Our Civil Rights

I don’t think the world really cares who we are. It just wants to pidgin hole people. I’m not convinced the language of identity is an issue here but if you disagree feel free to pull out some concrete examples.

I wouldn’t say societies understanding of autism was ambiguous so much as largely non existent. I’m not sure what ambiguous understanding is supposed to be in this context.

Laws, laws designed to protect autistic people, fail because people don’t understand the law or think they can get away with ignoring it, which often they can since it’s usually up to autistic people to take the matter to court.

Are we coping or just existing? Is existing enough? I don’t want autistic people to have to cope. I want a society where they can thrive. We won’t get that with coping strategies. We need to shift some of the burden onto society to make the changes that will empower autistic people. I’m less interested in coping strategies and more interested in social reform. Social, legal and political reform.

I'm interested in the idea, but I have a few concerns, the first is around establishing a clear identity

At present, to get protection under the Equality Act, you usually have to show that you have a disability. And the most common way is to provide evidence of diagnosis, or treatment (and/or medication) from your GP, or another medical professional. Evidence must clearly state whether they think/suspect you have a disability as it relates to the Equality Act. They must show that:  you have a physical or a mental impairment; it is long term and your  daily life is substantially effected in an adverse way. Sadly, the current legal advice given to clients is that 'self-diagnosis is officially discouraged by governments, physicians, and patient care organisations, because it is deemed an unreliable form of diagnosis, prone to error and may be potentially dangerous if any inappropriate decisions are made on the basis of a self-misdiagnosis'. Whether we agree with this or not, and whatever the reasons for people not seeking an assessment (for valid reasons such as infringement to civil liberty, no access to assessments, or simple assessment-hesitancy) that's how things stand. So any campaign would first have to lobby for a change to the equality act, which would be a mighty challenge in itself in view of the fact that none of the key players in the field are sympathetic to self-diagnosis. 

The next one is around the appropriation of Autism Denial, which, to my knowledge, is a term reserved for people with autism who deny their own diagnosis.  We would need a very strong argument to appropriate this term as a form of discrimination, or  hate crime, and could risk exposing autistic adults to having to defend their identity and prove that failure to comply with the EA  was NOT the result of their failure to disclose for reasons of autism denial. 

Thirdly, the idea of equating alleged failure to adhere to the equality act as a criminal act of a hate is fraught with legal and ethical complications. In order for the CPS to being a criminal case to court, they are required to provide enough evidence for a charge of criminality (via investigations from police officers).  This would mean that employees were now responsible for reporting any instances of workplace discrimination to the police, and the police would need to attend someone's workplace to pursue a criminal investigation. Can you even begin to imagine the implications, the stress and the repercussions of such a change in the Law? A dream scenario for commercial litigators, but a nightmare for employers, employees and the entire legal system.

Lastly, it is impossible to fundamentally and qualitatively change people's perceptions and behaviours with attempts to criminalise large sections of society for their previously normal behaviour.  As we have seen all to clearly, heavy-handed activism can be counter-productive and quickly be the cause of a loss of public empathy, sympathy and support. Education and visibility is always the most effective way of leading a society to self correct its outdated societal norms. Apart from in national emergencies, no government can hope to introduce new legislation without perceptions without widespread public support.

If you watch Autistic content creators on Youtube, they are raise awareness by normalising their autism in the context of current public perception and discourse, and not by advocating aggressive forced behavioural changes. And so, for me, it would mean that these societal self-corrections need to be generally accepted across all sections of a society through education and awareness and logic.

As you say, we already have protections under the Law (although there are issues with access and application). But for me, lasting positive change should have its focus on normalising autism, presenting autistic people as human beings, giving us visibility to strip away, naturally, any negative perceptions and stereotypes.  This would be my preference as opposed to a hostile reactionary movement that alienates potential allies and causes an equal and opposite pushback.

These are just my initial thoughts. 

There is more that we have in common than separates us, the spectrum idea is all about disability, if you ignore the people who successfully manage their Autism you lose the benefit of their experience, if you don't use your experience to help people who can't cope as well as you then what does that make you. 

It's not a spectrum its a collection of traits and another collection of ways to manage those traits, look at someone like Gretta Thunberg what changed between the schoolgirl who decided to sit outside on a Friday and the girl who sailed across an ocean to address the UN.

That isn't a spectrum that is a selection of traits that have been perfectly managed to allow her to do something very important.

JuniperFromGallifrey said:

f all of society were to engage in useful personal questions like "am I presuming to understand this person, I don't want to be arrogant in my response." "I wonder if this individual perceives life different than I do?" Especially when someone isn't being harmful... Or even ask themselves "How can I be more respectful?" Then we may not even have need of these advocacy groups.

I think you're right. Perhaps just a better understanding and respect of differences in general would go a long way. I think it should be a two way thing about getting to know the individual regardless of whether theyre on the spectrum or "NT". "We" get to know "them" and "they" get to know "we".

I also have a problem with "we". It's a spectrum and one person's difficulties or differences might be completely different to someone else's.

Yep your right agency is a much better word. 

The whole problem with the spectrum identity is that it gives agency to the person hearing to decide what they want to understand.

