My Fellow Disabled White Dudes: A Thread #BlackLivesMatter

The following is a Twitter thread I composed four days ago which I'm archiving here: 

I want to take a hot minute to call in my fellow disabled white guys. Look, I know it stings to be told we have white male privilege right now. I understand the urge to get defensive. I know a lot of poorly-worded viral tweets and hashtags have felt like punching down. 

I understand the unintentional pain that caused. Assholes trying to radicalise you to the Right will try to abuse it to tell you that the Left hates you, that they'll abandon you, abuse you. They'll try to tap into your fears as a vulnerable person. I know this because they used the same tactic to (almost) successfully radicalise me in the Ancient BeforeTimes of post-election 2016. I was scared. I was vulnerable. I was a prime target, and they knew it, and I bought in just to feel safe and wanted. 

The Right, and the MRA and anti-Feminist and MAGA cults all want you to believe that acknowledging our privilege means self-flagellating, self-hating, and self-abuse. Maintaining that ignorance suits them down to the ground. The way out is knowledge, compassion and self-love. 

So let me break this down: My fellow disabled dudes, nobody has ever wanted us to blame ourselves, or feel bad about advantages we happen to have in life that we didn't ask for. If anyone did, they're an asshole. Every movement has bad actors. Nature of the game. Fuck them. 

Remember that one history class where we all learned that women got the vote because men cried about how bad they felt for being mean, or MLK won civil rights because white people felt bad enough? No. Come on, that's never been helpful. No one useful wants that. 

BUT (I like BIG BUTS, and I cannot lie) it is helpful, and useful, and necessary to acknowledge the advantages our privilege affords us. That's something we all need to be doing. It stings, yeah: but the fact is, being white and male helps a lot, regardless. Take me, for instance: is it my fault Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger just happened to pick out exclusively white boys when they were developing the concept of autism/Asperger's, and our idea of who could/couldn't have autism in the 1940s? No. Should I feel bad? Also no. 

BIG BUT (ha :P ), it would be foolish of me to fail to recognise and understand that that original white-boy-centric view gives me a huge advantage today, even after 80 years. When we think "autism", we think "white boy" whether we want to or not. It's just a fact. That tendency means that, today, being a 7-year-old white boy is everything when it comes to getting the right diagnosis. 

It's meant that in my life, I:

1) Got a correct diagnosis immediately, with no backtalk or gaslighting from the medical establishment.

2) I got immediate access to help and resources and support from a very early age, including speech therapy which helped a working class kid sound MIDDLE-CLASS. Huge personal and professional bonus benefit; and,

3) It has got to be acknowledged, I've seen a hell of a lot more leniency in the face of "challenging behaviour" with autism from authority figures that I honestly don't believe any woman or girl or person of colour could even dream of seeing. 

Women and girls with autism face entrenched medical sexism that misdiagnoses them with personality disorders which blame them for their own condition, and people of colour both struggle to access support and have their difficult autistic behaviour blamed on their race. 

Moreover, white autistic men and boys are just accepted. Nobody tells them outright that they can't be autistic, because we all think we know that it's a white boys' club, no girls allowed. 

I say again: nobody is blaming us for this. Nobody wants us to feel bad about this. None of us asked to get a head start in life, especially if we're already further back from the starting line than non-disabled people; but if we're serious about not wanting to be treated badly for being disabled, the litmus test for that is to not want other disabled people who don't look like us to be treated even worse than we are. 

Fellow DWD's: Let's take this time to recognise that a high tide raises all ships. We will all benefit by acknowledging our privilege (not beating ourselves up over it, just admitting that it's there) and moving forward together in a spirit of solidarity. #BlackLivesMatter