I have noticed disturbing similarities between nonautistic people who are hellbent on finding a cure for autism, and nonplurals who evangelise integration as the universal treatment for all plurality, whether it falls under the classic definition of MPD/DID or not.
Both of them, I feel, seem deeply uncomfortable with the idea of neurological variation being something other than a dangerous pathology. When defending their pro-cure stance, they will invariably cite “their brother who smears faeces” or “their dysfunctional cousin whose ‘personalities’ have destroyed her life.” It is always the most extreme cases, nearly calculated to elicit disgust in the general population, that these people use in order to invalidate the idea that all neurological variance should be eliminated.
Empowerment is never an option; it is always cure. Because being neurotypical is the only acceptable state. There are no exceptions. I could draw further comparisons, to the anti-LGBT religious fundamentalists who advocate reparative therapy for queer people. Only straight sexuality and cisgender identity are acceptable. No deviation is permitted. You must be assimilated. They, too, trot out the worst examples of LGBT people in order to invalidate the entire movement.
This makes me feel deeply uncomfortable as a member of a plural system on the autistic spectrum, whose individual behaviour appears autistic. It does not seem like a considered evaluation of neurological difference; it feels like a visceral reaction to the idea that someone does vary from them, and that there is a challenge to the way in which they perceive personhood. Since humans are considered social animals, the idea that there is a subset of humans that does not derive the same experience from social interaction, and has different reactions to other environmental stimuli, makes them incredibly uncomfortable. What, then, does it mean to be human, if there is this group of people that “are human in a different way”? Plurality, too, challenges their notions of what the self means—if many selves within one brain can exist, is it possible that I, too, could be many? That I may have to share my thoughts, that the notion of privacy or identity could be more complicated than what it initially was on the surface?
The singular obsession with cure and healing also reminds me far too much of the eugenicist policies favoured in the United States and in Western Europe in the early twentieth century. Psychiatrists and academics relished drawing up hierarchical diagnostic schemas and creating Great Chains of Being, and consigning anyone who was considered “substandard” to abusive, soul-destroying institutions. The rise of Autism Speaks (and its predecessor, Cure Autism Now) in the past decade is simply repeating the sordid history of the suppression of disabled communities, and words cannot describe how much I loathe Autism Speaks and organisations that are philosophically akin to it.
It feels deeply adversarial. Us against them, combat neurodiversity, combat difference.
Combat me, combat Kerry, combat Hess, combat the majority of our closest friends. Crush the lives and ambitions of real, living, breathing people, because there is something that they perceive is challenging. Threatening.
My goal is to encourage people to accept complexity in identity, and to realise that variance, in and of itself, is not to simply be eliminated.
