This one let me know early that I would get angry about it. By which I mean by the second sentence.
People with autism have a spectrum of abilities and disabilities. Some are unable to speak, or care for themselves, while others can live on their own and have unique skills like excellent memory or attention to detail.
Last week my therapist and I discussed a new metaphor I’d stumbled onto, in which just managing to maintain my day to day life can be viewed as an architectural foundation, with the open question being its load-bearing capacity.
For example, my last job—the placement through Vocational Rehabilitation—had been part-time, well-accommodating, but a long and early commute. Think of that job as a single-story home build upon my day-to-day foundation.
That single story collapsed. What does that tell us about what can and cannot be built?
For example, if a part-time job at an accommodating place with a long commute was too much for my foundation, then a full-time job at an accommodating place with a long commute would be too much for it. Arguably, a full-time job at an accommodating place with a short commute also would be too much for it, if only because just the amount of time involved approaches the established capacity of my foundation.
That would leave only a part-time job at an accommodating place with a short commute as even being worth considering, and that won’t make me self-sufficient.
That’s the context, then, in which I read this report on hiring autistic people. The context in which I read its statement that among autistic people there’s the subset of “unable to speak, or care for themselves” on the one hand, and then the subset of “can live on their own and have unique skills like excellent memory or attention to detail” on the other.
In other words, you’ve either high-support needs or are some sort of savant.
Those of us in the mediocre middle who increasingly seem to be too disabled to work but not disabled enough to receive financial support are left out in the cold.
This has a noticeable impact upon my sense of self-worth. I realized this past week that I’d be afraid, as a hypothetical, to help a group of friends or neighbors spend three hours on a single Saturday planting trees, lest vocational and disability agencies deem that proof that I can work twenty hours a week, day after day, week after week, month after month.
Which just leaves you—me—feeling like you can’t dare contribute anything of value to the wider world around you because the effort will be misconstrued as evidence.
I’ll leave this here, with some parting words from Jack Wellborn: “No matter how logical, Americans will reject universal income until we stop equating work ethic to human worth.”
Except I’ll add this: it’s not even about work ethic. It’s about the load your foundation can bear.