is something that might someday appear in all its parts and might not. Right now I'm primarily interested in writing about staff infection. Spoiler alert though: the answer to "how did indistinguishability get its groove back?" is exactly that.
Or like I said before: it never really lost it.
I think there are two reasons "staff"--very broadly defined as doctors, teachers, therapists, aides, and a million other people--end up trying to control people with disabilities.
1. They believe people with disabilities inherently need to be controlled.
2. They get in a position of power because of people with disabilities' support needs and/or youth, and have the opportunity to make people with disabilities more convenient to deal with.
Whichever reason is not your reason can be used as a straw reason to support the real reason. I could give examples but basically you know it when you see it. Doing this relates to the Harder Fallacy and Shocking Behavior and things like that.
The way indistinguishability got its groove back is that a person with power looked at a person diagnosed with autism and decided they didn't like the way person's body looked or the way the person felt about things. Or (I say when I get angry) the way the person said no.
The person with power started trying to change the person with autism's body (or whatever). The person with autism couldn't defend themselves because they couldn't talk. Or, if they could, other people felt their beliefs, opinions, and arguments were inherently weaker than those of people without disabilities.
The person with power told their coworkers or their employees or the other people in their field to do the same thing. They by and large did.
Occasionally someone was bothered by it but afraid of losing their job, being seen as a pushover by their coworkers, or not being respected by other autism scientists. But most people weren't bothered. Maybe the original person with power was very charismatic and converted them. Maybe they already didn't like how the person with autism's body looked. Maybe they just didn't think about it, accepted it as part of their job, and eventually came to be a little passionate about its rightness. After all, no one was trying to change their bodies.
When I say this happened once I mean that people in power make this decision about people with autism on a regular basis. Probably as you are reading this a person is deciding to be this way, and their decision will spread because it doesn't occur to many people to question it.
To some extent this is true about any decision within that dynamic. Let's say someone decided that all kids with a certain disability have to play soccer, or read Tarot cards. I think this would actually catch on to a greater degree than you would expect. But indistinguishability is such a historically popular thing for people in power to choose to force on disabled people that it has a kind of momentum. You just think about it and it's already there.
Every person in power who unthinkingly chooses or supports indistinguishability is adding to its mass. It's an army of laziness, an army (usually) of feeling safe in your body. Of being able to talk about how much you love The Office in between sessions of training a kid with autism not to make jokes that don't have an obvious punchline. It's easy to do pretty much anything to people with disabilities but indistinguishability has an army.
The pressure of the army makes room for more soldiers. Obviously. This has all been an excuse for a pun. The way indistinguishability got its groove back is that indistinguishability actually is a groove being worn into the fabric of society by sheer constance and bullheadedness. Have a nice day.
Showing posts with label how indistinguishability got its groove back. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how indistinguishability got its groove back. Show all posts
25 June, 2012
15 September, 2011
3. How you learn how things are done
My dad told me that most parents wouldn't understand my "visceral reaction" when I see indistinguishability held up as an ideal, or even as something that would be nice. As if we were talking about religion, which he dislikes, he said, "Maybe it's not important and it's not what they should want, but most people want to be normal, so they want their kids to be normal. You can't tell them their choice is wrong."
"I don't really think it's parents who make that choice," I said.
"Oh, so it's just the evil professionals making parents do what they want?"
"Well, yes." Not that I think professionals are evil--this is really about staff infection, not individuals. Lots of the infected are probably great to play Dungeons & Dragons with (more on that later) but they have a particular way of thinking about people with autism.
Parents often don't. I know how I feel about disability in general and autism in specific, because disability is a permanent part of my life. For the average person that isn't the case. Now they have a kid who who has this--what do you call it? Disease? Mental illness? Neurodevelopmental condition?--well, they have this scary autism word that you see on TV. What the fuck. This is terrible. What do they do? What are they supposed to think?
It's perfectly normal, when something happens which is challenging and with which you have no experience, to look to the people around you for examples of how to respond. If your kid has autism, the people around you are often telling you that "recovery" for someone with autism is about looking non-disabled, and that this recovery is urgent, so you go along with it because you're not a fucking autism expert. You don't know how things are done.
