NTs, their gimp-splaining and privilege

Tags

gimp-splaining, neurotypical abuse, neurotypical intervention, Neurotypical privilege

do you remember this post? well i posted a bit from it to Facebook, and tagged a few of my neurodifferent friends. the post took off and got a few shares, a few likes and everything seemed to be going very nicely.

until a neurotypical individual came in and decided to “share their point of view” with the rest of us. it went the usual way when neurotypicals weigh in on matters of neurodifference – to sheol in a hand-basket:

Neurotypical:
Well, there are some of us, “neurotypical” (even I’m not pretty sure of filling all the description for it) that want to care about and deal with autism. In the small school where I work, we have 3 students with Asperger and 2 with autism (that’s the reason I follow B’s page) and what we do is learning and teaching the other kids to handle meltdowns, to understand the reasons of their behavior and how to help them to feel part of the society. We work a lot with all the students with their emotional education and we have had good results because the five of them feel accepted and now are pretty much as B, able to do wonderful things for the others.

Ok, the way they used quote marks around neurotypical told my right away that they were being defensive about the label, i.e not acknowledging it as a valid designation for people who are not neurodifferent. then there is the little matter of being totally OT (remember the original post was about how autists are being portrayed on television and in movies). then they go pretty self-promotive on the lot of us, and as icing on the cake, they throw in some gratuitous praise for one of my friends (whom i feel is rather shallow, into camouflaging and has a an attitude of defending neurotypical people when they are being offensive or stupid in relation to neurodifference). all that pissed me off and i wanted to rip this piece of horse-manure a new asshole. my wife advised me to not do that. i complied:

Henric C. Jensen Âû:
how is this even remotely related to the portrayal of autists on television and in movies?
i am sorry, but your post, comes across, to me, like “I know all about dealing with black people, I have black friends”, and i feel very much like i am being gimp-splained to. again. this post is about how autistic people are being portrayed by neurotypical people on neurotypical television and in neurotypical movies.
i realize that you are trying your very best to be an ally in sharing this with me and those i have tagged in the OP, however, your neuronormal/neurotypical privilege is showing. maybe you could review your post and see how that might be?

so far everything is still sort of good.
but then the neurotypical asshole comes in and says:

To fit your expectations? No. I’m expressing my point of view, if you feel it’s against the policies and objectives of the page, I ask B and administrators of the page to delete it. If you feel threatened I apologize.

what?? did they just demand that i accept their definition of the OP? did they actually claim it as their right to abuse me on my own wall? did this piece of excrement just claim that they have the right to be offensive in their treatment of me and my tagged friends, because one of the tagged people runs another page dealing with autism?

yup that was what they did.

at that point my wife released me from my restraints and i responded:

Henric C. Jensen Âû
this is is MY wall, not Bryan’s page – I am the administrator here – you are in my house and YOU ARE BEING RUDE.

my wife decided to respond to this and when she went to copy the comments they were gone. yes, the piece of shit decided to delete their comment, to which i had responded in a sub-thread. lucky for me i had copied and saved it to Edit-pad, and because the discussion was open in another tab, i also had a screen-shot.

i hate neurotypicals – yes, as a general rule i do. they are condescending, overbearing, ignorant, stupid, lack empathy, self-centered, selfish and crude. if i run in to someone who is not like this, i assume they are neurodifferent.

neurotypicals cannot deal with autistic people demanding our right to live our lives on our own terms, without neurotypical intervention or intrusion. they cannot wrap their minds around the idea that we are whole individuals, that we are not broken and that apart from them checking their privilege, we do not need them.

autism isn’t cute

Tags

AS, ASD, asperger's, gimp-splaining, movies, sheldon cooper, TV

A person with cute autism might commit a faux pas, but he will not be shamed and kicked out of school for it. He might utter a gaffe, but he will not permanently alienate a friend group because of it. He won’t destroy relationships. He won’t have an ugly emotional meltdown in public, or freak out and hit someone. While Sheldon Cooper’s friends on The Big Bang Theory are often exasperated and annoyed, they never shun him, because Sheldon never crosses the line into causing true offense and hurt. The writers carefully keep Sheldon just on this side of being awful. That is a high bar to set for autistic people in the real world.

in real life there is no room for the totality of an autistic person, because there is no tolerance for it. there is no tolerance for it because the portrayal of autistic people on television and in movies is the white-washed version of autistic reality. it is a vicious cycle of neurotypical people gimp-splaining to us and each other and at the same time demanding that we be autistic, politely and quietly, according to their rules. they do so love our little quirks – our little quirks they want. if we insist on being ‘really autistic’, they prefer that we be so out of sight, so we do not upset them and their neurotypical lives. neurotypical people simply cannot handle the truth about being an autistic person.

Consider the autism muppet, Julia, on Sesame Street. She is the epitome of adorable, and she teaches children to tolerate kids who don’t want to be touched, or don’t give eye contact, or make flappy hands. Julia will never push a joke too far or unwittingly say something unforgivably racist. Julia will never do something disgusting, or scary, or inexplicable, because Julia’s job is to teach kids that autism is safe and fine.

autism is not safe and fine. autism is not cute. autism is public melt-downs, saying hurtful things without realizing it, hurting oneself and others both physically and emotionally again and again and not being able to control oneself. autism is not being able to use public transportation because one might freak out because of the smell, light, sound and crowdiness. autism is never feeling safe and fine, because one has to hide the ugly, crazy, scary, disgusting parts of being autistic and be in constant fear that one will fail.