Traveling Show

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/10/24/163552936/political-memes-fast-cheap-and-out-of-control

I write against ableism so frequently that I thought I would do something different for Blogging Against Disableism Day.  This is a post on life as a neurodiversity blogger.  I will be more frank than usual.  There is a consequent trigger warning for almost everything, abuse, ableism, violence, killings, trolls, mental health issues, strong feelings of all kinds, bitterness, suicide, burnout, isolation, and an unhealthy lifestyle.

I am an autistic adult, part of the cohort finding success.  I am not a nice one.  Unlike a high school acquaintance and college classmates, I did not escape special education with no desire but a peaceful life.  I am the neurodiversity person your parents warned you about.  I was in the same lecture as the neighborhood shoplifter, your conspiracy theorist uncle at the reunion, the classmate with the pierced tongue and spiked, blue hair.  I am an unapologetic fanatic.  I learned about my diagnosis years after it occurred, found the autistic community, took to it as a starving person does food.  My life up until that moment had been a search for someone like me.  On the darkest days, I assumed I was a lone freak of nature.  Knowing this, one can understand why I would care for this now that I have it.

This blog is what I see first in the morning and last at night.  I have comforted the panic of newly-diagnosed people and their parents, offered advice, responded to the murders of children while trying not to break down, called out ableism, offered support on others’ bad days, penned manifestos, and asked others to take risks.  I have confronted abuse, called it what it is.  I sat through the recent JRC clips because I will not pass on what I have not seen.  I have disseminated information about issues of concern to the disability community.  I have fretted about how to convince people to stand up for themselves.  I win and loose faith in humanity with social media tides of compassion and barbarism.  I have tried to find the words to make strangers believe someone would care if they died, prayed with every fiber of my being, learned to sleep through knowing I will not know until morning.  I have told stories. 

I have drawn the attention of trolls from vulnerable members of this community, engaged them long enough to know them, found the one insult that would make an impact, and sent them slinking back from whence they came.  I hate to use the whack-a-mole cliche; it works.  Trolls expect tirades, not icy rhetoric that ends in a single point of calculated cruelty.  It catches them off guard.  To me, it is like breathing.  I grew up debating a University of Chicago Ph. D. who never pulled a verbal punch because his sparring partner was four, ten, or twelve.  Dad taught me the use of insults with equal intentionality when I told him I was being bullied in elementary school.  Texans have strange ideas of appropriate gifts for a child.  Neither of us knew it, but he raised me for this.  I was surprised at the ease of learning callousness.  I hope the day never comes when I do this without guilt.  Once, I wrote poetry every day.  Now, I quarrel.

Dad never expected me to take on the antithesis of his profession, either.  He raises funds.  I block them.  Every New Year’s Eve day, he asks one subordinate to work.  While one of his people waits for year-end gifts to the college in an empty office, I beg potential Autism Speaks donors to reconsider.  I have been known to poach gifts on their own Facebook page.  I can only dream of annual totals as grand as my father’s but have seen some success.  I have called others to this kind of confrontation.

I think I fulfill this self-made role well.  I take it seriously.  I work hard.  That is the problem with this time of semester.  It is not the courses, Internet, three musical endeavors, friends, family, or disability rights volunteering IRL.  It is no single thing that leaves me feeling wretched, though this commitment takes more time and intellectual and emotional effort than the others.  Slightly feverish, up too late, unable to position myself comfortably from sousaphone-related pain, I feel anything but nineteen.  This is not how society thinks one should be young, but this is an area of life in which I have no regrets.

I need a few days off.  I will take them soon.  I am still glad to do this.  I am pleased that our community has grown, proud to see it thrive.  We are in a position to make long-term plans.  Parents are coming around to the idea of neurodiversity.  Eventually, professionals will have no choice but to follow.  Allistic allies harassed Autism Speaks with us on April second.  There are days when there is little egregious ableism in the autism-related tags, more of our criticism than their propaganda in #autismspeaks. 

Two or three years ago, I assumed our future extinction was nearly inevitable.  Now, I have hope.  We did that.  We constructed the alternate narrative on which I keep harping, the better story of what autism is and can be.  Together, we are turning the tide.  Ableism still wrecks havoc on some lives and cuts others short, but we are making progress.  If you read this, you probably participated.  Congratulate yourself.  You deserve it.  Sudden change is obvious, gradual shifts less so.  Do not fail to notice just because the pace is glacial.  Being a neurodiversity blogger makes for better years than days.  I will continue for the foreseeable future.  I hope you will, too.  Every word of self-approval, self-value, self-love is an act of resistance.  It is an honor to be in the midst of this.  I will watch and help as what I am, a tuba player trained to take care of my own.  I want to see you make it through the night.

thingsilearnedfrom:

If you willfully stay away from the news, social justice blogging, etc. because the mention of anything resembling discrimination or violence triggers you, you’re automatically a self-centered person who needs to “grow a thicker skin.”

I was discussing this with a generally-non-activist gay friend.  She has the same problem.  It bothers me.  Not everyone is a fighter.  Not everyone should be.  Even I plan to take some time off soon because we all need it sometimes.

