Public Autistic Meltdown - Tumblr Posts
cw: ableism against neurodivergent folks, discussion of police violence, contains a personal story about a negative interaction with security officers
Most of the time I exist in a strange middle ground where I pass as neurotypical to some, albeit a weird one while some people just assume I’m autistic. Part of the reason why I want to get a diagnosis is because while yes, people who assume I’m autistic sometimes treat me like a child, I rarely encounter outright hostility with them when I can’t hide my autistic traits. Neurotypicals seem to need to have a diagnosis disclosed to them before they’re willing to tolerate perceived strangeness. It’s that thing where it’s okay to bully someone for autistic traits, but it magically becomes discrimination when the person discloses a diagnosis. I see people talking about this a lot, but I want to emphasize the potential danger of not being able to prove your autism.
In meltdown, I have had campus security called on me. Fair enough. I couldn’t stop screaming. I can see how that might scare someone. They wouldn’t believe me that I wasn’t high. I had to give them way more personal information than I should have had to to convince them that I was not, in fact, taking drugs I wasn’t prescribed. I had to tell them what medications I was on, convince them that I was taking them, tell who my psychiatrist was, and that I was on a wait list for a therapist before they would stop trying to convince me to admit I was high. Before they would treat me like a person and not a threat. I essentially had to prove that I was an acceptable mentally ill to them.
First I say, so what if I had been high? So what if I wasn’t being "appropriately managed?" Even in those cases, it is not helpful and potentially dangerous for the person in crisis to treat them like they’re a threat. That’s ableist. Requiring people to convince you that they are receiving or pursuing certain treatments or otherwise meet specific standards of respectability before you treat them like a person is ableist.
What if I had been having a verbal shut down that day? I was barely able to talk at all in that moment. Speaking felt physically painful and I was struggling to form complete sentences. I was lucky I was able to communicate the necessary details to earn safety from them. What if I hadn’t been able to? What if they had been real cops? What if I hadn’t been able to say "no touch" or communicate other basic needs and the situation escalated?
What if I had had an autism card? That situation would have been much less terrifying. I would feel safer going out in public knowing that if I get upset and can’t communicate, I have a diagnosis other people are likely to believe to back me up. I can make my own warning card with instructions on how to help me, but ultimately, people don’t listen to disabled people, they listen to their doctors. If I say I’m autistic to an authority figure and later on I can’t prove it, I will be in trouble.
The same way I hope people in my classes assume I’m autistic so they are willing to be tolerant of my autistic traits, I hope people who can genuinely hurt me assume in my worst moments that I am autistic so they won’t fucking tase me.
If I, a white person, a housed person, am worried about being hurt because I can’t be clear about my autism, imagine what it’s like for people from other demographics that are already more vulnerable to police violence. People who are also less likely to receive an official diagnosis.
I am willing to discuss this and would love to hear other people’s perspectives, but I will not be debating people about my choice to self-diagnose.