The Softer Side of Searing

The New Yorker has been kind enough to publish my letter, where I point out that Autistic kids don't have black mirrors for eyes. (Their version // my initial version.) I really appreciate them doing this because I hope it will make their readers consider the effects of dehumanizing language. I don't refer to my hurt feelings, but to the way people may behave after being exposed again and again to the idea that Autistic kids are bad tempered, bad to be around, and different to the point of being inhuman.

I also hope that the wording of my letter will remind people that autism is just one of the many disabilities that exist. I feel this is an important thing to remember, both for Autistic people's benefit and for the benefit of people with other disabilities.

When the New Yorker first edited my letter, I didn't like some of the changes they made. I worried that they would not publish my letter if I argued, but the Letters Editor was very nice and accommodated the 3 requests that I had.

However, I want to point something out. I summarized the black mirrors quote this way:

Shapin claims that Autistic children's eyes "are not windows to their souls, but black mirrors."

The New Yorker wanted to change it to:

Shapin mentions the struggle of parents whose autistic children’s eyes "are not windows to their souls, but black mirrors."

My original letter did not mention parents at all, nor did it need to. It was only about a 9-word phrase describing Autistic kids' eyes. Knowing that this phrase appeared in a sentence about parents does not explain or excuse it. It is just as bad to write, "Autism parents suffer because their kids have black mirrors for eyes," as, "Autistic kids have black mirrors for eyes"--and for the purposes of my letter, I don't see the value of one over the other.

I explained why I did not agree with the edit--"Bringing up parents' 'struggle,' when it's not relevant to my point, is something that I don't agree with because I think media discussions of autism are already biased toward the experiences of parents. (Of course their experiences are important; they are just not the only perspective, and they're often treated that way.) That line doesn't represent how I would write."

It's a bad habit the media has when discussing autism--always inserting the perspective of parents, whether or not there is a reason to do so.  I've read a lot of great deconstructions of this by Autistic people, but my favorite is Zoe's parody article from a few years ago, Person With Autism Manages to Do Something:

How does Joe Autie feel about his achievement? “We’re very proud of him,” said his mother.

Anyway, I suggested that if the editor wanted to provide context, it would be better to quote more of the review. Now the letter includes the entire sentence that the black mirrors line is from:

It’s a searing experience to have a child who doesn’t talk, who doesn’t want to be touched, who self-harms, who demands a regularity and an order that parents can’t supply, whose eyes are not windows to their souls but black mirrors.

This edit is okay with me, but does have an unfortunate result. My letter begins with this quote, but only talks about black mirrors--giving the impression that there's nothing to say about the rest of this quote. However, it's actually pretty awful from beginning to end. I just decided to write in about "black mirrors" because it was the most obviously wrong and offensive part of the sentence, and I felt I could write something very short about it.

I want to address the rest of the sentence, though, except for the part about the "searing experience." If people feel "seared" by having Autistic kids, I can't argue with that--it's how they feel. I feel "seared" by reading that it's "searing" to have a kid like me--and that's how I feel. If feelings can't be criticized, it's a tie. However, I can and will criticize the list of reasons that Autistic kids are "searing."

After "black mirrors," what stuck out to me is the self harm--specifically the construction, "It's a searing experience to have a child who self-harms." I'm afraid that this is such a common construction, when writing about autism, that it's not obvious what is wrong with this picture. Imagine the following description of a violent accident:

Kendra, a kindergarten teacher, slipped on the steps of her house; she fell and cracked her head open on the sidewalk. It was very upsetting to all the people on the street to see Kendra lying there. Kendra's husband fell into a deep depression, unable to deal with what had happened. Kendra's students were very distressed when she could not come back to work because of her brain injury.

Hopefully this example gets the point across. Everyone has good reason to be seriously affected by Kendra's accident, especially her husband. But we don't expect to have their perspectives emphasized to the point that they entirely drown out Kendra's perspective of her situation. Her physical condition is only described in terms of its effect on others, and her feelings aren't described at all.

That is just a ridiculous way to describe something bad happening to Kendra--because first and foremost, it happens to Kendra. It does not happen to the people around her, no matter how much they love her. I can't speak to every person's experience of self harm, but in my experience it feels pretty bad internally--and physically, of course, it hurts a lot. No one else's reaction to self-harm is as "searing" as being in that situation yourself. To frame a child self injuring in terms of how someone else feels about it is unbelievably unempathetic to the child; and when it happens over and over in the media to the point of being unremarkable, that is really disturbing.

However, as I read the multi-faceted "searing" quote again and again, what stands out the most is the implication that autism is volitional--that Autistic children are being Autistic on purpose, just to torture the people around them. I addressed this idea a few years ago in my post Behavior vs. Ability. I was saying that those who are more empathetic to a disabled person will usually see the person's actions/inactions in terms of what they are not able to do, the fact that they may have to do things in alternate ways, and that they are trying to cope. On the other hand, there's the colder view that the actions are all there is--the person "prefers to do this," "refuses to do that." No reason is given, and no acknowledgment is given to the idea that a reason might exist. The person is just being bad.

It's subtle. But look what Shapin says:

a child who doesn’t talk

Why not "a child who can't talk?" Does Shapin mean to say that kids who can't talk are just refusing to talk? Does he really believe they can talk?

a child who demands a regularity and an order that parents can’t supply

Why not "a child who needs a regularity and an order that parents can't supply?" I doubt the child is drawing up a contract of "demands" like a rock band demanding green M&Ms in their rider. The child is upset when things aren't regular and orderly. The child is struggling, not "demanding" things.

(Imagine if the New Yorker had wanted to edit my letter to discuss "the struggles of children with black mirrors for eyes" instead of "the struggles of parents who have children with black mirrors for eyes." It's really too bad how surprising that would be.)

And how come the child "doesn't" talk, but the parents "can't" supply order? Why not say "the parents refuse to supply the order the child needs?" Because Shapin has empathy for the parents and understands there are things they can't do--but the child is just a mirror-eyed cipher.

Well, I'm just spitballing here--I don't want to go point by point through the whole sentence and edit everything to make it sound more like the child is in fact disabled--not "demanding" the things they need to function, not refusing to talk to "sear" their parents, not self-harming just for the hell of it. At that point, the sentence would no longer be as damaging to Autistic kids, but it still wouldn't be very good. ("This is the worst writing I've ever seen in the New Yorker," was my mom's comment, although her judgment may have been affected by all that searing I did to her.)

Anyway, I just wanted to give the searing sentence a more thorough look, and now I'll shuffle off with 2 boring postscripts:

1. I want to be very clear that I was not offended by the idea that Autistic kids' eyes look black, or that they look different from other people's eyes. I was offended by the context and implications. I don't like the resemblance to the Black-Eyed Children urban legend and to the purely black eyes (including black sclera) in a lot of ghost/alien/monster characters in movies and TV. I don't like the idea that our body parts aren't flesh but metal, or the idea of us having "nothing behind our eyes" where other people have souls.

However, lots of people do have glass eyes, metal spines, and so on. There's nothing supernatural about that either. When I jump on this quote like, "How dare you say this!" it is NOT because I think there's something horrific or monstrous about anybody who really has glass eyes, has very different looking eyes (no pupils, etc.), or doesn't have any eyes at all. It is because of the context and the tropes it's drawing on. And while the insult was specifically aimed at Autistic people, I don't think it does blind people any favors either to talk in such a weirdly tragifying, spooky way about eyes that look different, or eyes that do not focus and make eye contact.

2. It's hardly worth responding to, but Shapin says some really false and insulting things about the neurodiversity or Autistic self advocacy movement. I assume these are regurgitated from the book. For a smart and clear self advocate response to In a Different Key, that explains exactly how untrue these assertions are, I recommend Ari Ne'eman's review.

Why I Published A Picture of a 24-Year-Old Looking Bored With a Stuffed Dragon

Like many people, I recently saw a picture of a disabled teenage boy in his underwear. I'm not going to post the picture since I don't find it appropriate or appealing to distribute near-naked pictures of minors. If you don't know about the picture, it was the main picture on an NPR article about the boy's parents and their experiences taking care of him. Now you have enough information to find this picture--and what 16-year-old wouldn't be thrilled if the entire Internet community could find a picture like this of them?

It's true that most 16-year-olds wouldn't like it at all, but almost no one considers your perspective if you have a severe disability.  When disabled people complained about the picture, NPR ran another piece defending their decision and a bunch of non-disabled people made comments about how beautiful and important and meaningful the picture was.  All these people--the author of the new piece, the photographer, and most of the commenters--failed to comprehend any of the complaints that had been made. It is amazing how much people just refuse to hear information that has to do with disabled people having a perspective.

To hear them talk, the only people who had problems with the picture were just weenies who were shocked to see an image that refers to personal care.  The commenters especially seemed to feel that they were crusading for great justice, shutting down a bunch of Cloudcuckoolanders who want to remain unaware of the fact that some people need this kind of care and it can take a physical toll on their family members. The popular phrase was, "When I look at the picture I don't see all the stuff you're complaining about, I just see LOVE."

Most importantly, this is bullheaded ignorance of the fact that a)disabled people have opinions, b)most people would not like a picture like this to be distributed of themselves so it's a double standard, and c)no reference was ever made to the boy, Justin, being asked his opinion, nor whether he was able to give his opinion.

But on another note, I'd like to put forth my disabled opinion that this simply isn't a very good picture and that it represents neither love nor the real experience of caring for a severely disabled person. I'm not a parent, nor do I expect to ever be able to be one because of my disability; but my job is taking care of a severely disabled person, who I happen to love. My job involves personal care sometimes (how shocking), but also endless attempts to take good pictures of Anna. She doesn't care about pictures, but her dad is a photographer, her mom is an artist, and I am a member of the Selfie Generation, so we feel compelled to document every adorable and interesting thing that Anna does. Since Anna is quite adorable and interesting, she has to contend with this kind of thing pretty often.

Here are some of my pictures that I consider bad:

I consider them bad because they don't do what a picture should do--show who a person is. In the first picture, Anna is not looking at the camera and her face isn't visible. In the second picture, she is visible, but she is tired or lost in thought, so her personality is not portrayed in the picture. Actually it's not a great example of a really bad picture, because she sort of has an expression. The point is that in many candid pictures of Anna, she looks very blank and much more like a stereotype of a severely disabled person than she does in real life.

Here are some pictures I'm proud of, because they show Anna's personality.

 

I'm not a very good photographer, but I can sometimes get accurate pictures of Anna just by choosing the right time and talking to her while I'm taking the picture so she is interacting with me instead of hiding from the camera. Or I might take a picture of her while she is doing something she really likes to do or interacting with someone else. This seems pretty obvious, yet Andrew Nixon of NPR did not seem to think doing this was important. If you cut out the "shocking" part of the picture (that the boy is almost naked and his dad is carrying him) this is the supposedly loving image that you get.

I feel he could have taken a better picture of the dad too, but the most obvious problem is that you can't see the son's face. He might be smiling back at his dad, but you really can't tell because of the angle, and you have to work hard to even guess what his expression might be. I don't see the love or realism in this picture because I can't see the connection and interaction between the father and son. Some people think that taking care of a severely disabled person is just a heroic task where you cart around someone who doesn't even know you're there, but that's not reality. It's not unrequited love.

Andrew Nixon took a picture of two people, and failed to take it from an angle that included both of the people in the picture.  Without the "shocking" parts, it's obviously a bad picture. Rather than people not liking the picture because it's too shocking, it seems to me that people who like this picture like it only because they find it shocking.

The article includes another picture, where Justin is getting physical therapy. No one has much of an expression, and Justin especially almost looks like he is asleep. I don't really mind this one too much though, since it was not used to illustrate the article and everyone is fully clothed. Finally, at the end of the article, is an actually good picture of Justin. It looks to me like someone who Justin actually relates to (i.e., not the photographer who obviously doesn't know how to interact with him) has stepped in between him and Nixon.

Justin is at his birthday party, and clearly interested in what's going on. I think he's not looking at his cupcake as you might expect, but at a person he likes. Anna's dad also thought this was the best picture in the article and should have been highlighted because, "he's with it; he's paying attention."

