The Cerebral Subject and the Challenge of Neurodiversity

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Interesting scientific publication on Autism and neurodiversity :
The Cerebral Subject and the Challenge of Neurodiversity

Three pages in (and I'm going to be reading for days, possibly with a large dictionary close to hand), I have one major argument.

I cannot, of course, speak for the self-advocacy movement, of which I am not even sure I am a part. I can speak for myself.

I do not hope to construe autism as a positive attribute, nor do I hope to encourage anyone else to do so. Frankly IMO anyone who says that it would be sunshine and roses if it weren't for the stigma and the determination to "fix" is deluding themselves. There are things I would dislike about autism in a value-neutral (or value-reversed) environment, just as there are things I dislike about my fine, straight, dry hair (no matter how many people tell me how shiny it is or how beautiful it's going to look shot through with those pure-white strands I've started getting) and things I dislike about my daughter's coarse, wavy, oily hair (no matter how often I appreciate how full it is or how much it resembles my mother's and MIL's).

My greatest hope is to discourage autism from being automatically construed as a negative attribute.

If I could realize my highest hope for autism culture, it would be for autism to be seen as AN ATTRIBUTE, nothing more and nothing less. Like "blond hair" or "hazel eyes" or "left-handedness" or "polydactylism." Or for that matter, "knack for/hopeless at drawing" or "gifted dancer/two left feet" or "a way with machines/mechanically incompetent" or "drawn to writing/not so great with the printed word" or "good at math/not so much" or "green thumb/brown thumb."

Do I believe that will ever happen?? Not really, because autism affects the way we interact with other people and therefore their pathologies and self-image are tied up in it too. At the end of the day, it will always discomfit the majority, leaving them wondering why they did not get the expected result and if they did something wrong.

And that will always leave quite a lot of people who are unable to see it in any way other than "something wrong with us."

"Oh, child, those poor Mrunas..." +5 if you can name the literary reference, +15 if you can put it in context.

We can keep trying.

Maybe I'm cynical, maybe I'm wrong.

If, however, you believe that the majority of the culture now accepts homosexuals (in a way they didn't before-- the way that changes when it stops being "those queers" and starts being "that nice boy, James McCoy, who always played so well with my Billy" or stops being "Dykes on Bikes" and starts being "Heather Flickman, from down the street, who spent most of her summers in our back yard"), perhaps you ought to turn off the TV news, log off the Internet, and go get a cuppa at your local diner.

Those who accept gays as valid really accept gays as valid. Those who don't, well-- Homophobia is a lot more virulent, where it exists, than I ever remember it being when I was a young woman.

Back then it was background noise. Queers, Communists, those weird people from the Church of Christ, Arabs-- y'know. It was kind of disgusting, how casual it was, but it was CASUAL. They started being OK with Commies when the Berlin Wall crashed, OK with the CoC when I started dating a boy from there, OK with Arabs when this Iranian guy moved in down the street, OK with queers when my peers started coming out of the closet.

And it wasn't any great seismic shift. I remember the day my cousin started dating a black guy. My great-grandpa picked a couple of notes on his dobro, laid it down, picked up the Bible, thumbed through it, said that "You know, Jesus Our Savior mighta been a black man," and that was the end of it. He was Family (at least until they split ten years later). This from a man who had, at one time, been in the Klan, and who had been opining about "n****rs" over dinner an hour before.

Now-- I don't know, man. The anti-gay rhetoric frightens ME-- and I'm pretty damn hetero.