My Existence is Unthinkable

It’s a day late for Autistics Speaking Day, but I just had an experience that reminded me just how unthinkable it is that I exist.

So. Today I was on Facebook, reading status updates, when I got an ad for a bracelet to “fight autism”. This is offensive. This is vile. This is an ad being served to me telling me that something fundamental to who I am is a thing that must be fought, because they presume that, because I talk about it:

1. I must be an allistic parent of an Autistic child, rather than an Autistic person myself.
2. That the only thing to do is “fight autism”. That nobody on facebook who talks about autisticness would have any other view than that “fighting autism” is a good thing and a priority.

This isn’t the first ad to remind me that anyone who uses the keywords I do (“autistic”, which I use way more than “autism”. I should talk about the theory behind this sometime, because I have one. It’s actually, in its own way, “person first”). I get ads that presume I’m a parent rather than Autistic all the time. When I care to, I block them and mark them “offensive” or “against my views”.

I have never once seen an ad on Facebook presuming that the reader was Autistic.

Ever.

Not once.

Instead I get assumed to be someone I’m not. Only. I get the assumption that my political beliefs on autisticness are the opposite of what they actually are. Only. The idea that I might be an Autistic person who does not want to be cured is entirely unthinkable.

How unthinkable it is that I exist as a trans woman is a story for another day. But I have experience in that vein, too.