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.)

real time post #1

but not a super composed post, just a reply to a comment. Normally I'd just respond in the comment thread obviously, but since I've had poor access to the Internet I have spent a lot of time thinking about the comment and have a lot to say.

Sarah Abraham-son is a person who writes a blog called Aspies on TV where she lists TV and movie characters who she thinks have "Asperger's." Several months ago I made a comment here expressing why I didn't agree with the blog, and she recently came across the comment and left her own comment on one of my recent posts. This is Sarah's comment:

Hi Amanda:
I just read this, I'm not sure how we disagree, based on your comment on my blog. Of course people with ASDs commonly have EF issues and mood issues, but these are not core features and not part of the diagnostic features, but often more disabling than some core features. Many of the fictional characters I described do have these features, eg. David Brent in The UK Office (EF issues help him be bad at his job, mood issues develop later when he's fired). This sort of issue though is not very funny, and the aim of fiction is firstly to entertain in some way, so not standard in comedy characters with ASDs.

Hi Sarah. Like many Autistic people and allies, I don’t consider the stuff you consider to be core features of autism to be core features of autism. I’d recommend reading my “social skills don’t exist” series to better understand my perspective on social skills being socially constructed.

As for executive function and mood not being part of the diagnostic critera for autism spectrum disabilities, that’s neither here nor there as the DSM kind of blows in this department. Also, the social skills thing is really neither here nor there either, as a lot of of the characters you claim are “Aspies” don’t even have the kind of social problems that verbal people with autism usually have, but are insensitive or odd in any number of ways. I think fictional diagnostics is fun and everything, but to pick out any character who doesn’t fit in socially or acts rude, without taking the time to think about the specific reasons why some verbal Autistic people don’t fit in or are perceived as rude, is to thoughtlessly perpetuate the very popular and inaccurate belief that all types of insensitivity and social awkwardness equal “Asperger’s.”

Not really clear what you mean with the entertainment value thing--I can think of many humorous portrayals of people with mood disorders and other psychiatric disabilities (although I don’t agree with a lot of them obviously), and cognitive disabilities including intellectual disabilities and Alzheimer’s. Just on a basic level, I tried to serve myself corn in a water glass the other day and all my campers thought it was really funny. Probably much more funny than if I said, “Wow, you have ugly hair” or whatever I’d be saying if I was an autism pop culture character.

Furthermore...come on. Funniness is not an excuse for portraying minority groups inaccurately or disrespectfully--not that portraying a minority group was even what most of these TV shows and movies were trying to do.

disabling queerness: Fingersmith

Before I start, there are two kinds of ASD (or generally mind-disabled) characters, besides those who are actually canonically identified as having ASD. There are people like Pete Campbell where I sincerely think that if they were a real person born in 2000, they would be diagnosed with ASD. Then there are people like River Tam from Firefly, who obviously doesn't literally have ASD or schizophrenia, because we know that her ASD/schizophrenic traits come from emotional trauma and brain injury. If I write something "reading" River as a person like me, I'm not trying to deny the canon of the show, but just saying that functionally, she is kind of like people with certain disabilities, and can be identified with/claimed by us.

The character Maud Lilly, from the book and movie Fingersmith, is the second kind of character; she comes off as being like a person with ASD because of her life experience. Although this isn't the reason I love the book and movie--they're just incredibly fantastic and creative--it is probably the reason I find the love story so affecting, because Maud's experience of infatuation is so much like mine.



If you are interested in watching the movie or reading the book Fingersmith, you should probably know that there's a big twist and it has to do with exactly what this post is about. I knew the twist beforehand and I still love the book and movie, but if you want to be surprised, you should stop reading here.

Okay. (I'm talking about the book, but the movie doesn't change any of the facts--it just doesn't focus in on Maud's adolescence and sexuality as much as the book.)

So Fingersmith is a gothic novel about a 19th-century teenage pickpocket, Sue, who is hired to scam a sheltered girl named Maud. Maud lives with her uncle in the country and would inherit a lot of money from him if she ever got married--but it seems like she never will get married because she's so isolated. Gentleman, a con artist, is planning on marrying her and then getting her labeled as "mad" and put in an institution so he can have her money.

Sue's job is to be Maud's maid, become friends with her, and do anything possible to get her to fall in love with Gentleman and elope with him. Sue narrates in the movie, "When I saw her I thought: 'This is going to be easy.'" Maud is very stiff and soft-spoken and has nightmares every night (during which she begs Sue not to leave her alone). Sue has grown up taking care of babies and young children, so despite her plans to hurt Maud she has an instinctive protective reaction to Maud's anxious, childlike nature.

Maud is "developmentally delayed"--I don't use this as a euphemism for intellectual disability, but as a term for something that most disabled young adults have, both because of disability and as a result of being sheltered and not learning to be independent. Maud is young for her age. She does not understand how to do a lot of things that most people her age know how to do.

Sue becomes very attached to Maud, and ends up kissing and having sex with her because Maud claims not to know how to have sex. But she doesn't know how to stop what she's doing, and the con continues as planned. In the days after Maud and Gentleman have gotten married, but before Maud is institutionalized, Sue becomes more and more distraught and depressed about betraying someone she loves, someone who is so innocent. Then Maud steals Sue's identity, and Sue is institutionalized as Maud Lilly. Sue realizes that Maud was actually working with Gentleman to scam Sue.

