Things I Wish I Never Had To See Again

 So here we are in April again, and the legions of Autism Awareness are out again. I’ve become quite cynical or maybe just jaded in recent years, as it sometimes seems like the more things change, the more they remain the same. There are so many things, so many people, I wish that I never had to see again. Here are the most prominent of them, and what they say, sometimes outright, sometimes not, but always implicit.

‘Autism mommies’ (and sometimes daddies). (Aka warrior mommies, or martyr mommies on a bad day.) “You’re not like my child, you’re too high-functioning, if you can post online then you’re not really autistic/not autistic enough to understand, what about the ‘real’/‘severe’ autistics, you don’t know how hard it is to raise these children, my child will never be independent, you’re so rude, if you would tone down, if you would shut up, you should say that you ‘have autism’ not ‘am autistic’, I am an ‘autism mom’, I’m fighting autism every day, I am my child’s voice, I want my child to be ‘normal’, my child loves ABA, I don’t care if adult autistics don’t like it, I’m going to Light It Up Blue/wear the puzzle piece/support Autism Speaks anyhow, you’re not really autistic anyway so your opinion doesn’t matter…”

ABA defenders/promoters. “I’m sorry if you were hurt but that’s not ‘real’ ABA, that’s ‘old’ ABA and we don’t do that anymore, my ABA isn’t like that, our children love ABA/their therapist, it’s scientific and ‘evidence-based’, we’re helping these children, we’re teaching them skills, we’re teaching them how to be like other kids, you must want them to not have any therapy or help then, you must want them to grow up to be like animals screaming and pooping in their pants, we’re helping their families, this is what the parents need, it’s not true that ABA is torture or abuse, we don’t punish them anymore, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re not really autistic anyway so your opinion doesn’t matter…”

Inspiration porn peddlers. “Look at the wonderful boy who asked the nerdy girl ‘with autism’ to the prom, isn’t he wonderful, such an inspiration, look at this program or device or special class that’s ‘helping’ children ‘with autism’ learn how to talk/interact ‘like normal’/play special sports/be a team mascot, isn’t it inspiring, aren’t they good for doing this, aren’t we good for sharing this? Look at how our faces soften, our smiles beam wide, our eyes glaze over with our own goodness and compassion for these poor creatures, isn’t it inspiring? …What’s that? No, we didn’t ask the autistic kids/teens/young adults what they thought about being ‘helped’, we didn’t include their words, their responses, their ideas, in our article/news item/puff piece, because we already talked to their parents and teachers and the ‘experts’, so it’s not necessary…”

Media bias and ignorance about autistics. “Autism is a disease/epidemic, it’s brain damage, it’s a layer that must be removed to let the ‘real’ child shine, the world would be better off if there was a cure for autism; it’s a childhood thing, mostly little white boys, they’re non-verbal and almost mindless, they lack empathy or understanding of others; they’re nerdy young white male computer geeks, with no caring or empathy and zero social skills; people are saints to put up with/help them, their parents deserve a medal… what’s that? Ask the autistics what they’re feeling? Communicate with them? Consider how things might look from their point of view? Consider whether there might be autistics that don’t fit into these narrow little categories? But we already know All About Autism, because we’ve talked to their parents and teachers and the ‘experts’, so it’s not necessary…”

Biased research on autistics. “We must compare autistics against the ‘normals’ and discover their defect, because any difference is a pathological one, in no way can autistics ever be seen as okay or maybe even better than non-autistic controls, even if we must invent new terms or slant the research results in favour of those controls, even if that involves recasting morally or socially dubious results as ‘good’, and autistic’s purer motives as ‘bad’, because just being autistic is a wrongness in itself, so autistics can never be better at anything, everything they do is wrong simply because they are autistic…. What’s that? Autistics are fine just as they are? They’re not an inferior version of ‘proper’ human beings? Impossible! We’ve already outlined their deficiencies, and we’re the experts anyhow, we know autism best, so it’s not necessary to change what we’re doing…”

Violence against autistics. “Autistics bring in on themselves because they’re weird, they’re the r-word, they’re ‘natural’ targets, what do you expect, if they’d only behave properly they wouldn’t get bashed and bullied and murdered, it’s their own fault; if my child could just be normal I wouldn’t have to do this to them, if I didn’t have an autistic kid my life would be so much better, they’re better off dead anyway, they drove me to it, I’m the victim here; these kids need controlling and suppression so it’s only right that the usual rules shouldn’t apply to them, it’s only natural that teachers don’t want them in their class or have to put them into isolation rooms or tie them into chairs or hold them down on the floor or have them arrested no matter what their age, it’s only right that the Judge Rotenberg Centre uses electric measures to keep them in line, it’s only natural, I mean they’re animals really, so what does it matter what’s done to them… What’s that? Human rights? But they’re Not Really Human, so…”

We know none of this is true.

