Tomorrow, Friday, April 26th, 2013 there is going to be a hearing about HIPAA. Well, that’s not exactly accurate- it is about HIPAA for those with psychiatric disabilities or seeking psychiatric care. But no, this isn’t an entirely accurate description either. It is about how some people truly believe that those of us who receive psychiatric care and have our HIPAA rights respected are somehow a threat to public safety.
They believe this even though our providers are mandated reporters, people who have an exemption for threats of violence to others or one’s self. They believe this even though we are more likely to be victims of violent crime than to commit it. They believe this even though when we report on the violence of others, our voices and experiences are discounted.
They believe us as such a huge threat, despite evidence to the contrary, so much that they won’t even be having any of us at the table as they talk about taking away our rights. That we aren’t able to be truthful, competent, or able to speak for ourselves to such an extent that Representative Murphey has gone on air with his belief that we would be incapable of testifying and that the most important conversation is one about parents and families’ experiences.
Those of you who follow this blog just for the Autism angle might recognize that sort of language. It’s the same sort of language that made our fight last November to get Autistics on the panel of another hearing so important, and that makes our objections to how we are portrayed in the media so necessary.
I’ve heard from some corners of the autism communities that the issue at these hearings isn’t about us, or that some of the efforts that autistics (and ASAN) are doing around this hearing are somehow conflating “mental Illness” and autism. Setting aside the fact that in some places autistics without ID are only able to access supports through the mental health system, and setting aside the fact that some of us have additional disabilities that happen to be in mental health, I still have to disagree. These are the same issues that we face, the same ways our voices are invalidated and our societal consent voided.
Even where we aren’t also people with psychiatric disabilities (and a number of us are, either by birth or because having society tell you you aren’t worthy tends to be traumatizing) , we should be giving our solidarity to the people who are fighting the same fights. And we are fighting the same fights against ableism, albeit from slightly different angles. We have a stake in this too- because ableism isn’t just actions. It is systemic. It impacts all of us, though often in different ways, regardless of our exact disability. There’s a reason we need a cross-disability movement, and the strength we have in supporting each other is just one (important) part of it. There is a song that goes, “None of us are free if one of us is chained,” and you know what? There is a certain amount of truth there.
There is also, of course, the fact that co morbid mental health disabilities or not, many Autistics will be served through the mental health system. The sort of policies this hearing may engender often don’t care if you are receiving services for mental health. They only care about what the services you are receiving are classified as.
I personally am multiply disabled. I have multiple reasons to care about this issue, and that is just reasons that have only to do with myself. There are even more when I think about the people around me.
I am someone who is all about disclosing. I’ve talked, in the past, about topics that are very personal and are too much information for some people. It’s ok if you aren’t comfortable with that, but I have done it for a reason: for every time I’ve had a comment or email expressing concern that I’ll disclose details of my life, particularly as it relates to medical care, I’ve received one if not multiple telling me thank you. Because they? They don’t feel safe disclosing and it has left them feeling isolated.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? That people don’t feel safe, or comfortable, and they feel that way for a reason. it is the same reason that disclosure is currently a political act: because the negative consequences can be so great. People regularly face discrimination when they disclose, particularly when their disclosure is about a highly stigmatized disabilities. There is a reason both psychiatric disabilities and autism are on the list of such disabilities that the Department of Labor’s ODEP put out- people unfortunately are still fired or even denied a hire on the basis of disability, even though it is against the law. Housing, too, can be riddled with discrimination, leaving affordable and safe housing harder and harder to come by.
Even disclosing in the medical community has negative consequences. This past month, we had a prominent, multiply disabled, autistic voice who had to fight medical discrimination to have a life saving procedure. So, too, do people with psychiatric disabilities find their medical needs and wishes challenged. I cannot begin to count the number of stories I’ve heard in which people I know, either personally or through my advocacy, whose medical conditions were ignored or even blamed on their having had a mental health diagnosis. Either way, they faced a denial of timely and appropriate medical treatment, not because of a lack of disclosure between professionals, but because the stigma is so great that when we disclose even medical professionals have their judgement clouded.
Just as other people with disabilities, people with psychiatric disabilities have our abuse and murders excused as treatment. Our families feel justified, or at least are told they are justified, in abusing or being complicit in the abuse of us. After all it isn’t just Autistics being shocked at the JRC- young people with psychiatric disabilities are also sent there. Indeed, there is a whole industry around sending young people with psychiatric disabilities away to isolating and sometimes dangerous camps.
I am someone who takes the risks that comes with disclosure, but no one should have the choice to take those risks taken away. It has far too dangerous a set of consequences to take consent to disclosure away from the people whose privacy it would expose. Far too dangerous to take away the right to privacy of a group that must rely on privacy in order to both get support and to avoid discrimination.
I would encourage all of you to sign the petition that ASAN has written calling out the chairman of the committee for excluding the voices of people with psychiatric disabilities in a hearing that could very well threaten their rights. If you are in DC and are reading this in time*, please try to attend the hearing, even if you just end up in overflow**.
Our privacy, even if we chose ourselves not to keep it, is a right that no one should be taking from us. Talking about doing so, let alone having that discussion without us, is reprehensible.
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* I’m sorry I didn’t get this out earlier. I tried, but kept getting stuck on the endless examples that can be found of both how we face discrimination when we disclose, and how the language that is being used to justify the lack of People with Psych disabilities is used to justify other miscarriages of justice.
**I personally cannot make it- not only because it’s out of my budget to go to DC last minute, but also because tomorrow I have to go face the housing system to prove I deserve to keep the voucher that makes being not homeless affordable. So please, if you can, go; there are many of us who would like our voices or at least persons represented, but cannot make it ourselves.
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.
Content: Mentions of violence against people on the basis of ability, race, and so on; Mention of abuse.
Friday, March 1, is the 2013 Day of mourning for those PwD whose lives were lost to the hands of their caregivers. Last year, it was at the end of March, not the beginning, which means it’s not quite the anniversary of knowing one of my abusers/caregivers is dead. Last year, those two things fell on the same day. I felt shock and relief mixed into my grief. The shock predominated throughout most of that afternoon.
It’s been a year and a month since Stephon Watts was killed, by police who his family was told to contact for “help,” for the combination of being an Autistic young black male. 11 months since Daniel Corby’s murder. This fall it will have been 20 years since Tracy Latimer’s murder. A month and a half since Robert Saylor’s murder. Almost 80 years since the Nazi’s T4 program. I can post lists and timescales forever, it seems, and it still won’t have all the names it should.
Our dead are mixed in with the dead of others in places where our identities cross, these cross sections boosting statistical probabilities. Stephon’s murder was just as much (if not more so) a factor of racism as disability. T4 blended in to a larger propagandistic and genocidal engine.
There are sadly always many for which to mourn.
This year, we’ve seen violent events, events which have gotten the attention of major news outlets and the dwellings on of news cycles. In these ways, it is unlike our dead- though our dead are hidden in theirs. Instead of joining in mourning, the public uses these deaths as a means to fuel the same bigotries which lay behind the excusing of our deaths and pardoning of our murderers.
Recently, some noticed something terrible, something demonstrating the way in which a certain segment of the disabled population is viewed, when they googled “Autistics should” and “Autistics are.” Google uses everyone’s searches to guess what your next words will be. Based on the searches in their database, google suggested things like “Die” and “dangerous” to complete the search.
A flashblog (see both “should” and “are“) appears to be bearing some results* in amending the computer side of this, but Google only has the ability to amend what their searches suggest. They can’t amend a code and instantly remove the biases that lead to those searches in the first place. (Though it does help.) Erasing bias a is longer, and more complicated, process than that. A process which is on all of us to work on.
A process that we all need to keep in mind. Bigotry that cannot be forgotten, as it blooms fresh again.
My words here are not as direct as I’d like. I see that my sentences are convoluted, but every time I fixate on them enough to begin translating them out from the word pictures in my head into plain language I feel those things that indicate I’m about to cry. It’s hard not to, when you allow yourself to really have the reality sink in. Terror, relief, grief, anger, sadness, and the sense of ever reaching, all inter-playing and weaving.
Yes, I do believe I’m mourning.
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This year’s vigils are being jointly backed by ASAN, Not Dead Yet, and the National Council on Independent Living. You can find the nearest vigil to you on the ASAN website, and I’m (as an ASAN person) managing the virtual vigil 3:30pm EST-Midnight-ish, with a good friend, That Crazy Crippled Chick, as my second.** This is a cross disability effort; Autistics are not the only PwD to be murdered by those who were supposed to protect us.
* The article in the link is titled in a way that suggests that this change is already in effect. This is inaccurate; as of this writing, Google has agreed to modify their algorithms to eliminate this issue. It has not been implemented in a way that impacts the user end experience as of yet.
** Or number one, if I’m Picard and she’s my Riker.
In the past couple of months, I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing curriculum and reading some research papers/essays that some people trying to be decent allies have done. A lot of them do an okay job on some things, and a less great job on others. But the most common issue seems to be conflating “disability” and “impairment” in a way that reflects a relatively un-nuanced understanding of the larger disability rights movement.
The most basic definition of the Social Model is along the lines of a person is disabled not by their impairment, but by their environment. Sadly, many people fail to look at this and see more than “society alone is to blame for disability.” I see people who say that social model isn’t realistic, based on this misconception, for individuals with extensive support needs.
This fails to take into account the possible corollary that within an appropriate context, a person’s impairment would be irrelevant to their abilities. Here’s an illustration of that, and a very standard one:
Imagine a wheelchair user named Mary. Mary’s condition includes impairments in being able to support herself due to muscle weakness, so she needs to use a chair to get around. Mary goes into a general world, and there she finds that people who she shares interests with meet in a space that is up stairs without an elevator, and that the coffee shop that said it was accessible actually has a stoop too high to wheel over. But if Mary goes into Accessible Town, elevators are in the buildings and the buildings were built/modded in a way that doesn’t involve stoops, and where the halls and doors are wide enough for her electric chair.
Mary didn’t magically stop having her impairment. Instead, her environment no longer interfered with her ability to participate fully in the community of Accessible Town. Unfortunately, people look at the stories of hypothetical people like Mary and go on to claim that that is all well and good for people with physical impairments, but that those with intellectual, developmental, or psychological impairments. This is inaccurate.
Bob is non-speaking, and uses alternative communication. In general world, people become impatient or dismissive because they do not want to deal with alternative communication. (This is similar to someone who doesn’t speak the typical language in a country they are visiting, unfortunately.) Bob goes to Accessible Town to meet his friend Sue, who is Deaf. People wait for his responses, don’t try to speak for him without his permission, and ask for help understanding when they do not. Bob’s other impairments might preclude him being able to learn much of the sign language his friend Sue uses to communicate, but her interpreter is great at making sure both of them can understand each other, even though they are speaking different languages and styles.
Bob is still non-speaking and still has intellectual impairments. But he is able to not only be actively involved in this community, but to communicate and hopefully have a good time with people with different access needs entirely. In this particular context, his impairments are not disabling him from this sort of participation. He has the support, both technically and emotionally, to be a full participant.
Some people see this as just a fantasy. The standard that they hold up as “too disabled” shifts to higher and higher support needs each time we try to explain how that hypothetical person could be supported. At some point, it has become a game, which is why my examples of the hypothetical Accessible Town will end. The truth is that what access looks like will vary by person. It isn’t an easy thing at all, especially in our current world, to create environments or communities that balance people’s access needs. This seems especially true when the most needed aspect of that process is patience and trust.
Note, if you will, that a condition that may be referred to as a disability might have traits that are not impairments in and of themselves. While stimming can be a coping response to an impairment, perhaps with self regulation or sensory hyper awareness, it is not necessarily so. In some cases it is simply used as an expression of emotion- atypical, sure, but not an impairment. The only disabling factor when it comes to stimming, barring those which involve self harm, is that other people are jerks about it and project prejudices and bigotry about how people are supposed to look. Essentially, it is simply other people’s assumptions, not the behavior interacting with the environment, that creates barriers. Yet it is one of the traits by which Autistics are diagnosed.
The next thing is something that I don’t know how to introduce properly. I see a lot of people approach the idea of Neurodiversity as though it is some new big thing completely different from other disability things. The truth is that it simply is applying the larger disability rights movement to the experiences of people with certain impairments, often defined as Autistics.* It is not some great new thing that we came up with via spontaneous generation, without previous foundations. It was built on the work of many people who live with a wide range of disabilities.
