This month, on the 18th is something called Autistic Pride Day. It probably won’t make the news, you almost certainly won’t see a large march and you won’t have to put up with hearing z-list celebs talk about their solidarity and respect for the celebrants.
Autistic Pride Day is a day that adult autistics chose to commemorate the fact of their autism and the fact that they were proud to be autistic. It should not be confused with Autism Awareness which is a campaign set up and managed mostly by parents and carers of autistics to highlight what they see as the tragic blight of autism.
Autistics today face an incredible amount of generalisation and pejoratives. I’ve heard other parents of autistics describe their own children as – ‘disappearing down a black hole’, ‘stolen’, ‘missing’, ‘a parents worst nightmare’ and their own family situations described in terms reflecting grief and tragedy.
Once upon a time, homosexuality was considered an illness. In fact it wasn’t until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed homosexuality from its official listing of mental illnesses in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders.
1973. Just over 30 years ago. It seems incredible that people really did think that a persons sexual preference was symptomatic of an illness, but they did. Up until that point, gay Americans were subjected to pejoratives and mind-sets very similar to those that autistics face now. The ‘deviance from normality’ was too much for most families so a lot of gays stayed quiet or grew estranged from their families. Autistic people don’t even have the option of staying quiet. Their ‘deviance from the norm’ leads them to ‘stim’ (flap hands, rock, sing to themselves and a massive variety of other ‘deviant’ behaviours). Its obvious to everyone when an autistic is autistic.
The Black man, it was repeatedly claimed, was uniquely fitted for bondage by his primitive psychological organization. For him, mental health was contentment with his subservient lot, while protest was an infallible symptom of derangement. Thus a well-known physician of the ante-bellum South, Dr. Samuel Cartwright of Louisiana, had a psychiatric explanation for runaway slaves. He diagnosed their malady as drapetomania, literally the flight-from-home-madness, ‘as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation.’ Another ailment peculiar to Black people was dysaethesia Aethiopica, sometimes called rascality by overseers, but actually due to ‘ insensibility of nerves’ and ‘hebetude of mind’, explained Dr. Cartwright. Whereas psychologically normal Negroes were faithful and happy –go-lucky, the mentally afflicted ones ‘pay no attention to the rights of property…slight their work…raise disturbances with their overseers.
The shocking quote above, demonstrates how people one believed that black people were considered ill. How a Doctor could believe that a person desiring freedom could be construed as an illness is bizarre. But it happened.
Benjamin Rush, MD (1746 – Â1813), signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dean of the Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania and the “Father of American Psychiatry, “described Negroes as suffering from an affliction called Negritude, which was thought to be a mild form of leprosy. The only cure for the disorder was to become white.
If such a hypothesis was even suggested today, the author would be quite rightly hounded out of the medical profession. Its utterly ridiculous. But it happened.
Autistics today face similar situations, similar ill-informed judgments and similar results. A lot of autistics say that growing up they felt forced to try and bury their autism as much as possible to avoid the judgment of family and peers. Would we find a gay teen having to do this acceptable today? Whats the consensus of opinion on Micheal Jacksons continuing quest to make himself white?
In the days leading up to Autistic Pride day, I’m going to try and write something every day about why I feel this is such an important event for Megan and for our whole family. I’m also going to try and link to articles that offer some insight into what its like to be on the receiving end of prejudice. The first article is written by Amanda Baggs and describes how the mainstream autism advocacy movement (by which I mean medics and parents mostly) are participating in the belittling of autistics.
As to what we’ll be doing on Autistic Pride Day, we’re not sure. My wife’s due to give birth to our new baby sometime this month so it may be on or around this very day. But if it isn’t, then we’ll be passing it quietly with Megan. Doing things that she likes to do. We’ll also be thinking of all the autistic adults and children we know and wishing them well and hoping that equality for them comes sooner than it did for gay people or black people.
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