Reports from a Resident Alien

Last month, I got an e-mail out of the blue from a man who said he was a radio reporter for NPR, and wanted to interview me. It took me a while to figure out whether the whole thing was legitimate; but eventually I satisfied myself that it was. Last week, two people from NPR flew here to stay for two days. They are working on a series about what it means to be human; and had read my blog and thought I had a unique perspective on the subject.

I had to say yes, of course. It's not every day you get the chance to represent autistic people as, well... people. Rather than, say, walking tragedies. If this works out, I suppose I shall have a few minutes on the radio.

The interesting thing about the whole subject is that they said I had been doing a lot of sociology and anthropology, on my own, to understand people. Well, I have been; that's one of the strategies I use to try to communicate with the human race in general. (Psychology, too; but they weren't focusing on that so much.) I just didn't realize that my viewpoints were remarkable to anybody who wasn't autistic. I don't suppose I'm unusual, as far as autistic people go, in my approach: Study things theoretically; try to see the patterns; try to figure out why people do things. The point isn't to imitate the typical people around me; it's simply to communicate. If I can get information from my brain to theirs, then that's all I need. The better we communicate, the more our diverse viewpoints and skills are going to work together in a larger society.

Being interviewed is utterly exhausting. Basically, you have to socialize for hours at a time--and you have to answer questions that make you think very, very hard. After a while, I stopped even trying to fake eye contact, and at times closed my eyes altogether, so as to think better. However, there is apparently one advantage to being autistic, or at least as far as my particular autism style goes; I speak in a very precise manner, and this is well-suited for recording because I am easy to understand. (When I can't get words, I just tend to go entirely silent. It's either full sentences or nothing at all!)

A friend of mine who works in the pharm/tox department here at the university, and has been an unofficial mentor to me since last summer, really helped me with this. She let us use her office; and she stayed with me until I felt comfortable (this situation, naturally, was completely new to me and sent me into the usual panic that new situations tend to do). The second day, she took the lot of us out for sushi, which was wonderful because I have never had sushi before and I am quite a sense freak when it comes to food. (Eating the same thing every day? Yes, I do that, but it's an executive function thing, not a sensory thing.) I especially liked the papery texture of the nori which was wrapped around a lot of the things I tried. It's basically dried seaweed; so it tastes a bit like fish and a bit like ocean; and it has a very interesting feel in your mouth. I didn't catch half the conversation in the restaurant, but that was okay. And my friend helped me order. (I am not very good with that either, especially when I have no idea what half the menu even is!). I think I am getting closer to learning how to use a restaurant properly. (I can already do fast-food restaurants and a little at the college cafeteria.)

So, I got to talk about how I saw the rest of the human race. When it comes to the gap between autistic people and neurotypicals, it's not particularly much that we are fundamentally different; it's more like we've got different ways of doing the same things--different ways of connecting with each other; different ways of loving each other; different ways of communicating; even (possibly especially) different ways of dealing with the information coming at us from the world around us. Even communication gaps exist between neurotypicals. They're sometimes blocked by their social rules from communicating what they really mean; we're often blocked because we're either not good at language or not good at the subtext.

I found it a bit amusing that they asked so much about romance. I'm asexual/aromantic, so that was a bit like asking a man about the nature of femalehood, or a child about the nature of adulthood. But maybe the outside perspective will be useful. Who knows?

Air date? Summer-ish. Still nothing firm. And, of course, the thing has to actually work out. They said that I provided useful material, so there's a good chance it will be aired.

Kaiya was five years old. She had Rett syndrome, and she is dead because her uncle starved her to death. Ironically, Kaiya's killer worked as a caregiver for special needs children for twenty-five years.

One of several articles about the incident (put the name Kaiya Kapahu into a search engine to find more):
Uncle of 5-year-old charged with murder, child abuse

Unlike many murderers of autistic people, it looks like this man may be brought to justice. That won't change Kaiya's fate, but at least he wouldn't be one of the many who gets away with murder because his victim was autistic.

When I read the comments after the articles, I see a lot of very ignorant comments about the incident.

Her uncle must have been completely overwhelmed by having to take care of a special-needs child.
Leaving aside that he has apparently taken care of special-needs kids before (a chilling thought all by itself), it still makes no sense to assume that special-needs children make murder excusable. Completely typical children may scream all night, play in the toilet, bite their siblings, have whiny tantrums, and drive their parents up the wall; but last I checked, we still found it utterly abhorrent to even slap a child. If we consider "minor" cruelty to children inexcusable even when they are difficult, infuriating little bundles of annoyance, then why is it so common for people to say, "Well, I can't condone the murder, but it's understandable; it must have been so hard to care for a special-needs child"? I think it's because we as a society simply put disabled people in a completely different category--one that doesn't feel like a subcategory of "people" at all. Not, of course, consciously; and not, generally, when we think about it seriously or get to know people who are disabled. But just enough that when someone kills a disabled child, we think of this "disabled" category first, rather than thinking of "person".