When we talk about both needing disability supports and treating our impairments as differences, we are not being disingenuous. We are not “talking both ways.” And it is not about denying legitimate supports. It is an incredibly nuanced issue, but one that can be summed up in a phrase that isn’t terribly new or specific to Autistics, and is in fact used on materials put out by the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD):
“Disability is a natural part of the Human Experience.”
This is the core idea here. Disability is one of many natural variances in what the human experience is like. It is not inherently shameful, ”freakish,” or unnatural. It does not rob us of our humanity– that is instead done by the perceptions of people. It is part of the amazing and beautiful diversity of our amazing species, Homo sapiens sapiens. It is a part of who we are and how we are put together.
This diversity can be powerful whether you are a religious creationist (indeed, there are hymns about this), an Atheist who believes in an unmitigated evolution, or any combination thereof. On a personal level, I believe in theistic evolution, and the vast diversity which allows for the survival of the species is something amazing and beautiful and spiritual for me. But I believe that the fact that we are so amazingly diverse, that we live in such a diverse world and are such a diverse species, is something that can be beautiful and powerful regardless of your beliefs. (Reminder: this is not a post about evolution or religion. These are tangential issues.)
When we talk about Autism or any other condition as a difference, we are not inherently denying that people with those conditions face disability. We are talking about how our conditions, and the impairments that might come along with them**, are a natural difference in the species. That those differences, like any number of others, should not bar access, dignity, or respect. That our differences are not things that should be eliminated, but that we should work towards a society in which difference is not a bar to access, be that because of changing attitudes or changing our physical environments.
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Talking about these distinctions isn’t something new. Please consider checking out some of the links below in which a number of other writers have covered similar issues.
* I personally consider Neurodiversity an issue that covers a wide range of individuals whose brains don’t exactly fit the “typical” brains or ways of working.
** Some people do not follow this, but they are a small subgroup who are often not aligned with the principles of the movement.
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.
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 organizationswould 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 toothers, 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.
I have things I want to do, want to write about. I wanted to write about disability voting for Persephone Magazine (I contribute occasionally, though lately it’s mainly been food posts). I’ve had a number of things I intended to write about for here. But every time I’ve tried to sit down to write something prompted by myself, I’ve ended up staring at the writing field blankly.
I’m frustrated with myself. A part of me spends time berating myself, reminding me that I can and do write fairly well some times so I ought to be able to churn something serviceable out when I want or need to. It’s more than writer’s block- I get that too sometimes. I have all the ideas there, but the brain fog has been interfering with my ability to put them into the text box coherently.
I know where the fog comes from- it’s my fibro and arthritis pain mixing with my neurology. But I also know where the frustration and the self doubt comes from too. I’m not the only one struggling with that one.
I’ve had friends who have told me things about their struggling. Some do have brain fog, but a number of them don’t. Some have had disabilities their whole lives, some have had them without words for them, and some who gained disabilities later on and their lives. Many have very different tasks that they struggle with. Some of them struggle more with tasks I also struggle with. A number of them struggle mainly because the things they need to succeed aren’t met or are met hostilely.
See, it’s the hostility that makes a lot of it all worse. A hostility to the idea of alternative needs in order to accomplish things. Hostility to the idea that one experience of a situation is not going to be the same for each person. And this hostility breeds some dangerous, some might say poisonous, memes in our culture.
I think I’ve talked about memes before, not in the internet sense but in the anthropological and sociological sense. They are basically a unit of culture. An idea, an image, archetypes- these are memes, elements that make up culture and society. We live in one which perpetuates hostility towards people with disabilities. And a lot of the memes that make up that hostility are ones that we find ourselves repeating when we are frustrated.
That our needs aren’t real. That we are actually just not trying hard enough. That we are actually just bad people, or lazy people, or selfish people. None of these are true, but they are memes in our society that we have for people.
There’s lots of things that perpetuate it. Some of it is direct- people actually saying these things. Some of it is a consequence- someone using these views to “legitimize” denial of access. And some of it is subtle- like inspiration porn. A lot of peoplehavetalkedabout that last one in recent months. But all of it is a part of our society and culture. Not a good part, but still a part.
