Please sponsor my 5k swim coming up in April and help support Marie Curie Cancer Care, an organisation which provides home nursing care to people with terminal illnesses.

:Route: 66 Kicks

o glorious southwest
 o tulsa   o albuquerque   o motel six
eggshells patter your freeway fiction
    well, I hacksawed that —— the fiction of your free
      way to panic & decay    (or litter or slow pedestrian dinners
                           she muttered under crown
         of red dirt frog
    these (now) frosted lanes in summer (floor it to then)
  become another footlocker
for roadkill & Arby's & McD's
                               lubricious in their juicy beef
posters & blood would be offensive
when you can have ketchup
  or semifresh, tomatoes , instead

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written in response to read write prompt 114: all over the map

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• ‘Love Hormone’ Oxytocin Shows Promise in Autism (abcnews.go.com)
• Nasal spray raises hope for autistics (telegraph.co.uk)
• Hormone oxytocin offers hope in treating mild autism (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Less Sensitivity to Hormone May Play Role in Autism (nlm.nih.gov)
• Party people: Gregarious types may have more oxytocin receptors (guardian.co.uk)
• Thin Line Between Love and Hate Stops at…Oxytocin? (healthmgmtrx.blogspot.com)
• The 5 Scariest Experiments That Scientists Are Working on Right Now (neatorama.com)
• Autistic People Don’t Like Hugs? Quick, Someone Tell Conor (autisminnb.blogspot.com)
• “A Bunch Of Social ‘Yak Yaks’”: Temple Grandin And Autism [Broad Spectrum] (jezebel.com)
• Dismay at Aspie ‘hate’ (leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk)
• ‘A real shock’ (news.bbc.co.uk)

Grown Up, or, Not a Revelation since Nothing Changed

blue house
gray house
synthesized
barn house

six-year old,
thinking there’s
nothing, to protest,
other than a changed
schedule on Saturday
morning TV:

she did march at home
round and round her
parents’ parking spot

San Francisco,
decades later
(almost two)
she marches
yes but also sits
arrested for blocking
Federal property
cited out:
War (Iraq, Afghanistan)
never ends.

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written in response to: read write prompt 113: the therapeutic cleanse — a spa for your writerly being, by mary biddinger with the following changes to my recent style: no physical gaps within lines, more punctuation (in an earlier draft this was even truer, but I couldn’t stand it), closer attention to the location of the emphasized syllables, starting in a setting I haven’t used for years (Coburg, Oregon), and trying to tell a story a bit more than I usually set out to do.

Winter Solstice

window beaded with my sweat
hides the falling snow
which softens light, a world reset
window beaded with my sweat
won’t let me see to forget
who wouldn’t stop when I said no
window beaded with my sweat
hides the falling snow

Rented Rooms

these walls never change
the same off-white or taupe
   or sometimes lighter egg
none dare call it nude

there's dirt
the breath
           of whoever lived before
lived here I mean   these walls

             keep us apart
from quiet

           that never changes
the same gold light
through the same wet glass
same time relative
                   to dark

moves less than I have
and yet these walls I sleep beneath
read beneath   eat beneath
      & fuck    & breathe
change only
            to follow me

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written in response to read write prompt 112: the narrative wallpaper