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vals and blogarounds politics social model saying yes april 26 2012 written by anthea leave a comment someone posted a link to jonathan mitchell neurodiversity just say no to facebook my attempted reply was getting more than a little our of hand so i decided a blog post was in order it would be fair to say the title s a hint that i don t agree with much about this article at the same time though i do think it s reacting to a trend that is somewhat problematic justifying ourselves by pointing to either the advantages of autism or people with autism who have done amazing things this leaves out a lot of our experiences and many of us entirely after a description of neurodiversity i would describe as fair by incomplete he talks about examples of people or behaviours who he says the social model of disability fails to appropriately accommodate is it morally justifiable to force a woman to have sex with me and other socially starved autistics is discrimination the same as sexual disinterest these are issues that neurodiversity can t seem to reconcile i also have problems applying myself and staying on task which has made it difficult for me to do many things i wanted to do like learn computer programming and about computers and do more writing and do requisite research for certain types of writing it has also given me perceptual motor impairments and bad handwriting impairments what do these things have to do with societal accommodations what about severely autistic people who can t talk and bang their heads against walls how will societal change stop these behaviors there seems to be a common misconception of the social model of disability that it says that if people are nicer and don t discriminate directly and make buildings more accessable for those with mobility impairments then people with impairments won t have any difficulty with things that have caused them problems in the past like mitchell i struggle with handwriting it s slow and painful these days it s not such a problem i have a netbook and other computers my workplace is quite happy for me to use them and when i had exams in the past couple of years i was able to take them using a computer in the past it s been significantly disabling for me a society that accommodates me wouldn t mean i could magically handwrite with no problems it would mean that i always had access to appropriate tools such as a netbook irrespective of my financial status and had done from a young age it would mean that no future employer would make me write by hand or judge me because of my inability to do so it would mean that people wouldn t consider a typed letter to show less love than a handwritten one the same with those who are non verbal they wouldn t magically start speaking but they would have access to appropriate communication aids and a society that accommodates multiple methods of communication mitchell does broach this but i think he fails to take into account that such a society with invest much more in technological development of better aids nor that a society which places excessive weight on verbal communication judges such aids by verbal standards rather than on their own merits they would still have the impairment but they would not be disabled by society i really don t know enough about headbanging to talk in detail about that but as appropriate less stressful environments effective substitutions or ways of engaging in it safely understanding and lack of judgement could be appropriate accommodations mitchell doesn t go into enough detail about his difficulties with learning to talk about that either but things ranging from medication to help concentration ah another misnomer that us neurodiversity types are all anti that we re not to an appropriate physical environment to study arranged in blocks of appropriate length would all be ideas i m going to come back to the relationships side because i think that merits its own post i m not claiming i ve solved these but i do believe that a society where the presence of any of these impairments is not disabling is possible mitchell goes on to talk about claiming figures like einstein and thomas jefferson and isaac newton as autistic i have a lot of sympathy for his reaction to this not because i necessarily agree with his undiagnosis of them i honestly haven t studied any of them enough to say either way though there are some greats i m convinced were but i think we talk about figures like these too much and it s to our detriment it s understandable why of course we re told we can t achieve anything and then to learn that people like this may have been autistic is a huge boost to the self confidence i believe in reclaiming historical figures because we re so often written out of history however our claim to respect as human beings should not rely on us going great things much less that people like us did great things placing excessive weight on these claims excludes the vast majority of us who will never come anywhere close but more importantly it weakens the heart of the argument which our claim to be free of oppression irrespective of what we accomplish mitchell again one young angry autistic female even goes as far as claiming that persons desiring a cure for autism are responsible for the murder of katie mccarron a 3 year old autistic girl who was brutally murdered by her mother when her mother could not deal with her autism and other autistic toddlers who were senselessly murdered by their parents i find his young angry autistic female to be quite problematic and offensive but that aside i don t know specifically what she said there is a huge difference however between individual wanting a cure and a current in society that views us as problems to be cured maybe she said the latter maybe she said that individuals wanting a cure are responsible if so that was not something i d agree with but it s not a majority view and people often say thingswhen they re sick of people like them being murdered mitchell goes on to talk about those expressing support for neurodiversity i also notice that many of them were not diagnosed until they were adults some have married and some have kids with one exception none of them have to the best of my knowledge ever been in a special education setting as i have the one exception is someone who was able to talk as a child and then allegedly lost her speech as an adult some persons on another web site have even accused this person of being a fraud well we obviously read different blogs and communicate with different people i ve read work by several who were in special education some who are non verbal others who have not had but want a romantic relationship or a job for someone wanting to emphasise the difficulties people have the disability angle mitchell ignores that achieving superficial goals and having real severe difficulties in life are not mutually exclusive and some would say that he having worked in skilled employment was part of a particular so called high functioning subset himself that said i do think we need to include those who are autistic in a wider range of ways more another thing that comes to my attention is that a disproportinate number of them are females it seems as many or more females than males are claiming to be autistics with a neurodiverse inclination this is in spite of the fact that the literature on autism has consistently shown the condition to have a 4 to 1 ratio of males to