Seeing the Person
Things not to say to autistic, ADHD, and others with a diagnosis of a neurological ‘disorder’ or to their parents:
-But you/they don’t look autistic (or ADHD etc);
-Labels are silly;
-Labels don’t define you;
-See the person, not the label;
-Everyone’s ‘different’;
-Everyone's 'odd';
-Everyone’s ‘on the spectrum.’
People whosay such things mean well, but actually need to listen and learn rather than presume that an autistic person is feeling vulnerable and seeking reassurance that there is nothing wrong with them and that they belong. Such 'reassurance' always tells the autistic person that they really are on the outside and effectively denies their voice and their experience. It is the voice of the autistic person that most needs to be heard here, not the voice of the well-meaning but ignorant advisereproducing and reinforcing all the wrong associations. Diagnosis comes with definition and labelling. Whilst it is wise to be wary of the dangers of negative associations and stereotypes, it remains true that without the definition and the label, an autistic person becomes just like everyone else, just another anonymous face ‘on the spectrum.’
An autistic person is an autistic person, something much more than a ‘person with autism,’ a person with a label that can be put to one side, ignored, shed.
The phrase ‘see the person not the label’ is one that rather grates with me. Any labelling that is associated with negative assumptions and connotations is indeed to be resisted, but this is a question that runs deeper than labelling itself to address the definition of autism. All too often autism is defined in the negative terms of impairment and deficiency, with positive qualities coming to be ignored. It is these negative connotations of autism that lead well-meaning people to presume they are being enlightened and compassionate when rejecting labels and definitions. In other words, the negative model of autism is the one that is uppermost in their mind. Rejecting the label in order to embrace ‘the person’ has the result of denying and devaluing a person’s autism as ‘a very bad thing.’ They talk as if the person can be freed from the weight of definition and thereby freed of their autism as a burdensome condition. This betrays an almost total lack of understanding, and serves to reproduce the negative connotations of autism.
The definition and the label come with the diagnosis. It is a short step from denying the label to denying the definition and denying the diagnosis. That denial is based on the presumption of the very thing that stands in need of being challenged – the negative definition of autism as disability and impairment.
The diagnosis is valuable and desirable. With diagnosis the path is cleared towards self-knowledge. Denial and denigration here is based on the assumption of autism as a negative. Seeing the person and not the label is tantamount to saying that we value the person despite his or her condition. This is wrong and has to change. A person’s autistic condition is not a matter of definition and societal labelling but of a person’s very being. In other words, we need to reject the negative connotations associated with labelling and ‘see the person’ as autistic to the core of their very being. That’s something to be valued and celebrated, not denied and devalued.
