Confession: I stink at community conflicts. For one thing, I overwhelm easy. Not that this keeps me from raising hell – if anything, I’ll go right for the oppression vector and start (metaphorically) swinging at it, even if it’s burning me out. I tend to wind up in polarized positions — I’m good with that, but it also means that the stakes are higher.
Autistic organizing feels different to me than anything I’ve been a part of politically, though. The closest thing I can think of is the trans community, but even that’s a coalitional effort, and while all of us are marginalized (seriously so), some of us are more oppressed than others, in fairly direct ways. The social dynamic seems to map to being completely fucked, a pretty big apologist, or worse – and from there, the usual range of oppression dynamics apply. Women are more disadvantaged than men, people of color are more disadvantaged than white people, poor and working class people (which is most of us) are more disadvantaged than wealthy people. My running “not a joke” joke about not being sure if it’s the 1950s or the 1590s seems more and more apt, the more I learn. There’s a lot of shit going on against us that’s horrible enough that I don’t even know to what degree I should put it on blast; if anything, the message I get back is “That’s so completely horrible, I don’t even know how to process it”. I didn’t, and I’ve been through some heavy shit. So it’s no surprise that things can wind up very, very polarized.
It’s not like other situations I’ve been in, where I was the one pointing out the inconvenient truths that nobody in some group or collective house or affinity group or whatever didn’t want to address — this is like the truths are right there on the table, in some sort of “Sauron? (Y/N)” sort of way. “Well, let’s try to be reasonable and hear all sides” doesn’t carry much weight, nor should it.
The self-check I’m doing here is that I tend to be a polarizing force in a lot of situation; it’s likely part of my neurology, as well as my background. Which, in a room full of people with similar neurologies (and frequently similar tendencies towards very strong views and tendencies to be all in, do or die as mine), could get…contentious. I’m down for it, though. ✊🏽
There are problems here that I’d love nothing more than to avoid, but I’m pushing myself to stay aware and ready about. There’s no magic potion that makes everybody who’s autistic (or another other category of marginalization and oppression) free of oppressor behavior, nor is there any spell that can make people automagically not have a social impairment.
That said, I think that trying to address social conflicts with more social rules, when someone is “impaired” in a way that affects that, is some sort of sinkhole. Saying “grow a pair” (regardless of gender) isn’t always going to work. There’s approaches that address this, they’re getting underutilized. Presuming a workable level of good faith (as in: I’d actually like to change, but I don’t know how), telling someone why their behavior is harmful, and how that can affect people as a result, works. We learn social situations, we don’t abstract them.
People can use disability to excuse oppressive behaviors as well, though. The current example I’m referring back to these days is “Brooklyn Becky“, who turned out to be alt-right, apparently.
That’s a pretty clear line, even if someone “doesn’t get the rules”. “Anybody who isn’t alt-right: come get your friend and talk some sense to them in a way that they’ll get”. Or just ignore them, because that’s crossing a line that I’m not gonna put up with, nor should anybody else, in my opinion.
The classic “Oh, that’s what that’s about! I didn’t understand how that works. Thank you.” learning pattern is a real thing — it’s just that it’s not *always* true. White people are notorious for playing “I don’t have a problem, you have a problem” games with people of color — and if that doesn’t work, they’ll start making up problems to try to force people into silence. This is far from something that’s unique to the disability rights community, I’ve seen white people in a variety of activist communities do it for years. As much as I’d like there to be an easy solution to this, I think we’re dealing with the same dynamics that exist in the society at large. It’s not pleasant to see allistic social norms, racist social norms, sexist social norms, even ableist social norms being acted upon, but what I keep reminding myself is that it’s not surprising, either — it just needs to be addressed, just as it does in any liberation movement. That’s what I’m here to fight for — the right for *all* of us to live our lives in ways that we want, free of oppression.