I am an autistic adult. I believe that autism can be seen in better ways, respect can encourage potential in everyone, and there are many ways to celebrate diversity.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Worth of Silver
Over the years I have polished a lot of silver. It's not my favorite job. However, I have gotten pretty good at it. Yes, there actually is a technique to it. That really is the point of this post. Being good at polishing silver not only does a better job, but once you know how to do it, the job is actually easier. If you don't already know it, a person can waste a lot of time polishing silver, work really hard at it, and not do it very well at all.
The value of skills must change when someone meets a challenge. Diversity is the biggest expense the world has ever known....and all because people would rather ignore it, change it, fix it, hide it, or hope it goes away. You would be surprised how many people would actually cancel a social event because they can't find a way to deal with their tarnished silver that seems convenient enough to them. Society folk have a pretty high standard when it comes to silver. Ya know it's a good thing that parents don't choose to not take their kids out when they seem tarnished based on ridiculous social standards. That would be awful....
Then again what about that.... The number of things that I see on a daily basis about autism on the internet that is biased and wrong is pretty overwhelming....not to mention often insulting and hurtful. But what do I know? Right?
I mean every autistic is different and views of autism needs to be left to professionals and parents. I mean you can't take the rights of parents away who are the ones who know their kids best. Heck, some people think corporal punishment should be outlawed as though it was actually hitting a more vulnerable person who can't defend themselves....and they want to make such restrictions on parents, why? All because they had a parent who didn't know how to "spank" responsibly. Don't give the government rights that they abuse. I actually agree with not giving rights to the government based on them abusing their privilege to govern and restrict responsibly..... but....
Autistics....Handouts and pity sucks. Not because there aren't resources available but because it's done for convenience sake instead of for the person's sake. We don't need to be given opportunities for things that would level the playing for things that we really aren't good at anyway....at least not yet.... because what we are good at has not even begun to be explored. We don't need the advantage, or even the benefit of the doubt, when police situations happen when we are present because NOBODY has begun to to even start to prevent us from being attacked for things that everyone knows are benign.
Nothing about us with out us.... you have got to be kidding. I was in D.C. and got close enough to the students at Gallaudet when they were in the midst of their most publicized fight to get a pretty good picture of what was going on. I assure you that they didn't get any of the rights that they deserved in the first place by holding hands and marching on Washington. Deaf people have even been accused of being exclusive....
ND bashing is still encouraged and NT bashing is considered very wrong if not illegal. The deaf community kicked ass for any rights they do have, and its time the autistic population started realizing that we are going to have to start speaking a stronger kind of language that people will listen to.
No we shouldn't be rewarding autistic overcoming or rewarding the experiences of autistics as valiant. However, as much as autistics need to quit selling us out, the rest of you need to quit buying bootleg. Get it?
There are a lot of autistic people who wouldn't dare say what I just said here no matter how much they agree. Gee....I wonder why?:/ Maybe people should start posting comments on blogs as though autistics were reading them because actually a lot of them are. What's your message to them?
Everybody knows that only "good autistics" are accepted and the rest get punished. Right?
I can't wait for somebody to tell me that an aluminum plate and baking soda is the answer to conveniently achieving polished silver.
First let me tell you a stereo-type of an obnoxious tourist.
Note: In this example the tourist happens to be a man. Women can be like this too, but they dress differently.
The obnoxious tourist is wearing cheap sneakers, white socks, plaid bermuda shorts, a ridiculous T-shirt, a Nikon camera around his neck, cheap sun glasses, and a baseball cap that advertises Blue Ribbon beer. Also he drives a Cadillac and he has sunburned knees, neck, forearms, and crusty white cream on his nose to prevent sunburn.
He claims to be touring the town but the most interesting thing in the town are the people who live there. However, he will never find that out, because that's the way it is in the town where he lives and he never pays much attention to the other people there either.
Since he learned a little Spanish on T.V. , when he sees someone whom he judges to be an immigrant, He asks "whats your name?" in Spanish (that no one would even recognize as any language) when what he wants to know is, where is the bathroom. When he doesn't get the reply he's looking for, he talks louder. He somehow figures that if he can't accommodate one of the locals for one of their deficits of not speaking like he does, he will assume that they have another deficit, which is that of not hearing him. He figures that two accommodations for what he assumes to be "their" problem will have a better chance at getting him what he wants.
I see autism tourists in much the same way. There are some great parents of autistics.The parents of autistics that I"m speaking about may not be the worst part of this problem. It may just be that some of the parents I meet are more likely to loudly ask me where the bathroom is in a language they haven't bothered to learn. Actually since I don't even appear to be that sophisticated or valid, I usually just get ignored all together.
I mean think about it. These parents are presented with this being that does nothing but eat, cry, and poop, and it's their job to get them through college so that they can be independent valids, like they are.
Doctors. and teachers are taught that our competitive marketing must become stricter, so our teaching methods must recognize fewer achievers, and therefore we need more division among classes.
If they can't achieve this by showing that fewer are even worthy of life itself, they will show everyone that people have been plagued by this awful disease. This will make the disease - ridden invalids hide or want to, and once the doctors and teachers can show that the standards need to be high and narrow and the education and training budget is low, the parents will these pay these "professionals" all they have, which doesn't do much more than provide more valids with employment and comfort at the expense of validity seekers that are disguised as charitable parents and near-do-well missionaries.
Those that can complete the validity test and show competition for other valids will give us all an even higher bar to strive for that will make us all stronger and fewer. It won't do much for human relations, but there are more important things for people to think about. Right?
Since the typical tourists are seen as (metaphorically speaking) driving new Cadillacs and the locals drive old Mazdas, locals will do anything at their neighbors expense ( and even at the expense of looking foolish to their neighbors) to become or to at least look like a tourist. This way they don't have to relate to anyone and they can be seen as valid. Their life will be miserable, but they will have a little more time to live (most of their lives will be spent in schools, doctors offices, and funerals of course).
Doctors, teachers, and parents will encourage societal validity to parents as the standard to strive for and even autistics themselves will describe themselves as better than valids (by foolishly trying to beat them at their own game). They will claim that they are better than the invalids....I mean the disabled. These proud autistics will claim that "other"autistics" that don't meet the standards of superiority that they blindly assume THEY were uniquely and divinely destined to become, are lazy or that it is the REST of society that has abandoned them and left these invalid, disabled, autistics behind.
Tourist never see or hear anything of value because the valuable people that they won't recognize keep getting in the way.
I am going to write a series of blog posts (this being #1) about how the general public is served in official ways. Service is, of course, provided to everyone but those who are seen and treated as a burden to individuals and society are the only ones penalized for how our needs are unpopular among decision makers.
These peoples abilities (or whatever we provide that isn't seen as worthy of respect) survive in the wild (as in; forgotten entirely,on the streets, warehoused, or hidden away by the financial restrictions and label of disability) and are the ones I'm concentrating on as those who are lawfully eligible for public services in the U.S.. Primarily this series will focus on autistics.
This has nothing to do with community efforts because before the general community accepts this responsibility, most of us will be selected as unworthy of breathing.
By official I mean what is provided for outside of the free market. While free market service providers may provide better services to a few people, they could hardly be considered to be available to the general public. The general public can't afford them and many others who can are often subjected to opertunists who prey on their need for conveinience and their willingness to pay for it.
I will (for the purpose of this series) not refer to any differences between what are considered levels of functioning or age of autistics. The laws concerning these issues, as to how they affect a person's right to receive services, contradict themselves and are further complicated mainly by the public who serve the agenda of those who govern service providers, by bickering over trivialities and by not addressing the unwillingness of the officials to make fair judgements based on these laws .
The law already provides for the accomodations of autistic people at any age. Unfortunatly, there are no official public defenders (by title or otherwise) who are willing to educate the public about these laws or demand that they be enforced. Anyone who would choose to do this would either lose their job and /or tell the rest of us the truth.
I will be choosing topics for this series that include both the general types of service providers for autistic people as well as specific individual institutions, warehouses, and agencies.
We all, at sometime in our life will find someone or something to commit to. Too often that commitment is not much more than one of dependence on what we need to survive. It's even worse when that dependence is on something that doesn't have to be a necessity but it becomes one.
A relationship based solely on dependence will rob both party's of their liberty and freedom. Without commiting to our responsibility in a relationship we loose the benefits that come with that.
Responsibility is too often seen as an obligation when really, commiting to our responsibility in relationships is what provides us with the opertunities to obtain all of the wonderful things in life.
I hear socital views that claim that so many people are not willing to accept responsibility and too often:
1) Our leaders set really bad examples of how to be truly responsible by the way they behave in all aspects of their life.
2) I hear these leaders complaining about how others are unwilling to be responsible and yet they continue to not provide the people they claim are being this way with real opportunity for change. This instead show the leaders irresponsibility and their neglect at nourishing a responsible relationship with the public they are supposed to be leading.
What is the public's responsibility? Well, we need to teach our parent's (so to speak). To those of you who are younger than I am, I apologize. We who are a part of previous generations haven't been very responsible in providing you with the leadership you needed. You deserve to be able to depend on your leaders and I don't see how you can at this point. Now we have to ask you to help us create something better for us all and the next generation as well.
One place we can all start is: If your job and your environment teaches you a value system that will create the dillusion that what you perform determines your worth, you are likely to look at your friends, family, and kids in this way and then they are likely to reflect that to others as well.
Personhood is a right. However, being treated this way often must be asked of others or demanded of them if necessary (and as difficult as it sometimes is) we have to remind ourselves that we own it.
How do you think that the mental heath industry got so screwed up. Do you think that aliens came in and took over their bodies. Those people who work there are ours weather we like it or not. Our values aided in them to being able to cause such extreme chaos and harm.
I wish the angry bullies who spread false information was the biggest threat to autistic people, but I can't give anyone or any group of people that much credit or perceived power. Our views and values have set up alot of ignorance.
Mercury isn't the outside force that creates autism any more than bullies are the outside force that is causing all the problems for autistics. Some bullies are autistics themselves who are acting very badly. I agree some are acting terribly....Very terribly. And no, being autistic doesn't make anyone less responsible. We can't allow or afford to think that way.
However, society continuing to seperate itself from people (even bullies and leaders who are sometimes one and the same) and blaming them is what excludes people from ever being allowed to show up in places where their integration with others can provide them an opertunity to educate themselves and have them educate us as well (as crazy as this may sound).
We as an autistic culture, like any other subculture, must teach the rest of society who we are and what the best ways we learn are, rather than relinqishing that power to irresponsible societal leaders . That's been part of the problem all along. We haven't done that.
Why can't we get poorly behaved people punished for their outrageous criminal acts? Partly because we are trying to make nice with too many agencies and companies that we claim are only doing "a little bit wrong". Our irresponsible relationship with these people (by not holding them responsible for their inappropriate behavior) is punishing us all.
Political back scratching, being the good autistics, instead of just being people who are hurt and angry as ANYONE would be if they were mistreated, is, in many ways, sending the wrong message.
We are not saints and describing ourselves this way, only allows us to be seen in ways that promotes the pendulum to swing the other way so that we are being seen as worse than typical. This often happens when we reliquish our power to others by claiming we are better than them in the same way as they have done this to us. Instead we need to just be honest and show people that we are just different. We are people with good and bad in all of us. Trying to present ourselves as anything else only hurts us when the truth is learned.
Our personhood is a free gift that can't be taken away. Earning the right to be treated as free (even when fair treatment has been stolen from us), requires consistent and persistent effort from all of us.
