the violence of nerdiness

(from Fear Claws)

more on this (about Chase from Runaways, some weak spoilers)

I was also thinking that Chase’s lack of nerdiness/intellectualism/intelligence (including the facts that he isn’t part of a subculture, doesn’t do well in school, and is often kind of dense and spacey) is an extremely important facet of his character, and that makes it especially unfortunate that Joss Whedon retconned him as nerdy. The conceit of Runaways is that all the main characters have parents who are a different type of supervillain, and when the kids find out, they team up to fight their parents. Chase’s parents are “mad scientists,” obviously the most intellectual type of supervillain (which Whedon himself portrayed as a hero in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, with the villain being a conventional hero, Captain Hammer, who is a stereotypical dumb jock–self-centered, stupid, sexist, and a bully of the nerdy Dr. Horrible). Although, like all the Runaways’ parents, they do evil with the goal of providing for their children, Chase’s parents are physically and emotionally abusive, and they are the only set of parents who are like this.

Although Chase fights with his parents and behaves rebelliously, he is written throughout Brian K. Vaughan’s run as having internalized the lessons he was taught by their abuse–basically, that he deserved to be abused because he wasn’t a good person, misbehaved, or was otherwise unsatisfactory. An amazingly painful moment, toward the end of BKV’s run, is Chase’s realization that he is “innocent” after all. (Amazingly painful because Chase wants to sacrifice an innocent soul to bring his dead friend back to life, so his realization causes him to plan his own death.) Chase’s parents frame their abuse of him in terms of “we’re smart, and you’re unsatisfactory and don’t know what is good for you, because you aren’t smart/intellectual.”

I started thinking about Chase again because my original post was called “isn’t that a cliche?” which is a quote from the first page Chase appears on. During an argument about Chase’s grades, his dad hits him and tells him he is a “dumb jock,” a “cliche.” Chase responds, “You’re a nerd who punches like a girl–isn’t that a cliche?” Which I think is really interesting because if you do read Chase’s dad through that lens, as a nerd who was bullied as a kid and wasn’t physically able to stand up for himself, and the violence that grew in him became his supervillainy…doesn’t that serve as a frame for his parenting? Does he have a childhood hatred of “dumb jocks,” which he takes out on his dumb jock son? It doesn’t matter if you “punch like a girl,” after all, if the person you’re punching is young and dependent on you.

So can I just say how much I love Brian K.Vaughan? He clearly isn’t mainstream or anti-nerd, as many of the positive characters are nerdy, but he also sees the potential violence in the idea that nerds are better than other people. In Y the Last Man he does a great job of portraying very diverse characters and the same is true for Runaways.

(The reason I’m categorizing this post as “disability” is that I think some disability culture, primarily Autistic culture, has this kind of nerd violence in it. Basically, autism is associated with nerdiness and intellectual achievement, and the people who hold this association think that intellect should redeem autism from the stigma of disability, or even the word disability. People who feel this way are prevented from experiencing solidarity with people who have autism but don’t have high intellectual achievement, or have intellectual disabilities, and they are prevented from experiencing general disability solidarity. Which is a huge problem in my opinion, and very upsetting.)

13. Social model of social failure

I guess this as close as I will get to an ending. I've typed up everything I can find in my notebook related to this, and written the things I had floating around.

Basically I think it's definitely true that a lot of normal people sync up with each other and come off in certain ways to each other, and then when a lot of people with autism don't sync up with normal people, or don't come off properly, the results can be very bad for the person with autism.

I don't think this relates to people with autism not having "social skills."

I don't think social skills exist. Or, if I do, I think they exist like God exists--in everyone. They just may not always be apparent. For example, I may have very good social skills when relating to other people who have disabilities, or people who are interested in the same things I'm interested in. I have much better social skills with men than I do with women. Social skills are not contained in a person--they require the right other person.

With work, I think a lot of people can learn to develop their mindfulness and modulation skills so that they can have good social skills (i.e., capacity to connect) with more people--or, so that more people can have good social skills with them. It's the same thing.

Some people--disabled or not--may not be able to learn how to do that, but they will still sometimes meet a person who is exactly like them, or who is very good at mindfulness and modulation, and they will have good social skills when they are with that person.

