Breakupversary

It's Autistics Speaking Day. I think I only completed an ASDay post on the first year, 2010, and since I don't blog very often, I'm not sure if I would have decided to write one this year. As it turns out, I didn't even remember November 1 was Autistics Speaking Day, even though I've been watching November 1 coming for quite a while. That's because November 1, 2013, was the day I stopped being in an abusive relationship.

That was your trigger warning. I'm not sure if this counts as an ASDay post or not. It's aimed at Autistic people, disabled people, and to some extent, anyone who is part of a marginalized group and sees that as an important part of their identity.

I have written about my abusive relationship, and I have more to say in the future. What I have to say today is: I didn't know that an abusive relationship could feel the way mine did. I generally didn't feel scared of my abuser or like I was being hurt; instead, from the beginning of the relationship, I was afraid that I was abusing and hurting her. I saw her as a very weak, vulnerable person who I was obligated to protect, and even when I was really unhappy and wanted out, I didn't see it that way. I saw myself as being stressed because my girlfriend needed more help than I could consistently provide. Or, towards the end, I thought that I just was too disabled, or too selfish, or not disciplined enough, to do everything she needed.

It wasn't until after the relationship ended that I became afraid of her. When we were together, my perception of the world was so absorbed into hers that I didn't realize how little control I had over my choices, how afraid I was of displeasing her, and how little she cared about my well-being. It's pretty scary that her thoughts and opinions became mine, that even disagreeing with her in my head was really difficult; but naturally, I wasn't scared at the time, because I didn't have enough control over my mind to be scared.

A few times I cried uncontrollably for hours; I felt hopeless; I got sick. But I always traced it to sources other than my relationship. The closest I ever got was thinking that really bad things happened because I didn't respond to her the right way, and if I just did it better next time, things would be okay. I could handle her.

To be clear, my ex was also Autistic, and had various other disabilities. Her disabilities played a major role in why I stayed with her and was afraid to question the nature of our relationship. At the time, I had a few rationalizations for it:

1. It would be wrong to think that she might be exaggerating or lying about certain needs, or using her disabilities as an excuse for her behavior--even though that was clearly happening sometimes, I refused to consider it.
2. I should be loyal to her because she was disabled. It was right for me to stay with her and help her because disabled people should look out for each other.
3. If I didn't stay with her, she would be alone because other people didn't understand her disabilities and discriminated against her. She wouldn't get the help she needed, and she might even die. A few times she told me that because I had upset her, she might get institutionalized and they would kill her.

As comforting as it might be to imagine that she was faking or lying about her disabilities, that the person who did this to me wasn't Autistic--well, I knew her well enough to know she definitely is Autistic. I also know that it doesn't matter, that if she wasn't really Autistic, or wasn't really disabled, that wouldn't make this any better.

This is a friendly reminder that marginalized people can be abusive or dangerous just like everyone else; and that some social justice ideas are right most of the time, but have exceptions. You don't have to always agree with someone just because they are marginalized. If someone is obviously lying, you shouldn't just accept it because they are marginalized. Disabled people aren't usually lying about their disabilities or using them as an excuse, but it does happen, and you don't have to put up with it if it's hurting you.

Maybe most importantly, not everyone who shares an experience with you is trustworthy. Making Autistic friends was very important to me and I'm now at a point where most of my close friends are Autistic. That does not mean all Autistic people are my friends or have my back, or that I should have their back. This sounds obvious, but it's a lesson I've had to learn a few times, and I hope (maybe unrealistically) that I'll never have to learn it again.

These are some links I find helpful.

The Pervocracy--"Why does she stay with that jerk?"

Myths About Abusers

Off the Rails by Abbey Wilson--particularly the "Why I Don't Believe in God" series--one, two, three, four, five. Additional warning, this is about being in a cult as well as an abusive relationship. It's very different from my experience but for whatever reason, it was the first thing I read that I related to.

Trigger Warning: Breakfast

I like the writing of Lundy Bancroft (like this for example, and that whole tumblr has a lot of good stuff), but the big warning is that he basically doesn't believe women can abuse men. This is ridiculous and makes me uncomfortable.

Also, if you are in my situation, there might come a point when you should take a break from reading and writing about abuse, even if you think it's a good thing to do. It can upset you and make you paranoid; at least, it can for me. When that happens I make an effort to focus on other subjects for a while.

Compare and contrast

I just realized something weird about my feelings.  Actually, I'm guessing this is true of a lot of people and I'm going to write about in the second person, but there's always a possibility I'm just a huge freak.

Basically, things look better when you are comparing them to something worse.  This means that the worse someone is, the more their behavior can impress you.

For example, if your best friend usually criticizes you and insults everything you say, you will feel so special when he does tell you, "That was really smart."  He will seem really nice, and you'll feel like what he said was really meaningful because you waited such a long time to hear it.

If your boyfriend always hits you when he's mad, it will seem amazing if he gets mad and doesn't hit you.  It will seem like he's great for controlling himself, like he's really working hard to treat you well.

Actually neither of these people is nice!  It doesn't have to be this extreme.  But the point is you give more credit to people who deserve less credit.  Meanwhile, if someone is consistently kind to you, you never get the high of being shocked by an ordinary display of kindness.  Their kindness blends into itself and doesn't impress you as much as someone not hitting you 1% of the time.

I think I first got exposed to this idea in the form of a piece I read about being nostalgic for bad relationships.  It was basically about how bad relationships have some really exciting and good moments when your partner stops being awful for a minute and you're so excited about it.  Then you end up being nostalgic when you're in a relationship with a good person, because you don't get excited the same way. (If someone could find this piece, I'd love to link to it--I just couldn't find it.)

This is pretty obvious, I guess, but I was thrilled to notice myself having one of these reactions today because I could self-correct.  Here's to prioritizing people who are actually good to you most of the time.

///

I've been writing about the idea that you can't forgive someone until they're sorry.  Obviously, this isn't a rule, it's just something that can be really hard to do and, I think, damaging to require.  I was reading some comments on a post about a parent who tried to murder her disabled child; obviously there were endless calls for compassion, and the commenters who wanted to focus on the crime were being told that they should focus on compassion for the criminal instead.  To me it's a similar thing.

The focus on dealing with any kind of abuse or violence cannot be that we should be nicer to the people who commit it.  It just can't be.

That doesn't mean that murderers, rapists, etc. aren't human, or that their behavior may not have partially come from something bad happening to them, or that maybe if someone had been a little nicer to them or made things easier they wouldn't have committed the crime.  Those things might be true in some cases but it's not an appropriate thing to focus on and in some contexts, it's downright terrifying.

It's terrifying because it implies that non-perpetrators should be walking on eggshells in dealing with perpetrators.

Maybe if people provided more help or compassion to this parent, the parent would not have committed a murder.  (There's also the fact, rarely said but undeniable, that if the victim hadn't needed so much help we wouldn't be having this conversation.)

Maybe if people dressed differently, drank less, or expressed themselves more clearly, someone would not have sexually assaulted them.

Maybe if people were more nice/open/compassionate to someone, that person would not have behaved abusively.

No.  Wrong.  This frames things so what happened is the fault of either the victim, or people who were not involved, instead of the person who actually perpetrated what happened.  People do a lot of bad things to each other and the way to address that is not to focus on how other people should be nicer or more understanding to people who do bad things.

