I really need people to understand the difference between advocating for someone, and speaking for them.

Unless someone tells you exactly what to say, you don‘t „speak for them“.

You are still you.

You’re using YOUR words.
You‘re using YOUR voice.
YOU are choosing what to say.

Advocating for others is a good thing. As long as they want you to do that in you do it how they want you to.

Claiming to speak for others when you are factually using YOUR words, YOUR voice, YOUR choices - not theirs - is not a good thing. Even if you have good intentions.

When my husband reads out loud something I wrote and gave to him for this purpose - he is speaking for me.

When my husband decides to write and give his own speech about who I am, what I have to say, what I need - he is not speaking for me. And he better not claim that he is.

You don‘t need to claim to speak for someone in order to advocate for them.

In fact, ensuring people understand that you AREN‘T speaking FOR the person you’re advocating for is an important part of advocating!

Because only then does THEIR OWN autonomy and agency remain intact.

If someone claims to speak for me, it implies whatever they say, think, decide, comes from me.

This erases my autonomy and agency.

People don‘t come to me for input anymore, because they don’t have to! They have that other person, easy to communicate with, „speaking for me“.

Communicating with someone who struggles with communicating takes time, effort, and resources.

But EVERYONE communicates.

EVERYONE has the right to autonomy and agency, no matter how „difficult“ that is for others.

You don‘t get to circumvent this by „speaking for“ people.

Are some people excluded from certain things because of communication differences and accessibility barriers?

Yes!

Is that bad?

Yes!

Should we try to fix it?

Yes!

Does that give you the right to claim to „speak for them“, claim that your words are their words?

NO!!!

And one more thing:

Self-advocacy is for everyone.

People often misunderstand (or purposefully misrepresent) self-advocacy to mean „eloquent communication“.

In reality, self-advocacy is ANY and ALL communication sharing one‘s needs, wants, thoughts, opinions, etc. ANY AND ALL!

If someone struggles to self-advocate, the solution is NOT to „speak for them“.

The solution is to enable them to self-advocate!

Find. A. Way.

And if that‘s really impossible (more often than not it‘s NOT impossible), you advocate for them.

You still don‘t „speak for“ them.

Now there will always be environments, circumstances, contexts, topics, etc. that are inaccessible to some people.

That‘s a real problem and it must be fixed!

Then you may speak...but you still may not claim to be speaking for someone else unless they told you what to say.

In short:

Claiming to speak for someone, when they havn‘t asked you to and told you what to say, circumvents their autonomy and agency and is a huge advocacy no-no.

Advocate for others if others want you to.
Speak for others if others want you to.
Otherwise speak for yourself.