as small as a world and as large as alone

12:55am March 8, 2014

dendriforming:

I cannot follow this (recently widely-promoted) essay about why not to say “stupid” without a lot of effort. And not just because I keep wanting to shout about what consensus means.

I’m saying this as someone who got a perfect score on the verbal section of the GRE. How are people with significant receptive language impairments supposed to access this conversation? Don’t they belong at the center of it?

If it’s one I remember, I can’t follow it either.

At all.

And that entire way of communicating, is so rampant in the community promoting these ideas, that they have no idea how badly they are screwing things up for people like me.

Not that I’m asking them to communicate differently.  They might not be able to stop communicating in extremely abstract ways any more than I am able to stop saying ‘stupid’.

But I am saying, if they communicate like that, then a lot of people including me won’t be able to grasp any of what’s going on.  And there’s something wrong there that the conversation only happens in that language.  That tells me that the conversation is a self-selected group of people who all communicate best in that kind of language and have a very insular view of the disability community, the autistic community, the DD community, and the world in general.

And that’s besides any and all of my other problems with this stuff.

But any time I try to speak up about my perspective I’m told I’m being horribly oppressive in one way or another.  

Because in these communities there is only one answer and their answer is always the right one.  It’s black and white and there is no possibility for grey or other shades of color.

Which is actually a living hell for people who are different.

And isn’t people who are different, the people these communities are trying to protect?

There’s become an orthodoxy.  And it’s horrible.  And only people who speak the language of the orthodoxy are respected.

Note that I haven’t followed any recent conversations about this topic, I’m just remembering things from before.  But I’m pretty sure things haven’t changed.

One thing that shames me.

I created some of this orthodoxy.

I didn’t mean to.

I wasn’t trying to tell people to agree with me.

But there are many areas where – if you take just the words we say without necessarily the substance or the deeper ideas – what I say sounds exactly like the orthodoxy.

Because there was a time I was a respected leader in some of these communities – and to some extent I still am which is why I get away with saying some of this stuff without being totally ostracized (which is why I feel it my duty to say this stuff because maybe maybe someone will listen and hear and not just close their ears, whereas other people might be shot down much quicker than people are willing to shoot me down).

And I said things.  And so did a small number of other people (because there weren’t many of us back then).

And people made those things into The Orthodox Belief System That Everyone Must Believe.

And I never intended it but I’m still ashamed.

I’ve continued changing and growing and changing my mind all my life.

So some of my old ideas, I still agree with.

Other of them, I agree with them in words but the principle of the thing goes deeper than I see happening in the most orthodox parts of these communities.

Other of them, I agree only partly, or have changed a large part of the substance of my beliefs.

Other of them, I no longer agree at all.

But some people from back then have not moved and changed, they still say the exact same things from back then, in the exact way.

And that’s fine if that’s really what they honestly believe.

But – taken together as a group – intended or not – it creates an orthodoxy.

And that orthodoxy shuts out those who are different.

It shuts out people with amazing ideas that could change the world, because those people say 'stupid’ or even 'retarded’, or don’t/can’t use splats, or trigger warnings (gah I thought the debates about splats and trigger warnings died long ago until I found tumblr and related communities), or disagree on much more fundamental principles.

Yet some of those people being shut out.

Could be the ones who solve the problems that all of us want solved.

And it makes me want to cry.

And it pisses me off.

And can’t people see what’s happening?

Can’t they see this isn’t about their ego wars between various communities and factions?

Can’t they see who’s being shut out, compared to who they claim to speak for?

I once said that reality is always heresy.  I meant it spiritually, but I think it applies ethically and politically as well.  I can’t be anything other than the heretic I am.  I don’t claim to totally know reality, but I think I can see parts of it others don’t always see, and I think that makes it important, I’m not trying to be a troublemaker or something, I’m trying to say something horribly important is being destroyed here.

This is not an attempt at destruction, this is a plea.  This is not saying I know everything, it’s saying I know at least a little something, something important.  And I’ll keep on saying it, because someone has to, and why not me?

Or to quote an old favorite poem of mine:

The web was woven curiously
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not–this is I,
               The Lady of Shalott

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