Autism Month x Disability Justice

Recently, many autism self-advocates have been calling for April to move beyond Autism Acceptance Month (also known as Autism Awareness Month), and now for it to be renamed a neutrally toned “Autism Month”.  The given reasoning is that Autistic individuals know that our neurotype(s) carry both positive and negative traits, the same as anyone else’s.  No one requires any additional words in the phrase “National Poetry Month”.  The merit of the literary form stands, and so do the merits of the neurotype.  In exploring this from a disability justice perspective, a central curiosity emerged:

In an era of eugenics and misinformation, how can we bring the principles of disability justice to the ways that autism is discussed in April (and everyday)?

INTERSECTIONALITY

If we always begin here, as the nexus, or the center of our circle, “we do not live single issue lives” – nowhere is that more evident than when discussing the month of April and Autism.  The month calls for celebration.  The shifts in nature have created long-standing and ancient rituals in communities globally, whether religious or secular, each creating a flower in a bouquet.  As we observe them, we can notice that here the adage “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” rings true as always.  It’s no less true for how each of us feels about Autism / Acceptance / Awareness Month, which also shares a stage with Minority Health Month, and Black Maternal Health Week, here in the US.  These and other worthy causes to celebrate, bring awareness, and acceptance, like World Autism Day, all feel at home in a month celebrating poetry and the change of the seasons.

COMMITMENT TO SOLIDARITY

Disability Justice principles call for commitments to cross-movement and cross-disability solidarity, as those allow us to build our interdependence and sustain our movement, communities, and lives.  In this moment, it feels compelling to also build a cross-understanding solidarity to meet individuals in the autistic community and their families where they are with Autism.  Autism was initially a term invented in 1911 by a German researcher attempting to define symptoms of what he thought was schizophrenia, while Asperger's, a diagnosis invented by a nazi of the same name– both have roots in harmful practices.  This, and other basic awarenesses about the Autism spectrum are still not held among many allistic individuals, and for that reason, Autism Awareness month may be most effective for those spaces, and for individuals moving in and out of them.

Autism Acceptance Month may resonate most with autistic individuals who feel they want to be seen, recognized, and held by an allistic world. At the same time, Autism Month may appeal to those who are building a protective bubble against it, made of other neurokin and fellow disabled individuals.

RECOGNIZING WHOLENESS

Language is an evolving, evolutionary, imperfect & imprecise tool. The beautiful irony of trying to fine-tune language about something that not only is an abstract embodiment, but that is explicitly explored and expressed by so many of us as the absence of words is not lost.

To recognize the wholeness of the experience of being autistic is to understand that it cannot always be accurately interpreted or defined with language at all.  It cannot be co-opted by any one symbol.  It is already by its essence, anti-capitalist; it can’t be branded or color-coded.

Therefore, no one perspective on how autism feels, affects me, or you, our loved ones, or community, is or can be accurate.  No diagnostic narratives can hold us.  You know how the human eye is limited in the color spectrum that it can see?  So too is the human tongue limited in how and whether it can describe the spectrum of autism.

LEADERSHIP OF THE MOST IMPACTED

So will we one day envision April as Autism Justice Month?  Is justice too limited a word for what we will ask for, and when? 

Will we stop using language to express or justify all of this altogether?  These are questions we get to answer, all together.  If we embrace collective access, we can understand that although we may falter, we are all moving together towards collective liberation, in April, and every month.