But Kaiya had Rett's. That's not the same as autism.
Possibly not. It's not autism in the same way Down Syndrome is not developmental delay. Rett's includes, among other neurological symptoms, traits that are extremely reminiscent of childhood disintegrative disorder, which in turn either is the same as, or is very much like, classical autism. Whether the classification turns out to be on the autism spectrum or not (at the moment it looks like it will be a separate diagnosis), we have so much in common with Rett's individuals that our experiences and the issues we face are very similar. And neither autistic people nor Rett's people deserve murder.

Rett's is a severe disorder. She wouldn't have lived much past twenty-five, anyway.
Which is why we kill people as soon as they turn fifty... oh, wait, no we don't. A shorter life is still a life. And it's not nearly as short as we thought it would be even five years ago. Many Rett's individuals die not because of their neurological problems but from illnesses like pneumonia--which can be made much less likely with proper care. Advances in medicine have also made a longer lifespan possible; twenty-five is an extreme underestimation. Think, forty. Or even older. And would it really matter if it were twenty-five? Would it make her worth any less?

This wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been autistic.
My own stepfather decided to target me because I was the annoying autistic brat in the household; but you don't see me wishing I were someone else, do you? It's true that, most likely, I wouldn't have been kicked around as much if I hadn't been autistic. Blaming abuse on the autistic person's existence, though, is going too far. My stepfather made a choice. So did Kaiya's uncle. It's not very logical to try to solve the problem of abuse of disabled children by wishing they didn't exist; it's an utterly backwards way to go about it, punishing the victim for being vulnerable to the crime.

People who abuse other human beings will prey on anyone who is vulnerable, accessible, and in their way. Disabled people don't have a monopoly on that. If you wanted to solve the problem of abuse by removing all the vulnerable people in the world, you might as well just re-create the world's population from clones of a carefully selected blonde, blue-eyed, average-sized, non-disabled, straight white male. Don't want to do that? You'll always have a vulnerable population.

He didn't have enough community support.
True? False? I don't know. We don't have enough information to tell (though one would assume a former professional would have at least some insight into how to obtain assistance if he needed it). I do know many parents of special-needs kids don't have enough support; and that many people who are taking care of disabled family members are finding themselves overloaded, with too much to do and not enough time. Many abusive parents of typical children don't have enough community support, for that matter. But we do not excuse the abusive behavior of a single mother whose job barely pays the rent and doesn't stretch to cover day-care; neither should we exuse the abusive behavior of someone raising a disabled child without enough assistance.

The statements, "Parents of disabled children need more support," and, "It is neither excusable nor 'understandable' to murder an autistic child," are not mutually exclusive. I agree with both of them. (Here I put "understandable" in quotation marks because I mean the word in the sense of, "That's something anyone might be expected to do, provided the circumstances were bad enough," rather than, "I can understand why he did that." I can understand what his reasoning might have been; but I can't excuse it, not even partially.) Responding to the need for more support does not mean we excuse crimes committed against disabled people. Neither does demanding justice for these crimes mean that we do not want people to have help when they are overloaded by caretaking/parenting responsibilities.

You're using her death as an excuse to preach your agenda at me.
It needs to be said. When you go to the doctor, he uses your symptoms as an excuse to treat your problem, doesn't he? Kaiya's death, and especially the response to it, is a symptom of a societal disease: The tendency to see disabled people as worth less than non-disabled ones, and our existence as a burden. This perception of disabled people has made us much more vulnerable than most; and when that vulnerability crosses paths with an individual who does not listen to his conscience, people die.

Murder, of course, is murder, whether the victim is disabled or not. It shouldn't make much difference why someone made a good victim. If Kaiya had been a typical little girl instead of being born with Rett's, it would have been just as much of a tragedy. But, unfortunately, some people seem to think that disability makes it somehow more excusable, more understandable. When people respond to the death of a disabled five-year-old much the same way they respond to the death of a typical child, then I won't have to point out the discrepancy anymore.

But partly, the people who are saying "you're preaching your agenda" are right. Sometimes we forget the human element in the middle of all the politics. A little girl is dead, one who should have lived longer and enjoyed her life. That is a sad thing. She probably had people who loved her; and they are mourning. She must have had things she liked to do; things that made her happy or sad. She was a person; a little human being with her own thoughts, looking out at the world through her own eyes. Kaiya's death isn't just an expression of an underlying problem that needs to be solved; it's also, simply, one of the most common and most tragic events in the world--a life that ended before it should have, with too many things still undone.

Autistic people are not the next step in evolution. However, you can't go to the other extreme and say that autism needs to be removed from the human gene pool. But why? Autistics don't reproduce as often; doesn't that mean the trait is undesirable? Nope. Autism genetics have a purpose. As far as natural selection goes, the function of autism genes is to benefit the population as a whole--but this is only possible if autistic genetics do not replace NT genetics.