The twist of the story is that Maud isn't a "pigeon," the term Gentleman uses for an easily manipulated person. This is already a "fuck yeah" moment for disabled readers. But what's even cooler is that Maud wasn't faking very much. She really is developmentally delayed and she really does have nightmares, and she really is very stiff and impaired when it comes to other people. Nonetheless, she is calculating and capable of doing evil.

The unevenness of Maud's abilities, the fallacy inherent in categorizing her as "childlike" or "adultlike," is encapsulated by her knowledge of sex. In the second part of the book, which is narrated by Maud, we learn that her uncle collects pornographic writing and images, and she has been his secretary since she was a child. The servants in the house don't know what her uncle's library consists of, and became unsettled by Maud because she would use sexual terms at a young age; this led to her losing their motherly support, after which she began to bully and harass them. Her uncle's friends are attracted to Maud when they visit the house and she reads porn to them--they think of her as sexy, impure, and probably available, though of course she's never even kissed anyone. After Maud has scammed Sue and is living in London, she tries to get help from one of her uncle's friends, but he refuses to associate with her because of her reputation.

Maud can't be categorized as a virgin or a whore; she is physically and emotionally untouched, but seen as damaged goods because of her intellectual knowledge. To me, the most beautiful passages in the book are those describing Maud's attraction to Sue--her surprise at realizing that something she's very intellectually familiar with could actually happen to her; that sexuality isn't the boring, mildly disgusting thing she always thought it was.

After putting Sue in the institution, Maud realizes that she is in love with Sue and wants to save her. But it's very difficult for her to do anything because she has no common sense or understanding of how to move around in a city. I won't summarize the rest of the book, but don't worry, everything turns out awesome and there are some more twists. I basically just want to talk about what a great mind-disabled character Maud is. She comes off at first as being completely guileless and unable to do anything. Then we find out that isn't true at all and she's a force to be reckoned with, but her disability doesn't just disappear; there really are things she can't do. And she's neither good or evil, she's both, just like all the other characters.

The fictional diagnostics explosion

(this post kind of went off the rails, sorry)

There is a space between visible disability and being normal. Before you start going off about how no one is normal, blah blah blah, I'd like to remind you that some people have to constantly worry about whether they're going to fuck up, some people have to go through periods of their lives (or their whole lives) without friends, some people feel that they can't express who they really are to anyone--and despite the fact that they're faking really hard, people still think they're weird. It's cool that you have a tattoo or whatever alternative thing you have, but if you don't have to worry about this stuff, then you are normal. Sorry.

Where was I? Yeah. There's a space where you are not normal and you either actually succeed in hiding it (at great personal cost) or you do a shitty job hiding it, and other people don't treat you very well.

The best part is sometimes you actually tell someone you have ASD, and even if it's a person who has always hated you for being so weird, the response is:

"You couldn't possibly have that. You're SO NORMAL. You're just using that as an excuse because I can tell you're really really normal. Everyone's a little bit different from each other but that doesn't mean they have ~AUTISM~. You're just saying that because you want to be unique or you don't want to be held accountable for your actions."

(This last part is really funny because disabled people have a ton of stuff stacked against us, so being openly disabled is probably the last way you'd try to get out of anything.)

Anyway, like lots of people with invisible disabilities I am used to hearing this shit about myself, so I don't enjoy hearing it about characters for whom I have been an f.d. (remember an f.d. is a fictional diagnostician, i.e. a fan who theorizes that a character may have a particular disability). I'm not trying to say that other fans can't disagree and say, "No, I don't think so-and-so has ASD," but I do have a problem with the contemptuous response, "What are you talking about? You must have put a lot of effort into that theory--so-and-so is totally normal and definitely doesn't have ASD! ASD isn't the same as just being a little awkward!"

This is something I wrote in an email to my friend almost a year ago, when I had ventured to link Stop barging in here and infecting me with your anxiety: Pete, Peggy, and Passing on the Mad Men livejournal community, and had received some withering stock responses:

People are always posting about Pete and calling him a sociopath and a robot; it’s a perfectly accepted part of the show that he is bad with people and very odd, so it’s not just a little bit of shyness or awkwardness; he is impaired, whatever you call it. Early on in the run of the show people used to criticize the actor and say he was “trying to talk like he lived in the 60s” because he has a really strange way of talking. I just feel like people are perfectly aware that this character is really weird to a notable degree, and even insult him for that, but then when someone says “oh, kind of like Asperger’s” it’s like “where did you get THAT from?”

Mrs. Blankenship on Basket of Kisses said, "If [Pete and Peggy] represent an accurate portrayal of Asperger’s then everyone I have ever known fits the diagnosis." This makes me wonder how many people Mrs. Blankenship has met in her life. No matter what you think caused their impairments, Peggy and Pete certainly are more socially impaired than other characters (and more impaired than most people I for one know in real life). Hasn't Mrs. Blankenship ever met anyone more like Ken Cosgrove, Harry Crane (nerdy but still social), Don Draper, Joan, Sal, Rachel...anyone? Every single person she knows in real life is as socially impaired as Pete and Peggy?

I find that really hard to believe. But why would she say that? Why would she imply that Meowser and I, who are people with ASD, don't know what ASD is?

Sometimes I feel like this attitude is just more of what I discussed in part one--the idea that ASD is such an obscure, bizarre disability that no one could really have it. This might explain both why non-disabled people refuse to believe us when we disclose in real life, and why they think it is ridiculous to suggest that a TV character could have it (unless, sometimes, if the TV character is an incredibly overdramatic and unrealistic compilation of textbook ASD traits).

However, sometimes--and I admit this comes out of bitterness--I wonder if the motivation is something more sinister. Maybe people just get really attached to the idea that a certain person is lazy, creepy, "sociopathic," annoying, immature, attention-seeking, spoiled, stoned, or whatever. They like feeling superior. Maybe they even like making fun of aspects of the person that don't quite fit into any of those stereotypes--like the fact that the person moves differently. The movement may poke at something inside people's heads, a concept they've been making fun of since they were kids--like when they would call their enemies "retarded" or "special," thinking of "retarded" and "special" people as almost imaginary, since they didn't know any people who had those labels for real. They're just words. And the way people feel about this lazy, creepy, immature person who flaps their hands has nothing to do with disability at all.



So I sometimes think that people feel cheated out of the fun of judgment, when they find out someone like that is disabled. They feel like it's not fair. Disabled people should look disabled! They shouldn't look like people that I'm allowed to be mean to! In fact, I never would be mean to a disabled person, so I'm pretty sure you're not disabled at all!

I think the impression that ASD is very obscure is probably the main cause of the hugely energetic and contemptuous responses to Fictional Diagnostics. But I think the other one is sometimes there too. People really don't like Pete Campbell--he's a creep. His sins are not really worse than those of other characters, but he is a "weasel," he speaks too formally, he speaks too soon. People call him a creep because he pushes certain buttons. They don't want to think about what that means.

Fictional diagnostics stock responses--part one

I've only commented at Basket of Kisses a few times, but it's one of my favorite blogs, and a place I spend a ridiculous amount of time now that Mad Men season four is off and running. Today I got the shock/delight of a lifetime because I saw that Meowser, a poster with ASD, is writing a series called Pete, Peggy, and PDD-NOS, and linked some of my posts about ASD and Mad Men! It sort of fries my brain to go to sitemeter and see that people are coming here from the Most Amazing Place in the World!

However, people have already made some of a certain kind of comments on Meowser's post. These certain kind of comments really bug me, but because I rarely post on Basket of Kisses I don't want to just go on there and act really confrontational. I really do love it there. Besides, it's not really on topic, so I'm bringing it back here.

The kind of comments I'm referring to go like this:

"I think sometimes people read too heavy into things."--Edward A.

"If [Pete and Peggy] represent an accurate portrayal of Asperger’s then everyone I have ever known fits the diagnosis."--Mrs. Blankenship

"Perhaps we can say that it is a testament to the quality of writing of the show that people seem to work very hard to find a way to say certain characters are exactly like themselves."--MM fan

I want to be clear; I don't have a problem with anyone disagreeing and saying, "No, Peggy just seems different because she has a different background, and Pete has trouble with people because of the way he was raised." What I do have a problem with is a certain kind of automatic response that non-disabled people seem to have when fans with ASD suggest that a certain character might have ASD. This response comes in two types, which can exist on their own or be combined.

1. You're reading too much into it./It's just a TV show./You're working really hard to try to make this fit.

Response #1 tries to cast the fictional-diagnostician (henceforth called f.d.) as a ridiculously obsessive fan, which is usually undercut by the fact that the Responder is on a forum or blog or LiveJournal community for the fandom. Most people who consume Mad Men (or anything else) are not involved in Internet fandom. If you are discussing this on the Internet, you've already forgotten that "it's just a TV show" just as much as the f.d. has.

The Responder also seems to imply that having a disability is like being a mastodon from outer space. It's so bizarre and out of the blue that the f.d. must have worked really, really, really hard on this theory, just so he or she could have the most original idea ever. The f.d. probably opened some crusty old encyclopedia and was thumbing through it for days on end, until finally the weirdest possible condition emerged--autism! Whoever heard of that? What could be more off-the-wall than saying that Character X has autism?

Of course, most f.d.s aren't diagnosing Character X with some random disability. They're diagnosing Character X with a disability they have a lot of experience with, or even have themselves. If you are actually living with ASD, then of course you're going to notice that Character X seems familiar in a certain way, and that ASD could explain some of his personality traits.

For example, Pete Campbell often behaves like someone who feels powerless. But in the obvious areas--race, class, and gender--he has a ton of power. Does he feel powerless because he lacks abilities that other people have? I came up with that all by myself, you guys, and it took me about a minute because I have ASD so it's easy for me to come up with theories that relate to ASD. I'm not "working hard" or "reading really heavy into things." I just tend to respond to my fandom from my own experience, like everyone else.

The implication that ASD-related theories are elaborate or ridiculous, and must take up a lot of time to think up, is insulting to people with ASD, especially when the f.d. is a person with ASD. That reaction implies that people with ASD are so other that it's not logical or intuitive to expect them to be part of a story. It also erases the fact that of course disabled people are the center of our own experience like non-disabled people are the center of theirs. I'm not other to myself, so of course I don't think of ASD as being some rare condition that no one could possibly have. Am I really expected to feel that way about it, just because that's how you feel?

Interesting new twist: MM fan's suggestion that Meowser and I desperately want Mad Men characters to be "exactly like us." Are all people with ASD exactly the same? Most of the people who think Peggy and Pete are non-disabled are non-disabled themselves--does that mean they want Peggy and Pete to be just like them?

I'm really sleepy but I will be back tomorrow with part two ("You can't just diagnose anyone with ASD! It's a serious disability! You're making it sound like just anyone could have it!"--come to think of it, that kind of overlaps). Again, not trying to be a bitch, incredibly excited to be linked at a website I love--it's just that as an ASD person in fandom I get sick of these kind of responses, and I wanted to address them.

catching signals that sound in the dark

Like most people, I love the Hensel twins, and have since I was little. I remember my dad bringing home the Life magazine cover for me. I just spent a lot of time looking at videos and pictures of them online. It's awesome to watch the way they move around. But it's also awesome to watch them asking questions in class and joking around with their friends, because this isn't a life that would have been available for them a hundred years ago.

One of the most obtuse passages I've ever read comes from the Wikipedia page for Schlitzie, my favorite circus freak:

Under the care of Surtees, Schlitzie continued performing the sideshow circuit until Surtees' death in the early 1960s, after which Surtees' daughter, who was not in show business, committed Schlitzie to a Los Angeles county hospital.

Schlitzie remained hospitalized for some time until he was recognized by sword swallower Bill Unks, who happened to be working at the hospital during the off-season. According to Unks, Schlitzie seemed to miss the carnival dearly, and being away from the public eye had made him very sad and depressed. Hospital authorities determined that the best care for Schlitzie would be to make him a ward of Unks' employer, showman Sam Kortes, and return him to the sideshow.

Okay, dude--I really like Schlitzie and would like to think that he lived a happy life. And from the way he comes across in Freaks, he seems like a sweet person who liked attention, so I'll totally buy that he was into being a sideshow performer, and that he felt sad when he stopped doing it.

BUT DON'T YOU THINK HE WAS ALSO SAD BECAUSE HE WAS LIVING IN A HOSPITAL? I mean, if I was living in a hospital for no reason, and someone encountered me there, I'd think it was really fucking weird if they were like, "Amanda seems really sad, she must want to be a sideshow performer." Maybe he just didn't like living in an institutional setting. You know, like almost every person who ever lived.

I am really into the show Carnivale, and one of my favorite things is a very minor aspect of the show. Ben's crush, Ruthie, is a middle-aged woman with an adult son, Gabriel, who is a pretty minor character. But we know that Gabe is intellectually disabled and performs in the carnival as a strongman, as well as helping set up rides and tents with the other young guys in the carnival. Ruthie used to be a snake charmer when she was younger, but now she's mostly the "barker" for Gabe's act. Since I am interested in the history of disabled people (especially intellectually disabled people) who worked as a sideshow performers, Ruthie and Gabe's story seems especially moving to me. I imagine Ruthie realizing that her child was intellectually disabled, and that he didn't have a disability that affected his appearance and could therefore be the basis of his act. I imagine her thinking about Gabe's options outside of the hospital--probably being locked away somewhere. But in the carnival, he could travel and be part of a community. As he got older, he turned out to be really big, and that turned into an act, which was great. And Ruthie doesn't have to worry about what will happen to Gabe when she dies, because he has things he's good at, and he's surrounded by people who have known him his whole life.

But obviously not every carnival was as friendly as the one portrayed in Carnivale. The only good thing that happened in the class I dropped was that we read a piece by Eli Clare, who is a queer trans guy with cerebral palsy. Part of the piece was about his interest in particular historical figures--disabled sideshow performers, and XX people who lived as men. But he admits that he doesn't know exactly why certain XX people lived as men, and that it isn't necessarily accurate for him to claim them as trans. And he admits that some of the sideshow performers may have been manipulated and abused, and felt that they had no choice but to be "freaks." I am interested in the same two groups of people, although I'm a lesbian instead of a trans guy, which proves how hard it is to identify who inverts "belong" to. The Well of Loneliness seems to me to be a story about deviant sexuality, but in the 1940s Michael Dillon, a trans man, identified Stephen Gordon as someone like him.

But I'm getting off topic. I was thinking about Amanda Palmer, who has been criticized at FWD/Forward for starting a band with her friend where they pretend to be a pair of conjoined twins. I don't think Amanda Palmer is coming from a typical ableist perspective, even though she is being ableist. I think she thinks of the idea of conjoined twins as just another part of the whole circus/carnival genre that she's always drawn from. I'm not super offended by Evelyn Evelyn, I don't think, but it does make me kind of uncomfortable. It just seems stupid (although I generally love AFP, don't freak out). However, I feel like if I think that this is really bad, then I have to think Neutral Milk Hotel is really bad, too. Although Jeff Mangum didn't pretend to be conjoined twins, he just wrote a song about them.

I mean, is it ever okay to view people with certain physical conditions as part of a genre? I don't think it's okay to go as far as Palmer has gone but is it okay to be into conjoined twins and make art about them when you aren't actually conjoined and don't know any people who are?

eta: I just deleted a little bit about whether ASD people are circus freaks in modern society, and whether Jeff Mangum can be considered a circus freak because of his mental illness and nonstandard body language--I need more time to write that than I have, because I was too brief and it came off like I was saying "Jeff Mangum and I can have circus freaks but Amanda Palmer can't" or something equally oversimplified and self-serving.

