Peak Autism Bodies — Please Catch up.

I really wish that the peak autism groups, the groups that exist to represent advocate and be service providers could please catch up. It’s not hard to discover and understand that autistic people are a very diverse group. We are possibly a group with more diversity within itself than perhaps any other minority group you could find.

Research is emerging and there is beginning to be a genuine body of research that empirically points out to anyone who takes the time to read it that one of the most common aspects of this diversity is in the realm of gender identity. It is a well-known reality to #actuallyautistic folk that quite a lot of us are not cis. Quite a lot of us do not identify with the gender we were assigned at birth. Quite a lot of us identify as trans and gender diverse.

In short in large proportions autistic folk do not fit into the social construct of the gender binary. I have written a bit more about this here https://transtistic.net/q-is-for-queer/ in terms of queerness in general and here https://transtistic.net/g-is-for-gender/ more specifically in terms of gender.

This post is not about proving or explaining all the stuff that goes with this reality, but with that in mind seeks to call out the Autism Peak Bodies that have a role in supporting, advocating, servicing our community to, in effect, get with the darn program and catch up!

Yes, it really is time to catch up. This applies I believe to such groups globally. This is not an issue confined to a local context but is an issue that is in place largely due to a combination of cishet normativity seen as the default and natural order and concern of a ‘what would the parents think’ variety.

I am here to say, well that is just plain wrong. cishet normativity is not the natural order it is just a commonality, a commonality that is an awful lot less common when it comes to the autistic community. And quite frankly if the parents have an issue with ensuring the peak bodies have the capacity to ensure their child is catered for and encouraged to be the very best autistic human they can be then I think they have an issue with being good parents, no let’s be honest they have a problem with being good humans.

This might seem a bit harsh, and sure, maybe it is, but it is also time for these organisations to bite the bullet and shape up to the reality of the life and experiences of a large cohort of the group of people they purport to represent.

As a human person who is trans, there is very little available to me from the autism peak bodies that cater to me. Be that face to face programs, be that support services, be that peer resources, be that informational resources. This is tantamount to neglect of your key stakeholders.

For humans folk who identify under non-binary identities, the support and resources are even less and the face to face spaces to access are few and far between. Again this is tantamount to neglect of one’s key stakeholders.

Now, of course, I don’t just want to be seen as a key stakeholder, I am a human person, but you can bet your life that we autistic folk are identified in their business plans as one of their key stakeholder groups.

Peak bodies it is bloody well time to stop neglecting us catch up with the research, catch up with the embodied knowledge of the autistic community and to catch up and stop leaving us out there on our own with nowhere to turn to find the support we need.

Some will say but this is a queer issue. Well in a way that is correct, but it is just more complex than that, because, it’s intersectional. Yes, there are absolutely lots we can gain and benefit from as queer people from the queer communities, however, there is the intersectional stuff that we can’t get there and we sure as hell are unable to find it in the peak autism groups.

Surely as a peak autism group, at the very least the provision of information around perhaps the most common intersection for autistic folk there is, is the very minimum one could expect. Sadly this is not the case.

Surely these peak autism groups should be looking to support their queer key stakeholders and finding them common supportive programs and services to support them having the best lives they possibly can.

It’s time to catch up peak bodies. We’re autistic and queer, we’re here and we will not live in fear! But we do long for you to hear us, to listen to us, to honour us and to include us.

Originally published at A Transtistic Life.