Recent Links of Awesome

Trying to ease myself back into blogging (LOADS of posts i want to write, but having trouble with inertia in actually writing them). I think more and shorter posts is going to be my aim for a while, and possibly doing this sort of link-posting thing reasonably frequently...

Anyway, some cool stuff i have just found or caught up with...

This post is almost a year old, but i only found it (via random link-clickage) this week... and it makes a fucking brilliant point, as well as giving me something to link to every time i want to say "just because it's a social construct, doesn't mean it's not real". I must remember to blogroll Fetch Me My Axe...

This is even older, but i really, really like it... and this is definitely awesome (and i really want to do it)... ;)

Lindsay of Autist's Corner and Mik of Coffee and Gender have both recently written posts that i really strongly identify with bits of, and need to comment on, but need to put loads of thought into my responses to:

Gender Variance in Autism: How much of it is just sensory?

Gender, Sexuality and the Fluidity of Identity

At ScienceBlogs (on a blog whose usual content is anti-creationism and cephalopods) there was a really good post and comment thread on intersex conditions and nonconsensual surgery on children here...

Also, i found it a month or 2 ago, but i can't remember whether or not i have linked to Eli Clare's website yet. Eli Clare is, IMO, one of the most awesome people in the known universe :)

There are probably more, but these are all the ones i can think of right now...

Incomplete write-up of Autscape

This isn't the post i wanted it to be, because what was supposed to be a relaxed few days in between Autscape and the Climate Camp was somewht ruined by my computer crashing completely, and me spending £50 on a new hard drive, only to have something else go wrong (i don't know what, presumably a hardware tihng) and for it to work for a day, and then become unable even to turn on. :( (I am now at a friend's house, typing this on his incredibly sticky keyboard, hence the many typos...)

So, the well-thought-out write-up of my Autscape experience hasn't happened, and of necessity won't happen for another couple of weeks, as i'm off to Climate Camp tomorrow... but I wanted to write a bit about it while it was still fairly fresh in my mind...

I had built my expectations up for being around a large number of autistic people, and in a majority-autistic environment for the first time, to be a very emotional, possibly even overwhelming experience. Actually, it wasn't that great a leap - in fact, the thing that struck me most strongly about it was how easy it felt to interact with the rest of the people there, and how "naturally" it felt like i fitted among them - people didn't mind me not looking at them while talking to them, not necessarily feeling like talking to them every time i passed by them, etc, and it was incredibly quick and easy to just fall into that, because it felt, well, natural to my own nature - which i don't often get in the mainstream world...

I definitely felt more able to do "autistc things" like rocking, other stimmy movements, etc - to feel able to rock in public without embarrassment was definitely a big thing (in fact, i felt positively encouraged to do so). I think the experience was definitely a positive one in terms of feeling able to be my autistic self, without apology and without compromise, and probably gave me more cofidence to be "out" in future social situations (although the whole "passing" thing is still, and probably always will be, a problematic area for me). Talking to people in a context where autism-specific things could simply be referred to without further explanation, rather than having to be given a whole conversation just to explain them, was also really good, and quite liberating (it made me realise just how easy it is when talking to non-autistic people, even when the non-autistic people in question are good friends, to feel the need to be a "self-narrating zoo exhibit")...

There was definitely something about other autistic people that made them easier even than non-autistic disabled people (who make up the majority of my "real life" friends) to relate to and communicate with, even if i didn't get time to explore that as far as i wanted to, and it made it very easy for me to think of them, on a very personal level, as "my people", even though on a political level i still prefer to think of all oppressed peoples as "my people". It made me think a lot about the need for both (impairment-specific) "autistic community" and a wider "disability community", and whether a stronger identification with either one weakens one's membership of the other. (I think it doesn't necessarily, but that "juggling" them is still an issue of importance in my life...)

I think i had a sort of "delayed response" after coming back from Autscae into the "NT world", when i was struck by just how overwhelmingly noisy, crowded, etc it was, and by how much greater my anxiety levels were walking aroud Birminham than they were at Autscape - although, of course, that was probably also partly down to the objctive difference between a city like Birmingham and a rural area like the Yorkshire Dales, as well as being exacerbated by the stress of all the shit with my computer.

Te Yorkshire Dales scenery was incredibly beautiful, and made me really want to go back there (almost as soon as i got back, i called a friend who, like myself, had memories of visiting that area as a kid, and suggested going on a hiking holiday there next year). I took loads of photos, but due to nt having a functional computer to upload them to, posting them here will have to wait... :(

(edit: Katja, another of the presenters, took some photos that can be seen here)

I don't know quite how representative of autistic people as a whole the people who came to Autscape were - my first impression was that it was dominated by people who fit reasonaly well the very verbal, "geeky Aspie" stereotype (which very much includes myself), and that it would have been good to have some more people who looked more like the supposed "lower-functioning end" of the spetrum (note that i don't think "end of the spectrum" is actually a meaningful phrase, as i don't think that "the autistic spectrum" (which, of course, is a metaphor) is literally a unilinear thing like the electromagnetic spectrum, but i'm using the phrase stereotypically), and, in fact, on the first night i felt no different from how i would have felt among a crowd of fairly geeky NTs (it felt much like being at university, actually)... but, as it went on, i noticed that many people, including myself, showed their "autistic mannerisms" more, which made me think abut just how much i do, even subconsciously, in order to "blend in" to the mainsream world (without actually even having the intention to "blend in", but just semi-automatically acting like the people around me, perhaps picking up NT-ish mannerisms in a mostly-NT environment and autistic mannerisms in a mostly-autistic environment in the same way that i tend to pick up the accent and vocabulary of whoever i'm speakng to)...

Of course, apart from those who, like myself, were presenters and got their fees paid for them, everyone there was able to pay at least £155 to go to Autscape (not couting travel costs), which probably in itself made them not demographically representative of autistic people in the UK (and probaly even less so for those who travelled to Autscape from abroad - there were people there from the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Israel and probably other countries i can't remember - the people with US and Canadian accents were, ithink, currently living in the UK, tho some people talked about also having gone to Autreat in the US).

The venue could have been a lot more physically accessible, but the organisers did everyuthing within their power to improve access - unfortunately, there wasn't really anything that could be done about the actual buildings, or the long distances and steep slopes between them. It did piss me off that one friend and activist (who is both autistic and physically impaired) was unable to come because of insufficient accessibility, tho, and a couple of other people who had "hidden" physical impairments in addition to autism tld me that they did less than they wanted to because of the long uphill walk between the accomodation and the presentation room. AFAIK, it's not yet known whether Autscape will be in the same or a different venue next year...

The presentations i saw (other than my own) were all highly interesting, although i didn't get to see all the ones i wanted to beause of my own disorganisation. I missed the first half of the introductory one on inertia, but the second half had a lot of very relevant-to-my-life stuff in it (probably the subject of future posts). The LARM-UK and Autreach presentation also made me feel very inspired about the growth of autism rights activism in the UK, and contacts made as a result of that presentation and my preesntation may start a regularly meeting autism/neurodiversity group in my area. Alexis, who was giving the LARM presentation, showed this video, made by a 12 year old "non-verbal" autistic kid, which made me cry (in a good way) :)

I probably didn't have quite as many conversations about personal experience (of the "compare-contrast-empathise" kind) as i expected/wanted to, but i did have some good ones, as well as very inspiring ones about more political issues, including gender identity and sexuality as well as disability rights. Particularly interesting was the conversation about polyamory with a couple, both on the spectrum and one a trans woman, who were also in a network of poly relationships - i am going to try to write up my own thoughts abut polyamory fairly soon, but i definitely feel that it provides a very powerful framework for thinking about gender/sexual liberation, and has some particular insights for disability and relationships too...

I definitely want to keep in touch with several of the people i met there. It makes me really happy that i actually seem to be succeeding at putting people with similar or overlapping concerns and identities in touch with each other at the moment... :)

Anyway, this is nowhere near complete, but i have to go home and pack for tomorrow (and typing on this keyboard is making it really hard to be coherent, because it's so sticky and slow). I will blog about the Camp for Climate Action when i return from it (and for my posts from it last year, see the relevant category, and for a short video about last year's camp from someone who was also at Autscape, see here)...

My first conference presentation! (Autscape live blogging part II)

Well, today i gave my presentation...

I think it actually went surprisingly well. The time slot allotted was 1 1/2 hours, and i started a bit late as i was waiting for people to come in, but the room soon filled up - the majority of people there were interested. I thought my talk would take 20-30 minutes, and it ended up taking over an hour, partly because of questions and interruptions (coughLaurentiuscough ;) ) and partly because of me going a bit rambly and remembering things i needed to say that i had forgotten to include on the handout.

I didn't conclude as conclusively as i wanted to, but then, that's always a problem for me (as those who read this blog may well have noticed). My conclusion was essentially that there is a need and a place for impairment-specific groups and organising, but that impairment-specific groups need to recognise that they are part of a wider disability movement (and an even wider pro-diversity/anti-discrimination movement).

The discussion afterwards, although shorter than i wanted it to be, was also really good. I was surprised and flattered by the several people who told me how good they thought my presentation was - i was really nervous at first, but presenting to an autistic audience massively helped - i knew i wouldn't be judged for the little style things that a predominantly NT audience would probably have judged it negatively for, like sitting down and standing up again multiple times while speaking, pausing/trailing off a few times to shuffle my notes, having to run out halfway through to get a glass of water because my throat was so dried out from talking loud enough for a room full of people to hear me, frequently not looking at the audience, etc...

I think i actually managed to influence a few people's views in favour of the social model of disability, which is very very cool :)

It was pretty knackering, though (and my throat is now feeling raw)... but, i am kind of elated...

There's a discussion on alternative sexualities later this evening, which sounds awesome. Have met one trans person and several people in poly relationships here.

Pissed down with rain today, but the scenery is still inspiring. Swifts and swallows flying around in massive flocks all over the place.

Mozart and the Whale was... interesting, but i'm not sure if either of the leads came across as genuinely Aspie-like to me. More coherent thoughts on it in a future post (probably).

Off to collapse for an hour or so now...

Live blogging from Autscape 2008...

well, maybe not strictly "live", as nothing is happening *right now*, but i'm there...

My presentation is going to be tomorrow. I don't know if i'm going to live up to the standards of the incredibly inspiring (if slightly frustrating because of the presenters flicking through slides full of info too fast for me to write any of it down) presentation on LARM-UK (London Autistic Rights Movement) and Autreach-IT (I'll edit this post to put links to their websites in here).

I simply can't believe i didn't hear of either of these before - LARM is a network set up for active political campaigning for autistic rights, and they're committed to the social model of disability (which makes me feel optimistic for tomorrow, altho i know that there will be a lot of people with very different views, and it will be challenging for me in terms of presenting my position successfully, but i know i have some strong allies), and Autreach-IT is an utterly awesome sounding project to get accessible communication technology (based on the "One Laptop Per Child" idea) to autistic people living in settings (care homes, etc) where their communication needs are not recognised... and, IMO, it really has the potential tobreak out of the "disability technology" ghetto, and become universal assistive technology...

There was an incredibly moving short video put together by a 12 year old non-verbal autistic kid, to illustrate the power of the technology - i'll try to find and post it...

I missed a couple of the other presentations i wanted to see because my own inertia made me miss breakfast, and so i had to go on a food mission to the nearby town (Settle), but the Yorkshire Dales scenery is incredibly beautiful (despite intermittent rain), so i found it impossible to be too pissed off... (I will post photos when i get back...)

Loads of thoughts about the general atmosphere, being around so many other autistic people, etc swirling around my head, but can't verbalise them very coherently right now, so i might post again tomorrow, if i get time (or do a more thorough post when i get back)...

Anyway, i'll cut this short because the film showing (Mozart and the Whale and Snow Cake) is about to start...

My presentation for Autscape

I thought people who read this blog might be interested in the presentation that I am giving at Autscape on Thursday...

I haven't decided exactly what I am going to say yet, but this is a loose outline. It's more intended as a handout for people who want to come to the presentation (hence the links, intended as stuff to look at if people want to look further into the topics touched on), and i'm going to start by talking a bit more generally about the disability rights movement, ascertaining how much the people there know about it.

Then, after talking for a bit, i'm going to turn it into a discussion (i decided to do a bit of a "hybrid" between a lecture-style presentation and a semi-presenter-led discussion). Hopefully some interesting and challenging views will come out of it...

(I was meant to finish this about a week ago, but only just finished it. I'm off tomorrow morning, to see some friends in Manchester, who i'm staying over with tomorrow night, then going from there to Autscape on Tuesday...)

Anyway, here it is (links ain't hyperlinks cos it's a printed document):

The Social Model of Disability is a major part of the ideological groundwork of the disability rights movement. Put simply, the Social Model states that there is a difference between impairment (a physical or psychological difference from the human "norm" - e.g. autism, deafness, blindness, a missing or paralysed limb) and disability (the social disadvantage experienced by people with impairments). Thus, according to the Social Model, people are not "disabled" by having an impairment, but by society's failure to accommodate the different access needs that they have as a result of having an impairment. "Disability is injustice, not tragedy; unequal treatment, not inherent inequality" - Cal Montgomery, "Critic Of The Dawn" in Ragged Edge Magazine, http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0501/0501cov.htm

(There are debates about whether the Social Model, stated simply, ignores the reality of impairments and/or regards them as irrelevant, and if this is a bad thing or not. These are beyond the scope of this short presentation, but recommended reading is Liz Crow's essay "Including All Of Our Lives: Renewing The Social Model Of Disability", which can be found in the book "Encounters With Strangers: Feminism and Disability", edited by Jenny Morris, or at http://www.disability-archive.leeds.ac.uk/authors_list.asp?AuthorID=49&author_name=Crow%2C+Liz)

It is easy to see how the Social Model applies with regard to people with physical impairments - a wheelchair user is disabled by steps into buildings, tables at heights that hir wheelchair cannot get under, etc. But how well does it apply to autism? The accommodations needed not to disable autistic people may be subtler or less obvious - e.g. changing assumptions about verbal and non-verbal communication, what constitutes "rudeness" or "politeness", etc. Autscape badges are arguably an example.

Experiences of autistics within the Disability Rights Movement: has the Disability Rights Movement accepted and accommodated autistic people?

Some autistics (along with other people with "hidden" impairments/disabilities) have felt alienated by the Disability Rights Movement, claiming that it has been mainly focused on the needs and rights of people with physical impairments, and that those with other types of impairments have been neglected or even not regarded as a valid part of the movement. An example of this is Sarah Triano's account of her experience at a national ADAPT action: http://www.disabledandproud.com/movement.htm (scroll down to the section titled "AN ALIEN WITHIN MY OWN COMMUNITY"). See also the experiences of Cal Montgomery (who is both autistic and physically impaired) with her local CIL in this article: http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/reviews/ckmontfoucault0905.html

Some argue that there is a "hierarchy of impairment" within the DRM - with either some impairments being regarded as "more disabling" than others, and thus people with those other impairments as "not really disabled", or people with physical impairments being regarded as capable of self-organising, whereas people with mental impairments are regarded as incapable of self-organising, and thus not deserving of a place in the disability movement. However, writers and activists such as Cal Montgomery and Amanda Baggs have challenged this, with a lot of success, and many people with neurodiverse impairments have played major roles in the disability movement (for example in DAN).

Disability (as a term) and the Autistic Rights Movement: There have been mixed attitudes in the autistic rights/autism acceptance/ neurodiversity/etc. movements towards the term "disability" and towards associating with non-autistic disabled people and their struggles. Some have enthusiastically embraced the social model of disability and considered themselves to be a part of a pan-impairment disability rights movement, while others have tried to argue that autism "is not a disability". For a very good example of this debate, see the following blog posts:

Welcome to the Disability Community by Joel Smith: http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=287
This post is mainly for three sorts of people... by Amanda Baggs (Ballastexistenz): http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=480
Not just about barriers by ABFH: http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2008/01/not-just-about-barriers.html

Is this based on ignorance or misunderstanding of the social model, and the difference between impairment and disability? Parallels with the Deaf movement, many of whom see themselves not as "disabled" but as a "linguistic minority"?

(Disability activist blogger Kay Olson (http://thegimpparade.blogspot.com) said, in a comment on my blog post asking for input for this presentation, "This is where I think the disability rights movement could often gain from being understood or more explicitly promoted as a "difference" rights movement.")

Is there a role for impairment-specific organisations within the disability movement?

Many activists within the disability rights movement have argued against impairment-specific organisations, saying that the DRM should cover disabled people of all impairments, and that impairment-specific groups go against the social model, by dividing disabled people against each other by impairment groups, as charities (e.g. RNIB, RNID, Scope (formerly Spastics Society), Autism Speaks, etc.) and the medical establishment do.

However, according to the principle of "Nothing About Us Without Us", if there are specific issues relating to a particular impairment (which might not affect other categories of disabled people), then people with that impairment have the right to self-organise to deal with those issues. Disability activists who are physically impaired but neurotypical, for example, may not recognise some of the issues faced by autistic people (but also vice versa).

My blog (Biodiverse Resistance): http://biodiverseresistance.blogspot.com

Some notable autistic blogs:
Ballastexistenz (Amanda Baggs): http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org
This Way Of Life (Joel Smith): http://thiswayoflife.org/blog
Asperger Square 8 (Bev Harper): http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com
The Autistic Bitch From Hell (Whose Planet Is It Anyway?): http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com

Some other notable disability blogs:
Chewing The Fat (Dave Hingsburger): http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com
Crip Power (Miss Crip Chick's Blog): http://crip-power.com
The Gimp Parade (Kay Olson): http://thegimpparade.blogspot.com
F.R.I.D.A. (Feminist Response In Disability Activism): http://fridanow.blogspot.com

Call for papers on autism

Via FRIDA:

CFP: Special Issue of Disability Studies Quarterly on Autism

Submission deadline: Jan. 1, 2009

Projected publication date: Summer 2010

Co-editors: Emily Thornton Savarese, University of Iowa, and

Ralph James Savarese, Grinnell College

We are looking for completed articles, from a disability studies perspective, on what the medical community refers to as ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). We are especially interested in pieces that engage the so-called “low-functioning” end of the spectrum, where increasingly those presumed retarded and lacking social awareness are writing back to the empire of science. As the field of disability studies has theorized cognitivedifference, it has had to refine its cherished social-constructionist approach, making sure to account for physiological distinctiveness in the organ of sensibility, a distinctiveness that has been interpreted in a myriad of ways, most quite prejudicial. We are interested in the burgeoning neurodiversity movement, which has self-consciously resisted such prejudicial interpretations, often revealing the “science” of autism to beanything but reliable and objective. How to talk about autistic difference? How to represent it? How to convey its gifts and challenges? Who can talk about it? What role should parents play in this representational arena? What role should teachers, doctors, researchers, therapists, media entities, and academics play? What kind of interdisciplinary approaches are needed to understand, respect, and even cherish autism?

We are open to the widest array of progressive approaches and topics. The latter include, but are not limited to issues of:

race/ethnicity
sexuality
self-representation/autobiography
movement and cognition
perceptual acuities
popular cultural representations
internet/blogging
literacy
communication
the arts
treatments, cures, prevention
science/research
eugenics
education/inclusion
disability rights
employment
perseveration, echolalia
independence

Questions or queries may be sent to emsavarese@hotmail.com or savarese@grinnell.edu

Labels: call for papers

My Libertarian Ethics

I am writing this because I realised it would be relevant to several of the posts I am currently planning to write, and it would make it somewhat easier to write them if, instead of explaining basically the same ethical position in each one, I could just link back to this...

Libertarianism is my most basic and fundamental ethical and political principle - it is what underlies pretty much all my other principles. I am an anti-capitalist, a feminist, a believer in the social model of disability (there needs to be a snappy word for that - social-modellist?), etc., because I am a libertarian, and not vice versa.

Unfortunately, the word “libertarianism”, particularly in English-speaking countries, has been grossly distorted in meaning in its commonest usages - hence my need to explain here what it means to me...

“Libertarianism” has seemingly come to mean a sort of amoral, social-Darwinist style of extreme free-market capitalism, based around a belief that “free trade” (something which I actually believe is an oxymoron, at least when using the word “trade” as it is generally used in an economic context) is the only ethically acceptable way to run an economy. However, this isn't the word's original meaning - according to Wikipedia, the term was coined by the French anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacque in a letter to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, although other sources say it was first used by Proudhon himself. At any rate, the original (and still mostly current in Europe) usage of the term as a self-description was by anti-capitalists, and the “default” libertarian position was and is the one which needs a qualifier as “left-libertarian” or “libertarian communist/socialist” in the UK and US.

Libertarianism, as far as I am concerned, means a political philosophy which holds freedom from coercion as its primary value, the value which all other values derive from. Thus, as far as I am concerned, a libertarian must be a feminist, because all of the key feminist issues, as far as I can tell, revolve around women lacking and deserving the freedom to control their own lives and their own bodies, and fighting for liberation from a restrictive system of patriarchal family and relationship structures and gender roles. Similarly, as far as I am concerned, a libertarian must be an anti-capitalist, because capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with liberty - as exchange-value, the most fundamental component of capitalist economics, needs some form of authority to define and regulate it, and the capitalist wage-labour system could not exist without coercion (at least in its negative form of threats, e.g. of poverty for not working). (I will expand on this particular topic in a future post, because it's hugely controversial to say the least, and I think it deserves a post to itself.)

As Wikipedia notes, “Libertarian is an antonym of authoritarian” - i.e., it is not, despite the popular understanding in the English-speaking world, an antonym of “socialist”. In fact, as far as I am concerned, the only true socialist is a libertarian, and the only true libertarian is a socialist (which is a pretty good working definition of an anarchist).

(As an aside here, I have become convinced that the disabled people's liberation movement is quite possibly the one movement which holds the key to unifying libertarianism and socialism in such a way as to resolve some of the apparent contradictions in present left-libertarian thought, because it is quite possibly the only movement which is necessarily both libertarian and socialist. This, however, I also intend to expand on in a future post...)

My libertarian ethic basically boils down to this: no person has the right to forcibly prevent any other person from carrying out any action which harms no person other than the person doing it - or, to use a slightly more elegant phrase, “Do as thou wilt, an it harm none”. (OK, I'm not so into the mysticism... well, OK, sometimes...)

One corollary of this is that, as far as I am concerned, no moral judgement is possible of self-regarding actions - what X does to X is no one's business but X's. Of course, it can be convincingly argued that there is no such thing, in reality, as a wholly “self-regarding” action - but, still, I think that, in most everyday situations, the distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions is fairly robust and fairly obvious.

