
A Semi-Constant Waiting Game
Today we get most forms of entertainment at the push of a button, so we tend to hate having to wait. The situation is even worse if you can’t read print—resulting in an endless waiting game for blind readers.
Today we get most forms of entertainment at the push of a button, so we tend to hate having to wait. The situation is even worse if you can’t read print—resulting in an endless waiting game for blind readers.
Autistic people learn, change, and cope like anyone else. However, when a character is autistic, many authors appear to see only one route for character growth: effectively making the character less autistic.
As much as I crave representation in fiction, it bothers me that some people seem to see autism as a way to create conflict or add a unique viewpoint to a narrative. It is even more disturbing when so many of these portrayals are inaccurate or incomplete.
These magical or futuristic “fixes” seem rooted in a discomfort with disability: many writers cannot (or don’t want to) imagine a life without sight and therefore create excuses to give their character equivalent sighted experiences.
An estimated 1 in 7 women suffer from chronic pelvic pain; it’s bizarre and disappointing that despite these statistics, there are distinctly zero characters with this condition.
I have to accumulate all the data from these varying experiences and use them to define myself. Otherwise, others will do it for me.
It’s clear that many people, including pre-diagnosis me, don’t know much about hypermobility; this only makes the need for representation more necessary.
ADD isn’t an end of the world big deal. It’s really, really not. But it is a deal, it’s a thing. It’s a disability. It puts you on a different default setting.
A snarky New York Times column referred to CFS as “yuppie flu,” and oh, it was hilarious. Those silly rich people imagining themselves sick!
Is any representation better than no representation? That argument frequently comes up in response to criticism, but is it valid?