There were a few comments on the article from people who thought Justin had, and I quote, "no cognition" and therefore his life was meaningless. His mother contacted some commenters to explain that of course he has cognition, which I am glad she did. But she could have done something better if she had demanded better pictures to be used in the article than ones that did not show Justin's face, or where he looked blank, which play right into the idea that severely disabled people don't think and disabled people in general don't have perspectives.

I'm not saying it is the parents' or Andrew Nixon's fault that people make those kind of assumptions about someone with severe disabilities, but they all could have fought against those assumptions by making an effort to include better pictures of Justin that portray his personality and inner life. Apparently none of them realized why it was important to do this, and they unintentionally advanced the idea that what's important about severely disabled people is the physical support they need, and not that they have personalities like everyone else.

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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.

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It seems like it's socially acceptable for "liberal" parents to say things like, "This is hard for me, I need time" as an excuse for saying offensive or hurtful things to their kids who are queer or transgender, and generally not making an effort to support them.  For some reason, this functions as a get out of jail free card to keep the parents from being seen as prejudiced or a bad parent, and I don't really think that is okay.

It's harder to actually belong to a marginalized group than it is to have your kid not turn out the way you were expecting.  Queer and trans people shouldn't have to deal with our parents being insulting and unhelpful on top of other things we have to deal with, and we definitely shouldn't be expected to act calm and patient when they're not even acting like parents.

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There's something I think about when I see parents of disabled kids fussing about how disabled people should be more tolerant of murder or whatever other crappy things parents want to do. What I think about it is not going to change the mind of that kind of person, but it's still something I think about.

I am never going to be able to spend a single second of my life away from a disabled person and I am never going to be able to spend a second not thinking about how to manage my disability. I didn't get to spend the first few decades of my life without a disability. I don't get to walk out of the room away from the disabled person who I am the only caregiver for. I don't get to send the person to respite so I can get a break.

Yes of course it can still be tough and a lot of work to take care of someone, even if you can walk out of the room and take a break for a few hours or even for months or a year. But I don't need to put myself in a parent's shoes, because I've been doing it longer and harder.

mixed feelings

The family I work for went to a protest against the cuts to classes, programs, and teachers at City College of San Francisco. CCSF offers non-credit classes aimed at disabled people which cover all kinds of subjects, from arts and crafts to trying to get a job. Anna goes to CCSF drama classes three days a week and clearly likes getting to see people she knows, listen to music, and participate as much as she can in the acting and dancing. It's a big part of her life and it doesn't even cost anything, so it's horrible to think that this opportunity could be taken away from her and all the other people who benefit from it.

Anna got to be on the news representing the point of view of disabled students, and her mom was interviewed explaining how the cuts would impact her.

I thought it was cool to see people I really like on TV talking about something really important, and Anna has a great sad face. But I also felt frustrated, just like I do about most representations of disabled people in the news. I've been in class with lots of the other developmentally disabled students who were at the protest, and most of them could have answered questions with speech, sign language, or AAC, some of them very fluently. Instead, the reporter chose Anna, who couldn't answer the questions and had to have her mom speak for her.

Of course, Anna is great and I think everyone should pay more attention to the point of view of people who don't use language. But if someone really wanted to put an interview with Anna on TV, they would need to really get to know her and learn about how she communicates. Someone who was willing and able to put in enough time could make a longer video showing Anna's feelings about her classes. But Anna couldn't give an interview in the form of a couple of sentences on the evening news.

When looking for an interview in the form of a couple of sentences, the reporters decided to go past all of the protesters with developmental disabilities (many of whom were older adults and not with family members) who could have directly talked about their experience in exactly that form. They found someone who couldn't talk about her experiences in that form, and was with her parents, and had to have her parents talk about her experience. Surprise surprise.

tl;dr

I know this isn't an interesting post, it's probably my 100th post on the subject. I try to avoid even reading about this stuff because no one cares. But I quit tumblr, so sometimes I have to say boring emotional stuff on my regular blog.

1. It's so dumb to think that listening to PWD aside from your own kid means that you have to obey and agree with everything they say! PWD don't even all have the same life experiences or opinions. Why don't you just treat people with disabilities like people with disabilities who might have something to say that is important and, even if they don't, don't deserve to be personally attacked?

"But I didn't personally attack anyone!"

Oh yeah, I've heard that before...too bad Ability Statements Are a Personal Attack! There's no way you would be into it if I started making assumptions about your kid or your life so why do you think disabled people should be all calm about you doing the same to us?

No disabled person wants a bunch of parents following them around and obsessing over their lives and worshipping them. Well some people do, but they're famous and they try not to talk politics because it might distract from the worship. You're not talking to those people, you're talking mostly to some really young/not-famous people with disabilities who don't want to profit from our disabilities but just want to be able to talk about them. We don't want you to agree with everything we say, we just want you to stop being disrespectful and acting like we're not even here.

This is especially annoying when used as an origin story, like, "I used to believe everything that disabled people on the Internet said, until someone told me that one person wasn't diagnosed with the disability they said they were diagnosed with, so now I don't believe ANY disabled people on the Internet." If you legit were believing everything all disabled people said AND prioritizing what they said over your own common sense and experience with your kid--instead of just listening to them like you would listen to any normal person, and thinking about what they said critically--well, why were you doing that? Why do we have to be always right or always wrong?

We're just OTHER PEOPLE, like you.

2. If I see the word high-functioning used one more time by someone who is claiming to be evenhanded...okay I'll probably have the same reaction as usual. Super big sigh, bad mood, usually avoiding a conversation with that person. That word just feels like they are stepping on other people and not even noticing or seeing why it's important.

3. It's not that weird that people from a certain minority group involved in advocacy would not be representative of everyone in their group. I remember someone (non-disabled obviously) making a comparison between gay advocates and Autistic advocates, and hastening to add, "except, the difference is not all Autistic people can do this kind of advocacy."

Yeah, okay, what about gay people who don't have the money or the mobility or the cognitive or emotional ability to participate in a certain kind of advocacy? Since we're always on the subject, what about gay people who have multiple severe disabilities? What about gay people who smear feces?