Consider:
1. Autistics are less likely to reproduce than NTs (low social skills, preoccupation with something other than getting dates, and a higher incidence of asexuality).
2. Autistics are more likely to have splinter skills and extreme specialization and thus more likely to create technological innovation.

For autism to benefit the human species, the best possible state is to have some autistic people in the population--but not too many. Each autistic that is produced means fewer children in the next generation, but there is also a chance of more innovation for that same next generation. The balance is at the point where the loss in children that the autistics don't have, is balanced by the survival of other children because of the new technology.*

Bob, the Autistic Caveman, invents fire. Because he is too nerdy for the cave-women, he has no children. However, Alice, his sister, takes advantage of the fire he invented to successfully raise five children to reproductive age. Even though Bob has no children, Alice, who shares half his genes, passes on her half of his DNA to her children. What's more, Bob's autism had a permanent effect: Not only do Alice's children benefit from the invention of fire, but so does every generation thereafter. Because even one innovation can confer a very large survival benefit to the entire society, Bob's autistic DNA sticks around, mostly recessive and occasionally expressing itself. Even though the vast majority of the autistic cave-men who result don't manage to invent the wheel or create the first spear, the small number who make permanent changes are enough to keep Bob's clan successfully competing against all the other cave-people clans, and enough to make up for the small decrease in overall reproduction.

If Bob had not been autistic, Bob might have had two children, but Alice would not have been able to take advantage of fire, and so only two of her children survive to adulthood. In this case, Bob passes on his genes; but he does not give his group of cave-people any permanent advantage. Soon, Bob and his tribe of NT cave-men are assimilated or crowded out by other tribes, where autistic genes have allowed technological innovations.

This only works, though, if the majority of the cavemen are neurotypical. Taking advantage of a trait that lowers reproduction, like autism does, is only possible when that trait is not expressed in the majority of a society's members.

Other than the glaring ethical problems, that's where the eugenics movement was wrong: Eliminating "undesirable" genes is not the way to make a species stronger. Diversity is. The more ways your society has to look at a problem, the more likely they will be to solve it. The more diverse the personalities, the more likely that there will be, when it is necessary, the right person for any given crucial job. The more cultures, the more ideas you can pull from to create new ideas. Flexibility is the key, not uniformity. The more the people in a society take care of each other, the more specialists they can produce, the more innovation is possible. That's the exact opposite of the eugenicists' ideas--taking care of disabled people makes a society stronger. The cost is worth it. (Not just because some of said disabled specialists will invent fire, either. The knowledge that you will be supported if you become incapable of supporting yourself leaves you free not to spend all your energy on making yourself as self-sufficient as possible--also allowing for specialization--and that knowledge exists only in societies that do actually take care of their disabled members.)

It doesn't just apply to autism, either. All sorts of different brains can create all sorts of different advantages. Sure, the individual might be less likely, on average, to reproduce; but if the existence of traits like his benefits his society, his genetics will stick around, as they should, making his society stronger.

*This is not a new idea; many genetic traits exist which make it harder for the individual to reproduce but easier for the society to survive. SIckle-cell anemia is the first trait discovered to have this effect; while sickle-cell anemia represents a serious reproductive disadvantage (untreated, usually resulting in death before reproductive age), sickle-cell trait gives the individual a high degree of resistance to malaria. The number of people who have sickle-cell anemia is highly correlated with the severity of the endemic malaria in any given area.

As many Aspies are wont to do, I took a walk through the toy department of Wal-Mart the other day, and I noticed something interesting in the doll aisle.

Your "Baby Alive" Doll loves to be with you!... Come close, and watch me wiggle and coo! I say "mama", too! I want to cuddle with you!

Baby Born. She babbles. She baby talks. She gives kisses! Baby Born loves to give kisses to her mommy!

Little Mommy "Moments & Milestones" is so sweet! Just like you!

So what do you see? Just sugary advertising for baby dolls? Look closer.

First, remember that this advertising isn't aimed at the little girls, who generally can't read yet; the dolls are being sold to the girls' parents. And what the advertising actually says is very, very interesting.

When baby-doll advertising doesn't stick to just describing the doll's features, it usually reflects the ideas that the general public seems to have about what raising a baby should ideally be like; and practically all of that is focused straight on what the baby will do for you. Yep, that's right--it's not focused nearly so much on your caring for the baby; it's focused on how the baby will (emotionally) care for you.

The perfect baby doll, apparently, smiles, cuddles, and kisses her parents. She loves her parents, fulfilling the parents' emotional needs. She makes her milestones, saying "mama" and "dada" and making you feel happy.

Here's what this advertising is saying:

A baby will make you feel happy, because the baby will love you.

I have never once seen, on the packaging of a baby doll, the word "responsibility" (or any of its analogues). I've never seen the idea that the parent-child relationship may not be perfect. Even in dolls that are supposed to get sick, there's a little medicine dropper included to make the doll magically all better, so you can go back to being loved. (This is why you give medicine to the doll, you see. The doll will love you if you do so.)

