6 Everyday ableism and hate speech

A tale of three encounters in one day

Damian Milton

Introduction
When trying to understand autism and autistic ways of being one will quickly
come across the controversies that exist between various “stakeholder” groups
and positionalities, with autistic voices often at odds with those of non-autistic
parents and practitioners. Once thought of as a rare disorder, the concept of autism
has expanded in recent decades to encompass a wider range of people. Much
academic work in this area along with practice models are dominated by a medi-
calised and psychological framing of “deficits” in one’s actions in the world and
interactions with others. Such a framing can lead to the stigmatising of autistic
people as less than fully “human” in their sense of self and membership of society,
rather than as ways of being. This framing has also led to autistic people being
“spoken for” instead of at the core of decision-making processes regarding autis-
tic people, as individuals and as a community.
The subversion of autism as a construct by autistic activists and scholars can
be set against a backdrop however of cultural discrimination, stereotyping, and
othering. At its most violent, the “othering” of autistic people can lead to all kinds
of abuse, from subtle forms of “gaslighting” to blatant ableism and hate speech.
One can see these forms of abuse as being embedded within cultural expecta-
tions of normativity and resultant stigmatisation of those deemed outside of these
parameters. Living with the consequences of a stigmatised identity can lead to
alienation, social isolation, and a negative spiral of psycho-emotional disablism
(Milton & Moon, 2012), where social disablement infiltrates one’s psychological
and emotional well-being. Autistic people thus have to navigate social life, know-
ing (and in some cases not) that their ways of being are not accepted within the
realms of hegemonic normalcy, often resulting in attempts to mask one’s difficul-
ties that can further exhaustion as well as potentially impact their sense of self.
Hate crimes both impact on the individual targeted as well as wider community
life (Sherry, 2003), as they indicate intolerance and a lack of safety for disabled
people, further spreading fear and othering. Hate crimes are often perpetrated
by strangers with no previous connection with their victims (McPhail, 2000),
which is suggestive of the act being perpetrated on the assumption of someone
being characterised by a stigmatised identity of a collective group. Upon being the
 Everyday ableism and hate speech  111
victim of a hate crime, however, autistic people may also be less willing to engage
with a complaint of criminality, especially if they have had negative encounters
with the criminal justice system in the past.
Disablism can be said to refer to discriminatory, oppressive and abusive behav-
iour targeted at disabled people (Quarmby, 2008). Hate speech and hate crimes
can thus be seen as forms of disablism regularly encountered (Sherry, 2010). The
wider social victimisation of autistic people and those with learning disabilities
is well documented in research (Chakraborti, Garland, & Hardy, 2014; Emerson
& Hatton, 2008; Gravell, 2012). Richardson et al. (2016), through using a sur-
vey method as well as focus groups and interviews, looked into hate incidents
toward autistic people and those with learning disabilities, including wider forms
of victimisation. 46% of their sample had been victimised and many also talked
of historical abuse and bullying. National surveys such as by Emerson and Hatton
(2008) found a figure of 32%. In both these samples, those deemed more “able”
participants experienced more serious incidents of victimisation.
The nature of such negative social experiences ranges from disapproving
stares to criminal assault, and Richardson et al. (2016) found that multiple inci-
dents of victimisation were common and often sustained over a period of time.
The most common age of instigators of abuse were teenagers (61%) with half of
the respondents saying that the perpetrator was known to them. Although “mate
crime” is not the main topic of this paper, bullying and victimisation by so-called
“friends” can be a common experience. In the accounts of victims and carers,
police were often said to be often unsympathetic and/or ineffective, whilst others
had much more positive accounts of responses by the police. Yet most incidents
were left unreported. In this research, family carers were also often “victims by
proxy” of such disablism. Richardson et al. (2016) found that through a history
of victimisation, it can lead to something of a self-fulfilling prophecy (Becker,
1963); of feeling that this is “just what happens” to autistic people and those with
learning disabilities; and as pointed out by Richardson et al. (2016), is likely to
lead to less reporting of incidents to authorities:

Whether the incidents were serious and criminal or lower level, repetitive
harassment, they all had a long lasting and powerful impact on the quality of
life of the people concerned
(Richardson et al. 2016: 87).

Aut-ethnography
Although differing in one major respect from aut-ethnography, “aut-ethnogra-
phy” (Milton, 2014) is fundamentally the same in other respects, in the sense of
being a form of self-reflective qualitative method exploring personal experience
in relation to wider social theory and social issues. Whereas aut-ethnography
often seeks to construct a coherent narrative of self over time, an “aut-ethnog-
raphy” analyses snippets or fragments of experience and their relation to wider
socially situated contexts, yet without the constraint of telling a coherent story.
112  Damian Milton
This is to reflect my own fragmented and shifting “rhizomatic” sense of meaning-
making as an autistic person.

