I'm very active on my campus, and I'm quite proud of my position as the president of a small student organization. Thanks to a few "paper"work screw-ups, I had to scramble to get us a place at this month's Student Organization Fair, our best chance this semester to reach the campus community. We got the spot, and I was proud to represent our organization.
The fair was not what I expected, but it was okay for the most part. The less-than-stellar turnout can be looked past, my feet have finally stopped hurting, and the fact that the member who had all the literature no-showed becomes less of an issue when one considers that the people who gave my table a second look can probably be counted on one hand. What I can't seem to push aside is who was one table over. Because they put my student organization next to the table for our campus' all-new Autism Speaks chapter.
Now, they don't know that I'm autistic. My organization is not an Autism organization per se, although I've pushed to get more disability advocacy on our list of issues. The assignments were alphabetical, nothing more. But for me, it was more than just an unfortunate coincidence.
I didn't feel that there was anyone I could turn to to rectify the situation. Like it or not, I respect the rights of this organization to share their viewpoint, so asking the organizers to ask them to leave wouldn't have been an option to me even if I thought there was a chance I'd be taken seriously. I could have asked to be moved to another table, but there were two problems with that.
The first is quite straightforward: in order to explain why I was not comfortable with the arrangement, I likely would have had to disclose my Autistic nature to whoever I spoke to. I'm openly Autistic, but that doesn't mean I want to blurt it out to the virtual strangers running the event. There are still too many stereotypes associated with autism to make that advisable.
The second is more complicated, and that is that I would have had to explain exactly what about that was so unsettling as to create a situation in need of resolution. I did attempt to explain this to someone from the table on my other side, a disability advocacy group. Her reply was that she wants to "reach out to all advocates". I attempted to explain, but I felt I wasn't getting through even to someone who was a member of a group advocating for "diverse abilities".
How, then, to explain to a group of event organizers that this was not like putting the College Democrats right next to the College Republicans (and the judgement in that case is, in my opinion, questionable in and of itself). This is an organization that believes I should not exist. An organization that believes that my body is not rightfully mine, but rather something I have no right to. An organization that has said that people like me bring suffering on our families. And no, I don't believe that every person at that table believes these things, but that is what that blue puzzle piece means to me. It means an organization that advocates torture, that advocates silencing voices like mine.
I don't know the answer. I'm not even positive I know the question.