I'm not going to go writing angry letters to the baby-doll companies, of course. This isn't some sort of insidious plot to get parents to have these odd expectations of their babies; it's just a reflection of a general tendency: Parents put expectations on their children. Long before a baby is born, a parent has plan for the baby's future, a mental image of what the baby will be like, and expectations that their baby will bond with them in a certain way, act a certain way, and be, essentially, an extension of themselves. There is a baby-shaped hole in their ideas of the future; and if the baby isn't shaped exactly like the baby-shaped hole he's supposed to fit into, they get frustrated.

It's bad enough if Baby turns out to be interested in soccer instead of cooking, or prefers to study philosophy rather than go into Daddy's plumbing business. Families have been torn apart over things like that. And that's just neurotypical children.

What if, instead of babbling and cooing, Baby stares in fascination at the play of light on the dust motes in the air? What if, instead of kissing Mommy, Baby pulls back from the overwhelming touch and cries inconsolably? What if, instead of saying, "I love you, Mommy," Baby recites the full script of her favorite Sesame Street episodes?

If you're autistic, you know what it feels like when you are expecting one thing, and get another. You had a mental plan of the future; you thought it was stable; you thought you knew what to expect, and you were following along the plan. But suddenly, something changed. Something got canceled; something got moved; somebody stayed home sick; somebody forgot to tell you what was coming up. You feel like the floor's dropped out from under you, because now your plan is invalid, and people are trying to force you along the new, unpredictable path. You have no idea where it leads, you don't like it, and you're being asked to go along with it now, right away, without time to form a new plan of the new future. It's a horrible feeling, isn't it?

Well, we're not the only ones who have that feeling. Neurotypical parents do, too, when suddenly their babies don't fit into the baby-shaped hole in their plans of the future.

They're taught to believe that a child will complete them; that a child will be what they think it will be. Sure, maybe there'll be some annoyances; they'll lose sleep, have to attend PTA meetings, and be petrified when their teenage daughters start dating. But, all in all, parenthood will follow the script. "We just want," they say, "a healthy baby." But they want a lot more, and they don't even know it.

Most parents don't have the benefits of being autistic and having to practice dealing with unexpected situations every day. Some deal with it better than others; they realize that things are different, but can still be good. Some go into denial, trying to pretend that their baby fits the baby-shaped hole in their imaginations just fine. Some try to squish and squeeze their babies, and force them to fit. Some do all of the above, eventually arriving at acceptance.

The one factor that seems to be common to parents who accept that their child is not the child in their imaginations is the acceptance that their child is a separate individual. Certainly most parents would say, "Well, of course my child is a different person from me!"; but not all parents, deep down, understand it. The idea that their child makes his own decisions, has his own opinions, and feels things independently doesn't seem to sink in much of the time. It's as though the child were still connected to some sort of emotional umbilical cord, receiving all of his substance from his mother.

A baby is not simply a thing that loves you. A baby is a person. What a child does is not just a reflection of who you are. What he thinks isn't just an extension of yourself. I've seen it so many times, especially when the child is disabled: "Why is he doing this? What should I do so that he'll do this other thing?"--as though the child had no independent agency; as if his behavior were just the result of whatever treatments you stuffed into him!

It might be okay to sell a plastic doll by saying the doll will be what you want it to be; because, of course, a doll is what you want it to be. But flesh-and-blood babies are not dolls; they are people, with an independent existence and an independent mental universe from their parents. Maybe if we realized that, we'd stop trying to treat children, disabled or not, as though their futures could fit perfectly into our own ideas of what we think should happen.

A note: When I mention mental illness, assume I am talking about it in the most general way: Any condition that can be diagnosed by a psychologist; psychological, cognitive, or neurological. It takes too long to write that phrase out every single time I mention it.

Lots of people are getting upset about the proliferation of psychiatric diagnosis. It seems like everybody's kid has ADHD, autism, or dyslexia; and everybody who hasn't got depression probably has an eating disorder, bipolar disorder, or generalized anxiety disorder. And with every new decade, a longer list of diagnoses makes it into the manuals, and more and more people are labeled with them.

But that's crazy, isn't it? Only crazy people get diagnosed with psychiatric and cognitive disorders! You have to be really, really off your rocker to deserve a psychiatric label... or do you?

Well, no. Not anymore.

Psychology is a new science. Oh, sure, we always knew something was different about some people, and the explanations ranged from demon-possession to sainthood, or just being a woman (seriously, the name for "hysteria" comes from an old word for "uterus"); but it hasn't been until recently that psychology was anything approaching a science. Even Freud worked with nothing but case studies. The first working psychiatric drug was Thorazine in 1950--before that, there weren't even any useful medications. Even today, when you read the journal articles that deal with psychology, the writers seem almost desperate to quantify their research; and an entire branch of psychology deals with psychological testing--finding ways to make the evaluation and diagnosis of a patient more concrete, instead of subjective.

We're going through a transition in the field of psychology. Older generations have the idea that being diagnosed with a psychiatric/neurological/cognitive condition means that you must have a severe condition; because in the past, those were all that were diagnosed.