I would like to see mainstream gay advocates acknowledging gay disabled people more, obviously, but what I'm saying is I don't think you automatically have the right to discredit advocates just because they aren't a perfect microcosm of the community they are supporting. For example, people who can use the Internet independently, and read and type fluently, are more likely to be involved in blogging or having conversations on blogs. People who can use the Internet independently were more likely to find out about The Loud Hands Project and submit clips of themselves for the video. (According to one guy we all dress like "hipsters," and therefore don't have real autism. I'm still trying to figure out what people with real autism dress like? Probably guayabera shirts.)

I think it sucks that many kinds of anti-ableist advocacy aren't accessible to a lot of disabled people and I would like to change that. (I know that one of the goals of The Loud Hands Project is to do exactly that.) But I don't think, given the current lack of support, there is anything surprising when most disabled people who have anti-ableism blogs or attend meetings of disability rights organizations have certain abilities that make it easier (or at least possible) for them to do those things without support. It also doesn't mean they aren't severely affected in other areas, but no one cares about that, blogging is ~the most important thing in the world, ever.

4. Finally, just stop saying high-functioning! Again! It makes it impossible to talk to you because my head is going to DROWN in how annoying you are.

Especially if your kid is also "high-functioning" or could be classified that way, but for some reason you're neglecting to mention that. Maybe because you secretly sense what a shitty word that is to describe someone who's having a really difficult time! Or, maybe because you don't want to lose points in the argument. Possibly both! No one knows.

Like I said, this is probably the 100th post I've written on this subject and I swear to God, I don't think a single parent has ever read something like this and changed their mind and realized they were treating other people badly. Seriously. 100 posts. All bouncing straight back into my own mind.

If you have known me for a while, you probably remember my 2010 campaign to acquire a severe developmental disability by throwing myself in front of a FedEx truck before my 22nd birthday. Since I've missed the legal cutoff I would now have to throw myself a bit harder, or drink Drano, to get out the high-functioning deal. I know you think this is really insensitive and insulting to you and your kid, but try and think about WHY I would feel like that is a smart or reasonable thing to do. Because I really, really did feel that way.

A friend of mine recently described himself as "too disabled to work, not disabled enough to get disability benefits." If you think that kind of life situation is best described as "functioning," then you are a shit. Seriously. When I look at you, I don't see a person. I see a turd.

Of course I know you don't see anything when you look at me either!

Privilege and the TPGA Dialogues

This is kind of a draft for a comment I want to write somewhere, but might end up not posting if I can't get it out right.

Basically, I see a lot of people talking about the TPGA dialogues as a situation when parents and self-advocates were both focused on the issues that personally affected them and didn't want to listen to the other side or didn't want to compromise.

As a person with a disability, I'd just like to say: I love parents. They're totally sweet. I read some parent blogs that I really like and that are helpful to me in thinking about anti-ableism more broadly (since most of the disabled people I meet on the Internet have certain abilities by definition). But this doesn't have much to do with the reasons a lot of Autistic people on the TPGA threads were saying things that made parents feel "uncomfortable" and "silenced."

I think it comes down to the fact that a lot of the Autistic people who were in the conversation are involved in the kind of Internet social justice atmosphere where the concept of privilege is very central. The article I linked to probably isn't the best explanation of privilege, but it is hard to find one article or blog post that explains it really well. But basically privilege refers to the benefits that someone has when they don't belong to an oppressed group. For example I have white privilege and class privilege (and a lot of other kinds of privilege).

A really important aspect of privilege is that a lot of people who have it may not realize that they have it or how much and this can lead to a tendency to center their own experience because they don't realize how much their experience is already centered. That tendency can take the form of feeling like something is being taken away from them when in fact a situation is being made more equal. (I'm not trying to attack anyone by saying this, I just want to explain the concept.)

Where I went to college, there was a fairly big community of students who either were trans or cared a lot about being supportive of people who were trans. In almost every student group and even occasionally in classes, it had become the norm to ask people to state their preferred pronoun when introducing themselves. This can make things easier for someone who is often perceived as a different gender from what they actually are, since they can address potential misunderstandings before they happen.

Sometimes you would hear people who were not trans, who were very nice people, saying things like, "I hate going around the room and saying pronouns. Like, 'I'm sorry I'm not special!'" Because they had never had to tell people what their gender was, they found it a silly thing to do at best, and at worst, they actually felt that they looked boring and "not special" when they asked for the pronoun that would probably already have been used for them. Even though their boring and "not special" answer was being given by most of the people in the room.

I've also seen a lot of non-trans people feel like they are being insulted when they are called the word "cis," which is just a synonym for non-trans. The word NT, while not one I especially like, doesn't need to be branded a slur by people without disabilities, but I have definitely seen them have that reaction. In both examples, people from the dominant group seem offended by the idea of being called any word at all, instead of just being the group that is nameless because everyone is assumed to belong to it.

I think you might be getting to see why this seems like too long and involved a comment to post on the blog of someone I don't know! But to return to the TPGA dialogues, it is believed in the social justice community (by social justice I mean a certain way of looking at the world) that the appropriate way to talk about oppression is for the people who don't have privilege to be the authority because they experience the oppression firsthand. This doesn't mean that people who are privileged shouldn't get to talk at all, but that if a lot of oppressed people are saying a particular thing about oppression, the privileged people should accept it is true, even if it means apologizing for something they did wrong.

Also, to reiterate, since privileged people often feel attacked just because a situation is being made more equal, someone who thinks about social justice this way is probably not going to feel guilty and back off just because a privileged person says, "I feel like I'm being silenced and people from my group aren't allowed to talk." In fact, the reaction is more likely to be, "What you feel isn't the point."

If a parent thinks that the problem with TPGA dialogues has to do with, for example, everyone only caring about how anti-ableism could personally help them, then I don't think they understand what happened. It isn't possible to understand a lot of the things said by people with disabilities if you don't, either academically or just personally, understand the concept of privilege.

For the record I identify as disabled not as autistic.

I think if they do dialogues at TPGA again they should include people with disabilities other than autism.

It's kind of tough because I think in some ways these parent-centering issues are worse in the "autism community," not because of any real fact about people with autism or our parents, but because of the social position that autism occupies.

It's a really fashionable disability to be related to, and a really stigmatized one to have (in a complicated way--I think practically anyone can get famous for having autism while the voices of people with less distinguished disabilities are ignored, but it's almost impossible to get a normal job while being open about the fact that you have autism). To hear the average person say it, you would think that autism is the only disability someone's child could possibly have, and after watching TV for a few minutes you'd be doubly convinced.

