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.