Can We Discuss Concerning the Time period “Low Help Wants”? — THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Content Note: Mention of death and of a deceased person
Can we talk about the term “low support needs”? It looks like you all just took the term “high functioning,” switched “high” with “low,” and added two different words at the end. The problem is ableds read these terms the same way.
I know you thought they would read them differently—that you would fake them out switching the “high” and “low”—but it didn’t work out that way.
I would like a term to describe myself, as just one person among many many autistics, but the problem is ableds hear, “low support needs” and think, “OK then it’s fine to round down to zero.”
Except it isn’t. And… this is pretty much the exact same thing they thought, and enacted, back when it was OK to say “high functioning.”
And the other thing is, I actually DO have support needs that are not low. But I am terrified to express them in a public forum like this. Don’t blame me or internalized ableism for that (I have internalized ableism, but not in this respect).
This place is full of nice people. The internet and its search engines aren’t. It is a real threat that someone would read this, if I wrote about my actual support needs, and use it as a pretext to steal my child.
I write under my real name because I am a real person. But, no, I will not fall into ableds’ trap of writing under my real name about my actual support needs.
When I told my parents I was pregnant, my “high functioning” autistic father (I put the term in quotes because that’s how he thinks of himself, not because it’s OK) immediately jumped to the conclusion that I would be unfit. I proved him wrong, but it does not matter. The prejudice that led him to make that assumption, and express it to me, when I was trying to share the joy of my very wanted pregnancy… it is still there. It is unexamined and unchanged.
Why yes, there is intergenerational trauma in my multigenerational autistic family. We still cannot speak about my deceased autistic brother. (How “low support needs” is he, I wonder? He is dead, on the one hand, and requires little ongoing support to remain so. On the other, supporting his memory from falling prey to disgusting lies is quite the trial, at times.)
I am seem as cr*zy for insisting on the truths I do insist on, and wanting to raise my own autistic child away from at least some of their lies.
They will be furious that I wrote this.
This is only within my family, not our wider society. Not the agencies; not the prying eyes of schools and daycares; not the sensory hell of most public spaces; not the Individual Education Plan administrators who insist I communicate with them about my autistic child like a non-autistic parent, or bust. (Have I mentioned “bust” is always a very real option to them, and most of the others? Because it is.)
Nor my employer. Nor my landlord. Nor my vet. (OK, my vet is maybe autistic too and in any case does not think I am automatically an unfit cat parent just because I am autistic too. Go vets.)
There is no space for me to safely express ANY of my needs.
So don’t ask me to pretend my needs are “low.” They’ve never been low. Literally never.
And if you want to learn why and how… consider fixing the circumstances that make it impossible for me to state them here under my real name.
Then I will consider expressing them. Communicating them. Or trying to, anyway.
Not before.
Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay
