NTs Are Weird

Apparently, to be “fully” autistic, one must meet the new diagnostic criteria – one must be unsuccessful and unhappy.

I know this isn’t in any of the official criteria, but it does seem to be in many people’s unofficial criteria. In their eyes, autism is so horrible that nobody with autism could actually be enjoying life, successful at a job, etc. Maybe someone with only “traits” or who is “Asperger’s” rather than autistic could, but not someone who is a real autistic (not my beliefs – I am repeating theirs).

Kind of convenient, huh? If you can’t be happy or successful, then it wouldn’t particularly matter if you received good services. It wouldn’t matter if your education was worthwhile. It wouldn’t matter if you had enough money to do more than simply survive. It wouldn’t matter if you had control over your own life. After all, no matter what, you will be miserable.

This is a great way of taking away power, and is related to other power-plays such as adding “can’t communicate at all” to the diagnostic criteria (therefore not needing to listen to the actual people with autism, because nobody in that group can tell you what they want, and thus nobody’s personal experience as an autistic is relevant).

And, like other “add-ons” to the diagnostic criteria, anyone who is even moderately happy or successful can simply be dismissed as someone who is lying about their autism status – they don’t need to be listened to. This is ironic, as you would think people would want to see autistic people happy, and it should make sense to ask happy autistic people about things that contribute to the happiness. But if it isn’t possible to be happy, then this question isn’t valid. So the happy autistics can be dismissed.

We have the right to be happy and successful. A happy and successful autistic should not need to justify that they are autistic – instead we should celebrate that someone has managed to find a good life for themself. Yet a lot of disability services and support is predicated on the idea of being miserable – people can’t fathom that someone who is not miserable might still be disabled, as it ties into the popular prejudice that disability always leads to misery (and, hense, to popular support for things like euthanasia – who wouldn’t want to die if they only had misery ahead?).

Yet, if you want to be taken seriously on disability issues, as someone with personal experience of them, or if you are seeking services, you find yourself in the unenviable position of explaining how miserable and broken and unsuccessful you are. I’ve literally seen adults break down and cry when they’ve read their own documentation used to get social supports – typically these documents are not a glass half-full type of document, but rather one that doesn’t even acknowledge that the person can have a glass. It is downright depressing to anyone.

We should have the right to the supports we need – even when we are happy and successful. Social support shouldn’t be predicated on the idea of us staying miserable. Heck, they should aid us in achieving happiness and success, something possible even for “real” autistics (no, happiness and success does not look the same for everyone – it is very individualized).

We have the right to a good life. That doesn’t take our autism away.

I know I don’t usually write about non-autistic topics here, but I have to write about the marriage debate going on in California right now. At issue in the federal courts (likely to end up in the US Supreme Court before it is resolved) is whether or not gays should be able to marry – and whether voters can take rights away from unpopular minorities (California voters modified the State constitution recently to define marriage as the “union of one man and one woman”). Because autistics are often an unpopular minority, this is relevant to us. (note that this post is going to be US-centric)

I also believe, from personal experience, that there are far more people in the autistic community that don’t fit the standard gender and sexual molds than one would expect if there was no association between autism and GLBT (an umbrella term for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender/sexual) members. We also have in our community what seems to me to be a greater number of intersexed people – something relatively rare (although not nearly as rare as people think) in the non-autistic population. So I do believe that this issue affects us.

Yes, right now, the majority of people voting on gay marriage issues in the US are against gay marriage. That is one issue at hand in this trial – should the voters be allowed to restrict the rights of an unpopular minority, particularly on a state-by-state basis? In the past, states have restricted interracial marriage (US President Obama’s parents wouldn’t have been able to be legally married in several states when he was born), told us what kind of sex two consenting adults are allowed to have in private (recently overturned in Texas), and forcibly sterilized those seen as a “risk” to society (for such crimes as being disabled, blind, deaf, mentally retarded – unfortunately in some cases, this actually is still happening in the US, but not on the widespread basis that law provided for in the past). The reason that these laws are problematic is that the US constitution provides equal protection under the law to all classes of people. This means a state cannot take the rightful rights of a minority away, even when the voters want to. In addition, for granting rights, it is not required that a popular vote take place – that has protected us from many wrongs, and allowed many good laws to exist (two that come to mind that would not have likely passed if put before a popular vote are the ADA and IDEA).

An issue that is being discussed is the purpose of marriage. On one side, love trumps all. The pro-gay-marriage side believes that love and commitment to your partner is the primary reason for marriage. The other side believes that these are not the primary reason for marriage but rather it is about limiting sexual activity to one partner to create offspring (I couldn’t make that up) and then remain together to raise the child. Ignoring for a minute that marriage does not appear to prevent infidelity, and also ignoring that we allow divorce, this type of interpretation of the purpose of marriage is an insult to many. It says the marriage of those who cannot or will not have children is somehow less than the marriage of those who can have biological children. It devalues, even insults, those – typically heterosexual – relationships. Ironically, another argument being used against gay marriage is that it devalues heterosexual relationships. It seems only certain types of devaluation matter, and even more concerning, only certain types of even heterosexual relationships matter.

There are plenty of other problems with limiting marriage to man/woman relationships – there is no universal legal definition of male or female, for instance (seriously, go look for yourself and try to find one!) and any definition would likely apply – and prevent marriage – for some couples that nobody doubts are heterosexual. Determining sex is a lot more complicated than looking for a Y chromosome (despite what you learned in school) – not everyone has one set of chromosomes in their body (some have both XX and XY, depending on what cells you look at, for instance). Yet others have XXY chromosomes (both XX and XY in the same cell!). Nor can you look at sexual organs (might have neither, ambiguous ones, or ones that disagree with everything else like chromosomes). You can’t look at gonads, as plenty of people have the “wrong” gonads for their apparent or chromosomal sex (or perhaps both testes and ovaries). Even more difficult – some of these people don’t even know it (I mean, have you actually asked your doctor what chromosomes you have? If you haven’t undergoing genetic testing, you probably haven’t – I know I haven’t). Yet others have a sexual organ – the mind – that disagrees with some other part of their body. Is the mind less important than the genitals?

These aren’t the only issues – they are wide-ranging. Clearly, this is an important issue in our day, and a defining one for the United States. Clearly it is also controversial, with strong religious beliefs on both sides. I only hope that religion doesn’t get to define our laws – I can’t think of any religious organization I would want to obey unquestionably, not even my own. Nor would I ask anyone to like the choice someone else makes about a marriage partner. But we do have to give people equal rights – if don’t, we will find one day that we don’t have any rights either.

Last week, I attended a service for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. The day of remembrance is a time when people remember people who were killed because their expression of gender wasn’t “right” in someone else’s eyes.

As I participated in this event, I wondered, “Why is it that this event is not well known and not attended by members of nearly every social, religious, and civic organization? Can’t we agree that murder is a horrible thing?” There were many people from many walks of life there, but there were also large segments notably missing.

It’s clear that there is a political component at play. In this area, the political component is simply that some people find the idea of homosexuality repulsive, and thus can’t even associate with an event designed to remember that people who did no wrong to anyone else were killed simply for being different.

Of course, when people are asked, “Why would your church or civic organization not attend?” you are met with responses along the lines of, “We can’t support homosexuality”. In other words, the idea that homosexuality is sin is too important to “protect” (sound like the marriage debate?) that showing opposition to murder is politically harmful in many people’s eyes.

This doesn’t surprise me completely – I’ve seen similar trends in autism, although with entirely different motivations (not moral or religious, but rather political views on support services). Too often, I’ve received hate mail about my site because I point out that murderers of autistic people should face the same criminal penalties as murderers of non-autistic people. I am told about the hard life the murderer had, and how raising an autistic kid (yes, kid – despite the fact that not every autistic that is murdered is a kid) can push someone to the edge, and that these murders aren’t a time to cry for equal treatment under the law, but rather a time to petition government about support needs (I’ll also note that this clearly doesn’t apply to murders where, for instance, an autistic walking down the street is murdered by strangers just because he is different).

Well, yep, we do need better support for autistic people and our families. I’ve never disagreed on that. But it doesn’t justify murder, nor should it keep people from making a strong statement against murder.

Respect for life isn’t political, or at least it shouldn’t be. Whether the person has the “wrong” expression of gender, is autistic with unsupported parents, or whatever else, politics shouldn’t make murder okay. We shouldn’t be mixing respect for life with politics.

Regardless of politics, I’ll remember the people murdered out of hatred. I’ll remember the 31 people murdered in the last year because of hatred for how they expressed their gender. The world has lost much with these murders.

Every year, an Ugly Dog Contest is held.

This year’s pick?  A one-eyed, three-legged dog.

One might ask…what does this say about people’s view of disability? If a dog was picked for this based on what sex the dog was, I suspect it wouldn’t be nearly as funny to many people. Interesting.

That said, personally I think the pick was pretty cute.

