It enrages me when low support needs autistic people separate themselves from high support needs. I also hate how it’s framed as only ever caused by genetic factors. Autism is a spectrum, including how it’s caused, and how it presents.
Did you know prematurity, brain damage at birth, genetic mutations, and twin births greatly increase your chance of being autistic? That around 30% of people with ASD also have intellectual disabilities, and up to 70% have a learning disability?
Everyone keeps talking about how their autism makes them smart, or hyper empathetic. Just because a world calls you dumb doesn’t mean you have to say, “actually! I’m not dumb! I’m better than that! I’m actually super smart and social!”
You don’t need to bring people down to make yourself look better. It shouldn’t make you upset to be paired with intellectually disabled people, it shouldn’t make you upset to have a disorder that “bad” people have. Just because you don’t experience low empathy, or low IQ, or muteness, or profound social issues, or violent behavior, or immense sensory processing issues, or self harm stims, doesn’t mean other autistic people don’t.
And I do think that autism needs to be studied in adults more, I am an autistic adult. But i wouldn’t be alive to BE an autistic adult, if there wasn’t as much support and research on autism in children. Autistic children are the demographic who gets fed radiative oatmeal by fucking Quaker Oats— (look it up it’s a unethical experiment). they need more protection than us. And the only way to become a functional autistic adult, is to be trained for adulthood your entire life. You cant learn to speech after age 10- your brain literally can’t do it.
Autism can be caused, or worsened, by things like brain damage at birth. Obviously it’s not a fucking superpower, and it doesn’t make you better, OR WORSE, than anyone else. We are all just people trying to get by.
If I have to hear “autism is the new goal for evolution!” I’m gonna throw something. Reverse eugenics Pseudoscience bullshit that keeps getting millions of likes on the internet. Mute autistic people don’t have magical abilities. We aren’t ALL like Albert Einstein. Most of us just try our best to remain alive in a social world we struggle to navigate.
Be proud of your autism, and your accomplishments because and despite it. But don’t put people down. You have a disorder that violent people have, that mute people have, that unclean people have. People will never drive because of autism, will never form close bonds or parent children because of autism. Morally bad people, morally good people, they can all be autistic.
Did you know 4% to 9% of prisoners are autistic? OWN IT. Protect eachother! Apart of our disorder is social issues, and we live in a social world, the result is literally high rates of imprisonment and unemployment. Feel connected to these communities, don’t alienate yourself from them to feel better, don’t mask yourself out of it.
