as small as a world and as large as alone, Is "cousin" appropriating from PoC?

2:31pm September 3, 2014

Anonymous asked: Is "cousin" appropriating from PoC?

Short answer: No, WTF, no seriously WTF?

Long answer (quoted from Jim Sinclair):

The increased attention generated by my presentation drew more people to come to the ANI exhibit for information about us, and many of them became members. We were reaching the point at which our members no longer all knew each other; individual ANI members could be strangers to each other. For ANI to continue as a meaningful social entity, it had to be an entity that provided a common “home” even for people who did not have personal relationships with each other. I think it is this sense of being a “home”—a context for people’s lives as a whole—that distinguishes a community from a simple organization.

Another development during the 1993 conference was the recognition of a new segment of the ANI community, and the adoption of a new term to refer to it. One of the people who had been corresponding with ANI members online, and was attending this conference to meet with us in person for the first time, was not autistic. He had hydrocephalus, another congenital neurological abnormality. In our online discussions he had been noticing many similarities between his experiences and characteristics as a person with hydrocephalus, and the experiences and characteristics of autistic people. At the conference he met Kathy, who was not online at the time and did not know who he was. He introduced himself to her, explaining that he was interested in exploring similarities between himself and autistic people. He briefly summarized the effects of hydrocephalus in his life. Kathy considered this for a moment, and then warmly exclaimed “Cousin!” (Cousins, 1993). From that time on, the term “cousin” has been used within ANI to refer to a non-autistic person who has some other significant social and communication abnormalities that render him or her significantly “autistic-like.” The broader term “AC,” meaning “autistics and cousins,” emerged soon afterward.

Seriously, I swear people go looking for ways things can be offensive. And no, I don’t blame you, personally. I’m just exasperated at the way ‘appropriation’ has come to mean so many things that aren’t even close to appropriation. Like using the word 'cousin’ to describe someone with issues 'related to’ yours. (As in, cousin, as in, relative, as in, related.)

Xenia Grant is the most friendly and loving person I have ever met, bar none. She’s also one of the most visibly autistic people I’ve ever met. And to even think that her totally spontaneous exclamation of friendship is in any way appropriating from or even related to PoC in any way, I just can’t wrap my head around it. PoC don’t have a monopoly on the word 'cousin’. No group of people, to my knowledge, has a monopoly on the word 'cousin’. And nobody should.

The concept of cousinhood is an amazing concept. It brings people together instead of pulling them apart. Most oppressed communities I see on tumblr are in the process of pulling themselves apart, becoming smaller and smaller and more disconnected from each other. Communities that have the 'cousin’ concept, on the other hand, become more inclusive and less invested in identity policing. They become friendlier to people who might otherwise be on the fringes of the community feeling like they don’t have a place anywhere. I have never seen the concept of cousinhood do anything other than improve a community.

The only criticism I've ever heard of cousinhood that made any sense, was that it put autistic people at the center and other neurodivergent people along the edges. But that’s only true if you assume cousinhood only applies to autistic people. If you have cousinhood built in as a potential concept centered around any and every type of people, that problem goes away.

But anyway… no. Cousinhood has nothing to do with appropriating anything from anyone anywhere for any reason, and it bothers me that people are starting to use 'appropriation’ in ways it was never intended to be used. Appropriation is when you steal something integral to a culture, that is not meant to be shared by outsiders to that culture. That is not what Xenia did when she welcomed Stephen into our ranks as a fellow neurodivergent person. That is not what people are doing when they say “You may not share a diagnosis with us, but we have so much in common that it barely matters.” This is so important to so many people, and so thoroughly and utterly benign, I just can’t even…