A part of the conversation on Autism is the distinction between the medical model and the social model of disability. Some Autistic people, particularly those who are “level 1” or “high functioning” (terms that are problematic in themselves), insist that Autism is not a medical disability at all. I personally disagree.
Under the medical model, a disability is intrinsically disabling. I only have one eye; the other is prosthetic. No amount of social acceptance is going to change that. I cannot see things to my extreme left (without turning my head). My depth perception within a few feet of my head is seriously impacted. This will be true no matter what society does.
Under the social model, a disability is created or exacerbated by social attitudes. When getting a driver’s license, I had to pass an eye test, which included making sure that I could determine whether the red ball was inside the basket. I couldn’t see the red ball, and the examiner had to verify with their superior that one-eyed people could get driver’s licenses. I am an excellent driver, but I could have been denied my license based on prejudicial attitudes towards the disabled.
Autism *is* a disability, under the medical model. For those of us who manage through life with minimal external supports, it might sometimes seem like it’s not, but there are indeed things that are *intense* struggles for me that aren’t struggles for Neurotypical people. And for those Autistic folks who struggle much more with communication, they don’t have the clear voice to point out their very real struggles.
At the same time, we have to deal with social structures and prejudices on top of the medical restrictions. While in an ideal world, Autistic folks would still struggle with many things, those struggles are made worse, sometimes much worse, by social attitudes and expectations. And each Autistic person has a different mix, and different perspective on, how much of their daily struggles are inherent and how much is caused by social judgments.
For instance, I struggle with loneliness. I don’t do well in maintaining friendships. It’s not that I don’t enjoy interacting with people, or that I don’t “know how”, it’s that there are aspects of my Autism that make it a significant struggle. A big part of this, for instance, is Rejection Sensitivity (RSD), often in the form of a nagging voice that tells me how much I annoy people, how much people don’t really want to be around me, how incredibly stupid that last thing I said was, and so on. I remember incidents from decades ago where I said embarrassing things to complete strangers.
This is not going to go away. Ever. I develop strategies to deal with it, but this is a disabling, often cripplingly so, aspect of Autism for me.
But what can other people do about it? Society can either make room for that by accommodating for it, such as compassionate individuals reaching out or at least ignoring the taciturnity and emotional distance it sometimes causes in me, or it can create obstacles by mocking the notion, telling me to “get over it”, and actively avoiding me.
An example of mockery: I personally found the Saturday Night Live character “Debbie Downer” very hurtful. While I got the point, the recurring joke communicated that anyone who hasn’t mastered the art of being properly jovial in a group setting deserves to be rejected. It fed my RSD by telling me that that’s how people see me whenever I say anything that’s not 100% happy.
Relatedly, there was a push recently to challenge people not to “trauma dump” to the point that any mention of trauma, *even with proper forewarning*, was characterized as inappropriate, hurtful, and something that should only be done with therapists. Perhaps even this current post is going to be seen by some as “trauma dumping”.
So yeah. My RSD tells me I should never tell anyone about anything that is not sweetness and light. That’s a medical part of my disability. But when society reinforces that message, that becomes a social disability on top of the medical one.
(Also, “You misunderstand. You can talk about darker things, you just need to do it in the right way” is part of *another* socially disabling thing, because “the right way” is usually dictated by neurotypical norms, and many Autistics report that, try as we might, we can’t quite crack the code on “the right way”.)
Anyway, I’ve nattered enough.