7:50am May 17, 2014

It’s probably not worth it for me to be this angry.

It’s just that there’s something going on here that I can’t even put a name to, that pisses me off really badly. It’s something that happens when people become so hyper-conceptualized about their approach to activism that they can’t see reality staring them in the face. Where everything becomes an idea. And everything is one idea related to another idea bounced off of another idea.

And it’s not even the same as just having a mind that’s naturally drawn to ideas. Lots of very idea-oriented people (which the world totally needs) are not like this.

And it’s also feeling like someone is pinning me down and trying to force me to have an opinion I don’t have, just so they can argue against it. Like there’s nothing wrong with being hyper-aware of yourself and unaware or only unconsciously aware of other people, and that’s something that many different cognitive problems can do. There’s nothing wrong with living in a sensory world that doesn’t have much room for concepts or ideas. These are both things I’m intimately familiar with, in all likelihood far more intimately than the person who brought them up.

And yet we can’t just have a conversation about that, and about what it means. We can’t just sit down and have a conversation about what things mean. Because it has to be a fight. Somehow, in this setting, it always has to be adversarial. The whole situation conspires to make it impossible to just have an ordinary conversation.

Hell, all I was trying to do was start a conversation. I went out of my way to say that people didn’t have to agree with me, that I was just putting information out there, so that people would be aware of it. And honestly, most people probably took it exactly as I intended it.

But then someone had to come in and say “fuck you” not only to me but to anyone who had agreed with me or even gotten any benefit at all out of reading what I had to say. Which, well, it’s the Internet, it happens. But then someone else comes in and tries to make it sound like it’s about two sides who totally think they’re right and won’t listen to each other? Because… I’m willing to listen to other sides on this and many other issues, and probably so are most of the people who ‘liked’ that post. In fact I know many of the people who 'liked’ the post are people willing to listen to multiple sides, because many of them are using the word that I wrote the post about why I wouldn’t use. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, I would never set out to take people’s language away from them, ever. I don’t think I’m universally right, I don’t think that my experiences when the word started out are the same as the experiences of people when the word was popularized.

So it’s not that I won’t listen to other sides, it’s not even that I want to convert anyone to my side. I just want people to know there is another side. That it’s not just righteous autistics on one side and people offended at the idea of there being a word for nonautistic people on the other. That people have reasons for not liking that word. Many reasons – not just my own reasons, for that matter. I don’t want to convert anyone, I just want people to know that autistic people who can’t, or won’t, use the word have lots of good reasons for it. I gave my reasons. That’s all.

If everyone just talked about their point of view without having to make it into a fight, things would be so much more interesting.

I’d love to get into a conversation about what it means when autism restricts your ability to understand that other people exist. I’d love to get into a conversation about what it means when autism makes you hyper-aware of the fact that other people exist, but unable to experience your own self – which is equally as common. I’d love, really love, because nobody talks about this ever, to get into a conversation about what it’s like to not be able to put enough thought together to have any conscious awareness either of yourself or of other people, and what it’s like to spend a lot of time there.

But those aren’t conversations that can happen in an adversarial mud-flinging match.

They aren’t conversations that can happen when someone’s Not Like My Childing me by default because they assume that if I was Like Their Child then I would automatically share their point of view. (Yes, I know the person in question probably doesn’t have children. I’m not talking about a literal child, I’m talking about a thing autistic people call Not Like My Child, when a person, usually a nonautistic parent, tells another autistic person they’re too high functioning to take part in a debate about something related to autism. I didn’t know autistic people could do it to each other, but now I know. Someone basically told me that people who try to eliminate the stereotype that autistic means self-oriented are high-functioning people who want to throw low-functioning, self-oriented people under the bus. Maybe not using those exact words, but that was the basic idea. Which makes me furious because the number of ways it’s wrong are too many to talk about, which makes it impossible for me to respond coherently with anything other than a frustrated scream.)

I don’t know how to take part in conversations that are being force-molded into debates. Debates with two sides, always. Always two. Never three, four, or fifty-six. And in these debates, you get railroaded. So that you can’t step out of character. You can’t step out of it and say “this isn’t me, this isn’t what I think, damn you stop it!” Even if you do your best to present your actual point of view, someone will reduce it down to a “side”.

And in that world, nobody can ever win, it’s just “sides” butting heads until the end of time.

This isn’t a game to me.

When I write things, on the Internet, it’s because I want to be part of a conversation. Sometimes conversations get heated, and that’s fine to a point. But when the conversation stops being honest, that’s when I have to step out. By honest, I mean that an honest conversation is where you’re saying your real point of view. You’re not being railroaded into picking one of two sides, and sticking with the party line of one of those sides. You’re not having someone else try to steer you into being on a “side” you never said you were on in the first place.

And it’s really upsetting to be trying to just have a conversation, and then have us and then, right and wrong, black and white forced into the middle of it, and then being forced into being either us or them, right or wrong, until you aren't you anymore, you’re just a mouthpiece for an idea. It’s horrible, and it’s violent, and unfortunately I think a lot of people in some of these online communities are so used to this mode of communication that they can’t even feel when they’re doing it, or when it’s being done to them.

I can feel when it’s being done to me, and it hurts. If more people could feel it when it’s being done to them, maybe the world would be a lot better place.

And I’m not even trying to single out the person disagreeing with me here. Because I don’t know the person, I don’t know their name, I don’t remember their username, I’m terrible with things like that. I’m upset with something that’s a symptom of a much broader problem, a cultural problem with certain online communities. So please nobody rag on that person on my account, they don’t deserve it and that’s not why I’ve been writing the things I’ve written.

Notes: