I have had experience with ableism for my entire life. I was diagnosed at a very young age with autism. This was already somewhat unusual, as girls are less likely than boys to be diagnosed with autism, especially in very early childhood. I was diagnosed again in my early teens, solidifying my diagnosis.
Growing up, although I was aware of my autism, I often felt very out of place. In school, I was often labeled as the “weird” girl. Granted, I was “weird” socially. This was because of my autism. However, I had been given no resources with which to be able to better understand my disability or help cope with it throughout school. I am still “weird” in social settings, and I will always be. But when I was younger, I didn’t understand what it was about me that gave other children the notion that I was so “weird” and “different.”
I didn’t have much interaction with other disabled kids, especially not kids who shared my disability, so I didn’t have the opportunity to see that my version of “normal” was simply different from the average child’s version of “normal.” Instead, I tried so hard to fit into a definition of “normal” that would never quite fit. Because of this, most people can barely tell that I’m autistic. In fact, some people have said I should be re-tested again, because clearly some sort of mistake has been made. But in reality, my autism is no better or worse than anyone else’s. It just affects me differently than other autistics.
The lack of representation and delay in learning about how my disability affected me caused me to feel like something was horribly wrong with me. I didn’t understand why I was a certain way and couldn’t seem to do much to fix it. People not realizing I had autism, felt they could make comments about other autistic people around me that were rather negative, causing me to perceive myself negatively as well.
I get a lot of comments that I don’t “look” autistic. Most people with mental or cognitive disabilities, especially autism, find these sort of comments to be intensely insensitive. There is no way to “look” autistic, so how can one appear to be non-autistic if there isn’t even an associated look? There’s a stereotype of autistic people standing out like a sore thumb because of some extreme difference in social behavior, and if your autism doesn’t have much of an impact on other people, it’s considered “mild” and almost like you don’t have it. Just because someone’s autism doesn’t have much of an impact on you, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a solid impact on them. And even if someone’s autism has a decent impact on other people, that doesn’t make them less human or mean that they have less of an independent voice.
There will likely be people who invalidate my experience because of those stereotypes and erroneous preconceptions, but how other people see my autism does not change the affect it has on me. I still have sensory overload, I still stim, I still have issues correctly understanding body language and the art of sarcasm. I have executive function problems, which is especially hard to cope with in a world that expects maximum productivity. Large crowds in small spaces can bring me to the edge of a meltdown.
While I’m not an authority, I know what it is like to experience ableism. Although it will never be quite to the level more visibly disabled people or people with several disabilities have experienced, I have still gained an understanding of how dehumanizing and harmful ableism can be to disabled people.