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11:21am July 8, 2013

josiahd:

Calling bigotry a feeling doesn’t make it ok, and it doesn’t obligate others to validate it.


This so much.

I once encountered a mother who wrote endlessly of her autistic son not being a real adult, never going to be a real adult, not like her other son. She was a very influential autism mommy blogger who had written a successful book and had a wide readership.

I pointed out, tactfully I thought, the ways in which this viewpoint hurt people with developmental disabilities. The way that, not being considered adults, we end up with guardians even when we don’t need them, we get restricted from making our own friends let alone consenting to sex or marriage, etc. Some of which puts us in serious danger for abuse and people controlling our lives in destructive ways. And that we have been trying to break free of this idea for decades.

She told me that she was just being honest about her feelings.

Never mind that “DD people are perpetual children” is not a feeling. It’s a prejudice that was basically created alongside “mental age” and cemented by writings such as Pearl Buck’s “The Child Who Never Grew”. My own great aunt had trouble marrying because of that idea combined with eugenicist thinking.

It escalated into a flame war in which a variety of total strangers who loved her parenting blog, told me that I was basically a heartless monster. Reassured the mother that she didn’t have to listen to such “mean spirited” attitudes as mine. And lots of other comments to that effect.

And then she kept telling about how I was making her the bad guy. Until I had to explain that I don’t even believe in good guys and bad guys. And that I myself had said things similar to what she said and had to learn how damaging they were. And that I wasn’t accusing her of bad intentions, just saying that her actions had consequences.

I even pointed out that there are ways of being honest about such thoughts without having such a negative effect on people. You can talk about how you have a hard time seeing your son as an adult, and that you know that voicing such ideas can really harm people, so you are talking about it in order to highlight how we can all have destructive ideas from time to time.
It’s not hard to find a way of writing it that doesn’t actually reinforce similar ideas in others? There must be dozens of ways if you don’t like my approach above.

That was in order to explain to her that I didn’t think she was evil for having the idea, just human, but that such ideas can still harm. And that we all have a responsibility – people with as much influence as her having correspondingly more responsibility – not to encourage such ideas in others.

But no I was still an evil mean spirited autistic person who meant to paint her as a villain (therefore it was okay to paint me in the worst possible light, and allow all her readers to join on that bandwagon without comment?).  And deserved the tongue lashing I got from her and all her commenters.

Because I was attacking her just for expressing her feelings. And feelings are sacred and should always be expressed without expressing the effect they might have on the world, without taking the slightest bit of responsibility for the consequences of such expression.

I bent over backward, too. To make sure she knew I didn’t think badly of her as a person. That I wasn’t attacking her. That I was only concerned with the consequences of her actions, not questioning her motivations.

I have to say after all she said to me and allowed others to say to me, I think badly of her NOW.  I no longer see her as innocent.  She had no problem launching personal attacks on me and letting others use her blog as a platform for them. And those aren’t the sorts of things decent innocent people do, to people who are bending over backwards to be nice to them while explaining what they’re doing can harm people unintentionally.

I have to wonder, would she let people attack her son the way she let people attack me? Or does she only attack autistic people who suggest her “feelings” can actually do harm to people?

Oh I also was supposedly claiming she didn’t love her child. I forgot that accusation.

I’ve also taken a lot of flak for what happened. Because apparently just because she says she accepts her son’s autism, I’m supposed to see her as wonderful and infallible. I run into this a lot in certain circles. If a parent doesn’t want to cure their kid then I’m supposed to be “on their side” regardless of their other actions towards autistic people.

Because we all know the only important autism issue is cure, right? It doesn’t matter if the parent puts their child in an institution against their will, or treats them like a perpetual child, or talks about them in the most degrading ways in public. They don’t want to fix their kid, what more can I possibly want from them?

And just as with autistic people who want a cure for themselves… there are parents who want a cure that I sometimes respect more than some parents who don’t.  Cure isn’t the make or break issue for me.

What I look for is a certain solidity that shows me they have respect for us in a deeply human way. I could not give a toss about acceptance in these days when acceptance and celebration have become buzz words that everyone says and nobody remembers what they mean.

That was one of the most frustrating interactions I ever had when it came to “it’s just my feelings, and you are a monster if you want to stop me expressing them, or believe they could ever do the slightest harm to anyone”.

Thinking that autistic adults aren’t adults isn’t a feeling. It’s a thought. And even if it was a feeling, it’s possible to be honest about your feelings without using them in ways that hurt people.

I am really glad I’m not her son though. I could not stand if my parents decided to mourn my perpetual childhood and wish I was more like my brother. I hope her son never reads that entry. (Actually he probably has, and she probably has no clue that he can understand it let alone be hurt by it.)

Honestly when I read what she said, it made me feel sick all over.

I remembered the psychologist who told me that because I’d been in the system, I would never be a true adult, and that he would control my life because he had a right to. That he would veto any decision of mine he didn’t think was for the best, and he would convince my parents to enforce his decisions.

I remember that trapped feeling. I still think if I hadn’t been able to fire him soon after, he would have tried to persuade my family to file for guardianship. The only reason he didn’t, was he could control me without all the legal hassle, just by convincing me I had no rights. Most people can’t imagine the sickening feeling of powerlessness. Of honestly believing you will never be allowed to make your own choices. Never be allowed to fail and learn from it.

He actually at one point held my sleep disorder over my head. Told me that real adults can sleep through the night. And I wouldn’t be able to make adult decisions about my future, until I proved to him I could sleep through the night. I have a circadian rhythm disorder, even meds don’t completely control it. I had no chance.

I know people who aren’t allowed to make their own friends. People barred from consensual sex. People forced to be heterosexual when they’re not. People who could control their lives, not being allowed to. Being prevented from messing up and therefore prevented from learning.

I hated being a child. I hated the powerlessness. I hated it so much I wasn’t even sure I could survive it. Not being allowed to be an adult, even now, would be mind-rendingly horrible.

It’s still horrible when people with authority compare me to a child or even an infant. Try to take away my rights. They still do this. They tell people I will pull out my feeding tube by playing with it. They blame me when it clogs. They talk down to me. All of this because they see me as a child in an adult body.

But it was just her feelings. And feelings come from nowhere, they’re not in any way attached to your thoughts or worldview or prejudices. And she was just being honest. Wht tat more could I want?

But feelings don’t usually come from nowhere. They’re very much influenced by how you view the world around you.

And a prejudice isn’t a feeling anyway. It’s just not. “Feeling like my son will never grow up” isn’t a feeling at all. Pretending it is, in order to demonize the person who tells you how it affects disabled people to be thought of this way, is disingenuous at best. But even if it were a feeling, failing to look at and question your feelings and where they come from isn’t the best move anyway.  And feelings need to quit being considered sacred things nobody can question. 

Wow I didn’t expect a rant that long.