. . . obviously. I can't even claim that I've been "busy" or "working" or any such thing. Distracted, though. . . can I claim distracted? Not that distracted, though. Do I need a parental note?
So, I had this whole thing about Obama endorsing the vaccine theory and how the vaccine theorists can claim to be a silenced minority when they have more than one major-party presidential candidates on their side, but, well, what is there to say?
I should probably get over the notion that I shouldn't post unless it's important, and just start talking to myself like everyone else does. Anyway. I have a homeschooling post in the works. I promise.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Don't Distract Me With the Facts
Preconceived notions are powerful forces, but I am periodically intrigued by reminders of the sheer force of them.
My favorite manifestation of the power of preconceived notions is the assumption that someone whose experiences do not match the preconceived notions must be lying. It's my favorite because, isolated from context, it's so obviously ridiculous. Yet in the context of discussion, many people seem to find it compelling. As pertains to autism, it's almost a cliche---you can_______ [talk, type, read, have a family, have children, have a job, go to school, live alone, live with others, clip your fingernails. . . anything that doesn't fit the stereotype], so you're not really autistic! But it's not autism-specific. It's unquestioned-authority-specific.
The established authorities can't be wrong, so anyone whose experience contradicts the established authorities must be lying. Of course, not everyone has the same established authorities. For some, medical doctors are established authorities. For others, homeopaths are. For some, anything claimed by a governmental agency is automatically true; for others, it's automatically false. For still others, the "established authority" is the doctrines of a particular ideology. But it doesn't really matter what, exactly, the authority is. It simply is the authority, and anyone who contradicts it must therefore be lying.
People who are unconventional in any way (in neurotype, in lifestyle, in opinion, in anything) are therefore nearly constantly faced with the assumption of being liars.
I have no patience with this.
So I have, therefore, no impetus to prove my truthfulness to those who question it on prejudiced grounds.
A brief statement of policy for future reference.
My favorite manifestation of the power of preconceived notions is the assumption that someone whose experiences do not match the preconceived notions must be lying. It's my favorite because, isolated from context, it's so obviously ridiculous. Yet in the context of discussion, many people seem to find it compelling. As pertains to autism, it's almost a cliche---you can_______ [talk, type, read, have a family, have children, have a job, go to school, live alone, live with others, clip your fingernails. . . anything that doesn't fit the stereotype], so you're not really autistic! But it's not autism-specific. It's unquestioned-authority-specific.
The established authorities can't be wrong, so anyone whose experience contradicts the established authorities must be lying. Of course, not everyone has the same established authorities. For some, medical doctors are established authorities. For others, homeopaths are. For some, anything claimed by a governmental agency is automatically true; for others, it's automatically false. For still others, the "established authority" is the doctrines of a particular ideology. But it doesn't really matter what, exactly, the authority is. It simply is the authority, and anyone who contradicts it must therefore be lying.
People who are unconventional in any way (in neurotype, in lifestyle, in opinion, in anything) are therefore nearly constantly faced with the assumption of being liars.
I have no patience with this.
So I have, therefore, no impetus to prove my truthfulness to those who question it on prejudiced grounds.
A brief statement of policy for future reference.
Friday, April 4, 2008
The Gift of Hyperlexia
One of the more perplexing (and sadder) consequences of the widespread pathologizing of autism is that traits which would be highly desired and praised in a neurotypical child are, in an autistic child, seen as further manifestations of autistic dysfunction. A conspicuous example of this is hyperlexia, highly advanced letter and word recognition in early childhood. Hyperlexic children are able to decode written language at an exceptional rate, but struggle with comprehension and often have difficulty with receptive or expressive spoken language. As hyperlexic children get older, their comprehension increases, sometimes completely catching up with their decoding abilities.
So in a society which equates early decoding with worldly success of all kinds, in which reading flash cards for young children are a thriving industry, hyperlexia should be seen as a gift, the dream of every bourgeois, academic-success-obsessed parent---shouldn't it?
Well, no. It is associated with autism. Therefore it is a horrible soul-stealing disorder which must be treated and cured.
Some parents of hyperlexic children assert that their children are not hyperlexic at all because their children's early reading is a gift, not a disorder. Yet it is somewhat revolutionary to extrapolate from this notion that perhaps hyperlexia itself is a gift, not a disorder, that perhaps a child who would rather read several books per day than socialize with other children is atypical but not tragic. No---if it isn't tragic, it simply isn't hyperlexia!
If there is any doubt that the patholigizing of autism has reached hysterical levels of irrationality, consider only that bourgeois American parents have been convinced that precocious reading is something to be feared.
So in a society which equates early decoding with worldly success of all kinds, in which reading flash cards for young children are a thriving industry, hyperlexia should be seen as a gift, the dream of every bourgeois, academic-success-obsessed parent---shouldn't it?
Well, no. It is associated with autism. Therefore it is a horrible soul-stealing disorder which must be treated and cured.
Some parents of hyperlexic children assert that their children are not hyperlexic at all because their children's early reading is a gift, not a disorder. Yet it is somewhat revolutionary to extrapolate from this notion that perhaps hyperlexia itself is a gift, not a disorder, that perhaps a child who would rather read several books per day than socialize with other children is atypical but not tragic. No---if it isn't tragic, it simply isn't hyperlexia!
If there is any doubt that the patholigizing of autism has reached hysterical levels of irrationality, consider only that bourgeois American parents have been convinced that precocious reading is something to be feared.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
CNN, and why my spouse is ignoring me
My husband has forbidden me from reading mainstream autism coverage. He has little patience for the ensuing rants. If I read the stuff anyway, he's made it clear that he doesn't want to hear about it.
Alas, the spirit is willing but the clicky finger is weak. CNN.com, right there where I read every day the goings-on of the world, has been taken over by propaganda. I would of course be negligent not to read it.
As expected, there are articles and videos about vaccine speculations, effective "treatments," the many ways that "families are affected by autism," and so forth. Yet in this sea of curbie-ism, there was a surprising positivity--which managed to piss me off more than all of the cause/prevention/treatment/cure rhetoric in the other segments: this series of videos featuring families with autistic members.
But surely this is a good thing! Surely this is what we want, for the benefits and advantages of autism to be discussed instead of the obsessive hyperfocus on the disadvantages!
And indeed, if those were the only two options, I would gladly take the positive one.
Yet an oft-overlooked point is that the positive depiction is nearly as dehumanizing as the negative one. Autistics are charming little creatures (and they are inevitably little), with the attractiveness of a young child clomping around in oversized shoes pretending to be a grownup. Autistics can't be regular people, of course, but it's so cute to watch them try.
I don't claim that this was the families' intent in allowing these clips to be made; it's quite likely they were motivated by a sincere desire to provide insight into the lives of autistics. But it is clearly a bias on the CNN side. And its ability to soften public perception of autistic people is dubious. There have been articles and books and news segments and made-for-TV movies dealing with the joys of people with Down Syndrome, yet the majority of fetuses with this condition are routinely aborted. Because stories about neurodivergent people and their families are like stories about people who leave their corporate careers to teach public health classes for inner-city youth--even as readers' and viewers' hearts are warmed, they do not contemplate emulating the stories' subjects. The subtext of the story is it's so amazing that some people have the superhuman patience to not only assist but even respect those creatures.
And this is the way it will be so long as the focus of identification remains on non-autistic family members of autistics rather than on autistic people themselves. Autistics in the mainstream paradigm are nonpersons, thus cannot be the subjects of identification. They can only be considered as they pertain to the lives of normal people. Autistics are Othered to such an extent that an autistic perspective is assumed to require a neurotypical translator.
On the top of the CNN page, there are a list of topics. One is called "Autism." The one next to it is called "Black in America," which is a series of articles and segments about. . . well. . . the experiences of Black people in America. Would CNN ever label a topic "Autistic in America"? Surely not. The difference in the labeling of the subject tags reveals the difference in the treatment of the subject matter--the first as an illness, the second as a cultural minority group. There is apparently no intended comparison in the juxtapositions of the two subjects.
