When is enough going to be enough? Oppression sucks!

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I'm sure I'm not the only one here who shares the same ideology that I am about to say on here.

For starters I grew up in the special education system in the United States. With that, I learned early on I am not an equal through the eyes of society. Recently I started to accomplish some things in photography and now when I say I have autism the first reaction is "no you don't". They would have not said that 10 years ago which shows your disabled by societies eyes till you have a value which means they see people with disabilities as stupid and incapable.

Growing up the way people talked to us (when your in special ed) was bad enough, you know when they go into "child mode" when your 18 years old that they see you as stupid, ret*d, and worthless to society even though they will never admit it. With that also comes a life long experience of being told your different and not equal whether it be directly to indirectly (actions speak louder than words). I remember the moment I was diagnosed. My parents came out of the Dr. office crying and then my freedoms started to disappear at home.

School changed. I got on a short bus and went to class everyday. I could tell you about the teacher who touched a female classmate in middle school as I walked in on her being touched almost naked by the teacher in the special ed bathroom that was connected or the way she mentally manipulated me to hate myself in great detail but I feel that is not appropriate for this post. Just all I can say is after 12 years of that you start to see yourself as worthless.

After high school graduation I learned that many of my friends do not have rights as they gave up they're guardianship when they were tricked into it as my friend learned when he tried to walk to a bar on his 21'st bday to have a beer and was stopped and arrested by the police as the group home did not want him to enjoy a beer on his birthday (he's not a drunk, barely even drinks), or the way that people with disabilities are controlled well into they're 30's and beyond because the system thinks they know better than we do at how were supposed to live. Then there is the fact that we can get paid below minimum wage in this country, or the fact that parents are murdering their children and getting away with it in court as they are seen as the victims because an autistic child was such a burden to the parents.

There is a ton of these examples and I would end up typing in a book if I brought them up. But what this all adds up to is that over time these ideas set into our minds. It then makes us never attempt to chase our dreams, have the same ability to go through an interview with confidence (after being beaten down for years), or how to stand up for ourselves and fight for our rights, among many other examples like driving and such. This is something that is an epidemic in our community and nobody is talking about it.

This needs to be on the minds of every disabled person in the country, not just us autistics and we need a movement for our people because until we get empowered and take control of our community and the organizations that are supposed to be representing us then nothing will ever get accomplished. We also need to realize that we have been wronged by society and that we cannot stand for that anymore. This is something we need to change I feel!

I'm sick of our community lacking a backbone as a whole. Are you tired of the way we are treated and if so what do you think we need to do to start a movement of the disabled people of this country (United States) to get the rights that we not only deserve but were promised under the constitution? This also could apply to people in other countries if you are facing the same things over there as a fix over there would be a fix over here most likely and vice versa.

Disempowerment comes in many and various forms, and I think you have experienced most of them. You sound much more like a survivor than a victim (great) because you have a lot of clarity about what happened to you, you are in touch with the (justifiable) anger you feel about it, and you want things to change. You are putting energy out there, not channelling it inwards. Good for you. I like the clearsighted strength in what you have written.

I am much older than you. I often think it was easier, overall, for my completely undiagnosed generation despite the problems we faced, because what we did NOT face was institutionalized oppression towards us as people on the spectrum; our eccentricity did not get most of us sent off to special ed, with all the problems of that; there may have been a few that were sent there, but we weren't oppressed as a group because of our membership of that group; we didn't have to bear the burden of what sociologists call "spoiled identity".

And that is the problem that young ASD adults are facing: confronting this huge problem of spoiled identity, othering, stigmatisation, oppression. I am glad that you called what happened to you "oppression". It was, and it is very important in any struggle for change to call things by their right names. It wasn't just your individual experience; it was a form of oppression that you experienced because you believed to a certain class of people. You can see that very clearly. I wish all young autists thought like you, because then collective action might lead to real and important changes.

I experienced it to an extent however I wasn't in special ed. People just thought I was slow but rather I wasn't challenged enough and had what some people call a "bore-out". But I came to prove that I was mentally very capable even though people still think I am weird.

Aye, I'm tired of it.

I think part of the fix must be to develop counter-institutions. In my youth I lived several years in group homes. This was a hellish experience, but not due to the simple fact of living with a group of unrelated people - that was okay for the most part, fun in a lot of ways, although of course a lot depended upon the people in question. What made the experience suck so hard was precisely the oppression you're talking about.

My wife and I live on our own in an apartment, but we've talked about doing a communal living situation. Hard to progress past talking about it when you're socially withdrawn of course. But I like the idea of a "group home" organized and run by and for neurodiverse residents. Where if there are doctors and psychologists and therapists, they're employees of and answerable to the organization owned and controlled by the residents.