Going a bit further, when it comes to other-regarding actions, as far as I am concerned, if all parties in any interaction are fully and freely consenting to that interaction, then no ethical wrong has been done. (Sure, there are plenty of things that 2 or more people can do to each other that I find deeply repellent, but squick does not morality make.) Thus, even one person killing another person might not be morally wrong, because there are situations in which people consent to their own deaths - and I support an inalienable right to suicide, despite the fact that I agree that “we shouldn't be offering assistance with suicide until people can get the assistance they need to get up in the morning”. (if anyone can find me the source of that quote, I'd be very grateful...)

It follows that my definition of “harming someone” isn't necessarily the same as the one generally accepted in mainstream society (and certainly not the same as that held by most medical professional types). As far as I am concerned, “harm” is not defined by material damage to a person, but by antithesis to that person's will – a person is harmed by having something happen to them that they don't want to happen. Thus, while performing bottom surgery on a trans person could certainly be considered “harm” by a purely material definition (a lot of pain, a lot of tissue damage, the loss of organs, a lot of energy needed to recover) – and if the person is transitioning from male to female in a patriarchal society, it will probably do social and economic “harm” as well – it's not harming that person, because it's what that person wants – whereas denying them that surgery emphatically is harming them.

Similarly, while I consider myself to be fundamentally anti-violence, my definition of “violence” isn't necessarily the same as the standard one. I define “violence” as the violation of a person's will, the imposition of something unwanted on a person (whether that something is material harm or anything else), or the prevention of that person from having choice or agency in what happens to hir. This means that consensual BDSM, even if it involves typically “violent” acts such as beatings, isn't violent, whereas, for example, forcing someone to live in a “nursing home”, where they are denied agency over things as basic as what and when they eat, if and when they can leave the house, and even when they can go to the toilet most definitely is.

(I have seen libertarians use different definitions of violence - for instance, while this is an awesome article, its use of the phrase “consensual sexual violence” is, IMO, unfortunate, because according to my definition of “violence” it's an oxymoron... however, I think my use of the word is the only consistent libertarian one which can keep the sense of “violence” being an inherently bad thing...)

(I can't consider myself a pacifist, in the strict sense of that word, because I do believe that, sometimes, a particular act of violence is necessary to prevent greater violence, and I also believe in the legitimacy of self-defence. Strangely enough, it was actually the abortion issue which led me to stop defining myself as a pacifist - when I did consider myself a pacifist (while I was still a Christian, but on my way into anarchism), I had to take an anti-abortion viewpoint, because I believed that - at least after a certain stage - a foetus was a person, and killing it was therefore violence against a person. The argument that it only becomes a person at birth didn't really work for me, because I fail to see a meaningful difference between a baby outside the womb and that same baby a few minutes earlier inside the womb. Realising that violence against a person can be necessary to prevent a greater violence (in this case, forcing the mother to go through pregnancy and labour against her will) resolved my feminism versus anti-violence problem for me...)

One question I have to ask myself is whether, and if so how, my libertarian morality has any connection to my autistic neurology. I believe that, in at least an indirect way, it does. The single defining experience of my undiagnosed autistic childhood, if I have to choose one, would be being treated as if my own beliefs and judgements about myself were false, and that others knew my needs and desires better than I did, meaning that it was appropriate to deny me those desires “for my own good”. Of course, I believe that all, or nearly all, children in Western society experience this – but I experienced it with a particular intensity that is very difficult to verbally describe, particularly to non-autistic people, yet, I have noticed, even with my difficulty in describing it easy for those who have similar experiences to understand.

One of the things that is most noticeable about autistic people is that, due to our differences from the norm in sensory perception, we tend to regard relatively small things (e.g. temperature, light levels, texture of food or of clothing) as crucially important, whereas most neurotypical people would regard them as trivial, as “not worth complaining about”, and certainly not as serious rights violations if (for example in the workplace) we don't get them. This, I think, actually extends more widely, to other areas of life. I have lost count of the number of times I have been outraged to the point of utter horror by instances of denial of autonomy that the vast majority of people would regard as either justifiable or trivial enough to be “not worth worrying about”.

One good example is restrictions placed on people in the name of “health and safety”, which the vast majority of people just seem to accept, without questioning, and even to regard as important examples of human rights being defended (usually in the context of a “right to be safe”). (The concept of a “right to be unsafe” seemingly either never occurs, or seems absurd, to them.) Yet, if one of those restrictions or impositions (e.g., having to wear ear plugs or plastic glasses to work in a factory) is something that is completely intolerable to someone because of autistic sensory issues, although that person would be perfectly capable of doing the job if ze didn't have to wear them, then the ridiculousness of such paternalism (an employer being forced, against both hir own interest and that of the worker, to force a worker to wear something that ze not only doesn't want to, but that would also probably vastly increase hir likelihood of having a dangerous accident due to putting hir in a state of sensory overload) becomes all too obvious to that person. (Yes, I have lost jobs over that exact issue.)

(An equivalent for people with physical impairments would probably be not being allowed to use lifts in an emergency such as a fire – something ostensibly for “safety”, but which leaves people unable to use stairs completely unable to get out of the building unaided in such an emergency...)

A very uncomfortable thing about being against such things is that, usually, it puts me in complete opposition to the vast majority of socialists, and even many anarchists, and the only people who are likely to agree with me are Daily Mail-style conservatives who like to rail against “political correctness gone mad” and extreme “right-libertarians”, whose pro-capitalist positions I find as vile as paternalism...

I think autistic people very often feel the desire to be “left alone”, to be allowed to live our lives as we see fit rather than constantly harassed and questioned in “concerned” terms about why we are doing things that seem counter-intuitive to neurotypical people, far more keenly than the desire to be “supported” (in the sense of active intervention). I think this “naturally” does lead to a libertarian mindset, simply from universalising what we want for ourselves into what we want for all people.

However, I'm nervous of such a viewpoint being attributed totally to “the autistic experience”, both because I've also known autistic people with highly authoritarian or paternalistic views on some aspects of life, and because it reduces belief to an inevitable result of neurology, rather than something arrived at by individual choice or reasoning, which in turn could lead to such beliefs being dismissed as “pathological”, which is IMO one of the worst kinds of illibertarianism of all (personally, I don't think that, even if a belief was an inevitable consequence of neurology, that that would make it “pathological” - but that doesn't mean I don't think the danger of such attribution is real)...

Anyway, the main purpose of this post was to set out the basic ethical “framework” that underlies most of my more specific positions on issues. It probably isn't complete, and I'll probably return to the subject at some point in the future. Debate welcome...

Hugely frustrating communication issues, and inadvertently hurting other people.

(This isn't anywhere near as coherent as I want it to be, and a large part of me is certain that posting it will actually exacerbate, rather than clear up, some if not all of the situations it describes. But I'm going to post it as it stands anyway, and maybe edit it later, because I feel a strong need to put it out there...)

I'm really upset and frustrated with this discussion.

This is something that keeps happening to me – I post something in response to something written by someone who (usually) I like and admire, which that person (or someone else) disagrees with part of, or asks me to explain further. I try to explain further, and somehow compound the disagreement, or don't quite express myself clearly enough, with the result that what I said gets misinterpreted, or gets things inferred from it that I didn't intend to imply. I then try to set out my views more clearly, but the compounding of disagreement gets worse, and starts to get interpreted as a personal attack. From then on, my every attempt to correct and clarify – usually with the intention to aim for agreement, since that's nearly always my aim in discussion (and maybe that's something problematic? I dunno) – can only make things worse...

(here and here are other examples, and too many threads on Barbelith, before I gave up posting there, to count...)

The thing that particularly gets me is that, in nearly all of these cases, I really don't want to “attack” or to offend the other person(s) involved – usually, my desire to clarify my views and to get them to, if not agree with them, then at least to see them as reasonable, is so strong because they are people who I like and admire and who have said things that I agree with and find true and inspiring. Unintentionally offending people who I admire is very upsetting for me, and it makes me feel a genuine, heartfelt desire to apologise, to tell them I don't want to make them angry or upset, and that that wasn't my intent.

