autism | Cracked Mirror in Shalott

Autistic, Allistic, Neurodiverse, and Neurotypical: Say what?

April 12, 2013 at 3:10 am (terminology) (allistic, autism, autism community, autistic, Autistic Culture, disability, neurodiverse, neurodiversity, neurotypical)

Coming into the neurodiversity movement, there are some terms that a new person might not be familiar with. I’ve been seeing a lot of questions about some of them, and some misunderstandings about them as well, so it is perhaps time for writing something on these terms.

If you are reading this blog, I’m assuming that you know what Autistic means in a general way. Some of you might still hold some misconceptions about autistic life, but I believe that to be a part of the learning process. You are reading Autistic voices either here or on the blogs of other Autistics, hopefully learning from it, and that is what matters.

You’ll notice that I use “autistic” rather than “person with autism” throughout. This is intentional. The basic idea is that my being is autistic- the patterns my brain form thoughts in, the essentials of the way I perceive and learn from the world are autistic. Autisticness is, for me and many others, an essential part of what makes me, me. Saying I am “with” autism denies this reality.

There are many brilliant writers who have addressed Autistic vs person first language in more depth. Jim Sinclair, one of the Autistic community’s elders, wrote a piece in 1999 on the issue which you can read on Cafe Mom. Many others have echoed and expanded upon Jim’s thoughts since then. Lydia over at Autistic Hoya has written a number of posts on identity first language vs person first, including “The Significance of Semantics: Person-First Language: Why It Matters” which ends with a list of links to other writers on the issue.

Some people’s constructions of how they phrase their identity are very personal, others political, and a good number both. I have multiple disabilities, and have a mixture of phrasing for myself. My own preferred construction is “Autistic with anxiety/chronic pain/etc.” When I expand that beyond ability it gets more complex, but I will leave it at this because eventually listing every part of my identity, regardless of relevance, becomes a metaphorical rabbit’s hole.

Allistic, on the other hand, means “non-autistic.” (Some people use “neurotypical” this way, but I”ll get to why I disagree with that usage in a moment.) That is all it means. It doesn’t mean someone is intrinsically better or worse, and it doesn’t indicate ally-hood or opponent-hood. It just means that someone is not autistic.

Allistic is a term that members of the autistic community came up with. While the earliest mention I can find (Zefram, Fysh.org, 2003) is constructed to work in a parody, the word construction makes a lot of sense. So much so, in fact, that Zefram’s work isn’t known to many community members now using the term. In Zefram’s postscript, it is explained that the construction is based on the way that the word “autistic” is constructed:

The word “allism”, invented for this article, is intended to precisely complement “autism”.
It is based on the Greek word “allos”, meaning ”other”, just as “autos” (in “autism”) means
“self”. [...]

This explanation of “allistic”‘s construction continues to be in use. As some might note, the relative constructions of “autistic” and “allistic” are not dissimilar to the relationship between the words “transgender” and “cisgender.” Even if the alternative was developed to suit the needs of politically charged parody, allistic is linguistically a more accurate term than some of the alternatives.

Neurotypical is often used interchangeable with allistic, but I would argue that it isn’t actually interchangeable. Neurotypical is short for “neurologically typical”- within the typical range for human neurology. Obviously it wouldn’t make sense to say that someone with definitively atypical neurology was neurologically typical just because their atypicality wasn’t that they autistic. Indeed, the Neurotypical/neurodiverse terminology has been adopted by certain segments of the Mental Health consumers/survivors communities for this very reason.

On-going usage aside, from what I recall the initial usage was one that is synonymous with the current “allistic.” However, between the acceptance of autistic cousins (those who aren’t autistic but who have similarities, including those with ADHD) and the penetration of the term beyond the initial communities it swiftly became used more diversely. Eventually, the more diverse (and in my mind accurate) usage meant that a more accurate term for non-autistic was needed. (Which brings us back to Allistic!)

Neurodiverse can have two meanings depending on what it is talking about. When referring to individuals, it simply means that the individual(s) in question have neurologies that are neurologically atypical. AKA, that they aren’t neurotypical. Generally speaking this usage is not used to just talk about Autistics, but is inclusive of other people whose neurology is atypical.

When discussing a population sample, though, it can mean that the neurologies represented are diverse. In this usage, the people in question include more than one type of neurology, and may even include members with individually typical neurology in some instances. This is the less common of the two usages that I’ve seen, though.

I hope that this was useful. For those interested in more information about the origins of certain aspects of autistic culture, I recommend you read Jim Sinclair’s History of ANI, which documents the early days of the autistic culture movement through the establishment of Autreat.

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Personal note: I’ve been a bit distracted so far this month and have had issues coming up with something to write for here- while at the same time, preparing for putting things out elsewhere later this month. That I haven’t done much writing here so far this April hasn’t sat well with me, so I figured it was time to do another terminology type post. This isn’t the best post I’ve written, but it is what I have for you today.

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It Goes All Ways

December 29, 2012 at 7:34 pm (ableism, cross disability, Developmental Disability, Disability, doctors, Family, Health, Mental Health, sexuality) (ableism, anxiety, autism, autistic, children, developmental disability, disability, Disability Justice, disability pride, inside, interalization, neurodiversity, oppression, parenting, reproductive justice, Social Justice)

Content: ableism, internalized ableism, mention of hospitalization and depression, mention of denials of reproductive justice to people with disabilities.

When I was 20, I did not love myself.

I was tired. I had been in and out of hospitals, been under the care of providers hopeful that a pill would fix my brain. I had been told repeatedly that there was something “wrong” with me. That there were somethings it wasn’t “right” for me to do.

I had moved back home, having had my stint trying to be what I thought an “adult” was fail. A lot of my plans had failed: I’d been so unsuccessful at maintaining a home that I became deathly ill; I hadn’t sought out the support I needed at college, and had to drop for lack of funds; and I couldn’t get a job. I saw myself as incapable enough that I wouldn’t be able to kill myself, and went to the hospital again. Case management was better this time than they had been in the past. They were involved, and we worked on a self care plan.

“What about having kids some day?”

I told her I didn’t think so. I feared. I feared that I’d be incapable as some people assume about people like me. I feared that I’d be stuck in a cycle of hospitalizations, and that having a kid would mean they would lose their mother every two years. I feared that I wouldn’t know how to get support— I certainly didn’t know then what my needs were well enough to articulate them. I didn’t even have a strong enough concept of disability to think of it in terms of supports. I just feared, and I hated myself, and I pushed both of those feelings away by ruling out the possibility. I told her no, and refused to engage in that discussion.

People like me aren’t just told these things. Some of us, like the poor and People of Color, are or were forcefully or coercively sterilized in procedures we didn’t want to consent to. Some of us were denied even the knowledge that we had something to consent to. Some of us are coerced with them, denied a valid choice. We are lied to about our health, about our ability. We have our lives reduced to a gene, to things not to want our kids to inherit. We are told that having or keeping our own kids is by definition abuse. We are even sometimes ordered to go directly against our choices, or threatened with those orders. Our attempts to speak back are often co-opted by groups we may or (as in my case) may not believe in. The idea that we might even be sexually active in a way that might lead to us being parents is even seen as remote.

To be clear: I know plenty of people who have chosen not to have kids. They made a choice to be child free, of their own free will. It’s fine if they stick to it, and it’s fine if they don’t.

I don’t consider my choices when I was 20 about kids to have been of my own free will. My responses were societally coerced. I had so much self hate, self doubt, and fear that I had internalized that I didn’t feel like I even had a realistic choice. I thought that the choices open to me were to abort or put a child up for adoption. I had been told for so long that someone like me would by default be a bad parent, or an incapable one. So I felt like I had to reject the very idea of having kids when it was offered as a part of my future.

Around this time, I became more active in disability rights work. I’d been doing advocacy since I was very young, but hadn’t connected with the larger disability rights movement. I started writing and believing in disability rights, coming to identify as a person with disabilities rather than hiding them where possible. I even, at one point, had a friendship end because the other person kept arguing that people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities who need supports shouldn’t be having kids. I believed that People with Disabilities had these rights.

I just didn’t believe in them for myself. I had spent too long in choices dictated by fear and internalized ableism, and uprooting that is a long process that never seems to be over.

About 5 years ago, my younger sister found out she was pregnant. She was 16, and it wasn’t intentional. She was presented with her options— I know, as I was one of the people who went over them with her— and she chose to carry and keep her child. I won’t go into too many details about her pregnancy other than to note that yes, the hormones that come with pregnancy interacted with her disability (she has Traumatic Brain Injury). But she made it through, and the actual birth was relatively easy. My niece was born, and was and is gorgeous.

My sister has had the support of our parents and other family members in the 4 years, almost 3 months since my niece was born. I watched (and helped be a part of) the supports that she needs to be a successful parent. During this time, I became less and less afraid to ask for supports and accommodation, and slowly gaining the words to communicate and to define what my needs were. I also was becoming aware of the “wants” that I had been avoiding thinking about because they didn’t seem reasonable.

I realized that I would like, someday, to raise a child. I began to think about what I would need to have in place to be the sort of parent that I want to be.

There are some problems, though, that I’m more worried about than others. I have some reproductive health issues that sometimes, but not always, result in infertility. It is treated through a combination of medications that includes Hormonal Birth Control. The reason, in fact, that I’m not currently passed out in my shower or vomiting in pain due to this condition is because of those pills. It raises questions, both about how I’d be able to handle/treat my health conditions when trying to have a child, and if I’d be able to birth the child my self. I’d like to, but if I’m not there are other issues involved.

Fertility treatments can be harder to get when you are disabled. While it is against the law for a healthcare provider to reject someone on the basis of disability, this type of provider can reject someone for personal reasons. The Office of Technology Assessment of Congress did a survey of artificial insemination providers, which is one of several options in infertility treatment. They found that a large percentage screen for psychological, developmental, and chronic health issues when doing tests to decide on treatment recommendations. For example, 79% screen against hypothetical patients with serious genetic disorders. Another study found high rates of doctors deciding against treatment for or rejecting hypothetical patients with various disabilities, including past suicide attempts (around 40% answered likely to turn this group away) and bipolar disorder (34%). Adoption, too, is more difficult.

And this is just in the seeking to have children portion of things. Even if my health issues have not impacted my ability to have children, biases against parents with disabilities result in higher inappropriate removal rates, unfounded reports, and evaluations that are not built to accommodate the adaptations that a parent with disabilities may have established. The Family Law system is simply not designed in a way that accommodates people with disabilities. (Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and Their Children from the NCD has several chapters on these issues.)

I continue to think about supports, as well as the sort of environment I’d want to raise children in. I know that I’d need a partner dedicated to the family we would build. I’m good with kids, even babies, but I do need times where I have breaks to restore my stress, anxiety, and frustration levels. An involved partner would help with this. I might need alarms and reminders, but these are things that are more an more on the market for any parent. I personally want to raise my child in a Jewish home, with a Jewish co-parent. And, of course, for our family to be one that is highly pro-disability rights.

I want to have children. I want to raise children. Even though I’m frightened. Even though people will challenge if it’s a right I, and people like me, should have. Even if it’s not going to happen for a while. Even though it will mean needing different supports than I need right now. It doesn’t negate the fact that I’m pro-choice any more than it would for any other person wanting to become a parent. To me, it is about choice— about choosing the option that is right for me, myself, rather than having my choices about my body and my life made by someone else.

This is a choice that I’m wanting to make and someday follow through on— and finally, it’s of my own free will.

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I Was One of the Scary Kids

December 17, 2012 at 7:02 pm (ableism, Autism, coming out autistic, cross disability, Developmental Disability, Disability, disability law, Ethics, Healthcare Reform, Mental Health, news, reflection, statistics, Stigma, Trauma) (ableism, Abuse, adam lanza, asd, asperger's, autism, autism community, autistic, developmental disability, disability, Disability Justice, interalization, mental-health, mother, neurodiversity, oppression, outside, performativity, safety, sandyhook, scary child, scary kid, socialization, violence, visibility)

Content note: ableism, stigmatization of Autistics and other PWDs, the Sandy Hook shooting

I didn’t want to write about the shootings at all. I knew a number of people (who I’ll link to throughout this post) and organizations would be posting and writing, working to counter the inevitable stigma fail that would happen. I even was keeping to commenting on the links of people I care about, people who I know and who I want to have these sorts of discussions with. Then, it happened. I’ll leave the critiques of the post gawker promoted to others, but I feel obligated to make a comment about some of the assumptions it is based on and promotes.

That comment starts with a declaration: I was one of those scary kids.

It’s not some great proud thing to say. It’s a truth, a truth that when I reveal it makes people behave differently. Admitting that you were a “scary kid” means that people heighten their bar of behavior for you even more than a simple disability disclosure does. It makes even normal responses to threatening situations take on a sinister light to others. Telling someone to back off goes from angry to a threat. Pushing away someone who feels entitled to your body becomes violence rather than defense from it.

It makes people suspicious. It makes people question your ability to accurately report crime, abuse, or health concerns. When you are a former scary kid and let people know, they don’t want to hire you in meaningful positions — or sometimes at all — they don’t want you living in their buildings, and they don’t want you learning at their schools. Your opportunities are curtailed. You are told all the things you will never do.

All of these are true of having certain disabilities to begin with, but when you add in a confession of having been one of those scary kids it is heightened.

I was a scary kid. It makes me sad, but only because I actually don’t like scaring people, though I often can’t tell.

Before the age of 14, I was the sort of child that service providers recommend parents to place in a residential setting — that is, juvenile mental health institutions. Parents were — and are sometimes still — encouraged to relinquish them to the state, who would willingly pay for this kind of care. My mother fought it, and demanded community based services and the training my providers needed to provide it. But she was pressured the entire time, and when I was reviewing her records last year I found boxes of pamphlets and packets that she was given to encourage my placement in those settings.

I also found her private journals about our lives at that time. These were journals she might only ever show excerpts from to a therapist, but were meant to be private accounts. It was scary for her. I cried when I read them, because it was horrible to realize that I had made my mother feel so horrible and hadn’t known. I had not realized that anyone would have interpreted my behavior in a truly scary way, that they wouldn’t see the same causes that I was reacting to. But she was terrified in those pages — the ones she never meant for anyone but herself to read. Even in her advocacy work, she wouldn’t say that certain events were from my life, just that they had happened to “a young person” she knows. Even the things that she was terrified about.

In the pages of that private journal, she talks about the times I would charge at or by her. To me, I was desperately trying to escape a scary situation for me. To her, it was a charging at. I would throw things, and at the time didn’t have the impulse control to find soft things in a safe space. I never aimed at people, but to her I just had really bad aim. I screamed, and I said things that made little sense — I was scared and angry and frustrated that I couldn’t articulate it. These were seen as threats. When I was put in a scary situation, I would flail and push to try to get out of it — and these were seen as violence. When she left on trips, I was taken with her because she was worried what would happen if I was left with a babysitter.

Most of the episodes she chronicled for her private memory keeping were ones that she never saw the cause for. So many start with, “I came home from work, and Savannah…” It took me until into my twenties to be able to articulate what happened before — that her second husband had provoked responses and behaviors. How he would tell me I was fat, lazy, and that I would never be competent. How he would threaten me with sending me away. How he did any one of a number of things that would set off my behaviors. There’s no coincidence that the behaviors dramatically decreased a year after he left- at 14, I even was off medication.