Other people will just not let other people in. Sometimes it will be because the other person is obviously different. Such people may have good social skills when interacting with people who aren't different. But with people who are different, they will always have no social skills; and when a person who's different is with someone like that, they will "lack social skills" too. (But if they were told by a professional that they lack social skills, they won't understand the two-way nature of the failed connection.)

A person could be going through life, who can't talk, doesn't like to look at people, and is in a lot of emotional pain which they express with "challenging behaviors." This person may live in an institution where no one engages with them because the person is not judged to be interesting, or interested, or capable. One day a new person comes to the institution who is interested in the first person. They start to walk around together and sit together, even though they don't look at each other. Maybe they play games like the two kids I knew who liked to move each other's arms without looking at each other. Maybe they make noises at each other. Maybe they just physically stay near each other as much as possible. This is what life is about, and for some people, it never happens.

But it just takes people who fit each other, or learn to fit each other.

When someone is isolated or bullied, that is not all about them. Other people are bullying them and deciding not to engage them. Still other people, from a distance, in abstract, are framing the person as Someone Without Social Skills, while leaving the other people involved unmarked.

But everyone involved must have bad social skills, because they are all contributing to what is going on. Maybe we can't in the short term stop people from bullying and isolating other people, but we can in the abstract apply the social model of social failure, and stop saying that social failures deserve to be alone.

11. My Year of Flops

At the Onion AV Club, Nathan Rabin writes a series (which is now also a book) called My Year of Flops. Rabin watches very unsuccessful movies and rates them as Failure, Fiasco, or Secret Success. I am interested in the idea of people being "flops." A good example is Stephen, described above. Like most people with significant developmental disabilities, Stephen is written off by many normal humans; and a professional could have a great time studying Stephen and writing about all the "social skills" he "lacks." However, Stephen does connect to people, does affect other people positively, and is well-liked. Stephen is a Secret Success.

The opposite of flops, of course, are blockbusters. Some normal people--and I would argue that these are the people who could actually be termed "superneurotypical"--come off to other normal people as really nice, trustworthy, decent, competent, etc. They just hit all the buttons that make normal people feel at home. (And people with autism who are trying to fit in may try to have the same reaction to blockbusters that normal people do.) Blockbusters can be rated as Success, Fiasco, or Secret Failure.

One time when I was thirteen, all the Spanish classes in my grade went on a field trip to a Mexican restaurant. The table where my only friend was sitting was full, so I sat at the nearest table to her. The people who sat down at my table included a boy named Michael who was a Secret Failure. Michael asked why I had to be sitting at their table. I responded "I thought it would be amusing" (this is hard to explain but it's kind of similar to when George Takei said that he wanted to have sex with Tim Hardaway--the idea being that if someone thinks you're disgusting, you try to take ownership of that).

Michael said, "Well, I think it would be amusing if you fell out through that window." (There was a large plate glass window across the restaurant.) I tried to distract myself by writing a poem on the flyleaf of the book I was reading, but Michael carried on in this vein for the entire meal, describing different ways that I could die or become injured. Later my mom made the mistake of repeating this to the mom of another kid from my school. The other mom replied, "I believe that Amanda thinks she's telling the truth, but Michael is a really nice boy."

Michael went on to go to Georgetown and will probably live the rest of his life without anyone finding out he is a failure. I on the other hand actually think of my younger self as a failure for doing things like using the word "amusing" when a more standard word for someone my age would have been "funny." I also used the words "quite" and "suppose." Seriously! What did I think was going to happen?

In addition to using the wrong words, I was also kind of a douche at that age. For example I did (and still do sometimes) make jokes about things that other people were sensitive about. I didn't think about how this would hurt someone's feelings, and I still feel bad when it happens now. But I've never told anyone that I think they should fall out a glass window, so I think I am fairly categorized as a fiasco, not a failure, even though I am a flop.

4. Social skills and intent

I also guess you could--well, I mean, I can kind of feel the shape of an argument in my head--"Just because you guys like Stephen doesn't mean that Stephen has good social skills! That's something you guys are doing, not something Stephen is doing." I am sort of intrigued by the surfacing of this idea in me. If someone is severely disabled and doesn't really follow social rules like saying please and thank you, and doesn't seem to modify their behavior based on other people's reactions (I'm now talking about a hypothetical person because I feel like it's not possible to objectively judge that any real person isn't modifying their behavior), can that person really be said to have social skills any more than an object or a baby or a dead person that other people feel comfortable around? How can just being likable be a social skill?

Well I don't know but aren't some nondisabled people also just like a pretty rock that other people respond to because the sight of it makes them feel good?

I'm later going to discuss the idea of "mindfulness and modulation," which is a particular way of relating to people that I think is legitimately termed a skill, but which is not especially underrepresented in people with ASD, and is even overrepresented. Mindfulness and modulation is actually a conscious, intent-based social style. But lots of non-disabled people who are socially successful do not practice mindfulness and modulation, and may not move through the world with any more intent than someone like Stephen.

I mean, I recall meeting a friend of a friend who seemed very normal, and whom I didn't particularly like. Afterwards, my friend said, "She's sort of hard to spend time with because she doesn't pick up on social cues." I remember thinking it was funny because that seemed like such a textbook description of someone with "Asperger's," but this girl didn't have any of the qualities that would cause me to read someone as ASD. It hadn't even occurred to me to think of her as having "bad social skills" because she was normal. I guess I think of "bad/nonexistent social skills" as being something They say about Us--people with DDs or mental illnesses, or people who are part of subcultures. If They fuck up, if they're insensitive, it's just how they are.

If I fuck up, I think it proves everyone right.

Kids with ASD are said to be bullied and ostracized because they "lack social skills." In this equation, people who hurt other people (the normal people who are bullying the ASD people, conveniently erased by the passive voice) are said to be skilled. In this construction, they are the Haves and we are the Have-Nots and the thing they have is the ability to understand other people's feelings and reactions.

But um, then why are they acting like that if they know how it feels? When I was being bullied I remember having a feeling that the people who bullied me weren't real because they didn't seem to care about anything real and they didn't seem to know that I, and their other victims, were real.

(I went on a brief mental tangent trying to figure out if bullying can be considered a social skill--I mean yes they are mean blah blah, but even a bad action can come out of talent. I've concluded that while certain types of manipulation and abuse can be considered skills, most of the people who bullied me were not especially sophisticated at doing so. Obviously I was affected, but it's very easy to make someone feel bad; the tactics they used on me would have worked on almost anyone.

In the "My Year of Flops" section, I will discuss a bully with very good "social skills." I don't mean to imply that no such people exist.)

Just a splinter

Okay, I got kind of pissed in class today because we were talking about bullying and people started talking about their friends and how when their friend's ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend comes into the room, they start pointing at them. I don't really understand the point of talking about bullying if you make the definition of bullying so broad that it's about everyone.

I raised my hand and said something like this (I didn't sleep last night, okay? I'm not doing a good job taking stuff lying down):

When I was a kid I had very dramatic physical and facial reactions to things. So, other kids would come up to me with scissors and make like they were going to stab me in the eyes. They would also goose me, lunge at me, etc. There were also verbal fake-outs where people would say things over and over that we both knew weren't true, like that they wanted to go on a date with me.

I'm not saying this ruined my life or anything, but it has had a huge effect on my ability to have physical emotional reactions to things. It's very hard for me to let myself smile or flinch or anything at the drop of a hat, especially when I'm standing up. For example when I see people I like, it's hard for me to let myself look happy. My body wants to look happy, but it stops itself. It can't just let itself do whatever it feels like. I feel overwhelmed and I make faces or just go stiff and stuff instead.

After I had only been away from that environment for a year, I had this boyfriend who I communicated with online. I had known him in real life before we started being in contact online, but once we started dating I would get too panicked about seeing him in real life or even talking to him on the phone. It was just too much. I couldn't let myself get overwhelmed by being around him. One time he made the mistake of telling me that he loved me, and I got so upset I went on this dissociation/shutdown experience for most of a day.

This is obviously much more than what I said in class. And I'm not trying to make a point. I mean, I am, but do you see what I mean without me coming out with a thesis statement? People are frequently shitty to each other but I would say that people were shitty to me in a way that led to very pervasive problems that still affect me almost ten years later. When I have little DSM flamewars or whatever, I don't think that's the same thing. I don't think anything will ever be the same thing.