And we are all taught culture through these memes. It’s not an avoidable thing. True, some people don’t get the direct impact of it from the subtle parts alone. But they get it indirectly, from the messages that the people around them absorb and then act upon.
It is impactful, the expression of these memes. Someone with attention issues might need to doodle to keep their mind on a speaker, but get called unprofessional for doing so even though they need it to process what they are hearing. Another person might suffer from chronic migraines when around certain stimuli (like florescent lights), but have their need to have alternative lighting treated as being finicky or annoying. Someone who might need things in simpler language might get left out of choices about their lives, or are told that their goals aren’t reasonable without explanation. A child who uses an AAC device might find themselves or their parents pressured into a segregated classroom.
Years of this cultural environment takes their toll. When a person subject to it, to the “pointy end” of it, becomes frustrated about something, it turns inward. The fact that they’ve worked themselves to exhaustion, or have agitated a difficult part of their health by going beyond where their limits are, doesn’t prevent them from calling themselves lazy. After all, other people have said it about similar efforts by other people. The same with worries about being called “selfish” keeping people from asking for accommodation, or “drama seeking” when you report discrimination. None of these are legitimate statements, but they are all things that society’s attitudes attempt to legitimize through cultural means.
We feel these things as consequence. We feel that maybe we are lazy, maybe we are just bad people, selfish people. It is a difficult thing to stop thinking when things go bad. It’s hard to unhook those representations we see, the ones that tell us that failure is just because we didn’t do x enough. That we aren’t y enough for our struggle to be real, that we must be some sort of bum, drama queen, or whiner.
But it’s not true. We’ve lived, survived, a hostile world that would rather believe those things- that people like us must just be lazy fakes, that we are just bitchy people, that none of our reality is true. We’ve been raised in a culture that believes those things, we’ve had it ground into our minds.
Just because we resist doesn’t mean we don’t stilll have that thought in there. It’s been ground into us. Even those who come to life as a PwD later on, as it’s a societal thing, not an individualized thing. It’s a horrible thing, a painful thing, a thing that challenges us and makes us want to destroy parts of ourselves at some points of our lives.
We are real. And we don’t need to destroy ourselves. We don’t.
The medication I took earlier in an attempt to dismiss the brain fog is wearing down a little, as it doesn’t last too long, and soon I’ll be back in a place where the ideas are there where the words are not. I’ll read things and have feelings, but barely be able to come up with a way to say that I have them, let alone make a meaningful or thoughtful response. I’ll be able to put together other people’s points into meaningful words, but be unable to order my own points. And I will be frustrated at some point.
And I will survive it. Maybe I’ll come back to this, or you will, to remind myself, ourselves, what the self-doubts and self-flagellations really are- internalizations.
I didn’t think I’d have something to say today. I haven’t been able to organize my thoughts in the way I need to to write here, and I have a list of things I need to get done that. . . well, it just hasn’t thus far. I thought that I wouldn’t have something to say for Blogging Against Disableism Day, or at least not something that was worth posting here.
I was wrong.
I just finished reading Amanda B’s first post for this year’s BADD (she wrote two) and . . . Well, I found myself upset. And not just because her posts are on distressing issues around abuse by caregivers, but because I had just recently been trying to articulate some of the things she wrote about being conditioned to believe our support needs are unreasonable. Amanda was talking specifically about issues with staff and care givers being abusive, and about the cultures that support that within provider systems. But the conditioning is something I’ve been working on fighting out of my own head, and I’m someone who isn’t getting adequate supports or services. (I have less extensive support needs staff care wise and equipment wise as my health and skills are very different from Amanda’s, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need supports.)
I’ve been depressed lately because of how long it has been taking for me to get housing, and because the type of support that I need to navigate that type of system it is more complicated. As a result, my family has been truly over taxed in trying to make sure I’m not living under a bridge or someplace where predatory individuals would have access to me. My family members have disabilities of their own to provide self care for, as well as not really having the financial resources to support me in a way that respects their own needs. It’s not that I have super intensive care needs in general- once I have a place and can set up my charts and other adaptive methods, I might need a couple hours a week to help coordinate bills, cleaning schedules, and transportation. But they are still needs that are amplified by not having a permanent home that I can set up as an environment that is suited to developing or maintaining my Daily Living Skills.
