I learned a new term recently – Aspie Supremacist. I had an ah-ha moment this week and wanted to share my thoughts on where I think this mind-set comes from.
I just had this aha moment, thinking about Aspie supremacists, and if you don’t know what an Aspie supremacist is I didn’t know until very recently. It’s someone who uses their Aspergers diagnosis to paint themselves as better than someone who has the autism diagnosis.
Despite the fact that the Aspergers diagnosis is being phased out and moving forward in most parts of the world people are only being diagnosed as autism and no longer Aspergers. Not saying that if you have the Aspergers diagnosis that you can’t continue to identify as Aspergers if that’s already more comfortable for you.
Here’s the issue, you know I’m driving to work and I have this epiphany, this aha moment, you know where people with Aspergers want to separate themselves from autistics. People with Aspergers are like yeah the autistics have something really wrong with them us people with Aspergers are just really really smart, and that’s not OK.
And I haven’t really know what to say or do with this information but I had a big aha moment about the nature of these kinds. Where these thoughts come from? I wanted to share something with you very personal, when I was growing up I did some time in a special ed classroom. And I remember wanting to differentiate myself from the other kids in special ed, and I was not diagnosed at this time. So I didn’t have any diagnosis, I was just a problem and they put me in special ed.
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The other kids, you know people treated them like there was something wrong with them, and I was convinced there was nothing wrong with me, and so, I needed to separate myself, you know, and this is elementary school, so first grade probably, or second grade, third grade, I’m not sure of the exact year.
But I felt a really strong need to differentiate myself from the other kids, but it wasn’t because there was anything wrong with the other kids it was because the people around, like the teachers and the other kids, around the special needs kids and the special needs classroom treated these special needs kids like they were broken. And I, had a strong feeling that I wasn’t broken and that’s why I needed to separate myself from the other special eds kids like in my head a category, I had to draw a hard category there.
And I don’t see it this way now, but I just had this complete flashback to being my little self sitting in the special ed classroom and looking at those other kids and all of a sudden you know everything that was in my head is just back. I understood. I was able to take the perspective of you know the Aspies who…. you know I don’t really want to use that word, but that’s the word they often used for themselves, the Aspergers people who really you know are like ‘Autism is this but Aspergers is this’ and they really want to make that divide even though you know medical science is getting rid of that divide at this point… in most of the world
…but they really want to hang onto that, and it’s not, I don’t think it’s because they think there’s anything wrong with autistics I think it’s because everyone around them is saying that there’s something wrong with autistics.
And that’s more on this stigma we’ve got a problem with, is that society tells everyone that being autistic is so horrible and that it’s a tragedy and that we need to cure autistic people and that we need to help them, so they can lead more normal lives and be more normal, and fuck… why do… excuse my language. But what if we don’t wanna be normal or lead normal lives? Like you know normal quote normal, like what if we don’t want to do the same things that everyone else does?
What if we want to live our lives differently? Why does that have to be a problem? But you know that’s a whole other conversation, but these are just my thoughts, so I don’t know if I’m going to share this I’m just doing a voice memo on my phone right now I’ve got it sitting in my lap and I’m driving, because I don’t want to lose these thoughts because it’s hard for me to keep words in my head. And I don’t know, I hope I can share these thoughts. I’m going to go back and listen to them to see if they make sense. Anyway, I’m going to sign out.
Transcriptions thanks to