Three encounters in one day

The three fragments utilised for this aut-ethnographic case study happened to
occur on the same day in the south-east of England. This has not been dubiously
constructed for dramatic effect or to try and conform to the coherent story of
an “aut-ethnography,” but is a reflection of what for me in hindsight could be
described as just a “bad day.” This may be minimisation, but that is something we
can return to later. For those who like a story – the three encounters all occurred
on a trip my son and I had taken to an appointment at a medical centre. Yet this is
somewhat beside the point.

Fragment one
My son and I were walking to a train station. Usually a pleasurable activity, espe-
cially with the prospect of a train ride that my son tends to like. My son and I are
both autistic, yet he is also classified as having a severe learning disability. When
out for a walk something we sometimes do is hold each other by our little fin-
gers. This can be a surprisingly useful form of communication, such as applying the
smallest of pressure can indicate wanting to stop. Whilst merrily on our way I heard
a shout from behind: “Are you f***ing gay or something?” This remark angered
me for obvious reasons, yet being in an immediately compromising and stressful
situation, my abilities to process what to say was limited. I turned around to angrily
see three teenagers and somewhat shouted: “He is my son!” Upon reflection I am
not sure that this was necessarily the best choice of words, yet it seemed to create
enough dissonance for the teenagers to turn away and not engage further.
This encounter illustrates the ways in which autistic behaviours are often
subjected to a hostile gaze  –  and in this case hate speech which read autistic
interactions as homosexual ones (themselves subject to hateful assumptions).
Homophobia was directed at us as autistic people because our relationship was
identified as non-normative. Such prejudice demonstrates the overlapping nature
of hate. The completely unprovoked hostility represented an attack on both my
son and me. Moreover, such utterances psychologically wound. Hate speech
harms its victims.

Fragment two
My son and I arrived for an appointment at a medical clinic. Although this clinic
should have had information at hand that both my son and I were autistic, what
we were to encounter would not be the most “autism-friendly.” Instead, it was a
disablist encounter. Upon arrival the receptionist was quite busy, and I kept turn-
ing around to see if my son was okay, as he was exploring the reception area and
there were automatic doors where he could easily go through them and potentially
 Everyday ableism and hate speech  113
get himself into danger. When I did try and converse with the receptionist, they
remarked: “It helps if you keep eye contact when talking to someone.” I was imme-
diately flabbergasted, but somehow explained how my son was autistic and I needed
to keep an eye on him. I did not disclose at that moment that I was also autistic.
This disablist policing of social interactions (accompanied by judgmental and
critical comments) is common for autistic people. It is a form of discipline, a
reminder that autistics are constantly judged and criticised by people who are
non-autistic and have no interest in accepting different forms of human interac-
tion. Again, the critical gaze of disablism takes an emotional toll – it is a form of
psycho-emotional disablism that wears autistic people down, a reminder that the
social environment is hostile in many ways. Coming on top of the previous hate
speech, the effect of such disablism is to demean and belittle.
But as the previous fragment also illustrated, autistic people demonstrate resist-
ance to this oppression. Upon sitting in the reception area, I noticed my heartbeat
was very high and that I was highly stressed, something that I generally need to
keep to a minimum to minimise other unwanted adverse events potentially hap-
pening. Thankfully, I noticed that the clinic was undergoing a review and there
were feedback cards to fill in. Doing this about what had just happened managed
to bring my stress down somewhat.

Fragment three
My son and I had just boarded our train to return home and found seats. Suddenly
there was a loud banging at the train window, and a fairly young drunken man
holding a beer can shouted “F***ing weirdos!” before stumbling away again.
Again, disablist hate speech was directed at us as two autistic people in an unpro-
voked and unexpected context. The element of surprise – as well as the fact that
they were outside the train – limited any opportunity to respond. The insult – weir-
dos – is not just a generic slur. In this context, it is disability hate speech. It is
symbolic violence aimed at diminishing our sense of human dignity. Like other
forms of hate speech, it involves a wound that strikes deep.
Such an encounter on its own would potentially be enough to send me into
something of a panic attack, let alone after the other events that had previously
happened that day, yet I had to hold things together for the sake of my son’s
safety. Needless to say, I was more than relieved when we did eventually return
home. The broader social environment, filled with disablism and disability hate
speech, offered terror rather than inclusion and victimisation rather than safety.
Nobody else on the train or the train platform reacted to this event at all in any
way that I could see.

