On Metaphor and Culture

Autistic people often are described as having significant deficits in the ability to understand figurative language and symbolic representations. The professional literature and the popular media have characterized autistics as extremely literal-minded, sometimes to the point of being incapable of understanding the most basic metaphors without extensive remedial education. Folk sayings and slang expressions often confuse autistics.

As noted by Bev in a recent post on the Asperger Square 8 blog, however, scripted language is a form of metaphor. Scripted language—that is, the use of phrases borrowed from another setting (such as favorite lines from movies or TV shows) is extremely common among autistics. If you visit an Internet forum in the autistic community, you're likely to find a mix of quotes from Tolkien and Heinlein, lines from Star Wars and Dr Who, computer analogies that encompass everything from the workings of the human brain to simple daily life activities, rebellious lyrics from various anti-establishment musicians, video game references, and much more, all bubbling cheerfully away in a richly creative anarchic stew.

So what's causing the confusion here? Why are autistics likely to have trouble understanding popular sayings, and how did mainstream society go so far wrong in believing that autistics lacked the capacity for abstract thought?

Well, I'd put it like this—to understand a metaphor correctly, one must first understand the culture to which it belongs. Metaphors, and the ability to interpret them, do not exist in a vacuum. Bev's post addresses this point (metaphorically) by linking to a summary of the Star Trek episode Darmok, in which Picard's Enterprise encounters a group of aliens who speak entirely in metaphors taken from the cultural saga of their race. Although the universal translator on the Enterprise can render the literal meaning of their words, no useful communication is possible without knowing the context.

Because speech does not come as easily to autistics as it does to others, we often try to compensate by analyzing words and their possible intended meanings in detail, as Bev also has described. This causes us to see ambiguities in commonly used phrases and, sometimes, to become confused by them.

Many of today's folk sayings have their origins in a pre-industrial society that no longer exists. For example, the phrase "make hay while the sun shines" doesn't mean much of anything unless you first understand that a farmer must cut hay on a clear day, so that it will not get wet and spoil, and that villagers in the past who failed to gather sufficient quantities of hay to feed their livestock over the winter were quite likely to starve.

A non-autistic person who was not in the habit of analyzing the meaning of every sentence would simply file such a saying away in his or her mind, upon first hearing it, as an unfamiliar phrase. He or she probably would not ask what it meant and would not take any action based on it. After hearing it a few more times, in various situations, the person eventually would learn its usage (while still being unaware of its origin) from context.

However, an autistic who heard this phrase for the first time probably would try to reason out the intended meaning and, not being familiar with its history, might reasonably conclude that he or she had just been asked to go to a farm and cut some hay because the work would be pleasant on such a nice sunny day, or something of the sort. Far from reflecting a lack of imagination and analysis, this misunderstanding actually would be a consequence of applying more imagination and analysis than the circumstances required.

On the other side of the cultural/linguistic divide, non-autistics often fail to understand the metaphorical nature of autistics' use of scripted language because they haven't had enough conversations of this kind to learn the context. Autistics are a small minority, and most people, no matter how well-intentioned, just aren't going to talk with us enough to get a good grasp of how we use language. As a result, an ugly stereotype has developed that characterizes autistics as little more than robots or tape recorders, repeating phrases randomly with no intelligent thought.

Cross-cultural communication is always fraught with the potential for misunderstanding, even under the best of circumstances. When the majority group makes the arrogant assumption that it is intellectually superior, that potential increases exponentially. Andrea just posted an excellent list of potential pitfalls in cross-cultural relationships; you may want to take a look at it and think about the implications for a while!

More Bogus Autism Promises from Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton is up to her old tricks, shamelessly making conflicting promises to all of the cure groups, while ignoring the views of autistic people entirely. While campaigning in Iowa on Saturday, she characterized autism as an environmentally caused health crisis:


"I believe there are environmental triggers," she said.

Clinton said people are exposed to thousands of chemicals. "They are in the carpets. They are in the paints. They are in the clothes we wear," she said.


If you've been wondering what sort of political experience the second-term junior Senator from New York has been touting when she goes around claiming to have 35 years of experience, well, I'll have to admit that her skills at equivocation and triangulation are right up there with the best of Washington's career liars. It's not easy to pander to the biomed crowd and the behaviorists at the same time, while also sucking up to Autism Speaks and advocating eugenic "prevention," but she manages it:


Clinton’s plan would include a task force, that would include people from the autism community, that would be charged with identifying gaps in evidence-based biomedical research, behavioral treatments, and services for children and adults with autism.