However, I then get caught in a worse double-bind, because, apparently, it isn't legitimate to apologise to someone for offending them, rather than for what you said - which I also really don't understand. I have always passionately believed that retracting something you have said, if you still believe in it, because you caused offence to someone by saying it, is the height of hypocrisy (which is why it infuriates and disgusts me when politicians do it, as they seem to do all the time, particularly when what they said in the first place was something I agreed with, or that exposed the hypocrisy of other politicians). But I also genuinely feel ashamed and guilty for offending people I like when my intention was not to cause offence - but, then, it seems I am not allowed to attempt to make any kind of reparations for the offence, without retracting what I said - so I really don't know what to say or do when in this kind of situation, especially when it seems not to be the content of what I said, but the "style" of "how" I said it, that has caused the offence (since it is content that I pay attention to, and style, to me, is irrelevant).

In some of these cases, it seems that my writing style is the cause of the offence, as much if not more than the content of my views. This seems to be tied into some concept of "appropriateness" (which is a concept I always struggle with) - that some writing/speaking styles are appropriate for some topics, but not for others, and that this somehow depends on how "personal" the topics are -
which is a completely incomprehensible dividing line for me, as the dichotomy between the "personal" and the "political" (or sociological, or philosophical, or whatever) is one that has never meaningfully existed for me.

Also, it seems that the issues which I feel the most passion about are the issues which I'm most likely to get accused of being offensively “dispassionate” about, and the topics which I have the most personally invested in are the ones on which I'm most likely to be accused of “treating this as if it's just an interesting topic of conversation” - and I really can't work out why this is - although, I'm getting some sort of impression that, for maybe most people, emotional involvement in something and intellectual rigour about it are mutually exclusive (or perhaps that the application of someone else's attempts at intellectual rigour to something that is emotionally important for them is unwelcome) - whereas, for me, the more "personal", the more emotional and directly-relevant-to-me something is, the more I want and need intellectual rigour in thinking about it.

I get the strong feeling that, if I was having some of these conversations face-to-face, I wouldn't get regarded as taking such a “combative” attitude as I do on the internet. Tentatively, I wonder if that might be to do with the size of the “chunks” of conversation in those respective media – in a real-time conversation, people tend to speak in short sentences, with a much quicker back-and-forth rate, whereas on online discussion threads people tend to make longer statements at a time, trying to set out more of a comprehensive position in each one. I don't know if that has something to do with it. I'm fairly sure that, in my case, it can't be the commonly-cited presence or absence of non-verbal in addition to verbal communication, because I basically don't do non-verbal communication in any circumstance, and tend to find online interchanges easier to accurately state my views in as a result of that.

(I also think that I probably come across as more "sure of myself" on the internet than I do in face-to-face conversations, more definitive and authoritative in my views, which might contribute to it. I always thought that was a good thing, but... maybe not...)

This post isn't just to ask “where am I going wrong?” - it's to express my genuine bewilderment at what happens to me in these sorts of interchanges. I am really, utterly clueless as to what I am doing here that seems, repeatedly, to be so offensive – and yet, saying so seems to merely compound the offence. Frankly, this sort of thing makes me want to give up communicating with people altogether (although, of course, I know that that's not what I really want, it's just how hopeless and despairing it makes me feel – that literally whatever I say in an attempt to clear up an accidental offence I've caused to someone by stating my views will inevitably make it worse, but so will saying nothing).

And this, which I sought out in order to try to make some sense of this and see where I am going wrong, actually makes me feel worse, because, according to those rules, with my communication impairments I will *never* be capable of "civil discourse". And I'm not quite sure whether the things that Ballastexistenz talks about in this post (and the other posts that she links to in it) are the reasons why I get this, because that would seem to absolve me of "guilt" for what happens in these kinds of interactions, and I keenly feel that guilt (whether it's rational to or not).

Have any other autistic people encountered this? If so, what tactics have you found to be helpful in dealing with it? I'm really, really not sure if this is an autistic thing, or if tentatively seeing it as an autistic thing is just making excuses for being an asshole (even though I don't want, and am not trying, to be an asshole).

Any responses whatsoever are welcome. I'm not trying to be disingenuous or feign ignorance of anything here. I genuinely am ignorant of whatever social values I'm transgressing. And i know this is going to come across to people as whiny, self-obsessed, passive-agressive and all kinds of other things that i don't intend to be, but always seem to get accused of being (to the extent that i have to conclude that the accusations are accurate, because if everyone other than me thinks that i am something, then the only logical conclusion i can come to is that everyone else is right and i am wrong). But i want to not be those things... which is why i'm, rather pathetically and probably hopelessly, asking for advice...

Autscape presentation: help wanted!

So, as i posted a while ago, i am going to Autscape 2008 at the end of July... and I am doing a "major presentation"!

(Yes, Biodiverse Resistance readers... I do have some readers, don't I? (*awaits response*)... you now get to know the crappy name that I was born with... and if anyone realises that they know me offline, please comment or email me, altho, apart from the couple of people who i know already read this, it's probably unlikely...)

The good thing about this is that I only had to pay £25 instead of £175, because Autscape got funding to pay attendance costs for presenters.

The bad thing about it is that... well, to be honest, i didn't think that my proposal for a presentation had much chance of being accepted, and i was quite surprised that it was... so, now, i have to think of a) the actual content of my presentation and b) how to structure it...

This is going to be the first time that i've ever given or led a presentation at any sort of conference, and also the first time i'm going to have been either a) at an organised event with autism as its primary focus or b) in a majority-autistic environment - which latter fact is, i strongly suspect, going to be a very emotionally "heavy", and possibly a bit overwhelming, experience in itself...

I believe my presentation's going to have an hour slot, with possibly some time afterwards for questions/discussion. (I'd probably quite like it to be mostly discussion, actually - i really don't like the very hierarchical, "lecture-like" sort of conference presentation...)

I'd like to have a handout with some references (most likely online articles) which are relevant to the subject. I'm very probably going to use writings by Amanda Baggs and Cal Montgomery (with their permission, if i can get it), and i'm probably going to use references from this debate, and this piece relating to prejudice against "invisibly" disabled people within the disability movement. But i would really like any other people's suggestions for articles that could be relevant...

Also, i'd just generally like to hear people's (especially autistic bloggers') views and thoughts on the topic. Do you think it's a valid one for discussion? Do you think that "autistic rights" is just naturally a subcategory of "disability rights", and therefore that the autistic rights movemnent is simply one part of a wider disability rights movement, or do you think that they are separate - and, if so, why?

What about the autistic rights advocates who express the view (for example, ABFH's post here) that autism "isn't a disability"?

Do you think that the paradigms of the social model of disability, as generally understood in the disability movement, accommodate autistic people and autistic spectrum impairments, or do you think that they need significant modification to do so? (Yes, i know that sounds like an MA dissertation question...)

For people who are actively involved in the disability rights movement, in the UK or abroad, do you think it's dominated by a particular impairment group, or that disabled people with all types of impairments get reasonably equal representation?

Any general tips on how to give presentations would also be welcome...

Passing, stealth and disability identity

This is a late response to Blogging Against Disablism Day. It’s also a (hopefully not too late) submission for the next Disability Blog Carnival, hosted by Miss Crip Chick, the theme of which is “Disability Identity”. It’s probably not as good a post as it could have been if I had internet access at home at the moment (I’ve been going to internet cafes, cutting and pasting the stuff I've wanted to link to or quote and saving it to a floppy disk, then back home to actually write this… so, sorry if it’s a bit sprawling or disjointed-seeming), but I didn’t want to leave it until too late to submit it for the carnival...