Kids with physical, sensory, and intellectual disabilities don't have the high profile that kids with autism have, and the same goes for their parents. I'm sure this has plenty of drawbacks. I also think it gives families room to figure things out by themselves and get most of their emotional encouragement from other families rather than from the media. There's also the fact that Deaf culture is the oldest disability culture, and people with visual, physical, and intellectual disabilities have a fairly long history of advocating for themselves that anyone can read about in a book on disability rights. This isn't so much the case for people with autism.

Of course, it's also the case that any book about disability rights is pretty hard to find, and that parents of people with all disabilities are centered. I think in some communities there is more of a sense that this is something to be corrected--from my admittedly limited viewpoint, it seems that things like "Welcome to Holland" are much more of a staple in intellectual disability parent circles than they are among parents of kids with autism. But the idea is still there. The point of view of a person with a disability is always hard to remember to take.

I don't think I would be as into anti-ableism as I am if I hadn't seen how pervasive a lot of things are cross-disability, things that I had previously thought of as "autism problems." The world started to seem more broken to me but also somehow more fixable. I think parent-centering is one of the issues that people with all disabilities, and parents of people with all disabilities, need to talk about.

That said I do think it probably seems like a more severe problem to me and other people with autism than it does to people who have disabilities other than autism, because of autism's high profile and lack of history.

2. Unevenness and inexplicability

(Two)

One of the reasons I don't write primarily about my disability (if you were wondering), and also a reason I am balls at self-advocacy, is because I'm a person with--DUN DUN DUN!--uneven skills.

I actually don't believe in uneven skills! It's a social construct and this is obvious in the fact that--while people sometimes make practical blunders like assuming someone with a physical disability has a mental disability, or talking to someone who is blind the way you might talk to someone who is hard of hearing--most people would admit if they were asked that there is no logical reason someone who is blind must also be deaf, or someone who is physically disabled must also be mentally disabled. And no one feels the need to say someone has "uneven skills" because they can hear but not see.

But within categories of disability, especially the mental disability category, there's this expectation of evenness. If someone's abilities aren't exactly at the same "level," whatever that means, they're possibly an amazing curiosity, but probs lying.

A person can write but not talk? A person scores high on IQ tests but can't do well in school? A person does well in school but can't figure out how to go grocery shopping or make a meal? A person can cook but not clean? A person can make some kinds of phone calls but not others?

No way guys, all these people are just liars! Check it out, this person claims she can't talk, but I found a video of her SINGING! Oh hey, you said you can't make phone calls, but I know that you made a phone call one time. Caught in the act!

As a person who can't make certain kinds of phone calls, like phone calls to follow up on jobs for example, I would never be stupid enough to tell anyone this. When someone tries to give me advice on finding a job and the advice includes phone calls, I just stop listening to what they're saying and start smiling really big to show them that they're helping me LOTS.

"Why can't you make those phone calls?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?"

"I don't know? I just don't? I guess probably you could locate it in something about phone calls feeling insincere, and worrying about bothering people, and not knowing what I would say in the phone call, all of which are kind of horrible things, multiplied by like a hundred because I applied for a hundred jobs so there isn't even an end in sight."

"Oh so you could make one phone call."

"I mean, theoretically, probably? I'd sort of deal with it all day. I'd write myself a letter about it. Maybe someone could sit with me. But it isn't one phone call, it's a hundred phone calls."

"Why can't you make a hundred phone calls if you can make one?"

"Because it would take a hundred days."

"So you can make phone calls!"

"You're totally right, if I took a hundred days and used them to only make phone calls and felt calm about everything else. I could probably do it in less than a hundred days if I had my own personal phone call aide to support me in all the phone call problems and keep me from running away from the phone. Maybe I could even do it in a few days, with a phone call aide. You win. Great job. Are you going to hire one?"

"No, that's stupid."

"I know, so why did we have this conversation?"

No one knows!

One time my dad tried to have a conversation with me because I said something about it taking me a lot longer to do certain things than it took other people. He kept asking me why. I was like, "I don't know, but towards the end of college I started having to pull one or two all-nighters every week, because I could only get work done if I had that much time to do it in." My dad kept asking me why I didn't do things like "sleep for a few hours, and then wake up and work." I was like, "I don't know, because I know that wouldn't make any sense for the problems the all-nighters were supposed to correct?"

We had started having this conversation because I didn't think I could write letters that night if I also wanted to go to bed at a normal time. My dad said, "What about you bring your letters downstairs and I sit with you and make sure you write them right now?" This sounds nice, but I already knew what kind of conversation it was! For some reason I agreed anyway just to see what happened.

When I went upstairs, I said, "If I don't come downstairs in ten minutes, will you remind me to come downstairs?"

My dad was basically like, haha! Caught in the act!

Because--you saw this coming if you have "uneven skills"--the fact that I asked my dad to remind me to come downstairs showed that I actually was just lazy and didn't want to take responsibility for my own actions. Asking for this was the final straw that pushed him over into thinking that the whole problem I was describing (which he'd obviously made it clear he had his doubts about) was too ridiculous to be true.

I don't know if it seems weird that my dad wouldn't believe I was telling the truth, since I have been diagnosed with some disability or other since I was a little kid. In my family, whether I'm disabled is not a controversy. But when I try to tell my parents a fact about my disability, it is always assumed to be not true.

Uneven skills can also be called inexplicable impairments and they are basically anything someone thinks is ridiculous or impossible. I guess you might be wondering why I am just writing about myself, when I am supposed to be writing about Internet arguments. The reason is that, first of all, random Internet judgments of someone's ability tend to be made out of the same mindset that assumes someone is lying because their disability seems too "uneven" or unlikely.

Someone with a developmental disability is typing? Someone with a developmental disability is writing a blog? I saw on their Facebook that they're in college! My bullshit detector is going off--this combination of facts is simply too ridiculous to be true.

So first of all these judgments often come from the fact that most people have a poor understanding of uneven abilities (especially when those abilities are stated by a disabled person and not a parent or best of all a professional). But second of all, it's because so many disabled people are really used to having people (at best) smirkingly accept our stated impairments, if not outright challenge them, that it is so upsetting and frustrating to have some random person on the Internet imply we are not disabled because we have a blog. At least my parents tell me to my face that they think I'm trying to get away with something.