Space auties

My friend Clayton was telling me how he plays a video game where some of the characters are "basically autistic people on four legs." Then he kept saying "Amanda, I have to show you the SPACE AUTIES on YouTube!"



I think he's possibly better at fictional diagnostics than I am.

Fingersmith

So, the other night I dreamed that I was making a post about Fingersmith, which is my favorite romance novel--except I guess that romance novel is a genre, and Fingersmith belongs to a different genre. So, of the novels in the world that contain love stories, this one contains my favorite love story, and is one of my favorite novels in general. In my dream, I had decided that Fingersmith could be read through a disability lens. When I woke up I realized this was actually true.

It's sort of hard to describe what it is about without getting into OMG Spoiler!! territory. It's a gothic novel/thriller that takes place in Victorian England. The main character Sue is an orphan who was brought up in a den of thieves, and gets involved in a plot to screw over this rich girl, Maud. Sue is supposed to get herself hired as Maud's maid and convince Maud to marry a particular guy, who is actually a con man. Then they'll work together to make Maud unstable and depressed, get her put in a madhouse, and share her money.

Maud has an unambiguous disability, an anxiety disorder for which she takes sedatives. But she also fits into a particular archetype that could be read as ASD--she's prissy, naive, and social awkward. The whole plan is based in Maud's innocence, stemming from her isolated upbringing; she's an overprotected "pigeon" who can be made to trust anyone. Sue tries to make friends with Maud so she can better manipulate her, and falls into a nursing/protective role; Sue grew up taking care of babies, and responds to Maud's anxiety and neediness. To some extent, I think she becomes attached to Maud because she wants to fix her and make her more normal.

Right now I'm rewatching the movie, which, in an unusual turn of events, is just as good as the book. (I actually saw the movie first, because it's on YouTube; it's forever being taken down for copyright violation, but someone invariably puts it back up right away.) Does anyone else love Fingersmith as much as I do, and/or have disability feelings about it?

More Mad Men (do I ever stop?)

I'm having a boring argument on Television Without Pity about how Trudy is "enabling" Pete or whatever. I didn't even know how to properly argue about this because enabling is this word with a bunch of connotations that don't actually have to do with the definition so you can't just look it up in the dictionary and argue against that. Because enabling technically means making someone more capable and prepared for things, which is what Trudy is doing. But the way this person means it, I think, is that Trudy is shielding Pete from the consequences of his actions, and (in the poster's words) treating Pete like he's her child.

Okay, number one, who cares if she's treating him like her child? They both seem to like it. They both seem to be doing a lot better than they were in seasons one and two. What's the problem? It's weird? You wouldn't like it? Well, awesome, nobody's forcing you to have that kind of relationship.

Number two, this person seems to have this attitude that help is something you should get because you're a good person and you deserve it, not because you need help. I said, "Pete clearly has some kind of social impairment and has a lot of trouble controlling his emotions, I'm glad Trudy is helping him because he seems to be doing a lot better." The person said, oh, so Pete needs Trudy to keep him from committing rape and adultery?

Well...apparently. I guess I would argue that a combination of ASD and growing up with lots of privilege but no love (actually someone said it really well the other day--Pete was raised to believe that he's entitled to everything, but doesn't deserve anything) have created a person who has a very hard time relating to people, caring about them, understanding cause and effect/delayed gratification, and containing the pretty massive amount of rage that arises from his feeling that he has no control over his life. So, yeah, it's not that unbelievable to me that Pete needs Trudy--a person who genuinely cares about him and understands him, and has very good social skills and can explain to him what's going wrong--to keep from doing things that are fucked up.

Hopefully this won't always be the case. He seems to me to be growing up. He didn't yell at Pryce in 3x12 for example. He is displaying actual affection and loyalty and stuff to Trudy, which makes me flail my hands around with excitement. PETE IS BEING A PERSON!! YAY!!

But, according to this TWoP individual, Pete doesn't deserve to get the help he obviously needs in becoming a person, because he isn't a person now. Okay, cool, he doesn't deserve it, but can't we just be happy for him and the people around him? Trudy wouldn't be wrong to tell Pete he's a shit and she wants nothing to do with him, but everyone else already tried that and it didn't work. Not helping people who need help may be fair in an Ayn Rand sort of way, but I can't bring myself to criticize Trudy for being willing to help Pete grow up.

fictional characters

who strike me as having ASD and/or who I identify with as an ASD person without actually thinking that they have an ASD.

1. MAD MEN of course has Pete and Peggy, who pass in different ways, who compensate in different ways, who "improve" in different ways and are attracted and repulsed by each other for precisely that reason.

2. HARRY POTTER--Luna in a conventional way (i.e. she strikes me as actually having ASD). She was the first person I was exposed to that dumb conversation about, because Luna said something nice to Harry one time and real ASD people don't ever say anything nice or helpful, according to the people in that conversation. Also, Luna dresses weirdly because she likes to, while real ASD people dress weirdly because they don't know any better. Tiresome, because she's actually perfect as a realistic example of an ASD person, and I wish more intentionally ASD characters were like her.

I don't really think Neville has ASD, but he is my favorite character and it's easy to identify with the way life is a battle for him while he's in school. There's a really good fic, Night-blooming Heartsease, which really powerfully articulates the kind of determination I had to develop as a teenager--and yeah okay, it's slash, and has a pairing that squicks a lot of people out, but seriously, just read it anyway, you won't even care it's that good.

3. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT--Buster of course! His impairments are probably caused by his upbringing and not something neurological, but I've always found him easy to relate to. For a while it was easiest to just explain myself by saying, "I'm young for my age." Although I don't have all the trouble with things like taking buses that I used to have (not as much, anyway), I used to just tell people, "Yeah, so I'm basically the real-life Buster Bluth." It made things a lot easier. I think that Tony Hale makes some acting choices, in terms of mannerisms, that make Buster read as someone with a developmental disability, but I don't know if this was a conscious decision.

4. FIREFLY--River Tam, especially in "Objects in Space." Again I don't think she is really ASD, but I love the message of that episode, which to me is about how the crew try to judge River's sanity and morality based on the things she does that they read as "crazy" or "odd," like picking up the gun, or having (in Kaylee's eyes) the wrong kind of affect after shooting people. She doesn't see context, she just sees objects in space. Then we have Jubal Early who also doesn't see context but is completely different--River sees guns as pretty objects, and Early sees "ordinary" objects as weapons, he sees the cheerfully, guilelessly sexual Kaylee as someone he can cow with the threat of rape. So I think the story is supposed to be, context-blindness and being evil or unstable are not the same thing. River is odd and good.

5. SPACED--Brian! I really love him because usually when you are diagnosing fictional characters, you have to go on social interaction alone, but Brian actually has the mannerisms and postures of an ASD person. Well, this ASD person, anyway. And like Luna and River and Buster, he is a good person, just different, which is nice to see.

I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. A lot of people, actually. But whatever.

Privilege + ASD

This is something I said to someone in the comments of my Mad Men Asperger's post on livejournal, about Fuck Pete Campbell and its ilk:

I don't know, I mean I'm white so I feel like it's not really my place to say how people who aren't white should feel; I don't know if I would enjoy watching the show if I wasn't white. And I think that having a lot of privilege and being really unhappy about it is sometimes hard to sympathize with if you don't have privilege. For example, as a gay person I tend to get pretty bored when straight people complain about how hard it is being straight.

Also (I think I wrote about this a bit in the original post, or intended to) it's interesting to think about how different Asperger's looks in different people. For example with women you can't really tell. It seems pretty likely to me that this is because society comes down harder on women who have bad social skills. And it's probably the same with people of color. I mean, Pete's life is crappy now, but if he was a black guy in the 60s with the kind of social skills and temper he has, his family would probably be scared that something would happen to him; like, something violent. (I also think that they'd have more of a sense of him having a disability, even if they didn't call it that. I wonder if he would be sort of a family responsibility, like "shit, who's going to take care of Pete now that so-and-so died.") The way I'm writing this essay comes off as a little anti-Peggy, but of course it's totally not her fault. Peggy would have been fired if she acted like Pete. Peggy sure doesn't have the option of muddling around until she meets a nice guy who will devote all his energy to managing her social impairments.

When Pete feels powerless he kicks around women. When Peggy feels powerless--well, she better find another outlet, because she doesn't have anyone to kick around.

I hope it doesn't come off like I'm saying this all in response to what you said, and trying to correct your reaction or something--I just started thinking about it while I was typing. To be honest I do feel personally hurt when I see all this "fuck Pete Campbell" stuff, or just sort of this attitude that guys who pretty clearly have some kind of social impairment are just The Oppressors, and there can't be any more to them than that. I remember seeing this a few years ago in a post about RealDolls. The guy the article was about clearly suffered from a lot of social anxiety that made it hard for him to handle relationships (or even find them), but everyone on this blog was just like "oh, he hates women, he thinks women are untrustworthy." I love Pete, very much, probably more than someone should love a fictional character. I don't want to ignore his privilege but I don't think it's fair to ignore the fact that he has lower status as a disabled person, whether or not other characters consciously perceive him that way.

This is v. v. unfinished

Stop barging in here and infecting me with your anxiety: Pete, Peggy, and Passing

Peggy: Well, one day you’re there and then all of a sudden there’s less of you. And you wonder where that part went, if it’s living somewhere outside of you, and you keep thinking maybe you’ll get it back. And then you realize, it’s just gone.
Pete: Why would you tell me that?
--Mad Men 2x13, "Meditations in an Emergency"

I read this really beautiful post on Basket of Kisses that basically discusses the idea that Pete Campbell is (or is supposed to be) an s/m switch. And he lives in a world where there’s no room for being that kind of weird, so it comes out of him in messy, negative ways; he can’t learn control. The reason this was such a beautiful post is because it didn’t look at the show through the lens of period. Or, maybe, because it didn’t have this idea that certain things that are innate in some people, like s/m, are just a trend or a fad and therefore couldn’t really have existed in the 60s--because it realized that all kinds of minority experiences can be period, even if they weren’t recognized at the time. I would like to talk about something else that is innate in some people--Asperger’s Syndrome. I don’t like to use that term because it’s a bit reductive and calls up a lot of stereotypes; I would rather just say, I’m talking about verbal people with autism spectrum disorder.