We know it in the depths of our bones, in the depths of our hearts, in the aching depths of our pain. And we’ve told them so, again and again and again… but they still aren’t listening. In fact, far from listening, too many of them keep coming on to our pages or groups and talking over us, telling us how wrong we are, how defective, and how They Know Better and it’s Their Responsibility to Educate us… and get furiously offended, or loftily ‘forgiving’ and ‘above’ us, when we reject that so-called education. We’ve seen it all before, heard it all before, so many times. Too many times. It just doesn’t seem to end. We have more allies now, but somehow we seem to have more enemies too.

And meanwhile, we suffer. We bleed. We live in agony.

And no-one listens to our screams, our protests, our pleas.

They’re not listening.

I am so tired of this. I wish I could never hear any of the above again. But I know I will. And that’s why I am so tired and jaded and cynical.

Are you sick of autism awareness yet?

THEY DO IT BECAUSE THEY CAN

Like a lot of people, I’ve been watching the Black Lives Matter protests. What strikes me every time I see the clip of that cop kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, is how little he’s worried about being on camera. He’s watching the bystanders, sure, but only, it seems to me, to judge whether they’re a further threat. Being videoed kneeling on someone’s neck till he dies? Nope, not a worry.

Why? Because cops like him have done this, and worse, to many black or brown people in the past, and gotten away with it. And I bet that he’s not even that worried now, because even in the rare cases where charges are laid, cops usually get acquitted, or a minor punishment. He’ll be expecting the same. It’s not over yet, not by a long shot.

Because pretty much everything done ‘in the line of duty’ has been excused or overlooked by complicit police administrations, passive civil authorities, and a judicial system reluctant to believe any wrongdoing on the part of police, even when confronted with glaring evidence of it. And so they  assume they can get away with practically anything.

The signs are there, for anyone to read. There’s some kind of corruption of spirit – there’s no other way to describe it –  at the very heart of policing. They see themselves as ‘heroes’ fighting against ‘wrongdoers’, who can be pretty much anyone else. (But especially black and brown people, I believe.) The result, of course, is that police themselves have now become an enemy to many.

This ethos is so pervasive, it’s even in fiction. Watch any cop TV show or movie, read any detective novel, a cop will lie or beat up someone at some point. Or the heroes-against-the-world thing will pop up. ‘It’s hard being a cop, no-one else understands’. Etc, etc, etc. And bear in mind that these shows are usually sympathetic to the police. Yet even there, the corruption has become the almost-unremarked-upon norm. (And before anyone says it, yes, I can tell fiction from fact. My point is that it’s so widespread in fact, it’s permeated into fiction.)

A note here – I went on my fair share of protests and demonstrations, back in the day. I’ve seen cops insult or verbally abuse people, threaten violence, commit it, do various dirty tricks, and even lie in court. There was a time in my life when if I saw a cop in the street I’d want to vomit and run away. So even though I’m whiter-than-white, I’m not surprised at all the videos that have emerged in recent years, though I am angry. I back BLM two hundred percent.

However – though I’m not wanting to divert the spotlight away from the Black Lives Matter movement at all – that is NOT my intention here – it’s worth noting that there is a deeper problem, an underlying pattern, which is not limited to the interaction of cops with black and brown people.

I was reminded of this recently when watching a documentary on Harvey Weinstein, and how he preyed on women for years. And he’s only one of the many, many authority figures – religious leaders, politicians, sports coaches, psychotherapists, entertainment top-dogs, etc, etc, who have long targeted the young and vulnerable of both sexes. And then there’s the abuse or even murder of autistics and disabled, by those who are supposed to be caring for them. Or the (mis)treatment of psychiatric patients, or the homeless… the list goes on. Practically anyone ‘different’ or ‘powerless’ can be, and frequently has been, a target.