I got in an argument with a friend, as one does, and said something I may not have actually come out and said on the Internet before, but it is the basis of a lot of things I think. I really respect her for being willing to have this conversation with me.

her: i don't want to have a child with a disability because i know that if i do i will have to, in fact, love that kid like crazy and put my everything towards its thriving. i mean, depends on the disability but i think that a lot of parents do struggle with that

me: okay well, I don't mean to be a dick, but just so you know people can accidentally have a child with a disability, my mom did, obviously. so, like, keep it in mind b/c I always hear people being like "I'm not going to have a kid with a disability because I can't handle, so I'm getting amnio" or whatever. and I'm like....ehh.

her: no, of course but amanda, i don't mean to downplay whatever your mom went through, but you obviously do not have as severe a disability as someone with downs. if my kid had aspergers it would be really different

me: oh my gosh, for real?

her: yeah of course

me: how many people do you know with down syndrome

her: well, only patients

me: I know a lot of people with down syndrome and when people say things like that I wish they could know all the people I know

her: but anything really, whether it was downs or something like marfans or fragile x. i know that they are and can be really, really awesome people to know. and i'm not saying i wish that they don't exist or anything like that at all, it's just obviously they aren't easy kids to raise.

me: you think marfan's is worse than autism?

her: i don't think marfans is worse than autism, but there is a spectrum with autism

me: okay like, I don't want to be a dick to you b/c I think you're really cool but...this is really silly

her: no it's cool, i want to know what you think

me: and I know you feel like "Amanda's not really disabled, she's my friend, but ~some people are really disabled and I feel different about them~" sorry if that's a harsh way to put it, but something I have noticed about the way people talking about parenting a disabled child: people can frame any disability however they want, like, oh it's really difficult, so difficult that the parent doesn't have to be judged for any decisions they make, ever.

I actually think something that has made this really clear for me is that autism is a really stigmatized disability in terms of kids with autism supposedly being really, I don't know, cold and smearing shit or something, and with down syndrome there's more a stereotype of kids being sweet--so actually you see parents being able to frame raising a kid with autism in a really negative way, much more negative than parents can usually get away with when it comes to ds, even if you compare two essays/blogs/interviews/whatever where the kid with autism is more independent or whatever than the kid with ds. and that is why I find the "your disability is milder" thing to be kind of a red herring.

I grew up disabled in a really stereotypical way, like I felt really guilty and like a huge burden. it doesn't really matter what disability I have, it's a cultural experience that people have across levels of independence, IQ, etc.

(additional note: I was predicted not to be able to live independently, or at least that was implied, and this hangs over like...every conversation I have with my parents. it's a huge factor in our relationship and in how I live--and actually, in my abilities as well. and sometimes it annoys me when whether someone actually CAN live independently is treated as the most important thing when they're talking about disability or ableism. because tons of stuff can happen to you just because of predictions that someone made about you when you were little, and that matters even if the predictions were wrong!)

Apparently someone decided to call and harass RRH on the phone because of the tpga "dialogue." As everyone knows, it wasn't a dialogue, RRH didn't seem to care much about the issues being discussed, blah blah blah, but guess what, that's a totally irrelevant.

Part of being a member of a minority community is that you can't just do whatever you want all the time.

When a person with a disability expresses how they feel about something, especially if they are angry, other people regularly act as if the PWD has done something on the level of calling their house and harassing them. It can be kind of funny to look at this big divide between how someone's being characterized (scary and intimidating) and who they actually are (a disabled, usually young person typing comments on the Internet that are often more polite than the comments of the person who feels so "intimidated").

Well, guess what, there's no divide this time, because someone actually did what non-disabled people expect disabled people to do all the time. They actually did something scary. I'm sure this person was really mad and going through a lot, but, guess what, minority community! You fucked EVERYONE.

Now, I know this seems really unfair. Why aren't I writing a rant at parents who have threatened my own disabled friends? Because they're not in my community. Their decisions are their own, your decisions are ours. I totally understand that this sounds offensive--why can't disabled people just be individuals? I don't know guys, but we're just not, so please do not do things like this.

(trigger warning for description of me having violent feelings toward myself and other disabled people)

I couldn't sleep and wandered into Clayton's room and said:

when I was 13 my dog died and I felt really sorry for my parents because now they only had me. Whenever I thought about the fact that I was an only child I was filled with this guilt I tried to avoid thinking about, that they didn't have another kid to take their minds off me.

Last spring I was almost done with college. My parents had told me that I would be able to finish college in four years if I worked hard enough. All my friends who had disabilities like mine were either having a lot of trouble in school or had already had to leave and I was determined not to be like them. I kind of hated them. I got in a big fight on the Internet because I made an angry blog post about how I wanted to kill people who took medical leaves because I would kill myself rather than do that.

I would get really angry and scared about potentially not doing schoolwork and not being able to graduate. I would get suicidal. Sometimes just trying to come down from being really suicidal made it hard to do work but I couldn't tell my professors why my work wasn't good or on time. It made me feel upset to wonder what they thought of me but if I told anyone I was suicidal I could be removed from school and I wouldn't be able to finish in four years.

My parents do a lot for me and I'm very close to them. I consider them great people but a part of me is disappeared from them.

this is a collection of tumblr posts so it may get longer

Maybe you know what's going on. If you don't that's okay. I don't want to use the person's name and maybe that's dumb but it just seems like such an archetypal situation that I don't see the point of causing drama. He seems unreachable. If you know who this is you already know. It's a non-disabled parent vs. disabled people internet drama thing. It is taking a lot out of me and I'm not even directly involved.

Zero

[I deleted this post immediately after making it]

has ted ever considered treating other people with 1% compassion? just do it! it'll be great!

