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.”

  • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Arbiter@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.