Reclaiming Autism
I posted a message I received from the National Autism Society on FB in order to raise the profile of autism on social media, reporting back from the frontiers as it were, citing various bleak recent communications and exchanges I had had in order to detail how little help is available to autistic people in the UK. ‘Little’ is to be understood here in the sense of next to nothing. Basically, if you are autistic you are left to fend for yourself and make the best of the CGT and mindfulness you are offered, plus all the rewriting of CVs and practising of interview techniques you get at all those wretched employment agencies that have failed so many nts (let alone autistic people) for so long over the years. It’s ineffective but has the merit of costing ‘society’ nothing in terms of time and money, shifting all the responsibility upon the autistic person, you know, the person who is struggling so much alone as to be forced to express a need for ‘others’ to help. Having received a diagnosis of Autism I had looked forward in anticipation of certain keys and opened doors. Instead I slowly had to reconcile myself to the offers of old wine in very familiar looking bottles. I had dealings with employment advisers who formerly worked for the employment service or for Remploy. They basically advised as to what autistic people had to do to land a job against the competition of non-autistic others, which amounted to the inistence that you mirror and mask and bury your autism and give the appearance of being like ‘normal’ others. There is no mystery that only a miserable 20% or so of autistic people are in any kind of employment.
I can tell a bleak story of a society that really doesn’t give a damn. The only help that is available is the help that costs those wonderful caring, kind, virtue-signalling ‘others’ nothing and puts all the onus of responsibility on the autistic person who is reaching our for help. I see the memes that nice people regularly put out on social media, to the effect that the bravest thing a person can do is reach out for help. People are encouraged to ‘come out’ of themselves and seek help. The assumption seems to be that help is merely for the asking. I can tell you from direct experience that it isn’t, and that there is precious little help for people in need. I would go further and say that, for your own sanity’s sake, you are better bottling it all up and determining to go it alone rather than raise any false hopes and expectations with respect to a help that isn’t there. I have learned never to take nice, kind, and caring people by their own self-image. I will stick with the old proverb that a pretty girl can give only what she has, and add that prettiness in itself doesn’t yield much, however pleasing it may on the eye.
I’ve made this point many times before and have nodoubt that I shall be having to make it many times more: whilst autism tends to be viewed as a deficiency or disability in accordance with the impairment model, the problems that autistic people have when it comes to ‘social interaction,’ ‘social communication,’ and ‘social imagination’ are at least as much ‘social’ problems as they are personal problems – which is to say that they are problems that arise from having to relate to uncomprehending, uncaring, and unbending others, ‘society’ t large. In many respect, autistic people possess abilities and qualities that are infinitely superior to those possessed by nts so well adapted to social requirements (I tend to avoid pitching groups against one another, for the reason it is wrong and unhelpful, but am forced to make the point this way in reacting against the portrayal of autism as a negative).
My post on FB received no attention and was simply passed over in awkward silence. When talking about autism, people prefer something suitably reassuring like “the power of neurodiversity.” There is indeed a certain power that come with autism, a certain objectivity in seeing through the murk and bias of social activity and expression. I can see through and cut through mediated hype and tripe in a New York Second (which is "the shortest unit of time in the multiverse" for those who don’t know). Imagine the frustration I experience, then, when wading through the garbage, filth, and hypocrisy of social media. Imagine, too, the pain that comes with the infinite patience I have to show in order to maintain connection with those potentially but rarely ever actually helpful others.
It can easily become too much to bear, insufferable. Ihave to detach myself in order to spare the world an outburst of plain speaking. The nice and kind and caring people of the world, the people who have all the right causes, wouldn’t like it and would think me most unreasonable. They would prefer autistic people to be docile pets in a good cause, never speaking out of turn. (It was this that first alerted me to the idea that there might be something iffy about the Thunberg phenomenon, the sight of people with all their climate facts and figures claiming that Thunberg ‘never put a foot wrong.’ That made her sound like a perfect little masker and mirrorer, discovering what ‘society’ wants her to say and saying it. She was praised for her insight in repeating things that many scientists had been saying for years. She said so herself, when telling people not to listen to her but to listen to what scientists are saying. My target is not her, it’s the people who get very excited in her
praise. The praise that she ‘never puts a foot wrong’ gave the game away for me. This idea reeks of group think, committee work, and the bureaucracy of knowledge. It strikes me as the very antithesis of what I would expect from an autistic person. This area was covered closely in my own diagnostic assessment, highlighting those many occasions when I would indeed speak out of turn, put both feet well and truly wrong socially in the cause of truth-telling, going wayward by way of obscure tangents and tenuous connections. Someone who never puts a foot wrong sounds like the bureaucrats’ and technocrats’ very excited dream; it doesn’t sound like an autistic person at all.
It’s that fantasy that is the target of my ire, and the people who peddle their self-delusions as necessary truth, because this fetishism of autism makes it clear that autistic people are to be valued only to the extent that they make themselves socially and politically useful and don’t put a foot wrong. I’m putting my big feet very wrong here in full knowledge that it will be making a lot of nice people most uncomfortable. It’s called being blunt, rude even, thing that autistic people can tend to be. But I have licence, surely? Or does that only come with the right causes and crusades, rightness as laid down by ‘normal’ folk.
I saw autism trending on Twitter and was interested to see what this could be. I live in hope that the need for “autism acceptance” finally comes to make some headway in society. Was some kind of breakthrough in public consciousness underway?
Not in the least.
Instead I saw a deluge of tweets over an exchange betweensomeone called Andrew Tate and Greta Thunberg. I had never heard of Tate. I’m glad to say that I don’t pay attention to the talking heads of media mediocrity, with the result that these people mean nothing to me. It says something of the worth of social media that these characters only ever enter my world through its portals. I really should close all open windows to things I don’t need to see; nothing of any value would be lost. What little I know of Tate tells me that I don’t need to know any more. Thunberg I do know. I paid her little attention until she and her handlers hijacked the fire at Notre Dame cathedral. How easily impressed people are. I read some of her words in the little book she issued. ‘Is that all there is?’ as the song goes. I was looking for something new, some great breakthrough linking science with the world of practical reason. It’s the same old failing environmentalism on steroids, eaning big government, austerity, and technocracy. But people so used to losing in politics are happy enough to have won extensive and expensive climate programmes, even if they are ‘not enough.’
This has nothing in common with the politics of ecology I have sought to develop in my own work over the years and is in fact the suppression of the political through the most inorganic and anti-ecological of political and economic forms. This has the corporate form all over it. And progressives lap it up as in some way leftist. If you abandoned all sense of purpose and goodness in acceptance of the fact that a bleak, meaningless nature is all that there is, you might raise some laughter at the sheer stupidity of the protagonists.
The Tate and Thunberg spat, and the side-taking and name-calling it has encouraged, pretty much sums up social media and the people who spend their days mugging for attention. They are whores for likes and loves, and many are so desperate to be liked as one of the in-crowd as to fawn and flatter as a daily duty.
So this is where human interrelation takes place now.
In which case it can be no wonder that Western culture, society, and politics is circling round and round at ever increasing speed, before being swallowed down the drain into the cess pit in which it properly belongs.
The idols of a fake Left and fake Right are pitched against one another in this mediated world, with the virtue signallers who don’t give a damn about autism howling abuse at the materialistic hyper-individualists who use autism as a term of abuse. Autism may have been trending on Twitter, but this has nothing to do with autism. Thunberg can abuse back with impunity, as both shield and sword, but that’s because culturally dominant people consider her to be the champion of the right cause. Other autistic people would not be so indulged. To be valued, an autistic person has to confirm, has to be useful. As a result, autism comes to be weaponised in a toxic zero-sum political struggle. You have to be on the right side or you are a zero. And it is clear that it is the ‘right’ cause that is valued, the autism praised as a ‘special power’ only to the extent that it supports the right cause. This is utterly reactionary.
I don’t care to become some tame pet in a politicalcause and crusade. If you make arguments in a public place then those arguments stand and fall on their merits, according to reason, evidence, logic, and value – the identity of the persons making the argument is of no account. There is no special insight available to some rather than others. I have been staggered to hear people claim that Thunberg has special insight, when she herself has stated clearly that she is only saying what others have said. That makes it plain that the people getting most excited here are those who are having their value preferences and politics flattered.
It leaves me fairly cold and rather sceptical.
I have spent the past year trying to raise the profile of autism, arguing for autism acceptance. The great defenders of the autistic saints of favoured causes have been nowhere to be seen. They love the causes and could care less about autism.
The causes and idols people choose reflect the values they hold dear, and the existence – or, rather, otherwise - of substantive standards beyond individual preference and prejudice.
Every time I come on social media, I see more and more bad takes stemming from a lack of substantive grounding and meaning beyond personal value preferences.
Sneering, moralised arrogance is the normal mode of communication on social media: a maximum self-righteous entitlement yielded from the minimum knowledge and intellectual effort. And that’s only the good people.
If you were to attempt to respond to it all you would surely go mad; by the same token you will more than likely go mad attempting to suppress the urge to respond. Some say that it is best to ignore what is said, but the nature of autism is such that the error and stupidity of others is hard to ignore. You feel the urge to correct others in the effort of restoring order. It is best to just never let that world in in the first place, shut it and its inanities out. It’s hard to credit that people really do believe the tripe they write and like on social media. It would be utterly dispiriting if that were true. So little thought seems to go into any of it that it seems more like an automatic response, a form of electronic retching, and is utterly vomitatious. It is the sick and the sordid that generates immediate interest and incites response in a way that quality and depth doesn’t, and social media is all about instantaneity. My very reasonable post on autism awareness and acceptance was totally ignored. Such issues will never trend on social media; people are not interested. I wade through the swamp in search of something worthy of my attention. I don’t know why, because I do know where the quality lies, and it isn’t here.
So I shall issue a generic response with respect tosocial media – what a bunch of hate filled know-nothing bigots and morons, they deserve the company they keep. If this is representative of politics as mediated culture, then God help us – because far too many people have become incredibly small. And vicious and nasty with it.
I see that Julia Hartley-Brewer is now being hounded for her abusive reference to autism. A plague on all those who use autism as a term of abuse. A plague, too, on all those who seek to use autism as a political and intellecual shield. Thunberg – and her handler and advisers – do precisely this. She describes herself as an ‘autistic climate campaigner.’ I’ve been a climate campaigner since long before Thunberg was born. Autism has got squat to do with it. An argument stands and falls on its merits. When I see an argument insulated from criticism on account of being advanced by a wee child/girl/female/autist I know we are being sold a pup. And I don’t see women and autists as so feeble as to stand in need of protection. The screen, of course, is being put around highly contentious climate politics, putting politics and people on ice. The misuse of autism as a means to an end here is unconscionable.
Seeing as men have been disqualified for pointing out the obvious, and seem compelled to accept a beta status to cheer any low-grade nonsense as if it were Oscar Wilde, I’ll have to let a woman do it. I have no idea who this McArdle woman is (just as I’m glad not to know any of these social media/culture personalities). I’m glad I don’t really know any of these people. I only knew this Tate character through the cess pit that is social media. I wouldn’t see any of them if I just switched this idiot place off and occupied my time with more interesting and amusing people and things, waiting for the time when the predictable mediocrities who massage their prejudices and pleasure zones on social media on a daily basis have disappeared. I just have a feeling that it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. It’s not fit company to be keeping.
I trust that the people who have been busy scourging Julia Hartley-Brewer for her abuse of autism will maintain those energy levels at sky high level when it comes to fighting for autism acceptance, opening up social space to autistic people in the coming years. I hope, too, that they think on about the use of autism as a political means.
I further hope that the inordinate number of adults who have hailed Thunberg as a razor sharp wit of Wildean proportions for cracking a joke that pretty much every 12-13 year old girl has cracked will come to realize that they have embarrassed themselves and think on in future. Maybe I just had the misfortune to run into a lot of precocious girls when I was young. I don't think so. Is it really possible that people have been leading such sheltered lives that such a common put-down strikes them as highly original. It’s routine stuff, it really is. As I say to people who tell e a joke I have heard many times before: ‘I’ve always liked that joke.’ It also strikes me as a rather strange joke for kind, caring, and compassionate people to make and find funny, the kind of people who for years have told us that size doesn’t matter. It sesms it does. It seems that there are hierarchies, too. Certain people have been in hysterics, proclaiming Thunberg a ‘legend’, for cracking what Megan McArdle rightly calls a ‘very pedestrian’ – and predictable – ‘penis joke that could have been delivered by any eighth grader.’
And yes I do know the ever so clever meaning behind it.
Greta Thunberg Shuts Down Andrew Tate With 'Small DickEnergy' Tweet. Here's What It Actually Means
Except that Thunberghas visited this topic a few times now.
Greta Thunberg mocks climate change deniers by citing ‘penis shrinking’ research
Spare me. As an undiagnosed autistic person at school I was teased mercilessly about meanings and nuances I was too stupid (too literal) to understand. I find the same passive-aggression at work here, the same coded language accessible only to the clever initiates, the same abuse of uncomprehending idiots. How clever dear Greta is, she isn't actually referring to penises at all. You can shove it - this is a world far removed from autism, a world I know well having been on the receiving end of the barbs and jibes of its members. Of course some people see the literal meaning of 'small dick' jibes first and foremost - it's what autistic people do. We take the literal meaning only to have neurotypicals masquerading as warrior for autism poking fun. How incongruous it is tosee people who purport to be warriors for autism chide and deride people for a literal-mindedness that is an autistic character trait. The irony is bitter.
So I shall speculate that there may well be another reason at work behind the reaction – we are in the presence of people who will do anything and say anything to praise and curry favour with the right people. I know these kind of people well. They are cowards and bullies. I saw these characters at school, the characters who always wanted to be in with the in-crowd, the characters who would laugh with the alpha figures, whether they were funny or not, and sneer and jeer at the outsiders, subjecting them to pitiless put-downs to make themselves look big (or virtuous, as the case may be). I hold them in complete contempt; they are hypocritical, untrustworthy, and inauthentic. They also lack the nerve to go it alone to be themselves. They like safety in the group. Their high energy and aggressive tone in attacking Julia Hartley-Brewer is due entirely to their obvious relish in being given a stick to beat a political enemy with. Think I’m wrong? Ask where they have been when autistic people like me have sought help; and ask where they have gone when this latest media spat moves on to the next one.
