So Typical

CNN runs a story about the autism storyline in Parenthood. There are quotes from show producer Jason Katims (parent of an autistic child), one pseudonymous CNN reader (parent of an autistic child), executive producer of Autism Speaks Peter Bell, another pseudonymous commentator (connection to autism not clear), and blogger Angela Timpone (mother of autistic child).

Gee, I wonder whose perspectives are missing....

Divorce Rate Shocker

Remember how a certain autism organization made a fear-mongering video claim that 80% of parents with an autism diagnosis are divorced? Well, that turns out to be a load of crap. Shocking, I know.

I have an autistic friend whose parents divorced within the past few years. Naturally, this is quite upsetting. The fear-mongerers would have my friend believe that it is his fault that his parents divorced. This is unacceptable and utterly infuriating. I believe the psychological literature on divorce generally indicates that many children tend to blame themselves for their parents' divorce, regardless. Unfortunately, unscrupulous and unscientific organizations seem to have no qualms about adding to those feelings of guilt for autistic children in particular.

Skeptics and scientifically-oriented people have long questioned the origins of that 80% statistic, and promotion of this statistic has always been irresponsible at best. Now, these organizations have no excuse.

This study needs to be read by every autism organization and major media outlet in the country.

Liveblogging Parenthood

In "honor" of tonight's hour-long Autism Speaks commercial on NBC...oh, wait, I mean, tonight's episode of Parenthood, I thought I would foray a bit into liveblogging. I recorded some of my thoughts as I was watching the show, and I present them to you now (almost) unedited. Not the most profound thing I've ever written, certainly, but it sure is cathartic:

I really hate Haddie now.

You know what else I hate? Autism Speaks. Not anything new, but worth saying again.

Yes, Mom, you are doing something wrong. You’re encouraging your son to raise money for an organization that is oppressing him. And you’re continuing to be a self-pitying jerk about having a child who doesn’t fit your made-to-order specifications.

As if we needed another reason to hate Kristina: slut-shaming. That’s right. Only perfect, neurotypical, forever-virginal children for her. She and Haddie the Terrible deserve each other. Because Haddie might be a mean girl, but at least she's neurotypical and a virgin.

The idea of “something being wrong with” someone else seems to be a prominent theme in this episode, whether it’s Kristina saying there’s something “wrong” with Max (grr), or Amber thinking that there’s something “wrong” with her for having sex with Steve after her cousin had already broken up with him. Wisely, Sarah (Amber’s mom, that is, not me) tells Amber that there’s nothing wrong with her. Which is great and all. It certainly beats slut-shaming. But when is someone going to tell Kristina and Adam that there is nothing wrong with their son? (Their daughter, on the other hand, is a mean-spirited asshole. Cure assholishness now! We need to walk to cure this epidemic in our midst. I'd say to act now, before it's too late, but alas, it is already too late.)

Breast enhancement surgery mom subplot is mildly amusing. When that’s the highlight of the episode, though, we’re in trouble.

“You can’t let pain tell you how to live your life.” Tell that to Autism Speaks, please…as an organization they haven’t yet moved past the “grief” stage.

ABA hasn’t been a major them for the past several episodes, but there are hints of it which definitely show one of the basic problems with it—namely, that it resembles dog training. Stickers, bones…it’s all the same kind of thing.

Autism Speaks colors and logo make me see red.

Team Braverman is helping eugenics. Yay!

And Max’s parents are still completely misleading their son. Grr indeed.

And now because all of the Autism Speaks-promoting apparently wasn’t enough…we have a blatant ad at the end? Grr doesn’t adequately cover it.

Neurodiversity: Not Just About Autism

Or at least, it shouldn't be.

I think we in the self-identified neurodiversity movement are oftentimes guilty of implicitly and explicitly saying that neurodiversity is just about autism.

But it shouldn't be.

And some common sentiments in the autistic community are, quite frankly, marginalizing of many neuro-atypical people.

Take, for instance, the knee-jerk reaction which many autistic people have to the idea that autism/Asperger's is a mental illness. Now it is technically true that autism isn't classified as a mental illness, medically. But if we're being honest with ourselves I think we need to acknowledge that it's at least something like a mental illness in terms of social classification and stigmatization. Moreover, there isn't really a clear, objective distinction between which conditions are "mental" and which are "neurological." At all.

We are very much in the same boat, and not just because so many of us have MI diagnoses in addition to being autistic.

Why, then, do dehumanizing statements about people with MI appear on popular autism blogs and message boards with such frequency?

An example: Autistic advocates try to disassociate themselves from John Odgren by speculating that Odgren has bipolar disorder.

The message: We object to people saying that autism/Asperger's is associated with violence, but making associations between another mental/neurological condition and violent acts is fine with us.

Attitudes like these are not uncommon amongst the autistic community. "Bipolar" and in particular "schizophrenia" are thrown out like epithets used by autistic people to disassociate themselves from other human beings. And just as there is a problem with aspie supremacists not wanting to associate themselves with so-called "lower-functioning" autistic people, so too is there a problem with the rush to disassociate autistic people with MI--particularly the "scary" MI categories like bipolar and schizophrenia. (Don't even get me started on how people with schizophrenia, in particular, are demonized in various sectors of society). In doing so, these autistic people use similar tactics to those which are used to oppress us. When we treat non-autism mental differences as Terrible and Scary Things, we are implicitly acquiescing to the ideological system of neurotypical supremacy. A movement that seeks to de-stigmatize autism while re-stigmatizing bipolar and schizophrenia (amongst other conditions) is not one that I wish to be a part of.

