Why ‘you don’t seem autistic’ is not a compliment.
[tw: autism-specific ableism]I’m generally a lot more verbal than is comfortable for me because, like most things about my autism, I’ve learned to suppress it. I hold in every stim, every tiptoe walk, every animal noise and every ‘weird’ hand movement. I force myself to be as conventionally social as I can, carefully paying attention to my words and voice so as to not appear weird.
I do all this because over my life, I’ve been forced to by allistic folk. I’ve been told I can help it, that I’m weird, that I’m disruptive, that I’m fucked up… So for my own protection, I make myself act like you. It’s hard and I fuck up and it hurts. I get unbearably stressed from this and it makes me a lot easier to trigger.
So when I’m told that I “don’t act autistic!” and this is meant to be a compliment, or when people say i give them hope for their autistic relatives, it hurts me. You’re praising me for the damage allistic folk have done to me over the years and you’re hoping someone will break your relative like this too.
I want to walk on my tiptoes and flap my hands and make odd noises and never make eye contact because that’s just who I am and I shouldn’t have to suppress any of that for my own safety.
