Roses

When I wrote a post last month about pruning my rosebushes, Clay commented that he'd like to see another photo when they came into bloom. All the cold wet weather in the northeastern United States this year has been good for the plants, whatever else we might have to say about it. The roses are blooming quite nicely:





I've been reflecting on how much our society's understanding of neurodiversity, like my rose garden, has grown over the past five years. At the end of 2004, shortly before I started blogging, typing "neurodiversity" into a search engine yielded very few results. Finding a new self-advocate website or a parent site that wasn't doom and gloom was like discovering an oasis in a vast scorching desert of intolerance.

At that time Kathleen Seidel had just recently set up neurodiversity.com and was busily working on her collection of links, but there weren't many positive sites for her to add. Amy and Gareth Nelson had a forum for parents on Aspies for Freedom, which was also a new site, and were trying to get a constructive dialogue started between autistic rights activists and parents. One of the parents who joined that forum in early 2005 was Kevin Leitch, the Autism Hub's founder. Dave Seidel later took over as administrator of the Hub, with his helpful sidekick HJ, contributing a huge amount of time and energy for which they deserve recognition.

The Hub took a lot of criticism over the years for having an angry tone, frequent arguments that were often less than constructive, too much emphasis on anti-quackery blogging at the expense of other important issues, and lack of effective action to prevent bullying by various individuals and factions. All of these things did indeed happen, and some other annoying stuff besides, as to which I was not blameless and don't claim to be.

But the Hub was also a wildly successful online diversity seminar, quite possibly one of the most successful in history. Its participants and readers came away with their assumptions challenged and their understanding of others' perspectives broadened. After encountering the Hub, many readers became inspired to start their own pro-neurodiversity websites and to work toward improving conditions for autistic people in their communities.

The mainstream media started to notice what was going on. At first there were only a few scattered articles suggesting that the neurodiversity movement was an odd little fringe group. The event that really got their attention was the Ransom Notes protest, described in detail here, which was a successful effort in December 2007 by Hub bloggers and others organized by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network to shut down a very nasty billboard advertising campaign that was comparing autistic children to kidnap victims.

Journalists writing about autism politics soon began interviewing neurodiversity proponents on a regular basis, having now recognized that they were dealing with a fast-growing civil rights movement. Politicians took notice when self-advocates gave testimony before legislative committees and agencies, which led to autistics being appointed to policymaking positions with autism commissions and other entities. Local autism societies made more efforts to ensure self-advocate participation in their leadership. Researchers gave more consideration to the ethical concerns and practical needs within the autistic community.

The implosion of the Autism Hub, although it marks the end of an exciting time when the blogs were at the forefront of a major cultural shift, was not a defeat for autistic civil rights or for the concept of neurodiversity. On the contrary, it's now clear that we won the first battle. We made people understand that they were looking at human beings, not at monsters or changelings. We did an effective job of consciousness-raising in the autistic community.

This blog, in particular, has accomplished everything that I set out to do with it five years ago. Now the time has come, as I wrote in early April, to focus on the less dramatic changes that need to be made—the development of effective educational programs and support structures and employment regulations to ensure that every autistic person can be an equal participant in our society.

To everyone mentioned above, and to the many people I haven't mentioned in this post who also took part in laying the groundwork for a better future, I leave you with a bouquet of virtual roses and my deepest gratitude as I post my last entry here. My best wishes to you all.

Battle Fatigue

Regular readers of my blog will have noticed that I've been posting less often for the past several months. At first I thought my lack of interest in blogging might have been caused by seasonal depression over the long, gloomy winter. But it's been sunny and warm in my area all week; the birds are chirping merrily, the daffodils are blooming, and the grass is looking much greener; and now I feel, if anything, even less inclined to blog. For now, I just want to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather and be part of the real world, far away from all the pointless bickering that has been going on in the online autistic community.

I had a conversation last year with a friend who described autistic rights bloggers as "always at the barricades." That observation struck me as very accurate. We've had so many enemies to confront over the years that we have become hypervigilant, always looking for the next threat. And if we don't have a real enemy at close range, we're just as likely to lob virtual Molotov cocktails at each other.

That level of combativeness might at one time have been necessary, in the sense in which Malcolm X used the word; but it is not sustainable, either for an individual or for a community. Supporters of autistic civil rights, within the broader landscape of disability rights, now exist in sufficient numbers so that we can and should shift the focus away from Internet wars and toward the less exciting—but far more important—work of making the constructive real-life changes that we need to see in society.

As of now, this blog is on hiatus. When I come across general announcements that may be of interest to my readers I'll continue to repost them, such as the information about the Campaign for Disability Employment that I posted last week. I may write original articles on occasion, mainly about social and cultural issues, if I feel inspired to do so. There will be no more Molotov cocktail entries, though. I'll decide whether to return to posting more regularly after I've had a good long time to decompress and to consider what might be done with this blog in the future.

Wishing all of my readers a good spring, with plenty of time to enjoy the outdoors, and for those in the Southern Hemisphere a pleasant autumn.

Conversations

Reflecting on Mark Stairwalt's post about autism as a family reunion, I have to confess that I can't wholly relate to his well-crafted analogy from my own experience because my family never has held large gatherings. But I had what might be called a mini-reunion when I had lunch with my mom at a nearby restaurant on Thursday, catching up on the latest family gossip about who cheated on whom, and so forth.

We also briefly talked about the proposed changes in the autism diagnostic criteria. I mentioned that I thought we would see more changes in the future as researchers identify biomarkers, such as in this study showing a significant delay in auditory processing.

"That's interesting," said my mom, lowering her voice almost to a whisper as she confided, "I never thought of myself as autistic, but I do seem to have a delay in hearing and understanding speech."

I replied that it was only to be expected that family members would have somewhat similar traits, and then the conversation moved on to a more general discussion of genetics.

After reading the New York Times article by Roy Richard Grinker on the diagnostic changes, I've been picturing similar conversations taking place in many families. I'm very pleased to see how far Grinker's views have evolved in just the three years since the release of his book Unstrange Minds, which I reviewed on this blog. I noted in my review that although Grinker, a cultural anthropologist, is very well aware of the socially constructed nature of autism, he nevertheless made a number of unfounded assumptions about his daughter based entirely on the prevailing stereotypes in Western culture. Now, just a few years later, those assumptions—such as that his daughter would never leave home or marry—are nowhere to be seen, replaced by this enlightened observation: "Narrow diagnostic categories do not help us understand the way a person will develop over time."

Of course, as with all improvements in society's perception of a minority group, some of its more privileged members have made clear that they would rather keep the stereotypes and prejudice because they can't deal with the prospect of losing what they perceive as their elite status within the group. In Bev's post Angry Aspies, Please Go Away, she calls out two of the usual suspects by name, including (no surprise there) Michael John Carley, who is up to his usual divisive tricks. Clay's blog entry on the topic mentions another culprit. This was only to be expected; and as Clay accurately states, the autistic community needs to have this conversation. Still, it's odious when people make clear that their idea of dealing with stigma is to deflect it onto somebody else instead of working to end it altogether; and I sincerely hope that those who are displaying such attitudes will either grow up or, as Bev says, just go away.


Edit: More posts written from an anti-elitist perspective can be found at LB/RB, Ballastexistenz, Reports from a Resident Alien, Cat in a Dog's World, Journeys with Autism, Uncle Sam's Cabin, The Standard Review, Life with Joey, I'm Somewhere Else, Susan Senator's Blog, Autism Street, Heatherbabes, Homo Autistic, Astrid's Journal, A Time Will Come... and AspieWeb.

Community and Respect

In the military, as Clay describes in the first post of an excellent series on leadership training and respect, officers salute not only other officers but also enlisted personnel. This is not simply because of regulations and tradition, but because the salute signifies mutual respect between people working together toward a common goal. There is, however, a considerable difference between the rote show of respect for the uniform and the more meaningful respect that must be earned throughout the career of the person wearing it.

Applying this point more broadly to groups other than the military, I would say that meaningful participation in a community is not a matter of symbolic representations of group status such as a uniform or document issued to signify a person's membership in the group. Rather, a community and its culture arise from the many ways in which its people work together, communicate about their shared interests and mutual concerns, and show understanding and good will toward one another. When we pay more attention to symbols than we do to the community that they are supposed to represent, we risk losing the true respect and understanding that should be at the center of the community.

This is particularly the case when the identifying symbols are issued by others who are not part of the community, as Mark Stairwalt discusses in a recent article that draws the distinction vividly by means of a retold story involving tribal identification cards issued by the federal government. I won't quote any of that story here because I don't want to spoil it for readers, but I'll say that it has a powerful impact and that it is well worth following the link. The article goes on to make an analogy to the autistic community and the idea that having official diagnostic papers is what makes a person autistic:


…only some of us are “registered Indians.” Rather than a BIA identification card, some autistic bloggers have been reduced to posting a scan of their autism diagnosis, a “note from the doctor” in order to prove that they know whereof they speak. Others are derided and discredited for speaking about autism from the perspective of self-diagnosis. Most of the demand for this sort of “certification” may come from those who do not identify as autistic (at least not openly), but insofar as any of us take such demands seriously, we remain a house divided, by our own hands.

Our Community Remembers

The recent death of Alyric, who was an impassioned blogger and a strong voice for justice, was a great loss to the autistic community. I first encountered Alyric's writings on autistic civil rights and feminism in 2005, when I came across her blog A Touch of Alyricism. (Her family members have kindly allowed the blog to remain online as a resource for the community.) I thought it was a lovely and original name for a blog, and so well matched to the creative and insightful nature of its author.

Over the years, Alyric posted many thoughtful, in-depth essays addressing matters of importance to the autistic community. She wrote about junk science and the marketing of bogus cures, the ABA controversy, and the false and harmful 'autism epidemic' rhetoric. She is generally credited with having been the first to publicly post an exposé of the hate groups that arose from Maxine Aston's promotion of the fictitious Cassandra Disorder. Her writings were always well researched and often included many references. She will be greatly missed.

Here are several links to other memorial blog entries:

In Memory of Alyric
In Memoriam
RIP Alyric
Alyric

When Should I Be Concerned?

Those who have sent comments to the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) on its draft strategic plan will recognize the title of this post as the heading of the first section of the draft plan. (If you have not yet written a comment, they're due today. Follow this link to find a quick submission form with suggested talking points for last-minute responses.)

In the draft plan, the question "When should I be concerned?" refers to the identification of autism spectrum conditions. Although the main issue seems to be early childhood screening and when a child should be evaluated, there is also some discussion of identifying autism in older children and diverse populations.

Given the lack of clear definitions and the subjectivity of the current diagnostic criteria, this is indeed an area where more research would be useful. However, I believe that the IACC has not gone nearly far enough in questioning how our society identifies autistic people and that we need to reframe the issue from a much broader perspective.

What is actually being asked here, when we strip away all of the medical terminology, is a sociological question: At what point does our culture determine that a child (or adult) is not part of the dominant "normal" caste and should instead be classified as belonging to a subgroup (to which the autism label has been applied in recent years) of the stigmatized "abnormal" minority?

I'm reminded of the debates that took place in South Africa shortly before the apartheid system collapsed. At that time, the South African population was divided by law into whites, blacks, Asians, and people of mixed race. There was quite a lot of discussion about how to determine who belonged to what category, in the small percentage of cases where it wasn't immediately clear. As with autism in today's world, the resulting classifications affected what schools a child might attend, what sort of education (or lack thereof) he would get, and what his career prospects were likely to be.

Given the profound negative consequences of being identified as autistic (or any other neurological minority) in a society that sacrifices more of its children every year on the altar of normality, it is no wonder that so many parents are "concerned" when they notice that their children may have autistic traits. From that point of view, the IACC's question reasonably reflects the actual experience of many parents. It is also not surprising to find such a strong focus on teaching children how to pass as non-autistic, through behavioral programs or other means.

While it is only to be expected under the circumstances, this is not where our concern should be placed. Rather, we should have been concerned, a long time ago, about the social fiction of the "normal" brain and how it affects a human population that is—and always has been—extremely diverse in its cognitive and behavioral patterns. At a time when an increasingly complex economy needs large numbers of workers with highly specialized minds and abilities, our society perversely insists that there can be only one acceptable type of brain, thus forcing millions of people to hide their differences or suffer a lifetime of exclusion. It's past time to end our own apartheid system.


Edit: Here's a link to a powerful video about segregation of autistic students in American public schools.

That Wheelchair Analogy

You know, the one that claims autistic self-advocates exist only because the Internet enabled us to interact with others and that, without our computers, we would have very little ability to express our views. Mike Stanton used this analogy in a recent presentation about the Autism Hub, which he posted on his blog, stating as follows:


Computers have been described as “wheelchairs for autistics.” The analogy holds good. Computer technology and the internet have empowered many who would find normal face to face interactions extremely difficult. They can build web sites, write blogs and create videos.


It's a fair observation that many (although not all) autistic self-advocates are more comfortable using the Internet than communicating face to face. And the Internet certainly has made it much easier to share opinions and to build cultures and communities worldwide. However, it does not logically follow from these two broad factual premises that autistic people inevitably would have extreme difficulty advocating without computers.

The wheelchair analogy assumes that face to face communication is the "normal" way of interacting with people and that the written word is a less efficient substitute used by those who lack "normal" communication abilities. With all due respect, that hasn't been true since Gutenberg invented the printing press. The written word—whether or not it is on a computer—holds tremendous power to challenge entrenched social assumptions and to bring about far-reaching change.

Why is it, then, that autistic self-advocates are only just now becoming noticed in our society? I believe this can be attributed to a convergence of several changes and cultural shifts in recent years. The definition of autism has been greatly broadened, thus increasing the number of people identified as autistic. As a consequence, we have more potential advocates and more public awareness of autism than ever before. Disability rights activism has created a more receptive climate for autistic self-advocacy. And more generally, the views and concerns of minority groups are not routinely ignored to the extent they once were.

Not all that long ago, if a person did not have "normal" speech and body language, or did not belong to the "right" ethnic or religious group, or was not male and heterosexual and a property owner, it was simply taken for granted that the person had nothing worthwhile to say. These prejudices still exist, of course, but not as strongly as in the past.

Autistic people have been making coherent, intelligent, meaningful statements—both in spoken words and in writing—about our world and the value of human diversity, for many years, even before there was a separate and distinct category of "autistic people."

Society just wasn't listening.

Judge Rotenberg Center Abroad

Although there are many who would describe Dr. Matthew Israel of the Judge Rotenberg Center as a profoundly evil man, it's clear that he does not lack business and political savvy. Despite ever-increasing public condemnation of his use of electric shock on children with disabilities, he has repeatedly evaded both legislative and administrative efforts to shut down JRC over the past several years.

The handwriting is on the wall, though. The coalition of civil rights groups lobbying against JRC's abuses is growing stronger, and every time the Massachusetts Legislature votes on a bill to ban behavioral aversives (that is, the deliberate infliction of pain for behavior-management purposes), the vote gets narrower. One day soon, the legislation will surely pass, and that will be the end of the Shock Doc's lucrative marketing of sadistic child abuse for profit—at least in Massachusetts.

He can't simply pack up and move JRC to another state that has not yet banned aversives, either. Disability rights and anti-abuse groups such as APRAIS are active in all parts of the United States, and given JRC's horrific reputation, any attempt to apply for licensure in another state would surely meet with so much opposition that it would be a political impossibility.

So what options are there for America's most infamous behaviorist? Well, the obvious answer is that he will seek to move JRC abroad, to a country where its reputation has not preceded it. And there are indications that this is exactly what may be happening.

In mid-July, the Shock Doc gave a lecture about JRC to a group of Israeli behaviorists who invited him to speak at the Zisman College. Although this was purportedly an unplanned event that took place during a private visit, I have my suspicions that it was intended as a "trial balloon" to determine how well the relocation of JRC to Israel would be received.

The self-advocate organization Autistic Community of Israel (ACI) promptly took action by sending letters and information about JRC to those involved with the lecture. ACI succeeded in getting an advertisement removed from a website, but several behaviorists failed to respond to ACI's letters. As a consequence, ACI informed Michael Ben-Zvi, the secretary of the behaviorists' association that arranged for the lecture, that he was no longer welcome to speak at a symposium presented by ACI.

This incident demonstrates the need for the international autistic community to work together in solidarity to combat abusive behaviorist programs and other threats. We need to make it clear that there will be no safe havens anywhere on the planet for those who profit from the mistreatment of autistic children and adults.

Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), is currently in Israel and met with representatives of ACI on Friday to discuss this situation and to offer assistance. ACI has indicated that correspondence from ASAN to Israeli organizations would help to focus attention on the global nature of the autistic community's concerns.

Since its expansion into Australia earlier this year, ASAN has had a consistent track record of being aware and involved in matters of concern to the worldwide autistic community. It's good to see this level of international understanding and commitment.

On Changing a Culture

When I first read the young adult novel Gathering Blue, by Lois Lowry, it didn't immediately occur to me that the blue thread in the story was a metaphor representing the social contributions of people with disabilities. I won't describe the book in too much detail because I do not want to spoil it for anyone, but I'll say briefly that the setting is a post-apocalyptic village where anyone with a serious illness or disability is thrown out of the village to die, and the plot has to do with a girl's quest for blue thread to repair a damaged historical tapestry on a ceremonial robe. As I understand it now, I believe the author means to say that the diverse groups of people in a society, and perhaps individuals as well, are like the many colors in a tapestry; as such, neither the ceremonial robe nor the village could be made whole until they were all gathered together and made part of a shared culture.

The tapestry metaphor came to mind after I read a comment that Amanda wrote last week in response to my argument that the word "meltdown" should not be used to describe the behavior of an autistic person because it has melodramatic connotations of nuclear disaster and perpetuates a stereotype of autistics as violent and irrational. Amanda disagreed, pointing out that the word has been used within the autistic community for the past 15 years or so, and going on to say:


I would never attempt to join a culture and then say within a few years of joining it, that the culture's longstanding words are inappropriate and just now being defined, just because the wider community doesn't know them yet.


I take this to mean that because I have only been blogging for about three years, I am a relative newbie in the autistic community, when compared to those who joined listservs and support groups in the 1990s. This characterization seems to suggest that belonging to the autistic community is analogous to coming out as gay: that is, a person first discovers that he or she is autistic and then makes a conscious decision to associate with others so identified, thereby becoming part of a culture to which he or she did not previously belong.

With all due respect, that's not how I see it at all. The autistic culture did not spontaneously appear when psychiatrists noticed that there were enough autistics to start putting them into group therapy sessions, or when the first online support groups were formed. We didn't just recently develop a cultural identity as a consequence of getting diagnostic labels stuck on us. Our families existed and had a culture long before there were any online communities or support groups; before the psychiatrists invented the label; before there was such a thing as psychiatry; and before the Industrial Age gave rise to the concept of sorting people, like manufactured products, into the normal and the defective.

