Hi everyone! I'm Amythest. And welcome to this week's episode of "Ask an Autistic."
[Music] I wanna write a song
To shine a light
Be the change we want
Set things right
We've been waiting in the dark
For so long [Music ends]
To know if autism is a disability, we have to understand firs what a disability is.
And to know what a disability is, we have to take a look at both the social, and the medical, model of disability.
So let's get started.
What we mean when we say somebody's disabled is that we mean they have an impairment
in one or more areas.
Physically, intellectually, cognitively, sensory-wise, so on and so forth.
So you'd think that the answer to "Who is disabled?"
would be as simple as "Well, people who have impairments are disabled."
But this isn't actually the case, it's not that simple.
Let's start off with the medical model of disability.
The medical model of disability is the model that professionals, like,
doctors and scientists and researchers,
use to look at disability and illness and injury.
It's basically the foundation of how we treat, and help,
sick or injured or disabled people in our society.
The medical model of disability asserts two things.
First, that any deviation from the norm, the average, neurotypical, non-disabled norm,
is bad,
and must be corrected.
Whether or not this difference actually results in any impairments.
Or is inherently harmful in any way.
Two, in the medical model of disability,
the physician is central to the whole model, to the whole process.
Everything from how we understand and look at disability and illness,
to how we treat it, to the way that we think about disability or what it means to be disabled.
The medical model of disability is focused largely on treatment.
That is getting people better.
And that's great if you're sick, if you have an illness or a disease,
but what if you are disabled?
What if you have a developmental disability like autism?
Well the medical model of disability is all about
making everybody the same.
Making sure everybody is non-disabled,
not sick, not ill, has no diseases, but in a lot of cases that's just not a realistic goal.
There are a lot of illnesses and disabilities that you just can't cure.
And of course, science keeps trying.
And the medical model facilitates that really well.
But when it comes to people who have disabilities that affect them
developmentally or cognitively, the medical model of disability states that we should try to
make them as normal as possible.
Bring them up to everybody else's level.
And what about the people who don't want to be cured?
Something that's very prevalent in our culture and that informs peoples ideas about
disability is cure culture.
This is especially obvious if you're a part of the community like the autistic community.
We are autistic.
And we are born autistic.
And there are lots of us from everywhere on the autism spectrum who actually don't want
to be non-autistic.
We like who we are, as we are.
even if it's tough sometimes and we wouldn't want to be cured.
Cure culture is an especially insidious thing because it asserts that any difference is bad.
Even if that difference isn't harmful or isn't an impairment.
or doesn't make somebody's life more difficult.
A large part of being autistic
is just the autistic neurotype.
Things about us and our brains
that inform how we experience the world and how we learn and develop.
And these aren't bad things, they're just different.
Like most autistic people have special interests.
And this is defined as a narrow but deep field of interest or passion.
Some doctors call it an obsession or fixation.
Basically a topic that an autistic person is very interested in.
They love it a lot, they want to know everything about it.
It's not a wrong way to be passionate about something, it's not a wrong way to
have a hobby or enjoy your free time it's just different.
And yet, it's pathologised in our society.
Because autism is considered a disability. Cure culture is a big part of this.
A lot of parents who buy into the cure culture believe
that they should stop their child from exhibiting any stereotypical autistic behaviours
because disability is bad.
It's just so deeply ingrained in our culture that anything different,
is scary, and hard to understand, and bad, and shameful, and gross.
So things like forcing your child to stop stimming,
or to make eye contact, or
trying to redirect their special interest,
which is, you know, often not effective,
these things are actually hurting the autistic child
more than just letting them be autistic, letting them be themselves.
So this cure culture,
this culture of cure says that
autistic children have to be cured and if they can't be cured then they have to be
taught to look as normal as possible.
This has sprung out of the medical model of disability.
For as long as abled people have been talking about disability,
there have been disabled people.
Who have their own ideas about what disability is and what it means to be disabled.
In the '70s disability rights activists
from the UK coined the term 'social model of disability'.
And this is a response to the medical model of disability.
The social model of disability asserts two things.
Firstly, while a person may have impairments,
a physical, or mental, or sensory, or cognitive impairment,
it is not the impairment that disables them.
It is society.
It is society's exclusion of and failure to think of and accomodate for
people's impairments that disables people.
