As I’ve come across more people claiming autistic people are a problem it’s made me realise there’s a lot of dogmatic assumptions and beliefs about autism.
The main example is the assumption autism is a social problem because we don’t fit social norms and that social norms are inherently good. When we look to the past we can see “social norms” are actually inherently bad, social norms by their nature are discriminatory and are in direct violation of human rights such as autonomy. Less than a century ago treating women like they’re something less and have fewer rights than men was the social norm. In the 19th century slavery was part of the social norm. Each time we look at a social norm from any time period today’s people frown on it, it must of been someone with a “social problem” to want to deviate and change the social norm. I wonder if any of them were autistic!
Another example is the dogmatic assumption autistic people have a difficulty making friends. Autistic people do all that’s needed to be done to become friends, the reason things don’t work out is because the nonautistic people have a difficulty accepting people who don’t fit the standard norm. Nonautistic people are simply blaming their difficulties on autistic people, friendships are a two way street after all, not the autistic one is responsible for everything.
I won’t list all the dogmatic assumptions that came to my mind but as one last example, the assumption autistic people have nothing good to offer society which is why they find the idea of a cure beneficial. I can believe that numerous of the greatest scientists throughout history were autistic because “autism traits” are the precise behaviours required to make new discoveries. Narrow interests, detail orientation, intensely focused, can detach themselves from people and spend more time on their work, better at recognising systems and patterns. I would say all these autism traits are of high value if the autistic person is given the opportunity to use them, and that they should be on the “Human Ability Spectrum” instead of defined as “deficits”.
I see a lot of dogma surrounding autism and hypocrisy by people failing to evaluate today’s social norms that people fail to recognise they have the very same difficulties.
