[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

At one point when Marcia had just left the room I turned to Andrew and asked, “So how’s your relationship with your unconscious?” He gestured, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, to the window. I thought for a moment and replied, “I’ve been told of of Native American men who would sit on the shore of a lake and watch the water and the sky, all day, for days on end.” At this he nodded vigorously and emphatically.

Here I want to make just a quick mention of a story I remember from when I was a child who read the World Book encyclopedia. This is about the chemist Kekulé who made the breakthrough discovery concerning the molecular structure of aromatic compounds and famously explained years later that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail.

So there’s our ouroboros from the masthead again. I actually count that as a coincidence here, the real point being that scientific discoveries do from time to time spring from the direction of the unconscious — and as it happens Shift Journal owes its existence to Andrew Lehman’s long-ago obsession with serpent mythology. This is a seemingly random fascination to begin with but one which ultimately led to his Orchestral Theory of Evolution. Stay with me here; we’re just a just a paragraph away from being back to autism and disability ….

The upshot then when one studies serpent/dragon mythology in historical context is not only that the ouroboros is a reference to cyclical time, to events having a way of coming back ’round again, but that serpent energy in general is female energy. Whether the story is St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland or the Knight in Shining Armor slaying the Angry Dragon, what’s being recalled — yea, though the victors who write the history books would have us believe it’s the victory of Good over Evil — what’s being recalled and commemorated is the succession of patriarchal social structure over matriarchal (and significantly for our purposes, more autism-friendly) social structure. Now I realize no one who dialed in today was braced for a lecture on superordinate gender-defined social structures, and I apologize for that. But I ask you, what is “the social model of disability” if not a critique of patriarchal values and a suggestion that another option we might consider, you know, is matriarchal values?

What Andrew Lehman’s work does then is provide a framework in which for one style of consciousness — the one out of which the social model has arguably come — autistic is inherently a legitimate way of being in the world. This is obviously not the default style of consciousness at the present time, and much to our frustration today this ouroboros swallows its tail in evolutionary time. It moves slowly, leaving us epically “Tired,” as Lydia Brown has recently reminded. It makes for a scale of change that’s difficult to see from the perspective of any individual lifespan, certainly unless one knows what to look for. But this is the larger, big-picture context Andrew Lehman’s work makes available to every contributor whose words appear at Shift Journal: just as our familiar serpent and dragon myths describe the previous “shift” as it plays out in Dreamtime, Shift Journal is documenting the leading edge of the current one as it plays out in real time.

So. To wrap up this section, something I’ve been curious about ever since I realized how my first obsession transformed from jazz music (for 11 years) to archetypal psychology (for 7 years) in the space of one electrifying paragraph in a Michael Ventura essay, is just how many seemingly random autistic serial obsessions are not at all unrelated and do succeed one another by way of such a spark, one you can actually watch as it flies along a perfectly logical but completely unforeseen path from the last obsession to the next. All as if there’s something else that remains unidentified, stringing together behind the scenes what are in fact related obsessions. Unlike with Kekulé, what happened in Andrew’s case is that once the serpent obsession had run its course, the fascinations which succeeded it involved his wondering whether humans, consciousness, and the prevailing neurology were or are objectively different under matriarchal social structures.

What followed was years of apprenticing himself to the science that concerns itself with that question. It’s work that deserves to be vetted by better-trained minds than are likely listening to me today. I’m telling the part of the story I feel competent to tell at the moment, but the science — along with a copiously referenced twelve-page bibliography — is there for anyone qualified to do peer review.

Theories of course are made of hypotheses and hypotheses must be testable in order to be science. One of the easiest ways to hook into that science sometimes even as a layperson is to look at what a theory predicts, and The Orchestral Theory of Evolution yields a long list of predictions as recorded in the book, 28 of which appear at Shift Journal in an early post titled Predictions.

One thing Andrew has been keenly aware of all along is that since Evolution, Autism, and Social Change is a cross-disciplinary work true peer review will have to come from more than one discipline. Whenever I think about that I’m reminded of the prediction I ran across years ago that we might expect future scientific breakthroughs to come from just such outsider discipline-hoppers because most scientific fields are now so mature that simply keeping up with the literature in one’s chosen field is a full time job, leaving little room for the necessary creative reflection and reverie. My impression is that this has not necessarily been borne out in general, but then it may be that there simply aren’t enough cross-disciplinary thinkers out there — let alone enough time for reflection and creative reverie.

That then is the story of the inception of Shift Journal. It began with an obsession with serpent and dragon mythology, and Shift is not the most significant, thoroughly developed, or potentially far-reaching piece of work to come out of the story.

Recently presented online as part of a webinar sponsored by Autism NOW and The Arc.

(part 3 and more to follow …)

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[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

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related: Evolution, Autism, and Social Change

related: Predictions

related: Why Serpents, Dragons, and Shift (part 1)

1. Relative testosterone levels in males and females inform matrifocal vs. patrifocal societal structure. High T females choose low T males for their cooperative abilities, creating more egalitarian, matrifocal cultures. High T males choose low T females for their ability to be the complement to male authority, forming patrifocal cultures.

2. Autistic males, from families of left-handers, will have lower testosterone than the norm, and autistic females will have higher testosterone. In any study of autism, those with familial male maturation delay tendencies, families of left-handers, need to be evaluated separately from those possibly traumatized by an environmental effect.

3. Larger penis and testicle size will be associated with autistic, ambidextrous males and the familial left-handed.

4. Autistic males will exhibit more neotenous characteristics while autistic females should show less neoteny than contemporary populations.

5. If larger testicles and increased sperm production are associated with low-testosterone, promiscuous social-structure males, the two variables will be related in that higher-testosterone males will have smaller testicles or lower sperm production.

6. Left-handed males and autistics will produce more sperm.

7. A high percentage of artistic, narcissistic males and females with borderline personality disorder, particularly those from families with left-handers, will have more frequent incidence of autism in their family.

8. Narcissistic males will frequently mate with borderline personality females. The males will have lower testosterone, the females higher testosterone than the average.

9. The children of parents of widely different ethnicities, separated by tens of thousands of years of no interbreeding, should reveal characteristics of their last common progenitor and increased incidence of autism.

10. Among contemporary cultures, patrifocal societies will exhibit increased sexual dimorphism compared to matrifocal cultures.

11. Over the last six thousand years, female brain size will decrease at a smaller rate than male brain size, or even increase over the same period because the female is being selected for an exhibition of neotenous characteristics.

12. Neoteny has dental correlations, with smaller teeth being characteristic of the neotenous smaller jaw. Watching teeth grow smaller over millions of years, might researchers find that they have grown larger in males the last few tens of thousands of years as patrifocal social structure has taken hold?

13. Because a mother’s testosterone level rises with her age and because she has children across the whole arc of her reproductive years, then we might observe a display of personality and physiological features in her children that would roughly reproduce human evolution over a span of eons. An older mother should more frequently have children with maturational delay, including autism.

14. Obese mothers (overweight women exhibit increased testosterone levels), particularly those that are older, should show high incidence of autism in their children.

15. The teeth of males from older mothers should be smaller than the teeth of males of first-born, young mothers. It should be reversed for females.

16. If the low testosterone (T) males and high T females are late born, and high T males and low T females are the oldest children in a family or the first born, then first-borns will mate with first-borns and late-borns will mate with late-borns a higher percentage of the time than would normally occur.

17. In a large family, the male’s teeth will erupt later and later, the females earlier and earlier.

18. Hypothesizing that social structure has political correlates, it would be likely that in a politically conservative family, if liberals would emerge, it would be with the youngest sons and daughters. One would also expect a higher incidence of divorce or serial monogamy with youngest children.

19. Conditions that display maturational delay, such as autism, Asperger’s and stuttering, will appear in males with longer limbs and smaller teeth than in others in their family of origin.

20. Equatorial peoples transplanted to northern climates will display higher percentages of maturational-delayed male children, and maturational-accelerated females, including autistics, with the births congregating in certain seasons.

21. If mother’s allergies influence testosterone levels, for example, hay fever causing testosterone increases, then allergies might be a factor in the cause of autism in her children. Birthdays of these autistics should cluster in certain months.

22. Female infanticide is patrifocal culture’s method for keeping only high T males in the procreation pool. In societies engaging in female infanticide, there are far fewer females than males to mate. The males considered least desirable as husbands by the fathers of the females to be married go mateless. Female infanticide is the co-option of female selection by patrifocal society to maintain a patrifocal society over time.

23. Puberty or progenesis in humans when dropped to a younger age by several years has neurological and cognitive repercussions. In addition to an increase in depression and bi-polar disorder, there is a general curtailment of the final stages of cognitive development.

24. Eating healthy (the caveman diet) brings puberty later and provides a longer time for the brain to grow. Putting autistic children on such a late-puberty-enhancing diet may enhance their ability to connect.

25. Periods of innovation will be preceded by periods of romance, by changes in the selection criteria by which females pick their mates or by a widening of the selection criteria for the ideal male. Shifts to increases in the variety of acceptable features in the procreation population will result in increases in cultural and technical variation. For example, if female infanticide is a tool used for patrifocal cultural stability, decreases in female infanticide over time within a culture will correlate with increases in societal and economic variation.

26. If rhythm and dance were the media driving human evolution through rituals of sexual selection, then the sound and feeling of nonstop rhythm may be necessary to encourage the development of an autistic child. Rhythmic environmental triggers may be essential to the healthy growth of maturational-delayed children. Comparing congenitally deaf left and right handers may reveal an unusually high number of autistics in the left handed group.

27. If neoteny is a powerful force influencing the transformation of society, then we might predict societal increases in transparency, diversity and horizontal communication as features of aboriginals and the very young are prolonged into the character of contemporary times.

28. Teleological interpretations of cultural evolution are often the observations of the dynamics of neoteny. By prolonging the features of the smallest bands into the largest societies–transparency, horizontal communication, equality–society is invested with specific features and a predictable direction.

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Proceed to author’s FREE book download on this subject (The book is called Evolution, Autism and Social Change). 10 minute introductory video here.

Predictions first appeared at Shift Journal on November 30, 2009.

This re-posting (edited slightly for numbering) is part of a series of resurrections from Shift Journal’s archives.

Indeed, his project was not tailored to meet popular demand. It was written first for family, friends, and most of all, for his own satisfaction.
From these insular motives comes a great deal of its power.
There is something haphazard and unpolished about Tolkien’s storytelling. His pace is slow, the direction of his plot imprecise and shifting. It’s always given me the feeling that I’m sitting with him by a fireplace and he’s prodigiously making it up or recalling it from memory right there on the spot.
Tolkien had a natural grasp of the Subtle way of thought. He understood the charm of imperfection. As a result he sounds more like a storyteller, less like an author.
The details we learn aren’t necessarily relevant to the plot. A lot of that stuff is just for fun. You have to understand that playful impulse, that curiosity and creativity for its own sake to enjoy the story to its fullest.

Tolkien never intended to single handedly resurrect the mythological paradigm in Western society, but his stories obviously spoke to a deep human need
Tolkien understood viscerally that no society could be grounded without legend and mythology—narratives that establish a meaningful continuity that extends far into the past and which will extend into the future. A continuity that invites us to be a part of something greater than our own fleeting lifespans.
Tolkien was a true introvert and his mythology tells us something of a sense of isolation and alienation in a rapidly changing world.

When one encounters interpretations of the Lord of the Rings, the first thing people always seem to look for is allegorical references to the World Wars.
To do so is to fundamentally misunderstand the man was about.

Though Tolkien writes epic stories about great nations, the geo-politics of our world were never his overriding concern.
He was there in the trenches during WWI and lived through WWII, yet he never wrote obsessively about futility and disenchantment as did so many other writers from his ‘lost generation.’ Nor did he seem to perceive the opponents of his nation as evil forces out of some sense of nationalistic zeal.

Many of us who are familiar with Tolkien’s stories dismiss most of the real world allegorical interpretations, seeing instead reflections on the nature of good and evil. After all, the ethical questions posed by Gyges’ invisibility ring have been around since ancient Greece:
If a man named Gyges finds a magic ring that makes him invisible and unaccountable for his actions, would he still be moral?
Should he still be moral?
The Ancient Greeks believed that Gyges should resist his desire for power. Though external laws and punishments do not apply to him, the real danger is being reduced to a warped animal state:
Gyges need not fear going to jail, but by casting away restraint, he becomes prisoner to an ever growing addiction to power.
In the Lord of the Rings, there is a contrast between the Bagginses and Gollum, Sam and Boromir when faced with the temptation of the ring. The corrupting influence of power is clearly a theme, but it is not the theme that rules them all.

Tolkien’s works, though generally upbeat, have an elegiac message constantly hinted at: the old world with its legends, tradition, and magic is dying…

In this old world, with all its epic events, it is often a Hobbit, someone small, reluctant, and shy who has the formidable inner strength to save the day.

In the Hobbit homeland, the Shire we see an idealized representation of traditional village life, sheltered from events that shake the rest of the world.
The Hobbits work hard and grow their own food, but there is no rush or sense of toil.
There are no strangers in the Shire. All the families are known to one another, as are their reputations.

In the new world, our ‘age of men,’ traditional culture is dying out. It would seem there is no longer a place for these little people. Tolkien tells us those few who survive will be forced into hiding.
It’s a world where you have to compete to survive amidst a faceless crowd.
A world in which even friendships are contingent upon social status and money.
A fast-paced world in which no one has time for second breakfast.

It is not the clash of nations or moral quandary that seems to preoccupy Tolkien, but deep changes within society itself:

-The elves, the epitome of ancient virtues are forced to leave the continent by the oncoming forces of change. They embody a sense of mystery and reverence that cannot exist in a world where everything is explained away as mundane phenomena, where predictability and repetition are the aims of most endeavors.

-The ents are losing a bit more of their vitality with every passing year. Eventually they will all be ordinary sedentary trees. Their abhorrence for the cutting of trees and of machines echoes Tolkien’s personal disapproval of industrialized mass culture.

-The dwarves, stubborn, honorable, followers of principle live in a post-apocalyptic world, their underground cities overrun and in ruins. The new world won’t need their craftsmanship. Their skills will be replaced with machines. They too are doomed to fade away and be forgotten.

Humans alone are to be the future but they are fickle and perhaps prone to evil without the wisdom of the ancient races to guide them.

In the Orcs, we see a polar opposite of Tolkien’s values, a deliberate perversion and antithesis of the elves. In their race we can see his worst fears come true.

Most often, the Orcs are depicted as a screaming, faceless mass-produced mass(it is implied they might be manufactured rather than born). They move and act only as groups. They have little sense of individual agency or self. Beyond instant gain and self-promotion, they have no personal initiative. There are no Orc heroes. Their leaders rule by pure coercion. Bonds of honor and loyalty are absent. At all levels of the Orc hierarchy, there is constant, fierce competition, even for trivial scraps. Their whole society is mechanical by nature. Their armies move inexorably and in great numbers but with no sense of spirit, driving values, or purpose.
Ultimately, they’re all just obeying the will of the big boss and would be unable to act decisively without him. In every way, their society, to the extent it can be called a society is held together only through the exercise of naked power.
Furthermore, Orcs in true contrast to elves have no concept of beauty, sanctity, reverence, or mystery. Their world view is literal, pragmatic, joyless, relentless. They are devoid of creativity and imagination.

This Orcish culture tells us something of how Tolkien perceived our emerging new world. A world in which everything that made life worth living was under attack and an Orcish sort of life and world view becoming predominant.

His fantasy universe was not so much a direct allegory as it was a personal reaction to social change. Tolkien was stubborn. A devout catholic, he persisted in using Latin at mass even as everyone else switched to English.
In his personal world, he persisted with the conventions of ancient Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Celtic legends.
Middle Earth would seem in part to have been his personal defense, his stand against the overwhelming forces of modernity.
Indeed, Tolkien tells again and again the story of a few brave individuals in seemingly hopeless opposition to insurmountably numerous and powerful enemy forces.
Dying out and coming under overwhelming assault from all sides is a pervasive theme of Tolkien’s mythology.

As an introvert perpetually at odds with the mass society, Tolkien’s besieged defender mentality speaks deeply to me. Especially powerful for me is Tolkien’s conviction that the outwardly modest but inwardly strong amongst us can prevail against a monolithic mass no matter the odds. Tolkien is one of my heroes.
He may have been one of the last hobbits who could dare live out in the open. He had the good fortune to make his way into the relatively tolerant environment of the university. Without his job as an academic, it’s hard to imagine that Tolkien would ever have had the opportunity to pursue his eclectic interests.
He probably would have been crushed as others like him no doubt were(and are).

When I first read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings as a kid, it was just a great story, but even then when I wasn’t worried in the least about analyzing, I somehow felt Mr. Tolkien was on my side.
Now, I look to Lord of the Rings as a protest against an increasingly Loud society.
It is a project that openly defies the collective reality through the creation of a new world with new languages and societies. Everything about it, the world building, the con-langing, the plot tangents, the archaic tone, the emphasis on inner integrity over outer attributes, the lack of calculated mass appeal and shameless scraping to get to the top – it has all the ingredients for being deemed “a waste of time” or “self-indulgent” according to the conventional social understanding. Indeed, Tolkien’s works are more heretical than ever in an age defined by zero-sum popularity contests.

Zygmunt blogs at Kingdom of Introversion (and elsewhere).

Tolkien the Introvert appears here by permission.

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[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

I like to tell people that Shift Journal “is a big-picture endeavor” in part because I’m a fan of dry understatement. When one reads those earliest entries at Shift, it turns out that that sweeping claim about genetic justice wasn’t the half of what was being introduced. There are after all eight category headings along the bottom of the masthead; besides the Autism heading there are those for The Internet, Society, Politics, Evolution, Art/Play/Myth, Language, and The Unconscious — and yet all these are intended to relate back in one way and another to autism. Shift was conceived by its founder to be a forum for big-picture discussion of autism’s role not only in contemporary society but in evolutionary time.

All appearances aside, Shift Journal is first and foremost The House That Andrew Lehman Built. Mr. Lehman owns a web design firm, Andrew Lehman Designs, which is where Shift Journal came together under his direction. At that time he had for twelve years also been a serious amateur evolutionary theorist, an auto-didact first teaching himself evolutionary biology, both its science and its history, as well as neuropsychology and parts of other fileds such as physical anthropology, and then sifting through endless scientific papers with what can accurately be called obsessive dedication. He corresponded with and received encouragement from academics such as Simon Baron-Cohen, and documented what occupied him in a series of blogs, most recently prior to Shift Journal at Neoteny.org. The culmination of all this came to be a new theory of evolution complementary to Darwinism, centered around heterochronic theory and the ebb and flow in human populations of neotenous characteristics such as autism. It describes how relative hormonal levels in the mothers’ blood across generations and in response to both short and long-term environmental factors actually orchestrates the distribution of neotenous traits across populations which in turn influences if not determines the social structure of human societies. For those and other reasons he came to call it The Orchestral Theory of Evolution.

Why exactly “Shift” then as the title of the site, as well as the significance of that ouroboros in the masthead is intimately tied into that dozen years of work that led up to its launch. The obvious question of course is why Andrew is not presenting with me today, and the answer is that he had a stroke in the spring of 2010, about seven months after we had launched, and just days after his work was published in book form as Evolution, Autism, and Social Change: A New Feminine Theory of Evolution That Explains Autism. While the stroke has not impaired his ability to comprehend spoken language, it has put him in the position of having to re-learn the skills of reading, writing and speaking. All this happened in the midst of brain surgery undertaken to head off the growing risk of an aneurysm, so it was something he both was and was not able to see coming.

Recently presented online as part of a webinar sponsored by Autism NOW and The Arc.

(part 2 and more to follow …)

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]
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related: Why Serpents, Dragons, and Shift (part 2)

Item

Once in the cockpit of his F-11F though, Peewee Cobb’s whole character changes. The instant his hands and feet are on the controls, he’s as fast as his aircraft and as powerful as its armament.  He has superb reactions and eyesight.  Is rated superior in rocketry and gunnery.  Can outfly anyone in his squadron, including the Lieutenant Commander who leads it.

Item:  An acquaintance reports that a woman he has worked with is in person quiet, charming, and sweet, yet also confusing.  Her signature quirk is a shrug which comes frequently but seems neither to punctuate anything in particular, nor to be in response to anyone or anything that’s been said.

Some of the work they’re involved in gets hashed out and coordinated not in person however but online, via text, in listserves.  “In a listserve,” her observer notes, “this woman is a predator that takes no prisoners.  The same person in a different medium becomes a different person.”  He interprets the shrug as “some sort of tip-of-the iceberg evidence of the turmoil underneath,” and goes on to speculate that without the “analog signal,” the nonverbal back-and-forth of which the shrug is a part, “Instead of the tip, we get the Iceberg Whole.”

Item:  Another woman, a friend of ten years, becomes my partner in a long-distance courtship which is conducted at first largely by email.  As would be expected, new dimensions of her personality become available to me, and yet in person some of them remain largely unavailable.  We recognize these dimensions as being a “text-only persona,” and speak of her as such.  This persona becomes a third person in our courtship, and later, in our marriage.

A decade on, we become part of a far-flung online posse that’s in touch throughout the day and finds the experience so valuable that it migrates to a new social software platform when the first becomes unreliable.  Occasional discussions arise around the novelty and the pleasure of relating to each other in real time, via text-only personae.  Some find socializing this way to be more compelling and rewarding than relationships away from the keyboard have been for them, ever.

For some, even “text-only persona” doesn’t seem adequate to describe the experience.  In part as an exercise in geek humor but also to some extent in earnest, the phrase “text-based life form” is floated as an alternative and retains some currency.  Many in this group identify in fact as misfits, but these are not underachievers.  They’re professionals, climbers and rising stars in their field, coalesced out of a pool of attendees and presenters at annual conferences.

These text-only personae and text-based life forms then, the unlikely inhabitants of the Iceberg Whole—have they been here, quiet beneath the surface, all along?  There’s now a means for them to converse with one another, at any rate, a means for forming communities and coming to self-awareness—for only the first time, arguably, since the invention of text 5,000 years ago.  Or were the Icebergs Whole present prior to the creation of the written word?  Were they perhaps responsible for the creation of the written word?  How about for the creation of the internet, this other-than-analog means of communication that’s bringing the written word on a par with the spoken word—in terms of interactivity and real-time involvement—for the first time, ever?

Sure, the first use of writing was for keeping tax records and warehouse inventories—much as the first use of computers and the internet was to facilitate the interests of the powerful.  Yet culturally, along with the rise of computers, we’ve seen such a turnaround in the fortunes of the “geek” that most people under forty have no awareness that as recently as the 1970’s, being labeled one was about as empowering as being outed as a homosexual in Eisenhower’s America.

And now?  Yea, though the verbally gifted, the extroverted, outgoing tips-of-the-icebergs have overrun Twitter and Facebook and the rest of the internet with incessant inane chattering, surely it’s still the geeks, the Aspergian Tribe, the text-based life forms who built the joint and maintain it, those who are native to it, sometimes more familiar with its hacks than with those of analog reality, who are the ones who need the internet’s other-than-analog means of expression in order to recognize one another, experience themselves as a community, and maintain this tide of good fortune so recently come their way.

He’s a cliché now but even three decades ago a shy, geeky, pencil-necked kid who turns predator when faced with a cockpit full of gauges, buttons, and switches was still little more than a figure of fun in a book about real men—at best only a bitter-comic promise of possibility.  Now we see he was a proto-video gamer, and millions of shy, awkward kids have not only torn up the scenery in first-person shooters from beyond Ensign Cobb’s wildest dreams; they’ve done so as part of a community—which as they transition into their working years forms the basis for a social network potentially every bit as useful as the sports- or fraternity-based Good Old Boys’ versions to which they might formerly have had limited access.

In doing so they are making good on their lineage—as a group—for perhaps the first time in human history.  The same goes for those leveraging their text-only personae for professional networking.  How far back this lineage goes is anybody’s guess; it may reach back well beyond the paleolithic.  It’s a point I keep coming back to, that these people represent the oldest and most secret of all secret societies; at least throughout recorded history, its members seem not to have even known one another.

While it’s always an iffy proposition to imagine that we, yes, we in our lifetimes, are straddling a cusp that marks an epochal change, it does seem that after what may have been millennia in complete or relative silence and isolation, the arrival of the internet may mark the beginning of a re-membering, a calling-home of the children for the sort of minds who brought it into being.

Such a homecoming could well take centuries more to play out, but something Icebergian may be rising.  Those who set their store by the tip-of-the-iceberg and the analog signal will find it easy to see this rising as some Rough Beast whose hour has come round at last; wars are fought over just such matters of perspective, and for those who are paying attention this war is already being waged—and on more than one front at that.  What we are likely to see most of, however, is more and more adults whose text-only personae have grown up with far more opportunities than ours did.  Where that leads us, we’ll just have to wait and see.

The Internet and the Iceberg Whole first appeared at Shift Journal on September 25, 2009.

Here’s the rundown: A 2000 study by Abell, Happe, and Frith attempted to measure theory of mind by asking the participants to describe two moving triangles in computer animations. The researchers showed the animations to a group of adults, a group of eight-year-old autistic children, and a group of eight-year-old typically developing children. The animations were constructed by the authors to show random behavior, goal-directed behavior, and deceptive behavior. Most of the adults used intentional and emotional terms to describe the actions of the animations. The autistic children ascribed mental and intentional states to the triangles less often than the non-autistic children, and when they did ascribe mental states, the researchers described their answers as “inappropriate.”

A related 2006 study by Knickmeyer et al. attempted to measure whether fetal testosterone is inversely associated with empathy. To do so, the researchers analyzed the levels of fetal testosterone in the amniotic fluid of 38 typically developing children who had reached the age of four and, as in the 2000 study, showed the children cartoons with two moving triangles. The result was that more girls than boys used terms reflective of relationships, emotion, intention, and mental states to describe the triangles, and that levels of fetal testosterone were directly correlated with a lack of intentional thinking and the use of emotion-neutral propositions. The researchers reached the conclusion that the result shows a correlation between fetal testosterone and social development. Because a previous study had shown that autistic children score more poorly than typically developing children on the same task, the researchers also concluded that their findings support the extreme-male-brain theory of autism — that is, the theory that autistic people have male-gendered brains.

Before I continue, let me summarize the logic of both studies:

a) Autistic children do not impute mental states to inanimate objects as often as non-autistic children and adults,

and

b) Typically developing children who had higher levels of testosterone in their amniotic fluid do not impute mental states to inanimate objects as often as children with lower levels,

therefore,

c) Autistic people have extreme male brains.

You’ll note a few missing pieces in the logic here. This phenomenon arises from the fact that the researchers failed to pose a number of critical questions:

1) How does a failure to anthropomorphize inanimate objects indicate a problem with mentalizing, empathy, or pro-social behavior? An alternative explanation would be a bias in the autistic children toward seeing the world as it really is.

2) Given that triangles are inanimate objects and don’t have mental states, how could anyone possibly measure, scientifically or otherwise, whether the mental state one ascribes to a triangle is correct? Showing the participants a computer animation and telling they’ve gotten the answer wrong is like giving respondents a Rorschach test and telling them they’ve failed.

3) What, exactly, in a scientific paper, is the objective, quantitative definition of “inappropriate”? To my ears, the word translates as “You haven’t given the answers we had in mind when we set up the test.”

4) How exactly does a higher level of fetal testosterone make the culturally defined construct of “male” as “high systemizer/low empathizer” biologically determined in autistic brains?

Of course, the chief flaw in the study is the subjective nature of the ways in which the researchers view the cartoons. For instance, in the 2006 study, the researchers see the motions of two of the triangles as a mother coaxing her child to go outside, and they expect that their view will be shared by all of the participants. When the participants don’t see the shapes in the same way, the authors conclude that the participants are lacking in empathy and pro-social behavior. I can’t see any evidence that a failure to anthropomorphize inanimate objects indicates a problem with empathy or social relationships. An alternative explanation would be a bias toward simply calling a triangle a triangle, which is in no way opposed to empathic response.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, because the same thought occurred to me: “Autistic people tend to take things literally. Of course they just see triangles. Why does that have anything to do with empathy?” But you see, in the logic of autism research, the fact that autistic people take things literally is itself evidence of impaired empathy and theory of mind. Here’s the (very circular) logic:

a) Autistic people take things literally because they have impaired theory of mind

and

b) Autistic people don’t ascribe mental states to inanimate objects, but see them literally,

therefore

c) Autistic people have impaired theory of mind.

Sometimes, it just amazes me that scientific studies purporting to result in objective and quantitative measures are informed by so much subjective bias. But of course, given that such studies are constructed from inside the consciousness of one set of human beings in order to describe the consciousness of another set of human beings, they are, by definition, permeated by subjectivity. It’s not the subjectivity I mind; if the subjectivity of the researchers were fully factored into the research, as is the case in qualitative research, then the issues would be clear for all to see, and the questionable nature of the conclusions would be more readily apparent. It’s the pretense of objectivity that I find most objectionable, and that I consider one of the most serious issues in the research.

Sources

Abell, Frances, Frances Happe, and Uta Frith. “Do triangles play tricks? Attributions of mental states to animated shapes in normal and abnormal development.” Cognitive Development 15, no. 1 (January-March 2000): 1-16. doi: 10.1016/S0885-2014(00)00014-9.

Knickmeyer, Rebecca, Simon Baron-Cohen, Peter Raggatt, Kevin Taylor, and Gerald Hackett. “Fetal testosterone and empathy.” Hormones and Behavior 49, no. 3 (2006): 282-292. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2005.08.010.

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg blogs at Journeys with Autism, and presides at Autism and Empathy.

Can One Assign the Wrong Intentions to Triangles? appears here by permission.

The most recent installment in Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s published memoirs is Blazing My Trail.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

Savage said that autism was a “fraud, a racket.” He went on to say, “I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.”

The rage of autism advocates communicated quickly. Home Depot, Aflac, Sears, Budweiser, Direct Buy, Cisco and Radio Shack withdrew sponsorship before the end of the month. Radio stations dropped the show.

As an activist and organizer, I feel like what I observed was a social change miracle. Society likes to keep its anomalies and minorities invisible. Savage’s words have revealed the power of a group that will not hide.

Deep into this great transition from a capitalist, hierarchical, patrifocal society to the horizontal, aesthetic-based, partnership society, events occur that provide a window into the future. Neurodiversity is almost invisible at present. It is becoming a central focus of society very quickly. July a year ago was a coming out party.

Autism and Asperger’s rights represent the third wave of genetic justice. Civil rights, the first wave, established the language, strategy and tactics for creating social change. Women’s rights and gay rights manifested integral aspects of the social structure conflict between matrifocal and patrifocal frames of reference, championing the rights of all peoples. The neurodiversity movement heralds the hidden, central theme of changes underway. The physical, neurological and behavioral features of autistic and Asperger’s children and adults are confounding to a society unaware that these individuals are the third wave of a massive social movement.

Evolutionary biological theory in the U.S. revolves around a belief that natural selection satisfactorily explains how evolution unfolds. Evolutionary developmental biology is relieving many academics of this failed frame of reference. Still, with scientists unable to make the connections between societal transformation and biological evolution, the evolutionary mechanisms responsible for the dramatic increases in neurological anomalies are little understood. Darwin proposed three dynamics as integral to transformation: natural selection, sexual selection and Lamarckian processes. It is sexual selection in the context of social structure and the influence of the environment (Lamarckian selection) on an embryo that are together responsible for a switch from patrifocal to matrifocal frames of reference and the re-emergence of ancient genotypes in the present day.

We’re not talking about regression or reversion. It seems that something wholly new is emerging. It is possible that we are observing the first stage of a synthesis of the two great paradigms.

The thesis is that there were ancient, dance-driven matrifocal societies with commanding women, cooperative men and consciousness only beginning to split. We communicated by gesture. Waking was not unlike dream. Myth and miracle felt personal. Rhythm and pattern were the central aesthetics. Children did not know their fathers.

The antithesis becomes ascendant with the Indo-Europeans. A patrifocal society characterized by split-brain speech makers demands that woman cooperate with males that pass down possessions to the sons. God was distant. The rhythm of society becomes the horse hoof as the warrior takes control of the agricultural economy, song and story.

In the midst of synthesis, it’s difficult to understand the implication of the re-emergence of an Asperger’s/autism neurology characterized by a tendency to know things whole while engaged in the rhythm of the part. Back in Africa, when language was only beginning to break our brains into two, we were more unconscious than conscious beings.

Indo-Europeanized, we became separate and split-brained, focused only on the part or on the goal, alienated and male dominated, destroying what seemed not useful, unable to easily see the repercussions of our actions or feel responsible to change our behavior if we did.

The synthesis is a neurology with an intuition for understanding the big picture with guidance by a brain that can achieve goals step by step, a brain that has differentiated and understands that wholes are made of parts. We are merging the unconscious experience of the whole with the conscious focus on the part.

Aesthetics + reductionism = self awareness. Nature + individuality = humanity. Ancient aboriginal + Indo-European = Neurosynthesis.

The neurodiversity movement is only now just acquiring its legs. It needs to convince society that autism and Asperger’s are not disorders, not just unique, but are the first steps toward neurological synthesis.

We’ve waited a long time for this synthesis. Savor every moment of these unique times. An age of miracles has returned.

…

Proceed to author’s FREE book download on this subject (The book is called Evolution, Autism and Social Change). 10 minute introductory video here.

The above first appeared at Shift Journal on 8/31/09, and served as the site’s de facto keynote entry.

This reposting marks the beginning of a series of resurrections from Shift Journal’s archives.

To grow we all need challenges and changes. Putting oneself in an unfamiliar insecure place is a good way of doing so.

I hate all the latest pop music and dislike dancing to it even more, yet I would get myself out on the dance floor and experiment.

Strangely, I find there is a place for night clubs in the life of an introvert.
Night clubs are full of crowds so it’s like an arena full of bumper cars at an amusement park.
No matter how much you screw up, there’s no real consequences.
Short of threatening or physically assaulting someone, you can try what you like and see what happens.
You’ll make a fool of yourself again and again, but you’re a stranger. You’ll never again see all those other people.
You can keep trying and trying until you’re up to speed with everyone else.
At a night club, an introvert has that great ally of anonymity on their side.
Really, it’s not so different from posting articles online under silly pseudonyms such as “Gluon the Ferengi.”

You don’t even have to make a whole lot of conversation, the music is so damn loud most of the time that no one can really say anything except by shouting at the top of their lungs into each other’s ears. It really is reduced to raw chemistry.

For introverts who are behind in social development, bars and nightclubs can be a lifesaver. They are a place to remedy HID(Human Interaction Deficiency); it’s easy to satisfy the craving for physical contact with others. They are laboratories for scientific experiments in human social behavior.

Indeed, there’s no better place to take a starry-eyed romantic than a night club. In a night club, the reproductive market is laid bare. About 10% of men get most of the female attention. The rest of men struggle tooth and claw for the crumbs left over from the feast. Women get in free; men pay a cover charge. The currents of supply and demand reign supreme.
The lesson:
Women are valuable, the perpetuators of the species. Each is a bottleneck determining the potential for growth of the human population.
Men are cannon fodder, plain and simple. One man left alive after a slaughter can fertilize thousands of women.
But the top few men are the most valued humans of all.

Now, I have said before that I don’t consider myself to be one of the pickup artists. Their cynical, nihilistic ideas are a moral and intellectual dead end.
I don’t like the whole zero sum mentality of night clubs, but they do reveal our underlying instinctual drives and the social trends that must inevitably result.

If you observe one night in a night club you will understand why it is men who go to war and not women.
All those traditions that were simply handed down to us are suddenly explained.

Pickup artists embrace the nightclub mentality. As for me, going to clubs is a way of getting to know the enemy: ourselves.

If a Subtle person is to turn away from the surface world, they should first know what they turn from and why.
In night clubs, one can find the very quintessence of the Surface world. Everything you need to know to make a decision can be found there.

Ultimately I find:
The surface world has many privileges and pleasures, but is weak when it comes to meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.

Fulfillment is the greater good to me, even if happiness were the price. For the word ‘happiness’ in our modern language is just another of the pleasures.

Zygmunt blogs at Kingdom of Introversion (and elsewhere).

Introverts and Night Clubs appears here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/16/introverts-and-night-clubs/feed/ 0 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/13/tired/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/13/tired/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:00:05 +0000 Lydia Brown http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7643 I’m tired of being misrepresented. I’m tired of seeing the principles of self-advocacy misrepresented. And I’m tired of seeing the autism rights movement misrepresented.

Let me be clear. I’m not talking about allies, or about people who were just thrust into Autismland and don’t yet know much, if anything, about the constant conflicts that erupt here. This isn’t about you.

This is about people who write things like John Elder Robison’s “Looking forward at the autism spectrum,” or Mark L. Olson’s “Autism’s Fly-Over Population,” or the comments on Susan Senator’s “The Parents Vs. The Autistics.” It’s been a week of frustrating, misleading, and outright hurtful writing.

And I’m tired.

I’m also a little bit furious and a little bit frustrated and desperate to write something. My hands are numb right now, and it has nothing to do with my feelings. It’s kind of cold in here, actually.

Some background. John Elder Robison, as most people know, is famous because of his memoirs, Look Me In the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s. So he is Autistic, though you’ll almost never hear him use that word to describe himself, as he prefers the supercilious Aspergian. More recently, he wrote a book calledBe Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian. Fairly recently, I think around 2009 or perhaps 2010, Robison accepted an appointment to the scientific advisory board of Autism Speaks, an organization notorious for its lack of meaningful representation of Autistic people in leadership positions as well as its harmful and ableist rhetoric. I personally cannot comprehend why any Autistic person in his or her right mind, fully informed, would want to work with or for Autism Speaks, but there you go.

And Susan Senator is the non-Autistic mother of adult Autistic son Nat, as well as the author of Making Peace with Autism, The Autism Mom’s Survival Guide, and Dirt (a novel.) I don’t always agree with her, but she writes well and is genuinely interested in engaging and dialoguing with Autistic people as equals rather than interesting curiosities. Her most recent article, linked above, engendered a spat of disgusting, disturbing, and sometimes outright frightening comments, mostly from non-Autistic parents.

I think I’ve read enough disgusting, disturbing, and frightening things last week. I’ve been triggered pretty badly a few times. In fact, I’m slightly worried about opening the tabs next to this one in my browser, where I have those three pages open, just to get the quotes for this post. If you’ve read this blog before, you’ve probably caught a significant change in the tone and style of this post from previous ones. And it’s because I’m sick and tired of stuff like this.

“High-functioning autistic and Aspergers self-advocates who put themselves on an island by arguing that only the disabled can and should decide about the disabled to the exclusion of parents, family, caregivers and outsiders need to accept that they are only advocates for themselves, not the entire disabled population.”

-Mark L. Olson, LTO Ventures and parent

Wrong.

All self-advocates are not “high-functioning autistic and Aspergers” as Olson so arrogantly generalizes. The assumption that Autistic people who do things like blog or use speech must therefore automatically be “high-functioning” is fallacious at best and actually harmful at worst. I know firsthand of not a few Autistic people who cannot consistently perform activities of daily living such as cooking, cleaning, keeping a schedule, traveling, or maintaining hygiene without assistance from a family member, friend, or aide. Yet some of those same people often face ridiculous assertions that because they must be so high-functioning or “just Asperger’s,” their advocacy clearly is illegitimate and unfounded.

Other self-advocates might never be called things like “high-functioning” were you to meet them in person.Amy Sequenzia, of Rockledge, Florida, an Autistic self-advocate who regularly meets with government officials and expresses her opinions rather eloquently in the media and elsewhere, does not speak and travels everywhere with an aide. She communicates by typing via alternative and augmentative communication. (By the way, Amy prefers to refer to herself as“autistic” rather than “person with autism.”That too is not something that only “high-functioning people with Asperger’s” do.)

And Sequenzia is not alone.

Self-advocates Larry Bissonnette and Tracy Thresher are both non-speaking Autistic adults who communicate via AAC. In childhood, they were presumed mentally retarded and ineducable. They were in segregated classrooms and never mainstreamed or integrated with students without disabilities. Bissonnette and Thresher starred in the 2011 documentary Wretches and Jabberers, which follows their advocacy. Both men have served on the Board of the Autism National Committee, an organization that includes both non-Autistic and Autistic people in the fight for civil rights, and whose constituency has traditionally been non-speaking Autistic people (or Autistic people with limited speech) and their families.

They too are not alone in fighting for Autistic rights. Sequenzia, Bissonnette, and Thresher are only three of innumerable non-speaking Autistic people who are self-advocates. The majority of non-speaking Autistics face even more discrimination than do those who have learned to use speech, and by no means are they excluded from the model of self-advocacy, self determination, and autism rights. Olson’s assumption that all self-advocates are “high-functioning autistic or Aspergers” is grossly inaccurate and egregiously hurtful.

Non-Autistic parent Todd Drezner, in his 2011 documentary Loving Lampposts: Living Autistic, further explains why the use of the disputed “low-functioning vs. high-functioning” dichotomy is invalid and not useful when discussing Autistic people, and especially when dismissing so-called “high-functioning autistic self-advocates.” In one segment of the documentary, Drezner interviews an elderly non-Autistic mother to an adult Autistic man in his 60s. “Lyndon is employed and lives by himself in his own apartment,” says Drezner. “Is he high-functioning? His speech is severely limited and he needs support to perform life’s daily tasks. Is he low-functioning? And would it make any difference at all in Lyndon’s life if you could answer these questions?”

And what about people like Dora Raymaker? A board member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) and Co-Director of the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE), Raymaker does speak but prefers to communicate by text-to-voice. When she speaks, her words are not always articulate, as you can hear in Loving Lampposts: Living Autistic, and could lead the uninformed — or people like Olson — to make the assumption that she is “mentally retarded.” Clearly, that is not the case.

Olson’s second mistake is his blanket assumption that the principles of self advocacy seek to exclude “parents, family, caregivers and outsiders.” That is not true. Self advocacy seeks to ensure that Autistic voices are always heard and prominently so in any conversation about autism, along with the voices of parents, family, caregivers, and outsiders. Autistic adults welcome non-Autistic allies. People like Todd Drezner, Susan Senator, Kristina Chew, Kim Wombles, and Amy Caraballo are living proof of that. (And again, these names are only a very representative few of the innumerable allies, many of them non-Autistic parents of Autistic children, and some of children who might be described as “low-functioning” or “severely autistic” — insert a collective gasp of “WHAT REALLY THEY’RE NOT PARENTS OF ASPIES?” here.)

The principles of self advocacy are not that only disabled people can speak for disabled people, but that they must be involved with any advocacy. “Nothing about us without us” has been a motto of disability rights for a long time. There is nothing in that statement that suggests that non-disabled people have no right to be part of advocacy. What is at stake is that the most important stakeholders — the people for whom the advocacy is occurring — are routinely excluded, marginalized, and treated with the kind of contempt that Olson displays.

We, as Autistic people, whether we have been called “high-functioning” or “low-functioning” or both (at different times in our lives), have the right not only to advocate for ourselves individually, but for the rights and needs of Autistic people at large.

What I want to know, really want to know, is what parent in his or her right mind, would not want his or her child to advocate for him or herself? And what parent would not be proud of his or her child advocating for other Autistic people? When a non-Autistic sibling of an Autistic child starts an advocacy or awareness initiative, parents everywhere applaud. Why do you react with horror when Autistic youth and adults want to make the world a better place for your children? That’s what involving Autistic people meaningfully in advocacy means. We’re not in it for ourselves. We’re in it to work toward a world where all Autistic people, children and adults, speaking and non-speaking, can live better, happier lives.

Why would you oppose that?

“The image of autism is going to get lots of attention as more children with autism age into adulthood. Those who don’t see autism as a disability are talking about HF or Asperger’s. The DSMV slated for 2013 will officially expand the spectrum to include Asperger’s and my fear is that ‘Aspies’ will become the face of autism. It’s much less disturbing to talk about autism and include who seems, outwardly at least, like the boy next door. It’s easier to believe that autism has always been around when we’re talking about someone with amazing abilities or high levels of intelligence combined with some quirky behaviors. My friends with severely affected children have tremendous fears about the future. They clearly don’t need their children further marginalized by those who advocate just for awareness and acceptance.”

- Anne McElroy Dachel, Age of Autism

“When self-advocates’ autism talk shifts primarily to rights and entitlement, the need for new therapies, treatments, and services is forgotten. When we focus on entitlement, we create the impression that our problems can be solved by legislative action, much like the civil rights laws did in the sixties.”

- John Elder Robison, Autistic author and parent of an Autistic son

Here comes another grandiose misconception. Autistic self-advocates, with some exceptions, are not people who “don’t see autism as a disability.” If you don’t believe me, read closely the following sentences:

1.) I am Autistic.
2.) I am a self-advocate.
3.) I believe autism is a disability.

If you didn’t catch that, please scroll up a little and read that again.

I do believe that disability is entirely defined by society, but because of our society and our history, yes, being Autistic means that I am disabled. All Autistic people are disabled. Some Autistic people might be more disabled than other Autistic people, but if you are Autistic, you are automatically disabled.

The people to whom McElroy Dachel appears to be referring probably belong to an “autistic supremacy” or “Aspie supremacy” kind of ideology, the kind of people who believe that being Autistic means they are better, more evolutionarily advanced, or more morally upright than non-Autistic people.

Most self-advocates aren’t supremacists. We’re not advocating for “Autistic supremacy.” We just want equal rights. And yes, rights means services. It means accommodations. It means therapies. It means appropriate education. It means employment opportunities. It means housing opportunities. Rights isn’t a vague euphemism for “we don’t need help of any kind.”

It’s a bold, revolutionary statement demanding that the right of all Autistic people to equal access and opportunity as non-Autistic people be honored. And how is that right honored? At least partially, through appropriate services and accommodations, ad nauseaum. We have the right to receive services and accommodations without which we could not have equal access and opportunity. Some Autistic people would benefit from more services or accommodations, and others would benefit from very few.

Advocating for rights is not merely advocating for “awareness and acceptance.” McElroy Dachel misses the point entirely. We want all Autistic people – including non-speaking Autistic people, including Autistic people with self-injurious behaviors, including Autistic people with destructive or violent behaviors, including Autistic people who need an aide 24/7, including Autistic people who cannot complete higher education, including Autistic people who cannot travel on their own, including Autistic people who have not yet learned to communicate with non-Autistic people — to have better lives. And that very often means better services and accommodations.

McElroy Dachel is wrong. And so is Robison.

“Could it be that on the autistic-side-of-the-dichotomy, they are not able to see/perceive/understand/know well-enough outside of their own specific-ability-disability to accept the parental-dimension of autism?”

- Barbara, self-identified as not a parent

This one just blows my mind. I can’t win.

No matter what I say, it can’t be me; it must be “just my autism talking,” as Autistic writer Melanie Yergeau puts it.

So firstly, everything that I say or write is suddenly de-legitimized because (insert sarcasm here)obviously, an Autistic person is unable to understand someone else’s perspective or that someone else might have different challenges or needs. Absolutely and unequivocally wrong. At least one study (I believe there were more, but without citations, [and I'm too tired to find them now] I don’t want to list anything else) has demonstrated that Autistic people not only experience empathy, but in certain cases, experience more empathy on average than non-Autistic people.

And empathy has a lot to do with perspective-taking, doesn’t it? I’m a writer of fiction as well as of this blog. (Currently working on my fifth and sixth novels simultaneously, in fact.) I of all people should know right away that the answer is yes. For one, in my writing, I seek to humanize all of the characters — and I write crime novels that often focus on religious-inspired terrorism. (Disclaimer: I do not support or condone any form of terrorism for any reason. It’s sad, but after the NDAA, that has to be there.) I want the readers to be able to empathize with the characters. …and people like Barbara seem to think quite horrifically that people like me are incapable of perspective-taking and empathy.

It’s sickening and dehumanizing in the worst sense. For my part, I think Barbara is the one lacking empathy here. Sorely lacking, at that. The irony never fails to astound me.

Secondly, her statement is so patently untrue. There are Autistic people who are also parents of Autistic children, such as Melody Latimer or Paula Durbin-Westby or Phil Schwarz (Autism National Committee). So obviously, Autistic people can understand and even appreciate from personal experience, “the parental-dimension of autism.” By the way, all three people listed (who again, are only three people out of innumerable possible names) also happen to be self-advocates.

Thirdly, we Autistic people are more keenly aware of the diversity of disability in our own community than anyone else. How it could be otherwise? And as I’ve noted repeatedly in this rant of an essay, advocating for rights for Autistic people isn’t just advocating for the rights of some Autistic people or of the so-called “high-functioning autistic or Aspergers” people. (Where are those people, by the way? I’m beginning to think they’re almost mythical. At the very least, as Todd Drezner [again, a non-Autistic parent of an Autistic child] observed, it can not only be difficult if not impossible to define what makes someone high vs. low functioning, but also not particularly helpful in helping an individual person.)

“I think the dividing line in the autism community is ultimately if a person can achieve those goals of independence. At some point when a child is in ‘transition’ the parents (finally) have to acknowledge that their child will or will not meet the criteria for adult social service support (medicaid, SSI, and services). At that point, the life paths will differ between those that are ‘high functioning’ and those that need government supports.”

- Marjorie Madfis, parent

Again, it’s not so clear-cut. Kathryn Bjørnstad, one of the co-creators of Autistics Speaking Day, cannot travel independently. Kassiane Sibley, a highly articulate Autistic advocate, cannot cook and clean consistently for herself. Other Autistic advocates have noted that they do not live independently and or receive any number of government support or services. Most of the same people are blanketly labeled “high-functioning” in a frightening attempt to de-legitimize their voices.

If you blog, then you’re obviously high-functioning and very fortunate. Therefore, you obviously have no place advocating for people who are far more disabled than you are.

That’s how the assumptions go. And they’re just that. Assumptions.

Blogging does not equal independent living. Writing does not equal using speech offline. Advocating does not equal being “high-functioning autistic or Aspergers.” A large number of people who get called “high functioning” actually need government supports. And a large number of those people are unable to get the supports and services they need.

“Yes, I am upset that my daughter would rather play Pixie Hollow on her computer for hours rather than visit with a friend or interact on Facebook. And I do think this behavior will impede her from being able to lead an independent life. That is why I try to intervene – even though she does not like it.”

- Marjorie Madfis, parent

What if she’s happier playing Pixie Hollow? What if playing Pixie Hollow is a self-calming coping mechanism for anxiety, sensory overload, or social overstimulation? What if she, like a non-Autistic student in my computer science course this semester, simply sees no use for Facebook? What if she doesn’t have friends who value her for who she is as an Autistic person?

Did you ever think to ask those questions, Marjorie?

ost times, most of those “behaviors” are our way of coping with a world not meant for people like us. It seems another lesson in empathy could be used here.

“So, the argument from HFA’s that the problem is the expectations of society, that people learn to mesh into societal norms of manners, eye contact, and reciprocal language (body and verbal) seems just that……A tantrum over not having it their way……”

- Yvette Hansen, parent

Can’t win. No matter what we say, anything that challenges the status quo must be attributed to some terrible expression of our autism — in this case, throwing a tantrum. A tantrum. It’s reading ableist comments like this that sorely tempt me to actually throw a tantrum. But I don’t. I write these articles instead, hoping (maybe in vain) that people like the ones I’ve quoted will read them and alter their perceptions, bit by bit.

(I won’t even bother addressing the HFA thing here. That horse has already been beaten to death in this piece.)

But all I see here is another profoundly disturbing attempt to de-legitimize the voice of any Autistic person who expresses his or her frustrations. And all those expressions are met with such hostility and condescending accusations as Hansen’s, which inevitable evokes only more frustration.

It’s hard enough living a world where it is expected that a treatment protocol or behavior plan or intervention for an Autistic child or adult is in place ultimately to eliminate “Autistic” behaviors and replace them with “typical” ones. To make the recipient of those types of therapy appear and act as non-Autistic as possible.

That’s not saying that all services and therapies are bad; many are very good and sorely needed — the kinds of services, supports, and therapies that teach coping skills, cater to emotional needs, address sensory problems, accommodate in a classroom, assist with employment, and provide strategies for coping in social situations with non-Autistics. But these practical considerations are not the goals of most therapies or services.

So when we grow up learning that to be normal and healthy is to not be Autistic, when we are told to suppress obviously Autistic behaviors like echolalia or stimming, when we are sent to social skills classes for the purpose of making us appear more “normal” rather than giving us tools to better interact with non-Autistics, it can get very frustrating indeed. Hansen’s utter lack of empathy for the enormous difficulties and anxiety that Autistic people face — and especially the very verbal Autistic people who often get called “high-functioning” — because of the pressure to pass is telling.

It hints at the deep, systemic ableism that penetrates not just society at large, but also an unwittingly large number of the parents of Autistic people.

“At the other end of the spectrum are the Aspies and HFA teens and adults like Jack and Kirsten [from the New York Times article "Navigating Love and Autism"] who are the focus of media coverage, movies, federal programs such as Medicaid and the President’s Year of Community Living. They are also the primary beneficiaries of the Protection and Advocacy (P&A) Network created by Congress and self-advocacy organizations bent on eliminating all barriers to living and working exactly the same lives as ‘typical’ Americans.”

- Mark L. Olson, LTO Ventures and parent

Actually, the majority of so-called “high-functioning and Aspergers” Autistic people are often unable to access or receive the vast majority of supports and services. I don’t understand why so many people automatically assume that the Autistic people who speak and or can go to college are also the beneficiaries of most supports and services. Because for those Autistics, the ones whose disability is far more invisible than visible, asking for any kind of support or services usually results in a metaphorically slammed door.

“You’re asking? You? Well if you can ask, then you obviously don’t need any help.”

And whoever said that we wanted to live the exact same lives as non-Autistic people? Equal access and opportunity means exactly that – access if desired and when desired, and opportunity if desired and when desired. Most Autistic people don’t socialize the same way as non-Autistic people. Sometimes we have a different sense of humor. Sometimes we like to eat, work, and play in very different ways. So obviously, we’re not advocating to live the exact same lives as non-Autistic people.

We simply want to be able to access a theme park. Or a movie theater. Or a church. Or the RMV. We simply want to have the opportunity to go to college. Or join a civic organization. Or vote. Or work in a field related to our skills and interests. Or live in an apartment or house where we feel safe and at home. And what’s wrong with that? What parent wouldn’t want barriers for their Autistic children eliminated? Olson’s line of thinking seems twisted in incredulously ironic ways.

“Some disability self-advocates argue [that my daughter's] only option outside of my home should be in her own apartment or home no closer than 1000-1500 feet from any other disabled person.”

- Mark L. Olson, LTO Ventures and parent

Um, no. The proposed Home and Community Based Services waivers under Medicaid, which you can read for yourself right here directly from the federal Government Printing Office, have no such stipulation about living such a distance from another disabled person.

They state that a home or community based setting

must be integrated in the community; must not be located in a building that is also a publicly orprivately operated facility that provides institutional treatment or custodial care; must not be located in a building on the grounds of, or immediately adjacent to, a public institution; or, must not be a housing complex designed expressly around an individual’s diagnosis or disability as determined by the Secretary [and] must not have qualities of an institution, as determined by the Secretary. Such qualities may include regimented meal and sleep times, limitations on visitors, lack of privacy and other attributes that limit individual’s ability to engage freely in the community.

The proposed regulations further state that

A setting that is integrated in the community is a setting that enables individuals with disabilities to interact with individuals without disabilities to the fullest extent possible. Further, we believe that such settings do not preclude individuals’ ability to access community activities at times, frequencies and with persons of their choosing. Such settings are not segregated based on disability, either physically or because of setting characteristics, from the larger community. In addition, such settings will afford individuals choice in their daily life activities, such as eating, bathing, sleeping, visiting and other typical daily activities.

These do not mean that a group home, a residential institution, or a closed campus setting could not receive government funding. Such settings will still be able to receive funding from any number of other sources.

What they do mean is that a home or community based placement is one where the person is not placed on the basis of being disabled, as in an institution or group home. A place that is not essentially a ghetto, segregated from the community, solely for disabled people. That’s all. It says absolutely nothing about choosing to interact with, become friends with, or voluntarily choose to live with or on the same street as other disabled people. In fact, many of us Autistic adults like to be around each other. It gives us a sense of, you guessed it, community.

And as aforementioned, there are a large number of Autistic self-advocates who do in fact receive home-based services, including the services of part and full time aides to assist in activities of daily life. That can happen no matter where the person happens to live. So living in one’s own apartment, a la Lyndon fromLoving Lampposts: Living Autistic, is not mutually exclusive from receiving appropriate services and support.

“But as we enter 2012, I implore the autism community, media, government and especially those self-advocates who resist progressive thinking and innovation, to not forget the impact they have on our ‘fly-over’ population. Their story deserves to be told too. They deserve the right to choose how they want to live.”

- Mark L. Olson, LTO Ventures and parent

Suddenly we are the ones who resist progressive thinking and innovation? Quite the contrary. We are advocating for more inclusion, more integration, better access, and more opportunity. Equal rights. The right to self-determination. The right to receive appropriate supports and services. The right to live in a fully integrated community setting — with non-disabled and disabled neighbors — or to choose, of one’s own accord, to live in a setting like a group home.

And there have been a number of initiatives, many of them by Autistic self-advocates, to createprogressive, forward-thinking workarounds to challenges with regard to employment, higher education, and even aviation security procedures.

I think we have here a case of selective vision. Censored and redacted vision, perhaps even.

“As the autism spectrum expands to encompass more people with progressively greater verbal and written communication skills, those individuals have begun speaking for themselves. By doing so, they are altering the public’s perception of what or who an autistic person is or may become. This reshaping of perception has moved the public’s concept of autism higher on the IQ range, with more and more people seeing ‘autism’ as a euphemism for ‘eccentric geek,’ or, ‘genius,’ which is [sic] most assuredly is not. Popular television shows like Parenthood and Big Bang Theory reinforce that trend. At the same time, the population of people with intellectual disability and severe autistic impairment remains fairly constant. Those individuals are not generally able to speak for themselves. They are most often out of the public eye, and they may rightly feel they are rendered nearly invisible by this change in perception.”

- John Elder Robison, Autistic author and parent of an Autistic son

Maybe not to you. But in my experience, most people I’ve encountered picture a non-speaking child in a corner growing up to be an adult in an institution when I mention autism. Most people don’t actually believe me when I tell them that I’m Autistic. (And I was diagnosed by a neuropsychologist who specializes in the autism spectrum and sat on the board of an autism organization.)

Furthermore, two studies, which you can read here and here, have shown that not only is the rate of intellectual disability in Autistic people far lower than it has been assumed to be for decades, but that intelligence (or IQ, more specifically) is regularly underestimated in all Autistic people, both those with the Asperger’s label and those without it. So it seems that Robison is a bit behind in his facts.

In my experience, as an Autistic person with fairly invisible disability, I am not the face of autism. People do not look at me and assume that I am Autistic or associate my behaviors with being Autistic. When I disclose, I am frequently met with disbelief, dismissal, or denial. There has been very little change in perception of autism and what it means to be Autistic. And even less change toward the positive — of viewing all Autistic people as neurologically different from non-Autistic people, not diseased or disordered, but genetically and phenotypically divergent. Sometimes in disabling ways. For many, in severely disabling ways. But being Autistic is not a negative or unfortunate or bad or defective or lesser or inferior way to be human. It’s a different one.

“Every time a person with milder autism speaks of his own challenges, those words add to the body of information the public uses to define autism. The more we move that balance from disability toward eccentricity, the more we harm our cause, albeit unwittingly and with the best of intentions.”

- John Elder Robison, Autistic author and parent of an Autistic son

Again. Whoever said that Autistic self-advocates, who again, are not homogeneously “high-functioning autistic or Aspergers,” collectively deny that autism is a disability? Most of us are the first to recognize that being Autistic means being disabled.

And how can Robison not see how awfully offensive and insulting this statement is? So whenever a highly verbal Autistic person talks, he or she “harms” the cause. That’s about as true as saying that whenever a white American woman convert to Islam who does not wear hijab speaks about issues facing Muslim women, she somehow unwittingly harms the cause of advancing civil rights for Muslim women. Is she any less Muslim than a Saudi woman who wears a face-covering niqab or a Pakistani woman from the tribal Pakhtunwala? She may not look stereotypically Muslim or behave (in this case by not covering) in stereotypically Muslim ways, but she is equally Muslim. Her voice is equally valid and equally important.

Autistic people who are not visibly disabled are still Autistic. Just because the average layperson would not immediately assume that I am Autistic does not mean that I therefore have no right to speak about my challenges or the challenges of other Autistic people. In fact, if I do not speak, if I stay silent, then the world will never know that Autistic people are as diverse in our being Autistic as Muslim women are in their being Muslim women. The more Autistic people who speak (literally or metaphorically), the more advanced our cause will be.

Whether it is Amy Sequenzia or me, not speaking is infinitely more harmful toward the autism rights movement than speaking.

“The autism spectrum still includes a large population – several hundred thousand in the US alone – who currently have no realistic hope of substantial employment. That is a tragedy. And it’s not because they are discriminated against. It’s because they are disabled. Not only that, they are disabled for reasons we don’t understand and in ways we don’t know how to fix.”

- John Elder Robison, Autistic author and parent of an Autistic son

Actually, it is because they are discriminated against. Autistic people are routinely discriminated against because of their disability. Autism does not prevent a person from being able to work in a meaningful job using his or her skills and abilities. But discrimination does.

Any Autistic person, with appropriate supports, services, and accommodations, can work in a job using his or her skills and abilities. Some Autistic people can work in professions that might be considered impossible, such as in academia, the law, or medicine. Some might work in stereotypically geek professions, like in computer science or other technological fields. Others might work with animals, or in offices, or doing research in obscure but oddly specific fields. Autistic people can do just about anything non-Autistic people can do.

Can every individual Autistic person do any possible job? No. But neither can any non-Autistic person selected at random.

If a person who is perfectly capable and qualified for a job is not hired because he didn’t make eye contact during the interview, and he doesn’t make eye contact because it is infinitely easier for him to process what is said to him if not making eye contact, that’s discrimination. If a person who is perfectly capable and qualified for a job is not hired because she doesn’t communicate with speech, but can do the job without using speech, that’s discrimination. If a person who is perfectly capable and qualified for a job is not hired because he needs a few minor accommodations and the employer doesn’t want to deal with them, that’s discrimination. If a person who is perfectly capable and qualified for a job is not hired because she needs an aide to accompany her, that’s discrimination.

Robison is wrong.

And he’s wrong again — we understand exactly why autism is disabling. It is disabling because of the society in which we live. Let me quote from an earlier article, “Disability is a Social Construct: A Sociological Perspective on Autism and Disability.”

Our culture says that to be fully functional and able means that one should be able to attend a mainstream school, complete university or vocational training if desired, obtain housing, obtain and keep a steady job, and marry and support a family if desired — all without significant outside support or assistance. While it is considered socially acceptable to speak to a college counselor while in high school, see a math tutor for algebra or calculus, and even depend on one’s parents for financial support through young adulthood (twenties or so), an individual is not considered fully able and functional if he or she is unable to do one or more of those activities without significant amounts of support from others.

By this definition, the definition propagated and permeated throughout the societies in which we live, we Autistic people are disabled. Some of us may be more disabled than others — as some of us are more able to participate in life activities with less amounts of outside support, and others of us do now and will throughout their lives only be able to participate in some of those activities with significant amounts of outside support.

It’s perfectly understandable and perfectly explainable. There’s nothing mysterious about it.

But I’m tired of explaining away misconceptions. I’m tired of picking my jaw off the floor after reading such outlandish accusations that I’m throwing a tantrum for not getting my way, or unable to empathize with other people’s perspectives. I’m tired of seeing such incredulous statements by people who ought to care very deeply that there are other people, including Autistic self-advocates, trying to make the world a better place for their children. And by people who ought to understand a lot more than they do, as evidenced by their harmful and insulting assertions.