For one thing, if the perpetrator is not sorry and plans to keep doing similar things, then being compassionate just makes it easy for them to keep on doing those things.  For another, if there's a big focus on how victims or other people should have behaved differently, then the perpetrator can use those things to get away with their behavior or even to control their victims.

I'm not against being kind or compassionate to people, even people who have committed violence or abuse, but there's a difference between personally feeling compassionate, and trying to tell other people that they're wrong if they're not compassionate for people who have done bad things.  They are not required to be.

Not Boundaries

I have been thinking about boundaries a lot and have a bunch of posts stewing.  Some of my posts are about having strong boundaries, but today I was thinking about what is not a boundary.  I guess I should stop using the word boundaries so much because it's kind of vague--I would define boundaries as things that a person has the right to control.

For example, a person should be able to control whether they have conversations with strangers.  If I try to talk to a stranger on the bus and she keeps ignoring me or she tells me she doesn't want to talk to me, then I should stop talking to her.  If I keep trying to talk to her, I'm coming up on violating her boundaries.  If I actually become aggressive or try to punish her for not talking to me, then my behavior is seriously wrong and abusive.

But not every preference is a boundary.  Let's say the same stranger not only doesn't want to have conversations on the bus, but doesn't want anyone to have a conversation on the bus.  She tells everyone on the bus to stop talking to each other.  That's not appropriate, I don't think.

There's some room for interpretation of what is or isn't a boundary.  What if people on the bus are having a very loud conversation that is hateful or sexually explicit?  A lot of people would feel it's within their rights to tell them to stop having that conversation in public.  Even though there are some gray areas, I think there's usually an answer to the question, "Is this a legitimate boundary?"

Yesterday I was at a restaurant with two friends.  I'm not in a really high-quality fake name headspace, let's call them Alice and Sebastian.  After I mentioned how anxious and stressed out I sometimes felt when people would sing loudly in public, the conversation eventually led to Alice and Sebastian both singing loudly in the restaurant.  I felt uncomfortable and wished they would stop.

I don't know what's up with this, because I'm sure I'm totally loud and weird in public sometimes.  But I often get really distressed when I'm with someone who is singing loudly, talking in a certain way (like putting on a fake accent), laughing loudly, or just talking really loudly in public.  I guess part of me feels scared that people will be upset with them and something bad will happen to them, or that I'll get in trouble for allowing this to happen.

Because these situations make me so uncomfortable, there have been many times when I demanded that someone stop singing in public and felt like the person was hurting me when they didn't stop.  Even last night, I thought of putting my money down on the table and saying, "Okay Alice and Sebastian, you're upsetting me and I'm going to leave."  I briefly felt like doing this would just be asserting my boundaries, even though I knew it would upset them too.

When I thought about it, though, I remembered what I've been thinking about lately--that just because you don't like something doesn't mean it's wrong for someone to do it.  There's nothing wrong with being irrationally bothered by stuff, but there is something wrong with expecting other people to always stop things that bother you.  There has to be some kind of limit when it comes to accommodation.

I know that sounds harsh, but things can go really wrong if you don't prioritize logic over emotional reactions.  Like, if someone gets suicidal every time someone criticizes her--that sucks for her and it's not her fault, but if people always prioritize that person's feelings, then that means they can't even tell her if she did something really bad to them.  She could be driving the wrong way on the highway and the other person in the car would be worrying about making her suicidal by telling her they're about to get in an accident.

I've been in situations pretty close to this, and it just is no good.  Sure, people can't help having mental health problems or reacting to stuff a certain way.  That doesn't mean that they should allow those problems to control other people's lives.  I've had really positive and really negative relationships with other mentally ill people, and the most negative things have happened when people have not been mindful and responsible about their mental illness.

I just waited it out with Alice and Sebastian--I was glad that I didn't end up being mean to them for singing, because they should sing if they want.  But I also felt dissatisfied with how things had gone, because I had to sit through something that upset me.  I thought about it more today and came up with a potential solution of leaving for a while, explaining why I'm leaving, but also being very clear that I don't think they're doing anything wrong and I'm glad they're doing something they like.  Obviously this is something that some people would think is just crazy and ridiculous, but I think it could work with a lot of the people I spend time with.

Confusion and forgiveness

Content warning for gaslighting type stuff, I guess.

In November I made a few posts about how I have to be harsh with people sometimes because I have boundary issues and might take on their feelings by accident.  I'm not sure I do have boundary issues.  What happened is, at the beginning of November I ended my first serious romantic relationship.  Over the course of the relationship I had started to feel very confused about things like who I was, what I felt, and how I behaved.  I felt like I couldn't clearly remember incidents that had happened between my girlfriend and me and I was constantly straining to understand what was going on.

There was a possible explanation for this, but I didn't want it to be true.  My girlfriend refused to ever apologize or acknowledge doing things that hurt me.  If I brought up something I thought was a problem she would either claim she didn't understand, tell me I was confused about what was happening, tell me I was contradicting myself, or bring up something bad I'd supposedly done to her.  Along with whatever her response was, she also would get upset and it was awful because I knew it was my fault for criticizing her behavior.

This was all really disorienting.  When something hurt me, I had to either put up with it or risk something worse happening if I talked about it to her.  I worked hard to convince myself that she wasn't doing anything wrong.  I also worked hard to believe that the things she said made sense even when she was attributing feelings to me that I didn't have or distorting things that had happened.  Over time she caused more and more problems for me, but I had to believe it was my fault because otherwise, I would have to admit that my image of my girlfriend as a kind, well-meaning person was completely wrong.  It was past the point where she could just be doing all this by accident.  There was a long-term pattern of her distracting, punishing, and confusing me out of asking to be treated fairly in our relationship.

I don't think she set out to do this to me--I think she was desperate for closeness and terrified of criticism.  But it was still very wrong and shouldn't have happened.

When I ended our relationship, I knew that I had to turn off the parts of me that had focused so much on trying to keep my ex from being upset.  I had to stop trying to always see her point of view.  Instead, I needed to focus on the fact that what she did to me was wrong.

I might be more likely to identify with other people than the average person, but the degree to which I was identifying with my ex's feelings by the end of our relationship didn't come naturally.  I had to be trained into putting her comfort ahead of my needs.  I may be suggestible, but I didn't start out as suggestible as I was by the end.

So, yeah.  It's not me, it's you.

I also wanted to write about forgiveness a little bit.  I usually lean toward forgiving people but I think it's important to acknowledge that in some situations, certain kinds of forgiveness aren't possible.

Let's say Molly's boyfriend, Steve, steals money from her and she forgives him.  There are a bunch of different ways this could play out:

He steals money from her and then apologizes.  She forgives him.

He steals money from her and apologizes.  She forgives him.  He continues to steal money from her and apologize.  She forgives him every time.

He steals money from her and when she confronts him, he gets mad at her and says she should care more about his problems.  She apologizes and gives him as much money as he wants.

He steals money from her and she is going to confront him.  Then at church one day, Molly resolves to be a more forgiving person and decides she will be okay with Steve stealing money from her and she won't confront him about it.

He regularly steals money from her and she can't stop him from doing it and she resents this.  She decides to forgive him and not resent him for stealing her money anymore.

Molly says Steve is not allowed in her house.  She isn't angry at him for what he has done, but she's not willing to deal with him stealing her money.

