Archive for April, 2010

your dreams will be reduced down to breathing, and you will be grateful

The thing about not-being-a-person is: They will say those people and the price of being a person is to nod and agree that yes, those people aren’t people at all. They will have no idea who they are talking to. You yourself will start to forget, too. They will say a million small things that sow the seeds for violence done against you, and you will smile and let them. You will do math, constantly. How much do I want to be a person today? How much do I want this project to succeed? How much honesty can I afford? How much dishonesty will kill me? What is the cost of coming out? Is there a way to delay, soften, transmute? How long can I survive as half a person? Ever since the world ended ... I don't go out as much. People that I once befriended, just don't bother to stay in touch. Things that used to seem so splendid, don't really matter today. It's just as well the world ended -- it wasn't working anyway. Your dreams will be reduced down to breathing. [Read More]

on 03/5/12 | 2 Comments | Read More

Autism and the Uncanny Valley

One of the first pieces I wrote for this site finished with a whimsical suggestion that autistic people were somewhat native to what is known as the uncanny valley, a term that refers to the revulsion...[Read More]

on 04/30/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

The Benefit of the Doubt

Many books and articles have been published on the topic of what makes a marriage or relationship succeed.  At the top of my list I'd put willingness to give the other person the benefit of the doubt...[Read More]

on 04/28/10 | No Comments | Read More

How far can autistic culture develop without excluding neurotypical people?

How far can autistic culture develop without excluding neurotypical people? For many years I have been married (to the same guy).  It’s obvious to me that we are both on the autistic spectrum, e...[Read More]

on 04/26/10 | 7 Comments | Read More

Passing For Neurotypical

Officially, we don't exist. The hordes of psychological "experts" who regularly comment on the supposed near-impossibility of productive, independent lives and successful marriag...[Read More]

on 04/23/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

Social Anxiety and Autism

I am aware I have a subtly different style of communication and can see how it contributes to social anxiety.  I tend to stare at the floor and listen.  This way, I can usually get the context of a ...[Read More]

on 04/22/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Abortion, Violence Against Women, and Autism

Modern society is changing in many ways that increase the autistic population.  Andrew Lehman touched on one of them in a November post discussing the practices of sex-selective abortion and fema...[Read More]

on 04/21/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

The Dark Side Of Theory Of Mind?

“Our reputation-conscious ancestors would have experienced a pervasive feeling of being watched and judged, he says, which they would readily have attributed to supernatural sources since the cognit...[Read More]

on 04/20/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

The Road Less Travelled

We all know them, there is a certain tribe amongst us neuro diverse people who speak of cure and curse what they might have been but for the 'demon' of autism that possesses them. They tend to be r...[Read More]

on 04/19/10 | No Comments | Read More

You Could Be An Autistic Person If …

you are a very curious person, in both senses of the word you say goodbye to your husband in the morning as he goes off to work, and your heart leaps with joy at the prospect of spending the day home...[Read More]

on 04/16/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

Tips For Socially Awkward Geeks (According to Stanford)

Or perhaps more accurately, according to a certain student at Stanford.  Wait, shoot!  I broke the rules! Philip Guo has a write-up of rules for the successful social interaction of geeks.  Real...[Read More]

on 04/14/10 | No Comments | Read More

Mark Ty-Wharton Speaks

You might not expect an adult diagnosed with autism to be a public speaker, especially an adult with a long history of social anxiety, who gets caught out by the occasional bout of depression. And wh...[Read More]

on 04/12/10 | No Comments | Read More

How (and Why) to Use Framing in the Discussion of Autism

As is the case elsewhere, in the struggle over how autism is to be defined and understood, how a discussion is framed has more influence on the outcome of any conflicts that arise within that discussi...[Read More]

on 04/9/10 | No Comments | Read More

Emotions: who is the expert and who is the dunce and what exactly are we talking about?

Over and over again I read that autistic people are disabled in the ability to understand not only the emotions of others, but also our own emotions.  Could this mean that the subject of “emotions�...[Read More]

on 04/7/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Normie (part two)

In a part of his brain that he seldom communicated with, but fortunately, was ultimately in charge, he knew that the only way he was going to be able to live and support himself would be to join the N...[Read More]

on 04/6/10 | No Comments | Read More

Normie (part one)

How he hated that name, how it made him shrink to hear it.  For the longest time, he thought it was the cause of all his problems, the snickering, the disrespect he had endured.  He cursed his mothe...[Read More]

on 04/6/10 | No Comments | Read More

Autism, Alloparents and Human Evolution

It seems that the Sarah Blaffer Hrdy book, Mothers and Others:  The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, is blowing my mind.  I am discovering a new, yet established, researched human evolu...[Read More]

on 04/5/10 | No Comments | Read More

On Styles of Consciousness, Autism Included

“Whatever else it may be, autism is a way of being in the world.  It is a style, a manner of behaving and perceiving, and of being perceived.” Classical Greece had a whole lexicon of differe...[Read More]

on 04/2/10 | 11 Comments | Read More

Alloparents and Evolution

"Comparing the rates of violence in chimpanzees and humans gives support to the idea that male-male physical competition over females within the social group is vastly less important in humans.  Wran...[Read More]

on 04/1/10 | No Comments | Read More