I gave up smoking for Lent and in the middle of my drowsy, headachey Ash Wednesday morning it occurred to me to write about something I've noticed. Basically, some people are weird about smoking. I'm hesitant to write about this because I feel like someone will get offended, so please can you just read this in good faith.
I don't think people should be allowed to nonconsensually expose other people to secondhand smoke, so I am not interested in reading responses about how my argument is invalid because of secondhand smoke. I'm concerned about stuff like employers having a policy of not hiring smokers. If you want to relate it to benefits I can explain why it's not about that. It's also not about having a smoke-free workplace, since that's easy to maintain without not hiring smokers. Clearly, this kind of policy is about a group of people who do something unhealthy.
This subject is a bit close to my heart since I interviewed for my current job 2 weeks before they stopped hiring smokers, and also because I think smoking was a factor in losing my camp job. I didn't break any rules related to smoking, but my supervisors just had a different attitude toward me as a person.
I think it is weird that doing something unhealthy can turn a person into Bad News. When I read articles about places that don't hire smokers, they talk about it like good citizenship--not that they want healthy employees, but that they want employees who are "role models" and "set a good example." In addition to implying that smokers can be identified by sight when not smoking, this attitude equates goodness with striving to be physically healthy. Not that this is a new thing--observe fat hatred, or hatred of any disabled person who doesn't seem to be trying hard enough to not be disabled (i.e. all of us)--but I still think it's interesting.
Smoking is a sneaky subject because it can be categorized as a choice. But it is kind of an illness even if it's a chosen one. If people are addicted, that is an illness. If it's not an addiction, it still results in physical weakness and accelerated death. So I think smoking is cool because it shows you how people feel about sickness without those feelings being camouflaged by the propriety and pity they feel required to maintain when the person "hasn't chosen to be sick."
In American Horror Story, a bully beats up the main character Violet because the girl's grandmother died of lung cancer and Violet was smoking in a public place. I love this scene because I had a less Ryan Murphy version of the same experience. No violence I mean. But I had the sense that someone hated me because someone they loved died from what I was doing.
How does the construction of smokers as "our" enemies make sense? Because we might start liking them and then they might die? Because our grandmother died and we kind of want to beat her up for "bringing it on herself," but we can't because we love her and she's dead, so instead we will treat other people like her in ways we would never have wanted her to be treated?
If someone is to blame for the death of a smoker, and you don't want to blame the individual smoker or settle down to blaming no one, why don't you just blame tobacco companies for making cigarettes delicious and awesome? In theory people who hate smoking would probably say they do blame tobacco companies, but they don't really walk the walk. If smokers are the sheep/pawns of tobacco companies, why should we be denied jobs for something they did to us?
(I don't have anything against tobacco companies but I do think they're the only logical villain if you want to consider smokers victims or feel sorry for us.)
I feel like it's perverse not to care if you live a long time. Well, actually some dangerous things like driving are okay, but there are certain ways of shortening your life that are wrong. Smoking is wrong because it's like smacking God in the face, except atheists are just as offended. I don't know that it's not a more hostile version of the gooey/horrified reactions people have to quicker forms of self-injury. Do we really need ribbons and bracelets to draw attention to the fact that people put sharp stuff inside themselves and It's Serious?
I was going to say something about nonsmokers who have group discussions where they pat each other on the back for not liking the smell of smoke and thinking that people who smoke are dumb (outside of these conversations, some of the same people are totally happy to be around smoke) but this tangent is pulling on me. I feel like conventional self-injury is a bad sign and a bad solution, for me, but I think it is weird that a lot of people would want to gasp and call me a "cutter" (designating me as having a condition that puts me in a whole other class of people, a whole new noun) but wouldn't gasp about me ignoring mental or physical health problems, or not getting enough sleep, which can cause way more permanent damage than just palling around with tape dispensers/soup cans.
But anyway smoking? Probably one of the grosser things in the world but it still bothers me that I feel like it's become kind of this symbol/scapegoat of people who are ill/bad/ill-because-they're-bad. We're like an anthropomorphization of death you can yell at.
Note: I'm not interested in hearing about how you feel when you're around people who are smoking right now or have just been smoking. This post is about attitudes toward smokers that persist even when we currently aren't smoking and/or don't smell like smoke.
Showing posts with label self-injury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-injury. Show all posts
25 February, 2012
21 June, 2011
Fallacy Week: The Shocking Behavior Fallacy & The Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy
Hi guys it's FALLACY WEEK! Every day you get some fallacy action from a post I made a super long time ago at LOVE-NOS.
The Shocking Behavior Fallacy
MARY: My nephew Ralph has autism and it’s really sad. He insists on watching Thomas the Tank Engine every day, and he’s sixteen.
JOHN: Why is that sad? There’s nothing inherently wrong with an older person liking things that are aimed at kids. I feel like in our society, people label a lot of things as problems that aren’t actually problems.
MARY: That’s really insensitive. Ralph bites himself so badly that he has to go to the hospital.
Rebuttal:
John didn’t say that it’s not a problem to seriously hurt yourself, nor did he say that Ralph doesn’t have any problems. But Mary reacted as though he did say that, and now John is knocked off balance. He wonders, did he say that? How can he explain that that has nothing to do with what he was saying? Is there anything he can say now to avoid giving the impression that he thinks self-injury is okay?
In the Shocking Behavior Fallacy, you can use a shocking behavior to excuse something unrelated that you did to or said about the person who has the behavior. The fallacy functions by changing a very specific statement to a general one. Mary changed John’s specific statement–watching Thomas the Tank Engine is okay–to a very general statement–everything Ralph does is okay. Now she can prove John wrong by giving an example of something Ralph does that is not okay.
(Fun fact: This is actually one of the most dangerous fallacies in use. By equating one thing a person does with everything that person does, it creates a class of people about whose treatment no one is allowed to complain. Let’s change the example a little and say that Mary is a staff person working in an institution, and every time she sees Ralph trying to watch Thomas the Tank Engine she takes points away from him, which means that he doesn’t get to go on day trips. John thinks that Mary is micromanaging Ralph’s choices in an abusive way. Mary responds that Ralph has to be monitored closely and dealt with harshly because his problems are so severe; he bites himself, remember?
Professionals can fall into an inverse of the Shocking Behavior Fallacy, where instead of going from specific to general to shocking behavior, they go from shocking behavior to general to specific. Ralph has a really big problem, but instead of thinking of it as one problem, Mary starts thinking of it as who Ralph is. So whenever Mary sees Ralph doing something she doesn’t agree with, she responds as if he is biting himself. The results can be horrifying.)
The Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy
JOHN: It bothers me that doctors tell pregnant women that people with Down Syndrome can’t count change. They advise women to abort people like me, when they don’t even know what someone with Down Syndrome can do.
MARY: But most people with Down Syndrome aren’t like you. Just think, it would be so hard to have a kid who could never live on their own.
Rebuttal:
In this fallacy, you tell a person with a disability that they can’t use their feelings or experiences to make a point about their disability, because you just made a new, more specific definition of the group of people being talked about-–a definition which no longer includes them. Mary has transformed John from someone who had authority on the subject, due to his experience, to someone whose experiences aren’t valid because he’s an exception.
Let’s briefly accept Mary’s new definition of someone with Down Syndrome-–a person who can never live on their own. It’s true, John could have some opinions about whether it’s wrong to abort such a person, but he can’t speak as someone from that particular group. But guess what? The prenatal test doesn’t measure whether someone could live on their own, it just measures whether they have Down Syndrome. If a fetus exactly like John is diagnosed with Down Syndrome, it doesn’t get a break because it’s John. Its mother’s doctor is just as likely to present the diagnosis as bad news, encourage an abortion, and list a bunch of things the child won’t be able to do that may or may not be true of the John-fetus in particular, or people with Down Syndrome in general. Being an exception gets the John-fetus absolutely nothing.
The reason the Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy is a fallacy is because of its suddenness. Stuff goes along, people with a particular disability are getting discriminated against, mild and severe alike. Everyone’s welcome in the stigmatized group. Then someone says, “Hey, I have this disability and all these things you’re saying about my disability aren’t true.” Bam! Apply the Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy and remove the person’s authority (they can keep the stigma).
(Fun fact: I’m sorry if the example comes off as melodramatic, but I’ve read a lot about this stuff and John is not exaggerating.)
The Shocking Behavior Fallacy
MARY: My nephew Ralph has autism and it’s really sad. He insists on watching Thomas the Tank Engine every day, and he’s sixteen.
JOHN: Why is that sad? There’s nothing inherently wrong with an older person liking things that are aimed at kids. I feel like in our society, people label a lot of things as problems that aren’t actually problems.
MARY: That’s really insensitive. Ralph bites himself so badly that he has to go to the hospital.
Rebuttal:
John didn’t say that it’s not a problem to seriously hurt yourself, nor did he say that Ralph doesn’t have any problems. But Mary reacted as though he did say that, and now John is knocked off balance. He wonders, did he say that? How can he explain that that has nothing to do with what he was saying? Is there anything he can say now to avoid giving the impression that he thinks self-injury is okay?
In the Shocking Behavior Fallacy, you can use a shocking behavior to excuse something unrelated that you did to or said about the person who has the behavior. The fallacy functions by changing a very specific statement to a general one. Mary changed John’s specific statement–watching Thomas the Tank Engine is okay–to a very general statement–everything Ralph does is okay. Now she can prove John wrong by giving an example of something Ralph does that is not okay.
(Fun fact: This is actually one of the most dangerous fallacies in use. By equating one thing a person does with everything that person does, it creates a class of people about whose treatment no one is allowed to complain. Let’s change the example a little and say that Mary is a staff person working in an institution, and every time she sees Ralph trying to watch Thomas the Tank Engine she takes points away from him, which means that he doesn’t get to go on day trips. John thinks that Mary is micromanaging Ralph’s choices in an abusive way. Mary responds that Ralph has to be monitored closely and dealt with harshly because his problems are so severe; he bites himself, remember?
Professionals can fall into an inverse of the Shocking Behavior Fallacy, where instead of going from specific to general to shocking behavior, they go from shocking behavior to general to specific. Ralph has a really big problem, but instead of thinking of it as one problem, Mary starts thinking of it as who Ralph is. So whenever Mary sees Ralph doing something she doesn’t agree with, she responds as if he is biting himself. The results can be horrifying.)
The Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy
JOHN: It bothers me that doctors tell pregnant women that people with Down Syndrome can’t count change. They advise women to abort people like me, when they don’t even know what someone with Down Syndrome can do.
MARY: But most people with Down Syndrome aren’t like you. Just think, it would be so hard to have a kid who could never live on their own.
Rebuttal:
In this fallacy, you tell a person with a disability that they can’t use their feelings or experiences to make a point about their disability, because you just made a new, more specific definition of the group of people being talked about-–a definition which no longer includes them. Mary has transformed John from someone who had authority on the subject, due to his experience, to someone whose experiences aren’t valid because he’s an exception.
Let’s briefly accept Mary’s new definition of someone with Down Syndrome-–a person who can never live on their own. It’s true, John could have some opinions about whether it’s wrong to abort such a person, but he can’t speak as someone from that particular group. But guess what? The prenatal test doesn’t measure whether someone could live on their own, it just measures whether they have Down Syndrome. If a fetus exactly like John is diagnosed with Down Syndrome, it doesn’t get a break because it’s John. Its mother’s doctor is just as likely to present the diagnosis as bad news, encourage an abortion, and list a bunch of things the child won’t be able to do that may or may not be true of the John-fetus in particular, or people with Down Syndrome in general. Being an exception gets the John-fetus absolutely nothing.
The reason the Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy is a fallacy is because of its suddenness. Stuff goes along, people with a particular disability are getting discriminated against, mild and severe alike. Everyone’s welcome in the stigmatized group. Then someone says, “Hey, I have this disability and all these things you’re saying about my disability aren’t true.” Bam! Apply the Suddenly Specific Definition Fallacy and remove the person’s authority (they can keep the stigma).
(Fun fact: I’m sorry if the example comes off as melodramatic, but I’ve read a lot about this stuff and John is not exaggerating.)
06 February, 2011
reality in states; or, why I'm not going to overshare all the time anymore
(I was going to write an actual post about this, but I basically summarized the entire planned post when I was talking to my friend and I think the summary works equally well to get across what I have to say. This is slightly an announcement about the direction of this blog--or maybe it's an announcement that I'm getting back on track, after veering in some fucked-up directions--but I also just think it's an interesting problem on its own merits. I've edited the conversation to remove my friend's comments, and to avoid doing what I am, at this point, resolving not to do.)
me: well I feel like I've known a few people who like
11:07 PM
will get in a really depressive state and they can't separate the depression from what's true
so like for example they'll basically go on a crusade against some thing or person they see as being bad
and for people outside of it it's kind of obvious, like "wow, no matter what happened, this person is not really experiencing reality"
11:09 PM
me: well, so my blog becomes the narrative that I tell myself about my life, if I write in it a lot
me: and at periods when I'm in really bad emotional states, I often have this narrative going really loud in my head and when it's really bad the narrative becomes less and less connected to reality
11:13 PM
now, I guess I feel that what the narrative has been lately is basically probably true in some sense
"I'm disabled, people don't read me as disabled, people don't respect disabled people, people expect things of me that I cannot do, this is bad, etc."
and it's okay for me to write about this obviously
but the problem is when I get into some sort of state
11:14 PM
and I don't think I have a mood disorder, but I guess it's also pretty normal for a lot of people with autism that we just get into a state when something is overwhelming for whatever reason, and it just sort of takes over everything and it's not that different from a depressive or manic episode
11:15 PM
me: and, you know, I think my states are probably who I am and would probably happen no matter what--although they're affected by my stress level and other stuff, I definitely think they've been much worse this year and much harder to transition out of. I mean, some of the things that put me into states are really not fair and I'm justifiably angry about them, but that doesn't mean that I'm in my right mind when I'm in the states.
anyway I think the problem is
I get in these states and the narration in the states is like
11:16 PM
"everything is so hard, I'm a waste of space, my autism is like this giant pile of shit I'm carrying around, I have a horrible brain, I want to [blah blah blah self-injury blah blah], if I just [blah blah blah self-injury blah blah] everyone would believe I was really disabled and maybe someone would use what happened to make a point about ableism which would be the most useful thing I could do"
11:17 PM
me: and on the small scale, this is so bad I'm totally worthless I'm going to [blah blah blah self-injury blah blah]
and all of this, is like
me being in a state
yes, probably the opinions behind what I'm thinking are things I would stand behind when I'm feeling all right
but the whole thing is like
not really completely attached at the hip to reality
HOWEVER
11:18 PM
I think sometimes maybe because I want support but also because my states superficially resemble stuff that I write about when I am in my right mind
I end up writing on my blog about how I want to [blah blah blah self-injury blah blah] or something, because in the state it looks to me like it fits in with my other posts. when I'm in that state, it feels like hurting myself would be a political act.
but...making those posts is not a smart or okay thing to do.
even if I think I'm doing it to make a point or something
11:19 PM
what I'm really doing is letting my states take over completely
and instead of just understanding it's a state it's kind of awful maybe I can distract myself or talk to someone or maybe I just need to pray or sleep it off, like I start believing in the validity of the state
even when the state is like, I need to hurt myself, my life is so sad there's nothing good in it
11:20 PM
um...so yeah I'm not going to write about this kind of stuff on my blog anymore. and I want to write a post basically covering this because I think it's interesting and may be helpful to other people who have states
although I do understand the irony of writing a post about this when I just said I wasn't going to post these really intense emotional things.
me: well I feel like I've known a few people who like
11:07 PM
will get in a really depressive state and they can't separate the depression from what's true
so like for example they'll basically go on a crusade against some thing or person they see as being bad
and for people outside of it it's kind of obvious, like "wow, no matter what happened, this person is not really experiencing reality"
11:09 PM
me: well, so my blog becomes the narrative that I tell myself about my life, if I write in it a lot
me: and at periods when I'm in really bad emotional states, I often have this narrative going really loud in my head and when it's really bad the narrative becomes less and less connected to reality
11:13 PM
now, I guess I feel that what the narrative has been lately is basically probably true in some sense
"I'm disabled, people don't read me as disabled, people don't respect disabled people, people expect things of me that I cannot do, this is bad, etc."
and it's okay for me to write about this obviously
but the problem is when I get into some sort of state
11:14 PM
and I don't think I have a mood disorder, but I guess it's also pretty normal for a lot of people with autism that we just get into a state when something is overwhelming for whatever reason, and it just sort of takes over everything and it's not that different from a depressive or manic episode
11:15 PM
me: and, you know, I think my states are probably who I am and would probably happen no matter what--although they're affected by my stress level and other stuff, I definitely think they've been much worse this year and much harder to transition out of. I mean, some of the things that put me into states are really not fair and I'm justifiably angry about them, but that doesn't mean that I'm in my right mind when I'm in the states.
anyway I think the problem is
I get in these states and the narration in the states is like
11:16 PM
"everything is so hard, I'm a waste of space, my autism is like this giant pile of shit I'm carrying around, I have a horrible brain, I want to [blah blah blah self-injury blah blah], if I just [blah blah blah self-injury blah blah] everyone would believe I was really disabled and maybe someone would use what happened to make a point about ableism which would be the most useful thing I could do"
11:17 PM
me: and on the small scale, this is so bad I'm totally worthless I'm going to [blah blah blah self-injury blah blah]
and all of this, is like
me being in a state
yes, probably the opinions behind what I'm thinking are things I would stand behind when I'm feeling all right
but the whole thing is like
not really completely attached at the hip to reality
HOWEVER
11:18 PM
I think sometimes maybe because I want support but also because my states superficially resemble stuff that I write about when I am in my right mind
I end up writing on my blog about how I want to [blah blah blah self-injury blah blah] or something, because in the state it looks to me like it fits in with my other posts. when I'm in that state, it feels like hurting myself would be a political act.
but...making those posts is not a smart or okay thing to do.
even if I think I'm doing it to make a point or something
11:19 PM
what I'm really doing is letting my states take over completely
and instead of just understanding it's a state it's kind of awful maybe I can distract myself or talk to someone or maybe I just need to pray or sleep it off, like I start believing in the validity of the state
even when the state is like, I need to hurt myself, my life is so sad there's nothing good in it
11:20 PM
um...so yeah I'm not going to write about this kind of stuff on my blog anymore. and I want to write a post basically covering this because I think it's interesting and may be helpful to other people who have states
although I do understand the irony of writing a post about this when I just said I wasn't going to post these really intense emotional things.
22 November, 2010
yeah so I want to use the r-word in a story I'm writing
and I'm going to use it in this post so be warned.
I'm not actually going to use it in the story I turn in to my workshop, because last time I turned in a draft of this story it was the most awful experience ever. Basically I wrote a story about a 12-year-old boy who goes to a behaviorist school for kids with autism (but no disability-related words are used in the story, because no one has outright told him he's disabled). The boy is obsessed with lions and with the idea that he's slowly turning into a lion and will grow up to be one; his parents and teachers try to discourage his interest. He also has a lot of meltdowns and the story ends with him having a violent, swearing meltdown at school and having all his lion paraphernalia taken away as punishment.
So, everyone in my class got exactly that out of the story. A disabled kid doesn't understand he's disabled and can't control himself. (Some of them also made comments that outright assumed I wasn't disabled.) What I turned in was a really rough draft but I felt really positive about the germ of the story, and I felt depressed because almost no one reacted to it or related to it at all.
I sent the story to some of my friends who are good on disability stuff and asked them what they made of it. They got out a lot of the things I was putting in: the main character is faced with adults who try to control him, while his non-disabled twin is more wholly nurtured and accepted; identifying with lions is a way of feeling powerful and dealing with the fact that he feels like he's not human. My friend Laura wrote, "it seemed like he loved this thing/lions and nobody understands that it's something to just love and so they try to make it out to be a problem and to use it to get him to behave how they want him to... i think it seemed like a lot of it was about behavior modification and the loneliness of being told to act a certain way when you're just not naturally inclined to."
Which made me love her so much. I know it's only a workshop, but I've been in workshops for years, you know, and I've never had one hurt before.
I'm trying to write a more clear-to-my-class version of the story and the way I'm doing that is by having most of the story take place when the main character, S., is 17. The point of doing this is that by this age he would be aware of his diagnosis and stuff (in the original draft, I was trying to show that he hadn't been told about his diagnosis, but still sensed how he was being treated; but I think people just took it as typical "disabled person doesn't understand" stuff). It is also cool though because I get to address some issues of passing as ethics and passing as cure. I'm having trouble writing the story because I want S. to express his resentment of the way he was treated when he was a kid, but he's very isolated and doesn't have a lot of people he can talk about those things to. And he's also not quite sure how he feels about a lot of it.
But anyway, S. has been in a mainstream school for four or five years, and his main activity is selling his medication and making drugs for people. (The story has some magic realism elements so he's invented his own drug.) He finds this comforting, probably because he has something that other people want; he frequently accepts little or no payment even when he could ask for a lot of money. It's just what he does.
S.'s parents don't know about this and see him as a success. S. realizes that his mom has started referring to him and his sister as "the twins" when she never referred to them as a unit before. There is some anxiety about how S. is going to apply to college because his years in special ed may make him look "unstable" or like he's not capable of doing college work. But overall he has a sense of finally being someone his parents can be proud of. He goes to a normal school, he looks normal, he acts normal (with the kids he gives drugs to, he's intentionally weird and cold, and they see him as a creep; but he sort of likes that, because he's controlling their view of him).
But he is, you know, pretty masochistic with the whole throwing away opportunities to make money thing. And he doesn't really have any friends.
He desperately misses his best friend from special ed, but his friend is on a completely different life trajectory; he's still quite visibly disabled and needs help doing things. S. has no idea of what a friendship between them would look like now that one of them is supposedly normal. When he runs into his old friend, he lies to his friend's staff about how they know each other.
S. meets up with the head of his old school, and is overwhelmed by memories of trying to bite her, having her analyze and remake the way he walked, having her snap at him and take away his lions--but she's completely friendly, as if they are family members or old neighbors. S. falls into compliance, finds himself following her lead, trying to make himself sound even more successful than she already thinks he is. Wants to ask her why she cared how he walked or what was wrong with lions, but those kinds of questions don't belong in her world. He feels stupid even thinking them.
S.'s twin R., who is in boarding school and isn't around much, is the only person he's really close to. She's always known him roughly the way he is and when she comes home for Christmas he manages to tell her some of the things he's thinking about.
Anyway, for some reason I have this scene in my head: S. makes some comment about how he now looks normal. R. says, thinking nothing of it, that he doesn't. S. is really offended and scared. R. says that S. doesn't look normal to her because he's her brother, he just looks like her brother. And besides, he always says he doesn't want people to like him anyway, so it doesn't matter if he looks normal, right?
"That's retarded," S. says. "That's a retarded thing to say."
Now, the reason I won't really put this in my story is because I think people in my class may just throw this word around in their lives without thinking of it as hate speech. And I want S. to use it as hate speech. I will explain.
I feel a very intense urge sometimes to use the word about myself. Usually in some kind of school or work situation where someone is patronizing me or has failed to understand the nature of what I can and can't do. The sentence I want to say comes in two forms:
"I'm not retarded," when someone is explaining something they think I don't understand. And, more commonly:
"Yeah, I'm retarded, sorry" (little laugh)
because when things are really hard and someone is obviously kind of annoyed with you or thinks you're lazy or lacking insight/knowledge about basic things, you just...hate yourself. And them. And you're supposed to say, "yeah, I'm sort of slow, sorry," "oh yeah I'm kind of a space cadet." Like it's something small, and cute.
But it's not fucking small.
The word retarded is the most vicious word I can think of to quietly and passively explain myself. The reason I find myself wanting to use it is because it feels almost on the level of physically hurting myself or the other person, which are things I do not believe in doing (well the first one happens sometimes). And it doesn't seem like such a big deal to most people to say that word. But to me it feels like punching myself in the head, and sometimes I want to feel that way.
I'm not actually going to use it in the story I turn in to my workshop, because last time I turned in a draft of this story it was the most awful experience ever. Basically I wrote a story about a 12-year-old boy who goes to a behaviorist school for kids with autism (but no disability-related words are used in the story, because no one has outright told him he's disabled). The boy is obsessed with lions and with the idea that he's slowly turning into a lion and will grow up to be one; his parents and teachers try to discourage his interest. He also has a lot of meltdowns and the story ends with him having a violent, swearing meltdown at school and having all his lion paraphernalia taken away as punishment.
So, everyone in my class got exactly that out of the story. A disabled kid doesn't understand he's disabled and can't control himself. (Some of them also made comments that outright assumed I wasn't disabled.) What I turned in was a really rough draft but I felt really positive about the germ of the story, and I felt depressed because almost no one reacted to it or related to it at all.
I sent the story to some of my friends who are good on disability stuff and asked them what they made of it. They got out a lot of the things I was putting in: the main character is faced with adults who try to control him, while his non-disabled twin is more wholly nurtured and accepted; identifying with lions is a way of feeling powerful and dealing with the fact that he feels like he's not human. My friend Laura wrote, "it seemed like he loved this thing/lions and nobody understands that it's something to just love and so they try to make it out to be a problem and to use it to get him to behave how they want him to... i think it seemed like a lot of it was about behavior modification and the loneliness of being told to act a certain way when you're just not naturally inclined to."
Which made me love her so much. I know it's only a workshop, but I've been in workshops for years, you know, and I've never had one hurt before.
I'm trying to write a more clear-to-my-class version of the story and the way I'm doing that is by having most of the story take place when the main character, S., is 17. The point of doing this is that by this age he would be aware of his diagnosis and stuff (in the original draft, I was trying to show that he hadn't been told about his diagnosis, but still sensed how he was being treated; but I think people just took it as typical "disabled person doesn't understand" stuff). It is also cool though because I get to address some issues of passing as ethics and passing as cure. I'm having trouble writing the story because I want S. to express his resentment of the way he was treated when he was a kid, but he's very isolated and doesn't have a lot of people he can talk about those things to. And he's also not quite sure how he feels about a lot of it.
But anyway, S. has been in a mainstream school for four or five years, and his main activity is selling his medication and making drugs for people. (The story has some magic realism elements so he's invented his own drug.) He finds this comforting, probably because he has something that other people want; he frequently accepts little or no payment even when he could ask for a lot of money. It's just what he does.
S.'s parents don't know about this and see him as a success. S. realizes that his mom has started referring to him and his sister as "the twins" when she never referred to them as a unit before. There is some anxiety about how S. is going to apply to college because his years in special ed may make him look "unstable" or like he's not capable of doing college work. But overall he has a sense of finally being someone his parents can be proud of. He goes to a normal school, he looks normal, he acts normal (with the kids he gives drugs to, he's intentionally weird and cold, and they see him as a creep; but he sort of likes that, because he's controlling their view of him).
But he is, you know, pretty masochistic with the whole throwing away opportunities to make money thing. And he doesn't really have any friends.
He desperately misses his best friend from special ed, but his friend is on a completely different life trajectory; he's still quite visibly disabled and needs help doing things. S. has no idea of what a friendship between them would look like now that one of them is supposedly normal. When he runs into his old friend, he lies to his friend's staff about how they know each other.
S. meets up with the head of his old school, and is overwhelmed by memories of trying to bite her, having her analyze and remake the way he walked, having her snap at him and take away his lions--but she's completely friendly, as if they are family members or old neighbors. S. falls into compliance, finds himself following her lead, trying to make himself sound even more successful than she already thinks he is. Wants to ask her why she cared how he walked or what was wrong with lions, but those kinds of questions don't belong in her world. He feels stupid even thinking them.
S.'s twin R., who is in boarding school and isn't around much, is the only person he's really close to. She's always known him roughly the way he is and when she comes home for Christmas he manages to tell her some of the things he's thinking about.
Anyway, for some reason I have this scene in my head: S. makes some comment about how he now looks normal. R. says, thinking nothing of it, that he doesn't. S. is really offended and scared. R. says that S. doesn't look normal to her because he's her brother, he just looks like her brother. And besides, he always says he doesn't want people to like him anyway, so it doesn't matter if he looks normal, right?
"That's retarded," S. says. "That's a retarded thing to say."
Now, the reason I won't really put this in my story is because I think people in my class may just throw this word around in their lives without thinking of it as hate speech. And I want S. to use it as hate speech. I will explain.
I feel a very intense urge sometimes to use the word about myself. Usually in some kind of school or work situation where someone is patronizing me or has failed to understand the nature of what I can and can't do. The sentence I want to say comes in two forms:
"I'm not retarded," when someone is explaining something they think I don't understand. And, more commonly:
"Yeah, I'm retarded, sorry" (little laugh)
because when things are really hard and someone is obviously kind of annoyed with you or thinks you're lazy or lacking insight/knowledge about basic things, you just...hate yourself. And them. And you're supposed to say, "yeah, I'm sort of slow, sorry," "oh yeah I'm kind of a space cadet." Like it's something small, and cute.
But it's not fucking small.
The word retarded is the most vicious word I can think of to quietly and passively explain myself. The reason I find myself wanting to use it is because it feels almost on the level of physically hurting myself or the other person, which are things I do not believe in doing (well the first one happens sometimes). And it doesn't seem like such a big deal to most people to say that word. But to me it feels like punching myself in the head, and sometimes I want to feel that way.
28 March, 2010
sorry about posting 400 times today
but I have sort of been crashing, and I really liked this poem when it was in the New Yorker in 2002 the week my dog died, and it's a poem that I find myself thinking of, well, always when I am crashing. I just got home for break, and my mom has been going to workshops at the Autism Spectrum Resource Center and she was telling me about the people and I asked, "Are there any Amandas?" and my mom said, "no, there's no one as high-functioning as you." Also whenever my mom tells anyone I have Asperger's she says "But she's very high-functioning" even though I'm standing right there so I'd think the person would be able to tell if I'm high-functioning or not.
Anyway, I guess my question is if I'm so high-functioning why can't I do anything. I know the answer is that I can do a lot of things, for example we went to dinner with my grandmother and aunts and uncles and cousins and it was easy and no big deal, also my dad started a long conversation with me when I was doing something else, and I didn't whine or anything. Sometimes when this stuff is going on it just strikes me how easy it is now. I know that's good. It just frequently doesn't feel like enough. It turns into this creepy tug-of-war, like how I love going to the airport because I can take off my shoes and put my computer in the tray and go through the metal detector, and I love taking trains and subways because I know how, but then people ask me to do things that make me so upset, like my professor telling me we're going to have class on Tuesday instead of Thursday so I have to change my shift at work. When this happened I wrote on my knee:
"Life Is An Endless Mess"
and while I know this is dramatic, it sometimes feels that way and makes me want to cry.
I was thinking about my self-injury because when I did it I didn't have very stereotypical motivations. I basically did it to win the tug-of-war. Some people supposedly don't feel it or they like the way it feels but I always felt it, and I did it because I thought that other people wouldn't have been able to keep going, but I kept going to make up for all the other situations in which I couldn't keep going.
Anyway, this is the poem:
The Promotion
by James Tate
I was a dog in my former life, a very good
dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being.
I liked being a dog. I worked for a poor farmer,
guarding and herding his sheep. Wolves and coyotes
tried to get past me almost every night, and not
once did I lose a sheep. The farmer rewarded me
with good food, food from his table. He may have
been poor, but he ate well. And his children
played with me, when they weren't in school or
working in the field. I had all the love any dog
could hope for. When I got old, they got a new
dog, and I trained him in the tricks of the trade.
He quickly learned, and the farmer brought me into
the house to live with the family. I brought the farmer
his slippers in the morning, as he was getting
old, too. I was dying slowly, a little bit at a
time. The farmer knew this and would bring the
new dog in to visit me from time to time. The
new dog would entertain me with his flips and
flops and nuzzles. And then one morning I just
didn't get up. They gave me a fine burial down
by the stream under a shade tree. That was the
end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so
I sit by my window and cry. I live in a high-rise
that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises.
At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak
to anyone all day. The human wolves don't even see me.
They fear me not.
[I know this is the most emo post ever made, but if you want, you can bookmark it and then read it when you're feeling emo yourself and are in a state to handle it. If you read it when you're in a normal mood you might end up holding me in contempt forever.]
Anyway, I guess my question is if I'm so high-functioning why can't I do anything. I know the answer is that I can do a lot of things, for example we went to dinner with my grandmother and aunts and uncles and cousins and it was easy and no big deal, also my dad started a long conversation with me when I was doing something else, and I didn't whine or anything. Sometimes when this stuff is going on it just strikes me how easy it is now. I know that's good. It just frequently doesn't feel like enough. It turns into this creepy tug-of-war, like how I love going to the airport because I can take off my shoes and put my computer in the tray and go through the metal detector, and I love taking trains and subways because I know how, but then people ask me to do things that make me so upset, like my professor telling me we're going to have class on Tuesday instead of Thursday so I have to change my shift at work. When this happened I wrote on my knee:
"Life Is An Endless Mess"
and while I know this is dramatic, it sometimes feels that way and makes me want to cry.
I was thinking about my self-injury because when I did it I didn't have very stereotypical motivations. I basically did it to win the tug-of-war. Some people supposedly don't feel it or they like the way it feels but I always felt it, and I did it because I thought that other people wouldn't have been able to keep going, but I kept going to make up for all the other situations in which I couldn't keep going.
Anyway, this is the poem:
The Promotion
by James Tate
I was a dog in my former life, a very good
dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being.
I liked being a dog. I worked for a poor farmer,
guarding and herding his sheep. Wolves and coyotes
tried to get past me almost every night, and not
once did I lose a sheep. The farmer rewarded me
with good food, food from his table. He may have
been poor, but he ate well. And his children
played with me, when they weren't in school or
working in the field. I had all the love any dog
could hope for. When I got old, they got a new
dog, and I trained him in the tricks of the trade.
He quickly learned, and the farmer brought me into
the house to live with the family. I brought the farmer
his slippers in the morning, as he was getting
old, too. I was dying slowly, a little bit at a
time. The farmer knew this and would bring the
new dog in to visit me from time to time. The
new dog would entertain me with his flips and
flops and nuzzles. And then one morning I just
didn't get up. They gave me a fine burial down
by the stream under a shade tree. That was the
end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so
I sit by my window and cry. I live in a high-rise
that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises.
At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak
to anyone all day. The human wolves don't even see me.
They fear me not.
[I know this is the most emo post ever made, but if you want, you can bookmark it and then read it when you're feeling emo yourself and are in a state to handle it. If you read it when you're in a normal mood you might end up holding me in contempt forever.]
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