So, what most of these situations have in common is that Steve doesn't see his bad behavior as wrong and he plans to continue doing it.  I'm not sure that you can really forgive someone like this unless you are doing it from a distance.  I feel like trying to be forgiving, compassionate, etc. to someone who is repeatedly hurting you is less about forgiveness and more about accepting that you're getting hurt and trying to have a good attitude about it.  I'm not criticizing people who try to have a good attitude about getting hurt but I don't think anyone needs to try to forgive someone who is hurting them.

I think forgiving someone who is sorry can be a really positive thing.  I don't think forgiving someone who isn't sorry is really something that needs to be done.  For real forgiveness to happen, the boundaries have to be in place--it has to be acknowledged that there's something to forgive.

Away From Home

warnings: abuse, suicide, supercrippery

What is a supercrip?

I use the word supercrip a lot (though not as much as I used to) and it has a very specific meaning for me.  For some people, the word supercrip just means a disabled person who is successful or heroic, but usually it has negative implications.  Often the term refers to a media stereotype of a disabled person who “overcomes their disability,” especially by playing sports, and becomes an inspiring example for kids who don’t want to do their homework.

For me, supercrippery isn’t about how other people see me, but how I see and treat myself.  My definition of supercrippery has to do with putting a non-disabled picture of success ahead of your own safety and happiness, including placing yourself in physical and mental danger so that you can resemble this picture as much as possible.  For example, if you do things slower than average, you might decide to deprive yourself of sleep so you can be as productive as a non-disabled person.  Obviously, making this decision requires you to have a lot of self-hatred and to feel that you don’t deserve to have your basic physical needs met because you are impaired.

I’m doing well now but when I am having more mental health problems supercrippery is a huge part of my life.  This post actually isn’t really about supercrippery but I want to explain what it is and tell people that if these ideas are triggering for you or make you really upset, you might not want to read the post.  The post is actually going to be about comparing disabled young adults’ life trajectories to each other, but I feel like this kind of ties in to supercrippery because it is usually comparing people to each other based on how well they fit a non-disabled standard of young adulthood.

Bella and Sandra

You know I love my fake names, so let’s have two disabled girls who go to the same high school.  No one’s disability is exactly the same as someone else’s, but Bella and Sandra have many obvious things in common (I choose these particular traits because they make Bella and Sandra easy characters to write):

1. They both are diagnosed on the autism spectrum
2. At some point they both receive treatment for self-injury, anxiety, and depression
3. Adults who meet them always comment on how intelligent they are
4. but they get Cs and Bs in school, to everyone’s consternation

That was in high school.  Over the next 7 years, this is what happens:

Sandra goes away to the best college she can get into, graduates in four years, and starts a career.  (Let’s say she becomes a teacher and is working towards a goal of becoming a school administrator.)  She lives a few states away from her family.

Bella goes away to the best college she can get into.  In her first year, she takes a medical leave because of mental health problems, comes home to her parents, and never returns to that school.  Six months after that, she starts occasionally taking classes at the community college.  She completes a few classes but hasn’t earned a degree.  She gets a job at the grocery store and at age 25, she is working at the grocery store and has no plans to move out of her parents’ house.

Most people who look at this situation will either make a judgment about disability, or about people’s moral qualities.

Judgment about disability: Sandra is more “high functioning” than Bella because she lives away from her parents, has a college degree, and has what’s considered a better job.  Bella’s disability is more severe.

Moral judgment: Sandra is hardworking, brave, motivated, etc. and “overcame her disability” by putting in effort and really caring about living independently and having a job.  Bella is unmotivated, directionless, lazy, scared of the world and of growing up, and is “using her diagnosis as an excuse.”

Moral judgment of their parents: Sandra has “tiger parents” who pushed her to succeed and didn’t let her use her disability as an excuse.  Bella’s parents failed her.  They babied and coddled her and now she doesn’t have the skills she needs to be an adult.

Actually, when I say “most people,” maybe I should say “me”--I’ve always compared myself to other young adults with similar disabilities, and I’ve always agonized over what makes one person more conventionally successful than me, and another person less conventionally successful.  If they drop out of college and I don’t, is their disability more severe than mine or am I more dedicated than they are?  If they work 80-hour weeks and I don’t, what’s wrong with me?  Why can’t I be like that?

A few days ago, I realized why.

Seven Possible Reasons They Turned Out Differently

1. Sandra’s family is abusive.

Let’s say that in their first year of college, Sandra and Bella were both really stressed out, this triggered a depressive episode in both of them, and they both attempted suicide but were stopped by a friend.

Bella decided that she wasn’t ready to be a full-time student and live without the supports her parents gave her (meals, reminders about when to do chores and how to take care of her hygiene, help with scheduling doctors’ appointments, and emotional support).  She decided to go home, focus on managing her depression, and try to identify and avoid situations where she might become suicidal again.

Sandra’s friend encouraged her to take a medical leave, but he didn’t understand.  She was extremely grateful to be at college because for most of the year, her family couldn’t hurt her; and because she was talking to them less, some of the things they had taught her started to unravel.  She realized that the things they had done were really bad and weren’t things she had brought on herself.  If she could live away from her family, she realized, she could fill her life with people who didn’t hurt her.

Sandra felt like if she went home she would get more suicidal, not less.  She also felt like being away from her family was worth the risk of dying.  So Sandra made her friend promise not to tell what happened, and she did the best she could to hide her depression so she did not get suspended from school for bad grades or being “a danger to herself.”

If it’s really dangerous or painful for someone to be at home, then that is a big factor in how determined they will be to live away from home.  For example, if someone regularly forgets to eat and is in danger of starving if she lives on her own, it’s safer for her to live with her parents--unless one of her parents has tried to kill her.  Then she doesn’t have any safe options.

2. Bella’s parents have more money.

Bella gets along well with her parents, but she doesn’t particularly like her hometown and dreams of living somewhere else.  She also wants to be a vet tech and she is taking classes, but school is really hard for her.  If she takes a full load of classes, it occupies so much of her energy that she isn’t able to spend time with friends, sleep and eat properly, and play music--things that are really important to her happiness and emotional stability.  Instead, Bella is taking one or two classes a semester because that’s a better speed for her.

Sandra also gets along well with her parents, and also is not able to be very healthy or have a social life if she is a full-time student.  But her parents struggled to support the family when she was in high school, and they can’t afford to keep supporting Sandra.  She goes to a college that offered her a scholarship, and works in the summer to help pay for expenses the scholarship doesn’t cover.

Sandra feels like she works all day at college, struggling to keep up with her non-disabled classmates.  She’s also really lonely; she has to say no most of the time when people ask her to hang out.  She usually eats Doritos and coffee for dinner while studying in the library, and when she sees groups of friends walking to the dining hall together, Sandra feels like her life is empty.  But she has to be able to do this--for one thing, her scholarship won’t pay for more than four years of school.

3. Their hometown is mostly white and Sandra is black.

At best, Sandra feels like an outsider because her family is one of the only black families in their town and she’s barely had any black friends.  At worst, white people have threatened her.  One reason college is exciting is because there are more people of color; she makes friends who share her experiences, she gets involved in anti-racist organizing, and she feels more accepted and safer than she did in her hometown.  Even when she’s having mental health problems, she doesn’t want to go home and feel the way she felt there.

Sandra also really wants to be able to support herself financially and live independently so that after college, she can choose to live somewhere where she doesn’t feel scared and isolated.  Sometimes it’s really hard for her to make it through the day, at college and after college when she’s working as a teacher.  But it’s worth it.

Bella is white and does not have this concern.

