But… I guess I also view choice, when it comes to plurality, as being similar to how I view choice when it comes to sexuality. Right now, for me personally (Lilac), the term “lesbian” could be applied to me in the sense of someone who would only ever consider having a romantic/sexual relationship with another woman, but I don’t identify with it in the sense of someone who knew when they were two years old that they were only attracted to girls and would only ever be attracted to girls and would never have even thought about a relationship with a man, etc etc. I take people’s word for it if they say it was that way for them, but it wasn’t for me, it just happens that it works out this way for me now (partly because none of my experiences with men were good), and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

I think part of the reason I find the “you can only be a REAL one if you’ve known it your whole life and could never have been any other way” view worrisome is because of the implication that it (it being same-sex relationships, in this case) are only acceptable because “they can’t help it,” and that if there were any choice involved the matter would be totally different. (And obviously, if I say that I only date women partly because my experiences with men were all bad, in a room full of heterosexual men, at least one of them is going to start trying to convince me that he’s the one who can “convert me back,” etc.) But you can extend it to other things too– that, in general, a whole lot of other deviations from the “norm” are only allowed or considered okay, by some people, if “they can’t help it.” As soon as choice is involved on any level, people start yelling at you about why you choice to not be normal and to make yourself look so bizarre to others and face rejection, etc. (Even if the “choice” involved is a question of “Yes, I could choose to do/not do this thing if I expended a huge amount of energy, and I would be constantly uncomfortable and miserable, but I could technically do it.”)

In retrospect, I don’t know if being multiple was something totally inevitable for us in any case or something shaped by life circumstances, but I don’t think it makes any difference, whichever one it is. One of the reasons I’ve been kind of dropping back from a lot of communities lately is that I get really tired of people who are always willing to get up on a soapbox and toot their own horn about how great they are and about how their difference, whatever it is, gives them some superiority that “normals” can never have or consciously choose, but that “the really disordered” or “the severely afflicted” just have the disadvantages and none of the advantages and all the medical dogma about what to do with them is correct.

I read this a few months ago, when a friend had it on loan from the library and she let me borrow it. It was a pretty interesting read, and it got me introduced to the perspectives of a plural, when before I had only encountered the clinical descriptions (in 9th grade health class, I even had to do a presentation on it).

I think ultimately it was the author’s way of trying to “step on safe ground”, so to speak. It seems to be a much “safer” position for people to say, “Well, neurodiversity is fine for high-functioning people, but it doesn’t mean anything for those more SERIOUSLY disabled.”

Unfortunately, this is all too common, in the autistic community and without. People often, in arguing for their own self, will make concessions of the rights of other people without examining the issues for their prejudices. Sometimes just it is politically easier. More often, it is just easier to reconcile with their own preconceptions if they don’t have to examine themselves.