Are you tired, too, now? Because I am. And a few days ago, I almost threw in the towel. Because doing this is rarely rewarding and rarely satisfying. It rarely leads to closure and rarely creates lasting or meaningful change. It’s wrought with frustration and disappointment, and frequent personal attacks. That’s not just projecting either. It actually happens, and in public, too. Thoughts of leaving the hard work to other people crossed my mind. Maybe other people could deal with all of this. Maybe other people could accomplish things, and I could sit comfortably from the sidelines and applaud them when they received their due rewards. I don’t have to do anything, after all. I almost made that decision.

But I didn’t. I’m still here. And I’m tired. But I’m not defeated. And I’m far from done.

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Lydia Brown blogs at Autistic Hoya, and can also be found at the Autism Education Project.

Tired appears here by permission.

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An audio recording of the author reading tired can be found here and also embedded within the original post at Autistic Hoya.

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[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

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I am a self-advocate and I can type my thoughts. But, at the moment I show up with my communication device and an aide, my credibility, in the eyes of most neurotypical people, is diminished.

This is a constant battle for non-speaking autistic. Even the ones among us who have demonstrated, many times, their capabilities, and who have succeeded despite all the hurdles a disability imposes, these successful cases don’t seem to be enough to end the myths: that non-speaking autistic cannot self-advocate; that the so-called “low-functioning” cannot think by themselves, cannot have ideas or opinions.

We can, and we do. We keep moving forward despite the many labels we are given because it is assumed we need others to speak for us, to decide for us. Labels like: “low-functioning”, “severe”, “mentally retarded”, “needy”, “incompetent”. They all show how the neurotypical world sees someone like me. Someone who looks “more different”, acts “more different”, needs more help with things pre-determined, by the neurotypical, as simple tasks.

Looking very disabled or needing more physical help does not make us unable to think, being critical, being able to analyze.

There are too many neurotypical “experts” claiming to know more about us than ourselves. They say they can make us “better”, as if we are “not-right” or “wrong”. Most of them never thought about asking us what could make our lives more productive, less anxious; or try to understand a non-speaking autistic who has not yet found a way to communicate. All the conversation has been about “fixing” us, with the expectation that we finally look and act “more normal”.

Autism is a big spectrum. Some of us have better cognitive function; some of us might have intellectual disabilities; some take medication; most, if not all, have sensory issues. The ones labeled “low-functioning” need aides for everyday tasks.

For example: What does it mean if I don’t pick the right shape when asked? For the “experts”, it probably means that I am, in their words, “mentally retarded”. It is, in reality, more complex than that. It could be that my mind is obsessing over something else; it could be that I had a seizure or that the anti-seizure medication is making me extra drowsy; it could be that I believe I deserve a better treatment, since I am an adult and I am past childish tests. Even if I am indeed intellectually disabled, the fact that my opinion is being ignored remains.

Non-speaking autistics that fail to make eye contact, and that can’t say, or are never asked, why they can’t, also receive the “low functioning” label.

Forcing someone to make eye contact or insisting on assessments more appropriate for a child – with the inevitable “good job!” – are nothing more than a training program, a useless one. It causes more anxiety and does nothing to improve our self-esteem.

All the labels given to us only help to make myths seem like the reality. By classifying non-speaking autistic as low-functioning, one is lowering expectations for the autistic individual. He or she is not given a chance to express him/herself and maybe show hidden abilities.

We, autistic, have tried hard and accepted the neurotypical way of doing things to make it easier for non-autistic people to understand us, interact with us. Despite some progress there is still very little reciprocity. This is even more evident when the autistic person is one of the so-called “low functioning”. There is little patience in listening to us. When one of us succeeds, he or she is considered an extraordinary exception.

Look around. There are many of us trying to be heard. We did not put the “low” in “low-functioning” and we are speaking out. It is also up to the non-autistic to reciprocate in this communication exercise.

Amy Sequenzia’s Non–speaking, “low-functioning” is published here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

related: The Iceberg Speaks

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/11/non-speaking-low-functioning/feed/ 28 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/09/introducing-the-loud-hands-project/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/09/introducing-the-loud-hands-project/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:05:22 +0000 Mark Stairwalt http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7623 Julia Bascom, author of “Quiet Hands” and “The Obsessive Joy Of Autism,” is launching a new project, pursuing ends that parallel and surpass some of the goals pursued at Shift Journal over the past twenty or so months. From the website (edited somewhat for context and clarity):

“Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking is to be the project’s foundational anthology, featuring submissions by Autistic authors speaking about neurodiversity, Autistic pride and culture, disability rights and resistance, and resilience (known collectively by the community as having loud hands). The anthology is the first of a projected series featuring contributions from Autistic writers stressing the preservation and celebration of Autistic culture and resilience. The Loud hands website will host shorter and multi-media submissions along the same lines, along with additional materials and videos, and serve as a focal point for the project and community.”

“With an overarching commitment to undoing the cultural processes and ghettoization that make autistic people strangers to ourselves and spectators in our own stories, The Loud Hands Project consists of multiple prongs organized around the theme of what the Autistic community refers to as ‘having loud hands’ — autism acceptance, neurodiversity, Autistic pride, community, and culture, disability rights and resistance, and resilience.  The focus is on cultivating resilience among autistic young people and empowering the Autistic community writ large in building communities and cultures of ability, resistance, and worth. To quote Laura Hershey: ‘you weren’t the one who made you ashamed, but you are the one who can make you proud.’”

For further details including a roadmap for the ambitious future of The Loud Hands Project as well as an opportunity to contribute see the project’s IndieGoGo site here.

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/09/introducing-the-loud-hands-project/feed/ 0 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/09/beyond-introvert-survival-finding-allies-in-an-extroverted-society/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/09/beyond-introvert-survival-finding-allies-in-an-extroverted-society/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:00:59 +0000 Zygmunt http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7562 For many introverts who find themselves isolated, the advice they receive seems reasonable enough:  “Get out more.  Meet some people.”

Yet in practice it never seems to work.  One ends up exhausted and without having made any real friends.  One might continue this routine out of a certain need to be passable within society, but this doesn’t change the fact there continues to be little change.

Eventually, one, might arrive at a certain truth: time spent surrounded by people is no solution to the basic problems of the introvert.  Without a genuine sense of commonality, group belonging is in vain.

If the introverted person doesn’t want to completely resign themselves to a hermit-like life or continue hanging with company that does more harm than good, what are they to do?

There is a key error in the typical advice:  “Get out.  Meet some people.”   Get where?  Meet who?  Most people answer these questions without really having to think about it.  Their instinct guides them where they need to go.

For the more difficult introvert situation it becomes important to perform some of these functions manually.

An extrovert advisor might not realize it but ‘some people’ isn’t just any people.  In most cases, the extrovert ‘some people’ = the type of people they like to hang out with.  They do not realize that an introvert has different needs.

Introverts, being lost already, tend to take their extrovert buddy’s advice literally.  They go out and  make themselves participate some place where they don’t belong.

Who then is ‘some people?’  One has to find new groups that will bring them closer to the answer.

Instead of trying to subordinate yourself to the common standard, ask yourself: “Where would people who don’t like the common standard go?”

In general, atypical persons are going to group around places, hobbies, activities viewed as atypical according to the common standard.  If one examines the extremes of acceptability, the chances of meeting compatible persons rises from near zero to somewhat probable.

Relying on sample size over sample quality is the big mistake introverts make when looking for social belonging. Looking in the right place once will accomplish more than looking in a thousand random places.

The Surface society has manifold ways of weeding people out and sorting people into various categories.  An introvert can observe the techniques the larger society uses to eliminate people and then apply them in their own personal life.

The right place isn’t necessarily easy to find or access.  This is because the right place by its nature weeds out individuals who are In Tune.  The right place has some kind of barrier that prevents most people from accessing it.  Insufficient socio-economic incentives?  Impossible if one has lots of commitments to the larger society?  Is it a category that makes participants socially undesirable, thus only those who are truly Out of Tune would ever want to do it?  Does it require a sacrifice or leap of faith a well grounded person would never make?

You know you’re on the right path when you’re meeting a lot of these conditions.  And truly passing from the surface realm into the Void underneath it often requires a certain action of sacrifice, severance, and renunciation.  Those who remain are the few who were able to perform that act and pass through that trial.  These people are highly likely to be viable colleagues.  They are the distillate from a seething mass of millions.

If one understands how to follow a process of rigorous social distillation, isolating any sort of person with any sort of proclivity becomes possible.

Moving towards extremes is one way to practice social distillation, but it’s precisely tough hurdles that make it work.

There are easier ways…

One way is finding simple unobtrusive ways of  ‘pinging’ groups for compatible persons.  An easy way to do this is to simply make subtle in-references to things only the right sort of person would understand.  In my experience, nonsensical speech barely registers on most people’s senses.  If the ‘ping’ fails there’s not really any consequences.  The occasion that it works can be life changing.  I met one of my best friends by asking jokingly if he was related to an obscure historical figure sharing his surname.  He got it!

We pass our colleagues in crowded places every day.  We just lack means of knowing one another.  Surface groups usually know one another by a certain fixed style of dress, music.  The introverts who feel mostly like hiding also succeed in hiding from one another.  This is a paradoxical problem that every isolated introvert faces…

In Korea, the number of U.S. troops is greater than the country’s largest ethnic minority ( about 40,000 Chinese.)  The rest are some thousands of guest workers from all over the world.

I lived in Korea for a short time and non-Koreans were highly conspicuous, Japanese tourists most of all.  When you’re in a crowd that’s 99.9% locals, anyone that’s phenotypically or behaviorally variant is instantly visible amongst thousands of people.  It was not uncommon to run into people I knew even though Seoul is a city of 12 million people.  A distinguishing trait is clearly an extremely efficient method of social filtering.  A clear difference from everyone else can allow one to completely rewrite the odds.

Yet true introverts are not about to all adopt purple Mohawks in order to stand out.  Exposure results in vulnerability after all and this is what we all want to avoid. How is one to proceed?  I think the subtle social pinging approach is on the right track.

An idea that’s occurred to me:

Make a custom shirt on a site like cafepress that makes a reference to something obscure or atypical.  I would make it in such a way that it would seem normal enough to the casual observer, yet would serve as an ostentatious beacon for the right pair of eyes.

If one was creative, there’s probably many possible Subtle ways to advertise oneself.  But we don’t search for these ideas because most of us are stuck in a typical ethic for finding the right people to associate with.

Recognizing the underlying meaning of well-intended extrovert advice is a necessary first step before one is free to construct one’s own ethic of human association.  For true introverts, the establishment of such an ethic is tantamount to a declaration of independence from the Surface world.  An alternative to social life on the Surface is a ticket out of  the directionless, unspoken, heavy sense of disenchantment that seems such a dominant feature of an introverted life.

Zygmunt blogs at Kingdom of Introversion (and elsewhere).

Beyond Introvert Survival: Finding Allies in an Extroverted Society appears here by permission.

related: Best Possible Persons

related: Introvert Hobbies

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/09/beyond-introvert-survival-finding-allies-in-an-extroverted-society/feed/ 0 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/06/the-sad-art-of-gaslighting/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/06/the-sad-art-of-gaslighting/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:00:38 +0000 Laurel Kendrick http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7581 Yesterday, was “one of those days”.

All was going fine—until I stumbled upon something that shook my core: I was going through my voluminous Inbox in an attempt to make room for my life and I found an e-mail from my best friend who died a year ago. For some reason–never opened it. I guess it got lost in the shuffle.

Anyway, I read it and was flooded with emotion.

I didn’t sleep.

I tried watching TV but “The Giant Ladder System” was on 269 of my 280 channels so, that was a wash. I thought I’d try reading, so I went looking through my books trying to find something that would either take my mind off things or one that could help me better understand and deal with my grief.

I found just what I was looking for, but it wasn’t a book that dealt with the loss of my best friend; it was more like a book that would help me cope losing myself. It’s entitled, The Gaslight Effect: Don’t Be Afraid To Speak Your Truth by Robin Stern.

“Gaslighting is the systematic attempt by one person to erode another’s reality. This is done by telling them that what they are experiencing isn’t so – and, the gradual giving up on the part of the other person.”

Stern goes on to say that gaslighting generally takes two to tango: one person who needs to be in control to maintain his sense of self; the other, who needs the relationship to maintain his/her sense of self and because of this, he/she acquiesces—constantly.

The victim ends up giving far, far more than he/she gets. This process invariably erodes the soul.

You know you’re in a full blown Gaslight Effect when you find yourself second guessing your own reality; when you’re unsure of what you really think and feel. Why? Because you’ve allowed someone else to define your reality for you. Invariably, this leads to being told what to think and how to think. And then in turn, you’re told who you are. You’re molded into an entity that someone else deems worthy of his or her love, affection; attention.

And because of the constant whittling away at your psyche, you believe you’re a better person as he or she sees you; as he/she needs you to be.

As the kids used to say….”word”.

Having been “gaslit” in the past, I’d like to share my thoughts with you.

