(CW: mentions of CSA, obviously, but no details.)

TL;DR: I have complicated feelings about my autism diagnosis and being part of the intellectual-and-developmental-disabilities community because of the incestuous child sexual abuse I dealt with in early childhood.

  1. Child sexual abuse is probably the only reason why I was diagnosed with autism in early childhood. If my memories are accurate, I had a speech delay because I refused to talk to my abusive father. This refusal led me to be labelled with an intellectual disability and spend my days at a “school” (that is, the children’s section of a psychiatric hospital) for children with severe and profound intellectual disabilities. I believe this went on for about a year. It is a miracle that I was not institutionalised full-time. Had I not been molested, I would have just been seen as a highly intelligent child. Had I not been molested, I would not have been thrown into special education, even after the nature and degree of my intelligence were noticeable. And had I not been molested, I would have been more likely to get an education that met my intellectual needs.
  2. I don’t know why I continued to refuse to talk even after being placed in this facility. It could have been sheer stubbornness, though it’s hard to divine my two-year-old logic thirty-six years after the fact. I could have thought that it was still necessary to avoid talking to him because of the abuse. I could have also been too afraid to talk. The one childhood photo I have access to from that era shows me in abject terror. I look like an abused child. Either way, a lot of the apparent developmental delays could be attributable to the abuse.
  3. My entrée into the world of intellectual and developmental disabilities was child sexual abuse. I know the “refrigerator mother” theory of autism is bunk, but I sometimes think that a lot of autistic advocates forget that child abuse can also produce social difficulties or make them more pronounced in people who were already autistic to begin with.
  4. I’d been angry about the special ed and developmentally disabled labels for years, though I didn’t know why my anger was so severe until I was able to contextualise my body memories and seemingly arbitrary triggers this year. For example, I remember being eighteen and being suspicious of my parents’ narrative—and irate that I’d been stuck in special ed and thrown into a class for kids with ID. All I knew was that I was a bright kid being held back by the system, and my parents’ stonewalling and smirking condescension did nothing to help when I called them on it. Of course I’m angry. Who wouldn’t be if their educational trajectory was held back by their father’s child sexual abuse, sexism, and personal hang-ups about his own intelligence?
  5. Because a lot of my seeming developmental differences were a probable result of child sexual abuse, and because I don’t have an intellectual disability, I feel uncomfortable calling myself “developmentally disabled.” Extremely so. I’ve done so in the past, but it still feels kind of disingenuous. It’s not internalised ableism per se, because I don’t feel this way about being disabled in general. It’s just about autism and IDD. (I do have some internalised ableism about my mental health conditions, but I still call myself Mad and don’t feel disingenuous at all.)
  6. I’m deeply tied with the autistic community, but I’m feeling the weight of my trauma every time I get involved with something. Because if I hadn’t been molested, if I hadn’t been raped, I would have probably come to the autistic community with the relief and calm that adult-diagnosed people often feel. Instead, I’m coming with childhood scars, and it’s hard to see… again, highly intelligent, creative, and sensitive autistic people attribute all their abilities to autism, or reducing themselves to being “developmentally disabled.” It just… I wish I could tell them about my pain every time they do this, but I can’t. Who wants to say “You talk about this, but I was molested, refused to speak to my abuser, was wrongly labelled as being intellectually disabled because of this apparent speech delay, turned out to be highly intelligent, was raped when I expressed this intelligence and challenged my father’s authority, and had the DD narrative thrust on me to thwart my educational progress”? I sure don’t. I guess I could say, “I have a lot of trauma as an early-diagnosed person.” I’ve said as such a long time ago, but I’m not sure how many people I know remember that.