Because Asperger’s has been portrayed in recent high-profile movies and books, it is popular to say that it is new or made up, but really autism spectrum disorders have always been around, just not identified. At the time the show takes place, a nonverbal ASD person would have been diagnosed with a mental disability and probably put in an institution, just like Arthur Miller’s son with Down’s Syndrome was in 1966. A verbal ASD person would have just been thought of as odd or annoying. But that doesn’t mean that, inherently, objectively, that’s all they were. Not having a name for what you are doesn’t make what you are go away, as Sal Romano unfortunately learned.

I read Peggy Olson and Pete Campbell as people with ASD. Because they live in a time when they can’t know what they are, each of them is a type of ASD person that should never exist:

1. Peggy forces herself to do what’s normal, and usually her perseverance pays off and she gets what she wants, but it also means that she is constantly acting. And also, although she may do all right in the short run, the people who see her every day know she is different and she doesn’t really have any true friends (except maybe Don--big surprise that he would feel connected to someone like her).

2. Instead of fighting his difference like Peggy does, Pete ignores it; because he doesn’t try to be normal, he gets to be more carefree, but he is hobbled by the fact that most people can’t stand his raw guilelessness, which affects him both personally and professionally.

Guileless may seem like a weird word because Pete is so manipulative--but he isn’t actually good at it, is he? Really, setting the two up as opposites is not correct, because Pete tries to do what’s normal too, but with a lot less awareness and determination than Peggy. People say that Pete is like a robot but I don’t see it at all--his boundless confusion is written all over his face. That’s why he’s always throwing things and punching people, it’s why he doesn’t really understand sex, because he is so full of a feeling of powerlessness, and he doesn’t know why.

Let’s talk about hunting. Obviously this is about s/m, whatever you want to call it; Pete gives Peggy a lingering description of killing a deer, carving it up, and taking it to a woman who cooks it for him and watches him eat it, while Peggy listens shivering with delight. But I don’t think it’s just about s/m. Pete doesn’t understand how to do things, he doesn’t understand his life, so he bought a gun to make himself feel better; but he doesn’t live in prehistoric times where he can just prove himself by killing something. He has to do things right, he has to be likable. This seems like a huge mountain to scale for a person like Pete, and he can’t take it, so he thinks about something else instead: a world where all he has to do to be loved is to accomplish a physical act. Where he has a very specific role. And Peggy, who is screwing up all over the place too, is also thrilled by Pete’s fantasy. She doesn’t have to lie, she doesn’t have to dress a certain way; she has a very clear, uncomplicated submissive role as the deer/cook.

This can also be seen when they have sex in the next episode. They’re just two people early at work, and then they create this space between them where it is okay to fuck up, to want too much--Pete hisses creepily, “Do you know how hard it is to see you walking around?” as if he owns her, just as obsessive and needy as taking two trains to drunkenly lean on her door. Pete has gone too far with girls before and he will again, but here, when he pulls Peggy’s hair and tears her shirt, he gets a positive reaction instead of a negative one. Because he doesn’t feel inadequate like he usually does, he’s much sweeter in this scene than he is with other people. He thinks about her feelings about her writing that he was supposed to read; she grumpily says “I know what you’re going to say” and he says “no, you don’t; you haven’t been right once” with a lot of affection. Pete never knows what people are going to say either. Peggy, who is always so tense and ineffective, is very serious and brutal when they have sex, and then afterwards when she does that incredibly cute incredibly awkward thing where she touches his hair--ohhh man. Okay this is not an essay anymore it is just a geekout.

The s/m essay interprets Pete’s rejection of Peggy at the end of that episode as showing that he is threatened by her power and assertiveness, because he is kind of turned on by it and doesn’t know what to make of it. I’m not sure I would say that; it seems to be taking that scene out of the context of the episode. Pete feels powerless and he doesn’t exactly understand why, but the truth is, it’s because he’s weird/off/whatever you want to call it, and everyone thinks he is slimy, and he doesn’t understand how to get what he wants. And he feels like Trudy is trying to control him (I love Trudy, more on this later, but I’m just saying that’s how he feels). I think that when Pete is overwhelmed by how much he can’t seem to do things right, he takes it out on people less powerful than he is. And also, I think there may be a bit of a betrayal, because when they had the hunting talk, and then when they slept together, those were both very weird outsider bonding sessions. Now Peggy has succeeded at something and is cheerfully doing the Twist; she seems normal and is asking Pete to do something normal with her. The way Pete sits in this scene is striking; I’ve experienced this myself, that when I am made very conscious of my difference, or when I am overwhelmed, I try to calm myself with these very stiff postures, things like wrists out, or ankles turned out. Pete is very prone to these tense little gestures and he is doing it here. He says “I don’t like you like this” partly because he wants to make someone, anyone, feel bad. But it’s also true; he liked Peggy because she was his home, a person he could make this tiny strange-person world with. Of course, Peggy still did want to make that world with him, he just couldn’t see it.

