Thanks for the reply.
I’m 65 years old and have never had friends. When I try to have friends, it always ends in trouble. However, I do my best to “pass for human” (being autistic feels like being a member of a different species) and that includes exchanging pleasantries with neighbors, showing kindness to all especially those who are marginalized for any reason, and imitating what I see others do when what they do appears to be acceptable.
It’s a lot easier for me to understand higher math than to participate in the usual sort of social interactions. And it’s a lot easier for me to tutor math than to talk about the things most people talk about. So I do by part by tutoring disadvantaged students through a free community-based program, so that they can graduate and have better options in life. Not bragging or complaining, just saying how it is for me.
My question was perhaps a bit rhetorical. There is a strong bias of able-ism in the movement, they think they got it covered by having meetings in wheelchair accessible places and having ASL interpreters in the meetings but there’s a lot more to disability inclusion than that.
Many autistic people are intensely interested in matters of social justice, because we also know what it’s like to be a problem, as Richard Wright put it. Not in the same way as Black people do, of course, but the analogy is there. However, activist spaces are often inaccessible to autistic people, for reasons that are hard to explain and impossible for neurotypical people to understand. I’ve raised the issue a few times and been accused of fragility, so now I just stay away.
Absolutist statements like the title and main premise of this article exacerbate this sense of being marginalized within the movement. When a Black person makes such statements, I give it a pass, because Black people have such a hard time that they got a total right to say whatever they want, however they want. But when a White person says things like this, it’s time to take a pause.
I’ve been to Unitarian Universalist church services a few times, and they have a very nice custom. In various parts of the liturgy when one stands, the speaker says “please stand as you are able” rather than simply “please stand.” I think a qualification like this would be good for some of the things we are told to do as allies.