For years, the standard argument against inclusion of any type has been “it will harm ‘innocent’ people.”

For instance, in the US, the argument against allowing openly gay people into the military is, essentially, it will lower the moral of the troops.  In other words, it will cause others to feel bad if gays are included.  And a soldier who is offended by being in the same army as a gay would, thus, be “harmed” by not having to correct his prejudice.  In this case, the right of the gay person to serve his country is considered less important than the rights of the offended anti-gay soldier.

We’ve seen the same argument whenever a group home tries to create a new home in a residential neighborhood.  While some argue about how much more dangerous a neighborhood becomes with a disabled person needing non-typical assistance living in the neighborhood (not supported by any evidence I’ve seen), most people focus on something else: property values.  However, in both cases, the rights of the disabled person are considered less important than the rights of others.

In education, the same thing happens.  Parents complain that a disabled child “hinders” education of non-disabled children, and this is used to justify exclusion.  I’m not going to argue about whether or not such “hinderence” occurs (although I will say lack of diversity doesn’t exactly help people become educated), but rather where people tend to side in such arguments.  Rather than realizing that both the disabled child and the non-disabled child have rights that should not be violated, often it is decided that it would be “more okay” to violate the rights of the disabled child, to spare the “normal” ones.  It’s not phrased this bluntly, of course, but that’s what is being done.

This has happened with nearly every minority, so we shouldn’t be surprised that disabled people are included in this.  There’s also the next step, which is once people decide that this type of overt prejudice is wrong, they will then start talking about how exclusion is “for the good of the minority.”  This is used with the military (“gays will be beat up, so they should be excluded by law, for their own good you see…”), used in historical times to justify racial segregation in schools (“Blacks have different education needs, they haven’t grown up in the same culture”), and certainly among the disability world (“Disabled people need special services.  They are best served in seperate schools or classrooms”).  But the key to all of this is that often the reason for exclusion isn’t that it is actually better for the minority, but rather because it is better for people who hold prejudice.

Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t a situation where a disabled student wouldn’t be best served in a non-mainstream setting.  Of course non-mainstream is not the opposite of inclusion – both can occur simultaniously – but rather I’m saying that the rights of the disabled student are only taken into consideration when it supports the prejudice of the majority.  Where it doesn’t support the majority’s prejudice, suddenly the rights of the minority are conveniently dismissed (gays in the military, for example).

As I watch the disability world, especially the autistic world, I see a rather disturbing trend that reverses much of the work disability advocates over the years have done – a desire to get things as a result of the public’s pity. Sometimes, it is used to such an extreme that some people truly appear unable to grasp the distinction between someone feeling pity for them and someone feeling love for them.

Most of the disabled world has fought against the “I’m disabled, feel sorry for me and give me stuff because this is horrible” by instead saying, “Hey, I have the right to the chance to enjoy life, I don’t have to be miserable. But I will be unless the world interacts differently with me.”

There’s a huge difference between those attitudes. In the first one, the attitude is one that assumes disability must always be something to pity, especially if the disabled person has non-typical needs. For example, if you see someone labeled as mentally retarded, you should feel sorry for them. You definitely shouldn’t see them as someone who can contribute to society, do great things, and be romantically attractive to someone else. No, instead you should feel bad for them, and realize that they can’t be happy in life, so they deserve at least a few things from the rest of us, since we all have it so much better than them.

The other attitude assumes the person labeled mentally retarded has a right to pursue their dreams, and actually has dreams which may be achievable – that they aren’t condemned to always wanting, and may even be, by all measures, having a fuller life than most people – while still remaining disabled. But it also recognizes the human rights struggles that often prevent these dreams from being achieved, understanding that simply interacting with everyone as if we are exactly the same is, in itself, a human rights abuse. It recognizes that this person is someone who may be able to contribute to society, do great things, and be romantically attractive to someone else.

I prefer the second option. Yep, there are other options than I described above, and maybe one that I haven’t seen is even better (there are a lot of us armchair disability philosophers, some of us are better thinkers than others – and I suspect I’m not at the top of this field). The second option still gives us the possibility of happiness. The first does not, it assumes that disability = misery, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially when tied to the idea that misery is what makes us entitled to the things we want in life. We are never allowed to be happy in a pity-based economy.

The pity-based economy (“we should help the less fortunate”) guarantees long-term support only to those who are continually miserable. As a corollary, support is dropped once they become happy. Maybe this explains why social programs are often structured the way they are – provide a person enough help to barely survive, but never enough to thrive. And, sadly, some in the disability community support this idea by promoting their own misery as a reason for their entitlement.