Not all the behaviors were triggered by him — some of them were reactions that I didn’t know how to handle internally. Some of them were because of how my internal state from incorrect prescriptions made things harder to deal with. Some of them were from being unable to handle fear, frustration, and change internally. Change was a big trigger for me, and set off the start of my fear responses. I just didn’t have the skills to handle those states. I would go on to develop them, but I didn’t have them yet.

For me, those times were scary because of the outside world, because of confusion at people’s responses, and because of people using my being a “scary kid” as a weapon. To her, I was scary and she didn’t know and couldn’t predict fully why. She understands it now — time, observation of me growing up and learning, my finally being able to properly articulate what was happening for me in those times.

My mother doesn’t regret keeping it private, between her and her private journal or her therapist. Today she was at a consumer and family advisory for our behavioral health managed care organization (BHMCO). They read that gawker article, and my mother was appalled. She has scary stories about me, but the idea of sharing them in a way that associated them publicly with me was a horrifying violation of privacy and good sense to her. She was struck by the negativity of the piece, of the author. And she noticed how it relies on and perpetuates stigma, and jumps to conclusions.

Having been one of those scary kids is scary.

It’s not scary in and of itself. What made it scary to have been one is what people assume based on it — and what they assume when you don’t disclose.

I’ve had people try to justify things from the JRC’s electric shocks to denying someone an integrated learning environment, to defend seclusion/restraint to “therapy” induced injuries and even deaths using my fellow former scary kids as their reasons. The kids with “significant disabilities.” The ways that other people saw my behaviors — things I didn’t know at the time- are the same things I hear from people trying to justify violence and isolation towards kids and adults with disabilities.

They also project forward to futures that are inaccurate, contributing to the problems that us scary kids face when we grow up. They say we will become criminals, or will commit violent crime, that we will be a danger to society. That we are “sleeper agents” of mass murder. They say that of course people who have had such and such a diagnosis, especially when you are also a scary kid, will do certain things or will never do other things. That we couldn’t successfully ever live on our own, that we’ll never graduate, never hold a job for long, will never have successful, healthy relationships. That we are doomed. And while not all scary kids have mental health disabilities (and not all kids with MHDs are scary kids), those who have developmental disorders with the right behaviors are lumped in.

When I- and others who are autistic, have Mental Health Disabilities, or both — talk back with truth, we are denied. When we talk about how having xyz diagnosis doesn’t mean we will do stuff, when we point out that we aren’t mass murderers, we are shut down. When we talk about how yes, mental health reform is important but that it shouldn’t come out of stigma, coercion and false equivalence, we are told that we are calling other scary kids lost causes. When we point out that we don’t have enough information, we are dismissed. When we disclose, we are called too close to the issue. Even when our mothers join us.

In reality, only 5% — or 1 in 20 — of those in jail for violent offenses entered jail with a diagnosable condition. The other 95% did not present as diagnosable on entry. Most of those with diagnosable conditions are there on non-violent and drug offenses, including a number of which are a symptom of a lack of supports rather than their conditions themselves. Some estimates place the rate of Mental Illness at 50% of the inmate population, and yet only a very small percentage are there for violent crimes.

In reality, these impressions of us make us targets of crimes. People with “Serious Mental Illnesses” are more than twice as likely to be a victim of a violent crime. We are targeted for sexual assault, particularly if we are or are seen as women. We are likely to feel stuck in abusive relationships, or to have people use our diagnostic status as justification for abuse. And that is just the violent crimes — we are astronomically more likely to be victims of personal theft, and 4 times more likely to be victims of property theft.

In reality, the stigma and stereotypes that people are promoting mean discrimination in employment, in housing, even in healthcare and courts. It means having people turning their backs on friendships and relationships when they find out, even if you are relatively stable now, even if you have the supports that make it irrelevant. It means people leaving if you have a setback that they would stand by someone without your diagnostic history for.

It is facing stigma, or hiding from it, sometimes at great cost. I certainly made a lot of poor choices based on trying to hide having been a scary kid, even when I wasn’t hiding having Mental Health Disabilities.

Being a Scary Kid isn’t certain doom.

They told my mother and I that I would never graduate high school and I’d never get into college. Some speculated I’d need to live in a group home or a more intense, and that I’d never live on my own. Some thought I’d get sucked into crime based on my psych history alone. Some said I’d off myself before I turned 18, 21, or 25.

I graduated high school — my siblings, the non-scary kids, dropped out and either have or are working on their GEDs. I even aced a number of classes, and other than my last semester (which was sucked up in depression) was pretty much tops. I’ve had some unsuccessful attempts to live on my own in the past, but those had to do with daily living skills more than being scary. Right now I’m living relatively successfully on my own, even if it did follow a period of homelessness. I did get into college easily, even if I had to drop out for a mix of financial and ADL deficit reasons. I’ve never been in jail.

I celebrated my 25th birthday in August. I am alive, and though my health isn’t the best I am surviving and working towards my own personal wellness.

I have little in common with the things they assumed. My scary is now just the normal stigma that any of us, autistic, with mental health disabilities, or both, face. I do struggle, but not in the ways that were assumed when I was a scary kid.

Being a scary kid is just that — having behaviors that scare people when you are a kid. It doesn’t mean you have a particular diagnosis or neurotype. It isn’t predictive of being a mass murderer or anything else- heck, a lot of the people who are mass murderers, diagnosed with something or not, didn’t reach the heights of being “scary kids” when they were younger. Not scary the way I was, or others were.

When I point out to try not to link scary kids to criminal violence, particularly of the mass murder sort, I’m not saying that services and supports aren’t needed. I’m saying that they would be even if we never had a massive violent event. I’m saying none of us are doomed, if only we combat stigma and prejudice at every chance, be it ableism, racism, or classism that we are talking about.

When I tell you no, I mean that none of us are lost causes.

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News and Links!

April 15, 2012 at 10:13 am (news) (ableism, asd, autism, decolonize disability, disability, visibility)

I know I shouldn’t be doing an “update” post, but I’ve had to delay a lot of the posts I’ve been planning. In the mean time links and things, as well as some plans on what to look for, are ready and I’m pretty excited about them! First I’ll talk about some of the plans I have for the next few weeks, then the things I’ve done recently around the net, and finally some of the things I’m excited about that aren’t mine. Ready? Fantastic! Allons-y and Geronimo!

Look for a post about the Allied Media Conference, as well as on how access to various types of media has helped improve my life here on monday or so. I’m co-coordinating the Disability practice space- creating collective access- this year, and I’m really excited about it. (If you want to blog/write/make videos/make art about how media has improved your access, let me know!)

I’m also working on a post about the issue of ableism and classism combining in the practice of telling low income families to call the police when their kid has a meltdown instead of services. I’ll talk about an IEP meeting I had, and I’l talk about how the added factor of racism resulted in the unnecessary death of Stephon Watts.

Elsewhere on the web. . .

My interview with The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism went up! Hurrah! I recorded a video of me reading it which is captioned and included on their post as well.

If you haven’t yet, please go check out the Disability Right Now blog. I’m a staff writer as well as the PR head. We are wrapping up a blog event about George Hodgins, Euthanasia, and Eugenics this week. Next week, I have a post on Disability History 101: the origin of institutions going up for my post for round 1. Also, I worked with the EiC to do an interview about it for ASAN which will be in their April newsletter! Whoo!

Not Quite Web Stuff:

This week I’ll be going to Chicago to co-facilitate for the Illinois state team at an Allies in Self Advocacy Summit. It’s exciting, of course, though at this point I will basically be at the hotel and the airport.

I’m going to be going to a couple of Rallies in Harrisburg, PA this spring. The first one is on Women’s Rights, and Amy Caraballo is one of the organizers. It’s April 28th, and it’s complicated- but I think it will be important to be a PwD at this event.

The Other is May 2nd about the cuts to services for PwD that our current administration here in PA have been pushing. The PA Waiting List Campaign is heavily involved, as is Vision for Equality. I hope to see lots of people there! I’m going under the auspices of SAU1, but I’d love to see some ASAN representation or even NYLN representation!

It’s pretty scary stuff. So far: Disability Rights Network of PA and a whole slew of disability orgs here in PA have filed a suit against the Corbett Administration; Issues with Access to areas of the Capitol for PwD; and some fairly rude treatment of Protesters. (Rendell’s administration regularly sent someone to meet with Protesters with disabilities. Corbett’s ignores us or tries to create barriers to our exercising free speech.)

I personally feel sick over our current governor here in PA’s tenure. But then, I didn’t vote for him. I voted for the other guy. If you are in PA (or anywhere in the USA actually) please register to vote and read up on the issues. Help other people who might have barriers to getting in to vote- especially PwD- get registered and in to the voting booth or registered early enough for absentee ballot or alternative ballot. Last year I almost couldn’t vote because my absentee ballot came late- thankfully the plans that would have taken me out of town were cancelled.

Too often, PwD don’t vote because of a lack of support or people ignoring that we might want to. In the current political climate, it’s especially important that our voices are heard and votes count. You can find out more about getting out the disabled vote from the Disability Voting Coalition of PA.

Other People’s stuff:

Have you seen ASAN’s new website and logo? So pretty! Also, the new website has a lot more features, including membership and a way to sign up for volunteering. Exciting!

Babble.com is doing a Top 30 Autism Blog ranking, and the voting is now! A number of my friends are on the list and are blogs I’d recommend reading. (Along side some I’d have you avoid, but that’s your business.) Good Luck to Lydia, Julia, E, Stimey, “Autismum“, and Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism!

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Stimming in Public (and Breaking All the Rules)

April 4, 2012 at 10:03 am (art, protests) (autism, autism acceptance, autistic, Autistic Culture, autistic pride, breaking all the rules, disability, neurodiversity, outside, safety, stimming, stimming in public, washington DC)

I recently put together a video of me Stimming in Public. Regardless of the reception (which has been great!), it has always been intended as an ongoing project for this year.

If you have been following me on facebook, you might have already seen the video I recently put out. In it, I document myself stimming in public spaces during my recent Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC trips, all set to “America” by Orphan Songs. (I really liked the song, and feel so glad that the artist had it up for Attribution and Share Alike use via Creative Commons.)

Some of it was organic- I was there, and happened to think of pulling out the camera on the train, at baggage claim at BWI, and at the Baltimore Waterfront. Others were planned in that I went there with the intent of shooting some video. I spent a long sunny day at capitol hill filming at the Supreme Court, the Capitol building, Library of Congress, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education. It was both exhausting and satisfying, not just as an art effort but also as someone who was made to feel scared of the potential actions that could be done in the name of these places.

(There are captions at youtube of the song, even if they don’t make it in the embed.)

This, as I’ve mentioned, was never intended to be a one-shot thing for me. I mean, I’m going to be doing the stimming when I’m in public anyways, so I might as well film it in case it does something positive for someone else, right?

Therefore throughout the year 2012, I’m going to be putting together a video of me stimming in public for every major trip. I’ll try to get some interesting/meaningful locations in when I can, but most of it will just be what I have access to since almost all of my traveling is for advocacy events.

Between now and July1st, I know I’ll be going to Harrisburg, PA; Chicago, IL; Seattle, WA; Woodburn, OR; and Detroit, MI. Later in the year I’m hoping to get back to Washington, DC and to visit family in the area of New York, NY; Wallingford and Hartford, CT; Providence, RI; and similar locations. (I’m really hoping on the CT-RI trip to get a chance to film with some people in front of the JRC!)

If I get more things scheduled later in the year, I’ll be filming at those as well. It’s basically an every-chance-I-get thing for filming these. I mainly will be doing them on my own, though I hope as the year goes on to be able to have multiple people in the shots with me. Indeed, I’d love towards the end of the year to have a chance to film a bunch of people stimming together at once. I think it would be really. . . evocative, to end a series with a community together, when it started with me all by myself. But that’s just a thought, not a plan.

That is the project summary.

I don’t want to act like this is an idea that is exclusively mine. First of all, I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of it or do something like it. Secondly, all I’m doing is filming myself living life as myself, something I hope to have be a reality for all Autistics. It’s scary, but someday it won’t be. Someday I hope to meet young Autistics who were never afraid to stim in front of Authority, who never had to deal with the ableism it can be met with. Autistics who won’t have to make the choice between safety inside of their heads vs safety from people’s bigotry outside of it.

That being said, if you decide to do something similar, let me know! I’d love to see members of our community going out there and doing this if they feel so inspired. I feel like that would be something amazing to see.

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Finding a Positive Experience- or, New Psychiatrist

March 14, 2012 at 12:00 pm (meds, personal) (anxiety, autism, buspar, meds, merck center, psychiatrist)

[Content: summary of improper/abusive medication practices on a minor, detailed descriptions of a Psychiatrist appointment.]

I had my first truly positive experience with a psychiatrist. I don’t know for sure that it’s him, the facility he works out of, or just that my needs and his techniques lined up. But I do know that I wanted to share what happened, especially in light of the number of horrible or even traumatic experiences I’ve had with others in the past.

When I was a kid, I was medicated and medicated badly. It seems like every med that came out, I got tried on, in a wide range of uses. Indeed, some of the things I was medicated for was caused by other medications. very rarely was my body allowed to detox from one medication before starting another. And every visit- once every 3 months- my medications would change again.

I have a long long list of things I will not ever allow that is written in my Mental Health Advanced Directive. Some of the things were given to me as a form of long term chemical restraint on the part of the doctors, particularly after my childhood in patient hospitalizations. Some were given to me based on appointments where the doctor fell asleep during the appointment, and then would write down notes that could only be explained by falling asleep and dreaming while my mother was talking. That is my mother’s belief of what happened, and she saw the notes. All I know is I sat in the appointments and watched her nap through my mother’s talking.

I was on so many medications that I cannot list my past meds completely. I can list a few. Sometimes I can even check boxes off a list, but even then I miss some. I know I gained 60 lbs in 3 months at age 12 from Depakote. (Even when I was Bulimic in High school, I never have been able to get below the weight I gained then.) I know that on Risperdal, I became violent seemingly out of no where. I know that on multiple occasions, Seroquel was used to increase compliance and ease of handling by staff- and the vast majority of the other young people seeking treatment at those places that prescribed it were on it as well. Prozac made me manic as an adult, and made my compulsive behaviors more difficult to control- and I was house bound at that point. The list is seemingly endless.

All of this in addition to the disrespectful and disregarding attitudes and actions on the part of the people prescribing. Don’t get me wrong, I had some okay-ish Psychiatrists once or twice. I even had two who *wanted* to be helpful to me. One of them advised taking me off of medications completely when I was 14, upon which time the behaviors my mother found most concerning either diminished or vanished.

(A side note: My mother, not being a Psychiatrist and living in a rural area, followed advice on the med side of things. Over time her records and increasing advocacy skills lead to my getting to the doctor I had when I was 14. Those same skills also helped her teach me advocacy skills.)

But the vast majority of my psychiatrists were not respectful and wouldn’t listen to my internal experiences and motivations for the behaviors they were trying to medicate away. I don’t remember having someone talk through their process, take my input seriously, or give me options that were tenable. I definitely don’t remember a Psychiatrist who was comfortable with leaving behaviors I didn’t want or care to treat alone.

As a result of all of this, I have what I think is a pretty well earned fear around seeing psychiatrists. For several years, I’ve been having my general practitioner manage my medications. (I’ve been back on meds off and on since I turned 18.) However, my other supports indicated that seeing a psychiatrist was a good idea and Medical Assistance threatened to drop me if I didn’t try to find one.

We started looking for a Psychiatrist. I was looking specifically for someone with experience dealing with Autistic adults and anxiety. The nearest we could find with sufficient experience was the Merck Center in Pittsburgh. My Case Manager helped me and my mother do the pre-visit medical history and needs paperwork. At first I was concerned. A number of my behaviors that are not things I was looking to treat were on the list as check boxes, while other things I had no idea how frequent they were.

On February 17th, I had my appointment. I was scheduled with Dr. Hudak for that morning, and I took my mom with me. They had used my papers to figure out which of their doctors would be most appropriate to my personal needs. This alone is an improvement over many of the programs I’ve gone through where case load determines your doctor, not specialty.

I bring my mother to these appointments for a couple of reasons. She functions as support staff, where she helps navigate administrative issues, pick up on cues and behavioral aspects of people who are new to me, and helps out with remembering when and how things happened. But she’s also there because, should I become incapacitated, she will be the one needing to know what I want as far as treatment, accommodations, and other needs.

The waiting room was plain, and the unfamiliar check in process was a little nerve wracking for me. I was pretty oblivious to the people there, as my fears about the appointment made it hard to observe there. However, my mother says that she found everyone helpful- which seems familiar- and that when she was observing the other people there for services, no one seemed anxious. I don’t know how often you’ve had a chance to sit in a Psychiatric waiting room, but they are usually full of worried and anxious to be there people.

The doctor came out to get me, and got confirmation from me that I wanted my mother in the actual appointment with me. Then he lead us back to his office. I noticed a lot of books on OCD, Anxiety, and ASDs on his book shelf. That was comforting to me. My mom found his office to have the right balance of personal vs professional to make him seem like a real person.

He was definitely very interested in my internal experiences of my anxiety, and worked hard to understand how I was communicating that inner experience of it. He didn’t disregard or shoo away my internal experiences, which was a pleasant shock for me. I’ve had a lot of doctors- even medical ones- disregard my internal experiences to focus on external behaviors and evidences, and as a minor focus on other people’s reports on my behavior.

He addressed all of his questions to me, unless I then asked my mom to elaborate on a point that I couldn’t remember the details of or that I was having a hard time putting into words. He was very good from my perspective of understanding and negotiating that she was there as my support staff. My mother felt that he was good at asking her appropriate questions, and felt that he listened to me well.

What I appreciated- and what some people don’t like- was that he was excellent at talking through his process with me as he goes. This is one of the key access needs I have with any doctor, and I felt that he was very good at it. My mother’s impression of this aspect was that he was thorough and that his process reflected that he was actually listening to my input. It was the first access need I remember mentioning (other than explaining a stim toy) to him, and one that he seemed pleased to hear as it is the way he works. I understand some people don’t like this feature in a doctor, but it reassures me that I am being well informed as well as that the doctor is considering my remarks. It also makes me feel more confident in the outcomes of an appointment.

Something that I didn’t fixate on but that my mother has highlighted to me as I was working on this entry was that he was very direct about wanting to meet my needs. He asked about what there was he could do to make me feel more comfortable in his office, especially in light of my fear around Psychiatrists. He made sure he was aware of what accommodations I might need, as well as the role of my mother. He made sure to let us know that we should feel free to communicate needs in the future as well.

When it came time to make choices about medications, he talked about his thoughts on the issue, as well as how things would work with my other medications. When I made it clear that it is my anxiety, not so much the other things, that I am seeking his help with, I felt that he was very supportive. He gave me two medications to chose from. One had a greater chance of success, but might have side effects. The other has fewer side effects but some people don’t find that it works well enough.

Because of the history I have with horrible and unexpected side effects, I chose the second one, which is called Buspar. (It’s been okay so far, but this post is about the visit itself, not the medications.) He was very good at answering my questions about the medications. He also made sure to assure me that if we end up unsatisfied with the Buspar, the other medication is still an option.

When I asked him if it would effect my “twitchies” he told me that it might reduce any that are anxiety triggered, but only because the anxiety would be less frequent. Other wise, I shouldn’t expect to see any changes in the twitchies, which is a good thing because they (both tics and stims) are a part of me that I’m okay with. He was very accepting, I felt, of my wishes to keep my stims and their value as self soothing or self focusing/regulating strategies.

I had one of my stim toys, a mop slipper that is both green and a texture that I enjoy, with me the entire time, and he seemed to have no issues with it that were apparent to either myself or to my mother. She agrees with me that he respected that stims and to some extent tics are a part of myself that I am at peace with and embrace in myself.

After he made sure that all my questions and comments were answered, he let us out and had us schedule a follow up for late April.

Overall, it was one of the most positive experiences visiting a psychiatrist that I can remember.

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A Quick Update

March 8, 2012 at 4:16 pm (personal) (allies, asd, autism, autistic, developmental disablities, disability, housing, mental-health, mother, parents, personal, personal update, SAU1, self advocates united as 1)

It has been a while since my last post, and I have a lot of stressful stress happening. I do have plans for several entries this spring that I hope to get written, but I wanted to give a very quick update in the mean time. It’s my hope that I’ll manage to get a post out on each of these issues this spring.

First, a reminder: Loud Hands Project is still taking donations for 7 more days/until the end of march15th, 2012. The initial fundraising goal of $10, 000 to fund the anthology was met, but there are more benchmarks. If we can reach the next one, $15,000, in the next few days LHP will be able to do a documentary on Eugenics and Autism. That’s only about $1300 to meet that benchmark- and there are more benchmarks after that that you can read about on the website.

If you know me personally, you know that for the past year and roughly two months, I’ve not had a permanent residence. Thankfully, I’ve had family in my area who have alternated care of me. I stayed for several months at my grandmother’s last spring, stayed in a building owned by family that isn’t technically livable over the summer in a camping style, and since September have alternated between my sister’s and my mother’s. It’s very hard on me, and it is hard on my family. We’ve been trying, with the help of my Intensive Case Manager, to navigate the housing system, but with little luck. I’m hoping that I’ll have some resolution on this soon so that I can process some of it to share.

During the time that I stayed at the old house, I had an incident with sexual harassment that might be mentioned in another post. I thought at the time I was being targeted because of being poor, but my sister thinks that the fact that everyone in that little town is very aware of me being disabled was a factor. So I’m hoping to get a post on sexual harassment written. It would have been nice to have written it for International Women’s Day today, but I just couldn’t get it together.

I’ve gotten involved with a group of self advocates called Self Advocates United as 1. They asked me to join their board, and to become a trainer. I got a chance to visit a couple of state developmental centers to teach self advocacy skills for the people still living in the centers to use. It was a great experience. I loved being around other people with disabilities, and I learned a lot about audience participation and involvement from fellow board member and trainer, Larry Kubey. (Larry is also THE music man- he knows almost everything there is to know about pop music from the 60s on.)

I’m looking forward to an event in May where we will be gathering questions about moving into the community from the people from the centers who are looking to move in the next couple of years and addressing them to providers in the community. Hopefully, some of the myths and misconceptions people have about community living can be addressed, and help people feel more confident about their choice to move into the community. I hope to have something on community living this spring or even early summer to share with you all.

I went to a specialized psychiatrist in Pittsburgh, and had one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with this type of doctor. The facility specializes in people with developmental disabilities, and the particular doctor I saw had a lot of books on OCD, Anxiety Disorders, and Autism on his shelves. Because I’ve had so many horrible experiences, I found it remarkable- as did my mother- and so you should expect a post on this next. Depending on my anxiety levels, I might even get it done this week or next.

It’s my hope that you can use it in a couple of ways: 1) to know that not all psychiatrists are going to be horrible. 2) to have an idea of what might or might not work for you to look for in your search for a psychiatrist that will respect you. 3) To show your psychiatrist or care provider that they don’t have to be so horrible.