I don’t think people deliberately misinterpret, NT would be incredibly debilitating if there weren’t so many of them doing weird stuff and not realising.

LongSpoons said:

Poor language creates anxiety whilst clear language creates control.

Control is a difficult word with multiple meanings. I would suggest replacing it with Agency or Responsibility, which would be responded to better. Anxiety is also difficult as it's something NTs also struggle with and when "why should I help you when I can barely help myself' is a massive issue for most, then a word which suggests everyone wins is sometimes better received. For instance, "Lazy use of language will cause You frustration." But that would need to be presented like ear candy not harsh Autie-Speak.

A dilemma I run up against all the time with communication is that (and even just today with a GP) I need to say the same thing several different ways as most simply operate on a sub-conscious level extremely indirect. And they don't know it. Some are being genuine. But I do have a deep dark judge-y resentment toward NTs who attempt to redirect or misrepresent a conversation or ignore a question and just "blanket" back at me with small talk or unrelated talk. I don't want to be cruel but we all have our dark sides... LOL

*literally made up blanket. I don't know what else to call this. 

If all of society were to engage in useful personal questions like "am I presuming to understand this person, I don't want to be arrogant in my response." "I wonder if this individual perceives life different than I do?" Especially when someone isn't being harmful... Or even ask themselves "How can I be more respectful?" Then we may not even have need of these advocacy groups. This is the sort of information everyone used to get every Sunday (for the most part) when at least pretending to have charitable attitudes was approved of. While yes, a myriad of other problems came with that, getting humans to be more responsible with their perceptions, to be more reasonable with their interactions, to be less lazy with their pragmatics - it's idealistic. But we'd have to shift away from this consumer-based plot twist in history. 

If I'm too poetic I apologise. Trouble accessing words myself today...

I think this is something for a different thread

I guess what I am trying to say with identity and language is that we need to be really clear about who we are.

I don't think we need to get into an argument about the motives of NT people I don't think it will help.

Laws fail when there is ambiguity, the way society understands Autism is ambiguous which means the laws will fail, the clarity of language is something that will help the laws to work.

For the resources if we are coping well then we have probably developed skills that could help other people with the same autistic traits as ourselves, the difficulty is knowing what they are, how they work and how to tain someone else.

Sorry its not that I have answers, I just see a direction of travel.

next minute we will have microchips in our brains that detect any thoughts the government deem unacceptable and the chip will explode in our head and kill us upon detection of any wrong though or wrong emotion and to not die youd have to take emotion blockers and to stay on the governments correct thought path youd have to recite a mantra every single day of what the government wants in order to keep your brain from any unacceptable thoughts

speaking of private property being bugged to easily criminalise you for nothing... i heard the new model cars will have computers in them that log every single infraction of the law you do, be it going 31 mile per hour in a 30mph zone, it will log in the car computer and rat you out to get you arrested and criminalised.... society is going horrid. 

i dunno, i feel "hate crime" needs to be abolished as its being used in a overly authoritarian manner these days and is the reason your house is being bugged and your being listened to in your private at home conversations right now without you knowing it lol its too orwellian. and its far too easy to call someone a hate criminal even if they have absolutely no hate in their hearts at all and you can arrest them by placing hate on them that they dont even have. i find it rather alarming and id be glad when i die to escape this horrible direction society is heading in.

LongSpoons said:

There are quite a lot of us here who seem to be coping really well and I wondered if between us we had the strength to pull together some sort of campaign for better treatment by society.

Me too.

LongSpoons said:

If we could agree on what we wanted and could find a way to communicate it easily then why wouldn't non Autistic people want to help us improve the way we engage with the world.

Because it will massively inconvenience them and lead to occasional situations that make them uncomfortable ... In my view autistic inclusion in society trumps that easily but lets not pretend their won't pushback. For example my friend has recently started a degree in law and politics. Her request to do more remote studying was approved but only after her lecturers started to notice her odd comments and questions in class. Frankly the other students didn't know what to make of them. In this case it worked for her interests but had she wanted more class room engagement it might have been an issue.

LongSpoons said:

I think the first thing we need to do is have a clear identity that we own, that does not divide us and does not allow others on that identity alone to judge our abilities, limitations or needs. I would say that we all have an Autistic Profile or that we identify as a person with Autistic Traits.

The language of Autism should be autistic friendly, there should be no muddling of traits and general terms they tell us nothing apart from nobody has actually can properly explain what they are talking about. Poor language creates anxiety whilst clear language creates control.

I don't understand what you are trying to say?

LongSpoons said:

The issues around Autism Denial need to be treated as a hate crime, our use of language should be such that nobody can defend their actions when they treat an autistic person in an abusive way. We already have protections under the Law but we do not make it easy to engage those protections, we need to be clear about who we are and what we need. 

Yep. Thats very much the law. In theory the equality act is actually quite helpful, in practice the autistic people its meant to protect don't understand it and don't have the money / mental energy to invoke it. Disability hate crimes are already a thing but first you have to prove an ordinary crime for it to become a hate crime and most autistic people struggle to say get the police to bring charges of harassment. But that's an issue with law and law enforcement not language.

LongSpoons said:

Design a resource to provide specific coping techniques for individual traits, face to face training.

What kind of traits? What kind of coping? Training for autistic people or NTs?