Spoken Word Poetry

Medicalise me

Marginalise me

Traumatise me

I am bound up

In words made up

To tie me up

In bandages

Of oppression

Just like messages

On a plaster cast

Your DSM definitions

Bind me to false

Deficits

Instead of differences

It is not me

Who is disabled

But the world that

Disables

Constructed

For the majority

Misplaced superiority

Restricted access

For the minority...

Bound by your definitions

I struggle to break free

Make you aware of me

And my "needs".

Reflection:

This appeared out of nowhere. As in, this was not prompted by an exercise in a book as a guide for my creative practice. I have an image in my mind of being bound in bandages. Just like in my Viva where I was bound in red tape with alienating words written on the tape in black marker pen...

This time I have an image of white bandages representing the medicalisation of autism and how that restricts the individual. It is a visual metaphor to express how the individual is oppressed by the understanding of autism through a list of deficits instead of differences. The words on the bandages are the exact words used in the DSM about autism. The images in my head are in black and white, representing the binary struggle between the pathological paradigm and the neurodiversity-based paradigm for understanding autism.

How do we unwrap those bandages? How can autism be understood differently? How can people be educated? How can we change our language around autism to leave room for people to be accepted/embraced into mainstream society?

The answers to those questions will help to unwrap those bandages of restriction.

Next Steps:

These thoughts need to be backed up and distilled through looking at the books I have and underlining quotes about how society undermines us by the way it is constructed and the medicalisation of autism, as part of my research into literature around the subject.

Another point to consider is the scary thought of autism not being medicalised and therfore autistic people being unable to access the support they need to live their lives to the full.

This is not clear cut. There is an oscillating tension between giving up the disabled status and access to extra support from being diagnosed autistic and the freedom that comes with the neurodiversity campaign where autism and other neurodivergences are recognised as being a part of the spectrum of being human. This is not the same as us "All being a little autistic" but is an understanding that just as there is a majority neurotype, other neurotypes are a part of the diversity of being human, rather than an anomaly.