Links to previous installments in this series:
Part 1: Revisiting the Dark Ages
Part 2: Obvious Definitions of Ableism
Part 5: Is "Overcoming" Worth It?
In my last post, I discussed the fine line between accommodation and infantilization. Infantilization is just a symptom of the bigger picture of how many of us are viewed, and that can be summed up in the word "immature."
Many of us who came of age before the 21st century grew up hearing the word "immature", to describe them (and let's be real, some autistic kids growing up today likely do too). And many people, myself included, are sick to death of it. Fortunately, I rarely hear it these days, but I strongly suspect that's more to do with rigorous training in "overcoming" coupled with an accident of nature as to just what my autism profile looks like than improved understanding on the part of neurotypicals in my life.
Right now I can hear someone saying, "Oh, well if their social skills are underdeveloped, isn't it right to call them immature?"
Oh, my God, where do I even start?
Maybe it would be fine if not for the baggage that the word carries and the fact that people usually use it to reprimand others. Let me elucidate with an analogy: Would you ever call someone with an intellectual disability "stupid"? No, you wouldn't, and most people would consider you an asshole if you did. Why? Because it is not a neutral descriptor for people with intellectual disabilities, but rather a crass, dismissive word with a lot of baggage. When people use the word "stupid" these days, they use it for someone with average or above average intelligence who is acting willfully ignorant or foolish. For example, you might call an adult "stupid" for running a red light. You might call a teenager "stupid" for trying cocaine. You might call your neighbor "stupid" for saying that homosexuality is a mental illness. But when you do so, you are reprimanding them; the understanding is inherent that these people should have known better. In fact, it's certain that they did know better but didn't care.
To call someone with an intellectual disability "stupid" dismisses the very real cognitive limitations that are beyond their control for a variety of complex neurobiological reasons. It also carries the implication that they somehow made themselves that way and don't deserve to be treated with respect. In fact, I think it would be ableist to call someone with an intellectual disability "stupid." At the very least, it's tactless.
I would like to present the argument that the same could be said about the word "immature" for autistic people. Before I continue, I want to emphasize that I don't want to be the "word police" and insist that anybody who uses the word "immature" is guilty of ableism. It's this kind of orthodoxy that I want to avoid. Let's just consider and discuss the issue.
"Immature" is used in a similar manner as "stupid," to reprimand someone for an attitude or action when they certainly knew better. We might call a teenager "immature" for playing video games in his room during a family gathering. We might call an adult "immature" for changing the channel to a football game without asking the others who were watching a movie if it was okay to do so. We might call a ten-year-old child "immature" for screaming and throwing things because her parents wouldn't buy the American Girl doll they promised her for her birthday. In the case of neurotypical people engaging in such behaviors, it is probably safe to say that these were the behaviors of someone acting entitled or selfish, and it would be okay to use the word "immature" to reprimand them.
However, an autistic person could do these exact same things for very different reasons. The teenager playing video games in his room during a family gathering might be trying to get away from the overwhelming crowd and loud noises. The adult who changed the channel to a football game might have missed the cue that everyone else was engaged in the movie. And yes, the ten-year-old girl's reaction to not getting a doll she wanted can also be the result of something more complex than Veruca Salt-style selfishness and entitlement. In fact, her behavior that people might be quick to label "immature" is not a temper tantrum, but what is known in the world of autism as a meltdown. Before you, dear reader, accuse me of getting into semantics, let me explain the critical difference between a temper tantrum and a meltdown. They are indeed very different, even if they look the same on a superficial level.
A temper tantrum is something that young children do to manipulate a situation and get what they want. A neurotypical child might throw a temper tantrum when her parents won't buy her the doll she wanted, and she hopes her actions will make them yield to her demands; she is very much in control of her behavior, at least to a degree. After several firm "no"s and, hell, a half hour to calm down, she'll forget about it and go on with her life.
