It reflect an old, bad attitude. Back as late as the 60s and 70s anyone was obviously disabled was just shut out of public life by social and often physical violence. Check out "ugly laws"
In the 80s and 90s advocacy and visibility campaigns tries to end this and get people with various disibilities, be they physical, metal, cognitive, whatever, the right and freedom to just exist in public. All kinds of things were tried, including people who needed wheelchairs and other mobility aids publicly dragging themselves up the stairs of congress to present one of the drafts for the ADA to show what barriers to disabled participation in society looked like to an indifferent public.
One form of this advocacy was what are sometimes referred to as "a very special episode" or "inspiration porn" where a tv show, news segment, whatever, would have someone with some kind of disability on and treat them as "an inspiration" and do this very patronizing shtick about how abled people should be so inspired by how disabled people were "overcoming their disability". Try searching " a very special episode" and you might find some examples, it's cringe and ablest af.
Either way, this attitude applied heavily to autistic people and people with downs syndrome. They had some of the most common and visible non-physical issues, so they got the unenviable job of being made mascots of campaigns run mostly by abled people. People heavily infantilized autistic people and people with downs and treated it as some kind of wonderful miracle that they could do anything. It sucked. This is also more or less when "autism mommies" and vaccine denial comes on line.
So, basically, it reflects an archaic attitude towards people with autism that is extremely infantilizing and disrespectful and I was surprised to still see it in the wild.
I don't get it, is it bad what they said?
It reflect an old, bad attitude. Back as late as the 60s and 70s anyone was obviously disabled was just shut out of public life by social and often physical violence. Check out "ugly laws"
In the 80s and 90s advocacy and visibility campaigns tries to end this and get people with various disibilities, be they physical, metal, cognitive, whatever, the right and freedom to just exist in public. All kinds of things were tried, including people who needed wheelchairs and other mobility aids publicly dragging themselves up the stairs of congress to present one of the drafts for the ADA to show what barriers to disabled participation in society looked like to an indifferent public.
One form of this advocacy was what are sometimes referred to as "a very special episode" or "inspiration porn" where a tv show, news segment, whatever, would have someone with some kind of disability on and treat them as "an inspiration" and do this very patronizing shtick about how abled people should be so inspired by how disabled people were "overcoming their disability". Try searching " a very special episode" and you might find some examples, it's cringe and ablest af.
Either way, this attitude applied heavily to autistic people and people with downs syndrome. They had some of the most common and visible non-physical issues, so they got the unenviable job of being made mascots of campaigns run mostly by abled people. People heavily infantilized autistic people and people with downs and treated it as some kind of wonderful miracle that they could do anything. It sucked. This is also more or less when "autism mommies" and vaccine denial comes on line.
So, basically, it reflects an archaic attitude towards people with autism that is extremely infantilizing and disrespectful and I was surprised to still see it in the wild.