I'm not saying you won't get questioned if you're neurotypical. What I'm saying is, when you are questioned, people won't try to justify it because you're neurotypical (and therefore less capable of good judgement).
It's an intolerant and stupid thing either way; no less so for a neurotypical person, but there's an additional layer of socially acceptable "shielding" when doing such with autistic or otherwise neuro-atypical people because we're popularly thought of as being unable to exercise clear judgement or even self-awareness. Even people who wouldn't agree with the open statement "autistics/others lack self-awareness/the ability to make good decisions" still behave in ways that show they believe it, sometimes even when it contradicts other things they believe.
We have to deal with that in all areas of our lives, whether we're queer/trans/whatever or not. It gets used reflexively to justify oppressive statements of all kinds about us anyway.
Someone may suggest you can't really be trans or you don't know what you're thinking/doing or you're mistaken, but they are exercising transphobia over you; whereas when they couch it in terms of ability, they are exercising transphobia *and* ablism over us.
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Date: 2009-07-29 14:51 (UTC)From:I'm not saying you won't get questioned if you're neurotypical. What I'm saying is, when you are questioned, people won't try to justify it because you're neurotypical (and therefore less capable of good judgement).
It's an intolerant and stupid thing either way; no less so for a neurotypical person, but there's an additional layer of socially acceptable "shielding" when doing such with autistic or otherwise neuro-atypical people because we're popularly thought of as being unable to exercise clear judgement or even self-awareness. Even people who wouldn't agree with the open statement "autistics/others lack self-awareness/the ability to make good decisions" still behave in ways that show they believe it, sometimes even when it contradicts other things they believe.
We have to deal with that in all areas of our lives, whether we're queer/trans/whatever or not. It gets used reflexively to justify oppressive statements of all kinds about us anyway.
Someone may suggest you can't really be trans or you don't know what you're thinking/doing or you're mistaken, but they are exercising transphobia over you; whereas when they couch it in terms of ability, they are exercising transphobia *and* ablism over us.