4. Sandra falls in love.

In her first semester of college, Sandra starts dating a guy named Ed.  She continues dating him for the first year of college.  In her second year, Sandra becomes extremely depressed, and Ed ends up in the role of her emotional support person.

Sandra really doesn’t want to go home to deal with her mental health problems, because right now, Ed is the only thing that makes her at all happy.  Ed loves Sandra but he isn’t super comfortable with being the only thing that makes her happy.  He encourages her to at least try to deal with her depression even if she isn’t going to take a medical leave, and he helps her go to therapists, try medication, and do other things to improve her mental health.

When they’re juniors, Sandra and Ed start living together off-campus.  Sandra has problems with multi-step tasks like cooking food and cleaning; and she also has dyspraxia which makes it hard for her to do some household chores.  Ed understands this, so he always does the chores that Sandra can’t do.  They work together to make charts and other reminders to help Sandra with multi-step tasks.

After college, Sandra and Ed get married.  They move to the city that Ed is from, where his parents live.  Ed’s parents love Sandra and treat her like their own daughter.  They’re both teachers and Sandra often asks them for advice when she is having problems at work.  Sandra tells them she is overwhelmed by the idea of finding a GP, dentist, eye doctor, etc. in the city, and Sandra’s mom finds them for her and even reminds her to make regular appointments.

Bella would like to move away from her parents--they’re nice, but they annoy her sometimes and she really wants to live somewhere that isn’t so hot in the summer.  But how can she possibly do that when she can’t even make a bed by herself and often gets confused when trying to cook basic meals?  What if she moved far away and her job was too hard and she didn’t know anyone and didn’t have anyone to talk to?  What if she was too stressed out and confused to ever find a doctor or remember to make appointments, and she got really sick and didn’t even know about it until it was too late?

She wants to do it, but she just can’t.

5. Bella is really happy living with her dad.

Sandra likes her parents just fine.

Bella and her dad are extremely close; they have long conversations about absolutely every subject, and they share a lot of the same interests and values.  She even thinks he might be Autistic too.  Bella’s mom left when Bella was three, so she and her dad have had 15 years to learn to function as a unit.  As Bella got older, her dad encouraged her to help out around the house and things gradually developed so that they both were taking care of housework fairly equally, each doing the things they were best at.

It was really important to Bella to do well in college.  Everyone said she was super smart and she wanted to defy the negative expectations people had of her because she was Autistic.  But when she went to college, it was really hard for her to live in a dorm instead of living the way she was used to, and the workload was too much for her.  She started having panic attacks and shutting herself off from her new friends, and when she started to fantasize about killing herself, she knew she had bitten off more than she could chew.  She needed to go home and be in her regular house and spend time with her dad, who she could talk to about what had happened and figure out when she would be ready to go back to college.

But after going home and after a long time of trying to be ready, Bella realized that she wasn’t ready and didn’t want to be.  She loved her town.  She still had some good friends who lived there--and her best friend was her dad.  She didn’t want to move away from her best friend just because adults weren’t supposed to live with their parents.  She and her dad got along well and were a good household.  Now that she had decided what she wanted, Bella tried to think about what, if any, plans she should make for the future.

Bella has decided that she wants to work part-time at the grocery store; it gives her days a good structure and she meets new people.  She also is taking classes so that she can have a higher-paying job in the future, but she isn’t pushing herself that hard because there’s no immediate need.  But if her dad becomes sick or disabled when he’s older, Bella wants him to be able to keep living in their house and not have to go into a nursing home if he doesn’t want to.  He’s always supported her choices and she wants to be able to support his.

6. Sandra is a supercrip.

When Sandra was a kid, she could tell that people thought less of her because she had disabilities.  They didn’t expect her to go to college and they didn’t expect her to be able to drive and they didn’t expect her to be able to live on her own, or get married, or have a high-paying job.  Sandra hated the way those people looked at her and she grew up feeling like the only way to be a worthwhile person was to accomplish all the things they thought she couldn’t do.

When Sandra is in college, she puts her academic success ahead of everything.  So what if she works slower than the other students?  She’ll just stay up all night several nights a week so she can get work done.  She doesn’t really need to eat regular meals either.  She doesn’t deserve to eat regular meals if she can’t do as well as the non-disabled students.

Sandra avoids talking to her parents because they always get really worried.  They ask her if she has any friends, if she likes the campus, if she’s taken any time off from schoolwork to just relax.  When Sandra explains that she doesn’t have time to do that because she’s not as smart as the other students, her mom asks Sandra to come home for Thanksgiving.  They’ll pay for it.  But Sandra wants to stay at school over break so she can get ahead on the reading.

Sandra’s mom says she really just wants Sandra to come home for a while so they can take care of her and she won’t have to be so tired and stressed all the time and can get some sleep.  Sandra tells her mom that she is fine and she’s 19 now which is old enough to act like an adult.  If I’m 19 and can’t be an adult, I don’t deserve to be alive, she thinks to herself.  This is Sandra’s mantra.

Sometimes Sandra thinks about killing herself a lot.  She’ll wake up feeling like it is going to happen that day.  But she would never tell anyone about this, because they would force her to take a medical leave.  Sandra would rather die than not graduate college in four years.  So she might as well keep going whether she dies or not.

Bella doesn’t have this attitude; she feels like she deserves to sleep and eat regularly, and she would definitely rather take a medical leave than die.

7. Sandra is extremely beautiful and charismatic.

This gives her an advantage because a lot of people really want to spend time with her and do things for her.

Bella is an average girl with average charisma and can’t “overcome her disability” because she doesn’t receive all the support that Sandra does.

And so on.

Golly Sandra, you’ve grown up really crazy

When I was in a Sandra #6 situation, I would get super angry at disabled people who took leaves from school.  Like, I would hear about someone I didn’t even know taking a medical leave because they had a panic attack and I would be like, “Fuck him!  I almost killed myself this morning and I still went to class even though I was crying too hard to see the Powerpoint.”  I would start being mad at the person for doing something that I thought was weak and immoral.  Didn’t they know that they should try to do things as well as everyone else?

Obviously being mad at people for taking a medical leave isn’t a sign of a really well-organized mind, but I don’t think I realized until recently how disorganized that anger was.  The reason I was fixated on these people wasn’t because they were doing something bad, but because they were doing something good.  They were caring about themselves.  Even if they prioritized a non-disabled version of success a whole lot, there was a certain extent of suffering that they weren’t willing to go through.  They didn’t feel like they deserved to die for being disabled--or if they felt like that, at least they knew they were wrong.

I wasn’t feeling superiority, I was feeling inferiority--I was jealous of them.  They valued something more than looking “normal,” being “smart,” hitting “milestones” at the same age as non-disabled people.  Maybe they had friends at home so they wouldn’t be isolating themselves from everyone if they couldn’t stay at school.  Maybe their parents wouldn’t be disappointed in them and say they should have worked harder, been more organized, taken medicine they didn’t want to take.

I’m hesitant to write about this the way I am, because of the power dynamic.  People like Bella are judged so much.  People see it as a failure for a young adult to live at home, and for a disabled young adult, living at home can seem like the fulfillment of lifelong low expectations.  But in every scenario I wrote, Bella is making really good decisions.  She may not be a success if the goal is to imitate a non-disabled person, but she is prioritizing her happiness and safety and she has goals that she can accomplish without ruining her life (and imitating a non-disabled person will make your life empty even if it doesn’t kill you).