It's all too obvious that her idea of "people from the autism community" does not include any actual autistic people. Looks like she still hasn't noticed that there are over one million autistic Americans who are of voting age. Or perhaps she thinks that we have so little money and influence that we can be ignored, marginalized, and eugenically exterminated without any political cost to her.

To contrast Hillary's smarmy pandering with the principled views of Barack Obama, who cares deeply about the civil rights of minority groups, take a look at these comments posted by Kassiane on the Autism Vox blog:


...Obama listened in the summer of 2004 when a pigtailed dripping wet kid who’d been in an outdoor fountain (designed for the purpose) nearly tackled him at an Event to talk about autism, just before voting in her first big election...

Before then he said he hadn’t heard anything about autistic adults except the inaccurate bits in college & in the awareness campaigns. And in 2004 Obama said he would respect all diversity, that the idea that differences in brain wiring are valid ways of being made sense…


Respecting diversity may not get as much media attention as making phony promises to combat a staged epidemic of mass hysteria, but it certainly shows which candidate would best represent America's autistic citizens.

Nothing Linear About It

Sometimes I read articles that describe autistic civil rights as if it were a generational struggle to overcome ignorance and to create greater understanding and acceptance, in a straight-line progression, like other civil rights movements in history. But I don't see it as nearly that simple.

Yes, it's true that the efforts of past generations of disability rights activists have helped to close down some institutions, pass anti-discrimination laws, and bring about other social changes that directly benefit people today. And it's also true that explaining our differences to others leads to more understanding of the broad landscape of human diversity. The analogy to other civil rights movements falls short in some respects, though, because disability—unlike race or gender—is a very fluid concept that shifts its boundaries constantly as the prevailing view of what makes a "normal" person changes.

In particular, when we're talking about the autism spectrum and anti-autistic bigotry, there has been no epic generational struggle to overcome an ancient prejudice against a minority group. The concept of the autism spectrum was written into the DSM-IV in 1994; before that, most people who are now considered autistic did not have—or would not have had—any disability labels. Very few of the parents and grandparents of today's autistic children grew up being spoken of as mentally disordered, however similar their cognitive development might have been to that of their children. Perhaps they were bullied for being nerds, told that they were lazy or weird because they couldn't do some apparently simple tasks, or criticized because they had to struggle to find a suitable employment niche; but they were seen as part of the "normal" majority nevertheless.

To fight effectively against the sort of bigotry we're facing today, it's not enough to put it into the historical context of disability prejudice. Although this history is indeed useful to know, we also need to understand that the ugly attitudes we're confronting have arisen, to a large extent, out of a recently constructed and profit-driven agenda. We are not just fighting against historical ignorance, but also against sophisticated marketing campaigns that cleverly exploit society's fear of differences.

Right now, at this very moment, anti-autistic prejudices and stereotypes are being deliberately created by psychologists who profit from behavioral programs; by psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies seeking to increase demand for medications; by researchers trying to attract more grants; by purveyors of fad diets and dietary supplements; by publishers and journalists who have found that there's a lucrative market for wildly exaggerated stories of doom and devastation; by nonprofit organizations whose leaders draw bloated salaries and wallow in luxurious perks; by politicians with lackluster records who think they can get more attention and votes by promising to combat a terrifying epidemic; and by other assorted parasites who jumped on the gravy train. And when they've sucked our families dry, they'll gleefully move on to the next tragic disorder du jour.

It's not enough just to argue that society needs to be more aware of disabilities. Yes, it certainly does, but we have to get to the root of the problem, which is the prevailing idea that disabilities are unfortunate ailments suffered by someone else. The fact is, every human being on the planet has differences and quirks that could be redefined as tragic afflictions tomorrow, if it became profitable to do so. We're all going to be at risk until we transform the culture into one that accepts disabilities and different abilities as a normal part of life, rather than dreading them as the opposite of normal.

The Starkest of Choices

'Tis the season for doing our civic duty as Americans—that is, buying Christmas gifts to keep our relatives happy and the economy afloat, while getting ready to vote in the primary election. I know I'm not the only one who dreads going into overcrowded shopping malls with loudspeakers blaring "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for the umpteenth time. But fortunately, in this age of convenient websites, we can do all of our holiday shopping from the comfort of our desk chairs.

Voting is also quick and easy in the Internet era. Some folks haven't registered because they mistakenly believe that it might be too hard or a nuisance. If you are one of them, I have some good news for you: Voter registration forms are available online, and you can also avoid the nuisance of going to the polls by voting absentee (that is, filling in the ballot at home and mailing it in) if you prefer. Like Christmas shopping, though, it has to be done soon; every state has different deadlines for how many days before the election you must register, and those deadlines are fast approaching.