Unfortunately, it's exactly the powerful momentum of how things are done which keeps people from thinking much about the things they are doing. Sooner or later the parents know how things are done too.
"I don't really think it's parents who make that choice," I said.
"Oh, so it's just the evil professionals making parents do what they want?"
"Well, yes." Not that I think professionals are evil--this is really about staff infection, not individuals. Lots of the infected are probably great to play Dungeons & Dragons with (more on that later) but they have a particular way of thinking about people with autism.
Parents often don't. I know how I feel about disability in general and autism in specific, because disability is a permanent part of my life. For the average person that isn't the case. Now they have a kid who who has this--what do you call it? Disease? Mental illness? Neurodevelopmental condition?--well, they have this scary autism word that you see on TV. What the fuck. This is terrible. What do they do? What are they supposed to think?
It's perfectly normal, when something happens which is challenging and with which you have no experience, to look to the people around you for examples of how to respond. If your kid has autism, the people around you are often telling you that "recovery" for someone with autism is about looking non-disabled, and that this recovery is urgent, so you go along with it because you're not a fucking autism expert. You don't know how things are done.
Unfortunately, it's exactly the powerful momentum of how things are done which keeps people from thinking much about the things they are doing. Sooner or later the parents know how things are done too.
2. How Indistinguishability Keeps Its Groove
I'm sorry to mix metaphors because I often compare zombies to people like me (unusual gait, does the same things a lot, often judged to be better off dead) but let's focus on some different aspects of the zombie and swivel that image over to another group of people: staff.
How did you get your groove back? Well, indistinguishability, you never really lost it, and that's what scares me. Maybe this is a failure of mine because how can I be more scared by a difference of opinion than I am by more obviously bad things, like violence? I'm not sure. I know I find vampires pretty unterrifying when they're sadistic, but zombies are unbearable because they don't even know or choose the crimes they commit. There's nothing to explain.
So what I'm trying to do is explain. Not why I'm against indistinguishability, cause I have, but why it seems so stupid when I say that, like I'm against electricity. People respond with the most ill-thought-out support, and it doesn't matter at all. "But flapping your hands is against social norms and kids need to learn to follow social norms!" Across the country, kindergarteners are told to be yourself and do the right thing even if it makes you stand out--except when it comes to this one group of little kids. "But other kids will notice that they're different and exclude them!" Okay, just like when kids are bullied for race or religion their teachers start training them to look like white Protestants. Maybe you're thinking people can't pretend to be white, but some people can--and besides, good luck convincing his peers that a kid who can't talk isn't disabled, even if he keeps his hands by his sides.
This is a completely meaningless argument though because anyone who defends a point so weakly has already won. Even if someone says "Yeah, I guess you're right," it's like some interesting philosophical discussion about unicorns. Intelligent input darling, now let's go back to our day job where we kick horses in the face for having horns when they shouldn't.
"Hey hold on," you may be saying, "I'm not kicking anyone in the face! I'm just writing a behavior plan where if Erica talks about unicorns too much she doesn't get dessert."
That's cool but a lot of disabled people have had to live with this stuff longer than you have, and it kind of feels like being kicked in the face.
"Aw, but it doesn't feel that way to me."
That's because it's your job. Everyone's job feels normal to them. Our government likes to pretend that Abu Ghraib happened because Lynndie England is a bad person, but she just had a work environment where she thought it was normal to act a certain way. I know this is an aggressive comparison, but there isn't a point of wrongness where the things that you're doing suddenly feel wrong. I feel that if people were more aware of the broad spectrum of things that can feel normal when it's your job, it would possible to engage them in real conversation about what they do.
How did you get your groove back? Well, indistinguishability, you never really lost it, and that's what scares me. Maybe this is a failure of mine because how can I be more scared by a difference of opinion than I am by more obviously bad things, like violence? I'm not sure. I know I find vampires pretty unterrifying when they're sadistic, but zombies are unbearable because they don't even know or choose the crimes they commit. There's nothing to explain.