However, I also know that I cannot cope at all when I don’t have some obligations or responsibilities to meet. Accessible, meaningful involvement. Unfortunately, none of the things that are immediate to my situation are things I have the skills to navigate. Instead, online things and meetings and disability justice work are the things that allow me to cope, to endure not knowing for sure where I’m going to be sleeping next week.
But my needs for this sort of meaningful activity, and the relatively easier and less expensive to provide supports I need to do them, are characterized over and over as unreasonable. Unreasonable in light of how I haven’t been able to get housing. Unreasonable in light of needing someone to work one-on-one uestion by question with me to fill out assistance forms, or even in writing an advanced directive when I know basically what I want.* Unreasonable because I need some help in managing my money, because when I try I end up just not buying the things that I need and doing without until it hits crisis even when there’s money for something.
*That set of needs in and of itself is called unreasonable in light of how “smart” I am, how I can be involved in national level policy review, how I scored so high at English in high school. That I can write and review policy somehow means I must be able to apply each step to my own life accurately, without assistance. That there’s a different set of neurological skills between writing big things or reviewing big things and applying those to a very specific case in a way that uses standards measured from the outside is not fathomable.
This past weekend, it didn’t work out that I could go to a family member’s. So I went to the cheapest hotel in my county with wifi, and checked in. (I even agreed to watch my niece on Friday night, as she and I get on well and my sister needed the support that having someone else handling her would accomplish. The sort of support that if the dad had been willing to provide when it is needed two nights or so a week, wouldn’t be a problem.) But when the hotel’s internet was not operating appropriately, all the things that I’ve been told- the things I’ve listed in a heavily limited way above- came into my head.
That daring to have obligations to fufill was an unreasonable thing for me to have done, even though they are obligations that aren’t terribly extensive. That needing reliable internet access because I had been asked to complete one thing was something that somehow made me an extra burden above and beyond. That contributing at all can’t happen somehow when you can’t hold a job that supports yourself. That while my disabilities do not make me something aweful, that my daring to participate in the ways that are accessible to me somehow does.
I know that it is all programming, that it is the sort of behavioral training in action that Amanda is talking about when she says that you don’t need locks or restraints to practice seclusion and restraint on someone. I am someone who has picked apart the details of how society trains us into compliance for the ease of others. How being a part of a marginalized group means that we have epic fights against the things inside our heads in order to survive. I’m someone who films myself daring to reject indistinguishability, who knows that we make tiny revolutions by demanding that our determinations of what we need are listened to. Someone who lives and metaphorically breathes disability rights.
And I’m still digging out the conditioning in my own brain that reduces me to a something, to a burden and an unreasonable. My mother is still unraveling the complexity of what access is vs “enabling” (which is a complex mess to dig around in itself). My sister is still without her GED because when she has to directly interact with her acquired learning disabilities, the things she’s internalized over the years both when she was a norm with a disabled sister and after she acquired disabilities collapse her incredible demonstrations of self confidence.
When we talk about the impact of disableism, we are talking about trauma, a trauma that can be obvious enough to shriek or subtle enough to make being explicitly told that others will help us access our world a shock, a pleasant surprise. We are talking about outposts in our heads, and the outposts in other people’s heads.
We are talking about how some nights I lay awake worried about the day when my niece no longer thinks I’m awesome, no longer misses her buddy Skylar, no longer meets a family friend’s kid at his level of interaction because it seems horribly inevitable that she’ll learn the memes of disableism in our culture. Because even with some of the amazing bits of joy and hope that people share- Dave talking about Ruby’s dance class, Brenda talking about her love for her son as a whole person- it’s hard to believe that the hope that it gives will turn out.
It is so hard to believe something that amazing can last when you live in a world where it’s socially acceptable to exercise disableism, to raise children with disabilities around language about brokenness and tragedy into adults whose hearts break daily because it’s hard to unlearn that stuff.
But somehow, it is still something worth writing, and fighting, for.
___________________
(A different, positive, musical Something to play you out.)
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.
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!
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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