This is something I’ve touched on in this blog, however briefly: the wonderful (or not so wonderful) world of autism and so-called official diagnoses.
Among other not-so-pleasant things, autism is frequently depicted as the newest “trend diagnosis,” especially within online circles. We only need look to Dennis Leary’s or Michael Savage’s tirades this past summer to get an idea of the over-the-top vitriol surrounding this assessment. Moreover, such comments about overdiagnosis appear despite autism specialists proclaiming that autism is underdiagnosed.
Autistic writers such as Thomas McKean have argued that there is an “ethos” problem within the autistic community, that adult-diagnosed or self-diagnosed individuals have little to no place in the discussions that surround autism and autistics. The folks at autistics.org penned an excellent follow-up to McKean’s assertions. Of course, in addition to the overdiagnosis brouhaha, we have the high-functioning/low-functioning division, that clever binary employed as a mechanism to diminish the ethos of those autistics who do self-advocate.
I want to explore this diagnosis issue more, however, because I think it’s an issue that really needs to be addressed. Many so-called debates in autism discourse seem to prevent autistics from self-advocating, from entering into anything resembling an autistic culture — anything to further someone else’s agenda.
My own experiences with “diagnosis” and “assessment” are mixed. I first learned that I “likely” had Asperger’s when I was a teenager, around the time I dropped out of high school. Of course, the individuals providing such an assessment were not autism specialists, nor could they document my condition “officially.” Something similar happened in college — I sought out counseling at a couple junctures, and was again told that I had Asperger’s… unofficially. In fact, I didn’t become an “official” autistic (ugh) until I began working on my MA degree. What to make of this?
I should note that my age(s) of “diagnosis,” while somewhat older, are not that uncommon (especially for women), and thus I think I’m generally afforded a fairly strong ethos when I participate in autistic communities. But, nonetheless, some people only latch onto the official designation, which occurred when I was of college age. (For example, one autistic person I know in real life, when he learned of my age at official diagnosis, commented that I must be “extremely mild.” I resisted the urge to punch him in the face.)
Contrary to the beliefs of the interwebz, I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be autistic. I was passively labeled as autistic before I ever agentively labeled myself as autistic. I suppose I could have (or my parents could have) more vigorously pursued officialness when I was a child. But, for personal reasons, we didn’t go that route — at least not at that point in my life. However, there was something clearly different about me from birth. (Yes. That early.) Nobody recognized that something as Asperger’s until I was much older — partly because Asperger’s itself wasn’t even an official diagnosis until I was a fifth grader, partly because Asperger’s wasn’t widely and publicly recognized and diagnosed until I was nearly college-aged, and partly because autism has largely been seen as a “boy thing.”
This is all very personal, personal in a way I don’t quite feel comfortable writing about. However, I write this because I’d like to think that, eventually, both the autistic community and the autism community could move away from this obsession with age and diagnosis, as if somehow a 40-year-old diagnosee is either more “helpless” because she “lacked early intervention” or is less autistic because “nobody noticed it sooner.” Do we really, truly believe this nonsense?
Obviously, diagnosis can and does serve a purpose. It allows, legally, for access and accommodation. For many, diagnosis is validating and/or leads to self-understanding. Diagnosis can explain a lot. But there are some things that diagnosis just plain isn’t and just plain shouldn’t be. (For example, why must someone possess a legally binding document, a document that probably required oodles of out-of-pocket money, in order to receive an accommodation? In the words of my interwebz friends, WTF?)
I think we, as a community of autistics, need to recognize the structures embedded in diagnosis first and foremost: whether you’re examined by fourteen neurologists at age three or one clinical psychologist at age fifty-three, you can still call yourself an autistic and self-advocate with that ethos. Accordingly, even if you don’t have an official diagnosis, you should still be able to contribute to the larger autistic community, to be a part of this community.
Why are autistics making social outcasts out of other autistics? Are we not already outcasted enough on a daily basis? Autistics are individuals. Autistics are diverse. Autistics come from different places. Get over your own shiny brand of autism and get used to it.
My own reaction upon first learning about autism was that of fear and shame, mainly because fear and shame were the emotions I’d been programmed into feeling about autism. I’d never come across anything remotely positive in association with autism (and these were the days before I’d become truly acquainted with the internet). I welcomed unofficialness because I didn’t desire stigma, because I didn’t comprehend the fullness and richness of autism, because I didn’t come to autism from a lens of difference or diversity — I only understood autism as depressingly embedded in deficit. It took a long while for me to reshape my views of autism and myself. Although self-diagnosis generally refers to those individuals who voraciously read and learn everything they can about ASD and then recognize themselves in the label, I tend to see self-diagnosis more along the lines of self-recognition or self-identification.
I suppose this post is the result of a pent-up reaction to snarky comments I’ve seen in autistic web forums and listservs, snarky comments made about others. But I’ve also been triggered into annoyance mode by in-person questions. Lately, I’ve been greeted with the when were you diagnosed? question more often than usual, it seems.
I don’t really know how to answer that question. In a lot of ways, it seems invasive: why the hell does it matter? It’s not as if the autism latched to my brain one day in grade 9, and, as a result, I’m not as malignantly autistic as the kid diagnosed at age two. In a lot of ways, I feel as if this question is wrapped in a medical model, or a disease model, of autism and disability. To me, it suggests the idea of a severity continuum, as if teens and adults shouldn’t be diagnosed with autism by the sheer fact that they’re adults, as if only the little helpless children matter, as if only kids are “severe” and in need of “services.”
Moreover, anyone who claims to be autistic and not suffering has to be a joke, right? Why not find every means possible to discredit them — age of diagnosis, self-diagnosis, adulthood, gender, sexuality (gasp! autistic and sexual in the same sentence?), IQ, so-called “functioning” level, speaking style, writing style, stim style, income bracket, and on and on… </sarcasm>
Amanda Baggs has felt the need to post her official documentation online, which, I’m guessing, is due to some of the horrible, doubting comments she’s received on her blog. (One of the sessions I attended at CCCC, on autism and rhetoric, commented on this. The presentation was made by April Mann.) It’s as if people believe that personhood entirely precludes autism — forget the age or officialness debates. How long do autistics need to keep defending themselves? How long until our ethos is a legitimate one? Highly rhetorical questions, I know.
But back to that dreaded question: when were you diagnosed? I struggle with how to answer this concisely. I struggle with whether I should answer it. I struggle with writing this blog post. I feel as though I need to regurgitate the official diagnosis as my answer, even though I knew several years beforehand. But then there’s also the age at which I self-identified, the age at which I embraced my autism, which is a different matter entirely to most who ask the question — but to me, that moment is the important one, more important than the moments that involved paperwork and stacking cubes.
I suppose, as an autistic writer, concision has never really been my strong point? 😉