friends with someone who thought I was bad or what I did was so wrong, so I’m not going to stop, say, stimming, for anyone!)





They trust the opinions of the doom-and-gloom autism professionals more than they trust the opinions of us autistics when it comes to autism.





They don’t, and sometimes they even refuse to, expose their autistic children to the idea of neurodiversity.





They think all autistics have the same reasons for doing something: for example, thinking I use computers to learn about computers rather than to socialize, when actually it’s the other way around!





They say we are obsessed with rules when really we create rules to follow because we believe in them and are good people.

I also don't wish for people to treat me in those manners, either. I want people to just leave me to be myself. If anybody treated me any of those ways, I'd tell them to eat worms.

I forgot:


53. They think autism is an intelligence spectrum, that all low-functioning ones are dumb, and all high-functioning ones are smart but not as smart as NTs… that, after all, they are still autistic!

I want to be treated as a person, not as a science project. No, I do not want to visit somebody my sister knows because they want to know what an adult with ASD is like because I don't want to feel like a specimen to be studied.

This comes up all the time when I'm trying to do research on pubmed. I'll search on "autism AND sleep" (or whatever term I'm studying) and end up with a lot of studies of "cognitively impaired" people. Sometimes, there's not even any mention at all of autism in the actual study, only in the tags that pull the study up. This is really frustrating to me, because I'm not researching cognitive impairment; I'm researching autism! We're all over the "cognitive spectrum" and, anyway, the research is usually for my own benefit. I could extrapolate data from autistic people, some of whom are cognitively impaired, but I can't really extrapolate data from cognitively impaired people, few or none of whom are autistic!

That is very well said. I have nothing to add, except to encourage you to keep writing these things down. You communicate your ideas very well.

Yes. Gah! It's like they think they'll get more publicity for their study if they tag it with "autism" or something. Maybe true, but still a pain in the butt for anyone trying to dig up a few facts for a research paper, let alone do in-depth research. Everybody seems determined to grab onto the autism-research-funding bandwagon; and in all of it, we're still woefully deficient in research into teaching and learning--research that would help real autistic people living today, instead of analyzing their hormones, scanning their brains, and poking at their DNA to try to magic them into NTs.

Been there.




been there and I deal with it sometimes in my own apartment.




Been there. I call it tough love.




Been there. Then the teachers wondered why I couldn't stay awake in class. Plus my ex thought I shouldn't be playing my game at the table or reading when we go out and he was also a tough love person.




Been there.




Been there.





Been there but sometimes it is true.




Been there. I had to fight it.




Been told by a therapist she doesn't think I should have kids because I have AS and she didn't even know me and she only knew me for one session.



Been there.




Same. I think I did most of the work myself but my mom makes it sound like I wouldn't have done it all myself if I didn't get help and I don't remember going to tons of therapies growing up, doctors I remember but not therapies telling me how to act and behave. Speech therapy I remember.



I don't think some doctors like to diagnose NOS in people so they go with closest match. I was diagnosed with AS because it was a closet match he could get to for a diagnoses. But yet I slip on and off the criteria my mother told me.




My ex sure acted like this because he kept saying to me "That's not AS" as if he thought I could only have one problem.




My ex thought like this. He thought things like all aspies are good with math, all aspies are into technical stuff and if they are into childish things, it's technical stuff, they don't watch kiddy shows, only shows that are more for teens, all aspies are organized and neat.




My school counselor thought this and that is why my mother stopped having me see him.




Yeah no kidding. For example, they say black and white thinking is an autistic trait but yet they turn around and say autistics don't judge. Uh judging is part of black and white thinking. It causes them to judge. eg. They see the good and bad right so if you make one mistake, you're bad so therefore they judge you because you're bad. Another example I have seen is that they say aspies will follow the rules but then they say they won't follow the rules unless it makes sense to them. I have also seen they are great at math and then I have seen elsewhere they aren't so great at it. They say aspies want friends and then say they don't have interest in making friends. I know it can be both of course because every aspie is different.




Mom has played the literal card on me when I didn't agree with her on something and another time it was because she couldn't admit she was wrong so she said I was taking what she said too literal.

My mom did the same literal thing too, LG! My ex also takes things too literal and then acts like I'm doing that... he plays the "you just want to fight" card... on purpose. I like to think it's just immaturity, eing unable/unwilling to fess up. Same kind of manipulation.

54. They deny all the above.

Sorry, what?