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Callista
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02 Feb 2011, 10:13 am

Pretty often around here, people complain that NTs are prejudiced against autistics--that they don't like us, are actively malevolent...

It always makes me think of the NTs I know. And I think it's just not like that. The NTs I've met who didn't know much about autism were often open to learning.

Yeah, there are a few actively prejudiced NTs; but let's set those aside for a second and look at the majority. The majority aren't biased, so much as simply ignorant.

I don't mean "willfully ignorant" here; nothing like that. They are just people who don't know, have never had occasion to know, and don't know that they're unaware of, what autism is, how autistic people interact, what we are like, and what to expect from us. These are the folks who have a vague stereotype kid-rocking-in-the-corner or Rain-man in their heads, and that's it--they don't think about it much beyond that because they haven't had much reason to.

And it seems to me that, instead of complaining about prejudice, we should really be targeting that big group of people who just don't know, through no fault of their own--the people who are simply making assumptions that are in the long run harmful to autistics, but not through malevolence, not because they actually don't like autistic people.

I think that if we were to actually forget about the actively prejudiced people, the folks who don't want "ret*ds" out in public, and focused on the everyday people who just don't know much, and gave those everyday people a real picture of what autism is like--for kids, for adults, all across the spectrum, in everyday life, good and bad and in-between--then we'd have made a good deal of progress toward true equality...

The trouble seems to be that some people think that "any publicity is good publicity"--which may be true when it comes to show biz, but not so much with autism. Quite a lot of the pity, fear, and tragedy rhetoric used by autism "charities" actually makes matters a lot worse--instead of the vague kid-in-the-corner, it gives people a wholly negative picture instead of a realistic one. It turns people who don't know about autism and will admit to not knowing, into people who think they know what autism is, but who actually don't.


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02 Feb 2011, 10:20 am

+ 1 to you, Callista.

I was actually a little put off when I saw the family, friends, and coworkers of Asperger's individuals being labeled as 'NTs' - it seems to support this in-group vs out-group dynamic which can really be detrimental for social minorities who, beneath the bitterness or hurt or anger some may feel, simply want to be heard and understood by others.



Callista
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02 Feb 2011, 10:24 am

I've got no problem with the label "NT"; we needed a name for it. But the idea that "NTs are all bigots" just isn't any more true than "autistics are all fascinated with trains".

In-group, out-group is unfortunately a normal part of human socialization; but in this case I think the bigger problem is the way people naturally shy away from unfamiliar things. Removing the unfamiliarity should go a long way.


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02 Feb 2011, 11:00 am

:thumleft: Great post.

I had no self concept of "I am an NT" before I had an autistic child and came here. Most people don't. Autism is barely on their radar. Unfortunately, if people do have a mental image that they got through something other than being around autistic people (or just one person), that mental image is colored mostly by Autism Speaks propaganda. At this point, I think the Autism Speaks version is far more prevalent in peoples' heads than even Rainman, a movie that came out years ago and hasn't been seen by most people. To most people, if they have any concept of autism, it's what they've seen in those ads.

So how are most autistic people probably perceived by non-autistic people? Most likely as somebody who shares the exact same neurology they do and so any eccentricities are 100% voluntary. That's where the hostility comes from: the idea that you have read body language just fine (since they have no concept of not reading their body language) and chose to ignore it.

In another thread I thought Wavefreak should just educate his students on his face blindness and leave autism out of it because that's so much more involved and the learning curve for understanding autism is a lot steeper. But as I re-think it, maybe he's in a privileged position to do just the sort of education you are advocating; giving autism an image other than the one Autism Speaks has given it.

Education will help a lot. Of course there are some things that are just so different that the necessary paradigm shift is hard. There is a difference between intellectually filing away a piece of information and incorporating it into your life. I have a hard time with the whole concept of fluctuating abilities. I see it with my daughter and always have and it still flumoxes me. Yesterday she could zip her coat. Today she can't. Tomorrow she might be able to again. This just baffles me. I have to incorporate it into my life so I don't frustrated with her and say "but you could do that yesterday, why not today?" But even so, it still baffles me. I hope some researcher (or poster) comes up with a mechanism for that phenomenon because I have a tough time understanding things that I don't get the mechanism for. Theory of Mind is just theory, after all. And when that theory breaks down, confusion sets in.

I don't understand autistic people much at all yet am still far more knowledgeable than a random person you pull off the street. It's a very steep learning curve but also important to educate. I doubt it's possible for an NT person to truly understand an autistic person. But I do think some margin of understanding is possible, possibly enough to remove some of the current miscommunications.



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02 Feb 2011, 12:57 pm

Janissy wrote:
So how are most autistic people probably perceived by non-autistic people? Most likely as somebody who shares the exact same neurology they do and so any eccentricities are 100% voluntary. That's where the hostility comes from: the idea that you have read body language just fine (since they have no concept of not reading their body language) and chose to ignore it.

This is excellently put, Janissy! It explains why, when I am trying to discuss my sensory issues, that most people will invariably respond, "Oh, I get like that!" Hence the assumption that I am choosing to focus on things that are unpleasant, but could just as well stop getting "like that," if I choose to. I have also come to realize that in some cases, I am reading body language just fine, but then what a person says is definitely at odds with what their body language just said. And I am left doubting my perceptions.


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Callista
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02 Feb 2011, 1:40 pm

Yes, I've had to explain that it is literally impossible for me to ignore some things--that, unlike an NT being annoyed by something, there isn't much chance I'll get used to it. So what would be only annoying for an NT is a big obstacle to me getting done whatever I'm trying to get done. Thankfully, getting rid of most annoying things will mean less annoyance for NTs too--so everybody wins. If we can only explain that what's only convenient for some people is necessary for others...

It's kind of a universal design thing--the way that, say, handicap stalls in bathrooms are useful for moms with strollers, or audible traffic signals are easier to use even by pedestrians who have 20/20 vision. Removing sensory annoyances from the workplace is not necessary for NTs, but it is still beneficial.


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02 Feb 2011, 3:52 pm

I agree, Callista. Not all NTs are bad people. Most of them are normal, too busy with their own concerns to be actively malevolent. Ignorance is fine by me, especially when it is paired with a willingness to learn. We all start ignorant. Bigotry, active, malicious prejudice, is something completely different.

Universal design is important. Environments that keep everyone from making their maximum possible contribution are not benificial to anyone in them. We all do better if everyone can live up to his or her potential.



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02 Feb 2011, 5:45 pm

For me the problem lies with an NT world, rather than NT's or individuals themselves.

Just like the Chinese cultural revolution killed 50-100million dissidents, intellectuals and academics (how many of these poor souls were autistic?) and left the meat heads to run the show, churning out poorly designed and poorly built useless products, kill the sparrows-pestilence and famine, make pig iron-useless for anything....the list goes on....

If only autistics were given their rightful place in society...society would be the winner.

I eventually forgive any NT, solely on the basis that they are kept in the dark by the powers that be, and dont know any better.

The enemy wears a suit, and is in top level desicion making. Not your NT neighbour.

As far as Autism Speaks goes, Jesus needs to go in and turn over the tables at that temple



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02 Feb 2011, 8:57 pm

I don't know... most people I meet have some horrible ideas about disability. They may not be bigots in the classic sense of open hatred, but I would not trust them to, say, accurately judge my quality of life even with my input. The problem with disability prejudice is that it often looks like pity instead of more outright hatred. And that sort of thing... education isn't usually enough to ensure my safety from the views of such people.

They may at times be able to be educated about how to respond to an autistic person, but that only goes so far and only in certain situations. I can't even trust people who work in the field of helping developmentally disabled people to live within our communities to understand that putting us in nursing homes or other institutions is injustice rather than inevitability. And that's a life and death issue to me. I do see that as prejudice more than ignorance especially when my attempts to show what goes on in such places are met with twitchy nervousness rather than understanding. Like... almost like they know it's wrong but don't want to have to bear the responsibility of caring when it's time for them to deal with budget cuts (even when self-advocates present them with far more workable choices).

Most people I encounter don't want to care. Not when people are dying. They might care enough to be a bit more welcoming on a social level but... when it really matters and the stakes are high they run away rather than confront what is happening to us. And these are not hard-core bigots, these are ordinary people who would be horrified if they ever believed or understood they had prejudices.

I guess... the idea that all it takes is education is attractive. But it's not my experience. Especially the higher the stakes, the less education seems to be enough. It's hard for me to put it into words. I don't think these people hold any conscious malice. But they do seem to have a real... fear or something, of confronting certain realities about the world they live in and sometimes the world they contribute to maintaining. And that ends up killing people. And that can't be handled like mere ignorance even though it can't be handled like stereotypical bigotry. It's something else. And I'm afraid that something else will kill me one day.


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02 Feb 2011, 10:38 pm

We need to reach out to the average population and show them that autism is not a lifetime prison sentence.


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02 Feb 2011, 10:52 pm

anbuend wrote:
I guess... the idea that all it takes is education is attractive. But it's not my experience. Especially the higher the stakes, the less education seems to be enough. It's hard for me to put it into words. I don't think these people hold any conscious malice. But they do seem to have a real... fear or something, of confronting certain realities about the world they live in and sometimes the world they contribute to maintaining. And that ends up killing people. And that can't be handled like mere ignorance even though it can't be handled like stereotypical bigotry. It's something else. And I'm afraid that something else will kill me one day.


