The Only Victim

The Only Victim (originally posted on Tumblr)

When I saw the news trending on Facebook, my heart sank. Another dead - murdered - child by their parent(s). My first thought upon seeing the news of another murdered child was “were they disabled?”

I read on. London McCabe was Autistic; and my worst fears confirmed: another person to mourn on March 1st, 2015, at our annual Day of Mourning.

He is the only victim here, even as I wait for people to proclaim his mother a martyr mom. It is awful to have a dead child in any situation, but the difference is that when the child was not disabled, everyone thinks it’s awful. When the child, like London, was disabled, many rush to make excuses as to why it happened, when there are none.

...

London McCabe, 6 years old, Autistic, thrown off a bridge to drown in Oregon. This is why we don’t need your awareness. This is why when you talk about awareness, we cringe. This is how the awareness works: everyone “knows” what autism is, everyone “knows” it’s some scary thing that makes parents’ life “battle-fatigued” and our murder “justified.”

This is why we need you to listen. This is why we need your acceptance.

Mourning and Advocating for Autistic Murder Victim London McCabe

Mourning and Advocating for Autistic Murder Victim London McCabe



--Shannon des Roches Rosa at Squidalicious

The Murphy Bill Has Gained Support of NAMI-NYS

 This is not a good thing, by the way. 

[TW/CW: Ableism, shooting, institutionalization]

From MindFreedom International on Facebook:

"On Friday evening, November 14 at 6:00 p.m., the NAMI-NYS membership will “stand united” in presenting the 2014 NAMI-NYS Legislative Champion Award to Congressman Tim Murphy, for authoring H.R. 3717 called, The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act."

I will post a transcription of the Autistic Self Advocacy's document on the Murphy Bill, along with an image of the document below, and I urge to you write/call to your Congresspeople against this, and spread the word.

"Why Your Member of Congress Should Oppose HR. 3717 
After the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) introduced HR. 5717, legislation designed to take advantage of media associations inaccurately linking mental health and violent crime to rollback civil rights protections of people with psychiatric disabilities. It is intended to completely change the current state of mental health services to make it easier to forcibly treat people with psychiatric disabilities, expand institutionalization and reduce privacy rights and legal protections. Here are some talking points you can use when speaking with your congressional offices about why they should oppose HR. 3717:

Privacy
The bill would reduce privacy protections for both people with mental illnesses and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The bill allows disclosure of confidential psychological and psychiatric information to family and caregivers in additional circumstances to those already defined in current privacy laws. Right now, doctors and therapists can give confidential health and mental health information to family and caregivers in emergency situations or if they have permission from the person getting treatment. The bill would allow doctors and therapists to give confidential health and mental health information to family and caregivers even without permission and without emergency circumstances.

The bill also allows for greater influence from family and caregivers, including forcing involuntary medication and institutionalization.

Institutionalization
The bill will provide federal government funding for more institutionalization. This will mean less money is available for other community-based services. The bill will also cut the budget for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s community integration projects to a little over a third of what it is now.

The bill would also require all states to create programs that allow judges to order people to take psychiatric medications that they do not want to take. The best way to help people get mental health treatment is to make it available and give people support, not to get the courts involved.

Legal Protections
The bill takes away many legal protections available to people with mental illnesses through the Protection and Advocacy program, which is the largest and most accessible program for legal services for people with disabilities. Over 80% of the funds for Protection and Advocacy for people with psychiatric disabilities would be taken away.

Economics
The bill establishes an unnecessary assistant secretary position to oversee the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration which would be financially supported by a portion of the budget allocated to supports for people with mental illnesses.”

Autistic Pride and What you Need to Know

[TW: Includes links to the abuse of Autistic people and violence against them, as well as "quiet hands" and seclusion.]
 
Autistics Speaking

Our methods of communication may not be what you are accustomed to. Sometimes we use assistive technology or just flapping intermingled with words to get the point across. But we all have things to say. Listen.

Pride

We can be proud and often are. We are proud of our neurodivergent brains. And have you ever seen a room of Autistic people flapplauding happily? Have you ever seen the joy we feel when stimming, which isn't just a negative response? Or just the pride in our ways of thinking and doing.

Being Autistic can be hard. Being Autistic can lead to more challenges in the world, but so many of those are based in a society which values spoken/verbal communication and an education system which views it as a compilation of deficits.

More importantly, autism is not something you can change about a person, or something you can cure; it is part of our neurology, hardwired into our brains, so why not be proud?

Also, have you ever seen someone's face light up when they get on their special subject? The way they communicate and move and they are the expert and they want to share? It's beautiful. I can tell you everything about cats, I can explain to you my dragons on Flight Rising, or describe every aspect of eugenic history: I can recite eugenics books in my sleep (almost), name top eugenicists, describe the way they described people, tell you what state passed the first sterilization law and when, who first came up with eugenics in the U.K. and that he was a cousin of Charles Darwin, inform you of how it made its way to Nazi Germany and that American eugenicist Harry Laughlin was later honored by Heidelberg University and he accepted it with pride.

Nightmares: Open Your Eyes to the Things that Happen

People have nightmares all the time. Being locked up in rooms, not knowing how to get out or when they ever will. Violent nightmares where they're at the hands of someone who wants to do them harm. A lot of us live these nightmares in seclusion rooms. We get punished for flapping or making a noise or dropping a pencil or moving in the wrong way or if we argue with someone we get put in a room, locked in. These things happen where we're supposed to be safe, places like schools, places where we're supposed to be able to get an education.

Some of us are afraid, not so much from random strangers on the street but from the people who claim to love us. Some of us are the victims of violence and abuse that's either called self-defense or therapy, like Issy Stapleton, whose mother called her violent and tried to kill her. Some of us don't make it out alive, like Alex Spourdalakis, drugged and stabbed to death. These things happen when we're supposed to be safe, places like our homes, places where we're supposed to be loved and supported.

Most people can wake up from nightmares, but some of us can't. We hold a vigil every year for the victims of violence. We unite to try and put an end to these things.

A Guidebook for the Non-Autistic: Things You Need to Recognize

• Presumption of competence, believing in our ability to learn and understand, will bring us farther than any abusive therapies.
• We are marginalized, but we're still here and we will not be quiet; listen to us about things that concern us.
• Behavior is communication; do not assume behaviors have no reasons behind them, and do your best to understand.
• The same goes for watching us in public; we may look weird and different to you, but we have reasons and should not be shunned.
• Representation in the media is not accurate.
• We can provide valuable information on our disability and autism, and you should listen.
• The value of our lives are not less regardless of the level of support we need. We have the same rights to life, love, education, jobs, and living conditions as anyone else.
• Listen.

~
Kit Mead
Autistics Speaking Day 2014

The Problem Isn't "Infighting"

Recently, I posted “Polarization” and “When You're Not Loud and Angry Enough” on here, and on Tumblr. Discussions have sprung up, and I hope they continue, because the way the Autistic community treats other members of the community needs a fair amount of addressing. The discussions that have been started on Tumblr following those posts are not “in-fighting,” as I've seen the discussions called. I'm going to get more specific here and less jargon-filled than those posts and also add on extended commentary to reactions I've seen to the posts.

–

There are no such thing as good Autistics and bad Autistics, to be explicit. If good Autistic people are accused of sucking up to NTs and non-autistics and bad Autistic people are the heroes who actually call out people, how on earth do you expect solidarity within a community when people are trying to strike a divide? I know people who, on Facebook, Tumblr, elsewhere, who have been told that they are just goody-goodies and that they have no place in activism. It could have been me.

When you talk about a community, you take into account everyone. The people who feel guilt because they pass as neurotypical, the people who don't take pride in being Autistic, the people who maybe even want a cure, the people who feel guilty because they don't always have the capability of fighting every battle, the people who need accommodations, the people who need support staff, the people who need neither, and the list goes on.

