Edited version of a post on Random Reminiscing Ramblings.
A_few weeks ago something happened that, at the time, seemed very much like the sort of bullying and exclusion that I first became familiar with in kindergarten. The person didn't mean it like that, ey just expressed emself in a clumsy manner, but I didn't know that at the time. However, when it happened, my reaction to it was basically "oh, okay".
Despite the fact that it was a close friend who did it, despite knowing nowadays that the behaviour was ableist, despite ey being one of the very few people I've finally managed to get myself to trust in some small way... Despite all these things, my immediate reaction was still "oh, just another friend turned bully, what a shame, but to be expected".
When I realised how I had reacted, I became furious. Furious with myself, for still reflexively accepting bullying and abusive behaviour as normal and expected, even though I should know better. Even though I now have friends who I'm almost certain won't just turn into bullies one day with no prior warning, the way my former 'friends' used to do in school and later at various workplaces, the fears and impulses created by the past are still there, as potent as ever.
This is largely the result of what's commonly called 'mainstreaming', i.e. I was put in a large building with hundreds of individuals who had an intense, seemingly instinctive dislike of me, and I had to return there day after day, year after year, no matter what they did to me. If I complained to an adult, I was either disbelieved or outright suspected of lying and manipulation (since my face didn't twitch the right way), or in rare cases believed but still not helped in any way.
I tried solving the problem myself by staying in the classroom, or sitting in one of the deserted corridors, or going to the school library, but sooner or later an adult would find me and tell me to "go out and play". I tried very hard to explain that I was perfectly happy where I was, but it didn't help. They were sure they knew better, and nothing I said could change their minds.
If I had to choose a single sentence to summarise this entire entry, it would be this; if you're a parent, teacher or wossname, please make sure that your spectrum child has a refuge at school or wherever ey is. A place where ey can feel safe and not be at the mercy of the other children. I know that many fear that their child will miss out on important social skills training, but there are far better places for such things than a schoolyard.
As an example, here are just a few of the things I learned during the training that my teachers didn't want me to miss out on:
Evidently I did learn social rules by being forced to spend my breaks in the schoolyard, but I believe that they're not the kind of rules that most parents would want their children to learn. These and many other very defective rules are what I still use by default, even though know intellectually that there's something wrong with them, since they've become so deeply ingrained after being consistently confirmed during the first twenty-five years of my life. They're the result of the systematic bullying, abuse and forceful exclusion that a vast majority of autistic people are forced to endure in the name of 'normalisation' and 'mainstreaming'.
I've only listed a few of the rules I've learned over the years, since I haven't put more than a handful of them into words yet. I'm still finding and putting words to them, one at a time, and asking people I trust whether or not they're correct. Some of them are so weird that I realise myself that they're broken when I actually analyse them, but each and every one of them were once my best effort at trying to make sense of an abusive and intolerant world, and many of them have long since become basic assumptions.
The struggle to get rid of these rules and replace them with saner ones is far from over for me. However, I hope that writing about it will spare someone else from one day having to unlearn the same sort of things.
© elmindreda