But the new diagnoses, in many cases, aren't severe or obvious. To the older generations, and some members of the younger ones, this must be quite confusing; because if you don't let go of the idea that a person must be a raving lunatic to qualify for a diagnosis at all, then you will be quite surprised to see seemingly ordinary people with diagnostic labels.

The new labels come from three basic categories:
1. New disorders that have only now become recognized as a distinct group.
2. Recategorization from what used to be labeled a moral failing.
3. Less severe versions of things we already knew about.

The newly recognized disorders are easy enough to explain. With people formally studying psychology for a century or so, attempting to categorize and understand the variations of the human mind, it is only natural that many such variations will have been newly categorized. Among these are schizoaffective disorder (a name for what happens when mood disorder gets combined with schizophrenia), PTSD (first identified in veterans), and seasonal affective disorder (recently distinguished from depression for its strong circadian-rhythm conection). Autism is in this category too; it was differentiated from schizophrenia and recognized as a neurological disorder rather than a psychotic disorder. People with these disorders would, in the past, have been known to have "something wrong with them", but no particular name would have been found, and most likely, they wouldn't have seen a psychologist.

Recategorizing what has been thought to be a moral failing in the past, but turned out to be something completely different, caused more problems for the psychology profession. Now they were stepping on people's toes; folks could no longer see the person whom they thought to be annoying, stubborn, or depraved, and look down on him. The problem was, of course, that most of these diagnoses weren't moral failings at all--they were simply explained as such. In this category are things like ADHD, selective mutism (this even used to be called "elective mutism" because it was thought the child chose to be silent), gender identity disorder, and many of the disorders related to sex and sexuality. Borderline, avoidant, and narcissistic, and histrionic personality disorders go into this category, too, and so does premenstrual dysphoric disorder (also known as severe PMS). Even actual moral failings--which psychiatrists recognized as moral failings but insisted on categorizing anyhow--were added to the list, in the form of conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder.

The last group, and the one which seems to cause the most argument, is the group of milder disorders just being described, and milder cases of known disorders being diagnosed. Dysthymia and cyclothemia are long-term, low-level forms of depression and bipolar disorder. Schizotypal and schizoid personality disorders may be (or may not be) mild versions of schizophrenia. Asperger's, of course, is a milder variant of autism.

Many diagnoses have simply been expanded to include not just the cases where they cause near-total disability, but the cases where they cause distress and/or mild to moderate dysfunction. Now you can be diagnosed with OCD even if you aren't closeted in your house and spending all your time counting things; you can be diagnosed if you simply spend a few hours before and after work on your rituals, still managing to raise a family and keep a job but giving up your free time. You don't have to be completely unable to interact with the world to be diagnosed with depression; you just have to be in significant distress, even if you can still push yourself to get through your day.

All three groups, I think, are legitimate reasons to introduce new diagnostic categories. Differentiating disorders from each other, when they fall into distinguishable groups, makes a great deal of sense for the purposes of treatment (I've argued that Autism and Asperger's do not in fact fall into distinguishable groups; there may be others like this, but most of the ones I know about are in fact different and do fall into recognizable groups--autism and schizophrenia, for example, are demonstrably different.) And now that we know more about many diagnostic categories, it's no longer logical to call them moral failings--especially since many people with these diagnoses can be shown to have tried for decades to "overcome" their own "moral failings", with little success until outside help, medication, or a helpful environment are present.

If you can't change it, no matter how hard you try, then it can't be a moral failing--"moral" implies you have a choice. (It is, however, a moral failing to refuse to get help when you know your condition is hurting someone else.) Psychology can help these individuals by teaching new strategies, finding useful medication, or providing useful accommodations. What good is it to simply berate these people for being somehow deficient, if such an approach has never done much good, while helping them learn what they need (organization lessons for an ADHD kid, for example) tends to be at least moderately successful? The only benefit I can see to it is that people like to feel superior to others. The recognition that what most people do easily is difficult or impossible for people with various psychological diagnoses forces a change in perspective; after all, if it's easy for you to organize your desk, but takes your ADHD child six hours and maximal effort to do, can you really look down on him for having a messy desk? Nope. The proper approach is to teach him how to organize a desk. Suddenly, the easy, acceptable target is lost. That upsets some people.

(A word about conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder: I do believe that people diagnosed with these make their choices, and hurt people willingly. They are not excuses for any of their actions. However, they can benefit, if they choose to, from therapy, because there are peripheral issues that can be addressed to allow them to make better decisions: Namely, self-inhibition; decision-making; understanding of consequences.)

The milder disorders seem to cause the most contention because they fly in the face of a stereotype we seem to hold dear: Mental illness is severe. It's obvious. It's rare. And it can't happen to me, because I'm more sensible than that.