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I did not grow up with the label "autistic" because my parents did not believe that it would be helpful. That is not to say, however, that I did not grow up with a culturally autistic identity. My father is clearly on the spectrum himself, and my mother has some traits. The way they raised me was determined to a large extent by the resulting experiences, values, and perspectives that they shared.

When my parents noticed that I had a strong interest in letters as a baby, they filled my room with children's books and read to me every day. They started taking me to the library and, when I was two years old and could write my name, they gave me an application to sign so that I could get my own library card, which became a prized possession.

My bedroom had a small cupboard above the closet, which could be reached by climbing on my sturdy bookcase. I put a pillow and a straw-colored blanket in there and pretended that it was the loft where Heidi slept in her Alpine cabin. That was my favorite quiet spot for reading. My parents obligingly put on a show of never noticing that I used the bookcase as a ladder.

One year my birthday presents consisted of an electric typewriter and an office surplus desk for my bedroom, complete with drawers full of paper, marker pens, and a stapler so that I could write and illustrate and "publish" my own books.

I remember walking barefoot through damp grass at midnight, wearing a long nightgown and imagining that it was a medieval lady's dress and that I could walk forever along a stairway of clouds in the misty moonlight. I was about eleven or twelve years old. My mother told me the next day that it was not a good idea to walk alone at night, but she avoided saying why. I suppose she didn't want to take away too much of the magic.

What would I do at college, I asked, some years later. It's for broadening one's horizons and becoming a well-rounded person, was the answer. So I wandered through the course catalog and picked whatever looked interesting at random, blissfully unaware that other people went to college to prepare for jobs. In retrospect, there probably was an undertone of "find a good husband" in there somewhere, but if so, I never noticed it at the time.

This was the world in which I grew up—a world of curiosity, exploration, fantasy, and infinite possibility. This was, and is, my autistic culture. This is what I seek to preserve for future generations. I started writing my blog with the express intent of bringing about far-reaching social change; and there is still just enough magic left in my world so that I can believe it to be possible.

To make myself completely clear, I do not mean to suggest that the online autistic culture is in any way less valid or less worthy of respect. I would not presume to pass judgment on the relative value of two cultures. My point is simply that the online autistic community also should not presume to declare itself the exclusive autistic culture for all time.

It's just another strand in the tapestry.

The Needs of the Many

…should not be determined by the loud voices of the few.

I sometimes get commenters on my site who talk about the importance of considering the needs of autistic people with serious challenges and who declare that the discussion should not be monopolized by successful autistics who have a university degree, a career, a happy marriage, a house in the suburbs, a popular blog, or whatever the commenters' definition of success may be.

And then they're surprised when I agree with them completely.

Of course no individual or subgroup should ever claim to speak for an entire minority group. That's just basic common sense, and I've said many times that I speak only for myself on my blog. If I write a post that addresses a feminist issue, I don't claim to be speaking for all women, either. Nobody has the right to speak for all autistics. Period.

I'd like to see a world where millions of autistic people felt empowered to discuss their lives and their opinions on the Internet and elsewhere; to participate in public policy workgroups; and to speak out about their needs by means of voice, text, or whatever means they may find most comfortable. And I'd like to see a world where people actually listened to what they had to say.

Unfortunately, we are nowhere near that point, for a variety of reasons. I'm not going to point a finger at any particular group or philosophy; the main culprit, as with most social problems, is ignorance. Many governmental organizations and private groups still make policy decisions about autistics without seeking input from any members of the autistic community. The needs of autistic adults, regardless of whether or not they are deemed successful, too often are ignored.

There are no quick fixes for this systematic exclusion. As with other civil rights efforts, it's going to be a gradual process of putting more of our opinions into the public discourse and letting them percolate through the consciousness of the majority population. Here's an example of how this can be done: In New Jersey, a state planning committee has been created to focus on the needs of autistic adults. Ari Ne'eman, who is one of the committee's members, is requesting comments from autistic self-advocates, family members, professionals, and others who wish to contribute to the discussion. This will result in more opportunity for decisions to be made based on the views of a reasonable cross-section of our community, rather than on stereotypes and assumptions.

Crabs in a Barrel

I was reading a discussion on a listserv where the people were bashing various presidential candidates. Of course, that's not at all unusual around this time in a presidential election year; but I noticed one rant that argued Obama should not be taken seriously because he was like "Superman… wearing his armor suit of ethnicity."

Probably your first thought was that the author of that rant must have been a bigoted, cranky white guy. But I'm familiar with the guy, and in fact he is not white, and he has a history of being a very outspoken advocate of civil rights. So I was disappointed to see that attitude from him. Disappointed, but not surprised. That sort of thinking has been so common in the African-American community over the years that it has a name: Crabs in a barrel. That name comes from a fable that goes something like this:


A bunch of crabs were sitting in a barrel at a seafood restaurant, waiting to be cooked. One of them said to the others, "Hey, you know what, if we all climb to the top and push on the lid, it'll come off and then we can escape."

The other crabs all laughed. They knew it was impossible to escape. What could this foolish dreamer be thinking? It was nonsense. Couldn't be done. Not even worth trying.

After a few minutes, when it was clear he wouldn't be getting any help, the one hopeful crab climbed up and started pushing on the lid alone. The other crabs just laughed harder, until they heard a faint creaking noise and realized that the lid was starting to shift a little. Then they all got angry. How dare one crab try to escape by himself? He was just another crab, and he needed to be shown that he was no better than the rest of them.

So they grabbed the crab who had been trying to escape and dragged him back down to the bottom of the barrel. They all got cooked and eaten soon afterward, but at least they had the satisfaction of knowing that no other crab was able to achieve more than they had.


Of course, I don't mean to suggest that this kind of self-destructive envy is in any way unique to the politics of the African-American community. It's not. Just about every disadvantaged minority group has some version of it. I see it in the autistic community, too, with all the carping about "shiny aspies." Some people seem to think that if a talented, well-educated autistic professional accomplishes something worthwhile, it shouldn't even be mentioned because it might give the wrong impression. Just who does this shiny aspie think he is, anyway? He's just another crab.

Granted, there are a few high achievers in the autistic community (just as in any disadvantaged minority group) who try to distance themselves from the group by claiming to be much more intelligent and capable. That false claim does need to be challenged, in the strongest terms; but when some in our community mock high achievers generally, for no other reason than the fact of their accomplishments, that's wrong. It's just ugly, corrosive envy, and it is harmful to the community as a whole.

Chances

I got a comment from an autistic woman who is wondering if there is any way to determine the chances that she will have an autistic child, given that her fiancé also has some autistic tendencies.

As far as I know, no studies have been done that would allow such a determination to be made with any reasonable degree of certainty. (Until quite recently, most doctors and scientists did not even acknowledge the existence of autistic adults who got married and became parents.) And genetic testing, at this point in time, is very crude and inaccurate.

Of course, like most questions, this one is much more complex than its literal or surface meaning. I have to wonder: What does it say about our culture that this question is even being asked? My personal perspective on this issue comes from being part of a family where autistic traits are so common that they're seen as just part of ordinary life. In my extended family, some kids are early readers, some wander off if they're not watched closely, some enjoy sports, some are nature lovers, some arrange their toys in precise patterns and don't let anyone touch them, and so forth. We don't sort our family members into different categories based on these characteristics; it's just part of who they are.

As a result, I've never drawn the sharp distinction between autistics and non-autistics that many people do. I've known many autistic folks in real life, and to me, they just seem like ordinary human beings, not all that much different from anyone else.

To make myself clear, I'm not arguing that the autism label has no value or that it should be junked. It's useful to the extent that, in describing a general pattern of cognitive and behavioral characteristics, it enables people who have such characteristics (or whose children do) to gain access to potentially helpful information about educational methods, daily life strategies, and so forth. However, when we identify children as autistic, we should keep in mind that there is just as much natural developmental variation among autistic children as there is among any other group of human beings. They don't all have identical traits, and they don't all have identical needs. The label should be just a starting point to provide some guidance in discovering their individual strengths and weaknesses.

I'm aware that there are many people who would never consider eugenic abortion but, nevertheless, would want genetic counseling and/or prenatal testing so as to know in advance their child's chances of being autistic. That's quite understandable, given how poorly adapted our society is to the needs of the autistic minority population, and I wouldn't fault anyone for having that point of view.

Still, there are other questions that prospective parents might want to ask, such as these: What are my child's chances of being able to attend a school where he or she will be able to flourish, regardless of neurotype? What are my child's chances of being able to pursue a career that is well suited to his or her individual talents and interests, without discrimination of any kind? What are my child's chances of being able to obtain appropriate accommodations for his or her differences or disabilities, in the event that such accommodations become necessary for any reason? And what can I do, right now, to change society in such a way as to improve those chances?

Our Problem with No Name

Published in 1963, The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, described a sense of unease among American women. Even if they lived in comfortable middle-class suburban neighborhoods and had caring husbands who worked diligently to provide for their needs, many women still felt unhappy, although they often could not articulate why. They had a general sense that there ought to be more to a woman's life than keeping the house clean and the family well-fed, but they were uncomfortable discussing these thoughts with their husbands, who might feel unappreciated and resentful, and who probably wouldn't understand anyway. Betty Friedan called this predicament "the problem with no name" because there was so much silence surrounding women's lack of meaningful life choices.

In the autistic community today, we are confronted by our own problem with no name. Caring parents, in accordance with experts' recommendations, are spending large amounts of time and money to provide a variety of services for their children. Despite all their efforts, however, their children's options in life are severely restricted by a society that does not respect or value neurological diversity. When autistic adults speak out about their desire for greater acceptance and opportunities, some parents feel unappreciated and resentful. Some autistics have the attitude that parents, no matter how supportive, can't possibly understand their feelings and needs.

What's being overlooked amidst all the misunderstanding and resentment is that there is a crucial difference between the autistic civil rights movement and other historical struggles for equal rights: Autism is a very recent cultural construct. It's not like gender, which always has been seen as a major and immutable human difference (except as to the small number of intersexed and transgender folks, who still are far from achieving full social acceptance). It's not like race either, because society's racial categories have existed for hundreds of years and because the vast majority of parents are categorized by society as belonging to the same race as their children.

Some autistic activists contend that neurodiversity is solely a matter of disability rights and that parents who have no diagnosis are not part of the autistic community. I strongly disagree with that point of view. The current autism spectrum categories, which became part of the DSM-IV in 1994, are extremely vague and arbitrary on how to identify an autistic person. When making a diagnosis, psychologists look at characteristic childhood behaviors such as hand-flapping and spinning. Because such behaviors are less likely to be observed in adults, it is often difficult for a psychologist to determine whether an adult is autistic without detailed information about his or her childhood development. Also, because useful services for autistic adults are few and far between, adults often have no reason to seek a diagnosis, even if they recognize the possibility that they may be autistic—and, of course, there are many who do not recognize it.

The inevitable consequence of all this diagnostic ambiguity is that, although there are parents who had behavioral patterns and cognitive traits quite similar to their autistic children when they were growing up, most of these parents have not been identified as autistic themselves. They may—or may not—have enough autistic traits to fall within the DSM-IV criteria, but they and their children have significant neurological similarities. In my view, these parents and their autistic children are part of the same genetically related minority group—the same "tribe," so to speak. To that extent, society's prejudice against autistics is a form of racism, and the parents who want to join the struggle against this prejudice should be welcomed as members of the autistic community, whether or not they are perceived as having a disability.

The term Broader Autistic Phenotype (BAP) sometimes is used to describe individuals who have autistic traits that are not deemed to be clinically significant. For lack of any other term, I'll use BAP in this post to refer to the "tribe" of families that have multiple autistic and close-to-autistic members.

Because BAP families do not have obvious racial characteristics such as skin color, it's all too easy for the parents, most of whom grew up thinking of themselves as "normal," to be persuaded that their child is suffering from a mysterious affliction and that they must defer to the experts' advice on what to do about it. They are taught to mistrust their own instinctive knowledge of how to raise their children, as well as the familial wisdom passed down through generations of BAP ancestors, and to rely instead on therapists.

A while ago, Joey's Mom wrote a comment on one of my posts describing how some parents can communicate with their autistic children in ways that often go unrecognized by modern society:


I've always wondered about the "autistic communication" thing. I know my son has a terribly difficult time with language, but even when he wasn't pointing or speaking, we still understood him and had understanding with him. We now know it wasn't the "normal" kind of communication people have, but it was definitely there, and is still there—little body movements, cues, clues.


Some parents of autistic children have an innate understanding of their children's feelings and needs. We should not be treating these parents as outsiders or adversaries; instead, we should encourage them to see themselves as part of our community and to take an active role in the process of defining our "tribe."

