I love an epiphany!
God, being autistic is sometimes an absolute blast. I get to peel back layers of a life time’s accumulation of faulty learning and go, wow! so that’s how it really works…
Recent adventures have got me thinking about ‘social disability’ as an important addition to the terms I can use to help articulate accommodation needs. This could be a sensitive term for some, so here comes the bit where I make the usual disclaimers. As ever in my writing I only speak for myself, and please remember that when you’ve met one autistic you’ve only ever met one autistic.
The point is (however) that each autistic has to work things out for themselves. We mainly have no such thing as aftercare following an autism diagnosis. I’ve been through many a recalibration of my identity since my official diagnosis in March 2016, but my love for the word autism has never wained. I was luke warm on the term neurodivergent for the longest time, but have recently cosied right up to it – it’s so useful and brings much needed solidarity with a wider group. I’ve got a lot of affection for the term invisible disability, but rarely remember to use it (note to self to do more of this). But in almost mint condition is my sudden mental adoption of the term ‘social disability’ which I’m test-driving here. I’m excited by it mainly because I feel the need for clarity and specificity. This is about refining and recalibrating where I am 4 years on from my diagnosis and readying myself to meet new challenges.
It’s taken 4 years for me to absorb that I can never fully compensate for my autism with workarounds, accommodations and self-care. There’s no magic neurological catch-up or compensation that can level out the playing field (ergo it’s the playing field that needs to change, by the way!) I HAVE A NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION ( which affects me in many ways) as well as an identity to forge – and for me the two must go hand in hand.
The penny has finally dropped. It doesn’t matter how much learning I do, or how much I am accommodated, I will remain at core disabled by my hyper intuitive and sometimes scrambled navigational systems. This insight, by the way, does nothing to negate my autism positive position – I see autism as both disability and identity, and find no conflict in this position.
I feel great joy at being me, I love myself and my autism quite fully, right up to the brim in fact. But I will forever spend my days in hostile environments following norms I can’t ever hope to understand. I will always need to use my native intellect and find the will to be assertive and seek adjustments, but I need more than this. I NEED IT TO BE UNDERSTOOD THAT I AM RADICALLY SOCIALLY DIFFERENT – AND THAT I DON’T WANT SUPPORT TO APE YOU OR OPERATE LIKE YOU (if you are a non-autistic reader). This is not rudeness on my part, I’m talking about neurologically based social orientations and needs.
I do a lot of writing, thinking and advocating about autism and the arts, and I encounter a lot of artists who are autistic and struggle with the question of how to place themselves in their professional lives, and in the art world as a whole. There is no such category as ‘autistic artist’ that would fit us all – as stated above, once you’ve met one of us you’ve only ever met one of us. So what kind of beastie are we, and where do we fit, if at all? What does it mean to be an autistic artist?
We return to the conundrum of extreme diversity within divergence, but I believe we can perhaps haul some commonalities out of the possibly infinite variety of minds, though of course I can only truly speak for myself.
A social difference that’s disabling and is life long means the building blocks of learning have been (and will continue to be) different. THIS DOESN’T GO AWAY. Our thinking can run so counter to the non-autistic that we can feel alien even when we appear to be joining in and on side. We’re conditioned to mask our difference and often don’t know how to drop this adaptation. We can also find many points of joyful and genuine connection, but it takes colossal effort on our part to ‘make it’ into the room. Once there, we may well have no idea how to network and ‘makes things happen’. We can learn some of your tricks though kindness and information sharing, but THIS TOO DOESN’T GO AWAY.
So what’s my vision, and what does focusing on the term ‘social disability’ gain? I feel this would be suitably radical and risky. Talking about social disability is usefully uncomfortable and revealing. We reward neuro-normative sociability with popularity and power and we judge those who can’t perform it. In doing so we must sometimes confuse neurology with personality – neither should be judged, but disability is a protected characteristic and requires positive action.
Accommodations are vital, but so is culture shift. Please understand that I don’t want a leg- up to join the ranks, I want to break the current neuro-normative socially biased mould. I feel social disability as a term enables me to pinpoint a very particular aspect of my struggle as an autistic artist. At the forefront of articulating and carving out autistic space and power is where I want to be.