One

also, before I go back to sleep, because I can’t yet thanks to this ridiculousness.

it happens to be a fact that at one point You Know Who wrote in an email to either Z or me (I don’t remember which, because it was a while ago and it was an incredibly horrible series of days in my life for reasons that had little to do with him but definitely exacerbated how much the situation upset me) something like this:

“when this started happening my friends started telling me that I shouldn’t try to talk to self-advocates because it wouldn’t end well and they wouldn’t listen but I tried to anyway and I’m really regretting this because everyone has been so mean to me and not listened!!”

okay dude, so let’s look at this.

basically he’s setting up the fact that he tried to engage with self-advocates (also known as disabled adults!) as, like, some kind of awesome favor. like, the baseline thing that you would expect would be that he wouldn’t do it. and his friends told him not to do it because self-advocates are not nice, or maybe just don’t understand these issues because they’re not smart enough. (but when it actually matters, we are smart and NLMC.) I mean, this is what I already don’t get, because if your work is about disability and making things better for disabled kids, how could you think listening to disabled people is anything other than vital? because one day your kid will be an adult who people are trying to decide if it’s worth it to listen to, or if engaging with them ~won’t be worth it~ or whatever.

but you’re trying to figure out if disabled adults are going to be nice/cool/~understanding enough to deserve your time. yeah okay. I hope you engage with your kid even if they wake up on the wrong side of the bed and aren’t reasonable or in a good mood. (disclaimer, my impression of You Know Who is he would do this because he seems like a really good dad, but I have NO IDEA why I am required to say this when I am disagreeing with him or why he thinks people are required to take his advocacy work into account when disagreeing with something he said especially because he clearly doesn’t give a fuck about what any of the ~disabled adults~ arguing with him experience or what our work has been like.)

anyway, this guy decides to be an epic saint and actually answer/talk to disabled people who disagree with him even though someone told him that the disabled people would just be dicks. and the disabled people in question…were dicks, in his opinion. so his conclusion is to like try to guilt-trip us because HE LISTENED TO US EVEN THOUGH HE WAS TOLD NOT TO BOTHER. because he’s the nicest guy in the world. and we weren’t nice back!!

but if you really care what disabled adults have to say then you just would listen and you wouldn’t think you deserve something for listening! AND if you think someone wasn’t nice to you (which I couldn’t disagree with more in this case) you would still want to engage because it’s important! you definitely wouldn’t be like “ooh this is starting to prove that I shouldn’t have engaged with you”

IN CONCLUSION, this is a really good way of making it sound like you want disabled adults to shut up and practically all you have done is say things like this!

Two

[obviously, this was also a direct comment on one of his posts]

Hi R, it’s Amanda. We talked a bit in comments and by email when this first happened, and (as I probably said) I can’t do this conversation well because it’s a big emotional/psychiatric trigger for me to hear people being told their disabilities aren’t significant. (I understand if you think I’m misinterpreting what you said or taking it too much to heart, but you said that Zoe lives independently and that isn’t true. That is a perfect illustration of why parents should not try to bring in personal information when having these conversations with self-advocates.)

So I apologize for messy/badly thought out parts of this comment. But I would like to point out that I’ve never seen Zoe try to represent the point of view of someone with a disability that’s different from hers or more severe than hers—just her own point of view. I feel that we start having this conversation where we argue the legitimacy of things that haven’t actually happened. I actually see you acknowledging/agreeing with a lot of things that Zoe said in her letter and I don’t really think there is a lot of disagreement when it comes to actual ideas. And obviously Zoe cares a lot about talking to you and engaging with you, because she is making an effort to do so and has initiated most of the conversations you’ve had.

The biggest difference of opinion that I see seems to be that you feel attacked but no one I know feels like they have attacked you. I didn’t think Zoe’s original post was that mean or aggressive, except for one word choice that she later apologized for. But you’re saying she turned you into a “bogeyman?” And that you wish you could have heard from her when you first made the post with suggestions of how to make it be more inclusive—but that’s exactly what her original post WAS. She linked it in the comments of your post because she intended for you to read it and think about it.

I think you’re a great parent who has done a lot of important work for AAC users. At one point in an email you said that my reaction really bothered you because I was a longtime reader of your blog and knew about your work. But I don’t see why or how someone is supposed to take your work into account when responding to something you said that they thought was offensive. A person can do good work and still say something that other people find worthy of addressing. Personally I’d be really happy if this conversation stuck to opinions and ideas and stopped being about anyone’s life or work.

(I have to say that when in posts and comments you have tried to talk about what any of us know or experience in our personal lives, you have often been wrong, as with the comment about living independently. Which is one reason I’d like you to stop.)

Anyway, I’m getting off track, but I have seen you say that you were turned into a bogeyman, take words out of context to turn them into examples of how you were insulted (like when someone wrote a post saying that you and Zoe had both made “dick moves” in the conversation, and you said that you’d been called a dick), Tweet about things that self-advocates have said to you in emails that you think were stupid or offensive, and tell people like Zoe who have been fairly polite that you would have happily listened if they’d been MORE polite. To me, it looks like you think you’re in this situation where people don’t like you and are trying to bully you. That is what is most confusing to me because I think you are wrong. If disabled people didn’t care about you we wouldn’t be trying to reach out to you and talk to you! Most of the things you’re calling attacks happened because A DISABLED PERSON WANTED TO ENGAGE WITH YOU. I can see why someone would say that this really makes it hard for disabled adults to talk, because no matter what we do, you react as if we’re punching you in the face. I really don’t get it, with the work you do for your daughter, that you make it seem like disabled adults have to meet an impossible standard for it to be “worth it” for you to listen. To me your work/parenting and your reaction to this situation seem like they belong to two completely different people.

Three

“People who are struggling just to live every day don’t have the luxury for discussions like this.”—one of Ted’s friends on twitter


HEAD MEET DESK
FOREVER

but….but….HE IS HAVING IT!!! so therefore he ALSO sucks

and you’re talking about it on twitter so you suck too!

everyone sucks! we all have luxurious not-really-disabled lives!

[Savannah reblogged this and pointed out it's kind of like "poor people can't have nice things if they're poor." it sort of reminds me of people taking pictures of homeless people who have cell phones and maybe that explains why it feels so hateful. the constant desire to assert that people in a situation that blows are actually having a great time.]