TW mention of what we see on the tags

Welcome to the autism-related tags.  We are its autistic denizens.  We use this as a safe space to meet and talk about our lives.  Here are some helpful pointers:

• If you use autism as an insult, someone will chew you out.  If you are oblivious enough to walk into a space full of autistic people and use our label as a slur, I have no sympathy for you when the inevitable explosion of outrage occurs.
• If you question our humanity, someone will chew you out.  If you catch us in an especially bad mood, a sort of online angry mob fifty strong or more may bury you in angry reblogs.  Living in your world, many of us encounter those attitudes every day.  We do not tolerate them here.
• If you support Autism Speaks, TACA, etc., expect a snarky reblog.  This is why:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/05/19/336513/-An-Autistic-Speaks-About-Autism-Speaks

• If you say that you have abused or plan to abuse the autistic person in your life, a number of people here can track your IP address, take screencaps as evidence, and call your local police.
• If you want to learn, put out a question to everyone instead of asking a specific person.  Whoever is in the mood can answer it.
• Expect us to be people.  Questions that would seem rude to an allistic person seem rude to us.

This is not so much how I think things should be as what to expect from me.  We all have different standards.  Writing them down so everyone knows what to expect might make this place more civil.  I will post it for people who already follow me and add it to an FAQ page I will soon complete.

My Position:

Anger has a place in activism.  It moves people to take on the challenges at hand.  I recently said in an essay for something else that the cause of neurodiversity needs real people, not inorganic voices without flaws.  People who can hold a grudge, people with axes to grind, get things done.  Anger inspires resistance to oppression.  It ends talk and drives action.

Like anything else, there is a time and place for it.  I recognize that my life has been hard.  For me, these discussions are personal.  They represent the future of people like me.  They touch on the experiences I relive in nightmares.  Anger comes easily to the surface.  It should sometimes be restrained.  Even if you are a person with the societal privilege of being allistic or neurotypical, my anger is not your problem.  If you have not, to my knowledge, specifically done something wrong, I will be decent to you.  You did not choose to be what you are any more than I did.  I have no more right to punish others for being born a certain way than you do.

Under these circumstances, I will have genuine discussions:

• When someone wants to know more about autism
• When someone wants to know about my experience as an autistic person
• When someone wants advice I can give
• When someone asks an honest question
• When a civil, articulate person disagrees with me and wants to talk

Under these circumstances, I will rebuff questions without condemning curious person beyond mild reproach:

• When someone asks what I believe to be a genuine question that is offensive
• When someone asks what I believe to be a genuine question that is too personal
• When someone asks a question I cannot answer
• When someone asks me to interpret the behavior of a nonverbal child I do not know

If you appear to troll, I will engage and be unpleasant. 

TW Ableist Language, Discussion of Ableism, Discussion of Trolls, Discussion of Recent Autism Tag Events

It disturbs and angers me when people say ableist things.  We have that problem on a daily basis.  We would all like to see it diminish.  The obvious solution when we run into well-meaning people who say bad things is to correct them gently.  Sometimes they get angry, but we occasionally change minds.  I saw it happen last week.  When we run into real trolls, we need a different approach.

They strike me as people who need more attention than they get in daily life.  They seek it by misbehaving.  Trolls are amused by outrage.  Cursing at them only feeds them.  It encourages them to come back.  It is natural to be angry when confronted with one, but any emotional reaction increases your chance of seeing them again.  There are two effective ways to deal with them:

1. Ignore them.
2. Stay calm.

If you are too angry to engage rationally, ignore the troll.  If you need to rant, do it offline.  Shouting feels good but encourages the behavior.  If someone trolls consistently and it bothers you, block them.

If you feel up to engaging, take a deep breath.  Use no obscenities.  As autistic people, we are already considered irrational.  Our opinions are invalidated by our labels in many prejudiced minds.  Anyone who wants to troll you will reblog and declare that you are squalling or raving.  Look at what the troll said.  Read every word.  Stop and take deep breaths as needed.  Break it down.  See your opponent’s arguments.  With what do you disagree?  Find specific statements.  Can you provide counterexamples or point out a fallacy?  If so, do.  Use spellcheck.  Do the best you can grammatically.  Read it over twice before you post.  Watch for awkward phrasing.  Remove unnecessary words. 

The rules of writing have a problematic history on many levels.  They also have a history of creating meritocratic environments where achievement matters more than the circumstances of one’s birth.  People will take you more seriously if you can demonstrate knowledge of them, right or wrong.  This is a good book about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Sin-Boldly-Daves-Writing-College/dp/0465091598/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1323124582&sr=8-2

Used copies are cheap.  Since it is geared toward college students, you might find it at a local thrift store as term ends.  Here are other useful resources:

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos/writing-the-paper/fallacies

http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html

http://www.amazon.com/St-Martins-Handbook-Andrea-Lunsford/dp/031244317X/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323130720&sr=1-9

http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm

Engaging trolls is sometimes preferable to ignoring them if you can.  What if what appears to be a troll is a well-meaning person speaking in ignorance who happens to be abrasive?  Besides, engaging occasionally changes someone’s mind.  Shouting never does.  If you come across as competent, informed, cool headed, and reasonable, some people will respect that.  You are under no obligation to be “nice,” especially when someone invades your space.  However, civility is the productive choice.  “Civil” and “nice” are different things anyway.  There are ways to make someone out to be lower than slime mold without cursing or calling names.  These are so much more elegant.  Here are resources:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,463071,00.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/04/dissed_in_verse.single.html

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/09/the-gentlemanly-art-of-the-insult

I agree with Blinkpink that Manning is an asshat.  However, if we speak to him at all, it is more productive to treat him as reasonable in hopes that he becomes so.  It is more fun to call him the kind of person who crafts fine sentences about nothing worth reading and is up to date on the latest 19th century ideology.