Why aren’t the incredible efforts of autistics to fit in, recognised?

We are fish in a world devoid of water. So, what do we do? We adapt as best we can.

I thought I’d start this piece with a quote from Albert Einstein. Unfortunately, upon looking it up, I found out that there is precisely zero evidence that the famous physicist said the following. However, it makes an important point so I’m going to run with it. The quote goes like this: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

According to one history website, it can be traced to a well established allegory that involves animals doing seemingly impossible things. The tale is used to illustrate the ungenerous fallacy of judging someone by a skill or ability that they do not possess. It seems like a useful prism through which to view autism. Autistics are mainly judged by what they cannot, or find difficult to do, rather than by their skills and talents. We face hostility for our different communication style. Our hyperfocus and our grasp of detail are framed as negatives.

We are fish in a world devoid of water. So, what do we do? We adapt as best we can. With great difficulty, we learn how to move across the land. Some of us even learn how to climb trees. It takes an extraordinary amount of focus and effort for us to do this. It is exhausting. It is evidently (or at least it should be) far more challenging for us than it is for, say, monkeys. It is also damaging to our health and wellbeing to do so. Our multicoloured scales get torn on the bark.

We learn to live in what is, to us, an inhospitable environment. Now, if most people saw a fish climbing a tree, they’d probably think it was pretty damn incredible. It would not be judged by the fact that it made the ascent in a less elegant fashion than a monkey. If it was far more tired than the monkey after the climb, most people would understand why that might be. They might well get why fish don’t particularly relish tree climbing and seek to avoid it if they can. But what we do isn’t seen as incredible, because we are judged not as fish, but as monkeys.

It’s a bit like a monoglot laughing at someone speaking their second language with a foreign accent and using incorrect grammar on occasion. The effort we put into communicating in a fashion so alien to our own, goes unrecognised. To be recognised would be nice. To adapt the environment so we could thrive, would be even better. If you fill our world with water, then you’ll see what we can really do. And don’t worry, we won’t judge the monkeys by how badly they swim.