I’m seeing TERFs calling up the word ‘autism’ to justify making transgender folk less safe.
So let’s talk about how autism, neurodivergence and queerness overlaps – and how we aren’t the same as you, and how we are.
Let’s talk about cupboard doors.
And who fucking opened them.
Firstly, the stats. About half of all autistics are queer. We are 12 times more likely to be transgender.
That’s why you hear the word ‘autism’ coming out of the TERFs thin mouths. They think we need PROTECTION. That we don’t know our own minds.
Nothing further from the truth.
What people don’t understand is that we do actually think and behave differently. That’s a problem for allistic (non autistic) and neurotypical people.
If I roll into a kitchen, I can often tell if there’s a neurodivergent person living in the house, just by looking.
Here’s how. We often don’t shut cupboard doors, we often place things in ways that make sense to us. Some of us also have adhd – some of us also have ocd, they are co-occurring conditions.
These are breadcrumbs to me for understanding that there’s a fellow ND person here.
People think that it is about dishes left undone. But that’s the least of it. It’s the open cupboard doors and open drawers – because we learn by consequences.
There are no consequences to leaving that door open. Except maybe your long ago mother and parenting overall.
This is how we think; this is how we learn. Most of us shut the front door because we understand that an intruder could come in, as could flies. It’s not about Mum saying ‘shut the door David, were you born in a barn’. She could say that til the cows come home.
Consequences work. And that is why we have abusive practices like ABA and gay conversion therapy, which is based on ABA. Because you can’t talk us into or out of things without reasoning or logic or consequences.
They use punishment, reward, abuse and fear to make us comply.
I learned my variable eye contact thus – the old fashioned type of abuse. Look at me when I am talking to you. He would have called it a clip around the ear if I didn’t comply – in reality, it was a blow. I learned that lesson hard and forever. I still look away when I speak.
If you’re some of the autistics who also have a co occurring intellectual disability, you’re automatically othered. If your communication is different, your behaviour is significantly different, you’re in a category where you’re regarded as ‘safe’ for them. You are OTHER.
But for the rest of us – well, we are dangerous. Ironically, for the same reasons that we use to try and keep ourselves safe. We try to BE like you. Be NORMAL. We try and try. They call it masking.
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And often, that involves gender or sexuality. And pretending harms us.
Not all trans or queer people are ND, but a good portion are. And what we have in common is that pretending to be something you’re not, trying to fit into a norm that you don’t fit into, facing stigma and shame every day – that hurts us. That’s why so many of us die early.
You know when abused women tell you they walked on eggshells? That’s us, every day of our lives. We are just waiting to make the next mistake so that you can all rain down on us for something we never intended.
Now, imagine gender is a social construct. Hint: it is.
We don’t learn the same way as you. We are already considered different, weird. We didn’t suck up that conditioning you did in the toy shop, nor remember pink was for girls, blue was for boys. We learn differently and the consequences of being different are variable.
Imagine that inside, you always knew you were a girl, or a boy. Or that you didn’t feel like either.
Imagine trying to conform with no success. And now imagine having loving and accepting parents and community and then state sanction hate being rained upon you, in public.
For fucks sake.
Yes, many of us are broken. That’s because we have been broken by hate, by confusion at our treatment, by ptsd, by rejection and abuse.
By people like Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull. Mark Latham. Pauline Hanson. Lyle Shelton.
And then there is this. I’m not going to cite the ADHD and autism suicide statistics, nor those for transgender people – you can look those up yourself.
But what I do know is this. That people will have suicided over the past weeks, at the hands of those in charge.
I’m not just talking about the obvious culprits – not even Posie fucking Parker or the Nazis. Hate is always there.
I’m talking about @andrewjgiles and those who opened the cupboard doors, thinking there would be no consequences. But there were, and are, seen and unseen.
When you let that person into the country, you opened the door to sanctioned hate against vulnerable populations, Andrew. To unfiltered hatred on the lawns of our nations capital. It was not up to those who turned up in force to defend our nation against this.
It was up to you. It was up to you to prevent hate from entering our borders. She was flying her colours before she got here. Her ammunition was on clear show and you knew that her aim was at vulnerable children, young adults, marginalised populations.
You made us unsafe.
We see the forces at play here. That there’s an international coalition of conservatives and religious figures weaponising hate to win votes, deploying their donors, using company names to conceal shadowy figures and hidden agendas.
Why don’t you? It’s your literal job.
You opened the door to this and @AlboMP has a leadership responsibility to act like a leader and keep ALL our citizens safe, especially those who need it most. Don’t be fooled by these bad actors & their lies about the safety of children.
Listen to autistics and queers. Now.
By Sam Connor
I’m seeing TERFs calling up the word ‘autism’ to justify making transgender folk less safe.
So let’s talk about how autism, neurodivergent and queerness overlaps – and how we aren’t the same as you, and how we are.
Let’s talk about cupboard doors.
And who fucking opened them.
— Sam Connor (@criprights) March 24, 2023
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