CN Sia

*sigh* Hoo boy. Just gonna...document this for when it inevitably gets deleted.

Yeah just...to get it out there: while there’s something to be said about only casting trans or autistic people as stuff society deems as “bad”, drug addiction is a medical condition and sex work is a job.

There are real people dealing with both, in fact.

And I don’t think it’s terribly helpful to those people to stigmatize them further without any nuance. So. Start there.

“Casting someone with her level of functioning was cruel, not kind.”

Yeah, this? This would be one such place where functioning labels gets us. Broad, sweeping generalizations about how “those kinds of people” work.

First, this implies a lack of accomodations.

It’s possible that they tried to accommodate her to the actress’ comfort. Frankly, the way this director is talking about the situation doesn’t make me inclined to give them that grace, but it’s possible.

There’s no reason they couldn’t have tried other nonspeaking actors.

You don’t see people going “This MAN actor wasn’t able to perform under the circumstances we put him in, so we had no choice! We had to cast a woman instead.”

Because we recognize the reason it’s not working isn’t about him being a man. It’s the situation we put him in.

Or about how he was feeling. Or about someone close to him dying. Something was going on with *him*. We don’t blame a part of who he inherently is by default-we try to make it work, and if we can’t, we hire someone else appropriate for the role.

“But Noor, nonspeaking people are inherently-“

Nonspeaking and partially nonspeaking people are inherently nonspeaking. That’s it. That’s literally all you can fucking say about us. There is literally every human experience variant possible in a nonspeaker.

Is it more challenging to cast a nonspeaker? Probably, yeah, the industry makes it hard on nonspeaking actors. All the more reason to *communicate with nonspeakers directly* about ways you could make the film set accommodating for them. To build this around the community.

By writing a nonspeaking person, and an implied nonspeaking autistic person, you CHOSE the responsibility of representing a real life community. You CHOSE the job of making your production possible for a nonspeaker.

You could’ve done anything else. You chose this.
You. Not us.

Cussing out people whose community you’re representing for judging a film on a trailer? You know, the thing DESIGNED to make us decide whether to see the film or not? That thing you have complete control over, and could use to convince us you’re acting in good faith? Not good.

People don’t have to see something you’ve explicitly advertised to be bad. That’s...not how trailers work. Trailers are built to make us understand the idea behind what you’re making.

You had control over that. You chose to highlight stuff that made us mad. That’s not our job.

Intent isn’t magic. You doing three years of research (which seems like it didn’t involve contacting the broader community directly, or any internet research, because that would have told you very quickly this would happen) doesn’t stop your actions from hurting.

If you had “no idea” Speaks was polarizing, that tells me you likely didn’t research many autistic adults that don’t meet your stereotypes. Or, possibly, that you only researched kids. Either way, not great.

And no, avoiding saying the word autistic doesn’t un-offend people.

Autistic people have a lifetime of watching media representation, most of which is a list of stereotypes projected on a white dude or a child. We know what that looks like. We know when you’re talking about us.

Anyway.

If your executive decision to “lovingly represent the community” meant implying we should be grateful you didn’t give us the “bad” roles and that you deigned you “do your research”

It makes me feel like your intent wasn’t that great.

Anyway, muting this thread! Kindly DO NOT TAG THE ARTIST IN QUESTION because the last thing I need is even more harassment from fans than I’m already getting.

Please and thank you.