Gaslighting I think, is all that I just mention, with refined manipulation added. And this is maniplation that’s defined by greed and selfishness. It creates cognitive dissonance and it’s this “in between state of cognizance” that women–people, find themselves most vulnerable.

It’s being forced to color inside the lines that others have drawn for us. If we don’t, we’ll be alone and that to some people, is a fate worse than death. Knowing that isolation and lonliness are the dreaded alternatives, we allow gaslighting. It’s not compromise. Hardly–it’s utter relinquishing of the self.

The authentic self.

Then, you find yourself in a horrifically bad relationship but you stay because of that INSIDIOUS goddamn mindset that a bad relationship beats no relationship.

Make no mistake: this IS emotional abuse in every sense and women are almost always the victims. Don’t misunderstand the premise: women can be the culprits too. But women bear the brunt of more negative genetic coding–or so it seems. We’ve been subjugated by primordial design to believe relationships, love….and men, define us.

But gaslighting isn’t limited to love relationships. We also fall victim to it on the job; co-workers and bosses are often perpetrators and it also happens within the family dynamic.

Gaslighting is very real. As I stated, I’ve lived it. I just didn’t know it had a name. Or a book that defined it. Ordinarily, I try my best to avoid partaking from the sump pump of pop psychology. In other words, if Dr. Phil mentions it, I run in the opposite direction. But this book makes sense.

And here’s my two cents.

Integrity (something sorely lacking in the world today) applies to behavior that consistently matches principles. You can’t be a person of integrity if selfishness and self centered behavior are what fuels every motivation. Gaslighters almost always lack integrity; as distorted as this sounds, they thrive on their own selfishness. They are always self-centered. They are consummate liars. Invariably, they will never fail to fail you.

One must then ask, how can a gaslighter expect to be loved if he or she doesn’t know how to love? How can he or she venture into a real, equitable partnership without knowing how to play fair?

The answer? Manipulation passed off as love or affection…or concern

No one will love ever love you like I love you
You’re nothing without me
I ONLY want to take care of you
I only want what’s best for you and only I know what that is
You have changed and grown so much since knowing me. I make you think and
you are better because of it

Furthermore, what these people demand of themselves will rarely work with others. Once again, we touch on “coloring inside the lines” we draw for others. And when someone refuses, that’s how gaslighting starts. I think foisting this on someone else, is the quintessence of neurotic narcissism.

What this book reveals isn’t earth shattering. If you’ve lived it, then you know exactly what gaslighting is all about. For me, it merely gave a name to what I’d experienced.

In remedying the gaslight malady, it goes on to state the obvious:

Women (especially) must be more assertive. We must be fearless about defining who we are, what we are and what we really think. We must empower ourselves to move forward and find real contentment in a relationship as opposed to sanctuary, no matter how fleeting.

I’ll take it one step further:

Some of us, by virtue of childhood experience, seek emotional replicas of our fathers and mothers. If we had a controlling parent, very often we’ll seek controlling partners. We’re most fortunate if we can break that cycle. And just because we find ourselves in abject co-dependence with someone cruel and controlling, well…that doesn’t mean we have to stay. Gather your courage and leave Simon Legree. As the James Gang so aptly sang, walk away.

But remember this: walking away is sometimes much easier than garnering the strength required to take that first step.

And keep this in mind as well: you’ll never gather courage by allowing fear to keep you in a one-sided relationship that’s devoid of romance, passion and real emotion. To do so is a sign of weakness. It’s giving your power away. We should be empowering ourselves. When we relinquish control, we hand over the reigns of our lives, willingly.

Frequently.

Tragically.

But for some, this is the perfect scenario. We’re absolved of all blame if we have no control of a situation. If we believe we’re not responsible, we can’t be held accountable. Especially when it comes to our own actions. Victimhood is extraordinarily convenienct. It all boils down to neglect. We’re being neglected and we’re neglecting ourselves. Well then– here’s your wake up call: neglect kills as often as a bullet to the head.

It kills relationships just as efficiently. And if you sit by and allow it to happen, you’re just as guilty.

In closing, I’ll just say this: Caruso loved the sound of his own voice…some people love the sound of their own opinions being expressed.

This should come as no surprise.

The typical gaslighter defies Copernican theory. They think THEY are, in fact, the center of the universe. In reality, this blustery bravado masks rampant insecurity. Inside, they’re just scared little boys and girls , very much afraid to be hurt, yet they think they’re too smart, too superior to actually feel the pain they’ve so deeply buried.

Sadly, this fear-based arrogance means they themselves have been “gaslit”…made victims by their own actions.

Laurel Kendrick blogs at the eponymous Laurie Kendrick: Life’s a journey….never fly coach.

The Sad Art of Gaslighting appears here by permission.

While the vast majority of available writing on gaslighting concerns itself with “romantic” relationships between individuals or parent-child dynamics, the term has shown up from time to time here and on other autism-related blogs that discuss autistics’ relationship with society. This suggests that there is also what might be called “institutionalized gaslighting” at work in the world which affects not only the lives of individual autistics, but also society’s perception of autism itself. The Sad Art of Gaslighting is presented here as an accessible introduction to the general concept. While at this date a site search of Shift Journal for the words gaslight returns just three posts, as time goes on this number is likely to increase.   — ed.

related: Wikipedia entry for Gaslighting

related: Robin Stern at Psychology Today: Identify “The Gaslight Effect” and take back your reality

related: IMDb entries for Gaslight, the movie, from 1940 and 1944

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/06/the-sad-art-of-gaslighting/feed/ 2 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/03/saving-a-theory-dismissing-its-subjects/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/03/saving-a-theory-dismissing-its-subjects/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:19:38 +0000 Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7593 I’ve been spending the weekend putting together my preliminary research questions and a working bibliography for my graduate program. To my great surprise, I’ve actually been able to read some of the blazingly unempathetic papers about our supposed lack of empathy without spluttering in a fit of moral outrage every five minutes. I call that progress. In fact, I read several articles and found myself able to critique the problems in them rather effortlessly. I credit this development to two things: a) the critical theory I’ve been reading, which helps me to see the larger issues of power and privilege that weave themselves throughout the literature and b) my support network of over 40 people I can call on when the going gets tough.

And then, I read a 2004 article by Uta Frith, and I moved away from my stance of critical detachment toward one of absolute moral outrage.

There I was, enjoying a quiet day at home, reading by the woodstove, minding my own business, and wanting nothing more than to have an enjoyably uneventful time, when I stumbled upon the following piece of remarkably nuanced thinking and stellar prose in Frith’s Emanuel Miller lecture: Confusions and controversies about Asperger syndrome:

“One way to describe the social impairment in Asperger syndrome is as an extreme form of egocentrism with the resulting lack of consideration for others.” (Frith 676)

Don’t you just love when these kinds of prejudicial statements rise up and punch you in the gut? I know I do. It’s just so much fun to read about myself in these terms. You have no idea. And what makes it all the more fun is that the irony of the statement is entirely lost on the writer. She engages in a prejudicial generalization about an entire group of people (otherwise known as a stereotype) and, in the same breath, tells us that we’re the ones with a “lack of consideration for others.”

And here I thought it was autistic people who couldn’t understand irony.

Now, you might not think it could get worse, but that’s because you haven’t read a lot of papers on autism and theory of mind. As it turns out, not only are we egocentric, but we’re unlike those “normal selfish” people who can use egocentrism to their advantage. At least, with them, someone gets something out of it, right? But with us — well, we just can’t help ourselves:

“The self-absorption and disregard of others is not like the strategy that a normal selfish person might deliberately adopt and flexibly use according to what is currently in his or her best interest. Autistic egocentrism, by contrast, appears to be non-deliberate and not determined by what might currently be in the best interest of the individual.” (Frith 676)

In other words, nature has made us selfish. We were just born that way. It’s taken us over and it’s out of our control.

And guess what happens once you peg a whole group of people as being egocentric and selfish? Everything becomes our fault. All the problems in our personal relationships? All our fault! All the problems in our social world? All our fault! You don’t believe me? Read on, my brothers and sisters:

“This egocentrism seems to present a huge difficulty in forming successful long-term interpersonal relationships. Spouses and family members can experience bitter frustration and distress. They are baffled by the fact that there is no mutual sharing of feelings, even when the Asperger individual in question is highly articulate.” (Frith 676)

Yes, you heard it here. We cause people “bitter frustration and distress.” Of course, they do not cause us “bitter frustration and distress.” No. Never. Just doesn’t happen. If we feel “bitter frustration and distress,” it’s all our damned fault for being so, you know, abnormal. If we were only normal, we wouldn’t feel frustrated and distressed. Problem solved!

And, of course, it’s absolutely UNHEARD OF to find a neurotypical person who has difficulty expressing his or her feelings. It just doesn’t happen. Those men I dated and broke up with because I couldn’t get them to articulate a feeling to save their lives? I must have misunderstood where they were coming from. When they were telling me I was hormonal — or refusing to speak altogether — I guess their body language was actually saying, “Yes, honey, I understand and am awash in feeling.”

But of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that, because apparently, I’m just not able to imagine what other people might be thinking. Or so says the author:

“One obstacle seems to be an inability on the part of the person with Asperger syndrome to put themselves into another person’s shoes and to imagine what their own actions look like and feel like from another person’s point of view. Another way to describe the social impairment is as a failure of empathy, involving a poor ability to be in tune with the feelings of other people.” (Frith 676)

I’ve just spent the weekend going through dozens and dozens of articles, and these kinds of statements keep coming up, over and over and over. I can only conclude that the researchers are perseverating on a theme. And I don’t mean for a day, or a week, or a month, but for years and years and years. It’s incredible. You’d think they’d be more flexible and want some change — a broadening of perspective, so to speak — instead of this incessant sameness.

But you know what happens when you try to separate a person from his or her perseverations? It’s not a happy moment. Witness then, the way that the author responds to the fact that autistic people have been writing self-reflective narratives for some time. In a section whose title, “Listening to people with Asperger syndrome,” should really have been “Dismissing people with Asperger syndrome” (or did I miss the intentional irony?), the author makes the following assertions regarding people with Asperger’s who see themselves as having a different experience of the world and a unique perspective on life, rather than being a collection of deficits:

“Researchers and clinicians can agree with this to some extent. However, they may point out that a peculiar lack of insight and an egocentric viewpoint are typical of the syndrome, throwing doubt on at least some of the self-assessments of needs and expectations.” (Frith 681)

In other words, the “experts” have determined that we lack insight and suffer from egocentricism, so whatever we say about our own desires, our own needs, our own experiences, and our own expectations of other people is suspect. Got that? If that’s not a perfect formula for disempowering hundreds of thousands of autistic people, I don’t know what is. And it very neatly closes off the potential for measuring the external validity of the research findings, too.

But, of course, those of us who reflect upon ourselves and others in insightful ways probably don’t have Asperger’s anyway:

“One problem with the autobiographical literature is that the authenticity of the diagnosis is not guaranteed” (Frith 681-682).

Will people ever get tired of the perseverative need to keep saying this? Would it be possible for them to just walk in our shoes and say, “Oh, I see. Now I understand. Thank you for providing a reality check on my lab tests”? Would that really be so terribly difficult?

But the zeal to save a theory from the clutches of reality does not simply extend to talking about our inherent egocentricism and casting doubt on our diagnoses. Oh no. It moves into misinterpretations so extreme that they beggar belief. Take, for example, the following:

“The autobiographies of individuals with Asperger syndrome indicate a high degree of retrospective self-analysis that came with adulthood. This can be seen, for instance, in Gunilla Gerland’s autobiography (1997) and in Clare Sainsbury’s collection of over twenty individuals’ reminiscences of their school years (2000). These works suggest that self-knowledge and sharing of knowledge with others was poor in childhood.” (Frith 683)

So, let’s get this straight: Because we now look back on our childhoods and understand things that weren’t clear before, that in itself is evidence that we lacked self-knowledge and understanding of others as children. Of course, the questions that jump immediately to mind are the following: What self-reflective adult doesn’t look back on childhood and understand things that were opaque before? And what small child understands things the same way as an adult? When non-autistic people look back, reinterpret, and reweave the stories of their lives in narrative form, we laud them for being mature, creative, and insightful. But when autistic people look back, reinterpret, and reweave the stories of our lives in narrative form, we’re told it’s evidence that we lacked theory of mind in childhood.

Not too much confirmation bias there.

But the theory must be saved. Oh, yes. And its subjects must be dismissed.

Source

Frith, Uta. “Emanuel Miller lecture: Confusions and controversies about Asperger syndrome.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45, no. 4 (May 2004): 672-686. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00262.x.

Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg blogs at Journeys with Autism, and presides at Autism and Empathy.

Saving a Theory, Dismissing its Subjects appears here by permission.

The most recent installment in Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s published memoirs is Blazing My Trail.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/03/saving-a-theory-dismissing-its-subjects/feed/ 1 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/02/introvert-vs-extrovert-restaurants/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/02/introvert-vs-extrovert-restaurants/#comments Mon, 02 Jan 2012 06:00:10 +0000 Zygmunt http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7558 I found the ideal sort of introverted restaurant in England.  It’s a dying breed of restaurant except perhaps in the countryside where only 20% of the country’s population lives.  It’s another Britain really, as foreign to the rest of the country as is the Continent.  This sort of restaurant is called a pub.

Every small town has at least one.  Often, the building was originally an old stagecoach inn that serves up the same sort food it would have 300 years ago.  Upon entering, it’s clear the average person used to be shorter.  A modern person of average height stands just a few inches below the ceiling.  It’s like entering a comfy hobbit hole.  The stone walls are often clearly the uneven type thrown together by hand.  Usually, there is a crackling fire on the hearth.

Pubs are typically quiet places.  They are meeting places for the locals.  Not just rowdy men or young people but entire families.  On slow Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays there’s usually a quiz night or some other special occasion to attract patrons.

There was a feature of pubs that at first absolutely stunned an American like me:

You have to go up to the front and order food yourself when you’re ready.  If you just sit there, no waiter will come to pester you.

Once you’ve gotten your food and drink no one pressures you into asking for the check and getting the hell out of there.  In fact, it’s routine for people to stick around talking for a long while even after they’re done sipping at their beers.  No pressure, complete relaxation.

And the beer:  It’s primarily what’s called ‘real ale’ in Britain.  It’s dark, bitter, thick, and foamy.  It’s liquid bread that would fill you up before you could ever get very drunk off of it.  It’s often served only as cool as a cool cellar.  It makes one tranquil, warm, and drowsy on a rainy winter day when the sun goes down by 4 PM.

The menu at a pub rarely has more than half a dozen different entrees.  Choosing a meal is always quick and simple.  After having a steaming, piping hot steak and ale pie one might wonder why British food has such a horrible reputation.  Culinarily, the British are the masters of desserts served hot.  In the cold and clammy climate of the UK there’s no delight greater than a freshly prepared berry tart or treacle sponge drenched in lots of hot custard.

This pub experience was all an immense departure from the norms of my home country and from the majority urban UK.

The typical American restaurant is a corporate chain in a rush to make quick profits.  Customers are rushed to tables and are pressured to make decisions within a few minutes of sitting down.  “Do you need another minute?” the waiters ask with nervous sweat visibly beading on their brow.  I often wonder if they’d be in fear of getting fired by their manager if I told them “No, I’m going to sit and chat with my friends half an hour over an ale before actually ordering any food.”

Actually, it’s not uncommon for a typical American waiter to turn nasty if they think you’ve taken too long.  They adopt a petulant sneer and start pretending you don’t exist once you’ve figured out what to order at your leisure.

An American restaurant is not so different from a night club!  The noise level is usually astonishingly high with hordes of people crammed in close proximity.  Customers are brought in and out of the establishment on a conveyor belt.  Time is money!  One can observe a freshly abandoned table wiped down and reset within a few seconds by frantic workers.  Such a scene resembles a pit crew changing tires on a race car.

Who would ever want to sit down and have a meal in such horrid adrenaline drenched atmosphere?  Clearly, though this place must have a strong appeal to most customers.

What could this appeal possibly be?

Anyone who’s worked in restaurants, retail, or hospitality already probably has some idea of the answer.  It becomes clear that certain customers get a rise out of an environment teeming with stressed out underlings at their beck and call.  An ugly truth about many people: feeling powerless in their everyday lives, they love nothing better than a clerk or waiter to lick their feet and massage their perpetually bleeding egos.

I often have trouble getting any relevant information about a restaurant when I look up online reviews.  More than half the time, people have little to say about the food but instead obsess endlessly about how their waiter was five minutes late with their drinks.

No matter what one’s rank in America, one can always go to a restaurant and have an attractive, well-dressed young person grovel and make silly insincere recommendations about a menu they’ve never actually been able to try out for themselves.  I strongly suspect this pre-packaged subservience plays a role in how people justify paying the substantial bill of eating out.

Unfortunately, the introvert, though harboring as many frustrations as anyone else, has little desire for this rent-a-sycophant system.  No sooner has a menu been opened than a staff member descends like a gadfly, making obsequious sales pitches and asking for a decision with desperation that’s thinly masked by a grin.  The hurry, the noise, the sheer ugliness and venal nature of the entire outfit!  Few places could seem more unappealing to an inward oriented person.  There’s no possible way to communicate to that waiter to do away with all the hurry and pretense.  Even if the waiter could be made to understand, they would be compelled to stick to form by the expectations of their boss.  There’s little to do but to focus on the positive aspects of the meal, still knowing well that the experience could easily be immeasurably better.

The Loud person never seems to understand that the human body is not just a machine.  We do not fill ourselves with food as a car is filled with fuel.  The circumstances in which we sit down to eat, who we sit down to eat with are just as important to our nourishment as any physical quality of the food itself.  To be relaxed at the table is to be a free person.  To be stressed and hurried even at the dinner table is to live as the most abject of slaves…

Where socialites take over, social institutions that might support Subtle people die out.  Restaurants, like so many other aspects of life, have become little more than a reflection of the sheer desperate ambition of a Loud majority.

Zygmunt blogs at Kingdom of Introversion (and elsewhere).

Introvert vs. Extrovert: Restaurants appears here by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2012/01/02/introvert-vs-extrovert-restaurants/feed/ 2 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/30/anatomy-of-an-autistic-vv/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/30/anatomy-of-an-autistic-vv/#comments Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:00:56 +0000 Julia Bascom http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7535 Anatomy Of An Autistic

So it looks as if I have two options. Pass and learn, perfect, the art of being a person I’m not. Or don’t, and let everyone else define me as some entwined version of monster and victim, pity and revulsion and terror.

But there’s actually a third option.

I can humanize myself. I can define myself. I can speak for myself, as myself.

I can find out who that self is.

I can learn what it is to be an autistic adult.

To be honest? I don’t have the faintest idea how to do that, and I don’t think you do either. It’s not as simple as flapping in public or typing on my laptop when speech is too much. All I know how to do is pass, and to interrupt that passing with moments of confusion, furious honesty, rawness and vulnerability. The emphasis in education and intervention is to make the child look nonautistic, not to prepare them for a future as an autistic adult. And there a million more posts in here, and I will go back to writing them eventually, but the point is that a whole generation of us have graduated, we can pass now, and we don’t know who we are or what to do.

The anatomy of an autistic is a lot of sketched out, smudged charcoal lines and open uncontained spaces. It’s a free space to develop. It’s something that will fill in as disability is humanized, normalized, as autism is accepted, as I am allowed to be who and what I am and to drop the poor facade that got me so far without risking losing it all.

The anatomy of an autistic is perhaps a scary thing. So few people have filled it in before, and even those fleshed-out illustrations have been crossed out by the dehumanizing, pitying, horrifying interpretations superimposed by others. But there’s a whole generation of us coming.

And I? I at least am going to work it out.

Hi, my name is Julia, and I’m autistic. It’s probably the best thing about me. Check your assumptions at the door.

We write to fill a silence here.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/30/anatomy-of-an-autistic-vv/feed/ 1 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/29/anatomy-of-an-autistic-ivv/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/29/anatomy-of-an-autistic-ivv/#comments Thu, 29 Dec 2011 06:00:40 +0000 Julia Bascom http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7533 Anatomy Of A Monster

And what none of us passers want to talk about is what our passing does to those who can’t. Passing is necessitated because without it, we would be stuck being a Scary Disabled Person and everybody knows how well their lives are allowed to go. There is a pervasive, fundamental belief that disabled people are monsters, or else possessed by monsters. That disability is monstrous, and disabled people, by implication are either victims or monsters ourselves. And therefore any and all talk of accessibility, universal design, human rights, equality, self-determination, alternative modes of communication, interdependence, what it means to be human and in a communication, what needs are and what it is to have them, etc etc etc goes out the window. Our bodies and lives and minds can be medicalized and politicized, but our voices are silenced and we get redefined as not quite, or not even close to, human.

Maybe it’s that view, of autism as monster and we as victims, which makes people recoil so much from the word, from the idea, from the concept of someone who will need 24/7 assistance and someone who won’t but has the same label. People don’t know how to treat victims, except by recoiling, as if bad luck is catching. People don’t know how to treat disabled people except as someone blend of horrific and pitiful, and by doing so we are dehumanized and re-conceived as something manageable and avoidable and yes, monstrous. Unhuman.

To be disabled is to be dehumanized. To pass is to be re-humanized as an acceptable, safe version of yourself that does not actually exist.

Well. Hi. My name is Julia, and I am autistic, and I am neither horrific nor pitiable nor monstrous, and if I am so what? And I pass. Mostly. For now.

That’s right. There’s a monster in your midst.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/29/anatomy-of-an-autistic-ivv/feed/ 2 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/28/anatomy-of-an-autistic-iiiv/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/28/anatomy-of-an-autistic-iiiv/#comments Wed, 28 Dec 2011 06:00:57 +0000 Julia Bascom http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7530 Anatomy Of A Passing Person

Passing is….

Passing is…

Well, passing is difficult, first of all. It’s constant anxiety, calculation, cognition, because remember, those of us who pass are trying to be a person we aren’t, a member of a species that, should it know our true identity, expels us. The trick to passing, to passing well, is to make it look natural.

Passing means repressing, memorizing rules, sublimating, jumping through hoops, and turning tricks so we can get the human treatment. It means making it so that when you reveal your diagnosis to someone they “never would have guessed it”.

Passing is supposed to be a good thing. It’s convenient for the enabled and beneficial for the passing. The passing gets college, health care, respect, an audience to speak to, friends, work, a house, etc.

What I want to know is why do I have to pass in order to implicitly deserve any of these things?

What I want to know is since when did being treated like a human being have requirements?

When I am actively, deliberately passing as nonautistic, I am supporting power structures I benefit from. I am saying through my actions that it is okay to divide the human race along these lines, to treat people who fall outside of these lines like this, to save all the privilege and benefits and nice things for the safe normal people, etc. And you know, there are a million reasons to deliberately do this, some of them okay and a lot not, but in the end I am still supporting and ironically benefiting from a power structure designed to oppress and disable me.

But there is nuance to this. Silence is safety, of course, and being safe is important. And we aren’t all cut out to be radical, kyriarchy-smashing activists.

And what of those of us who pass without really trying all that hard?

There is a certain amount of ridiculousness to that idea, of course. Of course we have to try hard, speaking (speaking!) and socializing and reacting and parroting like the neurotypicals around us takes effort even (especially?) when we don’t realize it. Being a fake person, a half person, a glass girl or a ghost takes work. We tend to burn out eventually, no matter how brilliant a job of faking it we were doing. Or maybe we develop depression, anxiety, dissociation secondary to our autism as a result of this facade? Perhaps we take an increasingly upped litany of pills to cope. At the very least, we spend so much time learning how to be an acceptable human being that we forget, or never learn, how to be an autistic one.

Or to question why the one isn’t the same as the other.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

]]> http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/28/anatomy-of-an-autistic-iiiv/feed/ 1 http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/27/anatomy-of-an-autistic-iiv/ http://www.shiftjournal.com/2011/12/27/anatomy-of-an-autistic-iiv/#comments Tue, 27 Dec 2011 06:00:57 +0000 Julia Bascom http://www.shiftjournal.com/?p=7526 Anatomy Of A Meltdown

My brain likes to alternate between being made of swiss cheese (full of holes to fall in and through and down) and wax (for optimal melting). I have meltdowns a lot, in part because I use the term “melting” very broadly. Meltdowns, moments in which one’s brain melts, are a physical thing, though they look different moment-to-moment and person-to-person. But they all start out the same, with that pressure behind the skull and the feeling of your thoughts evaporating, your language freezing, your body retracting inward. It’s called shutdown, meltdown, violent meltdown, tantrum, outburst, dissociation, a million different things, but they all refer to the moment wherein your body or your brain, independent of your vote, decides that it simply cannot and will not continue to function in this charade that wasn’t really working anyways and…

Well.

Maybe you don’t bang your head, scream, throw things, leave. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I incur brain damage. Sometimes I just sit frozen for an hour.

Passing tends to come to a halt when this happens.

Meltdowns are of course a bit more complicated than all of this. What they are, to me, is a descent. A black hole opens up and draws you in, in, in. It’s empty and silent and ringing with screams and your intestines get itchy and try to crawl up out your throat, or maybe that is just the pressure everywhere building, building until it explodes out or locks you down.

The worst part about any of it, for me, is the silence.

The complete and utter silence. Silence so deep it fills up your ears. Silence like a scream.

And what’s worse is that, when I’m melting, as I enter or exit, I am silent too.

It’s why I type so frenetically. Why I get so upset when the words don’t mesh just right, or when they build up and won’t come out. That silence is to be avoided at all costs. When I’m silent, when I have no voice, I might as well not exist. I don’t, really. I’m not properly a person. I must speak, type, make my voice project over their heads and into someone’s ears.

Julia Bascom blogs at Just Stimming.

Anatomy Of An Autistic appears here, in five parts, by permission.

[image via Flickr/Creative Commons]

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