In past years, some of us might have skipped the primary election, thinking that one candidate was as good as another. That is most emphatically not the case in the 2008 election. In the two leading presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, we are faced with the starkest of choices for the direction of the country and our own personal futures.

Barack Obama, who was a civil rights lawyer and constitutional law professor before he went into politics, understands the struggle of autistic people (and others who are affected by disability prejudice) for recognition of our basic rights as human beings. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, blatantly pandered to Autism Speaks' bigotry earlier this year by suggesting that it would be desirable to prevent and cure anything along the autism spectrum. Her idea of making health insurance more affordable seems to consist of eugenically "preventing" any group of people who might have higher than average medical costs.

If you prefer a different Democratic candidate, or if you are registered as Independent or Republican, please give some thought to voting for Obama anyway. You can always change your registration back to Independent or Republican after your state's primary is over. And if you're leaning toward another Democrat, well, this is how I see it: Edwards has good intentions, Biden and Dodd are respectable elder statesmen, Richardson is a capable governor, and Kucinich is a man of strong convictions. They're all decent guys—but this is clearly not their year for winning, and we all know what happened in 2000 when a few people in Florida decided to vote for the guy they liked (Ralph Nader) instead of the guy who could actually win the election (Al Gore). Let's not make that mistake this time around!

Getting back to Christmas shopping for a moment, the Obama campaign (which, unlike the Clinton campaign, does not take money from lobbyists) needs to raise funds from individual contributors to compete effectively in the primaries. If, like most of us, you don't have a lot of extra money to give to a political campaign, you can still help the cause by going to the Obama Store to shop for holiday gifts. You can get good quality T-shirts and other merchandise with Obama '08 campaign logos. They make great Christmas presents for Obama supporters, and all proceeds go to the campaign. Buy some for yourself while you're there!

Also, in some states (Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia) a person who is 17 years old on the date of the primary election, but who will turn 18 by the general election, can vote in the primary. If that's you, or if you have a 17-year-old friend or relative who lives in one of these states, it's time to get registered! You can find more information about your state's specific voter registration requirements and get a registration form online by visiting the voter registration information page on the Project Vote Smart website. It's as easy as a tasty slice of holiday pumpkin pie.

(Edit, Nov. 19: The above list of states where 17-year-olds can vote in the primary may not be complete—thanks Kassiane for pointing that out. To be sure, check with your local election officials to determine if your state is one where 17-year-olds can vote.)

A Diversity Issue

I sometimes receive e-mails from a company that puts together minority business directories and diversity-related events. I'm not sure how I got on their mailing list with an address that I use only for autistic civil rights advocacy, but it shows that at least some folks in today's business environment are becoming aware that disability issues are, in fact, diversity issues.

Although there are still plenty of ignorant managers who rarely hire employees with disabilities because they think it's an expensive act of charity, more people are starting to realize that this attitude is prejudiced nonsense. Companies have been providing reasonable accommodations to maintain a diverse workforce for many years. Accommodations are made for women who become pregnant or who have child care responsibilities, for religious employees who cannot work on the Sabbath, for minorities who celebrate ethnic holidays, and so forth. As employers make more accommodations available, they directly benefit from the increased morale, loyalty, and productivity of their female and minority workers, as well as the ability of their workforce to better understand the needs of customers from all walks of life. The same is true with respect to workers with disabilities. There's nothing charitable about a diverse workforce; rather, it's an asset to employers.

Autistic workers, and others who fall into our society's ever-expanding disability categories, aren't asking for charity. We know that we are capable of producing excellent work, and we don't need (or want) anyone throwing us their crumbs. Like anyone else, we just want equal opportunity to succeed in our careers.

Here's an excerpt from a letter I got from a British reader last week, describing his successful struggle against employment discrimination:


I applied for a place... I got through the online application, online situational judgement test and telephone stages without issue. At the assessment day, I mentioned that I have Asperger's syndrome. I was told that I would hear by the end of the following week if I had been successful or not. I didn't, so I called them up. They said I was successful, but they wanted to call me in for a discussion about reasonable adjustments. I attended this. The sponsor turned up over a quarter of an hour late and I asked him what research he had done on the subject of Asperger's syndrome, to which he replied that he hadn't done any: - very professional of him, given that I had come in just to talk about Asperger's syndrome! I was told that I would hear by mid-September whether they would offer me the job. They had openly admitted that my performance in the assessment day had been very good and that it now only hung on the reasonable adjustments question. The deadline passed and so I e-mailed them to find out what was going on. The following day, I was called by one of the H.R. people who said that the sponsor had sent him an e-mail merely saying something along the lines of, "we regret we will be unable to offer him the position". I thought this was extreme discourtesy and cowardice. Under the Disability Discrimination Act, an employer who wishes to deny employment on the grounds that reasonable adjustments can't be made has to offer reasons why not. As they didn't do this, I said I was contacting my solicitor. Over the next 6 weeks or so, I sent several polite but icy e-mails to them. I also sent them a Questionnaire (this is a proforma available on a government website that you can print off, fill out and send to the company saying what you allege and asking them if they agree with it or not and if not, why not). The day before the deadline after which I would commence legal action if I hadn't received all my documentation from them, they conceded defeat and offered me the position. Currently, I am waiting for the paperwork to arrive and I will send it off confirming my acceptance.


That's the way to fight back against prejudiced employers! Bravo!

Unfashionable Abilities

Every now and again, someone misrepresents the neurodiversity movement by claiming that its adherents believe autism is not a disability, but a wonderful gift and the next stage in human evolution. Without fail, several pro-neurodiversity bloggers respond that they don't believe any such thing—that yes, autism is a disability, but that it is OK to be disabled, and that neurodiversity is all about making the world a more accepting place for the cognitively disabled.

Speaking only for myself here, neither of the above viewpoints accurately represents the way I see neurodiversity. The question of whether or not autism is a disability is a false dichotomy, as I see it, and the wrong question to ask.

There are two main schools of thought with respect to disability: the medical model, which characterizes disability as consisting of medically defined impairments; and the social model, which looks upon disability as a culturally constructed status resulting from society's failure to provide adequate services and accommodations to enable full participation in society by those who have physical and/or cognitive differences.

Most of the arguments about autism as a disability seem to be rooted in the confusion caused by these conflicting approaches. Behaviorist and biomed supporters chiefly see autism in terms of the medical model, that is, as a defect to be remediated by means of various therapies. When someone disputes the validity of their medical claims, they're likely to interpret that as the equivalent of denying that autism is a disability or that autistic people have medical problems. Neurodiversity supporters, on the other hand, generally embrace the social model of disability and argue that social acceptance of cognitive differences is the most important issue. According to this view, treatment of medical problems, while appropriate to the extent it is based on solid and unbiased scientific research, should never be a substitute for respecting and protecting human rights.

As a consequence of the different ways in which the term "disability" is being understood in the autism community, the discourse often degenerates into straw-man claims that have little to do with reality. This is what I have to say about that: It's time for everyone in the various camps to recognize that these issues are very complex and that unrealistic caricatures of opposing views are not going to help autistic people or their families. I haven't seen any neurodiversity supporters who would deny that some autistic people have medical problems; disputing issues of causation and treatment is another matter altogether and has more to do with scientific accuracy than with political activism. I also don't believe that the majority of behaviorist and/or biomed supporters are ogres who consider the civil rights of autistics to be totally irrelevant.

Regarding the straw-man depiction of neurodiversity as some sort of aspie supremacy cult, I'll note that a few people have indeed argued that autism is the next stage in human evolution; however, my impression is that they're mainly teenagers who complain on forums that they don't get enough respect for their academic talents. As they grow up and develop a more mature perspective, they'll eventually realize that high scores on tests do not equate to overall intellectual superiority and should never be used to pass judgment on anyone's value as a human being. (And maybe they'll learn how evolution actually works, too.)

Although I generally agree with the views expressed by the pro-neurodiversity bloggers, I don't believe that it is appropriate under the social model of disability to make categorical statements such as "autism is a disability." Yes, it's certainly true that some aspects of autism are disabilities under some circumstances; but the same could potentially be said of any other set of human characteristics. To put it another way, today's disability classifications often are based on irrational prejudices and subjective value judgments; they're not just about a lack or impairment of an ability.

When pro-neurodiversity bloggers write that autism is a disability, I think what's meant is that in today's society, autistic people can benefit significantly from services and accommodations that are not commonly available. I don't disagree with that observation, and I believe that accommodations for all sorts of differences should be made available as a matter of course; but, at the same time, I think we need to be very cautious about declaring millions of people to be disabled on the basis of recently created and vaguely defined diagnostic classifications. On that point, here's an excerpt from the anti-psychiatry essay Shrinking to Excess:


The latest edition of DSM lists more than 300 mental syndromes. Only two decades ago, an earlier edition listed a mere 106... the psychiatric establishment is foisting these invented illnesses on us in a bid to lay claim to handsome reimbursements from insurance companies. For psychiatrists to receive payment from health insurance companies, they must find a way to label a patient with a recognized condition--which is why they recognize more, and more, and more conditions. Wait for the next DSM, and there will be at least another 50 conditions added to the existing list. According to Drs. Kutchins and Kirk, "the unlabeled masses are a vast untapped market, the virgin Alaska oilfields of mental disorder."