It's true that for a long time, we identified only severe mental illness as mental illness at all; and identified only severe cognitive and neurological disorders as disorders. Epilepsy was only diagnosed if you had grand mal seizures; autism was only diagnosed if you couldn't speak; depression was only diagnosed if you couldn't take care of yourself or tried to commit suicide. However, this is an incomplete view of mental illness. Mental illness isn't present or absent, either causing severe distress or not there at all. There are in-between gradations, in which a person has significant difficulty, but doesn't yet need constant supervision. Think of physical illness and disability: There are gradations there, too. The common cold is just as legitimate a medical diagnosis as pneumonia; an incomplete spinal cord injury causing weakness in the legs is just as real as a complete SCI which requires a ventilator and wheelchair. Why should mental, cognitive, and neurological diagnoses be different?

That mental illness must be obvious (or, at least, be dramatically non-obvious until someone snaps and murders someone) is also quite a false stereotype. It does not need to be obvious. Many medical diagnoses are not obvious. Notably, high blood pressure can cause absolutely no symptoms. Diabetes can be silent, in its early stages. Most cancers don't show themselves for quite a while. A person can go about his business quite happily while infected with HIV. The reason we diagnose these problems is that they will eventually cause trouble, if left alone; and so it is with many psychology diagnoses. Learning disabilities will eventually cause a child to fall behind in school. Depression can worsen. It makes sense to do something about these things while they're still small and minimally harmful. (However: It's important to remember that psychological treatments, including the various therapies, are NOT free of risks and side effects, and should be pursued carefully, as any treatment should be.)

The fact is that mental illness is not rare--no more rare, anyway, than physical illness. While you may never have a mental/cognitive/neurological condition that requires intensive support, odds are that you or someone in your family does have, or will in your/their lifetime have, a legitimate psychological diagnosis--a condition that causes significant distress or dysfunction. It probably won't be severe. You may just have a child who needs extra reading lessons thanks to dyslexia; or you may have nightmares and flashbacks after being mugged. You might find that your brain doesn't deal with winter unless you get enough light. You might have problems getting over the baby blues and need an antidepressant. It's about time we stopped ignoring this real human suffering. After all, we don't ignore sprained ankles or high blood pressure just because they're not medical emergencies that require an ambulance and an ICU bed, do we? We shouldn't ignore these less-severe psychological/neurological/cognitive problems, either.

The transition we as a society are going through in regards to psychology is an awkward one: At the same time as the stereotype is still, "Mental illness is severe, obvious, rare, and morally questionable," we're recognizing that psychological, congitive, and neurolgical conditions aren't rare at all. People diagnosed with anything at all immediately get the idea that because they have a psychological diagnosis, it must be stereotypically severe. Because it's not obvious, many people think it must be fake. And because many people still think that these conditions must somehow be your fault, the tendency of a community to support physically ill members, at least to some extent, is nearly or completely absent for those with a psychological diagnosis.

I've heard a lot of jabbering that we should stop diagnosing so much mental illness, and stick labels only on the people who are obviously crazy. But why? People with milder problems do experience distress; and they can benefit from help. That's the definition of a sitution in which a diagnosis is helpful. It doesn't make sense. Instead of going back to a century ago, when only the "really crazy" people got what passed for help, we should make it known that it actually isn't such a rare thing to have a psychological diagnosis. Remove the stigma, and people will be free to think of having a mental illness as a problem like any other--bothersome, painful, but not something that defines your existence and means your life is basically over.

We're just going to have to face it: We're all a little crazy, and we all have the potential to have problems with various kinds of craziness. We shouldn't exclude people who do; we shouldn't deny our own problems. And, for their part, the psychology profession needs to stop taking themselves so seriously, assuming they're the saviors of all the poor crazy people out there. After all, the psychologists are probably a little crazy, too.

A strategy that some people want to take when they try to increase acceptance is to emphasize the similarities between a minority individual and the "norm"; to try to explain to people that, "He's a lot like you. There's no need to reject him for being different because he's not really that different." It works pretty well with racial minorities, and to a degree with minority sexual orientations; and to some extent, it's even true of people with physical disabilities, because with these categories, the primary difference is one of culture and lifestyle, one which most people can understand. But "he's not so different" is a rather misguided approach when you try to use it to encourage acceptance of people with psychological and neurological disabilities.

The fact is that despite having more things in common than not with the average person--after all, we all share the fundamental experience of being human--people with mental disabilities have significant differences from the norm. A person with a mental difference--for example, bipolar disorder--is not just a typical person who also has bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder, or any other cognitive or psychological difference, touches the person's experience of the world; the way he thinks; the way his personality is expressed. In any sense but the metaphysical, a person is his brain, and when the brain is different, the person is different.

If you try to get people to accept a person with this sort of disability, by emphasizing the parts of his life that are very much like most everyone else's, you may end up getting acceptance only of the person who would theoretically exist without the cognitive difference. That's bad enough when it happens with a physical disability (for example, people who treat Deaf folks as though they are just like hearing people, only without one particular sort of sensory input; ignoring the different experience of the world that they have, not to mention their different culture and language). It's even worse when the difference between the disabled fellow and Joe Average is something that touches the way you think, feel, and see the world.

If, for example, you gain acceptance for people with schizophrenia at the cost of getting people to accept schizophrenia itself, all you've done is gotten acceptance for their parallel-universe non-schizophrenic twins; and the best they can hope for is being treated as though they were those twins, with their differences uncomfortably ignored because they're still thought of as foreign and somewhat frightening. When people are judged acceptable because they're "not really so different", the polite thing becomes to ignore the differences. The differet-ness of these individuals become the elephant in the room, stunting relationships and forcing people to try to put on a show, acting as though these very important parts of their own lives and minds didn't exist.

When the cognitive or psychological difference becomes big enough, this sort of "acceptance" totally blocks communication, because the individual with a big enough cognitive difference sees things from such a different angle that he simply can't be understood under the presumption of sameness. Eventually, the charade that "we're all the same, deep down, really," breaks down; and with nothing to replace it, only the glaring differences remain, forcing rejection by people who don't know of any other possible reaction to unreconcilable difference.

It's probably going to be rather difficult to get people to accept these undeniably weird folks, instead of just assuming the differences must be insignificant. Neurotypicals, especially, but also some neurodiverse, are built to try to connect with people; and they do this by relating their own experiences of the world with the experiences of other people. That trick works fine when those differences are subtle; but it breaks down when they're significant. At that point, the predictable becomes the frightening unknown, and all too commonly,the result is rejection, marginalization, and sometimes even outright violence.

People are a lot like numbers... no, really, hear me out.

Look at these numbers:
6
10
15
30

They're different numbers, right? Unique, with all sorts of different properties to them?

OK. Prime factor time.

6=2x3
10=2x5
15=3x5
30=2x3x5

See those factors? They're parts of the numbers. Take the prime factor, set it at right angles to all the other prime factors, and you've got the number.

Those numbers are all made up of the same group of prime factors, and yet they've got different properties and different shapes.

People are a lot like that. You might have the same prime factor as somebody else, but that doesn't mean you're anything like them, because it doesn't predict the other prime factors you might have.

Replace prime factor with psychological trait, personality trait, neurological trait, and maybe you get what I mean.

There are ever so many more composite numbers than primes--infinitely many more. People are composite numbers, by their very nature, with more dimensions to them than anybody can even count. They can't be defined by any one trait any more than 30 can be completely defined by its status as a multiple of 2.

There's one way people are different from numbers, though. 30 will always be 2, 3, 5; but people are forever adding and dropping factors, changing their shapes and their places in the patterns of life.

Humanity has come a long way since we learned to plant crops and domesticate animals. Evidence of disabled people participating in society comes from as far back as ancient Egypt, where they've found adult mummies with what would have been disabilities, prosthetic limbs (cosmetic, not functional, for the most part), and some early wheelchairs. Arguably, Egypt was one of the most successful ancient societies, which is why it was able to support people who could not do everything for themselves.

Our modern society is similarly prosperous. We can afford to be interdependent, because we specialize to produce for people things that they cannot make for themselves. That doesn't just go for people with disabilities. Most likely, you buy your clothing from someone else; you drive a car that someone else manufactured; you send your kids to schools where someone else teaches them. We're a society of specialists, not generalists.

In a society for specialists, where not everyone needs to do the same work for the society to survive, people with disabilities are pretty much at the same level as anyone else. If you use your hands to do your specialized job, it doesn't matter if you can't use your feet. If you use your eyes, it doesn't matter if you can't use your ears. If you use your body, it doesn't matter if your mind isn't efficient. If you use your mind, it doesn't matter that your body doesn't work right. Add a few accommodations, use the strengths, and voila--specialization.

We don't have to be generalists anymore; and because anyone who can do anything can specialize, he can contribute. Doesn't even have to be profitable labor. You contribute just being part of a family or leaving your little legacy to the people you know. There's always mentoring, volunteering, being a part of an organization. You leave your mark whenever you, directly or indirectly, affect the life of another person. Nobody, but nobody, is useless--even if you don't consider people's intrinsic value (though you definitely should). And that's just from the outside in. From the inside out, there are even more factors, totally unrelated to disability, that make a life valuable--happiness, fulfillment, self-determination.

DNA has ceased to be the only thing we pass on to our children. Even in many animal species, parents teach their young; but in the huge, interconnected human society, we don't just teach our young--we collect data that can be accessed by the whole world. Our heritage isn't so much the DNA we pass along, but the information we collect. People who never have children can still have a huge impact on the world by the information they disseminate, whether that's art, science, politics, or even human interactions like marriage, friendship, apprenticeship, mentoring, and social organizations. Every time you teach someone what you know, you're contributing to society just as truly as you would be if you had had a child.