In the supercrip scenario, Sandra isn’t making a ton of sense, but in a lot of the scenarios she is making good decisions too.  In some of the scenarios she isn’t receiving adequate support to make it through college or live on her own, but going without support is the lesser of two evils.  In other scenarios, like the one where she falls in love with Ed, Sandra is really lucky and support falls into her lap, so she loses nothing by living away from her parents.

In most of the scenarios, Bella is able to live with her parents because she has an advantage that Sandra doesn’t have--she is white, she has more money, her parents aren’t abusive, she doesn’t hate herself, etc.  In other scenarios, Sandra is able to live away from her parents because she has advantages that Bella doesn't have.  If Sandra and Bella are still friends at age 25, maybe Sandra is jealous of Bella because she feels like Bella had more choices.  But Bella is probably pretty jealous too because society judges people like her and wants her to feel worthless.  She also doesn’t have the freedom that Sandra has.

Depending on the scenario, one of them can often be considered better off than the other, but only a few of the Bellas and Sandras are really happy with their lives.  This is because, bar extraordinary luck, a lot of people with disabilities like Bella and Sandra are not considered to be entitled to support in living.  They have to choose between living in bad physical and emotional condition so they can be free (and seen as a success), or living with parents, or getting in a relationship with someone who is willing to help them, or just ragequitting the whole thing.

The choice they make is determined by a whole lot of factors, and two people with exactly the same abilities can make totally different choices without either of them making a bad choice.

(I wrote this post in July and didn't end up posting it because I wanted to nitpick it but I ended up not doing that.  My friend had said that in my posts, I presented all the Bellas as really smart for choosing to stay home.  I know there's plenty of bad reasons to drop out of college but I don't really feel the need to enumerate them because dropping out is so stigmatized and everyone assumes it's being done for a bad reason, while disabled people who graduate college are idealized.)

when loving your enemies is hating yourself

Some more about the stuff the other day.

I think having compassion or trying to understand someone's point of view is a luxury.  Well, luxury is the wrong word but I mean it should never be your first priority in a conflict.  Other things are more important, and compassion/seeing other people's point of view should only be attempted if other things are there first.

Lia left this comment on my pop culture blog where I had reviewed a glurgey YA novel about bullying:

"i can say this as someone who often tries to cope with things by being sort of detached but also outwardly optimistic and upbeat even if i'm not really feeling that way, it's not actually desirable or emotionally healthy to react to everything that way. a person who acts like that in response to bullying in real life is still going to be affected by the bullying, but they're more likely to turn their feelings about it inward on themselves. instead of (rightly) getting angry at the bullies, they might get angry at themselves for being bullied, for being unable to stop the bullying, and for being angry/upset about anything in the first place. sometimes these are people who have been taught, or have decided, that it's morally wrong to feel or express negative emotions. sometimes these are people who can react really calmly to being mistreated because they are very used to it and honestly believe that they deserve it or that it's normal. and that's less inspiring than it is depressing."

Lia is pretty stellar.

My mom has been visiting me and tonight we were having dinner with the family I work for.  We got on the subject of different illnesses and injuries I had when I was a kid and how usually people did not realize what was going on because I didn't have the level of distress they were expecting.

Not having enough visible distress is something I really hate about my life, to the extent that I've always assumed it was some kind of trauma reaction.  There's not really a ton of evidence for this so it might just be that I'm projecting/imagining that because it has been such a bad experience for me.  It's obviously been going on since I was really little so the list of possible traumas is pretty narrow and it's nothing obvious.  Also, it is a common problem for people with autism so it's either that it results from a traumatic experience that a lot of us have, or it just is part of autism.

In addition to less visible distress I also have more trouble noticing and identifying my feelings than other people do.  To make things even more annoying, I sometimes develop obsessive fears about having certain feelings and because my feelings aren't very concrete to me in the first place it can be really easy for me to get convinced that I'm really feeling those things just because I'm worrying about feeling them.

I really confused someone recently by talking about how far I'll go to avoid situations where someone downplays my disability or refuses me services.  I basically have chosen not to ever pursue any kind of services because if I was not able to get them, I would get too upset, and to me that's more important than a chance to get help I need.

I guess it doesn't make that much sense to other people why it affects me so much if someone doesn't think I have a significant disability*, even if the person isn't a close friend or someone who has a lot of power over me.  The reason it affects me is that I don't feel secure/distinct about my disability but it's very important for me to know that I'm disabled in order to manage and cope with my life.  I surround myself with people who either support this, or don't talk about it.  If someone says that I don't have a significant disability then that idea is introduced to my brain and even if I know the person isn't that smart or doesn't know me that well, it introduces a lot of doubt and I start seeing myself as a liar and a faker and can become suicidal or otherwise be affected in my day to day life.

*(I know some people use the term "significant disability" to mean a "profound" disability like my boss has, but I'm literally using it to mean a disability that is significant, i.e. it affects my daily life in a lot of major ways even though I can work, talk, etc.)

If someone says I'm not disabled or says something else that demonstrably isn't true, but would be threatening to my quality of life if I believed it (for example, saying that the family I work for hates me), I immediately want to remove myself from that person and see them as an enemy.  I don't want to engage with the person about this or even think to myself about why they think what they do or why they said it to me.  If I think about it too much, I will definitely start believing it so I just have to be brief and rational--it's not true, they were wrong, it's a harmful idea, and I'm rejecting it and the person who introduced it.

By the way this can be pretty unfair because someone who is perfectly nice might just make some uninformed statements about my disability or something else, and they might even see their mistake if I just talked to them about it, but I can't talk to them because I can't risk being convinced by them.  If I did talk to them, it would be very brusque to just give them the information about why they're wrong in case they want to think about it, and then end the conversation.  I probably wouldn't do this with most people, because it obviously seems mean and hurtful, but it's the only way that I would be able to engage without potentially hurting myself.

I'm going a bit off track here--the original thing I was thinking about was being secure in knowing when someone has hurt you, and being secure in the idea that it's wrong for someone to hurt you.  Some people are secure in this and some aren't including me.  In my opinion, if you are like this and immediately attempt compassion (or you encourage someone like this to immediately attempt compassion), what is really happening is that the person could hurt themselves.

For example, let's say Emma and Shirley work together.  Emma is very brusque with Shirley, makes fun of the way she walks, talks, and looks, never thanks her for anything she does, and is patronizing.  Shirley is hurt by the way Emma acts and finds it to be insulting.  She doesn't like Emma because of it.  Shirley decides to try to see the good in Emma and treat her well even though she doesn't like her.

On the other hand, let's say Shirley never gets to the point of being insulted and not liking Emma, even though Emma is treating her disrespectfully.  Trying to be compassionate, Shirley always makes excuses for Emma or tries to think of reasons that she has done something wrong to provoke Emma or reasons that she is wrong to be upset by the way Emma acts.  When Shirley has negative feelings toward Emma she tries hard to make herself feel the opposite and see Emma in the most complimentary light.  Shirley works so hard to be nice to Emma that she comes off like she particularly likes her, even though Emma is extremely rude.  I have been in this situation a few times and I think it damages me when instead of focusing on seeing that someone is treating me badly, I focus on seeing the good in them.

I have to assume that most people (or at least people who have tried to encourage me to be more compassionate/educational/thinking about other people's feelings) take it for granted that they will see it as wrong for someone to hurt them and that nothing can change that.  Then when they talk about compassion, maybe it's like they're skipping the foundation that should be in place; they always have it so they barely notice it and don't mention it.  But to me, because the foundation isn't there, they're advocating something quite different.

