Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

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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A recent study has suggested that autistic adults who have inhaled the hormone oxytocin do better at tasks that involve recognizing faces and throwing a ball around with others. While the sample size was quite small (13 people!), the study still suggests how oxytocin can help Aspie adapt to what neurotypical society expects of us. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has framed its reporting the story in highly problematic ways: this Washington Post article manages to combine most them.

The story’s headline tells us that a “[h]ormone-infused nasal spray [has been] found to help people with autism” but the lead tells us that oxytocin “can help those with autism make eye contact and interact better with others”. Leaving aside for the moment that the reporter seems to be drawing conclusions somewhat beyond what the study actually suggests, there’s still the issue of how helping the autistic is defined. Helping autistics here isn’t about making them happier: it’s about inducing behavior in them which makes other people more comfortable. That is what interacting “better” means.

Further along in the article, the focus shifts from adults to children even though it the subjects of the study are adults, which fits into a more general tendency to make adult autistics invisible:

But Sirigu was among those who said the finding should encourage more research on the potential benefits of oxytocin itself, especially for children. Administering the hormone soon after a child is diagnosed with autism might help him or her develop more normally, she said.

This shift cannot entirely be blamed on poor journalism since the quote is from Angela Sirigu, who led the study. This move to focusing on children also become a move towards focusing on a “cure”, totally ignoring the perspectives who do not believe that autistic tendencies should be eliminated.

Indeed, the reporter seems to have been unable to locate a single autistic person to ask for an opinion, relying instead on “advocates for families with children with autism” (see how removed from actual experience that is?) including Autism Speaks. Would it really have been that difficult to contact ASAN?

Reporters covering stories about autism need to start centering autistic people, autistic perspectives, and autistic needs instead of considering only what neurotypicals want of and for us.

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I am tired of running into bigotry and ignorance in the poetry world. Tired but no longer surprised when I do.  There is no reason, after all, to expect that any subculture or set of subcultures would avoid the hierarchies and cruelties of the broader world. I just used to believe that poets might pay more attention to their words. The latest instance comes from a statement made by Christian Bök during a Q&A at Kelly Writers House last month, a transcription of which was posted to Harriet Blog. It begins

I think that my poetics makes it viable for me to excuse a whole variety of obsessive compulsive disorders. It’s not Asperger syndrome; it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Half the battle of being a poet is trying to transform what would otherwise be dismissed as a weakness into a strength, trying to find ways in which something that should fail under other circumstances finds an ecology within which it can succeed.

How nice. How nice that he gets to decide which neurologies are bugs. Even nicer that he then goes on to describe being a poet in terms of making what others see as weaknesses into strengths. Does the differentiation from Asperger’s mean, then, that it is outside of the set of perceived weaknesses that can be turned into strengths, that it is only a flaw? Those of us who actually know about Asperger’s, I mean we who are Aspies, know better. Did he consult with any of us before deciding to talk about us?

Of course, I don’t expect he gave the utterance much thought. I don’t think he had sat down and thought, “ah yes, the difficulty of being a person with Asperger’s is entirely unredeemable.” Rather, this is what happens in a culture in which a trait or tendency has become an easy sign for “something wrong.” The whole autism spectrum is maligned by groups with money, power, and media reach.  I’ve heard self-described progressives use Asperger’s as insult aimed at the Bush administration (because, you know, we Aspies are very well known for our social skills which allow us to lie successfully for period of years).

So I’m not surprised when such things are said. It’s just, you know, poets are supposed to think about words, right? (Or is that me being too literal again?) So I’m disappointed when they say such things and more disappointed when, thirty one comments later, no one has called them out.

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Earlier this month, the New York Times covered a proposed changed to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which would eliminate Asperger‘s as a separate diagnosis making it, instead, part of a category of autistic spectrum disorders. To me, the categories used by psychiatrists are of little interest. (I do, however, realize that there are some for whom it matters very much, and I in no way wish to denigrate them or their needs). The DSM, by its very nature, reflects reality as seen by psychiatrists not as seen by the people it’s supposed to categorize. That is to say, I have very little use for it myself, though I recognize that this proposed change would make it much harder for curebies to tell Aspies that they don’t really count as autistic, and that’s certainly something to be happy about.

Still, I’m not going to dodge the questions this proposed change raises about the difference between Asperger’s and autism. Ultimately, I see the former as a subset of the latter and will identify as one or the other or both depending on the context. Certainly, my response to stress is recognizably autistic, but my approach to and use of language seems to have more things in common with other Aspies’ than with non-Aspie autistics. It’s not either/or. It’s not both/and. And wanting to preserve the Asperger’s identity is not necessarily about wanting to maintain privilege or subscribing to some sort of notion of superiority-through-higher-functioning.

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