Self-Advocacy is collective self not individual self

Self-advocacy, in a context of disability rights activism, is more about identifying with and advocating for a community of others with whom one person identifies.  Self-advocacy is less about one person advocating for themselves in a constant battle to be perceived by others as assertive not aggressive.

The community of others with whom one person identifies is a collective self or group of individual 'selves.'  The group of individual selves could also be thought of as a protected class under civil rights laws.  In the case of disability the civil rights protected class would be disability and the primary civil rights law would be the ADA signed into law on July 26, 1990.  Other protected classes are defined by, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and include race/national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression to list a few identity politics communities that could also be thought of as protected classes.  


One person, or self, advocating only for oneself for some type of reasonable accommodation in a workplace or to be offered housing to rent without discrimination on some basis, disability or source of income, is much less powerful than many selves advocating for the same goal.  "Safety in numbers" as the saying goes.  


The following list serve thread from 2010 and the pasted message best shows one view of how to define self-advocacy, for the autistic part of the disability rights movement, where advocacy should be done for a community of many 'selves' rather than one 'self' because it's impossible for others to represent anyone but themselves for the purpose of legislative advocacy.


https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/alt.support.autism/99cCofiO4oQ/8us1CGJMl4MJ






4/2/10
The Autist formerly known as

Try telling that to Autism Speaks or Grasp then, who act with much less
honourable motives than ASAN.
Individual representation is always a legislative fiction, no one person in 
any large community can accurately represent the beliefs and aspirations of 
every single constituent, not in the least because those are likely to be 
paradoxical an contradictory. One therfore advocates a community rather than 
individuals.
In that advocacy however it should in no wise substitute for the right of 
the individual to represent him/herself and any advocacy that tends toward 
the acknowlegement of that fact is better than advocacy that rides roughshod 
over it making many assumptions. I am aftraid the alternatives do just that, 
therefore in a less than ideal, and less than being capable of ideal world I 
support the flawed humans of ASAN in preference to any alternative that 
currently exists.

-- 
şT

L'autisme c'est moi

"Space folds, and folded space bends, and bent folded space contracts and
expands unevenly in every way unconcievable except to someone who does not
believe in the laws of mathematics"