Allowing our community to be defined exclusively by psychologists forfeits the ability to define ourselves as other minority groups do. When some of us argue that the autistic community should consist only of diagnosed autistics, so that we can be in charge of our own destiny, what they're really saying is that we can be autistic only if a psychologist tells us we are. They're so worried about parents having any influence in our community that they'll happily turn over complete control to the psychologists, while deluding themselves that this will result in greater self-determination. I've noticed that even people who voluntarily choose to identify with the autistic community often use the term "self-diagnosed," meaning that after comparing their behavior to the DSM-IV criteria, they decided that it matched. There is no recognition anywhere that we have a right to define ourselves as part of a cohesive social minority group. If the diagnostic criteria were to be changed tomorrow, many of us would meekly go and visit a psychologist and ask if we were still autistic. That is the complete antithesis of self-determination.

Our cultural heritage is being taken from us, our children are being denied equal rights and taught self-loathing, our governments are openly targeting our community for genocide—and we don't even know who we are.

When Whites Led the NAACP

I'm totally sick of the gripefest that has been going on for the past few days, and I have nothing more to say about it, except to address one point—the "what if whites led the NAACP?" argument.

That's a poor analogy because the Autism Hub is not a major civil rights organization; it's just a group of blogs taking part in an exchange of ideas, information, and personal perspectives about autism and neurodiversity. What's more, even if we look only at the early years of the NAACP, when it had much less influence than it does today, the analogy still fails because the NAACP originally was led by whites.

It's a little-known fact that the NAACP, in its early years, was led and financed chiefly by Jews. This was not done out of a sinister desire to control blacks or a patronizing belief that blacks were incapable of speaking for themselves; rather, the Jews who got involved in the struggle for racial justice knew all too well that they, too, could easily fall victim to the popular ideology of Aryan supremacy. They understood that when society becomes more open and accepting of human differences, everyone's lives are safer.

Could the black founding members of the NAACP have done it all on their own, without the organizational, financial, and legal help from their Jewish allies? Yes, given enough time and enough support from their own community, they could have built an organization led exclusively by blacks. Considering the vicious social climate of that time, however, it's quite possible that in the interim, their entire race might have been lynched by the Ku Klux Klan or sterilized by the eugenicists, or some combination thereof. Both of those hate groups and their repulsive ideologies enjoyed widespread popularity throughout the United States a century ago and had supporters at the highest levels of government.

Fortunately, the black activists who were involved in founding the NAACP had more sense than to jeopardize the survival of their race for the sake of maintaining exclusivity. They made practical compromises and accepted help when they needed it. Eventually, capable black leaders took charge of the NAACP and went on to accomplish many successes in the civil rights era.

Demanding exclusive control of everything from the outset is not always the wisest course of action.

Definitions

Brian Deer asked a perceptive question on Kevin Leitch's blog, just before Kev got disgusted with the tone of the argument about Autism Hub and turned off the comments:


...is being autistic like being gay, in that it’s a self-designation?

Or is it like being black: in that other people tell you that you are?


Until quite recently, that question could have had only one answer—society, and more specifically the psychological profession, defined autism any way it felt like it. The idea that autistic people, like other minorities, might be entitled to take the lead in defining their own identity would have been dismissed out of hand. Psychologists were seen as demigods with absolute authority who waved magic diagnostic wands and proclaimed the Truth as set forth in the Holy Book: "thou art autistic."

And in the beginning was the Word...

There's still far too much of that attitude out there, but it finally has started to crumble. Neurodiversity is becoming a mainstream concept, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Autism Hub in spreading the message. And it should be noted, while we're talking about self-designation in the gay community, that gays had to go through the same sort of struggle to gain the right to define their own culture and identity. Until 1973, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder and was seen as needing a cure. Gay activists and their allies fought successfully to get that diagnostic category removed.

We're only just now getting to the point where it is within the realm of possibility for the autistic community to be culturally defined by autistic people. And what have some of us decided to do with this newfound sense of empowerment? Throw a hissy fit complaining that the parents and professionals on the Autism Hub, who have consistently spoken out against society's abuse of autistics and have taken significant personal risks in doing so, somehow are unfairly preventing autistics from being in control.

This is what I have to say to anyone who has that attitude:

While you're getting so gung-ho about autistic self-determination, why don't you go have a nice friendly chat with Mark Geier and persuade him to stop injecting autistic children with chemical castration drugs. After that, pay a visit to the Judge Rotenberg Center and convince Matthew Israel to be a nice guy and take the electric shock devices off the kiddies. Go talk to the Wrights, Alison Tepper Singer, and Hillary Clinton about their jolly plans for a world with no autistic people in it, and convert them to our cause. After that, you can come back and complain that the Autism Hub parents are interfering with your efforts to define the autistic community.

But until then, just shut the fuck up.

Diversity and Representation

Who can be a leader in the neurodiversity movement?

This question was raised in two recent posts by Laurentius Rex and Kevin Leitch. They ask: Should we be concerned that the parents who are blogging on the Autism Hub have a significant amount of influence in shaping the discourse? Are these parents somehow "hijacking" the neurodiversity movement and taking it away from its rightful owners, autistics (or people with psychological diagnoses in general)?

I don't think so.

That criticism arises from the disability rights motto "nothing about us, without us." And to the extent that we're talking about specific disability rights issues, I agree that the people who are directly experiencing these issues are the most qualified to speak about them. However, that does not necessarily equate to having a particular diagnosis. I would not, for instance, proclaim myself entitled to make policy decisions about augmentative communication devices simply by virtue of being autistic, when I've never used any such devices. Conversely, there are many non-autistic people who cannot speak and who use or could benefit from augmentative communication devices (because of stroke, head injury, etc.), and their views ought to be given substantial weight. More simply put, disability self-advocacy is about practical real-life needs, not parlor games with labels.

It's all very well to say that parents who have no disabilities should not be at the forefront of disability rights advocacy, and that makes sense as far as it goes; but I think we need to carefully examine just how far it goes, so that we're not conflating all sorts of other things with disability rights advocacy.

When we're talking about neurodiversity in the abstract, the concept encompasses much more than disability. It's about social acceptance of cognitive and behavioral differences, regardless of whether those differences are, or are perceived as, disabling.

To illustrate this point, here's a hypothetical situation: A young immigrant who was raised in a traditional Asian family graduates from school and gets a job with a large corporation. Because of his cultural background, he does not make eye contact with supervisors, appears very introverted by Western standards, sometimes misunderstands social expectations and the complex nuances of the English language, and gives the impression of being obsessively focused on his work.

One of his classmates, who is not an immigrant, exhibits precisely the same behaviors and has an Asperger diagnosis. He gets a job with the same company. Both of these young men soon become targets of bullying and discrimination in the workplace.

The immigrant, who clearly does not have a disability, files a complaint of an equal employment opportunity violation, claiming national origin discrimination. His autistic co-worker, on the other hand, does not belong to a protected group under the equal employment opportunity laws and can only claim disability discrimination, if he's to get any legal redress at all... but he is likely to have a hard time proving that he was targeted because he was perceived as having a disability. Chances are, he was just seen as different and weird, rather than as disabled.

Although this young man could perhaps win his disability discrimination lawsuit (and I'm certainly not trying to discourage anyone from filing such complaints), the root issue here isn't his abilities or the perceived lack thereof, even if that has to be the focus for legal purposes. The underlying issue is society's intolerance of anyone who deviates from its narrow cultural expectations.

Intolerance affects everyone. It's not the exclusive province of any particular minority group. Society is very fickle, and any of us might end up in a socially rejected group at some point in our lives, even if we originally were seen as part of the majority. In fact, that's exactly what happened to many autistics. When the Asperger diagnosis came into use in 1994, large numbers of people were classified as having a mental disability, even though their particular quirks previously had been accepted as within the range of normal human variation.

As I see it, the Autism Hub is the blogging equivalent of a diversity seminar in which people from different backgrounds get together and discuss how to overcome prejudice. Everyone's opinions and experiences are valuable in this context. When parents describe how they learned to accept their autistic child's differences, they are teaching other parents how to do the same. Although we may dispute whether these parents ought to be viewed as disability rights advocates, we shouldn't be so caught up in that dispute as to overlook the big picture—that what they are doing is vital to neurodiversity.

If Kev, Kathleen, and Estee all went out and got an Asperger diagnosis tomorrow, that would not, in my view, affect the validity of their message one iota.

The Face of the Race

Originally posted January 2006

This is a response to various people who have criticized my website, complaining that I am too manipulative, radical, extreme, and vulgar, and that my writings give society a bad impression of neurodiversity activists and/or the autistic population in general.

I'll answer these points in detail, but first I want to say that (despite all my bitching) I have a tremendous amount of respect for the wonderfully decent people of the international autistic community. If any other minority group had been targeted for worldwide extermination, you can be sure that their conversations about ethics would have nothing to do with language but, rather, would focus on what acts of terrorism were morally justifiable. Instead of building googlebombs, they would be building real bombs. Instead of manipulating words, they would be manipulating rocket launchers and sniper rifles. But we're such an honest, nonviolent, truth-loving bunch, many of us "have a cow" if we see a few words of misleading rhetoric.

I love this community.

With that said... am I manipulative? You bet. Whenever it will help our cause. Although I have no experience in politics or marketing and am nowhere near as skilled with rhetorical tricks as the professional pity-merchants who manage the curebies' fundraising campaigns for eugenics research, I look at it this way: Somebody has to yap loudly enough to draw attention to what's going on before it's too late. This is not a genteel debate in the quiet halls of academia; it is a war for the survival of our race. The eugenicists have us in their crosshairs, and their fingers are already tightening on the trigger.

As for being radical, extreme, and behaving in a way that creates an undesirable image, that accusation has been made (in one form or another) against the more outspoken members of civil rights movements throughout history. Suffragists and other feminists were despised and abused for what was viewed as a foolish, even blasphemous, refusal to accept the natural order of things. Gandhi was denounced by many of his opponents as an unrealistic idealist who resorted to extreme attention-getting tactics. Because of his sermons on poverty and social justice, Martin Luther King Jr. was suspected of having communist sympathies and was hounded mercilessly by government agents for several years. Even Albert Einstein was thought to be a dangerous radical because of his strong support for racial justice and other unpopular liberal causes. In short, if resolutely demanding human rights makes me a radical, I count myself in good company.

And those who want to complain about obscenity should consider this: autistic people are still being tortured and murdered in institutions. (Warning, don't follow this link unless you have a strong stomach.) That's what a real obscenity looks like, and there are far too few people who are willing to say anything about it.

Once again, we are not giving speeches in a high school debate class or nibbling crumpets at a tea party, we are on the front lines of a war. Real people are dying now, and millions of autistic babies will end up in the abortionists' garbage cans within a few short years if our efforts fail. That is not just rhetoric; it is a cold, hard, brutal fact. So if you think that I ought to feel guilty about having manipulated anyone's emotions, offended anyone's political sensibilities, interfered with the free flow of information on the Internet, or shocked anyone with crude language, this is all I have to say to you:

Get over it.

Genetic Quislings

Originally posted September 2005

During Germany's invasion of Norway in 1940, the Norwegian fascist politician Vidkun Quisling declared his support for Hitler and was rewarded when the Nazis appointed him as president of Norway. He held this position until the end of the war in 1945, when he was tried and convicted of high treason and executed by firing squad. The word "quisling" came to mean a traitor who profits from collaborating with the enemy.

I was reflecting on this bit of history while wondering just what goes on in the minds of autistic adults who voluntarily give biological samples to autism genetic research projects. (As for samples obtained from children whose parents are told that the research is for a cure of a tragic disease, I don't intend any criticism of such parents, who are innocent victims of the autism industry's family-destroying propaganda.)

Every once in a while, a post will show up on an aspie forum saying something like, "I went to X University to take part in their genetic research study. The researchers were all very nice to me, gave me a free diagnosis, and arranged for me to stay in a comfortable hotel."

I wish I could just dismiss these posts as sneaky spam by researchers posing as aspies, but they look all too real. And I wonder: How can these people not know what is being done with this research? It's no secret that the ultimate goal is a prenatal test: some researchers have even given interviews bragging about it. A highly regarded professor of bioethics, Arthur Caplan, who wrote the article Would You Have Allowed Bill Gates To Be Born? for MSNBC.com, recently stated that he believes a prenatal test for autism will be developed within three to five years.

No one knows precisely how many autistic babies are likely to be aborted in the next generation, but we're not just talking about a few thousand, or even a few hundred thousand. Unless there is a major change in social attitudes—and pretty damn quick—we're looking at an eight-digit number, at the worldwide obliteration of a genetic minority group, at a brutally effective "final solution" for the inconvenient existence of autistic people.

