Autistic Hedgehog

Yes, it does indeed seem that way. What saddens me the most is how few specialists in ASD there are for adults. Autism is not new, not in the least. Not only that, but almost 20 years ago when I was diagnosed, they were already finding a lot of autistic adults who’d fallen through the cracks because they passed well enough. None of this is new information and it should be something there are competent therapists and psychiatrists for. That there isn’t distresses me deeply. 

I’ve gotten a bunch of these in my inbox tonight. I am so, so sorry that so many people go through this crap. I mean, I experienced something similar when I made an attempt to move to an adult psychiatrist when I turned 18 (and ended up with my pediatric psychiatrist right up until I left for Sweden five years ago) but I really hoped that was an isolate incident. Running AH has taught me it isn’t, and that kills me. 

I’m so, so sorry they did that to you. That was the product of ignorance, ableism and privilege, plain and simple, and it was wrong. They thought it was okay because ableism is deeply ingrained in society, and people are taught all the wrong things about autism—and sadly, they thought it was okay because in truth, allistics aren’t naturally more empathetic than us. They just assume they are and many of them never teach their kids true empathy.

But they’re also wrong. Why shouldn’t you be emotionally capable of caring for a baby? Don’t let them get you down. This is a big thing in your life, and you deserve to be happy about it.

And congratulations! 

I’m alarmed by the amount of these questions I get. Holy crap, what are they teaching psychiatrists and psychologists these days? (Fellow Hedgies, that was rhetorical.)

I don’t know if I’d say she was bullshitting you…more like she’s ignorant as fuck. She’s not right. She’s wrong. Bad wrong. Badong. Just like allistics, we have all kinds of skills and talents, and we certainly don’t lack emotion or empathy. That’s an unfortunate bit if ignorance that’s been spread around for far too long. Maybe your therapist needs to read up on things like the Intense World theory. Times, they are a’changing. 

The Wendrow case. My thoughts on the Wendrow case…hoo boy. I didn’t know about the Wendrow case until I received this ask, and in the end, I had to have my husband read up on it for me, because I couldn’t get through a single article without crying. They were that nauseating. It’s hard to elucidate my feelings on this, when every article I found didn’t bother much with facts and chose instead to exonerate the father and lavish stomach-churning amounts of pity on him. 

Trigger Warning: Rape, abuse, ableism.

For those who don’t know, the Wendrow case involved a young non-verbal autistic girl who, via a method of communication known as Facilitated Communication, made claims that her father had raped her multiple times. To make a long short story, in the end, because she couldn’t perform like a trained monkey in court, her father was acquitted. 

Do I sound bitter? I can’t help it. The articles really were gross. Just the very fact that the police taking the girl’s word as true is regarded as them “not trying to find the truth” is enough to make me want to cry. My feelings on the matter are thus a bit tangled, and revolve mostly around the criticism (dare I even call it) of Facilitated Communication, which is so rife with allistic privilege, I want to slap someone.

Those who are tested—yes, tested—sometimes prove unable to communicate via FC under pressure, and people (all of them allistic) generally ask “How could it be that someone who can otherwise write speeches etc. etc. etc. with this form of communication suddenly can’t use it in a testing environment?” And because they’re allistic (and maybe because they don’t remember or know how uncomfortable testing environments are) they figure, hey, FC must not really work, and it must be the words of the Facilitator and not the autistic person themselves.

They think this because they’re allistic and thus they’ll never be stuffed in a box like a guinea pig and asked to prove that their method of communication is viable, knowing all the while that if they fail, their rights as a human beings will be stripped from them. 

So when using FC in court, all the girl was able to produce was gobbledegook, which led to the father being acquitted. Her Facilitator, according to my husband, was painted really atrociously in the articles, while the father was held up as the poor victim of a misandrist witchhunting country out for tasty tasty manblood. And maybe he is innocent, but when I think about this, I can’t help but doubt. Consider how many allistic women can’t handle the pressure of a rape case. Hell, I know that I, having already faced the pain and horror of being judged unfairly due to my struggles with communication, might not be able to handle what they asked of this girl. I, who can speak for myself, am not sure I would’ve fared any better in court. 

I can’t sit here and accept that FC doesn’t work and the father is innocent, because I know what it’s like to be autistic from the inside. And even if he is innocent, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because no matter how many times FC does work, it’s cases like this one that will be used as precedent instead. It’s cases like this one that will be used to strip autistics of their rights and force them to remain in unsafe environments.

In all the furor to condemn the case, no one in the press stopped and thought. They didn’t think “holy shit, this girl might have been sent back to a man who constantly rapes her.” That’s the thing. She might well have gone home to a place where she’s raped every day and can do nothing to defend herself. And even if she wasn’t, other autistics will be, helped along by this case. And I can tell you how that makes me feel: It fucking terrifies me. 

Considering that humor is a very subjective thing in the first place, I think the claim is hogwash.

Some autistics don’t understand some jokes, just like some allistics don’t understand some jokes. Because to those people, those jokes might not even be funny in the first place, and it’s hard to understand the point of something one doesn’t find funny. But like with so many other things, for us, it’s a stereotype and it’s been pathologized all to hell.

It’s true that in some ways we have slight disadvantages. Some of us struggle to understand sarcasm or other tones of voice, and if the person telling the joke doesn’t have very good delivery in the first place, it might make it even harder to get the joke (I have this problem with every single joke my brother-in-law tries to tell). But it’s important to keep in mind that allistics can and do have the exact same preferences and problems. If it’s not a stereotype for them, it certainly shouldn’t be for us.