This post was, in part, inspired by Ballastexistenz’s (utterly awesome) post for BADD, “Excuses to be a jerk", which “passing” isn’t the primary subject of, but in which she does say the following about the subject:

In a person who is passing, there is also often tension between who they’re trying to appear to be, and who they are. It can look like the usual angstiness some people go through; after all, most people hide certain aspects of who they are in order to fit in. But passing as non-autistic is a bigger disconnect than pretending to like bands you really hate, or even than pretending to like people you really can’t stand, or to feel feelings different than the ones you know you have.

Passing can mean, in its most extreme forms of disconnect, having no or close to no understanding of most of the words one is using, most of the interactions one is engaging in, etc.

...

Be aware that when the above happens, the disconnect is on the level of a disabled person passing as non-disabled, not a whiny person who just doesn’t realize how much like everyone else they really are. Yes, there are things all humans have in common. No, that doesn’t solve the severity of depression, disconnect, and alienation that autistic people often experience when passing, particularly when the person they’re passing as (or being passed off as by others, since passing can be entirely in other people’s heads, too) understands things they don’t. It’s a lot closer to a deaf person passing for hearing (while entirely missing at least 80% of conversations as a result), or a blind person trying to drive a car without crashing it or letting on that they’re blind, or a person from one culture being thrown into a totally alien culture (where nobody’s ever even heard of one’s own culture) with no preparation and trying to pass as comprehending, than a person with certain abilities trying to pretend they are similar to someone with roughly the same set of abilities but a different personality. Not that that’s easy either, but there’s an order of magnitude or two here that needs to not be missed.

Of course, not all autistic people are in a situation where passing is possible, whether due to their own abilities, the expectations of those around them, or both. And passing has gradations, too. It’s not like there are those who pass and those who don’t pass. It’s more like there are those who pass to different degrees, as different things, and in different situations. Passing can also be wholly unintentional and unnoticed, but I’ll get into that later.

(There is so, so much else in that post that I identify with more strongly and deeply than I could put into words right now, and, in fact, huge sections of it perfectly describe me, but that would be spinning off well outside the subject of this post. Suffice to say that it’s one of the best pieces of writing about autism that I've ever read.)

The first place I encountered the term “passing” was in African-American historical literature (which was one of my perseverations during my teens), referring to light-skinned (but categorised as “black” under the segregationist laws of the time, and also culturally “black”) mixed-race people who passed as white in order to get all the social benefits that that status gave them in an openly racist society and legal system. (The main protagonists of such novels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were very often a young man or woman who passed as white and whose relationship with a white partner turned to tragedy when their “true” ethnicity was revealed.) The place I most often encounter it (and the related notion of “stealth”) now is in the online trans* community (there are very good posts about the subject by many trans* bloggers, including Questioning Transphobia, No Designation, Galling Galla and plenty of others), where there often seems to be a divide between those who do “pass” and those who don’t, with calls for solidarity and attempts to transcend that divide often frustrated.

While it’s not talked about so much, I believe the same is very often true in the disabled community. Nicola at the BBC Ouch blog recently posted about “hierarchies of impairment” and division between different impairment groups; I have often found that one big division, even if not necessarily talked about in those terms, is between those who have “passing privilege” and those who don’t.

One particularly striking example of this is in this article at the Disabled and Proud website (I believe this article has also been published in Ragged Edge magazine, but couldn’t find it there at first look), in which the author describes her experience at an ADAPT conference:

As we waited for the elevator at the San Francisco Muni station the morning of October 21, my friend, Laura, and I could barely contain our excitement. After a long journey from Chicago, we finally made it to San Francisco for our first national ADAPT action. Even though we had both been actively involved in Chicago ADAPT, and in the activities of the National Disabled Students Union, we couldn't wait to experience the "coming home" feeling that many people talk about after attending their first national ADAPT action. It was a typical foggy day in San Francisco, the type of day that makes it very difficult for someone with an immune system disability - like myself - to climb stairs, so Laura and I decided to wait for the elevator. As we were waiting, a voice from behind us said, "You know, you ABs should really take the stairs and leave the elevator for those of us who need and deserve it." After signing this message to Laura, who is Deaf, she and I turned around and found ourselves face to face with a white, middle-aged man in a wheelchair. "We have a new name for you ABs," a young woman in a chair beside him said to us. "We call you Walkie-Talkies." These were the welcoming words that greeted us when we arrived at our first national ADAPT action. Needless to say, the "coming home" experience for us was less than welcoming.

Technically, Laura and I are "walkies." But we are also young women who openly and proudly identify as people with disabilities - young, disabled women who experience disability discrimination in the wider society on a daily basis. When the discrimination comes from within your own community though, it hurts… it hurts really bad. It takes a lot for someone with a non-apparent disability to get to a place where they openly and proudly identify as disabled. The pressures for us to "pass" and deny our disability - and our community - are tremendous. But to finally get to that place of power and pride and then be called an AB or a "walkie-talkie" by someone who you consider to be your sister or brother is devastating.

I wish I could say that this was an isolated instance of ignorance - which is evident in every community, no matter how "progressive" - but I can't. Nor is this a defining characteristic of ADAPT. This "culture of internal exclusion" that we experienced at the national ADAPT action is something that we deal with all the time within the US disability rights movement as people who are not visibly disabled. Take, for example, the time when I shared an experience on the Berkeley disabled mailing listserv about the person who glue a sign to my car windshield that read, "Mentally Handicapped," only to receive the following response from one of my "brothers" with a disability: "Oh no, it's another one of those 'supposed' invisibly disabled people trying to jump on the disability bandwagon again."

The irony of this is that the disability movement (or at least certain sectors of it) has, deliberately or not, in effect constructed in response to wider society's demand for disabled people to pass as non-disabled, a requirement to pass as disabled - which is rather spectacularly missing the point...

(Thankfully, in DAN, the UK's equivalent to ADAPT, I haven't encountered much of the same attitude, and many of its key members have non-physical or non-visually-obvious impairments. I couldn't really guess as to whether there is a UK/US difference overall in this - certainly both the UK and US disability rights movements had their origins primarily in the struggles of people with obvious physical impairments.)

There is a lot of talk about “visible” and “invisible” impairments, which I find somewhat problematic terminology (see for example Cal Montgomery's article "A Hard Look At Invisible Disability", which puts it better than i could), but still often find myself using; also a popular phrase in the UK seems to be “hidden disability”, which I think is also a bit problematic (although I sometimes describe my own impairment as “hidden, but not very well hidden” ;) ). The trouble with the terms “invisible” and “hidden”, IMO, is that they suggest that the impairments in question are not noticeable at all, whereas the reality usually is that they might not be noticed or recognised by most people, but, by definition, an impairment is noticeable in the area that a person is impaired in (I have difficulty seeing how it could meaningfully be an impairment otherwise). (There's also the risk of confusion between "visibly impaired"/"visible impairment" and "visually impaired"/"visual impairment".) Therefore, I think that the terminology of "passing", as originated in the context of racial segregation in the US and South Africa, and repurposed and elaborated by the queer and trans* movements, is a more useful set of terms in which to talk about the issue...

The problem with “passing” and “stealth”, when it comes to liberation movements, is that it’s essentially an individualistic way of seeking one’s own safety, freedom or place in society by moving out of an oppressed or marginalized group, which inevitably compromises one’s ability to fight for the rights of that whole group. It also implicitly upholds the idea that that group does not deserve equal rights, by saying “the best way to get equal rights is to appear not to be a member of a minority” – rather than demanding equal rights without compromise. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that every person who uses “stealth” is working against the liberation of their minority group, or that they, as individuals, are to blame – it can be very legitimately motivated by personal safety, or the person may genuinely be trying to live as if disability, or gender identity, or whatever, didn’t matter – there is a good discussion in the comments here and here about stealth and trans* identity.)

