No, no sort of professional, but there but for the grace of god go I. An anarchist who understands, rather, that supporting each other competently through our struggles and organizing across difference actually requires detailed and ongoing correspondence and study. And I walk on away from circles where people (dis)content themselves with saying the same three sentences over and over.
Oldhead – The fact that you think understanding and supporting each other is a “no-brainer” and “does not require” months and years of research and inquiry (and continuous re-evaluation of how we’re doing it, and in what socioeconomic context! and what our limits, burnout points, and own needs are! and seeking competency to address cultural gaps!) is probably what’s stopping you from doing it better.
Great article Sarah.
It’s a political strategy, not a “mistake,” dear.
Maybe for the sheltered, well-provided-for researchers who wrote this study, violation is an anomaly and a shock. For the rest of us, actually, experiencing victimization constitutes THE ENTIRETY of the social contract.
Ok good, but these techniques are not actually new.
(neurodiversity is also a movement for the rights of those with downs’ syndrome, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, fragile x syndrome and so on… there could be more nuanced language for sure but it’s produced good human rights organizing with a good critique of medical violence…)
Hi – A lot of us actually don’t want to ‘use person-first language’ or functioning labels, and many of us have found our parents and grandparents to be the *least likely* people to empathize, and the most likely to subject us to ‘normalization’ in attempts to eradicate our differences. Thank you though.
There *are* Autistic experiences and Autistic culture – as for instance there are Gay experiences and Gay culture. Sure, these groups are classed, maybe even categorically *produced*, by the era and culture we live in. Sure, there’s not one essential biological ‘thing’ that causes/defines our experience – and the search to find one has been lead largely by people who want to get rid of us.
Still, we have shared experiences, shared needs/desires that are different from the ones dominant culture expects, shared subcultures, and a shared need to fight against abuse and oppression.
All oppressed groups, in their struggles, have encountered this tension: Are we fighting for our rights *as* this group, or ultimately fighting to no longer be classed this way? The working-class anarchists and communists out for a classless society ran into tension with trade unions and political parties that wanted only ‘workers rights’. Monique Wittig contended, against more-conventional feminism, that lesbians could supercede womanhood itself. We will have this tension too, and hopefully we can come to talk about Autistic experience without the ‘scientism’.
(I see a huge parallel between current neurodiversity activism and how early gay-rights groups took on a medical framing of their desires. I hope we can similarly develop beyond it.)
Towards the anarcho-schizophrenic defense brigades,
Towards gender-nihilist trans(&)womens’ liberation,
Towards the end of whiteness and the end of wage-labor,
Love,
– Danny
This is a good critique, but the website easily could have published a similar critique coming from one of us who bears the autism diagnosis or deals with the processing/functioning differences that get labeled that way. Nothing personally against Dr. Timimi, but it’s frustrating that even critical platforms boost the voices of sane-classed professionals over the voices of the directly-affected.
“I thankfully have repaired all the relationships with people who were so pissed at me.”
Thank you for writing this article, Michael.
No, no sort of professional, but there but for the grace of god go I. An anarchist who understands, rather, that supporting each other competently through our struggles and organizing across difference actually requires detailed and ongoing correspondence and study. And I walk on away from circles where people (dis)content themselves with saying the same three sentences over and over.
Oldhead – The fact that you think understanding and supporting each other is a “no-brainer” and “does not require” months and years of research and inquiry (and continuous re-evaluation of how we’re doing it, and in what socioeconomic context! and what our limits, burnout points, and own needs are! and seeking competency to address cultural gaps!) is probably what’s stopping you from doing it better.
Great article Sarah.
It’s a political strategy, not a “mistake,” dear.
Maybe for the sheltered, well-provided-for researchers who wrote this study, violation is an anomaly and a shock. For the rest of us, actually, experiencing victimization constitutes THE ENTIRETY of the social contract.
Ok good, but these techniques are not actually new.
🙂
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.138.2.210
(neurodiversity is also a movement for the rights of those with downs’ syndrome, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, fragile x syndrome and so on… there could be more nuanced language for sure but it’s produced good human rights organizing with a good critique of medical violence…)
Hi – A lot of us actually don’t want to ‘use person-first language’ or functioning labels, and many of us have found our parents and grandparents to be the *least likely* people to empathize, and the most likely to subject us to ‘normalization’ in attempts to eradicate our differences. Thank you though.
There *are* Autistic experiences and Autistic culture – as for instance there are Gay experiences and Gay culture. Sure, these groups are classed, maybe even categorically *produced*, by the era and culture we live in. Sure, there’s not one essential biological ‘thing’ that causes/defines our experience – and the search to find one has been lead largely by people who want to get rid of us.
Still, we have shared experiences, shared needs/desires that are different from the ones dominant culture expects, shared subcultures, and a shared need to fight against abuse and oppression.
All oppressed groups, in their struggles, have encountered this tension: Are we fighting for our rights *as* this group, or ultimately fighting to no longer be classed this way? The working-class anarchists and communists out for a classless society ran into tension with trade unions and political parties that wanted only ‘workers rights’. Monique Wittig contended, against more-conventional feminism, that lesbians could supercede womanhood itself. We will have this tension too, and hopefully we can come to talk about Autistic experience without the ‘scientism’.
(I see a huge parallel between current neurodiversity activism and how early gay-rights groups took on a medical framing of their desires. I hope we can similarly develop beyond it.)
Towards the anarcho-schizophrenic defense brigades,
Towards gender-nihilist trans(&)womens’ liberation,
Towards the end of whiteness and the end of wage-labor,
Love,
– Danny
This is a good critique, but the website easily could have published a similar critique coming from one of us who bears the autism diagnosis or deals with the processing/functioning differences that get labeled that way. Nothing personally against Dr. Timimi, but it’s frustrating that even critical platforms boost the voices of sane-classed professionals over the voices of the directly-affected.
“I thankfully have repaired all the relationships with people who were so pissed at me.”
False.
<3 <3 <3s to you, Molly.