Of course, I’ll also be writing a post for Autism Acceptance Day‘s blog carnival this year as well. I’m not sure of the topic yet- and one of the above topics might end up being my post for it- but I do have plans for it. It would be great to see some new writers contributing this year, too, and I’m willing to provide some basic support where I can if you want to try.

The last thing I want to make sure I mention is a little post I am planning on doing for Mother’s Day. I’d love to hear from people about their mothers, or about mother figures’ experiences getting unconventional expressions of love from their families to either share or link to in my post. I’m going to be talking a bit about how even though many of the masculine figures in my life perpetuated some serious abuse- which I’ve discussed elsewhere- how my mother worked hard to support me.

I think that this is especially important, not just because I want to recognize my mother, but because my Autistics Speaking Day post was initially mentioned (and since amended!) in a round up as pointing out parents/allies as the problem, and that wasn’t my intent at all. I think many parents end up coming into the support role with this idea that their voices and experiences are centered. That they are “the voice” of their kids rather than the facilitator of their kid’s “voice.”

And that’s true no matter what level of communication your child has. You are there to facilitate their needs and interests being met. And the role of facilitator becomes more and more just facilitating as your child grows. And now I’m ranting, and I’m going to end now. Basically, I want to reaffirm my gladness for my own mother’s support and facilitation of my needs, and in the process celebrate similar mothers/maternal figures who have demonstrated excellent ally-ship.

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Quiet No More- The Loud Hands Project

January 15, 2012 at 8:45 am (ASAN, Autism, coming out autistic, Developmental Disability, Disability, The Loud Hands Project) (ASAN, asd, autism, autism community, autistic, Autistic Culture, developmental disability, disability, indiegogo, Loud Hands, neurodiversity, Quiet Hands, stimming, The Loud Hands Project, visibility)

“Remember, you weren’t the one / who made you ashamed, / but you are the one / who can make you proud.” - Laura Hershey, You Get Proud By Practicing

I think a lot of the people who read my blog are also people who have read Quiet Hands by Julia Bascom. (I actually already linked to it in my own Rocking (and Flapping) at a 1000 Revolutions a Minute.) If you haven’t yet, please go do so either now or after you’ve finished reading this post. Julia got a massive response, as Quiet Hands went viral. It became very obvious that it was describing an experience that a lot of us have either experienced or have observed, sometimes unaware of the emotional and communicative consequences.

One of the devastating effects of the phenomena that Quiet Hands describes is how it silences Autistic communication. For many of us- and particularly those of us with verbal communication difficulties- our hands are our primary communicative tool¹. We stim with our hands, we supplement our language with gestures and pantomime, we use languages like ASL with our hands, we type with our hands, and even utilize AAC devices with them. Things we do with our hands is how we connect with one another- even if that community building isn’t recognized by others. So when our hands are stilled, we are silenced and isolated.

What, with this context, does having “Loud Hands” mean? Obviously it would have to embody the opposite of- and possibly counter to- the silencing described above.

The Loud Hands Project (which is being run as a project of ASAN) demonstrates a pretty good idea of what it could mean to have Loud Hands. The project description defines Loud Hands as “autism acceptance, neurodiversity, Autistic pride, community, and culture, disability rights and resistance, and resilience.” Essentially, efforts that work counter to the silencing and discrediting that comes with a culture that denies Autistics the ability to communicate in ways that are natural to us.

The Loud Hands Project (LHP) is planning on being a transmedia project, spearheaded by Julia Bascom. The current focus is on putting together a written anthology that will serve basically as a foundation document. Submission guidelines/call for submissions for the written anthology went live on January 8th. They include a number of prompts on what it means to be Autistic and aspects of Autistic culture, but they welcome submissions that aren’t answering the prompts while still reflecting “questions about neurodiversity, Autistic pride and culture, disability rights and resistance, and resilience (known collectively as having loud hands.)”

From there, the plan is to focus on multiple mediums as a way of documenting and curating Autistic culture and community, particularly as related to the afore mentioned concept of what Loud Hands means. And I do mean curating- one of the stated goals is to collect and store some of the founding documents of the Autistic community.

Another major direction is looking to be video projects, starting with the trailer (more on that in a moment). I’ve noticed a lot of brain storming for future videos for the LHP media collection, but the actual non-written media submissions aren’t open yet. (Opening of those submissions is still to be determined.) They are welcoming your ideas/brainstorming for future non-written submissions though! Eventually I believe that they will join the trailer on the Loud Hands Project Youtube channel.

Fundraising efforts- LHP is using indiegogo- were launched December 26th with the video below. (You can read a visual transcription/description on tumblr or at the youtube page itself.)

In the first 24 hours, the indiegogo campaign raised over $3000- and over $6000 at the end of the first week. As of 9:30pm January 10th (when I’m composing this entry) it hit $7463 USD. Fundraising ends March 15th with a goal of $10000 USD. UPDATE: January 14th the $10000 goal was met. They are still collecting funds though- see the bottom of this post for more on this!

You can see the support levels, along with the number of people contributing at each level, at the LHP indiegogo page. Each support level has a different corresponding “reward” for your donation, ranging from a thank you email, to PDF pre-releases of the anthology, to signed hard copies donated to libraries in your name.

I personally feel that it is a much needed project, and am totally excited about it. As such, I’ve been trying to contribute in any way I can to this effort. I wrote the Visual Transcription mentioned above, as well as designing the Blog Badges (shown below) and writing most of the how to on using them.

The large blog badge, which I'm using in my own side bar; 170x300 pixels

A smaller Blog Badge; 170x193 pixels

I’m also (obviously) writing this blog post, and sharing it in my networks. Right now, LHP is on Twitter as @loud_hands and there’s a Loud Hands Project facebook page as well. (If you clicked through on my original link, you’ll notice that the Loud Hands Project is on tumblr as well.)

I think another interesting feature of the campaign is how various accessibility measures have been added.

The visual transcript for the trailer was requested before the campaign went live, which is kind of a big deal- while captions are becoming more popular, visual transcriptions are not as common. After all, they are time consuming to create- more so than image descriptions- and like image descriptions can be hard for people with visual processing issues to write. But they can be a big deal for visually based messages becoming accessible for the Blind, visually impaired individuals, and those with visual processing issues.

Additionally, there has been a recognition that language processing difficulties can be a barrier in sharing stuff like this. Two days after the campaign went live, scripts for sharing LHP‘s campaign went live.

This isn’t as uncommon to be accommodated, though outright recognition that it is an accommodation is, I think, less common. More often scripts get framed as “We recognize you are a Busy Professional Person™ who doesn’t always have time to handcraft sharing emails, so here’s an example you can use!” It has become something that, when present, isn’t seen as an accommodation, which would be great if it wasn’t for the resistance that those who do need this particular thing usually get when they have to ask for it. I think that in this context, the fact that the scripts are openly recognized as having an access function as well as being given in an overwhelmingly supportive manner in response to requests is significant.

And, of course, the blog badges have image descriptions and I’m going off to caption the lyrics to the song in the trailer via Universal Subtitles tonight. (Which means they’ll be up by the time this post goes live.)

I hope you’ll join me in supporting the Loud Hands Project. I hope you’ll link it, share it, tweet it, blog it, and post it. I hope, for those who have the money for even the lowest level of support ($10) , that you’ll donate. That you’ll encourage others to donate. And, once the fundraising campaign is over, that you’ll continue to support the projects of the Loud Hands Project.

I believe that we all should have Loud Hands, and that LHP is a great way to facilitate that. Not everyone is in a position where they can go and be safe stimming in public, or writing long blog posts, or have the supports to do speeches or attend protests or go to conferences like Autreat. But it is possible for some of us to do some of the little things- making a video or a painting, answering a mini-prompt, constructing things in our own natural languages that say, “I am here. I exist. I can be proud.” These are the core of what it means to have Loud Hands.