In all these cases, those doing this harm do it because they can.

Because they’ve gotten away with it over and over again, for years, decades, even centuries.

Because they were in a position of unquestioned, unassailable, and unchallenged authority.

Because their victims were perceived as ‘lesser than’, ‘defective’, and/or just plain unimportant, not even worthy of life in some cases.

Because those who could have stopped them did nothing, in fact chances were they’d done it themselves, and thus it was ‘business as usual’.

Because even if their transgressions came to light, and complaints were made, the word of the powerful was always taken over the complainants.

Because even if a complaint was upheld, the transgressions were seen as minor/unimportant, or their actions were ‘justifiable use of power’.  

Because their victims were silenced in various ways – through threats, coercion, money, or just being ignored or ridiculed.

So it was okay for cops to beat up or kill black people, or for them to harass or beat up homeless people and destroy or take their belongings (and heaven help those who are black and homeless), for entertainment moguls to put aspiring actresses through the ‘casting couch’ ordeal, for priests to molest children and then simply be moved on to another parish, for professionals to put autistics through various torturous processes to make them ‘normal’. And so on, and so on.

Because the victims weren’t, and often still aren’t, considered important. They’re ‘the other’, the ‘different’, the ‘lesser than’, not worthy of the same rights as ‘normal people’, and thus it doesn’t matter what happens to them. And in the case of some groups, such as black people and autistics (once again, heaven help those who are both these things), even a ‘threat’ of some kind which has to be obliterated. So that others of their ilk can be kept in line. Subservient. Uncomplaining. Knuckling under to the Powers That Be.

THEY DO IT BECAUSE THEY CAN.

This is an important point to remember. Because they can, and have, gotten away with it for a long, long, long time. This corruption isn’t only in the police, but at the core of every imbalance of power. It’s a sickness at the heart of a world where those with power simply assume they have the right to not only define ‘the other’, but to shape and control their very lives. Up to and including whether they even get to live or not.

But at a certain point, the oppressed have had enough. They see that nothing but their rebellion will stop it. And so they say ‘no more!’ Black Lives Matter says no more. The ‘Me Too’ movement says no more. Autistic Rights says no more. Social movements since the 50s and 60s – civil rights, feminism, gay liberation – say no more.

And that’s the whole point of these protests – that black people, along with their allies, have had more than enough. They’re saying that it’s way beyond time to make the oppressors get their foot, or their knee, off black necks. Literally and metaphorically. To end this sickness, and root out this corruption.

If you still don’t understand this, if you’re still into ‘all lives matter’, or going ‘well they shouldn’t riot’, then you have missed the point entirely, and you’re going to end up on the wrong side of history.

I Don't Belong In This World

I don’t belong in this world.

By this, I don’t mean that I hate the world, or anyone in it. I love or have loved many people, some still alive, some not. And while sometimes I’ve shunned the world and held myself aloof from it for my own self-protection, yet at other times I’ve felt huge pity or compassion, even aching sorrow, for the world’s inhabitants and whatever pain they’re suffering, and I still do.

I also love the world’s physical beauties, its forests and sunsets, beaches and waterfalls, sweeping mountains and ever-changing seas. I even love many of its manmade splendours – feasts of colour and light, music that transports me, or the many architectural wonders of the world, especially old buildings, archways, hanging stones and other ancient sites.

But I’ve never felt like I belong here.

This not belonging has many layers or facets to it. There are spiritual facets – I know this isn’t everyone’s thing, but it is mine. It has nothing to do with what anyone else believes or doesn’t believe, but rather with a series of personal understandings I’ve gained over the years. Many years ago, for instance, I was in the women’s spirituality movement, but left because of its focus on Mother Earth and our female bodies – something I just do not feel that connected to. And for much of my younger years, I experienced something I could only describe as a ‘butterfly in a jar’ feeling. Then one day I realised it was my spirit yearning to be free. My true home, I know now, is with the Divine. One day, when I’ve done all I’m meant to do in this life, I’ll get to go there.

