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Yesterday, John Odgren, a nineteen-year old man, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for stabbing a schoolmate when he was sixteen. His lawyer, citing Odgren’s Asperger’s syndrome, ADD, anxiety, and possible bipolar disorder, had attempted to have him ruled insane. Such defenses, even when they ultimately fail as in this case, have the effect of strengthening the perception of a link between mental illness or neuroatypicality and violence. Indeed, the Boston Globe is reporting that parents and advocates of Aspergian children are concerned that this will lead to an unfair association of Asperger’s with violence, even though Aspies are in fact likelier to be victims rather than perpetrators:

“Parents are worried that schools will be more restrictive, that they won’t allow children with Asperger’s to join programs because of the fear,’’ said Scott McLeod, a clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who specializes in Asperger’s syndrome.

While the article itself makes some excellent points, it fails in one very important way: there is not a single quote from an Aspie or other autistic person. By refusing to grant us the right to speak for ourselves and to self-advocate, this piece continues to marginalize and other us.

And it is precisely that othering which allows us to be so easily associated with the perpetrators of violence. As I’ve written before:

Autism, being the marked case, gets blamed when something goes wrong. Similar lashing out from a neurotypical young man who could not be diagnosed with anything would not be blamed on his neurotypicality. The Stanford prison experiments screened participants so that only “normal” volunteers could be included, but you hardly ever hear anyone referring to them as the “dark side of normalcy” (only of the human psyche).

So long as a disability is viewed as something that makes one other, “special”, or strange, it can be used by those seeking an explanation for the horrific, for the sort of violence we do not wish to associate with humanity or ourselves. This sort of explanation in turn leads to fear of the already marginalised.

This effect is why so many of us are so troubled by groups like Autism Speaks which paint a horrific picture of the autism spectrum in order to keep donations rolling in. Though she doesn’t associate it with that group’s work, Lisa Jo Ruddy at About.com has noticed a significant decline in parents’ willingness to say anything positive about their autistic children.

It’s time to stop othering people because of their disabilities. It’s time to stop letting the TAB and the neurotypical be the ones who decide how the disabled are viewed, for as long as the perspectives of the disabled are excluded, we will remain other and vulnerable to demonisation.

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Related posts:

1. No More Asperger’s?
2. I Am Autism
3. Helping Whom?
4. “it’s not a bug”

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