No, I do not have Asperger's

I am autistic. Some days I can pass for "normal". For some disparate moments, it looks like I "have my shit together".

Language is a special interest and my dyspraxia comes off as clumsiness, resulting in regular stoved toes—"stoved" is a regional variant of "stubbed" by the way, which is interesting because of how close the 'b' and 'v' consonants are and ...—and running into furniture and door jambs.

Sidebar: I am now quite good at falling. I still do the huge "klutz"-moment, but I tend to recover. I've successfully been able to learn those physical movements and can somewhat control my body when I notice it's too late.

I say this because I can type, which is not something easy or even feasible for all of us. Combine my special interests with my desire to help others and with my hyperactivity—check ADHD off your neurodivergence bingo cards—and I used to come off as like a Doctor-Who-esque overly-excited professor.

That was back when I was fully on my game and my 'mask'—also called 'camouflage'—"protected" me by allowing me to choose the type of social stigma I would face. So that role which I found easiest to assume in the environments I was in was the one for me.

Yet, it also "protected" me from being aware of my own needs. I knew since I was 18 that I was autistic and from the first time I heard about ADHD, I knew I was ADHD, too. Yet, I was "functional", I was "productive", I mostly got good grades and graduated college, I taught mathematics.

Sure, I was hospitalized against my will my first year away from home and I was depressed and an outcast and always felt a distance between the friends I thought I had and I also definitely shouldn't have trusted others. 

And sure, in spite of writing fiction from the age of 8, I had never finished any of my "main" stories and if I couldn't do my homework instantaneously it likely didn't get done and it took me ages to return graded exams and I couldn't speak on the phone and I engaged in self-harm. 

And yeah, I mean I literally run away from sound because it's painful and I feel air pressure and hear electricity and commune with animals in ways others couldn't and I was more vulnerable than is ideal to being sexually assaulted and I couldn't say no anyway so...

But I looked productive!

I didn't need to worry about those other things even as I could not pursue a Ph.D., became mired in debt, stuck in adjunct professor jobs without benefits, and I could just, not ever make any progress.

Only in the last few years did I become more aware of my needs. Only since I started living openly as an autistic person. It took me a while longer to accept I am disabled.

My favorite version of the relevant aphorism comes from Alyssa Hillary, they/them/theirs:

"High-functioning means your needs get ignored, low-functioning means your abilities do." 

https://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/2012/05/functioning-labels.html

They are understating it.

"High-functioning" is neurotypical code for "do not need to acknowledge whatever comes after it", while "low-functioning", "severe", "profound", or "disabled" (when coming from a currently-abled person) means we're seen as either an incomplete human or less than human.

"Disabled" is not a bad word and neither is "autism". Attempts to make either of them appear "better" or "worse" are absurd. 

If we are going to assign the levels of the medical diagnosis, then many autistic persons will change between levels, yet the levels still do not tell us of the individual or what they may need or require. And those needs and requirements can change day-to-day and evolve with time.

And the levels are just following in Asperger's footsteps of rating us based on how useful we can be to society, on how "productive" we can be to the Nazi war-machine.

To Asperger, it was about deciding which ones were "worthy of life" (German: "Lebensunwertes Leben" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_unworthy_of_life).

Now, it's more about deciding "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Once labeled autistic, bad actors in our lives can use that to steal away our liberty and happiness using legal means of oppression.

And yes, it's still about life. Taking away supports that make life possible while framing our lives as a burden on our loved ones and then offering MAiD (Medical Assistance in Death) for free is deliberate. As recently as the current pandemic, many autistic and otherwise disabled individuals have had DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) orders forced on them or placed in their file against their will.

We were both a "high-risk" for COVID and first on the "not worth saving" list of hospitals and doctors. The DNR orders were a common experience before the pandemic and will assuredly continue after the pandemic (if there ever is an after).

This is something that affects all of us, both disabled and currently-abled, neurodivergent and neurotypical. Once the canaries are gone, the miners follow. The mining CEO is probably still fine on their yacht of course, and eventually they'll have robot labor so ...

If leaders had listened to disabled voices early in the pandemic, the pandemic might be over by now (it's not over by the way). Then there are the folks who work actively against disabled people such as Autism Speaks. A$ has had a direct impact on the current pandemic and will likely continue to have an impact on future pandemics. Through them, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theory that the MMR vaccine causes or "activates" autism took root and flowered, being watered by their money and propaganda for years after the initial study was deemed fraudulent and retracted.

Children have died because of that propaganda.

Some parents and carers argue in favor of functioning labels because they view resources given to their wards as being finite and also being taken from then in favor of folks who don't need it.

Being autistic is not a one-size fits all approach no matter how you "group" us. Autistic persons regularly have different abilities and needs day-to-day, let alone between different autistic individuals.

It's not like, "Oh, you're Autism 1, you get $20 per day of speech  therapy and $5 per day of physical therapy; you're Autism 2, you get $50 and $100..."

In America, there's a reason why students have IEPs, that's Individualized Education Programs, not Education by Disability-Type Programs. Every disabled person regardless of disability needs to be individually accommodated for. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

And any efforts to enforce one-size-fits-all approaches needs to be fought against.

There's the aphorism "If you've met one Autistic person, then you've met one Autistic person." I tend to frame and contextualize my neurotype by saying something like, "My autism means for me that ..."

Imagine, if you will, a clear white light being shone through a prism. The light is "autism" and the infinite spectrum of colors that comes out is how that autism presents in individuals. Some folks even have stained glass windows that color the light in more extreme directions.

Saying someone is "blue" is ignoring whether the blue came through a tinted window and ignoring cyan, Tiffany blue, cobalt, azure, royal blue, midnight blue, and so many others.

They're still part of the spectrum of light though.

Grouping all autistic persons together as one Autistic People while being mindful of intersectionality and individuals is important for many reasons:

• We share a lot in common, even when it doesn't appear that way to external observers. Our genetics are likely similar (one reason why anti-autism orgs are focused on that).
  
  I can almost always find some part of myself in the stories of another autistic person, no matter their method of communication. Our stories are insight into each other.
  
  
• When we are divided, it is easier to warehouse and "euthanize" us; i.e., "divide and conquer". By all of us being in one group, it makes it easier to argue to outside forces that we deserve human rights.
  
  Remember that the number one "treatment" prescribed for autistic toddlers is torture.
  
  
• We have many smaller groups as every group does. We have individuals who like math and those who loathe it, ones who like trains and ones who hate them, we also have the intersection of other marginalized groups such as race, gender, sexuality, age, language, and more.
  
  If we first separate into arbitrary external labels placed on us by medicine, then those other groups are subdivided even further and may struggle to connect with each other.
  
  Some individuals originally diagnosed with "Asperger's" when or where that was still a diagnosis consider themselves separate from autism and autistic individuals. Those who do that often have a lot of internalized ableism but also are missing a wealth of community knowledge, understanding, and insight.
  
  
• So-called "classic autism"—which includes folks who some parents mistakenly fear will have supports stripped from—has traditionally been made up of white children who are designated male at birth from affluent families.
  
  It is much more difficult to receive an official diagnosis of autism if that doesn't apply to you even though you may have all the markers they check for. It is also more difficult if to receive the diagnosis if you are not diagnosed in early childhood.
  
  
• Due to different cultural expectations, cis women regularly go undiagnosed early on. If a diagnosis is received, it seems more common to have a misdiagnosis of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) or an accurate diagnosis of BPD coupled with a refusal to consider autism as a co-occurring condition.
  
  
• Similarly, Black male children regularly receive a diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) in lieu of a more accurate autism diagnosis.
  
  
• If an individual is known to be trans before they are diagnosed as being autistic, it is likely their autism will be mistaken for "gender confusion" or gender dysphoria or somehow tied up with or stemming with their gender instead of their autism (even though autistic folk are more likely to be trans and vice versa).
  
  
• Autism has a stigma to it still. And that stigma continues to be spread by anti-autism groups like Autism Speaks who profit based on how much public sentiment fears Autistic people and having autistic children.

By reserving the label of "autistic" for those of us who appear to neurotypicals to be the worst—those who have the most obvious needs, who are the easiest to clock in public, who jive with the image of the "autistic bogeyman" spread by our hate groups like A$—we further the stigma we face.

And we also lie to ourselves and harm ourselves if we cling to some "high-functioning" or "Aspie-supremacy" nonsense. We are pretending the mask is our reality. That if we just work a little harder, we'll be able to manage. "No, no, I'll be fine, I've got this. Don't worry."

Even if someone would be classified as "high-functioning" or "level 1", after burnout, trauma, or other events (which are all more likely while masking), they would no longer be diagnosed that way, yet they may still have that mistaken believe that they do not deserve or need support. That if they just work a little harder, dig themselves a little more into the ground, surely they'll dig their way out?

You deserve support.

I have said this before, if masking or any other perceived privilege is conditional or is necessary to ensure one's health or well-being, then that is not a privilege.

At that point you've switched from identifying "privilege" to engaging in comparative suffering.

I'll end with story-time of the last time I identified myself as "having Asperger's".

I have a lot of shame for how I acted that day. I recognized in the moment I was making a mistake, but my fear made me cling to an inaccurate label and not be true to myself.

I also acknowledge that this is something that parents face constantly as they need to repeatedly discuss their child with others and could be part of why they cling to these labels. 

The labels may save you "face" in the moment, but they harm your child and everyone else in the long-run.

Part of living openly as autistic was "coming out" to my classes back when I was still a math professor. I think living openly is a good form of advocacy—although I dream of a day when it would not be considered such—but living openly took more determination or preparedness than I had.

As I was talking about how brains work and process information, I brought up how my brain worked differently and this was a result of me being autistic.

The class of over 40 students went silent.

Let me describe the looks on some of their faces. First, I recognized confusion and bewilderment (unfortunately, a very common expression for a math prof to recognize and one that immediately prompts my, "wait wait, let me explain" mode).

Then, I felt several of them pull back and start to become distrustful of me. They looked at me like, "Why is this person a teacher?"

I'm not sure if it was the first day of class, but it was definitely within the first couple weeks of class. And I had lost them in that moment.

Now, I had a problem, their confusion and their distrust. I had one significantly older student, so one of the ways I came up with "explaining" my condition was to explain how if I had been diagnosed younger, they probably would have diagnosed me as having Asperger's, but that diagnosis doesn't actually exist anymore.

At that moment, I felt pretty bad for relying on a bad explanation, but I had never encountered such a visceral reaction from folks who I needed to trust me to teach them before.

Wow, I'm still trying to rationalize my choice.

The next moment was worse though. Because my internal processing of their expressions caught up and I realized they went from "human they can trust" to "something less than human" and back to "human" again, although less trusting.

I had never faced the stigma of being autistic so clearly before that moment.

I felt physically sick to see what my identity meant to them.

And I promised myself that I would never again describe myself as "having Asperger's" or allow someone else to put that label on me. Others should be the ones who need to confront their mistaken beliefs about autism.

The story continues and gets worse again. After class, I had one student come up to tell me how much it meant to her that I shared I was autistic with the class because she was also autistic but people don't understand and don't believe her because she graduated high school and was in college.

She was still grateful to me even as I early backed away and "protected" myself from my identity. As I made the conscious decision to try to "pass" as an "eccentric professor". As I did an, "I'm not like other girls" of autism.

A significant part of eliminating functioning labels is about solidarity. "Nothing about us without us" sure, but also, "you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us".

Individuals who believe care will be taken from their children to give to folks who are "not really disabled" do not understand that care will be taken from their children if they are successful in isolating them from support, identity, and public perception as human and worthy of human rights.

Any individual person should be approached individually to figure out what works best for them. This is true for both abilities and needs. And this is true for non-disabled persons as well. In disability care, individualized plans are supposed to be the norm already.

There's no "easy, quick" way to give one label and make your needs and abilities known.

Can someone be "profoundly gay" or "severely white"? There are probably some bad stereotypes that just flew through your head, but that doesn't tell us anything beyond what a bad comedy routine from the 90s does. It doesn't tell us anything about the individual.

Sidebar: I hate that I now want to identify as "profoundly queer" 🤦🏻‍♀️

Jokes aside, the Autistic People are not a monolith, but we are one People. It only does harm to all of us if we perpetuate functioning labels. Instead, actually describe needs and abilities and challenge stereotypes. 

Thank you for reading! I keep telling myself I'll do shorter articles and then I just like explaining things too much. 

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