“Autistic people have commonality but we are different from each other, and sometimes we are going to make mistakes and get it wrong because we didn’t know about your environmental needs or because we failed to take them into account. We are not here to send you into a meltdown. Please vocalise what you need, assume good faith and give us goodwill in supporting us trying to accommodate you – you will rarely be the only person with that need and we want to be as inclusive as possible of our people.
Autistic people very commonly have conditions such as but not limited to, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia, dysexecutive functioning, epilepsy, depression, gastric problems, allergies and all of those disorders that appear to be fancy medical titles for other aspects of autism. There is a strong correlation for autistic people to have minority sexual and gender identities. Along with this, many autistic people also have physical and mental disabilities just like neurotypical people. Autistic people exist in all genders, nationalities, ethnicities, religious and political persuasions. The Autistic Empire is committed to a diverse and inclusive society, recognising that this makes us stronger rather than weaker.
As part of an inclusive society, we all have to recognise the fact that sometimes access needs clash (the visually impaired person who uses a guide dog and the person who has a phobia of or allergy to dogs, for example, or the parent who has to bring their baby to an event where there are people who are highly sensitive to the sound of loud crying) and that there are simply some limitations on what we have the resources to provide (BSL interpreters, Changing Places toilets). As a matter of policy, we will strive to eliminate structural barriers to participation throughout the Empire and where we are unable to meet all access needs, we will do our best to ensure that across our entire programme of activity, everyone will be able to participate somewhere.”
This is an organisation made up of people who are all legally disabled. Obviously even minorities can be guilty of behaving in ways that are exclusionary towards that minority because of our social conditioning, but what this means is that there is a higher bar to demonstrating that we are ableist, then just saying “these people are ableist”. We can take on board and consider any specific criticisms of aspect of our processes, but dismissing this or that group as ableist is a common attitude thrown around by certain groups of people, and that does not mean that we are or that we have to accept those kinds of attitudes.
It is entirely understandable with this in our history, that some of the things that we say might have echoes to some people of aspie supremacy. However, the second and fifth principles of the Autistic Empire were specifically formulated to push back against both neurotypicals who seek to divide and conquer us based on how autistic we do or don’t seem, and aspie supremacists who do not feel any obligation to be polite or care for aspies who aren’t as smart as they are.
From our original briefing document:
Up to a third of autistic people do not speak. A third have learning disabilities. Maybe a fifth have epilepsy. Many have profound and multiple co-existing conditions that are painful, intolerable, and have few upsides. The Autistic Empire does not as a matter of policy pretend that this is not the case.
But saying that autism is a disorder because some autistic people have learning disabilities or medical conditions is like someone going to a doctor with period pain and being told their diagnosis is that they’re a woman. It’s a potential thing that happens to certain women, but it doesn’t mean there’s anything inherently flawed about being a woman.
There are some people in our community who want to create a separation between Aspergic people, and autistic people, with the idea being that Aspergic people have been blessed with intelligence and insight and independence from emotions and sensory whims and our autistic siblings – haven’t. This is not the position of the Autistic Empire.
We don’t know exactly what causes autism and why it manifests in one person as a love of strong colours and in another as a hatred of them, but the same combination of genes and hormones and whatever factors that gave some the skills to code like a fiend meant that other people grew up in wheelchairs. Autistic people are the only people who really know how they feel. And autistic people, verbal or not, are the only people who can communicate with us in a language we instinctively understand and never had to learn. There is no them and us. There is one autistic community, and we are responsible for each other.
The Autistic Empire will not leave anyone behind.”
Every minority surrounded by a majority have to make decisions about what extent they want to separate or assimilate from that majority. Every autistic person has to decide for themselves to what extent they are willing to compromise their identity or their behaviour in order to fit in with that majority. That also means that we are then responsible for the consequences of those choices.
If an autistic person becomes aware that they engage in behaviour that is alienating to other people, whether they are autistic or neurotypical, they have to choose to what extent they are willing to change that behaviour in order to be accepted. No-one is obliged to associate with a person if they do not derive happiness or pleasure from associating with them. The goal of the Autistic Empire is to help people to gain the self-knowledge necessary to make those choices about their behaviour and be content with them.”
These and the other three principles were all recorded as our very first podcast episode in October 2017, which can be sent to anyone who has such concerns:
From the original briefing document:
“The use of the term empire was to invert the general power dynamic of autistic groups seeking acceptance from a neurotypical society, to an empowered community, moving forward, in command of its own destiny. And an empire must have an emperor.
As a culture, autistic people are very good at arguing, debating, and analysis and not so good at reaching conclusions or plans of action. Many movements of autistic people that have tried to date have fallen apart or remained very small because we were not sufficiently trained in empathy and we struggle to read the intentions of others, so trust is either too readily given or withheld altogether. Non-hierarchical communities of autistic people, including in communities that weren’t about being autistic, have often been derailed or held back by the obsessive interests of a few on technical points.
The Autistic Empire aims to be efficient, effective, and swift. There is nearly always a trade-off between efficiency and democracy and we’re choosing efficiency. This does not, however, mean that we’re just going to blunder forward and declare ourselves the representatives of the autistic community. That trust must be earned, and we recognise that and aim to be responsive to the feedback of our citizens as much as operationally possible.”
The Autistic Empire was founded based on a vision. “The Autistic Empire is an autistic social organisation built by and for autistic adults to form community based on autism as a civic identity and to provide practical tools and services for all autistic people.” If people do not agree with that vision, then we are not an organisation that they want to join, indeed not an organisation that they *should* join, because they will be unhappy – and so will we!
So we have a vision and a focus, and this is not up for debate. If someone is an ideological anarchist and just doesn’t like the idea of a hierarchical organisation, nothing is going to persuade them otherwise. If someone holds the belief that any use of the word “imperial” is nothing less than an invocation of colonialism, then there is no point in engaging them on that, because it is inherent to their worldview. In the event that such people make such criticisms, all one can do is politely disagree, and move on. We can only change minds through success.
There is also a lot of anxiety among autistic people who feel like imposters, that they have no “right” to claim they are autistic, who find diagnosis to be a third party validation of who they are which comes as a relief to them. But diagnosis by a psychiatrist is still seeing autism as some kind of medical disorder, which is why we’re working on an alternative.