Autistics Speaking Day yet again

 Jane Strauss writes Autistics Speaking Day yet again on Facebook

Wow.

This year I was caught unawares. Probably because part of the “inner circle” of Autistics has, in some ways, decided I am not valid enough to be informed. I don’t fit with their “social justice” which holds that Parents have to be their kids’ friends, that my people are less valid in our indigenous-ness than groups which invaded the Levant over a thousand years after our civilization developed there, that my unapologetic cis hetero nature and old fashioned understanding of pronouns are somehow evil. I am not “successful” enough as they define it, to be a valid presenter in their events. I am not made in their (often decades younger) image.

But guess what?

I am still autistic, still a parent, still Jewish, still a fighter. I have gone back to fighting locally. I have retreated from the conference circuit. I am not wasting my time on the Large Established Organizations, whose primary purposes seem to be erecting a barrier between “professionals” and “clients” actually living with boots on the ground, placating (neurotypical) parents and professionals, and perpetuating their own existence. I have become disgusted, in this very political year, with all kinds of politics - organizational, interpersonal, national and local. I have retreated into the shadows.

I have begun working with some others on a new kind of organization, one which may be flexible enough to develop new models, responsive models, respectful models of support.

And, at bottom, the same old same old continues.

Autistic adults ask for help - and it isn’t what the World wants to give.

Schools, health care, government agencies ignore legal mandates while grabbing funds, cranking on their merry way.

Autistic kids are forced by the Powers That Be to see themselves as broken.

The world turns, what goes around comes around, somehow, something has to change or give, though there is no apparent human response on the horizon.

And in other news, the sky appears blue.