Reflection and discussion

In the events described here, the first and third acts could be considered hate
speech, infused with a bias that discriminates against people due to them being
perceived as belonging to a stigmatised category (McPhail, 2000; Sherry, 2003),
114  Damian Milton
and also as open verbal abuse. The first fragment consists of a random attack
based on the observance of behaviour (finger-holding between two males). One
could say in this instance that othering occurred, but through a stigmatising of a
group that I would not identity as belonging to. Yet the verbal attack was also
framed as a question. Perhaps this framing shows an insecurity as to what exactly
the young person had seen and why, and they had jumped to the nearest available
stigmatised group to categorise us in? What this showed to me was that discrimi-
nation on the grounds of perceived sexuality had a very similar pattern to that
originating in disablism, at least on this occasion. The third fragment shows a
categorisation and othering based squarely in a kind of disablism which is, no
doubt, all too familiar to autistic people, the tag of being a “weirdo.” Many autis-
tic people take pride in their eccentricities and one friend of mine proudly wears
a “weird pride” badge from time to time, yet of course this is not to invite attacks
for forming such an identity, but to fight against regular slurs on being perceived
as acting against expected behavioural norms.
The damage sustained by the second of these acts was somehow more perni-
cious to me though than either of the others. As the event was an indication of an
assumed normativity with resultant ableist “micro-aggressions” that happen fre-
quently in social life, usually without sanction, and yet diminishing those on the
receiving end of them. It is such widespread and unquestioned ableism in society
that is so persistent and destabilising. All of these actions came from people who
were total strangers to my son and me, signifying through our ways of being that
we are somehow perceived as not “normal” and judged accordingly as members
of one stigmatised collective group stereotype or another (McPhail, 2000). The
perpetuation of such social dynamics leads on to a negative spiral of psycho-
emotional disablism, which is at the very least “hard to navigate” a way out.
In these incidences, I was both a victim of hate speech or micro-aggressions
as well as a victim by proxy (Richardson et al. 2016). It is perhaps doubtful that
I would have experienced all of these events had I not been accompanied by my
son. Whereas I may be able to “mask” some of my ways of being so as to lessen
the chances of being attacked in some social situations, this affordance is not
accessible to my son, whose non-normative actions attract attention. It should also
be stated here though that high levels of masking obviously has its own potential
downsides in regard to well-being.
Scior and Werner (2015) suggested that direct contact with marginalised groups
was the most impactful approach for changing social attitudes toward them. It
would certainly help if autistic people were less segregated or not represented as
“exotic others” within the media. To make an impact on the embedded everyday
ableism rife in contemporary social life though would take a monumental cultural
shift from where we find ourselves today.

References
Becker, H. (1963). Outsiders: studies in the sociology of deviance. New York: The Free
Press.
 Everyday ableism and hate speech  115
Chakraborti, N., Garland, J., & Hardy, S. J. (2014). The Leicester hate crime project:
Briefing Papers, No. 1: Disablist hate crime. Leicester: University of Leicester.
Emerson, E., & Hatton, C. (2008). People with learning disabilities in England. Lancaster:
Lancaster University.
Gravell, C. (2012). Loneliness and cruelty: People with learning disabilities and their
experience of harassment, abuse and related crime in the community. London: Lemos
and Crane.
McPhail, B. A. (2000). Hating hate: Implications of hate crime legislation. Social Service
Review, 74(4), 635–653.
Milton, D. (2014). Becoming autistic: An aut-ethnography. Cutting Edge Psychiatry in
Practice, 4, 185–192.
Milton, D., & Moon, L. (2012). “And that, Damian, is what I call life-changing”: Findings
from an action research project involving autistic adults in an on-line sociology study
group. Good Autism Practice, 13(2), 32–39.
Quarmby, K. (2008). Getting away with murder: Disabled people’s experiences of hate
crime in the UK. London: Scope.
Richardson, L., Beadle-Brown, J., Bradshaw, J., Guest, C., Malovic, A., & Himmerich,
J. (2016). “I felt that I deserved it” – Experiences and implications of disability hate
crime. Tizard Learning Disability Review, 21(2), 80–88.
Scior, K., & Werner, S. (2015). Changing attitudes to learning disability: A review of the
evidence. London: Mencap.
Sherry, M. (2003). Don’t ask, tell or respond: Silent acceptance of disability hate crimes.
Hamilton, ON: Disabled Women’s Network Ontario.
Sherry, M. (2010). Disability hate crimes: Does anyone really hate disabled people?
Surrey: Ashgate.