Dear clinicians/educators who work with autistic people: When you talk about your students/clients/etc with other team members, ask yourself how the conversation would sound to an autistic clinician. If someone on the team was autistic, how would your words affect them?
Because let me tell you, when I get to the end of a long and stressful day, when I've spent all my mental energy spent on masking and compensating for executive dysfunction, I have *nothing* left to protect myself when a colleague says something hurtful about autism.
"But Speech Autist, how can your coworkers know not to say ableist things if they don't know you're autistic?" It seems simple to me. Stop being ableist. But that bar, it seems, is too high. So here's a strategy that I am BEGGING people in my field to use instead:
When chatting with team members about autism or an autistic person, no matter WHAT the circumstances, pretend there's an autistic adult listening to every word. Maybe it's one of your colleagues. Maybe it's a made-up person in the corner. It doesn't matter. They can HEAR you.
How does it feel to use phrases like "red flags" and "those POOR FAMILIES" when you KNOW your words also apply to someone in the room? How does it feel to say autism without ID isn't "real autism?" How does it feel to say that autistic people are a constant burden on you?
Oh look, someone is treating "autistic" and "enjoyable to work with" as mutually exclusive terms again. Someone else just implied that no one would ever want to be friends with an autistic person who doesn't mask. Well, isn't that awkward for the autistic person in the room?
Does it feel uncomfortable? It should. So stop doing it. Make an effort to never ever say anything about autism that you wouldn't say directly to an autistic person. Why?
1) The attitude you have about autistic people when you think we aren't around WILL find it's way into your interactions with us. You may try not to let it, but it will. Probably without you noticing. But guess who WILL notice?
2) Depending on the number of coworkers you interact with, there is a good chance that one or more of them is autistic. Maybe they know it, maybe they don't. But the longer your career goes, the more likely it is that you've talked to an autistic person without realizing it.
3) Because I'm not the only autistic person who hides my Dx at work. I'm not the only autistic person who has to listen to coworkers say demeaning things about people like me. And I'm definitely not the only autist who's tired. Like. Really tired.
Anyway that's all I have. TL;DR: stop being ableist. Just stop. I'm so tired.