Without the foundation, loving your enemies is just hating yourself.

How Indistinguishability Got Its Groove Back

is something that might someday appear in all its parts and might not. Right now I'm primarily interested in writing about staff infection. Spoiler alert though: the answer to "how did indistinguishability get its groove back?" is exactly that.

Or like I said before: it never really lost it.

I think there are two reasons "staff"--very broadly defined as doctors, teachers, therapists, aides, and a million other people--end up trying to control people with disabilities.

1. They believe people with disabilities inherently need to be controlled.

2. They get in a position of power because of people with disabilities' support needs and/or youth, and have the opportunity to make people with disabilities more convenient to deal with.

Whichever reason is not your reason can be used as a straw reason to support the real reason. I could give examples but basically you know it when you see it. Doing this relates to the Harder Fallacy and Shocking Behavior and things like that.

The way indistinguishability got its groove back is that a person with power looked at a person diagnosed with autism and decided they didn't like the way person's body looked or the way the person felt about things. Or (I say when I get angry) the way the person said no.

The person with power started trying to change the person with autism's body (or whatever). The person with autism couldn't defend themselves because they couldn't talk. Or, if they could, other people felt their beliefs, opinions, and arguments were inherently weaker than those of people without disabilities.

The person with power told their coworkers or their employees or the other people in their field to do the same thing. They by and large did.

Occasionally someone was bothered by it but afraid of losing their job, being seen as a pushover by their coworkers, or not being respected by other autism scientists. But most people weren't bothered. Maybe the original person with power was very charismatic and converted them. Maybe they already didn't like how the person with autism's body looked. Maybe they just didn't think about it, accepted it as part of their job, and eventually came to be a little passionate about its rightness. After all, no one was trying to change their bodies.

When I say this happened once I mean that people in power make this decision about people with autism on a regular basis. Probably as you are reading this a person is deciding to be this way, and their decision will spread because it doesn't occur to many people to question it.

To some extent this is true about any decision within that dynamic. Let's say someone decided that all kids with a certain disability have to play soccer, or read Tarot cards. I think this would actually catch on to a greater degree than you would expect. But indistinguishability is such a historically popular thing for people in power to choose to force on disabled people that it has a kind of momentum. You just think about it and it's already there.

Every person in power who unthinkingly chooses or supports indistinguishability is adding to its mass. It's an army of laziness, an army (usually) of feeling safe in your body. Of being able to talk about how much you love The Office in between sessions of training a kid with autism not to make jokes that don't have an obvious punchline. It's easy to do pretty much anything to people with disabilities but indistinguishability has an army.

The pressure of the army makes room for more soldiers. Obviously. This has all been an excuse for a pun. The way indistinguishability got its groove back is that indistinguishability actually is a groove being worn into the fabric of society by sheer constance and bullheadedness. Have a nice day.

What are restraints?

A lot of staff people talk about restraints like they are not the greatest thing, but it seems like they don't understand what is wrong with them. I am not an expert but this is just how I feel.

I think a lot of people feel like restraints are bad because they are scary-looking. To be honest a lot of people don't even seem to feel that much(1), but anyway. Some people and places are "restraint-free." They believe in being gentle. The question is: is gentleness restraint-free?

I have always been told stuff like, ask someone what shirt they want to wear not whether they want to get dressed(2). Make statements about what's happening, don't ask questions. The idea is that if you do this the idea of disagreeing with what you're doing won't even enter the person's head. Which is supposed to be the ideal thing--no conflict. But these "tricks"--presented as innocently as advice on how to transfer someone--are intended to keep a person from making decisions about their own life that might be inconvenient to you. Is this extremely different from physically making it so the person can't move?

Picture a staff person who reacts with complete sweetness and friendliness to a resident who's trying to do something like get up when he is supposed to be asleep. The staff person distracts the resident with conversation while gently guiding him back to his bed, and it seems that she has successfully caused him to forget what he had planned to do.

I can't think of any supervisor I know who would watch this interaction and not come away thinking, "wow, what a good staff person." The person is avoiding conflict and keeping the resident (apparently) calm and happy, while still efficiently controlling him. The supervisor might even think that this is a staff person who really cares about her residents because she is so "gentle" and didn't do anything that came off as angry or aggressive.

But what is actually caring about not allowing someone to make a choice, and not even having enough respect to tell them what you're doing? Is it caring to try to trick someone to the point that they won't even know what is going on? (If someone has a disability like dementia, is it really going to help them keep skills as long as possible if you are trying to control them by making them confused?)

There are other things that aren't always recognized as restraints, like failing to offer someone the support they need to do something you don't agree with. But I feel like these this are sometimes recognized as restraints. Like in Ohio, leaving someone in a locked wheelchair is a restraint, which seems to be along the right lines. (Chairs are not though, which is weird since at least some people could unlock a wheelchair.)

I feel like the idea is that it's bad to do something that would look immediately abusive at a glance or look like someone's stereotype of a restraint. Merely being controlling isn't recognized as wrong and the implications and affects of trying to manipulative someone into doing what you want are not considered.

(1)In my nurse aide class, we were told that while we would be shown how to put someone in restraints, we didn't need to learn how to do it because it was no longer on the state test. As part of the class we were taught and tested on lots of things that could be considered attitudes or ethics, like "don't try to convert residents to your religion" or "be willing to listen to a resident talk about their problems." Our various teachers, who were nurses, would give us advice from their experiences about how to treat residents properly.

But absolutely no subjective comments were ever made about restraints and why they were no longer on the state test. No one even said, "it's better not to use restraints" or the most basic thing in support of more facilities being restraint-free.

When one of our teachers put a student in a restraint to show us, everyone just watched like it was normal. Except one girl was really creeped out. She said, "I have a friend who can't stand being held still and if you did that to her she would go crazy. Anyone would go crazy if you did that to them. It's wrong." She said this almost to herself, not like she expected a response, and no one gave her one.

(2)When I described this "trick," Pancho Ruiz suggested that it could work not because the person has actually been kept from considering other options, but because assuming consent like this would be sufficiently scary to stop the person from disagreeing with staff.

disabled staff person no. 03847101

disabled staff person stuff is really weird

because I barely had a staff person.

I've had doctors and I guess therapists in the resource room when I was in middle school, but the truth is I don't really know what it is to have a staff person like some people do.

on the disabled vs. staff lines, I can't say exactly I have been on both sides.

as a staff person, I do sometimes feel scared. like this summer, when this guy kept saying disabled people who get upset need strict control and he wished he could hit them. and when I told my boss she told me I should have talked to him about why it upset me.

"it upsets me that you want to hit disabled people, because I'm disabled."

stuff lodges in me. I am not staff even though I'm staff. things happen and they stick in my throat.

other staff are like chameleons. if you're taught to be respectful to disabled people, you more or less are. if you're taught that "this is the real world" and you shouldn't ask them what they want because it takes time, you will enter THE REAL WORLD. and you talk like this:

"people with cerebral palsy are depressed and angry that someone has to do stuff for them, but fortunately these people have MR so they don't understand and they're happy."

staff person: "oh yeah, I guess that's true."

"I feel like some people talk to disabled people like they're children."

staff person: "yeah! they're just people and should be treated normally."

"he looks normal but you can see his elevator doesn't go all the way to the top."

staff person: "hahaha! that's such a funny way to say it!"

will the real staff person please stand up? probably not.

