"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."
-a 15yo autistic girl experiencing ABA therapy
Ohey, familiar. Lately getting that particular bit of equivocation from my own abusive "family" who've been threatening everything from having me jailed to having me "institutionalized," calling the cops on me to evict me without notice, physical intimidation... Turns out "no" is a grievous offense to such people. The whole "children as property" thing is vile, absurd that some clearly think giving birth yields the ultimate entitlement, to an entire person and their life. I wonder if not getting diagnosed is a 'blessing in disguise' :| Tried for a decade or two to tell BioMom I thought I was 'on the spectrum' but always just got bullied out of ever seeing a doc. "There is NOTHING wrong with you!!" she'd say, every time. So now I'm a wreck 'cause two people screwed and entitled themselves to getting by with this crap (and more besides). I hope that person manages better.
...Could really use help escaping before I become a data point, actually :-\
I wish you luck! Shit's hard, especially in the US.