The big things are great. But sometimes it’s the little ones together that end up being the loudest.

¹ I recognize that some of us also have mobility difficulties that make using hands in particular not something that is doable. If you can think figuratively, hands is a stand in for all the other non-verbal techniques that people use to accomplish the things we are talking about. Our hands here are not just literally our hands, but our own means of communicating. The same goes for words like “voice” and “speaking”.

UPDATE (January 16th, 2012): On January 14th The Loud Hands Project met their $10000 USD goal. That’s right, in 19 days you- the supporters- met a goal that was planned to take 80 days. Great Job!

Seeing how much our community needs LHP, and with encouragement from indiegogo, LHP is going to continue fundraising through the original March 15th deadline with benchmark goals at $15,000, $20,000, and $25,000. You can read the details on the projects at the Loud Hands Project blog, but they include more videos, more documenting of our community, more supporting Autistics pursuing community, and the launch of the website and all of the resources that will bring.

It’s exciting- exciting because we need it, and exciting because it means that we won’t have to wait for the anthology to be a success before LHP will be able to start bringing more projects to us.

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On Creativity I: Word Usage

December 25, 2011 at 12:31 am (art, Autism, On Creativity, personal) (autism, creativity, language, language disabilities, language usage, LDs, Learning disabilities, On Creativity, word usage)

I’m not entirely sure I understand what people mean when they say “creativity” any more. I have this idea of creativity as a broad concept in my head, encompassing a wide range of things. As a result, when people say they aren’t creative or that so-and-so isn’t creative, I’m usually pretty boggled.

Creativity- [mass noun] the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness: Firms are keen to encourage creativity.

-Oxford Dictionary of English

Creativity- n. the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

-The New Oxford American Dictionary

It’s taking me a minute, but notice the differences between these dictionaries’ definitions for creativity? The ODE definition is closer to what I think of than the NOAD version. (Note: These definitions are from the Kindle versions that are updated with changes automatically.) When I went to look at the about, NOAD didn’t have anything. It’s a standard American usage dictionary. ODE was a little better- in fact, there’s a long forward in this edition of ODE. They adopted a different style for this one, one that “aims in part to account for the dynamism, imaginativeness, and flexibility of ordinary usage.” (They also included usages in a wider range of English using countries instead of just American usage.)

Because of my language acquisition methods, the range of concepts/shape of the word in my head shifts every time I hear a word differently. Because of the range of the usages I see for the word “creative” is broad, my idea of how to use that word is broad. It puzzles and frustrates me that people have limited definitions sometimes.

In fact, for a very long time- until the past two years actually- I was frustrated greatly by dictionaries. They never seemed to encompass everything about the words that I was learning. That the resource everyone was pointing me to when I was confused by how people used words didn’t cover the areas that I was struggling with- usage, broad definitions, implications, etc. – was frustrating. Beyond frustrating- I’m trying to think of an analogy that is a little more obvious without being unfair or ridiculous to compare. Like entering a supposedly accessible bathroom stall, only to discover there’s not enough room for your power wheelchair. The people in charge say “but we have an accessible bathroom!” but what they don’t understand that the supposedly accessible stall – which is meant to help you – doesn’t. Everyone thought a dictionary would solve my word usage problems, but for me, it didn’t actually grant access. Just because it meets the minimum standards of accessibility does not mean it actually meets the need in question.

As I’ve come to accept how broadly my neurology impacts some of the aspects of my life- and that just because I’m “good” at something doesn’t mean my disabilities don’t impact them- this has become a little less of an issue. My disability justice work, in particular, has reached a depth where I can recognize what is going on. I can now identify the issue, and either find a way that actually helps me or accept that I need to approach the issue a different way. It was a very hard lesson for me.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t make the issue go away. For example, I still can’t define words very well on my own/in my own words, even when I’m relatively competent in using the words. More so for “abstract” words or usages of course. How I struggled in school when this is the sort of definition the teacher wanted instead of one that was lifted almost directly from a dictionary! In elementary and middle school, my LDs greatly impacted my grades and my relationships with teachers who thought that since I seemed to be “brilliant” or “intelligent” my issues must be laziness. By high school, I was a perfectionist about my grades, and when I had this sort of teacher I would get very frustrated. (Interestingly, the advanced placement or “honors” teachers were generally better with my approach to language usage than my other teachers.)

This brings me back to my point- to me, this approach of finding my own work around, one tailored to my own needs, is creativity in action. Building an accessible world is creative to me. Innovating, creating, re-purposing- to me, these are all creative acts. Sometimes they are hard acts, sometimes they are necessary acts, but they are all creative ones.

Sometimes they are vanishingly small acts- finding a way, even collaboratively, to deal with the trigger warning vs content warning issue for example. That debate is an act of creativity to me. The sense of awe I get when seeing innovative art even comes in to some extent. Any more, as I accept that other people don’t see it this way, I even get a sense of wonder about the sheer diversity of creativity- that my sense of it includes things that other people don’t, that it includes people who have felt alienated by other senses of what creativity is.

But that’s my personal definition, and if someone doesn’t identify themselves as creative I won’t label them as such. Performing acts of creativity isn’t the same as feeling an innate sense of creativity, and labeling a person something that functions as identity without their consent is kinda disturbing to me personally.

So, too, is ascribing attributes to an entire group of people. There is this- idea? Cultural meme?- that Autistics, because they are Autistics, aren’t able to be “creative.” I think this is pretty much the most easily debunked idea out there, but I could be wrong. It could be that their usage of creativity meets neither my own definition- which is admittedly broad- nor the ones in the dictionaries. But most people I’ve heard spout this realize they are wrong pretty quickly. There’s another one that people with mental health disabilities are inherently/innately creative in the traditional sense. This is harder to debunk, but it can be done. Especially if you know some of the people I know who explicitly identify as not creative. And I’m not just talking about medical model or even disease model people, either. Segments of the MHD community do actively ascribe creative to their experience of their MHD. That’s awesome. But it’s not awesome when they then try and ascribe creative as inherent to all people with MHDs.

I’m fine with creative, I’m even fine with linking my forms and concepts of creativity to aspects of my disabilities. But that’s my experience of my own disabilities, not someone else’s experiences. I don’t have a right to infringe on their autonomy- on identity or on anything else. I need to recognize- and yes, it is hard work to think this way for me because of how my brain works- that their experiences are not my experiences. And my experiences are not yours, your child’s aren’t yours, and your clients’ aren’t yours.

Which circles back around to realizing that not everyone has the same sense of words. Please understand, it wasn’t until I was 21 or 22 that I realized that not everyone experiences words and concepts as a mish-mash of texture, movement, and shape. I struggled a lot with figuring out why my words were wrong before I comprehended that I was processing the concepts behind the words differently. There were even times where I was shocked that someone would comment that they found a way of saying something or making something was creative. To me, the langauge that they found poetic or the art I made that they found creative were literals or very close approximations of how I experienced those concepts.

When I sit down to write poetry or make art, I don’t sit there and work on “creativity”. I sit there and I try out words that seem to be the right shape for what I’m “seeing” inside of my head. I sit there and think about the things that make me feel a certain way, that makes my internal experience match the concept my art is illustrating. I create a lot of analogies, and I go through a logical process of turning them into similes and then into metaphors. I create long lists of properties I see and feel about the two things I’m comparing. Sometimes I have to drop a concept because when I make the lists, I realize that the things I’m experiencing aren’t as similar to each other as I initially thought.

To me, while this might technically be an act of creativity, it doesn’t make me creative. It’s just how my brain runs. The sense of me as creative here is something that you or society is experiencing about me, and in this case I don’t mind it at all. Sometimes I do feel like I’m being “creative” in a smaller sense- the NOAD sense if you will. But much more often, I’m just being, experiencing the process of creating in the OED sense, or even my own personal sense of what creativity can mean.