"this I used to believe"

When I was thirteen I went to school in a gauntlet. It took a while for me to understand what this meant. One went to middle school. One was intrigued by the new building and stopped to watch boys knocking each other to the ground in the middle of the hallways. One felt crowded because one didn’t like noise. One tried to scrape out a place for oneself, in class, by saying weird things and chasing Richard around, both hitting each other with math books (whatever math was then).
Back then, in sixth grade, one was still kind of shut away from the world in a particular wing, although one ventured out, for gym, for art. On sunny days, all the kids were let outside to kick balls and make out under the trees, except one who was writing poems and listening to some older teachers talk about a girl in seventh grade who made a hit list and got suspended, one teacher saying, “She’s a nice girl. It’s sad. They just tease her so much.” And one knew, sort of--one had always known one was going to be the kind of girl who makes a hit list. It was just a matter of time.

If I expected words as withering as the ones in movies, then I was watching the wrong movies, and if I expected violence, then I forgot I was a girl. What developed around me as I progressed, making the wrong moves or just moving wrong, was an explosion of words without meaning, and endless, endless motions never carried through.
By the latter I mean goosing, jumping at me, making as if to grab my crotch or my thigh, and laughing when I flinched. Or coming at me, wielding a pair of scissors and letting them get within a few inches of my eyeballs before turning them off course. This is what I mean by the gauntlet, a tremendous difficulty, a brittleness in one’s chest as one is getting one’s books together to leave for the next class. And one is older now, and not sequestered away; one walks out the door, and one plunges into the gauntlet. One is tested on one’s reflexes and one always fails.
There are verbal reflexes, and that’s what I mean by the former, which is boys asking me on a date, even though I’m known and know myself to be not the kind of girl people ask on a date. Pale and flabby and ageless, I think, trying to fend off Taylor’s oh-so-ironic proposal: “Please, please, go out with me, come on, Amanda, just one time,” and finally, “If you go out with me, I’ll give you a dollar. You can buy a dildo.”
But that is not what I mean, and neither do I mean being accused of jerking off during the school play because I was rocking back and forth in my seat. Because the sexual stuff was always the cleverest stuff, and what I’m really talking about, besides people hitting my backpack so I slightly fell forward, is just a collection of words that are neutral and even cute--“bookworm,” “stairwell girl,” and most permanently my own last name called out to the extent that when I heard it said, at the doctor’s office or on our answering machine, I cringed. I’m still hoping I can marry out of it because it always feels like an itchy second skin, an epithet that for some reason is typed out on my birth certificate and my student ID.

But never mind. Christine was minor league, back in sixth grade--all those people who write books about how mean girls are to each other have never experienced the gauntlet, which is almost always populated by boys, the only people vicious enough, most of the time, to lean out and snarl into your face about how ugly you are when you are twitchily picking your way from art to math. Christine was just part of the pre-gauntlet situation, which maybe explains why in seventh grade, during the development of the true gauntlet, I distracted myself by making a new screen name and anonymously messaging Christine, telling her I was going to come to her house and kill her. I was with Megan, a friend from fifth grade who now went to Catholic school and was CCD enemies with Christine from way back. Megan and I were giggling. I don’t think we thought of what was going on as evil, or thought that Christine could be scared, although in retrospect we should have been able to see that she was getting increasingly terrified.

I was always taught never to swear when I was a kid, and I believed in it so hard that sometimes I would swear accidentally, compulsively, when I was alone, and then break down in tears. I don’t know why you would tell a kid like me something in such a serious tone of voice, but I guess my parents had their reasons.
I generally believe what I see. It’s not that I don’t believe in other people’s humanity, but that I had to meet it first. And the first time I said fuck you to one of the kids who was goosing me, I thought the world was going to explode, but he just laughed and imitated me in a high, lilting voice. This was not a meeting. And it also wasn’t a meeting when Christine said pleasantly, after some sort of encounter in which I had been asked how much I weighed and why my hair looked the way it did, “Come on, Amanda. You pretend you like being weird, but everyone knows that you wish you were pretty and had a boyfriend.” Which I did. She was joking, kind of, we were kind of friends--but as I said my verbal reflexes were poor, and as those books point out, as if they’ve thought of it for the first time, friends can treat each other badly.
Anyway, her mom called the police, and I was shocked when I found out that Christine had a mother and that she could cry. That’s when I started believing in her insides again.

For the rest of school, I’m not embarrassed to say that I sometimes imagined holding down the boys of the gauntlet with guns to their heads or cutting off pieces of their ears. I wanted to believe in them. I wanted them to wear it on the surface, like I do--to be reduced to squirming, to begging, to flinching. To swear.