Baltimore McDonald's Beating

I need to vent. As many of you may be aware another trans woman was brutally beaten while employees and other patrons stood around watching and laughing. One of the employees filmed the incident and posted it to youtube, apparently "for the lulz."

I read the Bilerico story on the topic. I read some of the comments.

I want to say this: I am sick and tired of people excusing the filming of this horrific beating under the pretense that the employee filmed the incidence due to some philanthropic desire to aid a police investigation.

Can I remind people of one fact here?

MCDONALD'S HAS SECURITY CAMERAS!!!

I'm a Level 32 Autistic

So, I was taking Simon Barron-Cohen's Autism Quotient test for giggles and a mischievous thought crossed my extreme-male brain in response to this question:

When I was young, I used to enjoy playing games involving pretending with other children.

Something tells me this guy's never heard of Dungeons and Dragons...

Also:

I find it very easy to play games with children that involve pretending.

I suck at this. My elf got killed by a kobold.

(I scored 32, by the way)

Money

Here's a thought: The people who tell us that disabled children should not be educated because we are not worth educating seem to be the same people who tell us that disabled people are freeloaders who leech off of social services. Did anyone stop to consider that perhaps if we were given proper educations fewer of us would be dependent on the government doll to survive?

A penny wise and a pound foolish.

I Took a Shower

I feel so much better. Last night I took what must have been my first shower in two weeks. It feels so nice to be clean again. Mom said I didn't look dirty but I felt dirty. I'd been so overwhelmed with work and the stress of all the work that it was becoming so difficult to keep my needs and tasks in line so that they got done. I was just able to keep focus of one or two huge looming projects in my head and if it wasn't for friends practically leading me with reigns through my other academic obligations I would be in so much trouble right now.

As it is, my personal life is still in shambles and it's going to take all week to get it back into some semblance of functionality. At least I'm clean now and it sounds really, really silly but being clean after these last couple weeks is really an accomplishment. I feel that must sound awfully silly and probably hyperbolic, especially to people who know me personally as I put such a good face on things, but I really mean it. I managed to wrap my head around what needed to be done enough to manage the sundries of personal hygiene and that can be a real accomplishment sometimes.

Next up: reequilibrating my medication regimen.

I'm getting to the point where I have to admit I need living support. I don't need a nurse but I need to live with someone else who is able to manage some of the things which I have difficulty managing on my own. It's not even that much that I need and I wonder if they would even consider it significant at all but I feel it would make a huge difference in my quality of life. Little things create accessible space.

P.S.: So, if you were wondering why my blog sometimes goes weeks without being updated...

Supportive Bigotry

I'm often fascinated by bigoted statements which show through when we make statements in support of certain groups of marginalized people. Take, for example, this web-comic (Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell).

In it two of the characters, Patrick and Skittles, and playing Grand Theft Auto. Patrick runs over a lady and Skittles gets incensed and demands to know why he had done this. Paraphrased:

Supposedly Biggoted Comment: I ran over her because she's a prostitute and running over sex workers is okay.

Supposedly Tolerant Comment: That was wrong because she might have been supporting a family and you have hurt her family.

Of course, what I took away from it was that the crime committed wasn't the violence against the sex worker but the harm that it could have caused her potential family. Had it just been the prostitute everything would have been peachy.

That's a pretty messed up message.

Of course, this doesn't mean in any way that either author of this strip is bigoted towards sex workers. But that's the point, isn't it? It's not about their bigotry so much as it is about an entire system that allows these messages to be considered so normal as to, well, be normal.

Burger King and Treating Symptoms

I was pretty hungry yesterday when I got out of lab. I knew I didn't really have anything to eat at home and I had very little money in my pocket so I got on my usual bus and hopped off next to the neighborhood Burger King to get something to fill my stomach. I walked up and opened the door, where I was confronted by a solid wall of little green paper shamrocks. They were part of a donation drive for Jerry Lewis's Muscular Dystrophy Association, also known as "Jerry's Kids."

Now, I can't support an organization which actively and intentionally plays upon and reinforces the most base and dehumanizing tactics with regards to people with disabilities in order to raise money to... well, let's face it but trying to create a world where people with disabilities don't exist is hardly the most progressive of goals. It's harmful for disabled people everywhere and it's hardly something which I could ever support.

I considered boycotting Burger King until their campaign is over and, in fact, this is something which I will be doing. However, when I think about it it's not really going to make a difference. There's a whole wall of reasons why this could never work. All those people who supported the MDA far outweigh the number of us who feel hurt by their campaign. It's not a numbers game we can win.