When a person gets arrested, the U.S. judicial system requires the police officers to read the assumed offender, his or her rights....and....being willing to demand your nonexistent and/or worthless rights may or may not delay or lessen all the other abuses of rights you are claimed to have but don't.
The assumption of guilt is no longer even claimed to be required of any officer at any time. Marshall Law will not be new in the United States. The news that we have it will just be new to the elite minority that thought somehow they were immune. Some of us grew up knowing this was true.
Besides, we who were excluded for arbitrary reasons, have always been targeted and punished for being different. Everyone else has just been comfortably ignoring what's going on. Now more people are taking a closer look because they are finding out like the rest of us that:
1) Conformists are never satisfied 2) Their conformity has done little more than buy them time at the rest of society's expense.
Assumption of breaking any law is the same as guilt. The only immunity from any type of any official's laws at this point is that the assumed offender may be able to display symbols of their ability and willingness to be taxed. Currency is one of the best and/or most important symbols now but currency and other status symbols will change for the purpose of continuing to make conformity unattainable for anyone at any time.
You have the right to remain silent until or unless someone with a more official title decides that you being silent is an aberrant act.
If you give up that right (or someone makes you give it up), even though you never really had it anyway, what someone with a more official title than you claims you said or did, then becomes the reason for your punishment.
Your individualism, your right to not fight against the injustices of those whom you have allowed to govern your environment at the expense of those who could not afford to display your adornments of temporary immunity, were just incentives to influence you to help carry out the master's diabolical plan. However, now you are becoming less valuable to the master because the master has not been given any real limitations.
I always knew that I was food or bait but now I see that you are too. My advantage is I already know it. Do you?
Now that you are with me, let me tell you what we mean to them. We are all poor, disabled, diverse, criminal ,and without monitary resources. BUT WAIT! THERE IS GOOD NEWS!
We are bigger than the master and together we have an undeniable resource, which is ourselves. If too many of us remain individually divided we will all remain this way and our life on earth will not be good.
Together we can create the liberty in our world that (through this fight) we have gained in our heart. :)
There have always been people who did not fit into what is seen as respected soceity for many reasons. Some were less likely to fit in because of physical and mental limitations as they were compared to elite societal standards of what was descibed as natural and normal. Some were just excluded because they were not seen as able to perform what were decided to be marketable skills.
One of the reasons this is important to recognise is that there have always been the majority of the elite society who would describe these people who are excluded in much more conveinient but impractical ways .
Many people who are respected for the wrong reasons misinterpret this problem as being better now due to the efforts made to help the people who were closer to the place of being accepted as "overcomers". While this has in many ways helped some, it has also prevented many efforts to include those who were not so close to this place of societal acceptance.
This misunderstanding of overcoming has hurt the majority of people in many ways. It's MOST debilitating effect is the claim that the decision makers are doing the best they can to help everyone OR even worse that important decisions are being made by a real democracy.
As democracy in the western world (where it has for so long been assumed to exist) is under more attack than ever and the goals of population control are much more effective without the voice of these unheard and ignored majority that is unfortunatly becoming quiter, more of the unrepresented are becoming less hopeful than ever. That's what I'm working to prevent.
The human race cannot withstand this level of oppression and exclusion.
Note: This doesn't need to be seen as a cynical, pessimistic, or overly idealistic at all. It is quite refreshing to see where the real problems are so they can be addressed effectivly.
Most people will naturally gravitate to some kind of organized community effort. Some will be more successful and some will be more effective at reaching their mutual goals.
Those who are less successful at meeting societal expectations that afford them benefits, REALLY DO have alot to offer and:
1) They don't have to be educated in all the formal ways others have been successful at achieving. Actually the opposite is true.
These people have life experiances that have never even been evaluated as to thier worth because their experiances have not been heard. What they have to offer has never been factored into any decisions and that has severely affected them in negative ways. Also ,these people DO make up the majority of the population.