Thank you, by the way, to elementary school teachers who got frustrated and desperate trying to teach me the differences between analogies, similes, and metaphors. I know it took me ages, but the tactics some of you tried did end up creating a functional system to process language stuff later on. Also, I read a lot of the books like “Heavens to Betsy” and other linguistic trivia books that would explain in plain language why people said certain things and used words in certain ways from an etymological perspective. I’m one of those people who loves dictionaries with huge etymologies. Sometimes I understand the word from the etymology better than from the printed definitions. In any case, language use and I have quite the complicated relationship.

I’m going to stop this entry now. The next entry in this series will be on poetry, and I’m setting a tentative date of Thursday, December 29^th for it. I’m not sure how many parts this series will have, as I think it will be an on going thing where next time I work out an entry that falls under the topic it will be a new entry in the series.

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Inside and Outside Safety

August 26, 2011 at 4:49 pm (ableism, Autism, cross disability, Developmental Disability, Oppression, personal, the autistic closet, Trauma) (ableism, AMC, asd, autism, developmental disability, disability, Disability Justice, inside, interalization, Neli Latson, oppression, outposts in our heads, outside, passing, safety, Social Justice, violence, visibility)

[Content warning: Mentions of violence towards PwD, both external and internal. Passing mention of the R-word and of a cat dying.]

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

-Zora Neale Hurston

I think sometimes when we talk about “passing” versus visibility we forget what that really means, what it is really about. We forget that it means a choice between being safe in the out there instead of being safe in the in here.

It’s a process of making a difficult choice for some of us. Which will destroy us sooner- the violence that others do to us or the violence we do to ourselves? How long do we defend ourselves from the violence that other people send us before we end up destroying who we are inside? Can we live in a world where we can be safe in our own heads without endangering ourselves from the violence of others?

A number of people have written about what it is to internalize oppression- ableism in particular. There’s one phrase I’ve seen that always strikes me- “outposts in our heads.” The place I remember coming across it was at Amanda Bagg’s blog, when it was used- along with the Sally Kempton quote- as the title of a post. Outposts in Our Heads was a big deal for me when I first read it back in 2008. It helped me form into language the things I was noticing about my own experiences, my own terrors, my own damages.

When we internalize the messages that tell us we are unreliable narrators of our own stories, that we are “bad” and “wrong” when we exist as ourselves, it creates violence inside of us. It’s not the physical kind of course- though sometimes people do hurt themselves as a result of this “inside” violence. But that makes it no less violence, no less an attack on our beings.

The more I reflect on my own behavior and the writings of others the more I feel as though a lot of our passing comes from this violence that has been pressed inside of us. Our passing is an expression, in part, of the thousand little insidious things we were taught. To remind ourselves that we are wrong, that we are “slow.” To remind ourselves that we don’t count as humans unless we take these “lessons” to heart.

With those lessons is one that gets pointed to as the “reason” for them, why it is so “needful” for us to find indistinguishable. Why the parent I will sit next to in a meeting next week will tell me that they just want their kid to have a shot at pretending to be normal. The outside world is violent towards us when we don’t accept these things, sometimes in more obvious ways.

I don’t think we have to go far to “prove” them their theory on how unsafe it is for us. Neli Latson‘s arrest- Young, black, and Autistic Neli- is proof in an of itself, however much it is also tangled up in racism. The bullying of kids who rock and flap are constantly held up against the bullying of queer youth by some parents, the violence that both populations face sometimes used to outline how bad it is not to pass. Sometimes I even hear the statistics about how 70% of women with developmental disabilities experience rape and that is used as an example of why we shouldn’t be obviously disabled. (Sometimes I even hear this from people who would fiercely remind you that how a person dresses or what they drink doesn’t make them responsible for the violence done to them.)

These things are brought out time and again, these dangers of the world. And too often- particularly when it is our families rather than disabled people ourselves- the solution offered is to teach us to pass. To not behave or exist as we are. To make eye contact and don’t flap or rock in public or don’t jump at loud sounds.

The solutions offered to individuals too often aren’t to make it so police know what to expect from Autistics (as well as unknowing the stereotypes of race), to end bullying through truly inclusive practice, to teach people not to rape and sexually assault people.

We are told that in order to save ourselves from the violence out there we must do everything we can to look normal out there.

And when we do look normal out there, they pretend that no violence is being done to us. Too often, they forget the violence that they did or dismissed to make us this way. Too often, they will always dismiss that it left us with violence in our heads.

As time goes on I try to unlearn the violence that was taught to me. I try to uproot the strongholds that tell me how wrong and bad it is of me, how selfish, to want to be okay with myself. This process isn’t helped by living in a society that reaffirms that all the bad things are because I’m wrong, I’m deviant, I’m disabled and I dare to try not to hide from it.

In June, I attended the Allied Media Conference as a Co-track Coordinator of the Disability Justice Track with A’ishah of ResistDance. Admittedly there were huge chunks of things that were issues in the physical world- for example, some people not getting what “scent free” meant, or staff members forgetting that sharpies can be toxic for some folk, or how incredibly echoy and not sensory friendly having closing ceremony in McGregor was. But the biggest thing for me had nothing to do with my external environment.

It had everything to do with my internal one. I was working so hard at uprooting the ableism inside of me, and yet while I was there surrounded by movers and shakers and hopeful justice makers I found more. I spent a couple of hours one afternoon sitting in a corner, crying and rocking and holding my arms tight. My outside was safe enough- someone even gave me a tissue as they passed. But on my insides the violence I had worked so hard to uproot from my mind was taking over.

I was alone and unworthy and bad girl. Of course you are having a hard time, I thought, you are wrong at the most basic level. Remembered directives of Stop Crying and This is for Attention isn’t it? and You are selfish for wanting to be safe and everyone knows that retards can’t lead.

I eventually got settled enough to move, to look for my mum in the Healing Justice Practice Space. When I got there, though, it was obvious in ways I couldn’t know that there was a violence happening inside of me to some of the healers. I had some tea, and Mariposa had me do medicine on my self by way of chalking protection at my wrists. It is protection from the elements of the outside that give power to the violence inside, she told me.

And I did come back to me, to knowing that I am worthy and human and deserving of existance. To knowing where those thoughts were pressed into me from. To knowing that it is a violence taught to me.

I won’t discount that the violence outside of me is painful. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t devastated when the neighbor shot my cat Tribble knowing that he was in training to be my therapy cat. I will never deny that there’s still a spot on my back that when pressed makes me panic, to think that my mother’s second (ex)husband is going to put me in prone restraint again. But I think that the most devestating is the ways that violence is pressed inside of me.

I’m tired of doing violence to myself inside of me to avoid the violence that could happen outside of me. I’m tired of having no safe place inside of me because someone might believe that the demonstrations of my disabled person-ness gives them license to grant violence to the external face of me. I don’t think it’s right to give in to demands that I pretend that passing doesn’t hurt me.

This afternoon, I’ll go shopping. At checkout, while I’ll smile at the register and answer questions from the check out person, chances are I won’t make eye contact. Chances are I’ll startle when someone shouts or drops something. Chances are I’ll flap in line, wander in a way someone else’s parent would characterize as aimless and pathological, cover my face or eyes or ears when things are “too much,” flinch when someone touches me in passing unexpectedly. I’ll stare and not be able to process a shelf display or two, and forget how much I need to get some bottled water because it looks like there’s so much stuff in the cart already.

And I will be safe.

_________

This Post was inspired in part by “Dear ‘Autism Parents’” by Julia Bascom, as well as other writings of her’s at Just Stimming. I highly recommend going over there and reading more of her stuff. I also want to direct people to the writings of Amanda Forest Vivian at A Deeper Country whose writings have been helping to “percolate” these thoughts all summer.

This has been reprinted at Shift Journal.

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