Alright so I’m about to go off.

Recently I was talking to one of my friends about this teacher she has, and she said (and I quote), “He talks to me like I’m autistic or smthn”. And this isn’t the first time she’s said things like this either. I’ve asked her not to say these things before, and her response was basically, “You’ll have to excuse me”. Not “Sorry I’ll stop,” and not even “I’ll try to do better”. It was an “I’m gonna keep doing it and you’ll just have to deal”. And like honestly they’re such obviously offensive things to say, so I don’t know why she says them. It should be common knowledge that you don’t use those words, even (especially) as a joke, whether it be autist, autism, or the R-word.

I absolutely hate the fact that the word autistic has come to have such negative connotations. I hate that it has become synonymous to stupid. Because it’s not. Autistic people are just the same as allistic people in the sense that, hey, maybe you weren’t aware of this, but we have feelings. We have interests and we have brains and we know what you’re saying about us. So stop. Stop using our condition as a joke. We aren’t. We aren’t your free entertainment. We aren’t a punchline. We are human beings and we deserve respect.

I’ve grown up being ashamed of my autism. I’ve grown up wanting to hide it from everyone, being petrified of what might happen should anyone ever find out. I’ve grown up hiding it, because if I tell people, then I’ll be the one they poke fun at, the one they whisper about and call “special” when they think no one is listening.

I shouldn’t have to hide! I shouldn’t feel like I won’t be accepted for who I am. I shouldn’t have to listen to people making jokes about a part of my identity. I shouldn’t have to push down my anger or my hurt because people think it’s funny to use autism as a joke.

So how about we change that? How about we stop abusing people on the spectrum and start treating them like actual human beings? How about we stop using autism as a joke, and start respecting people?