You take into account the people who disagree with you.

The original posts were never about allies, and I did write it as a semi-response to the TPGA debacle – but not from the perspective of ally worthiness. I see people taking it that way anyway. The posts were about that there is often no room for disagreement in this discourse, and more importantly, that the way people are treated (like me, and others) when we disagree, people yell at us.

I should not have to constantly remove myself from Autistic spaces because people are being abusive with their language and treatment of other people, Autistic or neurotypical, to be clear. This is not tone-policing, as someone told me it was. It is not tone-policing to request a stop to the endless barrage of explosions and abusive language. And abusive language doesn't even have to be in all capital letters, to be honest: it comes in the form of “you disagree with me, so here's why you should screw off.”

The problem isn't the “infighting.” The problem is the continued mantra that asking people to stop being flat out mean and abusive is silencing, but yelling and intimidation are not silencing, and if you say they are, you are tone-policing.

When You're Not "Loud and Angry Enough"

We clearly need to figure something out, as a community. When the Autistic community has scared a good amount of Autistic people into not being able to say things, what has it become? I was one of them, for a while. I’m not going into direct confrontations on Facebook (I don’t have spoons to deal with the arguing that would happen), but I’m writing this post.

The goal of a community is to not echo-chamber itself into only allowing certain ideas and viewpoints into it, which, frankly, has been a lot of what I’m seeing. People are attracted to the ideal that explosive, sometimes abusive behavior is okay when you’re part of an oppressed group. We as a community have dealt with a lot of pain. We’ve lost a lot of children, teenagers and adults to caretakers, and we’ve been abused in the name of therapy. I would not deny this community anger at things that have been done and are still being done.

The echo-chambering I’m seeing, though, is that if you’re not loud and angry and constantly scouring the bits of the Internet to confront and call out people, you are too polite and constantly want to make nice. The echo-chambering I’m seeing is permitting the silencing of some Autistic people through fear while saying that you’re being silenced when someone has a different opinion than you or wants you to stop yelling.

The dynamics of a community, the fabric of its being, does not rely on explosive techniques. The explosiveness I can no longer be quiet about drives potential allies and newly diagnosed Autistic people away as an unsafe space, and more importantly, many Autistic people may look at this community and wonder what is getting done, wonder if they even want to be part of it, and credibility is damaged. And what will we tell the people who aren’t privy to our conversations and are not able to join in, who may rely on us to help enact change in the community and society? What then?

Polarization

Polarization

 

I am sometimes afraid of “Autistic spaces.” I get afraid of the fact that hey, if I don’t like the fact that people are yelling about things because I have trauma in my past related to intense anger/yelling/emotional abuse… I’ll be told I’m tone-policing, that I’m a goody-goody with the neurotypicals and non-autistics.

“If you don’t like our anger, just leave, if you don’t like our anger, you’re trying to silence us.”

I am not trying to silence anyone.

There is a difference between explosive anger and righteous anger.

There is a difference between calling someone out and completely lambasting them into the next century with an explosion.

I’m trying to navigate a world of activism where if I disagree with someone, I might get yelled at – by other Autistics, of all people. I’m trying to tread a line between telling someone to stop triggering me and tone policing.

You can’t claim to want a safe space for Autistic people, then summarily explode at other Autistics who disagree with you because yes, we have other opinions, and no, it’s not because we just want to suck up to neurotypicals and non-autistics. Sometimes we have other methods of activism that still include calling people out.

It has a polarizing effect on the community. When people accuse us, the less angry-sounding, of being textbooks for neurotypicals, have you considered: maybe we don’t always have the energy to fight every battle? Maybe we don’t have the energy to yell and scream? Maybe we also don’t feel like triggering other people with explosive language?

I should not feel unsafe in Autistic and autism community spaces both from neurotypicals/non-autistics and other Autistic people.