And secondly, that when it comes to understanding illness and disability,
it is the disabled people and the ill people
who should be the centre of this discussion
and the focus.
And that the idea shouldn't be trying to make everybody
as normal or non-disabled as possible
asserting in the process that any difference from the norm is wrong and bad
but that each person should be treated as an individual.
And their impairments as well as their strengths should be taken into account when they are
being accommodated for.
So while the medical model of disability is great for treating things like
illness and injury,
and it has brought us a lot of advancements in medicine and in science,
it's done a really, really poor job at
accommodating or facilitating for people with disabilities in the past.
Especially socially.
And that's a huge thing because if, like, the social model of disability says
we are disabled by society then that is a huge void.
And the social model of disability seeks to fill that void.
Somebody who can't hear may never be able to hear.
But this only causes them problems when, a) they're in a society composed
mostly of people who can hear
and so their society and all of it's systems have been built around people who can hear
and 2, when the fact that they cannot hear is not accommodated for.
So while a deaf person may have a physical or a neurological impairment,
that causes them to be unable to hear,
they are disabled by society.
When they aren't allowed access to the same level of education as everyone else,
when they are discriminated against in employment situations,
for being deaf, and in other situations like when ASL translators aren't provided for them.
An autistic person who has sensory integration issues,
or a person with Sensory Processing Disorder,
will always have sensory integration issues,
but it's only when society either is un-thinking of or actively chooses to ignore
a person with sensory integration issues's limits and capabilities,
that that person with sensory integration issues
is unable to go into a certain store or attend a certain event
If our planet were populated mostly by autistic people,
and non-autistic people were in the minority,
the autism would not be considered a disability.
Allism would.
To come back around to the original question of this video,
"Is autism a disability?"
I personally agree with the social model of disability.
In that autistic people may have impairments,
but it's only because we are the minority in our society
and because society fails to accommodate for our impairments or for our different needs,
that we are disabled.
That being said, the words 'disability' and 'disabled' have come to mean
'have impairments' in our society.
And so I do, I call myself disabled and I do identify as somebody with a disability.
But when it comes down to it, I know and understand that I'm disabled by a society.
And by people's treatment of me and their judgement.
And that the hardest thing to deal with about being autistic,
is the non-autistic people.
Who don't understand.
So, cure culture.
This culture of cure.
This idea that any kind of difference from the norm is wrong and that
disability has to be corrected
and that autism is something inherently terrible and there's nothing good about it,
this cure culture,
is perpetuated by organisations like Autism Speaks.
And other organisations and businesses who stand to gain a lot of money from autism treatments and therapy.
Unfortunately, this culture of cure has lead, and is still leading to,
the mistreatment of autistic and disabled people today.
But in the same way that cure culture sprang out of the medical model of disability,
neurodiversity, the neurodiversity movement sprang out of the social model of disability.
Since this video is on the topic of disability and whether or not autism is a disability,
I'd like to clear up a misunderstanding that a lot of people have about neurodiversity.
Neurodiversity does not say that autistic people don't have impairments.
Neurodiversity also doesn't say that autistic people are better than non-autistic people,
or that autistic people don't need any help.
Neurodiversity doesn't seek to erase the hard or challenging
parts of being autistic, the impairments.
But instead asserts that it is society that disables autistic people.
Neurodiversity does not say that autistic people are superior beings,
it says that all brains are great and different.
And that everybody has their own strengths and challenges.
And neurodiversity isn't just for those 'high functioning' autistics.
Those of us who can speak verbally,
or who can attend school, or hold down a job.
Neurodiversity doesn't claim that autistic people don't need help.
A lot of us have impairments including co-morbid conditions alongside our autism.
So yeah, we do need some accommodation.
And some understanding.
And mostly acceptance.
Neurodiversity just says that autistic people, are people too.
And that we have the same rights as everybody else.
And that we deserve to be accepted and understood in our society.
I know I covered a lot of information in a short amount of time,
so I'm going to include tons of links below for further reading on the topic
of the social model, the medical model, neurodiversity and disability,
disability rights.
So if you're interested in reading further, feel free to check out the links in the video description,
and if you have a topic for a future video that you would like to see discussed,
by me, feel free to submit it in the comments section below or message it to me.
Thank you for watching my video!
[Music] I wanna write a song,
to shine a light,
be the change we want,
set things right,
we've been waiting in the dark, for so long.