We're a minority.

The shamrocks on the wall are a symptom. We could rally against them, try to stop them. We certainly shouldn't give our support. Yet, we are a minority and alone we are, as we have been, ignorable. We can not muscle change.

We need respect so that when we are grieved others will listen because it is the right thing to do.

Some day we'll get there.

Deserving of Care

I'd just like to apologize for not posting much recently. I've been thoroughly overwhelmed between my actual work responsibilities and my obsessive brains being stuck in a rut. I'm going to really make a point of posting something at least every few days but in the mean time I want to say thank you to all the people who seem to be sticking around anyway: You guys are awesome!

I've been thinking a lot about institutional accommodations and how we treat disability in the bureaucracy. It seems like there are a lot of needless roadblocks placed in the way of people with disabilities when we seek accommodations, even when said accommodations wouldn't be "unfair to everyone else" if an "everyone else" went and tried to procure them. It didn't make a lot of sense. Why would someone limit access to an accommodation unless someone who needs it is able to prove that they need it?

Then I realized that that's not what they're doing at all. They're not concerned at all whether or not you actually need it. They're not gatekeeping based on need. They're gatekeeping based on what they perceive as merit. Merit is not need.

Need is not enough. You need to "deserve" it, even when the accommodation is not a finite resource.

Pretty messed up, isn't it?

~~

The same can be said about trans issues, as well. I was born and assigned male at birth. Yet, I need to be able to live honestly and be able to present myself as the woman I am and have that presentation respected by those around me. Scratch that: I need to to accepted as female, full stop. It doesn't matter why, I just do. I need it.

I could be a flaming man-in-a-dress for all anyone cares but I need to be able to have my expression respected. I need it. When it matters why it no longer becomes a question of need. It becomes a question of merit.

... and that's wrong.

What is Autism?

This essay was written in order to provide some context, the theoretical framework, behind my previous essay: This Belongs to Us. I encourage that you re-read my previous essay after reading this one and that if you have any questions to leave them in the comments.

What is autism?

Perhaps we could describe what autism is like. Perhaps autism lies in the atypical way in which autistic people tend to interface with their social environment. Perhaps autism lies in an atypical sensory experience. Perhaps the heart of autism lies in atypical interests or focus. Perhaps it is executive dysfunction. Perhaps it lies in motor abnormalities like stimming.

These things describe autism. They do not define it.

What is autism?

Autism is something that all autistics have and that which differentiates autistic people from neurotypical people. The concept of autism did not create this group of people we call autistics. Science was faced with autistic people and science created the concept of 'autism' to define us. From this community the nature of autism--the nature of how autistic people are different from neurotypical people--could then be observed and elaborated on.

Autism is nothing more than a concept to describe autistic people. Autistic people define autism, not vise versa.

~~

Why is this important? It is important because it begs the question as to who is autistic and why. What makes an autistic person autistic? To answer this question we have been conditioned to look towards science--towards what science has been able to divine about our nature--in order to define who we are. To describe someone as autistic we must be able to look past the abstraction to truly describe who they are. To this I propose:

I, and everyone else who is autistic, are autistic because we are like other autistic people, not because we fulfill a checklist that attempts to describe us.

This Belongs to Us

I want to tell you a secret. I have been accused of being neurotypical or "not that autistic" so many times that it could make my head spin. I have been told this by friends or teachers or any number of other people in my life. I have even been told that I could not be autistic by doctors and even once by a psychologist. I have never been accused of being neurotypical by an autistic person.

Not once.

Autism is a community. Sometimes those who hold the keys to this community are those who have power over us. They are the doctors, the parents, the friends who say to us that we do not belong. Even while we may struggle to be like them we have no right to be ourselves. This is what they tell us.

Yet, be it through ignorance or simple naiveté, they are wrong.

They are wrong because they do not know where to look. They do not see what we see when we see each other. They can not recognize themselves in ourselves. When we see each other and recognize each other in each other we form a family -- a community. It is this shared experience, the experience which we are able to share that defines us. If ever autism could be given form it would be this: our shared experience of what makes us different.

It is ours.

Nobody may take it away from us.

Cis Privilege Checklist: Clothes

On request of Amanda Forest Vivian over at I'm Somewhere Else, who did a very good checklist of neurotypical privilege with regards to clothes, I will do the same with regards to cisgender privilege.

1. If I am female, I don't have to worry about being accused of trying too hard to appear feminine and having this call into question my legitimate gender identity. However masculine or feminine I choose to present as is seen as a stylistic choice or as an expression of my personality.