In the immortal words of Audre Lorde, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Irony & Autism Speaks Fund-raising

Autism Speaks' latest fund-raising tactic:

If you love the smell of burgers and onions, or just the distinct aroma of a White Castle fast-food joint, you can buy a White Castle candle for $10. The proceeds go to Autism Speaks, the country's largest autism advocacy group.
(Source)

The irony of this, of course, is that most autistic people experience sensory hyper- and hypo- sensitivities, and thus are likely to find this scented candle rather repellent. And I can't imagine many non-autistic people finding such a thing particularly appealing, either.

Alas, the candles are currently sold out, so people are buying the wretched things regardless. I can only hope that households with autistic people currently living in them will not subject autistic people to the putrid scent of White Castle. Bad enough that people who are trying to "help" are giving money to Autism Speaks in the first place.

In a way, these $10 White Castle scented capsules encapsulate Autism Speaks. Expensive, useless, and repugnant--particularly to autistic people.

And they say irony is dead.

Another Bullying Study: Water is Wet II

In the vein of this story comes more "news" on bullying: being overweight increases your chances of being bullied. This news is absolutely shocking, I know.

The people who ran this study--and the other bullying study about social ineptness--could have found out the same things just by asking me about my childhood.

Next there will be a study showing that the Pope is Catholic.

H/T Shakesville

To Tell or Not to Tell

Today I will be on a conference panel speaking about self-advocacy with regards to disclosure of disability, so that's been on my mind lately. I thought I would address the general topic for BADD as well.

While the concepts of "passing" and "having an invisible disability" have been useful to me in negotiating and feeling secure in my own identity as a disabled person (autistic with a side of various mental health stuff), there are limitations to these concepts. Chally and Amanda articulate many of these limitations very well. Some recent events in my own life have also prompted me to reconsider the definitions of disability (in)visibility and the utilities of disclosure.

For some non-autistic people who talk about disclosure, disclosure is this magical thing which will prompt all the non-autistic people to start becoming nice and accommodating towards us.* Most actual autistic people know better. Still, I do advocate disclosure, and not only for the potential accommodations/understanding (which is great, of course!) I've come to realize that being open about disability is also, in fact, a tool which fights internalized ableism, perhaps the most pernicious form of ableist oppression.

Six months ago or so, the idea of my being on a panel about autism and disclosure would have been laughable to me, and I doubt I would have agreed to do it at all. The idea of my being any kind of expert on disclosure still seems somewhat absurd to me, given how frequently I've mucked up disclosing in my own life. By and large I've tended to err in the direction of not disclosing, often waiting until some kind of disaster occurred. While I intellectually "knew" that there was nothing shameful in being autistic, my actions often belied this belief. I too often treated my diagnosis as a Secret (capital S) to be carefully guarded. Because, of course, being autistic did feel shameful to me, despite my pro-neurodiversity beliefs. I can do well passing most of the time, I told myself. So why bother disclosing unless I absolutely have to? Why take the risk?

As I began graduate school last fall, I embarked upon a new cycle of angst about disclosing. I constantly worried about if and when I should tell my new classmates and professors. Would they treat me with condescension, or outright discriminate against me? Would they not even believe me in the first place, because I can do a good job of pretending? The to-tell-or-not-to-tell question became a source of anxiety which equaled or even surpassed the stress of adjusting to graduate school in a new city itself.

I angsted in particular about disclosing to one person. Finally, around mid-January, I disclosed to this person. Only to be told that xe already knew, for a variety of reasons which included my own behavior and communication style. And I have generally thought of myself as being able to pass really well! But clearly, my "invisible" disability wasn't quite as invisible as I thought it was, to this person at least (who, by the way, is not a psychologist, neurologist, or anything of the sort).

This surprising turn of events was oddly liberating, and since then I've become significantly more relaxed about the whole thing. I'm realizing that the whole disclosure business doesn't have to be as much of a Big Deal (capital letters) as I once thought it to be. I'm more cognizant of the probability that a lot of the people I interact with are recognizing that something is different about me anyway. And that's okay. As is explicitly identifying myself as autistic.

I'm certainly not naive enough to think that disclosure will make everything better. In fact, it really bugs me when non-autistic autism "advocates" talk as though disclosure is some kind of magical panacea which will make everyone more understanding, as I mentioned before. I'm fortunate in that I have yet to receive any reactions to my disclosure which are downright insulting, but I know that probably won't always be the case. And that sucks, deeply. That's one of the reasons I'm deeply committed to eliminating ableism in our society.

But for most disabled people, fighting ableism begins with ourselves. We are implicitly and explicitly taught from birth to view disability as awful, tragic, and shameful. That's damned hard to undo. I'm still working on it with regards to my own disability, and I certainly still have a ways to go in terms of fully acknowledging and dealing with the privilege I have as a non-physically disabled person and as a kind-of-sort-of-"passing" person with neurological/mental impairments.

I don't think I'll ever get the whole disclosure business down perfectly or anywhere close to it. I doubt I'll ever know for sure when the "right" time to disclose is. As long as autism remains stigmatized, I'll probably always hesitate at least a little bit before disclosing. But I hope that over the upcoming months and years I will continue to be more forthcoming about my diagnosis than I have been in the past. Not just so other people will understand me better--though that would be great--but so that I can continue chipping away at my own internal ableism. Because being autistic (or having any other disability) should not be a shameful secret. It's bad enough that some people treat my neurology as shameful. I certainly don't need to.

*Yes, most "advocates" don't put it in those terms exactly, but I've read/heard far too many non-autistic people treat disclosure as a panacea, without acknowledging the potential discrimination we open ourselves up to when choosing to disclose.