@actuallyautistic
OK, my bash at something for Autism Awareness (or, as most of us would prefer, Acceptance) month.
I think so much of the problem why people can struggle to see us and to accept how we can be so diverse, is simply the language that is used to describe autism. And, perhaps, specifically, the English language. Because as everyone knows and to bastardise the original quote, English is basically a bunch of languages in a hooded robe, lurking in dark alleyways simply to mug other, more innocent, languages of their spare words.
It all too often this means that not only can the same word be used for different things, but that its meaning is all too often determined by the context and technical field in which it's being used. Different fields can use the same word to mean radically different things. But, unless you are aware of that, people tend to assume that it simply means what it generally and as far as they are concerned, normally does.
Autism is diagnosed.
The simple fact of the matter, is that nobody in history has ever been diagnosed with autism, either officially, or by themselves by being self-diagnosed. Not, in the way that most people understand the word, diagnosis. For them, it means a series of tests with definitive answers. Qualified people to administer and over-see those tests and in the end to interrupt, understand and give a clear-cut and unquestionable decision, backed up by those facts.
What we are is assessed and more specifically the likelihood of whether we fit within the current criteria for autism and the difficulties and therefore the support needs we may have because of that, is assessed. Well, in an official-diagnosis. Whereas self-diagnosis is a realisation, a recognition of the way so much is now explained, where it never was before.
To most people, there is a world of difference between a diagnosis and an assessment/realisation. Especially when it is used in a medical context.
Autism is a disability.
Well, this one is easier. Everyone knows what a disability looks like. In terms of autism, at best it ranges from "rain man", the idiot savant, to the absentminded, slightly, mad professor, or Sheldon Cooper look alike. But, all too often, it's the image and memory of all the children dragged across our screens by a certain well known charity/hate group, or during the height of the vaccines causes autism shit fest. It's the relative with genuine needs, or the relative of a friend of a friend, of a friend, who they have happened to have heard about once. It's not their teacher, or the friend they have who can't seem to hang onto a job and definitely not the person next door, who they nod to and talk to normally.
Autism is a spectrum.
People always think about a spectrum as a simple path from A to Z. A clear graduation of ability, or proficiency. As clear as the bands on a rainbow and as permanent. To think of it as the ever shifting and variable thing that it is as it applies to us, is understandably hard.
Autism isn't a disease.
But, doctors deal with it, diagnose it, it's clearly on the rise. Something must be causing it. If it's not a disease, then why are they involved?
I could go on. But, hopefully you get the point I'm vaguely trying to make. Language determines understanding and at the moment the language we use to describe ourselves, isn't really understood. Not in the ways that we want it to be and not because it's hard. But, because there are not enough stories out there that use it in the way that allows its meaning in this context to become more generally understood. The stories that include us and are from us and are not just about us. The stories that we can tell and show, often by simply being, that reveal what these words actually mean for us and that can allow others to understand and accept that, in the ways they can't, or struggle to, at the moment.
#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic
Have a fruitful & wonderful 
