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'm A Marginal Person

I live on the margins. I’m a marginal, a shadow creature, one of those who most people don’t even know exist, or are only vaguely aware of. I identify with all the other marginal – and marginalised - beings, who inhabit the world that lies beyond the harsh glare of nine-to-five, two-point-five mortgages, two-point-five kids and the house in the burbs. You know – the ‘normal’ world, inhabited by the straight white, cis, hetero, able-bodied, neurotypical, married, everyday people. Like you see on TV, in ads and programs and movies and so on. Normal people.

Please understand, I have nothing against them, I don’t dislike them or anything, in fact I find many of them fine people. I just don’t identify with them, and I can barely comprehend what it might be like to be them. And I guess they don’t really understand people like me either.

Us, that is. The not-so-normal ones. The socially rejected or scorned or ignored. The outsiders and the strangers and the simply ‘strange’. The autistics, the ADHDers, the dyslexic and the dyspraxic and the whole shebang of neurological ‘difference’. The gays and the dykes, the bis and the pans, the trans men and women, the aces and the aros and the happy-to-be-singles, the demis and greys and enbies and queers and all the rest. Or, for that matter, those who are not whiter than whitey-white, the immigrants, the disabled and chronically ill, the poor, the welfare beneficiaries, the homeless, the addicts and the mentally ill, not to mention the writers and artists and musicians and other creative types, and hell, even the hippies and nomads and rebels of all stripes, in fact pretty much anyone who finds their reality is not included in this supposedly wonderful ‘Norm’.

I don’t mean that I, personally, am all of these things (though I am quite a few of them), or that I know what it’s like to be all of these things. I mean that I most emphatically know the experience of being ‘not mainstream’, of being outside that norm, and so I empathise far more with these groups, collectively, than I do with the ‘normals’.

I also understand that many fall outside the norm in only one way, and wouldn’t consider themselves ‘marginal’ or even perhaps ‘marginalised’, and possibly are fighting to be included in the mainstream. How much any given individual feels marginalised tends to vary according to how many non-mainstream attributes you have. One, and you may reject any idea of being ‘marginal’. Lots, and you’ve usually given up on normal. Some don’t even care about it anymore, and some positively relish their marginal status. While if you have just a few attributes, you could be anywhere in-between. It’s a very individual thing, and no-one has the right to tell another how they should see themselves, or who they should identify with, or how they should live their life.

But all of us on the margins - beyond the boundaries of ‘normal’, in one way or another, and sometimes in multiple ways, being pushed further and further out beyond the back of beyond, in the eyes of ‘normals’ anyway - we inhabit our own universe. In that universe (or perhaps it’s a variety of different universes?), we connect, sometimes, with each other, and fail to at other times. We network, and fight, and disagree, and fall apart, and carry on anyway.

And our lives, our universes, are all too often invisible to the ‘normals’.  If they do encounter us, they sometimes refuse to acknowledge that our lives are actually different to theirs. “But everyone feels like that sometimes.” “Aren’t we all a little bit autistic?” “What do you mean, you don’t like sex/romance? Everybody wants a partner!” “I’d kill myself if I had your life.” “He/she’s just making a joke, it’s not really racism/sexism/homophobia.” “Non-binary? That’s not even a thing!” “But you’re in our country now, you should speak English.” And so on, and so forth.

But we know. We know our own truths. We live them. We know our day to day struggles are real – everything from wheelchair access to sensory overwhelm to pain management, from the lack of services to the lack of acceptance to the many micro-aggressions. And sometimes not-so-micro aggressions. We know it. Does it make us better people? Maybe. Sometimes. And sometimes not. All too many of us are simply left bitter, angry, hurt, sad and reeling away from the world. And even if we are stronger for it, I think most of us would still rather go without all the stuff we went through to get there.

Because we’re stressed out. It’s not fun to feel excluded, to never or rarely see our lives depicted in movies or on TV or in books or even just in a damn ad. (And why are so many movies and TV shows, even now, about The White Male Experience, especially the whole white-male-saving-the-day thing? I could write a whole book on this one, and no doubt someone already has. But do the movie and TV people ever think that even many of those who are white, might like to see something, y’know, different?)

Anyway, all this feeling invisible, ignored, overlooked, not valued or recognised, being the recipient of all sorts of bad treatment - prejudice, stereotypes, belittling, rejection, misunderstanding, mocking, ridicule or even outright violence – none of it is fun. But it happens. And it happens so often, and even if we complain about it, it’s obvious that the ‘normals’ don’t much care, really.

And that’s what cuts.

It’s not being different that’s the problem. It’s how others respond to us. We are what we are. Whether we hate it, love it, simply accept it or just wish we weren’t in a particular category, we are these things. And can’t be anything else. So why shouldn’t we feel pride in what we are? Why shouldn’t there be gay pride, indigenous rights movements, multi-cultural celebrations, autistic pride? Why should we not campaign for recognition, for human rights, for acceptance, and so on?

And what’s wrong with being different? Why are so many insistent we all be the same? What’s so great about being all alike? Why do the normals get to decide what we should aspire to, and why do they think they’re so wonderful that we should all be copying them anyhow? Did it ever occur to them that we just wanna be our own goddam selves, and not copies of them?