Am I denying that many disabled people are miserable? Of course not. Nor am I denying that, even with the best possible society, there will still be miserable people. We only have to look to neurotypical, non-disabled society to see this – misery can be in many places. But there isn’t a lot of future, in my eyes, for disabled people building a system where only misery gives us the things we need for existence. I’ll stick to arguments that are based on our human rights. These human rights exist even if we enjoy life.

They also open up the possibility of love. Love doesn’t require misery. Pity does. It’s time we ask for an end to the pity-based economy (not just with money, but with all things).

Autistic people face tremendous prejudice in the world. We might not be hired by an employer, simply because we disclose we are autistic. We are bullied in school. We have to fight for our right to eat, if we dare negotiate the world of social services (our other option is often starvation). We are subject to forced, involuntary confinement – and a world that understands that, “of course”, locking more people up in institutions is a good thing (and refuses to understand that there are other ways of meeting the needs of people and society).  We aren’t believed when we tell others about our problems. We are even sometimes murdered, simply for the crime of being different.

So, I don’t mean to dismiss these things – they are real examples of prejudice in the world, and these are some of the main things we must fight against. Any reader of this blog knows I talk about them all the time.

But we also need to be careful. Sometimes an autistic doesn’t get something they want not because of prejudice towards autistics (or disabled people) but for another reason. Sure, it still might not be a good reason, but that doesn’t make it prejudice automatically, either.

I’ll give some hypothetical examples, based on things I’ve seen in real life.

We’ll call a man Mr. Aspie. Mr. Aspie is 24 years old, and just recently received a degree in Computer Science from the university. He did well in his academic studies, and participated in a couple open source software projects over the internet, adding useful blocks of code to the projects. Now, having graduated, he is looking for a job, and applies where I work, for a programmer position. The position asks for several years of work experience.

Chances are, I wouldn’t consider Mr. Aspie – he probably doesn’t have the experience I’m looking for in this position.  Sure, he has some volunteer, open-source experience, and I value that greatly.  But at the end of the day, I am probably looking for corporate experience.  Is that good or bad?  Well, it could be either.  But the reality is that when I don’t hire him, it isn’t that he is an autistic.  I wouldn’t have hired a neurotypical with identical experience, either.  It has nothing to do with his social skills, his eye contact, or his perseverations.  It’s not a sensory issue.  In fact, it’s nothing to do with anything related to autism – it is simply that his resume doesn’t include the things I’m wanting on it.

Yet, I can see frustration and anger when Mr. Aspie finds he didn’t receive the position.  In fact, many people – neurotypical and autistic – are upset when they don’t get a job.  But having a protected disability doesn’t guarantee employment anymore than being neurotypical does.  And there just may be reasons other than prjeudice for my choice.

The problem is that autistic people face prejudice in many, many areas of their lives.  Like others that experience tons of prejudice, we begin to assume that outcomes we don’t like are always a result of the prejudices we fight all too often.  95% of the time prejudice is the cause, so we start assuming that “almost always” and “always” are the same thing – so we treat 100% of bad outcomes as if they are caused by prejudice.

Unfortunately, that 5% of the time is a different cause.  And when we assume it is prejudice, and respond as if it is prejudice, we harm ourselves the other 95% of the time.  We turn people who held no prejudice against us into people who are now seen by us as the enemy – and that causes them to have at least some sympathy for the other people we claim are prejudiced against us, the ones that truly are. We lose the 5% (and many others) as allies when we wrongly accuse people of prejudice.

We need to tred softly in determining the motivations for other people’s behavior so long as another possibility exists, and also recognize that there are often motivations that we may not have even considered as a possibility.  Yes, much, even most, of the time it may actually be prejudice.  But before we label it as such, we should be sure. We can’t afford to lose the battle against true prejudice.

At work, there is a sign that says something along the lines of:

“If the worst thing a man can be called is a woman, what does that say about society’s attitude towards women?”

The sign makes a good point. However, there’s an equivalent happening in our very own community – the worst thing you can call an autistic, apparently, is retarded.

My girlfriend pointed this out to me initially – she noticed that in much of the criticism of remarks made by a TV show character, a character who called autistic people “retards”, the focus wasn’t on the offensive nature of the term “retards” to anyone (including people labeled as mentally retarded), but rather that we weren’t mentally retarded.

It seemed to her (and me) vitally important for many people to immediately and violently distance themselves from mental retardation. Sure, many autistic people don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for mental retardation, and there is an error in facts. But the reaction by many seems to be more anger than simple miscatagorization would typically explain.