One of the most upsetting things about the way Pete treats Peggy is that he seems to forget they have the same problem. When he freaks out about her promotion, or snits, “Everything is so easy for you,” there’s the obvious dramatic irony that he got her pregnant and she had to deal with that while he remained blissfully ignorant. But there’s also the fact that Pete knows firsthand that it is hard to get anything if you’re the kind of person that other people just don’t like. Peggy works so hard; she is always changing, always moving forward. She takes Joan’s advice about changing the way she dresses and she lets Kurt cut her hair. When she feels her coworkers are leaving her out of things, she tries to figure out how to fix the problem, unlike Pete, who just complains and bullies women when he feels left out. Whether or not she has said it in words, Peggy knows she has trouble (and this isn’t just about being a woman in a man’s world, because she had trouble even when she was a secretary) and she tries to improve herself. Pete isn’t self-aware enough to try to fix his impairments, except very occasionally, like when he goes to Don after his father dies.

The thing is, Peggy is a person to root for but I’m not sure I want to be her. Her accomplishments are always about winning, getting some particular thing. I think an ASD person who is incredibly focused on looking normal as a means to an end sometimes ends up with a life that is fairly empty. Of course I love the two recent episodes that involve Peggy learning a social script, experimenting with it, and getting what she aims for--first a one-night stand, and then a roommate. When Peggy dourly intoned, “I’m...fun...and I like to have...fun,” and Libby Dreifuss actually bought that Peggy was a normal girl, I felt the same rush I have felt in real life, when I’m incredibly conscious that I’m faking, but I somehow slide under the radar and am not perceived as odd. But the rush of putting one over on people can’t be your whole life. And Peggy ends up not really being friends with the guys at work, sleeping with a guy she can’t face the next morning, and living with someone she has nothing in common with. This is success?

More and more, I’m finding I want to be Pete. Not early Pete, of course; he’s horrible. But at some point between seasons two and three, Pete realized how incredibly smart and cool Trudy is and started opening up to her the way he’d previously only opened up to Peggy and sometimes Don. When Pete talks to Peggy after they have sex, in 1x08, he says “Trudy and I are supposed to be one person, but she’s just another stranger,” and when he’s confessing his love to Peggy, in 2x13, he says that Trudy would care if he died, but it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t know him. But it’s Pete’s fault that Trudy doesn’t know him, of course, and after Peggy lets him down, he must grow up a little, because in season three the Campbells are more and more partners in crime.

Pete presumably reeled Trudy in with his smarmy anachronistic scripting (and what better evidence do you need of ASD than Pete’s endless supply of exclamations and terms of endearment that are just slightly off for a person of his time, age, and gender?). Then, he exploded a bunch of times, with the turkey, and the trying to whore her out to publish his bear story (oh Pete how I love you), and “WHY ARE YOU COMING TO MY OFFICE? WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK??” so Trudy figured out pretty early on that Pete was a really strange and really immature person--but okay, I’ll allow that this doesn’t mean she knows him. Usually the worst part of someone is the part you find out last, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and Trudy obviously doesn’t understand in season one and two the relationship that Pete has with his parents, and she hasn’t really connected with the good parts of his immaturity, the sometimes uncontainable energy and excitement. But in the first episode of season three, we get “Oh Peter, don’t go to the well; there’s no water there,” when Pete wants to call his mother, and a few episodes later we see the two of them pooling their manic energy into the BEST DANCING EVER.

I think it would be disingenuous to say that Pete didn’t rape Gudrun midway through season three. I mean, he does have trouble reading people, but I think his issue is sometimes that he knows people don’t like him and want him to go away, and he doesn’t want to think about it, so he doesn’t put in the effort to read them better; so maybe he didn’t want to think about what he was doing, but the fact that he didn’t think about it is not an excuse. I think it’s important to acknowledge what he did. But what’s notable for my purposes is what he does afterward, when he tells Trudy he doesn’t want her to go away without him anymore. Some feminist bloggers read that as Pete blaming Trudy for what he did, but I think that’s an overly harsh characterization of a really important and positive decision. Throughout this essay, I have emphasized how Pete isn’t aware of his impairments like Peggy is and how this both gets in his way professionally and leads to him hurting other people. When Pete said that Trudy shouldn’t go away from him anymore, I think he was saying that he knows he isn’t capable of making good decisions at this point, and he wants her to be his moral compass, at least for a while. And it is doing a disservice to Trudy to say that her pleased reaction was delusional, like she thought Pete was declaring his undying need to be around her at all times. Trudy is a practical person and, because she does know Pete much better than she used to, she understood why it was a big step forward for him to a)feel guilty, b)want to be better, and c)ask for her help.

Throughout season three we see Trudy giving Pete advice and talking about his decisions with him. This is one of the few really equal and honest relationships we see on the show and it makes me happy that Pete, despite all the issues he still has, has grown enough that he can have this relationship. Because of his relationship with Trudy, I’ve started to see Pete as more successful than Peggy, even though Peggy tries to be normal a lot more. The thing about Pete is that, now that he has finally started to change, he’s not changing in the direction of being normal, but of being good.

When you are ASD it’s all very nice to say that you just want to understand people and be more sensitive to them, but when you really start trying to manage your ASD, it usually just becomes about not wanting people to bully you, and being able to have a normal time making friends, and just fit in. But Pete’s recent spate of self-correcting (apologizing to Hildy about the hot cocoa, keeping himself under control when Kenny and his haircut triumphed once again, and of course the thing with Trudy) has been more about being kind, not yelling at people or exploiting the fact that they’re weaker than he is. That means that, while Pete’s self-awareness has been a long time coming, it looks to be an awareness that will make him more whole. While Peggy’s self-awareness, the awareness of a person who is trying to pass at all costs, is tearing her apart.