That being so, any aspie who voluntarily contributes in any way, shape, or form to an autism genetic research study is a traitor to the race and a collaborator in the coming genocide.

And jeez… what sort of putrid, worthless asshole would sell his own people down the eugenicists' bloody river for a free diagnosis and a comfy hotel room? At least Vidkun Quisling got to enjoy a few years in power with his Nazi buddies.

Bottom line: Although traitors generally deserve to be shot, for pathetic pissants like that, it would be a waste of good bullets. Somebody hand me a can of insecticide.

Pardon, Your Support Group Is Showing

Originally posted July 2005

The title of this post was inspired by a comment made by one of the more militant members of an aspie forum, on what she thought of support groups: "If I want support, I'll go to the bra department at Target."

I don't have a gripe with the concept of support groups in general. They can be very helpful for cancer sufferers, crime victims, and others who are struggling to cope with traumatic misfortunes. But I'd really like to know what asshole decided to set up support groups for autistics. I'm guessing it was one of the politically correct dorks who insist on using person-first language and would never use the word "autistics." Here's what I have to say to those shitheads-with-dorkiness: My personality is not a disease, and I wouldn't be caught dead at an autism support group. Oh, and by the way, you are most cordially invited to plant a big ol' kiss on the keister of this person with PDD, which stands for Pissed-off at Discriminatory Dumbasses.

Since when was group therapy an adequate substitute for civil rights? Every day, in autism support groups, people are encouraged to yammer on about the misfortunes of their autism, which generally consist of such things as not being able to get a job, or an apartment, or decent treatment at school because of their "condition." The psychologists and social workers who run these groups make soothing sympathetic noises and offer advice along the lines of how to make eye contact, how to stop stimming—in other words, how to pass for a non-autistic.

Just imagine if there were "femaleness support groups" where women were taught to cope with employment discrimination and other "impairments" of their gender by learning to behave more like men. Or "blackness support groups" where people of color were advised to deal with their "social problems" by learning how to bleach their skin and how to sound white in a conversation.

This all goes to show the total disdain that psychologists have for autistics, as well as the extent to which the psychs have warped their clients' view of the world and of themselves. No one with a shred of self-respect would voluntarily seek out such degrading "support." Hell, even a lab rat probably has a better opinion of itself.

The autistic community, as you've undoubtedly noticed, is in dire need of consciousness-raising efforts. As an antidote to the psychs' relentless brainwashing, I recommend a visit to the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical for a look at how the situation might be reversed if autistics were in the majority.

With Friends Like These...

Originally posted June 2005

This fact ought to be too obvious to be worth mentioning:

Psychologists are not our friends.

They are responsible for maintaining a vicious diagnostic regime that classifies autistic neurological differences as an inherently disordered, impaired, and defective state of being. Whenever an autistic child is excluded from a mainstream classroom because his needs are allegedly too difficult to meet, drugged with dangerous medications to make him appear "more normal," or subjected to abusive behavioral "interventions," you can be sure that a psychologist or psychiatrist is to blame. In order to ensure a steady demand for such "work," they have created a brutal self-fulfilling prophecy that declares autistics to be hopelessly mentally disabled, of no value to society, and in need of extensive (and expensive) lifelong psychological services. That description often causes governments, schools, and parents to treat autistics accordingly. Major depression, extreme anxiety, and other completely preventable disabling conditions are the inevitable result of such treatment.

Because of the widespread abuse of autistic people by psychologists over several decades, it has even been suggested that an Autism Truth and Justice Commission should be established to expose the depths of their crimes against humanity.

Friends or enemies? It's not a hard call.

And yet, some autistic adults who were fortunate enough to avoid the diagnosis and its resulting stigma as children are now voluntarily deciding to visit psychologists for the purpose of being diagnosed with "Asperger's Disorder." Apparently they have been persuaded that this shiny new label, with its stereotyped list of "impairments," will somehow validate their life experiences and establish them as full-fledged members of the autistic community.

In a word: Bullshit.

To make myself completely clear on this point, I am not talking about those of us who have made the practical decision to seek a diagnosis in order to obtain services or accommodations. That is a rational response to a woefully irrational and label-obsessed society that is stingy as all hell when it comes to providing services. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

But there are some autistics who, for reasons I can't fathom, have chosen to flaunt their diagnosis as if it were a badge of membership in an exclusive social club. These twerps act like teenage girls comparing rock-star autographs, proudly posting on the aspie boards, "I got my diagnosis from [insert name of well-known autism expert] personally!" Often they will follow this up by posting snide comments suggesting that their opinions as "real" autistics are more valid than those of the undiagnosed barbarian hordes. A few of them have even scanned their letter of diagnosis into their computer and posted it on their website.

Here's what I have to say to the Diagnosis-Fan-Club-Twerps: Whatever you're smoking, dudes, it's gotta be powerful stuff. I don't know what sort of status you think you've acquired, but here's a news flash: Society's "beautiful people" are not lined up around the block waiting to be officially diagnosed as mentally impaired. If you are not in need of services or accommodations, the only thing you're likely to get as a result of an autism diagnosis is a nice cozy spot on a permanent government database registry of diseased citizens. (And if you think that's a paranoid exaggeration, take a look at this thread on Aspies for Freedom. Our good buddies the psychs are no doubt responsible for the passage of that charming bit of Nazi-esque legislation, too.)

Let's put this in historical perspective. Other minority groups that were oppressed by psychologists acting as agents of social control, such as homosexuals and feminists, had the good sense not to treat their demeaning diagnostic labels as reflecting some sort of validation of their identity. Back when homosexuality was listed as a disorder in the DSM, you didn't find gays flocking to psychologists and bragging to others in the gay community that they had an officially diagnosed psycho-sexual disorder. And you didn't find feminists at consciousness-raising group meetings declaring giddily, "I got my hysteria diagnosis from Dr. Freud himself!" Both of these groups understood quite well that the diagnostic labels did not reflect neutral scientific truth but were instead deliberately biased instruments of social oppression.

I suggest an act of political protest in the same spirit as feminist bra-burning: Use your letter of diagnosis as an asswipe. Then mail it to your favorite autism "charity" in an envelope marked "contribution."

(Edit and clarification: A few people thought this might be a serious suggestion. Actually, I was just being sarcastic. Please don't really harass anyone through the mail. The postal inspectors would be very unhappy, and I don't want any of my readers getting in trouble with the law.)