Disabled Futures

 Many have different versions for the future, both disabled and nondisabled.

In my last post, I wrote of disabled grief. This week I'm less interested in loss and more in possibility. What does a future look like when it's built not dispite disability, but through it? For the disabled and neurodivergent populace, the mainstream version of the future doesn't include us. The futures we are offered are too often rooted in cure, correction and conformity. Stripped of disabled and other voices than those hale or rich.

A neurodiverse and autistic view of the future relies neither on past nor present. Look to the past, and you see eugenics, pathologization, institutionalization and fear. Look to the present, and you see ignorance, pathologization, infantilization and budding awareness. Neither are wholly ideal, but neither are yardsticks to measure. 

If we look to critical autism and neurodivergent scholars such as Luke Beardon and Dora Raymaker (in collaboration with Christina Nicolaidis), we are afforded a better glimpse of an inclusive future. Beardon envisages an autistic utopia, whereas Raymaker proposes a toolkit for a desired disabled future, on neurodivergent and disabled terms.

But what is a disabled future and how is it different from an ‘abled’ future? 

Raymaker proposes a future where the difference lies in the normalization and acceptance of Otherness. Ableism, stigma and discrimination of the disabled Other is eradicated. The world celebrates complexity and accepts neurodivergent and disabled people as people, not oddities or freaks or lesser. The status quo is shifted in an inclusive and accepting favor. The sense of time is extended to include crip, neurodivergent and other alternative temporal realities. Beardon's concept of an autistic utopia calls for a massive overhaul: it would entail recognizing the flaws and ableist tendencies within our current present. A rapid shift in society's approach to ASC in general, to understand what it actually means to autistic people themselves, not just their surroundings. How autistic minds and bodies are treated as a curiousity and threat, like most minorities, both ethnic and neurological. An accessible future for everyone, regardless of mind or body.

In the face of suffering, austerity, starvation and rising fascism, dreaming of inclusive futures can feel naïve. But without these aspirations, those marginalized are left with systems that continue to exclude and erase.

Pressures, both social and inclusive, are becoming more mainstream, as the neurodivergent movement gains track and demands to be included in discourse. There are advances in disability justice and disability rights, as marginalized voices begin to speak up and spread awareness and appreciation for different points of view.

Patience is the key to envisage a better future, as both Beardon and Raymaker tell us. Patience and creativity and support in the right areas of research, policy and collaborations and the status quo will slowly shift. It seems impossible now, but greater things have shifted over the centuries. A disabled future is an inclusive one, wherein one's condition is not a flaw to be hidden, but a natural state of being. Even if one must rely on technologies to be considered ableminded enough for discourse, that is also a concession to make. Technology has enhanced the chance disabled people to contribute to and take part in the reigning discourse due to improved aids. Braile fitted to read on screens, implants and text-to-speech to make communication easier, electric wheelchairs to mention but a few. 

The current view of ASC is one of disease, eradication, tragedy and normalization but I think that with enough voices, that take can be switched to a better one. The cracks are already forming, though the ongoing infantilization of autistic people also contributes harm to the neurodiversity movement. 

Still, even within the so-called progress, infantilization persists. Nowhere is this more obvious than how support tools for autistic people are marketed and disigned. Stim devices (vital tools for emotional regulation and grounding) are labeled as toys, still. Designed in neon colors or cartoony shapes, they are almost always appeal to children. We are expected to suppress ourselves, while being offered objects that make us look like oversized toddlers. Self-soothe with headphones or beads; no questions asked. But show up with a silicone stim in the shape of a rainbow catepillar, a purple octopus or a brightly-colored pillow, and suddenly, you're no longer a person with needs, but a true oddity. It is degrading, ridiculous and reinforces the idea of autistic adults as perpetual children who do not know their own worth or impact. 

It is a call to stop perpetuating the same harm in new guises. A disabled future is not about fixing. It's about listening to craft a better future for all.

Sources

• Beardon, Luke. “ ‘Autopia’: A vision for autistic acceptance and belonging”. in The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Autism Studies. Edited by Damian Milton and Sarah Ryan. (pp. 159-64). Routledge, Oxon. 2023
• Oxford Kafka24. “Extraordinary Bodies, Disability Justice, and Metamorphosis”. August 12th 2024. Podcast.
• Raymaker, Dora M. and Nicolaidis, Christina. “Neurodivergent Futures”. in The Palgrave Handbook of Research Methods and Ethics in Neurodiversity Studies. Edited by H. Bertilsdotter Rosqvist and D. Jackson-Perry. (pp. 423-36). Springer Nature. 2024