I’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing in the last few days – a lot of prejudice from autistic people towards people with other disabilities. I’ve seen a lot of statements about other people’s quality of life (hint: everyone is different, and what is horrible quality of life for one person might be a very joyous experience for another, and neither person is necessarily wrong with their views). I’ve seen a lot about how superior autistic people are to people with other disabilities. I’ve even seen some defend very prejudiced views by appealing to how “obvious” and “common sense” their views are (a common tactic used by racial hate groups, by the way).

We probably should learn to be more accepting of diversity, not less accepting. It just might benefit ourselves, as you never know when you might gain an ally.

A friend recently discovered he was disabled, and likely was going to need to use a wheelchair sometime in the future.

Now, he’s a good guy and understands disability rights. It’d be hard for us to be friends otherwise.

What, then, would be his reason for telling me that for him it’s better to struggle and continue to walk, even putting his life on the line to walk (the risk of falling is exceptionally high for this man), rather than use a wheelchair?

I talked with him a bit, and he’s rethought his beliefs. I had asked why it was more nobel for him to walk, to struggle against the chair, but he didn’t think that “nobility” requirement existed for other disabled people. I asked why he thought it was negative to be in a wheelchair for himself, but not for other people? I asked whether those inonnsistent thoughts might imply something

Now certainly I’m not advocating that people who truly don’t need a wheelchair go run out and buy one. What I am saying is that “nobility” and “showing that you are struggling and not giving in” are pretty lousy reasons to not use one, and in fact hurt people who could struggle and somewhat walk, but, like he will in the future, legitimately benefit from using a wheelchair. This type of noble struggle reinforces the idea that it’s “giving in” to use a chair – a very ugly societal prejudice.

Sure, there are plenty of reasons to want to walk. I told him so. First, true personal preference is a good reason to walk. Not to struggle or fight or show nobility, but simply because you ENJOY walking. Of course this expression can’t really exist in a society that doesn’t allow the other choice – and we don’t yet. But in a hypothetical society, it could be a good reason. Another good reason is that there are things that cannot be done in a wheelchair right now – of course many of those things can be done in a chair, but either barriers exist to prevent them from being done or society lacks the creativity to see how the could be done in a wheelchair. But regardless, wanting to do something that cannot be done in a chair is a good reason to want to walk instead, at least in my mind. But it’s not good for society to have this need for false choices when walking isn’t an intrinsic requirement to the activity but rather just the “natural” way society views the activity.

I see the same thing in autistic culture. First, there’s the reluctance to admit we’re disabled. It’s more noble, apparently, to overcome this, to show how we don’t need “special” help. Of course that says something about our opinion of others who do have a right to such “help”, but we tend to conveniently ignore that. After all, we claim it to be “personal choice.”

There’s the reluctance to receive help that we need. We can either get a job without any sort of “disability” accommodation or not, and if not, then we must not be qualified nor do we have the right to it. Of course when a person decides this for themselves, they are saying something about those who have the exact same traits and characteristics, but believe they do need the accommodation – and are able to work as a result of it.

We need to be very careful about how we see these “gray area” accommodations, especially when we are praising our “noble” struggle against them.

When it comes to inclusion, there seems to be a very common excuse to get out of actually being inclusive: you don’t need to be inclusive when it comes to things that are “privileges”, just things that are “rights”.

So, for instance, a school needs to be inclusive…well, inclusive for basic education anyhow. But often they don’t see the need for inclusion in advanced academic programs, specialized vocational programs, sports, or other areas. Nobody has the “right” to play basketball, after all – or at least that seems to be what is communicated.

The ethical basis of inclusion, however, isn’t dependent upon whether some activity is a basic “right” or a “privilege”. Inclusion is for all activities (and all organizations, even ones that see themselves as providing something other than a “right”). No, I’m not saying that someone who lacks basketball talent should be allowed to play varsity high school basketball – of course not. But someone that has talent should be able to. Even if accommodation is needed.

We need to be speaking out when we hear this excuse. It’s often said as, “Nobody has the right to XYZ.” And it may even be a true statement, but that has nothing to do with whether or not accommodation and inclusion are appropriate. Barriers need to be removed, even when society has had them so long as to think they are the natural order of things, and that nothing else is “natural”. While nobody may have a right to some activity, service, etc, everyone has the right to a level playing field. For those of us with disabilities, that’s all we ask: the right to a life that includes not only “rights” but also the “privileges” that we earn.