2. If I am male and I choose to present myself in a femme or androgynous manner I am still assured that, at the end of the day, people will still see me as fundamentally male. I can expect women who are attracted to me to still be considered heterosexual and, in fact, I can expect that heterosexual women will find me attractive because of my androgyny. I do not risk having my gender identity called into question.

3. If I am female and I dress in a way which is not appropriate for my age I am seen as, at worst, eccentric and strange. If I am still relatively young my choice may even be seen as sexually attractive and I may be rewarded for it. I do not have to worry about being labeled a fetishist, having my gender identity called into question, or being branded a sexual predator simply because of how I dress.

4. Whether I am male or female I can be assured that there are clothing options that are appropriate for my gender. People, when they see me in my wardrobe, will be able to easily identify my gender. I never have to be a fashion trailblazer simply to be able to reflect my gender. If, however, I choose to deviate from these styles my choice will be seen as a reflection of my personality and my gender will not be called into question.

5. Although I may be belittled for doing so, if I choose to wear articles of clothing traditionally reserved for another gender I will not have my gender invalidated. If I am a man wearing a dress, for example, I will still be seen as a man in a dress.

6. I do not have to deal with the fact that there is no way for me to avoid wearing clothes traditionally reserved for another gender because I can be reasonably assured that a suitable, reasonably culturally-normative and gender-appropriate wardrobe exists.

7. I do not rely that heavily on clothes to communicate my gender so if I wear something androgynous, such as a work uniform, I can still be reasonably assured that people will perceive me as a member of my gender. If someone makes a mistake anyway I can be reasonably assured that, given a polite correction, they will apologize and proceed to recognize my gender. I do not have to worry that such a mistake could seed rumors that could threaten the perceived legitimacy of my gender and, if they do, it will be relatively trivial for me to fix.

8. If I am a child I can be reasonably assured that I will be allowed to dress in a way which is appropriate to my gender. On that note, I can be assured that such a mode of dress exists at all.

9. If I work or go to school in an environment that requires gender-segregated uniforms I can be reasonably assured that I will be allowed to wear the uniform corresponding to my gender. On that note, I can be assured that such a uniform exists at all.

10. I can be reasonably assured that "being dressed up like a cis person" or "looks like a cis person" are not considered grievous insults.

11. If I am female I do not have to worry about my genitals imprinting on my clothing lest my gender be invalidated. Likewise, while generally undesirable, if someone sees up my skirt I will still be seen as a woman.

12. If I am female I do not have to wear underwear which is too tight for me in order to better conceal my genitals. If I am male I do not have to wear uncomfortable bindings around my chest. I do not have to deal with the health consequences of either of these decisions.

13. If I am male I will be allowed to expose my chest in public like other males. If I am female I will not be required to do so.

14. If I am a woman or girl and I choose to wear a padded or stuffed bra I can be reasonably assured that this will not be seen as detracting from the legitimacy of my gender.

15. Most clothes which are appropriate for my gender are sewn to fit people with bodies like mine.

16. I am not accused of being a fetishist or a pervert because I wear undergarments appropriate to my gender.

17. I can shop for underwear without being ridiculed or feeling shame.

18. When I shop for clothing I have access to fitting rooms appropriate for my gender.

19. If I am a woman and I choose not to shave my legs, my armpits, or my face I do not risk having my gender fundamentally questioned.

20. If I am a woman with hairy legs or armpits I can be reasonably assured that someone I meet will find this attractive about me without making me feel unsafe. I can be assured that my choice to not shave will be celebrated by people even when the same people ridicule this choice when made by people of my gender who are not like me.

21. If I am female and I choose to have short hair I do not risk having my gender invalidated by others. If I am male and I choose to have long hair I do not risk having my gender invalidated by others.

22. Either way, I can rest assured that there is a culturally appropriate hairstyle for people of my gender.

23. If I do not put much effort into my appearance I am not seen as not serious about my gender.

24. If I am seen as putting too much effort into my appearance this does not make people conclude that my gender is shallow and fake.

25. When I wear something which makes me look attractive people do not accuse me of entrapment.

26. I am not made to worry that a mistake in my wardrobe will cause people to scrutinize my gender.

27. I am not expected to feel shame about the way I dress because of the gendered implications of my clothing.

28. I can be reasonably assured that I will not be excluded or banned from an event, job, school, or anything else because I dress in accordance to my gender.