Some people are so aware that they miss the obvious.
Alas, the spirit is willing but the clicky finger is weak. CNN.com, right there where I read every day the goings-on of the world, has been taken over by propaganda. I would of course be negligent not to read it.
As expected, there are articles and videos about vaccine speculations, effective "treatments," the many ways that "families are affected by autism," and so forth. Yet in this sea of curbie-ism, there was a surprising positivity--which managed to piss me off more than all of the cause/prevention/treatment/cure rhetoric in the other segments: this series of videos featuring families with autistic members.
But surely this is a good thing! Surely this is what we want, for the benefits and advantages of autism to be discussed instead of the obsessive hyperfocus on the disadvantages!
And indeed, if those were the only two options, I would gladly take the positive one.
Yet an oft-overlooked point is that the positive depiction is nearly as dehumanizing as the negative one. Autistics are charming little creatures (and they are inevitably little), with the attractiveness of a young child clomping around in oversized shoes pretending to be a grownup. Autistics can't be regular people, of course, but it's so cute to watch them try.
I don't claim that this was the families' intent in allowing these clips to be made; it's quite likely they were motivated by a sincere desire to provide insight into the lives of autistics. But it is clearly a bias on the CNN side. And its ability to soften public perception of autistic people is dubious. There have been articles and books and news segments and made-for-TV movies dealing with the joys of people with Down Syndrome, yet the majority of fetuses with this condition are routinely aborted. Because stories about neurodivergent people and their families are like stories about people who leave their corporate careers to teach public health classes for inner-city youth--even as readers' and viewers' hearts are warmed, they do not contemplate emulating the stories' subjects. The subtext of the story is it's so amazing that some people have the superhuman patience to not only assist but even respect those creatures.
And this is the way it will be so long as the focus of identification remains on non-autistic family members of autistics rather than on autistic people themselves. Autistics in the mainstream paradigm are nonpersons, thus cannot be the subjects of identification. They can only be considered as they pertain to the lives of normal people. Autistics are Othered to such an extent that an autistic perspective is assumed to require a neurotypical translator.
On the top of the CNN page, there are a list of topics. One is called "Autism." The one next to it is called "Black in America," which is a series of articles and segments about. . . well. . . the experiences of Black people in America. Would CNN ever label a topic "Autistic in America"? Surely not. The difference in the labeling of the subject tags reveals the difference in the treatment of the subject matter--the first as an illness, the second as a cultural minority group. There is apparently no intended comparison in the juxtapositions of the two subjects.
Some people are so aware that they miss the obvious.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Awareness
And now I come to the reason for the timing of my admittedly belated foray into blogland (I don't have an i-pod or a digital camera, either)--Autism Awareness Day. Which is part of Autism Awareness Month.So, for Autism Awareness Day, I shall say that I am autistic and I am aware of it.
Simple enough, right?
Well. . . not quite. One of the secrets of the autism world is the unknown number of unaware autistics. If you were born before 1985, and you are autistic, you are most likely unaware of it. Why? Because autism spectrum conditions are diagnoses usually given in childhood, and when most of the adults of today were children, ASCs were diagnosed much more rarely. Autistics may have been diagnosed with various speech problems, learning disabilities, mutism, ADHD, psychiatric or behavioral conditions, or perhaps nothing at all besides "odd" or "nerdy."
So, is that a problem? Yes and no. For the individuals involved, it probably is no problem at all. But for the autistic self-advocacy community, it's a fairly significant one. There is strength in numbers, and it's difficult to advocate for a community of whom half the members are completely unaware of their own membership.
Therefore, I support autism awareness. Not in the conventional sense, the curebie sense of make everyone aware of how horrible autism is so we can cure it, but simply in the sense of be aware of what autism is, and what it isn't. It's a way of being that encompasses 1 in 150 Americans, and it's entirely possible that those numbers are low. Autistics are all around us. Friends, neighbors, coworkers, relatives. . . any could be unaware autistics.
So, be aware. Learn about autism.
I'll be attempting to post about autism awareness all this month.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