I was once involved in a discussion on a blog about disabled child (she had cerebral palsy, was in a motorized wheelchair, needed machines to eat, there may have been more) whose mother had put a "do not revive" sign on the back of her wheelchair.

When I argued that she deserved as much of a life as anyone else, and explained why I felt this way and why her disability did not make her life somehow less worth living, people started asking for an education to understand that disabled people are fully human. This was after explaining the basics. I wish I could say I was surprised by this, that no one read what so many in the thread (not just me, far from it) were writing, and simply continued restating their assumptions about how tragic the situation was.

I don't believe it's education, I believe it's empathy. Or rather, the problem is a lack of empathy. No amount of teaching can fix this, in my opinion.



Callista
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02 Feb 2011, 11:21 pm

I think that education can be a bridge to empathy, though. If there's one thing NTs are just driven to do, it's empathize with things. Even if you give them a videotape of random shapes moving and tell them to make up a story, they'll personify the shapes into having emotions and motivations. They have problems empathizing with people they don't understand; but if they learned to understand, they would find it possible to empathize.

I'm not saying that solving the ignorance issue would be all you needed to do. There are those who are actively malevolent or feel so superior that they can cause harm, and that needs to be dealt with. But a big part of the problem is ignorance. And the nice thing about a society made mostly of NTs is that when you tip the balance and make prejudice unpouplar, the people who really are prejudiced find it harder and harder to act on those harmful beliefs.


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anbuend
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03 Feb 2011, 3:00 am

Actually, the problem is they do empathize. But they empathize all wrong. They try really hard to imagine themselves in our shoes. But it's themselves they're imagining, not us. And themselves without changing any of their views say about us. And this isn't limited to NTs, I see autistic people doing the exact same form of empathizing (for that matter autistic people often see intent and emotion in those moving shapes, so I don't see this as an autistic/NT issue overall.

Anyway, what people often get when they attempt to empathize with a person who's disabled in certain ways that they are not... it's a really disturbing mix of emotions. Terror is the fundamental one at the bottom of the mess of emotions though. All the rest are just variants on it. Terror at the thought of living "that way", terror at the thought that this is an actual person leading what they think must be a life of unimaginable suffering.

In order to understand us they have to move past that sort of abject terror. They also have to move past the idea that empathy is imagining yourself in another person's situation, rather than imagining that other person in that person's situation. And these are incredibly hard for even very motivated people to do. Often the only thing that gets them to rethink that is ending up in that situation themselves and being surprised they still feel the same about themselves or something. But in the descriptions I've read of moving past this, it's incredibly hard. There's something self-reinforcing about ableism.

Dave Hingsburger has a really good description of this sort of thing in his book "First Contact", about actually making contact with people with profound developmental delays rather than just seeing yourself in the mirror. He talks about the thoughts that go through people's heads. I suspect he speaks from experience. He talks about realizing there's a person "in there" and suddenly believing maybe it's better if that person dies.

I think getting past that mentality requires not just education, but also the willingness to learn. Many people in the world only think of disabled people as symbols, or in ways that seem voyeuristic to me (like being fascinated with autistic people because we're all mysterious). Many think the entire subject of disability is negative and depressing. Or only think of it randomly in a "gosh could you imagine if you were..." kind of way. I see that all the time when disability comes up as a topic on forums that have nothing to do with it.

And to get past all those internal barriers requires motivation on the part of the person with those barriers. Which can be harder to come by than it looks. Lots of people don't want to know and don't want to hear it. I'm not trying to imply that most people are horrible. But I suspect it'd be accurate to say that most people have horrible and dangerous ideas in their heads. When current events bring these attitudes to the fore, suddenly otherwise decent people say things that just are so terrible and wrong they make me not want to read anything by anyone for awhile lest I come across disability hate speech. And these are not the hateful bigots you're talking about as a rarity. These are people I'd otherwise see as ordinary. It's just the ideas are there if you scratch the surface a little.

I still don't know how to help people get rid of ideas like that. But it takes a lot of work ion their parts. Most people see these ideas as only natural and may see the desire to get rid of the ideas as... overly PC or something, hard to explain this late at night. I'm just not certain how to effectively do it.


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03 Feb 2011, 3:28 am

CockneyRebel wrote:
We need to reach out to the average population and show them that autism is not a lifetime prison sentence.


And when it is for some such as home bound isolation and when it's not for those like you able to self-integrate and get a job?

Autism Advocacy - Stop Calling People Ignorant.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt150688.html

You were right when you were talking about egg shells between you and I.


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03 Feb 2011, 10:55 am

I come here to speak my mind, not to get into blood baths with other members. If everybody had a role model, there wouldn't be as many blood baths on WP. 8)


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