“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”
We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”
Or “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” That happened a lot, too, especially before the 19th century.
Or, backing up FURTHER
and lots of people think this very likely,
“Oh little Sionnat has obviously been taken by the fairies and they’ve left us a Changeling Child who knows too much, and asks strange questions, and uses words she shouldn’t know, and watches everything with her big dark eyes, clearly a Fairy Child and not a Human Like Us.”
The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost textbook depiction of autistic children.
To this day, “autism warrior mommies” talk about autism “stealing” their “sweet normal child” and have this idea of “getting their real baby back” which (in the face of modern science) indicates how the human psyche actually does deal with finding out their kid acts unlike what they expected.
Given this evidence, and how common we now know autism actually is, the Changeling myth is almost definitely the result of people’s confusion at the development of autistic children.
Weirdly enough, that legend is now comforting to me.
I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. I’m only a little bit autistic; I can pass for neurotypical for short periods if I work really hard at it. I have a lack of talent in social situations, and I’m prone to sensory overload or you might notice me stimming.
But here’s the thing: life is louder, brighter and more intense and confusing than it has ever been. I live on the edge of London and I rarely go into the centre of town because it’s too overwhelming. If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.
I’m not trying to romanticise the past because I know it was hard, dirty work with a constant risk of premature death. I don’t actually want to be a 16th century farmer! What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. When you make people more disabled, you start to see more people struggling, failing at school because they’re overwhelmed, freaking out at the sound of electric hand dryers and so on. And suddenly it looks like there’s millions more autistic people than existed before.
“…disability exists in the context of the environment.”
Reblog for disability commentary.
That really is it. And this goes back to the faux-evolution social darwinists who insist, wrongly, that disabilities and neurodiversity make people “unfit.”
It didn’t matter that some early hominids had ADHD. They were perfectly capable of surviving and reproducing.
One case of “disability exists in the context of the environment” is early European settlement of Martha’s Vineyard. Due to some genetic happenstance starting in 1718, by 1854 Martha’s Vineyard ended up with a deaf population of 1 in 25 residents (the national average was 1 in 5728).
Everyone there was at least closely acquainted with a deaf person, if not related to a deaf person, or deaf themself. Sending deaf children away wasn’t an option because there weren’t facilities for them on the mainland, nor could families afford to lose the labor of their able bodied, deaf kids. So the community needed to have a way to communicate with and incorporate deaf citizens. By 1854 everyone in the settlements were fluent in sign language, church sermons were delivered in sign and English. The deaf people of Martha’s Vineyard did not perceive themselves as disabled, nor did their hearing peers. It was barely more notable that a person was deaf than it was that a person had green eyes.
When Gallaudet University was founded, it began as a boarding school for children and many of the first students came from Martha’s Vineyard. Those students who were from elsewhere came to the school with almost no language skills, having lived their lives in isolation. Those from MV showed up with a fully formed language and literacy, their ability and aptitude completely changed the way deaf people’s intelligence was perceived. Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language formed the basis and provided much of the grammar of what is now American Sign Language.
Eventually the deaf children of Martha’s Vineyard moved to the mainland to attend school specifically tailored to them, much of the rest of the population followed, to move to cities like Boston and New York. And with this migration came the end of the island’s attitude toward deafness. American society views deafness as a disability and puts the onus of communication and accessibility largely on the deaf person, rather on the population as a whole. ASL is an American language, essential and non-optional in the lives of half a million Americans. But how many hearing people use ASL if they, themselves, do not know someone who is deaf? How many public grammar or high schools offer it as a course?
If more people knew their regional/national sign language and if captioning was more widely available would deafness still be a disability, or just a difference?
(Source: mooniicorn, via uristmcdorf)
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