So what I'm trying to do is explain. Not why I'm against indistinguishability, cause I have, but why it seems so stupid when I say that, like I'm against electricity. People respond with the most ill-thought-out support, and it doesn't matter at all. "But flapping your hands is against social norms and kids need to learn to follow social norms!" Across the country, kindergarteners are told to be yourself and do the right thing even if it makes you stand out--except when it comes to this one group of little kids. "But other kids will notice that they're different and exclude them!" Okay, just like when kids are bullied for race or religion their teachers start training them to look like white Protestants. Maybe you're thinking people can't pretend to be white, but some people can--and besides, good luck convincing his peers that a kid who can't talk isn't disabled, even if he keeps his hands by his sides.
This is a completely meaningless argument though because anyone who defends a point so weakly has already won. Even if someone says "Yeah, I guess you're right," it's like some interesting philosophical discussion about unicorns. Intelligent input darling, now let's go back to our day job where we kick horses in the face for having horns when they shouldn't.
"Hey hold on," you may be saying, "I'm not kicking anyone in the face! I'm just writing a behavior plan where if Erica talks about unicorns too much she doesn't get dessert."
That's cool but a lot of disabled people have had to live with this stuff longer than you have, and it kind of feels like being kicked in the face.
"Aw, but it doesn't feel that way to me."
That's because it's your job. Everyone's job feels normal to them. Our government likes to pretend that Abu Ghraib happened because Lynndie England is a bad person, but she just had a work environment where she thought it was normal to act a certain way. I know this is an aggressive comparison, but there isn't a point of wrongness where the things that you're doing suddenly feel wrong. I feel that if people were more aware of the broad spectrum of things that can feel normal when it's your job, it would possible to engage them in real conversation about what they do.
16 August, 2011
How Indistinguishability Got Its Groove Back, part 1
My first writing about disability was about an ABA school that I interned at when I was 20, which was a very ableist and passing-obsessed environment. Being in that environment I was forced to confront things I'd tried not to think about.
I remember when I first started writing about this kind of thing I was very careful to say that I wasn't anti-ABA and thought ABA could be really helpful and useful. I've kind of dropped that whole thing, not because I'm against behaviorism--I arguably am a behaviorist--but because I guess I am against any school or therapist who identifies as "ABA." ABA is technically a way of teaching, not what is taught, but it has historically been associated with physical punishment and it still is very much associated with passing. So I tend to make certain assumptions about anyone who identifies with the label ABA without trying to apologize for or justify it.
Recently my dad was trying to convince me to work at a very old, famous ABA program, because of the benefits. When I pointed out that the person the program is named after used to give electric shocks to children to stop them from flapping their hands, my dad told me that he had researched this on the Internet and "they don't do that anymore." But this isn't enough for me.
It's not enough for professionals to refrain from the most obviously abusive practices, especially if they identify themselves with the doctor who introduced those practices. If you're going to work in an area that has that kind of history, you have to address that history. It's not enough to just stop hitting kids because you shouldn't hit kids--you have to think about why people like you were hitting kids in the first place, and how they got to a point where they decided it was okay, and how you might end up getting to a similar point.
I remember when I first started writing about this kind of thing I was very careful to say that I wasn't anti-ABA and thought ABA could be really helpful and useful. I've kind of dropped that whole thing, not because I'm against behaviorism--I arguably am a behaviorist--but because I guess I am against any school or therapist who identifies as "ABA." ABA is technically a way of teaching, not what is taught, but it has historically been associated with physical punishment and it still is very much associated with passing. So I tend to make certain assumptions about anyone who identifies with the label ABA without trying to apologize for or justify it.
Recently my dad was trying to convince me to work at a very old, famous ABA program, because of the benefits. When I pointed out that the person the program is named after used to give electric shocks to children to stop them from flapping their hands, my dad told me that he had researched this on the Internet and "they don't do that anymore." But this isn't enough for me.
It's not enough for professionals to refrain from the most obviously abusive practices, especially if they identify themselves with the doctor who introduced those practices. If you're going to work in an area that has that kind of history, you have to address that history. It's not enough to just stop hitting kids because you shouldn't hit kids--you have to think about why people like you were hitting kids in the first place, and how they got to a point where they decided it was okay, and how you might end up getting to a similar point.
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