females the ratio may be as high as 10 to 1 in the higher functioning groups according to some studies a cliched argument among allegedly autistic neurodiverse females is that autism is underdiagnosed in females females are not as aggressive they are more inclined to be social than boys and can pass more easily so they are not as often diagnosed i find mitchells questioning of other people s identities here and later to be really offensive seriously don t do that shit i also think he oversimplifies some of the discussed reasons for underdiagnosis of women but i think there s something else going on at feminist events i ve been to there s usually a much higher percentage of queer women than in the general population for a number of reasons i d guess but partly because they ve thought more about gender and about their identity they ve on average had more experience of oppression and feel the need to stand up against it also a lot of traditional environments such as workplaces neuroatypical men have associated have often been less open to women particularly those in their fifties and above which is i think where a number are concentrated they have more need for the neurodiversity movement to reach other people like them when it comes down to it though whether individuals want or would take a cure isn t a big concern of mine they re entitled to make that decision should it ever become available based on their own lives and experiences i m not fighting that i m looking to a world where no one needs to look for a cure because barriers are placed in the way of their participation of society a world where we all feel at home category politics tagged with accommodations autism cure gender neurodiversity politics social model environmental causes and triggers april 18 2012 written by anthea leave a comment for those who can t watch it the video above is a song listing some of the things infamous british newspaper the daily mail claims cause cancer age air alcohol aspirin calcium ham honey eggs dogs dieting and soup being a woman being a man bubble bath food from cans being black wearing bras left handedness speedy cars oestrogen climate change baby food the menopause beef beer pizza pork cereal and worcester sauce childlessness children vitamins bacon chocolate retirement deodorant and facebook unsurprisingly i think of this every time there s a discussion around what causes autism and i ve been having a few of those discussions in various forums so i m going to try and consolidate some of my thoughts into a blog post first i don t consider the cause that important i can think of a few possible reasons for wanting to know the cause development of a cure early diagnosis and therefore access to support services to make a political point to stop the spread of misinformation or for pure interest value well i don t believe a cure is possible and wouldn t believe it if i did the early diagnosis has some currency but the age of diagnosis is much younger than it was and seems to have achieved that by better awareness to reduce prejudice reminds me of the people in the queer community who insist sexual orientation is ingrained because as soon as people realise it s not a choice or damage by environmental factors homophobia will end because once people realised that skin colour was genetic racism disappeared the argument goes stopping the spread of misinformation is admirable but the vaccine link has been disproven no i don t want a discussion about this and that doesn t seem to have stopped that one being trotted out at every opportunity and yes i am interested in the subject but not half as much as i am in other aspects so there s pretty limited reason for all this research into a possible environmental cause as far as i m concerned on the flip side this constant looking for causes does a fuckload of harm harm that goes beyond simply those causes being wrong or that it diverts attention from other areas i find it quite worrying that so much of this plays into food moralism and that given the risk of negative reactions to food pickiness resulting from sensory issues leading to eating disorders children are being further restricted by being placed on gfcf diets irrespective of whether or not they show actual signs of intolerence simply because they re autistic but the harm is far more fundamental than that at the heart of it any attempts to search for a cause irrespective of the nature of it are a pathologisation of autism rather than looking at why some people are autistic and some are neurotypical looking for a cause presents autism as something a person has or lacks an addition to or deficiency in a standard person who is by definition neurotypical it s like how the body we generally consider male is considered standard and a female body is a male body without the genitalia and the genitalia that women s body has ignored our lives would be easier if the dominant view was more that some people are as and some are nt the latter are the majority and better accommodated in the world but no more standard second to the discussion about causes is the one about triggers about environmental aspects which make our autism better or worse i m not talking about things like sensory overload but things like food or medicine that accentuates autistic aspects or a person i d dispute the idea of making autism better or worse people are autistic and they have different abilities and are disabled in different ways it doesn t make them more or less autistic still i understand the point being made here there are foods i have limited tolerance for large amounts of one send my anxiety through the roof and my own limited reading indicated this is likely to be related to my being autistic would research into this be helpful quite possibly but as long as we view autism as a separate _thing_ autistic people are excluded from much research into for example anxiety because they have an additional condition that would complicate the results i know i m going to have to keep saying this for the rest of my life but i wish all those people who were so keen to unlock the mystery and find a cause or cure or whatever else would show a little more consideration for what they actually can do to make things more accessible things like turning music down explaing a process beforehand turning up at an agreed time without the stress of those we d have more resources to speak for ourselves as well category medical scientific politics tagged with autism causes pathologisation autistic april 14 2012 written by anthea leave a comment technically my diagnosis is autism spectrum disorder asperger s syndrome as well as related anxiety and dyspraxia when it was confirmed the asperger s syndrome part took some processing but i was reasonably comfortable with it describing myself as autistic though was another matter it wasn t that i believed the negative stereotypes at least not rationally i d been reading blogs such as ballastexistenz journeys with autism and more recently autistic hoya all of which prominently use the words autism autistic all written by intelligent articulate women who if i someday manage to write like i d be bloody proud and it wasn t even that i believed that mattered i hate the idea that people need to prove themselves in some way for me to say i m one of you this is our fight i m not into leaving behind people who don t meet some arbitary standard of making intelligence prettiness friendliness or whatever some prerequisite for ...