I'm not like this (I think)

cause I'm a real disabled person and I get to have weird conversations like this:

"I think it would be fun to work in a group home but I'd feel bad that people have to live there."

my aunt (who is in a care profession and was giving me advice on jobs): "well, for some people it might be more convenient. they chose to do it after all."

"actually, a lot of people aren't given the choice."

my dad: "amanda means the disabled people not staff who live at the group home. see, look how much she cares about the feelings of disabled people! isn't she caring?"

yeah, so caring. unable to enter THE REAL WORLD and see a bunch of objects or problems in the place of humans. unable to see these things that shimmer in and out of different meanings--are they cute? do we love them? do we respect them? do we think they'd be better off dead? are we too good for this job or is it inspiring?

but I am not a disabled person, I'm staff.

I'm not being bitter even though I am. I hate that some of my friends see me as the enemy sometimes because I am staff. I also think it's fair.

like, if it's really difficult for me to get a job because disability limits my options, and I get this job, and I don't report/identify abuse because I know they all think I'm weird and incompetent, and people won't believe me and I might lose my job and not get a reference

I still let abuse happen.

remember The School that I interned at, that I got my start blogging about? like, with the aversives and the anti-stimming and the crackdown on language that sounds too old or too young for your age. you'd better believe I kept my mouth shut at The School entirely and never told anyone there what I thought. it's probably been less than a year since I last used them as a reference.

other staff think I am a bad staff person. because I don't know what I'm doing. because I'm shy. because I don't have experience. because I'm scared of/intimidated by disabled people.

because I say:

"I'm sorry"

"wow I'm sorry, I spaced, I didn't realize what you had asked me to do"

"I'm sorry" (when someone has yelled at me)

"well, what do you want to do?"

to disabled people.

one time I called a disabled person by the wrong name, started to walk away, realized what I'd done and came back to apologize. "wow, you're so POLITE!" said the staff person.

I don't live in the real world. I don't live in the real world.

but I do.

all this niceness/incompetence means I find it almost impossible to speak up about anything. I love my people really hard and I'd like to pretend that love illuminates me and makes me brave, but that's a total lie. I can't even suggest to people that when a mobility impaired kid who can't talk starts trying to go somewhere, you should probably let him actually accomplish that instead of obstructing every single desire he slowly and painfully tries to act on.

this kid was pointing at the door, looking at me, and making noises. he never made noises. a very old lady pointed at me this weekend, in the nursing home. another lady said, "help me, get me away from that woman, I'm afraid of her, she's going to hurt me, I want to kick her in the ass, I want her to die."

my excuse is I didn't know that woman's name. also found it too easy to tell myself I was wrong. she was just tired. the stuff she was saying to old and disabled people, and the way she was handling their bodies...she was just tired.

anyway, I know that's what everyone else would say, if I said something.

I am not disabled.

I want to be. got mad at you because I make myself sick.

still kind of believe in doing good in bad places, that because I am not a chameleon I would be better suited to bad places than the rest of them are. also worried that life would become an endless supply of things stuck in my throat--this constant reminder--

I'll die in this room if you die in this room?

--that I both am disabled, and don't deserve to be.

2. How Indistinguishability Keeps Its Groove

I'm sorry to mix metaphors because I often compare zombies to people like me (unusual gait, does the same things a lot, often judged to be better off dead) but let's focus on some different aspects of the zombie and swivel that image over to another group of people: staff.

How did you get your groove back? Well, indistinguishability, you never really lost it, and that's what scares me. Maybe this is a failure of mine because how can I be more scared by a difference of opinion than I am by more obviously bad things, like violence? I'm not sure. I know I find vampires pretty unterrifying when they're sadistic, but zombies are unbearable because they don't even know or choose the crimes they commit. There's nothing to explain.

So what I'm trying to do is explain. Not why I'm against indistinguishability, cause I have, but why it seems so stupid when I say that, like I'm against electricity. People respond with the most ill-thought-out support, and it doesn't matter at all. "But flapping your hands is against social norms and kids need to learn to follow social norms!" Across the country, kindergarteners are told to be yourself and do the right thing even if it makes you stand out--except when it comes to this one group of little kids. "But other kids will notice that they're different and exclude them!" Okay, just like when kids are bullied for race or religion their teachers start training them to look like white Protestants. Maybe you're thinking people can't pretend to be white, but some people can--and besides, good luck convincing his peers that a kid who can't talk isn't disabled, even if he keeps his hands by his sides.

This is a completely meaningless argument though because anyone who defends a point so weakly has already won. Even if someone says "Yeah, I guess you're right," it's like some interesting philosophical discussion about unicorns. Intelligent input darling, now let's go back to our day job where we kick horses in the face for having horns when they shouldn't.

"Hey hold on," you may be saying, "I'm not kicking anyone in the face! I'm just writing a behavior plan where if Erica talks about unicorns too much she doesn't get dessert."

That's cool but a lot of disabled people have had to live with this stuff longer than you have, and it kind of feels like being kicked in the face.

"Aw, but it doesn't feel that way to me."

That's because it's your job. Everyone's job feels normal to them. Our government likes to pretend that Abu Ghraib happened because Lynndie England is a bad person, but she just had a work environment where she thought it was normal to act a certain way. I know this is an aggressive comparison, but there isn't a point of wrongness where the things that you're doing suddenly feel wrong. I feel that if people were more aware of the broad spectrum of things that can feel normal when it's your job, it would possible to engage them in real conversation about what they do.

How Indistinguishability Got Its Groove Back, part 1

My first writing about disability was about an ABA school that I interned at when I was 20, which was a very ableist and passing-obsessed environment. Being in that environment I was forced to confront things I'd tried not to think about.

I remember when I first started writing about this kind of thing I was very careful to say that I wasn't anti-ABA and thought ABA could be really helpful and useful. I've kind of dropped that whole thing, not because I'm against behaviorism--I arguably am a behaviorist--but because I guess I am against any school or therapist who identifies as "ABA." ABA is technically a way of teaching, not what is taught, but it has historically been associated with physical punishment and it still is very much associated with passing. So I tend to make certain assumptions about anyone who identifies with the label ABA without trying to apologize for or justify it.

Recently my dad was trying to convince me to work at a very old, famous ABA program, because of the benefits. When I pointed out that the person the program is named after used to give electric shocks to children to stop them from flapping their hands, my dad told me that he had researched this on the Internet and "they don't do that anymore." But this isn't enough for me.

It's not enough for professionals to refrain from the most obviously abusive practices, especially if they identify themselves with the doctor who introduced those practices. If you're going to work in an area that has that kind of history, you have to address that history. It's not enough to just stop hitting kids because you shouldn't hit kids--you have to think about why people like you were hitting kids in the first place, and how they got to a point where they decided it was okay, and how you might end up getting to a similar point.

Fallacy Week: The Shocking Behavior Fallacy & The Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy

Hi guys it's FALLACY WEEK! Every day you get some fallacy action from a post I made a super long time ago at LOVE-NOS.

The Shocking Behavior Fallacy

MARY: My nephew Ralph has autism and it’s really sad. He insists on watching Thomas the Tank Engine every day, and he’s sixteen.
JOHN: Why is that sad? There’s nothing inherently wrong with an older person liking things that are aimed at kids. I feel like in our society, people label a lot of things as problems that aren’t actually problems.
MARY: That’s really insensitive. Ralph bites himself so badly that he has to go to the hospital.