The awkward thing about passing, when you do have a radical commitment to a minority group as a political identity, is it can actually be counterproductive personally, and that it can be very difficult to explain why you don't actually want to. (I remember posting about this over a year ago at the BBC Ouch message board, and encountering incredulity from several "non-passing" disabled people that I could envy the visibility of their impairments.) I have had responses from disabled people in the street to whom I have tried to hand out leaflets about disability rights campaigns that suggested they viewed me, as someone not obviously disabled at first glance, as a non-disabled "do-gooder" handing out propaganda for some charity or "cure"/"healing"-oriented organisation. (As an attempt to counter that, I have attempted to appear "more disabled" by trying to exaggerate my subtler autistic traits (including many of the things talked about in Ballastexistenz's post) to a level of fairly-obvious visibility, but then felt like a "pretender" or "fraud" for doing so.)

(This also serves to highlight the same problem from the other side - the disabled people to whom I hand leaflets about organisations of disabled people are those who I can tell are disabled, and in fact I have fairly often considered giving a leaflet to someone who looked possibly disabled, due to subtler factors such as slightly unusual movement or facial expressions, then decided against it because of the possible embarrassment of getting the response "but I'm not disabled", possibly accompanied by righteous indignation at having been perceived as such. I don't quite know how to outreach to disabled people who are not visibly impaired...)

This is one of those situations where I can recognise that it's problematic, but not really think of any solutions. Obviously there are things I could do, such as wear an item of clothing with a slogan like "Disabled and Proud", or something autism-related, on it, but that's not always practical, and, in any case, would probably still result in people responding by refusing to believe that I am disabled, or even just not connecting the slogan directly to me (after all, people wear T-shirts with all kinds of things written on them that don't actually describe themselves - even in the political sphere, you can, for instance, wear a "Free Tibet" or "Free Palestine" T-shirt without being Tibetan or Palestinian). I could attempt to cultivate a "more obviously autistic" style of moving, dressing or speaking, but that would seem just as "fake" and counterproductive as trying to move, dress or speak more like a neurotypical person, and just as against the entire goal of both the neurodiversity movement and the social model of disability - disabled people (and non-disabled people, for that matter), being accepted as the people they/we are, and society changing to fit us, rather than the other way round.

I do kind of think that people involved in disability activism, particularly in membership organisations of disabled people such as CILs, whose impairments are not obvious do have some sort of responsibility to declare those impairments, though I'm not sure exactly how far that responsibility goes (how much detail is acceptable, for instance) - which, to some extent, arguably goes against the social model principle that impairment isn't what matters in defining disability. I think, however, that this (and the "don't talk about impairment" attitude it engenders, in which for instance it's almost taboo to ask someone what their impairment is, being automatically seen as "medical model") is one of the weaknesses of the most simplistic form of the social model, and that "bringing impairment back in" to the social model is necessary - I've touched on this before here (near the bottom of the post), and am planning to return to it in more detail, but the work of feminist disability theorists such as Jenny Morris is, IMO, vital here. The taboo against talking about impairment has led, in some cases in the UK, to non-disabled people infiltrating and taking over disabled people's organisations by claiming to be disabled without disclosing an impairment.

On the other hand, this definitely needs to be approached with caution, as it could easily lead to the kind of hierarchy-impairment situation Nicola describes, in which "invisibly" impaired, but not "visibly" impaired, people have the onus placed on them to justify that they have a "real" disability. (Not to mention that, in a fully social model world, IMO there actually wouldn't be any real dividing line between an impaired and a non-impaired person...)

There are undoubtedly privileges associated with being able to pass as non-disabled (and these are proportional to the extent to which one can pass, as passing isn't a binary state) - and, when having or not having those privileges can have serious, even critical, effects on one's life chances, I don't think it's reasonable to insist that people who have access to them outright reject those privileges. It gets even more difficult when the passing is unintentional, as opposed to deliberate "stealth" - and, of course, there are all sorts of blurry areas between the two. Where is the line between simply not disclosing an impairment because it isn't relevant (for example, on a job application form where the impairment doesn't directly affect any of the tasks in the job), and deliberately deceiving people? (People have been dismissed over this issue.)

The thing is, passing is never complete - if a person could completely pass as non-disabled in every aspect of life, then they wouldn't be disabled. And not only do those who pass in some situations nearly always not pass in other situations, the same person can pass one day, but not the next day, in the same situation, because there is fluctuation in nearly all impairments, even most of those generally perceived as "stable" (Ballastexistenz explains this better and in more detail, too). To quote the title of one trans* activist's blog, "Nobody Passes, Darling". And I haven't even touched on the issue of undiagnosed impairments - with which people can, as I was for the majority of my life, be passing, or even not passing, without having any idea that they are doing so whatsoever.

In a truly liberated world, no one would need to “pass”, because there would be nothing to “pass” as – there would be no privileged group or class that it would benefit anyone to appear to be a member of. Therefore the concept of “stealth” would be irrelevant, because how much a person would choose to disclose about hirself in any area of life would be a free, individual choice. However, I don’t even really know exactly what that world would look like, let alone if there’s much chance of achieving it…

Edit for more relevant links: Trinity has also posted about “passing” for this carnival here, and Tera of Sweet Perdition posted about the problem with the “visible”/”invisible” dichotomy for a recent carnival here…

(I'll post links to the several other awesome blog carnivals I've read recently, when I can get online for long enough to find them all again...)

26

Today... as of about half an hour ago... is the 26th of April, 2008. I was born on the 26th of April, 1982. (The circumstances of my birth were somewhat odd, like most things about me... my mum didn't know she was pregnant with me (despite being as thin as me, which is very thin) until about a month before I was born, which was over a month prematurely - I was born on the day before the day she was due to have her first antenatal class. She didn't think there was a possibility of her being pregnant because a doctor had told her she was infertile (doh). And they had to use forceps to get me out, which i can't help wondering might have been a contributory factor to the autism (although there are clear traits in both sides of the family... but, AFAIK, no one before me with enough or disabling enough traits to merit a diagnosis), as well as to my somewhat small and narrowly proportioned head. And, y'know, the possible links between premature or otherwise unusual births and autism are an area that, AFAIK, hasn't been seriously explored...)

Anyway, this is the only time in my life that my age yesterday was the same as the day of the month yesterday, and my age today is the same as the day of the month today. Which feels like it should have some significance, but i'm not quite sure what.

A year ago, i felt like there should have been some meaningful significance to the quarter-of-a-century figure, 25... some extra layer of "adulthood", or something. Now it just feels depressing that i am now clearly, unequivocally past that figure, and yet no more, in any meaningful sense, of an "adult" than before. Most of the time i still feel like i am in my early teens, and i still catch myself seeing groups of teenagers in the street and thinking of them as "about my age"... then realising i am divided from them by 10 years or more of basically-having-achieved-nothing... at least, in the part of my brain that ranks "maturity" by some kind of "normal" (or should that be "normative"?) progression through life - qualities like confidence, charisma, "life experience", and that undefinable thing called "authority" (not in the political sense, which as an anarchist i know i don't believe in, but in the most basic sense of being worthy of being listened to, deferred to at least in matters primarily concerning one's own life, and given "respect"), which it is expected for people to develop in those years of life, and yet which i am painfully aware that i don't have.

I am 26 and I have probably less relationship experience than the average 16 year old - and the single, desperately passionate and intense yet, in retrospect, shamefully awkward and inept sexual relationship I have had lasted 3 months, and was over 5 years ago - which is 5 years of nothing whatsoever to show for myself, of slowly but inexorably approaching the point of "accepting" that i will never find any kind of relationship, nor be found attractive by anyone, other than that one, never to be repeated fluke.

