Published on 12, July, 2020
I have never been cool, and I never will be. So, to hear people claim that being autistic is a ‘trend’ is as laughable as it is offensive. I never wanted a label to be special. The autism label has opened a door to understanding how my brain works and who I am. I have no desire to be cool, and plenty of desire for knowledge and acceptance.
Autistic Not Alien: 'It's cool to be autistic...' WHAT?![edited by moderator]
I find the general feeling is, “there can’t be that many ‘new’ autistic people, we will go along with it, but you don’t look or act autistic”. Basically we don’t believe you and you’re attention seeking.
One that I can tell people think regarding later diagnosed people is, “You never used to be autistic and you seemed to cope quite well.”
That’s just how I’ve often felt, there are some people who understand autism but they are in the minority, I can’t think of any other condition that requires someone to practically have to plead their case so much. That’s where so much energy is lost.
Do people think that autism didn't exist before some arbitary date? So many of us have grown knowing that we're somehow different to everyone else and being told off, abused, ignored, etc, its not a bandwagon it a recognition that we've always been here, silently suffering and just getting on as best we can.
One of the things I notice is the difference between the older and younger members of this site and their experiences of being autistic, being diagnosed and any help they recieve.
This experience mirrors mental health issues and hidden disabilities in particular and frankly, despite our impression that we like to pretend otherwise, we are not as caring a society as we claim or pretend to be - since Covid, I’ve really lost all patience with this kind of hypocrisy, where we see mental health issues being treated as if they were not real illnesses, are the poor relation when it comes to NHS funding, services and supports and hidden disabilities like ours even more so - there is a core cohort of people who simply point-blank refuse to understand any aspect of our condition in order to justify their hypocrisy and nasty attitudes and behaviour towards us for no real reason and frankly, the only way to deal with such people is by way of the criminal law, to teach these people a harsh lesson that they will never forget in a hurry - “coming out” (as autistic) in later life mirrors my own coming out as gay in my teens in the 1980’s and there are many similarities between people living with autism and with LGBT people