We introduced you to Puzzle Joe not long ago.  Joe is in his early 30’s and was diagnosed late in life with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.  It’s really not uncommon for this to happen.  Late diagnosis of Autism is more common with women than men.  It can also lead to a lot of things like depression, anxiety, social skills challenges and the idea of people “not fitting in anywhere”.  It’s a remarkably trying and difficult thing.  First born are often undiagnosed too as parents have no comparative example of behavior in a sibling.  We met Puzzle Joe by chance, kind of.  Some of the work we do outside of publishing is helping with marketing and media.  In learning about the area to help them, we were looking in to Autism resources in Detroit and Joe came up on YouTube.  As the publisher, I have had a lot of real life experience with ASD people and families in my personal life.  Seeing Joe on his YouTube page, I kinda saw who was in there pretty quick and really wanted to meet him for his desire to be a PA announcer.  We spoke on a chat, we messaged back and forth, I was sure the choice was right so we set up to meet.  Joe blew me away with intelligence, articulation and depth of knowledge.  The idea of any new meet up was no more uncomfortable than meeting anyone else and having had made such an impression on me, I knew Joe was ready for more, and there is currently a kit for him to begin his own radio show with our network waiting to go to him.  Joe is equal and deserving of a shot like anyone else and to be able to give him the shot.  We’re on it.

Joe did however run into a “wrinkle”.  Is that a fair word?  There’s this thing called Ableism.  It’s defined like this – “It is rooted in the belief that non-disabled bodies and minds are the standard, and that people with disabilities are inferior or need to be “fixed”.  There ain’t no need to “fix” Joe.  I promise. There is however a way to learn about ableism from Joe and with his permission, we grabbed a post he wrote on Facebook last night about an occurrence he had with it.  We are copy and pasting it as is. 

“so today i want to talk about something serious. usually i want to keep things positive on here. but my goal in life is to teach the world about autism. and sometimes that means talking about uncomfortable things.
so recently i decided to try and start joining podcasts as a guest. there is a website where you can make a profile and either message a podcast or they can message you. so a week or so ago i got an offer to join a podcast. i was excited. i asked them when can we do it? then they told me i had to join a waitlist. i had to either pay or join a free one. i was confused and said that i thought they wanted me on the show right away since they came to me. then they accused me of trying to cut ahead of people who are waiting. even though they came to me not the other way around.
so i was pretty upset to read that. i had no idea there were people waiting. nor did they say anything about me having to wait in their invitation to join. then to add insult to injury. they sent me the forms to fill out. then they said that since i have autism i must have a caretaker. so i should show it to them. now at first i didn’t quite take offense to that. my dad does help me with some stuff. and my mom has read some legalese documents for me as she is a lawyer.

but then after re reading what they said i realized how ableist that was. assuming that just because i have a disability automatically means i cant read a document. which is extremely wrong. there are so many people with autism that live on their own. they have successful jobs and even get married and have kids. some of them become rich and famous. while i understand that some DO require a caretaker. they should have worded it better. something along the lines of “if you have any questions feel free to ask them to us or you can show it to a friend or family member.”  but saying caretaker implies that i need someone else to do it all for me. which is not true. like I’m not even able enough to read and fill out a form. which just felt offensive. I’m sure they didn’t mean for it to sound that way. but this is why we need more autism awareness and understanding. and that’s why I’m a proud autism advocate.

so the moral of this story is never EVER underestimate what autistic people can do in their life. especially someone you don’t even know. so i sent them a reply back and told them how rude they were. and that i don’t want to be on their show. i still haven’t had luck booking a show to speak on. but i hope the next time someone messages me. they have nothing but good things to say.
thank you for reading. i hope you found it informative. have a good day.”

We’re here today to let Joe’s voice be a little louder and nothing more.  We can all understand feeling awkward, out of place and not fit in.  Even back to childhood, when we first had to stand up and speak in front of class or into adulthood where public speaking is a top fear for 77% of adults.  Joe clearly understands it’s not intentional on the part of the podcasters, but…we wanted to share the message a bit more for your consideration and maybe too, the idea that just assuming something is deficient because someone seems “different”, well you might be missing more than you know.

PUZZLE JOE ON YOUTUBE.  FOLLOW PUZZLE JOE ON FACEBOOK.