Understanding

In the QWeekend liftout of the Courier-Mail a couple of weeks ago, there was an article about someone's relationship with her husband, who has Asperger's syndrome. It was not as bad as some articles I've seen that make the autistic person out to be some kind of an unfeeling monster- she spoke about her loneliness and not quite understanding what he did, but she also seemed to be trying to see things from his point of view. Once she discovered that he had AS, her understanding of him increased.

In the next week's issue, a letter to the editor talked about how horrible it was to have been married to someone with AS, and complained that the newspaper had only presented one side of the situation.

She was correct: the newspaper had only printed the non-AS perspective. This is typical of this newspaper. The only thing I can recall reading in it that discusses the autistic perspective was an interview with Daniel Tammet- talking more about his savantism than anything.

Where are the articles written by autistic people? If autistics and non-autistics wish to come to any sort of understanding with each other, we need to hear stories and opinions from both sides. We need to hear what it is like to be autistic and in a relationship with someone who isn't. We need to clear up the myths about "complete lack of empathy" "uncaring" "emotionless". We need people to know that we are PEOPLE, not some kind of strange monsters. Not aliens. But that will never happen if all that is published are articles by people who don't know what it is like to BE us.

What are the chances of this happening? I don't know. "Autistics are people too, and their views should be heard" doesn't make as good a headline as "Come and look at them, they're so DIFFERENT!"