Donna Williams – why she doesn’t do bigotry

‘NTs’… When a Word Becomes ‘Loaded’ and Why I Don’t do Bigotry - by Donna Williams (my favourite part)

“Now, I make it clear, bigotry is about heirachy and I don’t do heirachy.

I don’t care how much abuse or prejudice or bigotry I received from Harry, Mary or Joe and I’ve written enough books on it to know what those things are.

I am not going to feel better by doing the same rubbish in reverse, in fact I’d lose my best friend if I did- me- because I wouldn’t love or relax with that person.

I do not define all non-autie people by those who mistreated me or a time when people were less enlightened or as ‘trapped with me’ as I was with them.

I needed people to get understanding, to find a place of equality opposite me.

But I did not need or want them to feel shame, guilt or to grovel to me or anyone like me.

Ivory towers are shaky, lonely, unstable structures.

I don’t fancy making one my special space. A corner will do me just fine. Corners are cosy.

I forgive people their misunderstandings and assumptions because I make those every day and I don’t care if those folks are autie, Aspie or non-autie, canine, feline, tree or tractor.

Every day I meet non-auties and respond and behave as though I don’t understand their system, values, reality, I misunderstand and assume.

And their are Aspie people who assume and misunderstand auties all the time- many of us don’t have a techie, engineering, scientist bone in our bodies and are geared for ARTism and surrealism, not science. Many of us are not visual thinkers, some of us are musical thinkers and many are kinesthetic with very very poor visual processing. Many of us are not ideas people who wonder, we are discovers who experience and it hasn’t occurred to us to wonder. So we have many in our own ranks making misunderstandings, assumptions, projections all the time.

Non-auties often are grand enough to chill-out about the ways autie spectrum people misunderstand them or assume an reality they don’t experience.

I can be grand enough to do the same when their version rubs me the wrong way.

I find diversity interesting- INCLUDING THEIRS.

When one hasn’t truly moved in their world, with trust and openness then they may all ‘look the same’, just as autie spectrum people may to them.

But they are actually wonderfully different from each other.

We have invited them to embark on the adventure of understanding our differences and our diversity.

But have we truly turned a new page to look at them on their own terms without judging them by our own?

I’m not one for the mainland. Peripheries and islands work for me.

But I’d hope that when I visit that mainland that I leave the old battle scars behind me.

If I’m big enough to do so.”