10:57am July 1, 2014

OMFG this is weird as weird can be.

So in 1999, I coined the terms ‘autistic supremacism’ and 'aspie supremacism’.

And now I’m reading this guy using the words 'autistic supremacists’ in this Kindle book he’s written that appears to be a lengthy diatribe against the idea of ever listening to anything any autistic person says about autism ever.

And it’s just weird.

(Also he seems to hate ASAN. I’m not 100% fond of ASAN myself, but he claims that the board members secretly admit to not being autistic, and all sorts of other stuff I suspect to be either bullshit or gross misinterpretation. He never mentions ASAN by name, but it took two minutes of web searching to figure out who he meant because of a blog post he’d written about ASAN’s stance on an autism registry. Which by the way surprised me – I’d have hoped ASAN would be against an autism registry, but apparently they worked to get one in place? Unless he’s as wrong about that as he is about a lot of things.)

Basically his stance is that you don’t know if an autistic person is actually autistic, or “self-diagnosed”, or a “wannabe”. But that even if an autistic person is actually autistic (by which he means accurately diagnosed… he thinks lots of autistic people are misdiagnosed as autistic, too, and he seems to think that anyone who’s had more than one type of autism diagnosis is misdiagnosed, which is plain weird), that’s no reason to actually listen to us either.

And he has this weird fixation on whether autistic people have synesthesia or not. Like, as an actual question people should ask themselves about every autistic writer they come across.

This is really weird shit. Fortunately it cost me less than a dollar, or I wouldn’t be reading it.

Any of my ASAN readers should be aware that he admits to interacting with ASAN both as himself and as a sockpuppet, and finding it funny that ASAN was warning his sockpuppet about him. Or something weird about that.

http://www.amazon.com/Autistic-Authors-Autistics-Autism-Literature/dp/1482660040/

He seems to think he knows more about autistic communities than he does. Like he acts like he’s been around forever, but he’s only been around since Aspergia. This gives him very little insight into the roots of autistic self-advocacy, but he claims to have a lot of insight in that regard. And he keeps claiming to have all this inside knowledge of autistic people behind the scenes gleefully describing how they’re not really autistic but they just get along with autistic people really well and pass themselves off as autistic. Which does not ring remotely true. Although it could be that he’s grossly distorting things people have actually said, or exaggerating from a small handful of people.

I do have some concern about his apparent sockpuppeting and attempts to get into 'high places’ in advocacy organizations in order to get dirt on people, though. That sort of behavior irritates the crap out of me.

I guess I’m not as offended as I could be, because honestly it’s hard to take his viewpoint all that seriously. I’m more regarding it as a curiosity. But then on his list of things to ask yourself about whether an autistic person has this or that trait or not, is “Are they an autistic supremacist?” and I just have to laugh because I made up that term (back before Aspergia, that’s for sure), it’s mine, and his use of it just… it’s a WTF moment.

But I am concerned for my friends who are involved in ASAN, that they should know about this guy, and should not take him into confidence on anything. Because he may not name ASAN outright, but it took me two minutes to work out which self-advocacy organization he was referencing and it would be just as easy for anyone else. And he might be going by other names, online at least.

It doesn’t sound as if he takes any of y'all’s privacy seriously – he doesn’t mention names, but he says a lot of details about people. Like someone who kept going back to get diagnosed with autism and kept getting diagnosed with bipolar instead, that kind of thing.

It’s also weird how he keeps talking about how some purported autistics “may have a criminal record”. Okay… some people have a criminal record. How I think of them depends on what kind of criminal record they have and why. And it has nothing to do, at all, with how I see their connection to autism. Because autistic people can be criminals just like nonautistic people can. Having a criminal record isn’t proof someone’s fake or something, and it doesn’t even mean they can’t be trusted.

It’s just very weird to me, how much this guy cares, about this little world of autistic people, and autistic authors in particular. I mean I stumbled on his book looking for autistic authors because I collect books by autistic authors, and he’d written this thing about autistic authors. I also got his Kindle book about autistic factions. It should be entertaining if nothing else.

But seriously be aware this guy is out there, don’t give him personal information about your diagnostic history, sure as hell don’t tell him anything that he can twist into “you’re not autistic you just like hanging out with autistic people because you’re socially awkward too haha”. And this is a warning specifically to ASAN people, because he seems to have something against you.

(I’m heavily ambivalent about ASAN, but I would never do something like this to them, ever. And I would distrust anyone who did. There’s being cautious about an organization you don’t 100% trust, and there’s… whatever the fuck he’s doing. If you’re interested, his Kindle books don’t cost a lot of money. But they’re mostly rambling on the same theme over and over, at least the first one is. Like he keeps saying the same thing, in different ways, without giving much information of actual substance. But I don’t trust him.)

But his actual theme, throughout this entire book, is “Don’t listen to autistic people, even when they really are autistic, because they’re not qualified to know anything about autism.” He also seems to think that real autistic people don’t have meltdowns often or…. IDK WTF.

Notes: