Post #2025148

@pathfinder @autistics Thank you so much for this important post, that makes us think and write about individualism, community and disability, for pointing out, that needing support doesn’t mean that we are not independent. Similar to @Susan60 I don´t see the root cause for this individualistic view of independence in autistic black and white thinking, but in capitalism and white supremacy culture. The personal is very much political here. Capitalists believe that the one who hoards the most resources and exploits the most people is the most independent, which is nonsensical in itself. For us as autistic people “normal” often doesn’t work, because we are different, we experience the world differently, process information differently and communicate differently. For that reason, we have a strong drive for autonomy, we like to do things our own way, which is then pathologized as PDA. Your conclusion, that autistic people feel bad for needing support, because of our black and white thinking, reminds me a bit too much of the trope of the stubborn disabled person. This is how we are portrait in media so often, that we are the problem and that there’s a happy end as soon as we just accept the support, that is offered to us. It shifts the responsibility for lack of support to the individual instead of understanding it as a systemic issue. But the truth is, that most of us do not have access to the support we need and that we have to give up our autonomy for the little support we get. So, for me as an anarchist your heartwarming story about this old lady shows that we do not need a state, that makes us prove over and over again how disabled we are, which not only costs us energy, but is also a waste of resources, but that we need community. It’s part of my bottom up thinking as an autistic person. Unfortunately for us autistic people finding community is even more difficult, because of our differences, which makes us being even more isolated and in danger of our autonomy being taken away from us by a system that frames us as the problem. Capitalism takes peoples capacity for mutual support away and then sells it back to us, which makes access to support a privilege, a class issue.