2nd April
Autism (Awareness) Acceptance day.
In this post I'm talking about autistic people, but most things can be applied to any neurodivergent person, also will be mentioning and briefly discussing ableism, objectifying of disabled people and inspiration porn. 

Today is the day when almost everyone feels the urge to "light it up blue", share some so called inspirational stories showing that autistic people - surprise - are human beings too, show their sympathy to the families "affected" by autism or even better talk about how together we can "beat autism".

All this just makes me want to throw up - meaning today I will avoid social media and won't login into facebook, twitter or any other social media to avoid all the horrible, even if good intentioned, messages these posts are sending. 

I already wrote many times about organisations like autism speaks and the only message they are communicating is that being autistic is the biggest burden or having an autistic child is worse than to loose one.
Let me clear it again - groups like autism speaks do not speak neither for me, neither for any other autistic person I know. The only thing they do is talk over actually autistics, silence us and never listen when we raise our concerns. 

The term inspiration porn describes the fact that disabled people are seen as inspirational because they are disabled and/or are here to inspire non disabled people to be better human beings. I can think of a few most common examples:
*Neurotypical person is being friendly and not that shitty to an autistic person. This is seen as SO inspiring!! like wow! this person is basically a hero because they don't hurt, insult or completely ignore an autistic person. Autistic person is used to show that the other person is kind hearted & good, taking away autonomy from an autistic person - nevermind in the end of the day, we are here to please non-disabled people and show how nice they can be, right??
*Autistic person does something random, something most people are capable of, like goes to the school, rides the bike, goes to the shop, etc. etc. and it is so inspiring because autistic people are apparently not capably of literally anything. It is also used to stigmatise and put other people, especially children down (e.g. "look they are autistic and they are able to ride a bike, when will you learn??" or "even that autistic child got an A from an essay, what is your excuse now??").
*Autistic person does something extraordinary, something 99% of people wouldn't be able to do, like discovers a new constellation, goes to space, invents new type of machine, paints a masterpiece, etc. and it is so fucking inspiring, just not because of the actual action, but because the person is disabled.
Let's face it - we exist for our own reasons and not to please, inspire or what-ever-other-fuck to do with non-disabled people. This sort of objectification is really really fucked up. ​​It takes away our autonomy completely leaving us just as objects to please other people needs. We are already enough objectified, and if our needs, aspirations and ideas do not fit into society's concept of us - we are completely ignored...
I want to believe that people sharing these stories are just ignorant and think they are doing good. 

content: ableism, patronising of disabled people, discussion of the term "differently abled" 

For quite a while I was thinking about the term "differently abled" that sometimes is used instead of disabled. I haven't really used it myself, but heard lots of progressive people praising it and being so happy about "different abilities". From the first sigh it might look like a great term - concentrating on the positive instead of the negative, but taking a closer look into it we can realise how deeply problematic it is. First of all - different from what? Isn't everyone different in some ways and has different abilities? Using the term "differently abled" actually reinforces the idea that there is only one way of being. One "correct/right" way of existing, thinking, communicating, feeling, moving - you name it. Everything else that does not fit into someone's imaginary normality is classed as "different" "abnormal/not normal" (it is used to refer to disabled people in this case). Obviously that way even further contributing to patronising, stigmatizing and dehumanizing of disabled people. It does not matter how much one wishes or believes that the term might suggest that everyone is different and just exists in their own way, it does not. It rather suggests that there is one "acceptable" way of being and the other "different" "not so acceptable" way.

It also has the same patronising tone as the term "special needs", "challenging" etc. and suggest that being called disabled should be something to avoid, something to be ashamed of.. Many times these terms are used as more of a way for those non disabled people (who in most cases lead the discussion about disability) to feel better about themselves and deny (consciously or non consciously) any chance to answer the questions leading to acceptance instead of this tolerance. Disability makes them uncomfortable. It's like saying "at least they (disabled people) are not completely useless, they are good at something too" and continues the association of one's worth to exist with ability to work, be "functional", contribute to the society. World still thinks that my existence is tragic, not worth living and keeps reminding me how many times harder I have to try to be given the right to exist, to take the space, to talk...
​
The term "differently abled" does not only understate, but in many cases even ignores the reality and struggles disabled people have to go through their daily lives. It denies the impact of systematic oppression and suggests that disability is one person's problem rather than society's. Why should we let the society ignore the fact that they are disabling us and comfort to their patronising tone? 
Society already does a very good job at ignoring the systematic oppression and ableism. And by refusing to acknowledge that we are disabled by the society's lack of accommodation to our physical and neurological differences from so called typical minds and bodies, we are letting society to know that they do not need to look at the ways they are making us disabled. Disability does not exist on its own. We have to realise that disability is a complex interaction between social, cultural, political & other structures and individual's minds/bodies. It is institutional, systematic and personal ableism that creates disability. And we don't need to deny it exists. 

So yeah, that's why finally I decided that I won't start using the term "differently abled" as this language only helps to reinforce already existing oppression of disabled people.