A flawed but I think useful model of ASD

I want to make a post about being intellectually disabled without the intellectual disability. Which is related to my whole thing of preferring to call myself developmentally disabled instead of any autism-related word.

This is partly, as I said, because I hate the word autism. Sometimes I wonder what is wrong with me that no one else seems to hate it as much as I do. I feel like the word is very intimately tied in with the kind of mistreatment that ASD people receive from professionals. If despite all evidence to the contrary people continue to think of autism as primarily a social disability--a disability of dislocation and indifference--then the obvious way to treat people with autism is to MAKE THEM SOCIAL! But how do you do that? How do you look at a person and make them social?

Well, you try to make them act more normal. You make a list of normal things to do. And then you try to train the person with autism to do those things.

You also make a list of things not to do, like moving wrong. And if you know any people with intellectual disabilities, maybe a bit of doubt is starting to creep in, because...don't a lot of intellectually disabled people move wrong, too? NO NO NO NO. Autism is not about that! Autism is about BEING OBSESSED WITH YOURSELF! Kids with autism just move wrong because--well, it's like, the whole thing where they flap their hands over and over is kind of like how they have really strong interests! It's basically the same thing, because they don't...because they don't switch from one thing to another, they just always do the same thing!

(Except some intellectually disabled people have really strong interests. Shit.)

When I started realizing I wanted to work with DD people--I mean, not when I started wanting to do it, but when I became sure that I was going to do it--it was mainly because I realized that I'm not a person who can batter through a lot of really exhausting things, like moving right, and trying to pick up on things really fast, and then, when it still doesn't work and everyone rolls their eyes or gets mad at me or thinks I'm a lot younger than I am, then, pretending that I don't even care--it was mainly because I realized that for my own health I needed to aspire to a career where I would be spending a lot of time with people whose ways of moving and thinking were not extremely different from my own.

And eventually I narrowed that down to wanting to work with intellectually disabled people, not ASD people--not because of any particular difference between ID and ASD people, but because of the extremely different attitude in the staff who work with them. A particular ID guy, who I think and write about a lot, likes to collect fliers. The people who work at his workshop and group home try to keep him from grabbing entire stacks of fliers and putting them in a bag, but the general reaction to his excitement about fliers is amusement and affection. He was recently Consumer of the Month at his workshop; if you mention him to a staff person, they light up and say, "Oh, he's hilarious, he's great. Did he show you his fliers?"

Think about what would happen if an ASD person, in a school, group home, or workshop specifically for ASD people, expressed that level of excitement about collecting a certain kind of object. And flapped their hands and jumped around (which he also does). The reaction would not be "you're great" because ASD is conceptualized as a disorder that has to do with not caring about people or not knowing how to be with them. So the reaction would be, "There you go, doing your repetitive, antisocial behaviors."

This is why I can't work in most places for ASD people because I can't really suppress my positive reaction to "repetitive, antisocial behaviors" like stimming and being really interested in things. Also, I am prone to such behaviors myself, so it would just fuck me up spiritually and in terms of self-esteem.

I know this is a total crock of shit, what I'm about to say, because some ASD people aren't like this. But this is how I think of ASD in myself: intellectual disability without the intellectual disability. Which means, a lot of the same movements and emotional reactions as ID people, and a similar way of being slow to pick up on things and sometimes slow to get out the words I want to say, and trouble with looking after my best interests in various ways. But academically, when all the other stuff doesn't get in the way, I'm not actually intellectually disabled.

Or you can say it like this: I have an anti-learning disability. Instead of being affected only in terms of academics, I'm affected only in terms of everything else.

For a while, weren't they mostly calling us PDD instead of ASD? I really like that better. ASD is so focused, just because of the name, on this ONE THING. And I feel like sometimes I understate the social stuff, because it does exist probably, but I feel like it's not that much more social trouble than a lot of people with intellectual disabilities experience, just by virtue of being different and maybe not picking up on things as fast. It's definitely not the core issue in my experience, I don't think.

I feel like if autism wasn't thought of as being this inherent state of selfishness and indifference, life would be totally different and better for people who have it. There is a tremendous and awful amount of prejudice directed at people who have intellectual disabilities, but I feel like it isn't quite as acceptable to say that it's "heartbreaking" or "a nightmare" to raise a child with an ID. And I'm not being disingenuous because I seriously think that a lot of people with ASD are loving in a lot of ways, but people don't see it because that's not what they're taught to expect. And they also don't see joy and nonverbal communication and stuff when they look at stimming because they've been taught what to believe stimming is.

ETA: I guess I feel required to state once again that I think this characterization of autism is totally full of holes--however, I do sometimes want to wrench out some kind of narrative that will fit me, and it does fit me, even though there are lots of ASD people it doesn't fit. Rather than putting out this model to be judged as correct or incorrect, when it's clearly somewhat incorrect, I'm more trying to stake out an opposite pole from the selfishness model of autism, to turn that model on its head. I believe the anti-learning disability model makes more sense than the selfishness model, and is somewhat closer to whatever the truth is.