The Autism Conference (A Story About Functioning Labels)

"If a horse is sick,

you don't ask a fish what's wrong with the horse.

You go right to the horse's mouth."

~Carly Fleishmann, nonspeaking autistic

Inspired by part of this post from Tumblr user lauralot89.

This is a work of fiction, which does not make the very real ideas presented within any less painful.

Scheduled conferences about autism are a regular thing in this world. They're held all the time, and whenever a conference is coming up, autistic people sneak into the room a little beforehand. We're required by the neurotypicals (NTs) to wear a label, large and bright, so everyone can see the label just by looking at us. There are only two labels: High and Low.

The Highs are verbal, and the Lows are not - that's the only thing consistent in these groups. Some Highs and Lows alike are able to work. Some have live-in caregivers or are still living with their parents. Some drive, or are able to rely on public transportation in their area to get where they need to go. None of this is really taken into consideration when we receive a label. All that matters is whether or not we can speak.

When we are all together, the labels don't matter. We understand each other. When someone needs to leave the room to get some space, it doesn't matter if they are a High or a Low. When a Low shows us a new way of communicating - whether by typing, writing, using text-to-speech, PECS, or anything else - everyone else, High and Low alike, pays attention and adapts so they don't feel left out. We have people just like us here, and that's invaluable.

But now the conference is beginning. In come the NTs. They look around the room at us and sigh. They don't want to have a meeting this way.

The Highs voice that they want to participate, but are sent outside anyway. "You aren't anything like the Lows. I know you have a diagnosis from a professional, but you act differently than we expected; clearly, you'll never know what it's like to really have autism. You can do things the Lows will never be able to do, which we know for a fact, because we're fortune-tellers and can predict the next half-century or more of every single Low's life. Oh, I know it's an autism conference, but we're only going to talk about Lows. Go play outside."

Next, they pat the Lows on the head and smile, telling them very slowly that it's fine to stay in the room, but all of them have to sit under the table. Won't that be fun? Please don't bother us. We have important things to talk about. Okay? Do you un-der-stand?

They begin the conference.

"My son is a Low!" one NT announces. "It's just such an awful burden on the whole family. Yesterday he banged his head on the wall so hard, I had to make sure he didn't have a concussion. Didn't he take the time to think about how hard it is on me to do something when he's in pain? Oh, and before he banged his head, he'd been trying for more than fifteen minutes to ask me to turn my music down a little because it was too loud. Do you think that might have something to do with it?"

Her son sits at her feet under the table. He can hear every word, but because he is a Low, she's decided he can't possibly understand. She's also taken the tablet he uses to communicate, so he can't possibly interject and "bother" them by explaining his head-banging is a stim, a way to cope with being so overloaded by the music that he couldn't think.

The conference goes on in much the same manner. Once in a while a Low will try to get their attention and communicate that they hate the labels, or that the Highs know more about autism than NTs do, or that NTs make too many assumptions about them. Each one is met with a polite chuckle and a Very nice, dear, in the manner one would respond to a five-year-old, except that many of the Lows are full-grown adults.

The Highs rap on the window, try the door over and over, do everything they can think of to try and get inside. NTs roll their eyes at them and go back to talking.

"So I was thinking, we should really figure out how to cure autism, or invent a prenatal test to abort autistic fetuses," one announces. "I'm not autistic myself, and I've never asked a single autistic person about it, but I just know all 70,000,000* or so of them desperately wish they weren't autistic or had never even been born. I think we should - "

"Wait a second. Where's that one father who was here last week?" another interrupts to ask.

"Oh, you mean Melissa Stoddard's dad! He was charged with her murder."

"What, really?"

"Yup. Just like London McCabe's mom, Chad Jackson's mom, Daniel Corby's mom, and Jeremy Bostick's dad."

"Wow. Those poor parents, they were so overwhelmed, they must have just snapped."

Outside, the Highs begin to weep. They weep not just for the names mentioned, but also for Katie McCarron, Ryan Davies, Scarlett Chen, Christopher DeGroot, and so many others. They weep because none of the words at the autism conference are aimed towards the autistics themselves, the ones who were tortured, or starved, or poisoned, or beaten, or neglected, or any other number of unspeakable things.

A NT sighs, hearing their sobs. "Now I understand why we don't let them stay inside when we have meetings," he declares. "They're so rude, acting like that while we're right here trying to discuss. Don't they have any empathy for other people?"

The Lows are still huddled under the table. They have been crying for some time.

(* Roughly 1% of the world population is autistic. Source here. The world population is over seven billion as of this writing, which equals over seventy million autistic people worldwide. For comparison, the United States has a population of nearly 319 million, meaning there are over three million autistics in this country alone.)