The rest of society has no idea what these people (who have little or no formal education) have to offer ALL of society because their veiws and their life experiences have never been validated as being worthy of having anything to offer anyone.
2) The idea that these people are somehow a necessary exclusion to enable the most privaleged forward thinkers to pull the rest behind has never worked.
Expecting people to reach higher to catch nonexistent windfalls has left good valuable thinkers, workers, etc. being considered lazy, slothful, and even worthless and disposable.
This is the biggest economic mistake our world has ever made. It has also lead to the cruelest exclusionary judgements. -------------
There has never been a middle class in the United States that has been acknowleged or addressed. The claim to the contrary is one of the biggest lies ever told. It has caused some of the biggest problems.
The real middle and lower economic classes are not included in any statistics that validate thier needs and it is society's responsibility to provide them with the voice and the power they have never had. Also, that means alot more than having U.S. democrats driving people to the polls on election day because they can't get there otherwise. I mean really....
I believe stongly that those who have fought for civil rights and disability rights should be honored for their brave and persistant efforts and the benifits that have resulted from those efforts.
At the same time, it must also be understood and dealt with as a more important issue that:
The belief that such rights ARE actually provided for anything other than the minority (in any country) or that the rights of the majority of people are decided in any kind of democratic or fair way is causing the biggest problems.
Autistic people have a lot to offer. The internet shows too few people describing that they feel this way.
People that are diagnosed as autistic and desire to learn how that can be respected as they learn to respect autistic others and their autistic selves....I consider them to be autistic.
We are human whether we respect who we are or not. Every other valuable label we earn by learning to respect it. To do otherwise is to associate yourself with a label that creates pity, self loathing, disrespect, and disgust.
If you self diagnose yourself as autistic, or just identify yourself with autistics, then you, like the rest of us, are learning to respect what is good about it....and more power to you. If there are parts of being autistic that you need accomodations for, such as education, vocational aid, and healthcare.... then hold the people who are providing that to you, or who you want to provide that to you, responsible for treating the label of autistic with respect.
No one can expect you to do that alone but you don't have to.
If you are receiving services from an autism agency, autism organization, or autism service provider, find out how they define autism and work to make their view a more respectable one. Find out where their funds come from and where they go to. Find out who,besides their clients, that they are responsible to. If they or their money are being used to hurt and show disrespect for autistic people, work to change how they do things and find others who will help you with your efforts.
If you are seeking help for you autistic kid, along with whatever else you do to aid your child, seek out autistic adults who are working to teach society how to respect autistic people. If you hope for your kid to become an adult (which I'm sure you do) , they may have many of the same characteristics as we do and you need to be working to help us all to start creating more respect for autistic people so that your kid grows up in an environment that respects their differences.
If you don't like the word neurodiversity, use another word that shows acceptance for peoples' uniqueness and even what others see as weakness....because whether you like it or not, you ain't that normal or that strong by normal standards either, and if the world can't tolerate difference and/ or what they see as weak, then the world won't be tolerable for any of us.
And another thing: 1)Start placing a higher standard on where you show your gratitude. Make sure that people understand what it means to show respect for autistic and disabled people and that they follow the standards they understand. Especially if they are inofficial positions where it is very important for them to do so.
No one deserves gratitude for being willing to tolerate us, and diplomacy only works with people who won't abuse diplomacy as being what they see as an opportunity to continue with their inappropriate behavior.
2) Either fix the "autism awareness" campaign or help get rid of it before it does any more harm.
3) Quit telling people that the decisions that are made about autistic people are decided by some kind of democracy, when the few who are voting on these issues are uninformed about who we as autistics are, and how their decisions impact our lives.
4) Quit treating issues where people are being severely abused, and sometimes even killed, as an issue like one that might be discussed in a civil manner as some topic for a T.V. talk show.
This minimizes the severity of the issue, and worst of all it minimizes the value that people are placing on the lives of those who are being abused. They can't afford for people who care to handle this so dispassionately, or for it to be described to others in such a way.