Rebuttal:
John didn’t say that it’s not a problem to seriously hurt yourself, nor did he say that Ralph doesn’t have any problems. But Mary reacted as though he did say that, and now John is knocked off balance. He wonders, did he say that? How can he explain that that has nothing to do with what he was saying? Is there anything he can say now to avoid giving the impression that he thinks self-injury is okay?
In the Shocking Behavior Fallacy, you can use a shocking behavior to excuse something unrelated that you did to or said about the person who has the behavior. The fallacy functions by changing a very specific statement to a general one. Mary changed John’s specific statement–watching Thomas the Tank Engine is okay–to a very general statement–everything Ralph does is okay. Now she can prove John wrong by giving an example of something Ralph does that is not okay.

(Fun fact: This is actually one of the most dangerous fallacies in use. By equating one thing a person does with everything that person does, it creates a class of people about whose treatment no one is allowed to complain. Let’s change the example a little and say that Mary is a staff person working in an institution, and every time she sees Ralph trying to watch Thomas the Tank Engine she takes points away from him, which means that he doesn’t get to go on day trips. John thinks that Mary is micromanaging Ralph’s choices in an abusive way. Mary responds that Ralph has to be monitored closely and dealt with harshly because his problems are so severe; he bites himself, remember?
Professionals can fall into an inverse of the Shocking Behavior Fallacy, where instead of going from specific to general to shocking behavior, they go from shocking behavior to general to specific. Ralph has a really big problem, but instead of thinking of it as one problem, Mary starts thinking of it as who Ralph is. So whenever Mary sees Ralph doing something she doesn’t agree with, she responds as if he is biting himself. The results can be horrifying.)

The Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy

JOHN: It bothers me that doctors tell pregnant women that people with Down Syndrome can’t count change. They advise women to abort people like me, when they don’t even know what someone with Down Syndrome can do.
MARY: But most people with Down Syndrome aren’t like you. Just think, it would be so hard to have a kid who could never live on their own.

Rebuttal:
In this fallacy, you tell a person with a disability that they can’t use their feelings or experiences to make a point about their disability, because you just made a new, more specific definition of the group of people being talked about-–a definition which no longer includes them. Mary has transformed John from someone who had authority on the subject, due to his experience, to someone whose experiences aren’t valid because he’s an exception.
Let’s briefly accept Mary’s new definition of someone with Down Syndrome-–a person who can never live on their own. It’s true, John could have some opinions about whether it’s wrong to abort such a person, but he can’t speak as someone from that particular group. But guess what? The prenatal test doesn’t measure whether someone could live on their own, it just measures whether they have Down Syndrome. If a fetus exactly like John is diagnosed with Down Syndrome, it doesn’t get a break because it’s John. Its mother’s doctor is just as likely to present the diagnosis as bad news, encourage an abortion, and list a bunch of things the child won’t be able to do that may or may not be true of the John-fetus in particular, or people with Down Syndrome in general. Being an exception gets the John-fetus absolutely nothing.
The reason the Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy is a fallacy is because of its suddenness. Stuff goes along, people with a particular disability are getting discriminated against, mild and severe alike. Everyone’s welcome in the stigmatized group. Then someone says, “Hey, I have this disability and all these things you’re saying about my disability aren’t true.” Bam! Apply the Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy and remove the person’s authority (they can keep the stigma).

(Fun fact: I’m sorry if the example comes off as melodramatic, but I’ve read a lot about this stuff and John is not exaggerating.)

Hugging problems

Recently I was thinking about hugging and remembering what physical affection was like at the ASD school where I interned last summer.

I remember the last day I was there I asked my favorite kid, R.D., if I could hug him. He said yes, but when I put my arms around him he didn't put his arms around me. I remember that this was something I did at his age, and it was because I saw hugs as an opportunity to get my whole body squeezed tightly. But I also wonder if, given the culture of the school, R.D. felt that he had the right to say he didn't want to hug.

There was a lot of hugging going on. Some kids would ask for tickling or hugging as their reward for doing work. There was also a lot of teachers hugging, tickling, and grabbing kids without being asked--and the way I feel about this is complicated. I mean, it's inarguable that people with sensory issues need to learn to put up with annoying and borderline painful sensations at least some of the time. And I also think it's the case that some people who don't like physical contact will come to like it better if they put up with it for a while. But...I mean, I already feel kind of gross writing those sentences, and it makes me nervous to think of anyone taking that idea and running with it--the idea that forcing physical affection on ASD kids is good for them.

There was a boy named J.S. in R.D.'s class, who I remember as being sort of prim and serious. He would occasionally become smiley about something he really liked, such as his baby sister, but usually he looked pretty dour and complained about everything. The teachers would always grab, chase, and tickle J.S. and I'm not sure how I feel about that. J.S. would giggle so I think maybe he was learning that these things can be fun. But he never looked like he was luxuriating in being grabbed or tickled, like kids who had asked for it; his smile was always kind of wincing, his body was always stiff.

J.S. embodies how conflicted I feel about the benefits and drawbacks of being aggressively physically affectionate with ASD kids. But there was a third kind of affection at that school, and that was affection that was not supposed to happen. Twice, I remember R.D., in some sort of squeaky, wordy paroxysm, throwing an arm around me and squeezing me, to which he was told, "Keep your hands to yourself" or "Don't be silly." I've also mentioned a few times when kids would take the initiative in making a joke or game with an authority figure they liked, and be reprimanded for misbehavior (for example, turning off the lights in a room). This isn't ambiguous to me at all, it was a flat-out wrong way to do things. If R.D. wasn't allowed to impulsively hug someone else, then his teachers shouldn't be allowed to do that to him. "Can you be flexible?" was a constant question when kids who'd been expecting one thing had to accept a different result, and the only right answer was "Yes." But the teachers didn't show flexibility when a kid had an idea for how to do something, even something as small as an affectionate interaction.

There's a reason this makes me very upset, and the reason is abuse. I think I've linked multiple times to Dave Hingsburger's post The Good Girl, about a teenager with Down Syndrome who explained that if anyone abused her, she'd "understand" and wouldn't tell anyone because she wouldn't want her abuser to get in trouble. I think the attitudes at R.D. and J.S.'s school are perfectly suited to screwing up kids just that way.

I felt gross saying that sometimes having to put up with uncomfortable physical affection can be good for a kid. But at least I felt gross, at least I'm speaking from my experience as an ASD person, and at least I think it's an incredibly complex and difficult issue. The teachers at the school did not seem to think this was a complex issue, which is horribly dangerous. It makes me very nervous to think of J.S. getting older and eventually ceasing to complain about discomfort. It makes me nervous to think how R.D. will handle friendships and relationships as an adult, when he's been taught to accept contact he doesn't like and discouraged from initiating the kind of contact he does like.

But the prospect of unequal relationships seems almost jolly when compared to the possibility that one of these kids could be abused by an adult. Being trained to accept physical contact that you don't like, and being discouraged from complaining, being "inflexible," and expressing unpopular opinions, are things that could set up a child to not report being abused.

The connotations of this are horrible. They are connotations that exist in many of the attitudes at that school. Stimming is bad because it looks weird and can lead to discrimination--stimming is the enemy, not discrimination. Special interests are bad because they aren't considered normal--special interests are the enemy, not illogical constructions of what is normal. And, somehow, people who could hurt these kids are not as big an enemy as the kids themselves; teaching them power and independence is not worth it if it would mean letting them say, "I don't want a hug right now."