29. My clothing is not regularly seen to be the sum total of my gender identity.

30. I do not have to fear rape, assault, and murder simply because I choose to wear clothing appropriate to my gender.

Such a long list and I haven't even scratched the surface! Leave a comment if you think of more.

Accessibility Tip of the Day: Nonstick Pans

Nonstick pans are wonderful, or at least they're supposed to be wonderful. They promise extra easy cleanup but, in the past, I've been finding myself spending five-ten minutes scrubbing a pan that's been used to cook eggs or other sticky foods. Recently we got rid of our old nonstick pan out of frustration that it wasn't non-sticking and set out to buy a new one. The salesman told us what we were doing wrong: nonstick spray like Pam makes nonstick pans stick somehow. We've been using butter only on our new pans and it's been working wonderfully.

I just cleaned our pan that was just used for eggs in about 10 seconds. Wonderful.

Thus: to dramatically ease your after-cooking cleanup when using Teflon coated cookware ditch the Pam and other nonstick sprays and stick to oil or, even better, butter.

Open Minded Health

Please take a moment to drop by Open Minded Health which is a new blog which aims to present and analyze research on sexual health with regards to sexual minorities. It's being put together by my good friend Rose Lovell and her lovely wife, Marcie. I know it's been something which she's been wanting to do for a long time and, so far, she's doing an excellent job so go check it out!

Accessibility: Coffee Makers

Finally, after years of wanting a coffee machine I have finally been able to acquire one to replace the old coffee press, which was largely inaccessible to me. I am a huge lover of coffee and now I have a way that I can brew the drink in my own home without assistance. It is these small things which add up that make the biggest difference when coping with a disability so I have decided to profile accessible tech: coffee brewing.

My major difficulty when it comes to completing most daily tasks is that I have a very poor executive memory. I am not able to hold that much information in my head about what I have to do or what is going on around me at any one time. For this reason, I tend to forget to do things that would normally be obvious for other people or leave certain tasks half completed because I have to attend to something else and the previous task gets easily crowded out of my mental space. Routine helps me cope with this to a degree.

Brewing coffee is one of those things which is not on a routine, I make it when I feel like drinking it. This makes it difficult to cope with.

The coffee press was easily the most inaccessible piece of technology for me. In order to use a coffee press properly you must fill it with coffee and water and let it sit for about 15 minutes to a half hour for it to brew, then use the press to strain the coffee grounds from the brew. For me, what would often happen would be that I would prepare the press and, because it took so long to brew and staring at a metal carafe is extremely boring, I would head off to do whatever else I was up to. I would then promptly forget I had ever prepared the machine. At some point, usually after a couple hours, I might wander back into the kitchen and I might notice the coffee machine with its extended plunger and strain it. I would then have one cup of coffee which I could bring back to my room and sip. Of course, the rest of the coffee in the carafe, having slipped from my mental space, would be completely neglected, turn sour, and go to waste.

Enter the coffee machine. With this device I am able to load it, press a button, and be certain that the coffee is brewed properly 100% of the time (as opposed to having the coffee be bitter and over-brewed roughly 90% of the time). Also, it keeps the coffee fresh and warm for several hours so I still have an acceptable drink even when I forget I'm brewing for extended periods of time (most of the time). It also has an attention-grabbing light on it!

Of course, the machine keeps the coffee's temperature far too hot so I'm forced to let the beverage cool in my cup which is prone to be pushed out of my mental space and forgotten. About half the time I drink room temperature coffee because of it, although this isn't that bad for my palette. For this same reason I also had the tendency of pouring myself two or three cups of coffee at the same time because I would pour a cup, forget I had poured it, decide I want coffee and head off to pour myself another cup. I fixed it, though, by assigning myself one specific mug which I use in exclusion of all others.

Reading over what I have written it seems a little silly. Someone might be tempted to comment that if this is what autism does to me then it's not really much of a disability, is it? Yet, at the same time that's rather the point of this piece: It's not that I have a great deal of difficulty feeding myself a specific beverage but its the fact that so many of the things which I need to do to get through life become more difficult in subtle ways. We don't often think of those subtle ways which they do, especially when we don't experience them first hand. This is one of those minor difficulties which have a way of adding up.

Autism in a Nutshell

Do you know what bothers me? People who assert that "real" autistics can't understand colloquialisms or other symbolic languages. People like me, according to popular lore, are not supposed to be able to understand things such as "and that's how internal combustion engines work in a nutshell." But I do. In fact, I use symbolic colloquialisms all the time in my speech and writing.

Because I'm not "supposed" to be able to do it, this makes me feel guilty. It makes me feel that I'm not a "real" autistic and that I because I'm not a "real" autistic I shouldn't be having trouble with all the other aspects which come with my neurotype. I feel fake and I feel that whatever difficulties I have reflect instead on poor character.

Here's the thing: I don't actually need to understand that "in a nutshell" refers to the fact that a nutshell is small and therefore anything in a nutshell must be small and therefore the explanation was in brief. I just need to understand that "in a nutshell" mean that something is brief and probably overly abstracted. I can use "in a nutshell" to refer to a brief explanation in the same way I could use the word "cat" to refer to a feline.

I don't even know why symbolic language and thought are seen as so incompatible with autism. Just because I might interpret something literally because I don't understand that it is symbolic does not mean that I would not be capable of understanding the symbolism behind it. I know many autistic people who are very talented in metaphor, in fact. Some autistic people I know even write poetry!

It feels like many in the general public, and even autism "experts" make the mistake of observing a minor consequence of autism and then conclude that it is a central and defining characteristic of the neurotype. It's frustrating.

I'm sick and tired of it. I need to stop feeling guilty about using colloquial and symbolic speech, period. I have much more important things to worry about.

Executive Functioning, Friendships

One thing that is said often about people who are autistic is that we abhor change. This, for me, is true in some respects. Emotionally, I don't mind change; I actually enjoy it to some degree in that it keeps my life interesting. In other respects, however, it plays hell on my life because it makes it very difficult for me to accomplish anything. Routine, for me, is critically important for my productivity and disrupting my routine can be disastrous.

Take, for example, housework. I have a great deal of difficulty working in a "slightly messy" environment because the line between "clean enough" and "needs cleaning" becomes too blurry for me to conceptualize. In response, I will allow the area to become a complete sty before I become so frustrated due to my inability to live in the environment that I engage in a frenzied purging, cleaning spree to restore my environment back to the way it should be: I restore my system returning everything back to exactly where it belongs. It becomes easy enough to maintain this system because it becomes easy enough to recognize when something is amiss and I'll be capable of correcting it.

Should something disrupt my routine, however, such as a bout of depression or stressors from some other source prevent me from properly attending to my duties things can become highly difficult. That counter top which used to have a special place for every single item no longer has the same rules to it. I am no longer able to become upset that my father's coffee mug is in the wrong position or that the garlic humidor is misplaced. A new system must be generated: this is difficult and this tends to lead to neglect.

This is the crux of the problem. I'm either able to obsess over something or completely ignore it. I have enormous amounts of difficulty finding a middle ground. Having extremely strict routines or systems allows me to obsess over more things without them completely dominating my entire life, at the risk of having my routines and systems disrupted.

This is one of the reasons why I worry about living alone sometimes. My routines and systems are very fragile and having someone around to nag me really does help me overcome situations where my routine has broken down or when my system is disrupted much more easily than I would be able to do so on my own. I worry that without the occasional nag I'll fail to be able to correct a broken system or routine in time to prevent it from impacting my other systems leading to a cascading failure in my personal life.

It's not that I'm lazy, although I often feel lazy. I am extremely hard working when it I have an intact schema. It just takes a little bit of help for me to maintain a schema under stress or depression when they tend to change and fall apart.

Managing relationships are another area where I have difficulty in this regard. As long as we have a routine or system I can maintain a friendship but, because people are unpredictable often finicky, I find it extremely difficult to maintain my systems and my friendships fall apart. It becomes much easier when my friends "nag" me by calling me if they miss me or by running into me often because we work or live together. Of course, other people often seem to interpret this kind of neglect as a sign that I don't really care about the relationship when it in fact is just because I don't have a system and that's what happens when I don't have a system.

... I'm also probably struggling with a great deal of anxiety when deviating from my system in a social situation which further compounds the problem in ways usually don't occur with things like dishes.

Instant messaging programs have saved my life socially. Being on my buddy lists means that when you get on your client I'm able to see you log in and that acts as a "nag" for me to reach out to you. It's become so important in my life that not having an instant messenger has become synonymous with an inability for me to develop a meaningful and long lasting relationship with said individual. It's a system and it tends to work well.

To compound my reliance on instant messengers I find phones extremely anxiety-producing and difficult to navigate so I end up avoiding them if at all possible.

This is executive dysfunction in brief, or at least a significant part of it. This is the part of autism which most people fail to understand or acknowledge because, to the outsider who only casually knows you, this is very difficult to observe. Yet, it is real and, for me, it is the most significant point where I need support when it comes to being autistic.