When asked to write about what autism means to me, I jumped right in. I had a metaphor ready, and I set my fingers to the keyboard. But everything I typed in my first draft was no good. So, I tried to look at it from another perspective. Then another. Before I knew it, this simple question gave me a serious case of writer’s block. It seemed that no matter what I wrote, someone would take issue with it. Somebody would angrily declare, “That’s not what autism is to me!”

And he’d be right. Autism can be described. But it refuses to be defined. That’s because autism will never mean the same thing to two people. Especially if those people are coming from different perspectives. Parents vs. teachers. Grandparents vs. parents. Science vs. conspiracy theorists. Parents of “low-functioning” children vs. “high functioning” self-advocates. The media. Public perception.

It’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Their problem is that they can’t all agree on what they’re cooking. They all want different things. They all approach autism from their own subjective experiences. They observe autism from their respective places and report back to the world – which constructs its concept of autism from these reports. And that is problematic. (This article is continued where I’m guest posting today at A Dog for David…)