And I can’t help wondering, in the midst of this Covid crisis, whether it’s going to change anything for us. For most of my life, when I’ve looked around, I’ve seen a world increasingly skewed towards the superficial, the self-serving, the frenetically materialistic, and all too often the simply nonsensical. But this crisis has forced a change in many (apart from the usual idiots of course), it might even be that some serious changes will happen.

Our Prime Minister, Jacinda of international fame, has repeatedly urged us to ‘be kind’. And certainly there has been a surge of public-spiritedness evident, along with the Zoom conferences, the gee-we-can-work-efficiently-from-home-after-all, the endless hand washing and the social-distance-at-the-supermarket thing. But has this kindness been extended to real understanding and support for us marginal people? (Was it ever really anyway, except as patronising acts of inspo-porn, or other ‘feel-good’ exercises?) Will there be a wholesale change in how we’re seen? Or will this new-found public milk of human kindness vanish along with the need for hand sanitiser?

Who knows?

But whatever shape the future takes, one thing is certain – that I’m a marginal person, and always will be. The marginalised are my people, my tribe, and I’m happy with that, even if I’m not happy with how we’re treated.

How do you identify?

How To Dehumanise Autistics

Recently, I’ve seen a couple of items floating around social media either proposing that autistics should be killed, or that autistics and those who have autism running in their families should refrain from reproducing, to rid the world of the ‘scourge’ that is us.

Now, I don’t know if these are some horrible kind of satire or the work of (possibly fake) trolls, but it doesn’t really matter. Because it can only work as satire, or trolling, because there are plenty of people out there who DO have these attitudes, for real, even if they’re not usually so blunt about it.

These posts could be called ‘How To Dehumanise Autistics 101’. Here’s how you do it. (All italics are actual quotes from the above mentioned posts, some slightly abridged.)

1) Tell people that we are lacking in basic humanity.

Describe us in language that will frighten people who don’t really know much about autism. Tell them that we are not [in possession of] a fully aware sentient controlled mind, that we’re mental invalids, who are incapable of participating in the kindred spirit of human connection, that we have a deficiency of the essence of feeling, an inability to consider empathy, or that autism is the most inhumane, most destructive and dehumanising condition, in short that we’re the ultimate monstrosity.

2) Create an alarmist picture of ‘typical’ autistic behaviour.

Paint us as mass shooters blowing the brains out of kindergartners, or becoming stalkers, or simply as terrible things who tear our families to pieces, leaving our parents’ lives in ruins, who remain forever incapable of toilet training (what is with these neurophobes, that they always go straight to the faeces?), or the cause of public disturbances, or just claim that each of us cost the world a million dollars of medical care. A big part of much of this, of course, is assuming that we’re all low-functioning human pets, though even THAT picture is a distorted and incomplete one.

3) Insist our lives are ‘miserable’.

Tell people that we are doomed to suffering, spend our time banging [our] heads on the floor (or filling our pants, presumably), live lives of constant pain and hate [ourselves], and that those lives are incomplete, missing the most important components of humanity and sentient feelings. You might even claim that autistics themselves would like it if nobody would again suffer from the condition [we] have.

4) Suggest or even state outright that the world would be better off without us.

The bald advice of these people is to leave [us] by the riverside as babies, or that anyone on the autism spectrum or with… relatives with autism.. needs to be discouraged from reproducing. Because if you carry autistic genes… [they’re] not worth passing on. That we should dare to dream big, that we owe [it] to the future, in fact, to wipe autism from the face of the earth.

Never mind that much of this is contradicted by the evidence, eg that autistics actually have too much empathy, hyper-sensitivity, and all-too-aware minds. Never mind what should be obvious, eg that a kid banging their head on the floor is either in pain or in an extreme of rage and frustration. Never mind that most of us do not consider our lives, or ourselves, or our minds, ‘incomplete’, or ‘lacking’ in anything but acceptance and understanding from others. Never mind even that much of our ‘pain’ is actually caused by that lack of acceptance and understanding. Yes, even the so-called ‘low functioning’ (a label that is essentially meaningless in practical terms anyway). The attitude of those around us is *THE* biggest single indicator of the quality of autistic lives. Period.

Actually, never mind common sense or facts at all. Just go for the jugular, and fill people up with so much fear of us that they’ll agree to anything to get rid of us.

That’s how you dehumanise autistics.

We have been abused, beaten, denied basic human rights, had our intelligence discredited, been tortured with ABA, had bleach or turps or other horrible things shoved up our bums or down our throats, had our authentic autistic selves forcibly or even violently repressed, and much, much more, including sometimes being killed, because of attitudes like this.

I suspect that people like this haven’t actually met any autistics, even those who would be considered ‘low-functioning’, they’re just going by some mental image of ‘what an autistic is’. They certainly haven’t met me, or any of my friends. They haven’t seen their beautiful souls, their depth of compassion, their empathy for the underdog, their ability to create communities and support each other (that ‘kindred spirit’ it’s claimed we don’t have), their joy in their favourite interests, or helping others, or simply in small things like a drop of dew in a flower.

But I repeat – these people are have only *publicly* stated what many others are thinking or feeling, without much reflection. The media, the ‘martyr/warrior mommy’ movement, and Certain Big Autism Organisations who don’t actually include us or even attempt to understand us are largely responsible for this, but the attitudes are rife in the general public as well.

It’s these attitudes, not autistics, that I believe should be ‘left by the riverside’, and ‘wiped from the face of the earth’. Enough with the dehumanising. We’re people. We’re human. We’re here to stay. And we deserve better than to be treated this way.