Four

you know, when ted and I talked by email he sort of (very unenthusiastically) apologized for doing the whole YOU’RE SO MILDLY DISABLED thing to Zoe, Julia, and me. I basically spilled my guts to him, I linked him to the page from the passing project where people talk about wanting to hurt themselves or become injured to opt out of “invisible disability.” (I have to make a new version of the passing project at some point because there is so much I left out, particularly in this area, because about three times more people talked about this kind of thing than I had room for.)

I tried to say, hey, I might be jealous of someone with limited speech because they get assumed to need support, while I’m presumed to either not need support or to be able to ask for it! But that is just a feeling coming out of my own shitty circumstances and it’s not VALID. And it’s really hurtful! So it’s not something I need to go around announcing, especially as a way to silence someone with limited speech.

so ted was like…okay. That makes sense. I was jealous too.

yeah, no. here ted was again yesterday, saying that people who can “live independently and self-advocate” (even though he’s talking to someone who doesn’t live independently, well never mind, SHE HAS A BLOG, obviously the most important ADL) have “privilege.”

now, the truth is I don’t really want to argue with this. I have privilege over, like, another lesbian who gets regularly perceived as a lesbian by strangers. for example I’m moving to Cincinnati which I’m told is kind of conservative/homophobic in some places, but for me, that doesn’t matter at all because no one on the street is going to assume that I’m gay. whereas someone who looks “more lesbian” has to think about this stuff when they think about where they’re going to live.

it’s complicated because passing can be tough, and especially in terms of disability, passing can lead to all these real problems of not getting support. being treated like I don’t have a disability, or seeing other people treated that way, actually sickens me, it’s just really horrible. so I’m not sure I’d use the word privilege when it comes to disability? but I’m not sure I wouldn’t either. what I do know is if I was talking to ted’s daughter about disability, I’d be aware that we have way different stigma experiences because she’s more “visibly” disabled, and that would probably be something I was thinking about just as much as I’d be thinking about how best to listen to/communicate with someone who has more limited speech and uses AAC.

but no one is talking to ted’s daughter! we’re talking to ted. so please someone explain how this is relevant.

different experience of stigma DOES matter, but I don’t think it means such a clear-cut, huge different in privilege that any non-disabled person needs to be telling disabled people about it over and over. or like going on his Twitter (seriously is he a high school girl??) and posting about how we’re “ignoring our privilege.” what does that even mean? what would not ignoring our privilege look like? do we have to start every post/comment we make with a little checklist of our privilege over ted’s daughter (as far as we can tell, since we’ve never met her, and like I said these things are far from clear-cut)?

now, here’s what I think. ted, despite being aware of what privilege means from a social justice standpoint, isn’t actually using it that way. ted just means that he thinks we have it easier than his daughter. which, as I said, is totally fine, people play those little games in their head and resent other people all the time for having what they think are easier lives. it’s when you decide that those feelings/games actually represent FACTS or are somehow political that…you become a huge fail.

imagine if I thought it was relevant whenever I argued with someone to be like, “You’re straight! You’re a man! You’re better-looking than I am! You’re from England, I wish I was from England, so you’re PRIVILEGED! Your parents sound like more fun than my parents are! STOP IGNORING YOUR PRIVILEGE.” now obviously in some ways this person is more privileged than me and in other, non-privilege-related ways they may also have a more fun life than I do, but like, this isn’t related to what we’re saying! also what if their parents aren’t more fun than mine are or they don’t feel like they are? aren’t I just making them feel upset and playing this weird game with them for no reason?

not only is ted saying all these kind of nasty and insensitive things about how great he thinks other disabled people have it, but he actually seems angry that we either choose not to respond or point out he is being ridiculous? like, he’s personally offended?

this really hurts because I am personally offended by being told I have it great and I very sincerely and unguardedly tried to explain this to him. and he was kind of like “I guess I don’t know as many diverse pwds as I should” or some other half-apology. but I would say it’s not just that he doesn’t know a lot of diverse pwds, but that his understanding of disability is really simple and flat.

his daughter is disabled and has a hard time, so therefore she has it the worst. even though she’s on the unified sports team for the most independent kids. even though she can walk and run. even though she can use AAC and can use some speech. even though she doesn’t look different like a lot of kids with brain formation conditions (like microcephaly and lissencephaly) do and therefore experiences less stigma in that area. keep in mind there’s no way I’d ever want to have this kind of contest with anyone, but there are plenty of ways that ANYONE has it better than someone else. his daughter is really disabled, he knows that because he knows her, so therefore he categorizes her disability as real/severe/significant and the rest of us who he disagrees with, or who have abilities he wishes his daughter had, are in the only other category he knows of, which basically amounts to “not real.”

what if we were all really disabled?

what if we all just looked different from each other, some people looked like conventionally cute kids and other people had different-shaped faces and heads or different facial features; what if some people could talk and some people could talk a little and some people could talk sometimes and some people could only say one word or no words; what if some of us could live on our own and some could but ended up hungry and unwashed and some people would die if they lived on their own; and what if some of us could stand up for ourselves in school and fight back if someone hurt us and some of us could write in a blog and some of us could give a speech and some of us were seen as fucking geniuses/miracles because we “made a full recovery,” but didn’t even have the “self-advocacy” to say no to unwanted sex because we were too scared or well-trained; and what if a lot of us had all these predictions made about us when we were kids, he will never type on a keyboard, she will never drive, she will never go to college, he will use a wheelchair, she will have seizures, he will never live on his own, and to some extent it doesn’t MATTER what we went on to do anyway because we still were kids who were talked about that way and when you make decisions about a kid you don’t know what they will do, if someone tells you that stuff about the kid, you accept it—so we live with that anyway. What if all of these people were disabled?

I worry, precisely because ted’s daughter, still very young, is gaining skills that were not predicted and is very conventionally normal-looking, that someday people will try and tell her she is not really disabled. and he has set himself up to be totally blindsided by that because he used to say that to other people, and he doesn’t understand why it is wrong.

Five

from my favorite story:

Lupin looked down at him with soft eyes. "He's hanging in there. Between the nightmares and the Dementors and the Death Eater attacks-- but Voldemort can't take Harry out. No matter how much he throws at him, Harry always pulls through."

"The Boy Who Lives and Lives," Neville echoed weakly, because that's what the Prophet was calling him now.

Lupin shook his head angrily. "The damn Prophet. Only a Qwik-Quotes Quill would call it living."