But it goes beyond the spiritual. I find myself repelled by many of the values that rule the world. Over and over again, I see honesty, integrity, decency, basic civility and even common sense being sacrificed on the altars of Ego, Greed and Political Expediency. Whether it’s in the political arena or the personal, I see so many appalling behaviours, and constant attempts to justify them by blaming the victims or some conveniently horrible ‘enemy’.

This is a world where there’s supposedly ‘not enough money’ to ensure decent incomes, housing, education or medical care for all, yet somehow there’s always enough money to go to war. A world where if you’re black, you can be arrested for sitting in a coffee shop waiting for a friend, or shot at for asking directions, but if you’re white and rich you can literally get away with rape.

And then there are wars, and pollution, and a greedy ripping out of the world’s resources without thought for the future, the capitalist hegemony that knows the price of everything, but the true value of nothing. And yes, I know there are those who fight against these warped values, but on the whole, the good people are not the ones in power, and even where they are, they’re sailing against the wind. I despair for the world, I truly do.

There’s also the effects of my physical disability – an acquired thing, yes, but it’s meant that for most of my adult life paid employment has been minimal to non-existent, and I’m now pretty much unemployable. Ditto for education, and any kind of community involvement. People rush off daily to wherever, while I stand apart, and isolated. (And poor, of course, something else that separates me from most others.)

Being a writer also means standing apart from society to some extent anyway, being an observer rather than a participant. Not to mention, when I have had jobs, I always felt like I was ‘wasting time’, and not doing what I felt I was ‘meant’ to be doing, ie writing.

But if I was simply any of the above, I would still be able to find a sector of society I’d fit into and be regarded by all as just another part of humanity, even if some disagreed with my political or spiritual opinions, or disliked what I wrote, and so on. But I’m also autistic. And as an autistic, I feel at odds with the entire world on a daily basis, its precepts and practises that just make no sense, and the constant slamming up against unspoken rules and social expectations. Even after decades of learning social skills, this is still a regular occurrence for me, and, I suspect, for most autistics. It’s the ‘square peg in a round-holed world’ feeling.

And while we autistics now have our own community, it’s one that most of the world seems to think shouldn’t exist. We’re seen as less-than-human, or even ‘monsters’ or a ‘disease’, and anything people do to us is considered fair game by most. The usual rules of decency do not apply to us.

So I’m alienated most of all, perhaps, by how we get treated, a mistreatment which ranges from simple ridicule through forced normalisation to outright murder. Not to mention the do-gooders who think they’re being ‘nice’ to us but who reek of fake-cheeriness or pitying inspiration-porn, the parents who never listen to us, the professionals who pathologise us, the teachers who don’t grasp just how different we really are, the media who demonise us… The world makes it plain that it only grudgingly tolerates us, at best, and at worst actively seeks to eliminate us. 

So no, I don’t feel welcome on this planet, or that I belong here. And given all the above, I think this is understandable.

We Are The Last Group That Will Be Liberated

We are the last group that will be liberated. The last ones that will have their oppression lifted, their plight seen for the travesty of justice it is, their status as fully equal human beings asserted. The last two centuries have seen just about every other group or minority move out from ‘sub-human’ status and into being redefined as within the range of ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’. Now it must be our turn.

Once upon a time, the ‘norm’ was defined, at least in the Western world, as white, male, middle-class, heterosexual and of course sane, able-bodied and of normal intelligence. The attributes of this group were the standard against which all others were measured, the yardstick ‘everyone’ should ‘naturally’ aspire to, the best that any human could be. And if you weren’t all of these, you were somehow inferior. To a large degree this wasn’t even discussed, but simply assumed. It was the ideal pattern, the superior state, and that was that. In English-speaking countries, you could add ‘Protestant, of Northern European, preferably English, ancestry’ to that list, or, as the Americans call it, a ‘WASP’.

And then the challenges started. Women got uppity, demanding the vote and a decent education and all the rest. The lower classes formed unions and agitated for change and ‘one man, one vote’. Even ‘coloured’ people, once the shackles of slavery had been removed, began to slowly organise and strive for something better for themselves. And as the twentieth century moved on, the agitation only increased. Socialists came to power in some countries, or formed Labour Parties and got into Parliament in others. Formerly subject peoples threw off their colonial masters, and began to govern themselves. Those ‘coloured’ people started calling themselves Black, or African-American, and refused to sit in the back of the bus and accept second-class citizenship anymore. Women soon followed their example, for a second round of ‘uppity’ behaviour, and in the late sixties gays and lesbians began their own revolution.

