I read this article this morning and here are some highlights I think you’ll appreciate
“The core difference between masked Autistics and PDA Autistics tends to be their approaches to external expectations. Masked Autistics strive to game out unspoken social rules, and to perform the roles expected of them, in order to avoid detection as disabled. PDA Autistics, in contrast, are often viscerally incapable of doing so.”
“But the line between a masker and a PDAer is shaky, and may really just be a matter of one’s point of view. An Autistic person who strives with all their might to be easygoing and agreeable might still be viewed by ableist outsiders as too emotionally flat and hard to be around. Even when we parrot social scripts perfectly, research shows that neurotypicals still dislike us. So in many ways, masking and PDA are just two sides of the same isolating coin.”
“PDAers are often misdiagnosed with related disorders such as ADHD or oppositional defiant disorder as children, or with conditions like Borderline Personality Disorder or Narcissistic Personality Disorder as adults. Though the PDA profile of Autism has been championed by a number of parents’ groups and clinicians, it currently is not listed in either the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, or the International Classifications of Diseases.”
“People sometimes get very attached to an understanding of disability that is rooted in biology, because they believe that is the only explanation that grants them permission to not function up to society’s punishing, impossible standards. But the reality is that neurotypicality’s punishing standards are not attainable to anyone, and so nobody should feel defective or broken for failing to meet up to them.”
“While it may bring relief for a parent to believe their PDA Autistic child is failing to meet standards because of something neurologically wrong with them, questioning the standards themselves will prove way more fruitful.”
“In a world where Autistics are conditioned to become passive and compliant, I’m thankful that my reflex is to reject and disappoint instead. It’s a good thing that sometimes I can be a little difficult to deal with.”
“As a public-facing Autistic person, I receive many worried emails from the parents of PDA Autistic kids. They want my advice for how to “make” their kids feel better, “make” their kids do better, “encourage” their kids to do more. Instead, I wish most people could be more like PDAers. Perhaps if we all collectively refused to be pressured into painful compliance, the world would already be a lot more friendly to difference of all sorts.”
I agree with pretty much all of this, and it is a great perspective, but I also think it’s really really important to point out along side it that the fact that this trait (which I share) has so far protected you is probably a mixture of luck and privilege, and that many people in many situations can and have gotten in to a lot of shit (again, myself included), or worse, killed, because of these traits.
Police officers for example, hate nothing more than (Black people, but also) someone who doesn’t respect their authority, and they will use that authority to hurt us, no matter how little we think of it, no matter how much we try to explain our disability, if anything, it just makes them want to hurt us more.
Now obviously that’s their fault and them who need to change, not us, but we live in an ableist world that doesn’t seem very willing to change, and so we need to keep the very real risks in mind alongside highlighting the positives.
I would argue that is an issue caused by systematic racism, if PDA wasn’t what trips the cop off it would be something else.
And I wouldn’t argue at all.
I never said that racism isn’t an issue, or am “all lives matter”-ing, but this is a disability related space, and a disability specific discussion, and we’re allowed to talk about how we’re oppressed for our disability, which we are (and absolutely not just because PDA).
Will someone being Black put them at even higher risk? Of course! I literally said “privilege” in general helped OP, and one of the biggest privileges is whiteness, I assumed that was obvious and didn’t need spelling out.
But even if I hadn’t said that, the existence of racism doesn’t take away disability also being a massive factor for oppression, and ableism being just as systemic and institutionalised a problem.Don’t be the “oppression Olympics” person, it’s not helpful.
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In other words: Fuck em
Thanks so much for sharing this!
Well this hits close to home…in a good way I guess…(I mean I was diagnosed 10 years ago and I think the PDA aspect of myself went into overdrive in the opposite direction around “what would the Dr know and I’ve done just fine for myself until now anyway” - only been the last couple of years I’ve slowly started to “accept” myself as actually autistic…)
It can be good to challenge authority when it’s called for, I mean, I’m the person my friends (nearly all are NT) when they want to know about situations (legal and workplace in particular) and what they can do to fight back… challenge authority as I am all for it, but it still needs to be done within the bounds of not getting into serious hot water over it as well.
In that sense it has helped me as well. Plenty of situations where they don’t expect people to stand up for themselves or understand the laws (which I have used to protect myself over the years in things like real estate leases, employment etc)
But the flip side is challenging every little thing that seems wrong. I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve been into a HR office for formal counselling over the years because of refusal or being “argumentative” or just flat out “not a good fit for the business”…so yeah like everything it’s not a feature it’s a bug that probably needs work in my case…but where do you ever start after so many years anyway sigh
Yeah I love this.
Yeah this is good. I love this.
Love this! Thanks for sharing! Still figuring out my self diagnosis and this definitely provides some interesting insights!
That put a lot into a new perspective for me. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for sharing these highlights! Got a link to the full article? 🙏
The link is between the post title and the highlights provided. The box next to the post title should also work. This is assuming you are on the desktop version and not one of the apps though, I don’t know what those look like.
Ohhh… I see haha 😅 Thanks for explaining! (In case anyone else runs into this: seems like I couldn’t see it due to a bug in the Lemmy client I’m using - no problems if I view the post in browser)
It’s there!
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