And yet... while this reads like a highly depressing post (possibly because I am slightly drunk), I am feeling some hope that the next year might be one in which i can make somthing of my life. There are really exciting projects happening which i am a part of - in fact, which several of the other people involved seem to think I am the primary, central person in (which is pretty scary in itself, since i'm really, really not sure at all that that's true). And i am in the middle of moving house, which, while a highly stressful and exhausting experience (not least because of cutting me off from the internet for an uncertain period of time), is getting me out of a situation which i really, really needed to get out of, and putting me into one which, while almost certainly not what i want from life in the long long term, is at least one in which i can (perhaps) have the space to begin to sort out some of the key questions - who and what i really am, what i can contribute to life without losing too much in exchange for it, how much interaction with other people i can "safely" cope with, and if there really is a long term purpose to my life.

(Yes, there are a lot of other stresses, worries and disappointments in my life right now, including a few that have happened in the last few days - such as losing the opportunity to earn £150 in an hour's work by accessibility-testing a website because my computer broke down (I am now posting from the new one which I have been given, currently at my brother's house, but hopefully soon to be installed in my new flat) - which could have enabled me for definite to go to Autscape - however, i also recieved an email today saying that the Autscape organisers want me to run the workshop i proposed to them, with some alterations - which would involve me faclitating a panel discussion, something i have never done before, as well as doing a lot of research into the subject it's about (the relationship between the autistic rights/advocacy movement and the wider disaility movement)... but is pretty cool, if a bit scary... and some other things... but, despite feeling highly overwhelmed overall, i'm still feeling like the positive at least has a good chance of outweighing the negative... and i have stuff to say about the seasons of the year, and just how tied into them my emotions are, but that's for another post...)

Some very valued friends have also recently proven that they genuinely do care about me, and while i could do with a bit more of that, it's enough to give me at least a stick, if not much more of a weapon, to try to fight off the part of me that says "no one could possibly really care about you, and anyone who says they do is clearly just pretending, either out of politeness or some purpose of their own to either explout or make fun out of me"... which, i think, will always be there, to a greater or lesser extent, but, well, at least now has some challengers.

So, to all the real friends i have (not wanting to list, because i feel like that would devalue the individual nature of each friendship - if you are reading this, you know who you are) - i just want to say - you are gorgeous and wonderful, and i love you.

Anyway... this is not the post i intended to write when i started writing it, but it's... something. And i will probably regret posting this in the morning, but... whatever. Somehow or other - certainly not by deliberate design - I have managed to stay alive for 26 years. I will leave it to those, if there are any, who my life affects to judge if that is worth celebrating.

Autscape

Autscape is a three day conference organised by and for autistic people. There are workshops, leisure activities, social opportunities, and more, all specifically oriented to the needs and preferences of autistic people.

I really, really want to go to this conference. Just about everything about it looks utterly awesome. I really don't know if i will be able to afford £155 (which is the lowest rate, for people on state benefits or similar low incomes), tho...

I almost can't imagine what it would be like to be in an environment in which almost everyone is autistic. While i have met quite a lot of people on the spectrum in my life, and sort-of-know a few other autistic disability activists in the UK (one of whom is apparently one of the people behind this), and of course i "know" lots of autistic people online through blogs and forums, i don't in fact really know (at least not to actually regularly talk to or spend time with) any other autistic people in "real life", and it's a definite hole in my life.

(One of my closest friends, who might possibly also be going to Autscape, and who actually now works for the National Autistic Society, has some autistic/AS-like traits, but probably not enough for an actual diagnosis... although enough for her to "get" me in ways that nearly all neurotypical people don't - i suppose perhaps she fits into that "shadow syndrome" kind of category... or a "Half-Aspie" as i kind of jokingly call her, as her dad was, while undiagnosed, almost certainly an Aspie, but her mum seems to be pretty neurotypical... but she's still far, far more able to fit into the neurotypical world than i am, and i would really love to become closer friends with some other actually, unambiguously autistic people... the majority of the rest of my close friends have physical impairments, but i don't really know how coincidental or otherwise that is - while i definitely seek out disabled people, i don't think i particularly seek out those with physical impairments over those with mental...)

The deadline for submitting proposals for workshops or presentations is the 11th of April, which is this coming Friday... which is really annoying, because i would really love to propose one on the relationship between the (impairment-specific) autism rights movement and the wider (cross-impairment) disability rights movement... but i've got no chance of putting together a proposal by Friday, and in any case i don't know if i'd have the confidence, even in a primarily autistic environment (and i don't even know whether that would increase or decrease my confidence) to do a workshop/presentation myself... plus i'd probably want it to be something like a panel discussion type thing, which would involve others being involved in it as a collaboration... still, they have an email address and a discussion list for "if you are not interested in doing a presentation yourself, but have ideas for workshop or discussion topics", so i might email them...

I don't know whether to go to Autscape would be some sort of massive, emotional "homecoming" experience, or whether in a mostly-autistic environment i would have less communication/understanding problems than in a mostly-neurotypical one, or whether in fact they would remain the same... still, i'm quite unreasonably excited by how awesome, for example, the coloured badges idea is*, and the whole idea of spending a weekend somewhere where i'm the majority neurological type... while i'm not that into impairment-specific identity (i prefer to identify across impairment boundaries in solidarity with all disabled people), i think i still do have that attraction to the idea of being among "my kind", problematic as that concept is...

* I have a really vague idea that this might actually be an adaptation of something that originated from the gay club scene, and had to do with sexual availability... but i'm not sure... i think i remember an event held at my uni for something like HIV awareness called the "Traffic Light Ball" that was based on this idea... anyway, wherever it comes from, it's IMO a brilliant idea, and perfectly repurposed if it was repurposed...

The theme of "Inertia and Action" is one that is particularly appropriate for me right now as well, being all too familiar with the kind of inertia problems that Amanda (of Ballastexistenz) describes one type of very well here, but also believing passionately in the need for action (in all senses of the word!) for disability rights and liberation, as well as all other forms of radical social change...

Would be really interested to hear from anyone who went to Autscape last or a previous year, and what kind of experience they had...

Changelings

Ettina at Abnormaldiversity recently posted a link to an archive of changeling stories, including British, German and Scandinavian folk stories. The accompanying essay, by retired academic D.L. Ashliman, makes it clear that the changeling legends derive directly from the reality of disabled children:

We all want explanations for happenings that fall outside of our control, especially those that have a direct bearing on our welfare. It is only natural that our forebears wanted to know why some children fail to develop normally, and what our responsibilities are toward these handicapped individuals. The two stories quoted above are part of a vast network of legends and superstitions that give primitive but satisfying answers to these questions. These accounts -- which, unlike most fantasy tales, were actually widely believed -- suggest that a physically or mentally abnormal child is very likely not the human parents' offspring at all, but rather a changeling -- a creature begotten by some supernatural being and then secretly exchanged for the rightful child.

I've been interested in these and similar legends for a long time, partly because of my general interest in the weird, obscure or unexplained, and partly because of the disability connection; I think the first place I encountered the concept of "changelings" was in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", which I studied at school when I was about 14. The original form of the changeling legend seems to be that of fairies, trolls or similar supernatural beings abducting a human child and replacing it with an "impostor" (which might be a fairy/troll child, a child-sized adult fairy, or an inanimate object enchanted to look like a child); these are obviously pre-Christian legends. In more strongly Christianised countries, particularly Germany, the fairies/trolls were often replaced by Satan or demons, and the alternative story of a woman being impregnated by a demon often introduced (which links the mythos to the sort of witch-persecution stuff discussed by Thomas Szasz in The Manufacture of Madness... posts on this book will be forthcoming, at some point). In some of the Celtic stories there is an attempt to reconcile the Christian and non-Christian aspects with the idea of Faerie owing a debt to Hell, which it had