When we fail to challenge the authority of medical professionals to classify and pathologize traits that once were accepted as natural human differences, we make ourselves complicit in perpetuating a modern-day caste system that ranks people according to their perceived normality. The central underpinning of this oppressive system is the arbitrary division of the human race into "disabled" people and "normal" people, which depends largely on what sort of abilities happen to be fashionable at the moment. Instead of playing along with this destructive charade and obediently agreeing that we are disabled because they say so, we ought to be standing up and screaming at the top of our lungs that the Emperor of Normality is butt-nekkid.

What a Difference a CEO Makes

Yesterday, an Associated Press article suggested, quite sensibly, that today's increased number of autism diagnoses is the result of cultural and diagnostic changes. The article pointed out that many behaviors now described as autistic would not have been categorized as such in the past:


(these) behaviors were just about as common 30 or 40 years ago. The recent explosion of cases appears to be mostly caused by a surge in special education services for autistic children, and by a corresponding shift in what doctors call autism.

Autism has always been diagnosed by making judgments about a child's behavior; there are no blood or biologic tests. For decades, the diagnosis was given only to kids with severe language and social impairments and unusual, repetitious behaviors.


What caught my attention was not just the content of this story—the same observation about autism prevalence has been made many times before. Rather, it was that MSNBC.com was where I first saw the article posted. Yes, I'm talking about the erstwhile lair of Bob Wright, former NBC chief fired in February for blatantly abusing his corporate position to hype Autism Speaks, who never met an autistic person he didn't think should have been eugenically "prevented."

Not only was the story posted on that website, which is a considerable improvement in itself from the sort of autism reporting that appeared there last year, it was Sunday's featured article. Moreover, the page did not display the "silent epidemic" propaganda link that, until recently, infested all autism-related stories on the site.

I'm surmising that the new management at NBC is coming to the belated realization that if there are indeed two million autistic Americans, many of whom did not have any diagnosis as children and grew up to be wage-earning consumers who are integrated into mainstream society, it's not the smartest corporate strategy to offend this significant number of potential viewers (and their families) with bigoted stories characterizing them as a plague and a burden.

That should have been a matter of common sense (and basic human decency) from the beginning, but I'll give NBC my congratulations for finally getting it right.

This Is Not Who We Are

I recently had the privilege of attending an event where I was able to see, in person, the next President of the United States (if we have the good sense to elect him), Barack Obama. In discussing why we all need to get motivated to take back our country and restore our national values, Senator Obama spoke about the disregard for human rights shown by a government that sees nothing wrong with torture. This is not what America stands for, he said. This is not who we are.

Although he was talking about the mistreatment of terror suspects by the Bush administration, those words are equally applicable to the Judge Rotenberg Center, a Massachusetts institution that routinely uses electric shock on children with developmental disabilities. There have been several administrative and legislative attempts to put an end to this heinous abuse of our society's most vulnerable children, but so far, the place is still in business.

Many bloggers and human rights groups have asked why the State of Massachusetts can't shut down the Judge Rotenberg Center. It's for the same reason, as I see it, why the people of America haven't yet shut down Guantanamo Bay—too much apathy among the voters and too little insistence on demanding accountability from our elected officials. We lack full awareness of our personal power as citizens of a democratic nation to force our government to conduct itself in a decent manner. People talk to each other about such things and say, this is terrible, or that is awful; but then we just sit back and wait for someone else to deal with it.

Ultimately, it is our responsibility as citizens and as human beings to ensure that those who represent us in government will never commit, or allow others to commit, human rights abuses. If you live in Massachusetts, contact your state legislators and ask them if, like Barack Obama and Gov. Deval Patrick, they are ready to turn the page on this shameful era in American history and to take an unequivocal stand against government-sanctioned torture under any circumstances. Ask them if they will firmly commit themselves to enacting legislation to outlaw the use of electric shock and other abusive behavior modification practices.

If the answer is anything other than yes, GET YOUR BUTT TO THE POLLS AND VOTE THEM OUT! There is no excuse for politicians authorizing the torture of children with developmental disabilities. None. Zero. Ever. And there is no excuse for voters being so apathetic as to let them stay in office when they do.

This is not who we are.