The result is that over the last thirty to forty years, there has been a change in how such groups are regarded, with a consequent change to the common idea of the human ‘norm’. Publicly ‘out’ gay figures, mothers working full-time, women and dark-skinned people in prominent and powerful positions - even President of the US - are no longer seen as unusual or something to automatically reject even the idea of. In New Zealand we have gay civil unions, and have had two female Prime Ministers, one female Governor-General and two who are of non-white ancestry. And the sky hasn’t fallen yet.

And along with all this, there have been changes for other formerly powerless groups. Patients now have the right to be consulted and to choose their health care, where once they were simply passive recipients of ‘treatment’ from the Doctor Gods On High. Mental health patients have undergone a similar empowerment. The blind, the deaf and the intellectually handicapped, once powerless and marginalised into institutions, now enjoy a much better position and quality of life. The physically handicapped have also acquired ‘rights’, to accommodations such as disabled toilets and to being seen as fully human, even if in practise they are sometimes still treated as ‘not all there’. Nonetheless, it’s seen as ‘not nice’ to refer to ‘crips’, to laugh at someone because they can’t walk properly, or to talk down to/ignore someone just because they’re in a wheelchair – any more than it’s socially acceptable in most circles to call non-whites ‘niggers’, ‘chinks’ or ‘wops’, or to tell women they can’t do a particular job just because they’re female, or to say that lower-class or Black American accents are not acceptable on mainstream television.

That’s not to say that racism, sexism, homophobia, classism or even ableism, have all been eliminated. Far from it. But my point is that the idea of what constitutes the ‘norm’ has changed. All these groups are now seen as having fully human status, as being worthy of being treated well, even if they sometimes aren’t.

We are not.

It’s still okay for people to say in our hearing that we are ‘mistakes’ that should never have been born, or ‘thieves’ that have stolen away people’s ‘real’ children, or tragedies and burdens that have destroyed our parents’ lives.

It’s still okay – even commended – for people to say in our hearing that they ‘hate’ the autism that is the very core of who we are, without regard to the psychological damage that might do us.

It’s still okay for media to portray us almost entirely in a negative, patronising or pitying light, and to report unopposed the views of those who say that murdering us is ‘understandable’ and a ‘mercy killing’.

It’s still okay to force us into ‘treatments’, therapies or ‘restraints’ that can do us real harm, while denying us the support that actually could help us.

It’s still okay to refer to us as ‘retards’, ‘losers’, ‘geeks’, ‘nerds’ or ‘ass-burgers’.

it’s still okay to exclude us, reject us, laugh and jeer at us, bully us even as adults, deny us employment, and generally dis-empower us.

It’s still okay to demand that we suppress and deny our true selves and natural behaviours such as stims, even if they aren’t hurting ourselves or anyone else.

And it’s still okay to take it as a given that our ways of being are automatically inferior to those of neurotypical ways, and any difference between us is a ‘defect’ on our part.

Most of all, it’s still okay to see us as ‘not fully human’, as somehow lesser than the ‘normal’ people, as Not Good Enough to have rights just like any other human.

Because we are not seen as fully human, and we have no rights.

I’m not wanting to minimise any group’s struggle here, but it’s nonetheless true that even the blind, deaf, intellectually and physically handicapped, and those with mental health issues, are seen as more ‘normal’ than us. Unless they are also on the spectrum, there’s a shared outlook, a body of shared assumptions and attitudes, a natural facility with all the things we so struggle with, that they all have in common.

We don’t share it.

We are the ultimate ‘other’. The furthest ‘out there’ group, the last frontier of what it means to be human. Having spent time in the feminist and anti-racism movements of the eighties,  I believe our struggle will prove to be the hardest, the longest, the loneliest and the most complex of all.

None of which means we shouldn’t try – rather, it means it becomes all the more imperative, all the more needed, all the more necessary, that we do. And when we consider all the above treatments we are on the receiving end of, and the damage they are doing, all the more urgent. We have to do it. We have no choice. Because we are human, and it’s time to step forth and declare it, and take our place in the world.