A meltdown, on the other hand, is the result of being so overwhelmed by strong emotions, of a brain that experiences life more intensely than its neurotypical counterparts, that the person loses control. While it might be difficult to appreciate why a ten-year-old girl could experience such strong emotions about a doll, let me remind you that we on the spectrum have a propensity to fixate (which, unfortunately, many people also see as a sign of immaturity instead of different neurological makeup). This hypothetical girl has spent the month leading up to her birthday thinking about the doll literally nonstop, something that neurotypical children-- even younger neurotypical children-- generally don't do. When she eventually learns that her parents can't afford to shell out $145 for it, she does not experience a simple disappointment that most kids would feel but something much more intense, a feeling of genuine devastation. She is not angry at her parents for not catering to her whims, but angry at the situation. She is angry at the fact that something she invested so much of her emotional energy in is not coming to fruition. She may even know that her reaction is irrational and also be angry at herself for caring so much about something that she knows other kids her age wouldn't give a second thought about. After having her meltdown, she may even feel ashamed for her behavior but feel helpless for having been unable to control it. Imagine, then, after experiencing all these complex thought patterns and self-criticisms, when people around her dismiss her behavior as "immature" and also use the word to describe the sum total of who she is.
Autistic people --kids and adults-- can have meltdowns for a variety of reasons. One catalyst I commonly hear about is sensory overload, such as a barrage of loud noises that feel intolerably loud to them. I am not someone with sensory sensitivities, and this was never an issue for me. What triggered my meltdowns growing up and into my twenties (and today, albeit very rarely, and usually around my family where I let my guard down, and these meltdowns are usually in response to old wounds being reopened) was often the result of anxiety that accumulated over the course of hours, days, or sometimes several weeks. The anxiety could be related to trying to make friends in large groups as well as not understanding social situations and not feeling understood in turn. A series of these situations that added to my anxiety often culminated in a meltdown, triggered by something fairly minor. But what people didn't understand was that I was not reacting to that minor thing. It was as if there was a raw, exposed nerve that got brushed one too many times. I wasn't reacting to one thing, but a series of things. It was the end result of me trying to keep my stratospheric anxiety contained.
I would always feel deep shame and embarrassment as well as a sense of failure for not being able to prevent the meltdown. What made matters worse were people's reactions and assessments of what they witnessed. Dad often angrily commented, "You need to learn to control your temper!" and sometimes even implied that I was acting on a whim. Other adults labeled my meltdowns as "emotional outbursts" or "temper tantrums" for not getting my way.
The worst part was how people usually dismissed my behavior as "immature" and, by extension, invalidated my emotions, no matter how many different ways I tried explaining myself. I felt like parents, teachers, camp counselors, and others were summing up a reaction to a series of complicated emotions as the whim of someone who refused to handle not getting her way, or who refused to handle common life stressors. When dismissing me as "immature", they were blind to the reality of the complex, intense thoughts that led to the meltdown as well as the complex, intense thoughts that went through my head with promises to myself to control them in the future. Often, I spent copious amounts of time in my head trying to think up strategies to curb future meltdowns. Unfortunately, they rarely worked and only delayed the inevitable. In some ways, the more I tried to control the meltdowns, the worse they became when they finally happened. Why? It was another bit of pressure society put on me that only added to my anxiety, anxiety I felt I was rarely allowed to express. I also felt that people thought I had no idea how I was perceived when these meltdowns happened. Because, hey, I was "immature" and therefore beyond clueless as to how this behavior appeared to others, right?
Wrong. Of course I knew!
In a story that I related here, when I was eighteen years old I was thrown out of an art class for a fairly minor meltdown, in which in frustration I said "shut up" in response to a teacher's annoying laugh (I meant to say it under my breath; my utterance wasn't intended for her to hear). When my parents picked me up, they were angry with the teacher. But they also told me that a teacher shouldn't have to expect to deal with such behavior from an eighteen-year-old.
I think a good argument could be made that somebody in the 21st century dismissing a meltdown as "immature" or saying that a teacher shouldn't have to expect certain types of behavior of people in a certain age bracket (at least when talking about autistic people) is a form of ableism. Returning to my earlier analogy, I feel that it is ableist to call a kid who struggles intensely with math as "stupid" and it would be pretty lousy to tell the kid, "No teacher should have to expect to go over times tables with a twelfth grader when he should have learned them in third grade." Once again, I don't want to propose this labeling as a form of "orthodoxy" (which I see too much of on Facebook and in social justice circles), but as a discussion worth having and a concept worth thinking about.
I do, however, feel that this form of dismissing autistic people's emotions, no matter how unusual, is not only a form of ableism but also what some of us in the community have come to call "unintentional gaslighting." And yes, that will be the topic for the next blog post.
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