Natural selection isn't as simple as Darwin. It may be obvious that individuals pass down traits, and those traits that don't foster survival will die out with the individuals that carry them; but people forget (as Darwin forgot) that individuals almost always live in groups, rather than competing on their own. Darwin has, for example, no explanation for altruism--no explanation for the dog that dies to save its owner's life. Different species; different DNA; where's the natural-selection benefit for the dog? According to Darwin, none. According to Darwin, interspecies altruism is an evolutionary mistake that comes from confusing another species with your own. Darwin also doesn't have an explanation for homosexuality or asexuality--sexual orientations that should be the worst possible arrangement for reproduction, and die out quickly, but are still around and still very common. Granted, back then he might have filed it away under "crazy people", but there were still old maids and bachelors and clergy back then, and enough of them, and analogues of them having existed throughout all history, that he really should have considered that problem. He didn't. He also doesn't have an explanation for autism (or any neurodiverse arrangement) still existing after all these years.

You could say "recessive trait" and leave it at that, but it's not that simple. We're already pretty sure that autism doesn't have just one bit of DNA that causes it. We know it's multifactorial and polygenic (that is, different bits of DNA can create autism in different people; and those bits are found all over their DNA and not just in one place; and there's probably more than just DNA to it because, although autism is highly heritable, the strength of the autistic traits is not--so the prenatal and perinatal environment probably has an effect too!).

Answer to the dilemma of why traits that don't encourage reprodution are still common: Add sociology. Consider the natural selection of entire societies--family groups, small towns, any little group of individuals that share social customs. They needn't be genetically related (though they usually are) or even of the same species; what's being passed down isn't genetic information (though that's passed down too) but methods, customs, and ideas. Successful societies survive; unsuccessful ones die out, change their customs radically, or are absorbed into other societies. Darwin didn't consider that human beings are a tool-using, information-preserving species, and that's why his theory breaks down when it comes to human society (it breaks down partially with some animal societies, too, but humans are particularly striking).

Societies live because their members live. That's the interconnection to regular natural selection. People who don't reproduce may not be passing on their own DNA, but they're making their societies more successful, especially since the energy they don't spend on children gets spent on something else--inventing something, passing on knowledge, raising other peoples' children, creating resources. And when they make their societies stronger--societies composed of people to whom they are most likely genetically related--they pass on their own genetics indirectly, through relatives. It's beneficial to have non-reproducing members in a society, because that way, when you have children, the children are more likely to survive, and they'll have more and better tools and information that will help them do so.

Return to autism. We know autism and creativity, autism and genius, and autism and mental illness all run in the same families. It hasn't been proven, and I don't know how it could be, but I believe, as many people do, that some of the same genetics that makes autism also makes some very beneficial traits. Autism doesn't make you more likely to reproduce; we all know that. But a society with autism genetics in it is better off than a society without those autism genetics; and it doesn't matter that the people with more of those genes than most people may not reproduce as much.

It makes sense to support non-reproducing members of society. They don't even have to contribute directly. Let's say we've got somebody who's really, really autistic. He can't contribute as much as an asexual neurotypical person (you can never say he contributes nothing)--not directly--but by his very existence he strengthens the society. When a society supports vulnerable members, people become more altruistic. The society becomes more interconnected. If an individual knows that when he becomes vulnerable, others will take care of him, he is more likely to take care of others. That means that the contributions of people with various difficulties that might otherwise compromise their survival are not lost. Those differences can be as small as clumsiness or bad eyesight.

In a society where no one takes care of anyone else, generalists who can do everything for themselves are favored; but because there are only so many resources any given individual can allocate, such generalists, genetically and developmentally, do not have extreme strengths. Whereas, in a society where weaknesses are compensated for by others through a social contract, it is possible to develop an extreme strength. The nerdy cave-man who invented fire probably had other, strength-specialized cave-men to keep the sabre-toothed tigers away from him while he did it. When you know that other people will take care of you if you can't do it yourself, you're encouraged to work on things that benefit your society, without worrying about spending all your energy on protecting yourself, as you would if you knew you could never count on anyone. And in a society where every individual, no matter how vulnerable he is, has his needs fulfilled (including the need for respect), the social contract is strengthened, specialists are encouraged, and new information increases exponentially.

I'm not just talking about autistic specialists here, but about neurodiversity as a whole. The more different types of brain a society can access, the more flexible it is. At the center of it will always be the "neurotypicals"--the average people, who hold the society together and keep it reproducing and communicate between different sorts of brains--but without the strange, specialized, creative, vulnerable neurodiverse population, the society would stagnate.

Back to autism: Yes. This is why there are still autistic people, possibly even more of them now than fifty years ago, after all this time. It was profitable to us, as a species and in our small groups, to keep autistic genetics in our gene pool. It is actually profitable to have vulnerable members in a society, if you have the resources to take care of them. And those vulnerable members give back, in the form of social progress and the encouragement of altruism, a thousand times what you gave them...

Last week, I had an anatomy test. The lab had been rearranged so that the tables were in rows and every seat had a number. Since, as usually happens, I was disorganized that day, I was one of the last people in. And one of the last seats left was #13. Amused, I took the seat and did my test, more fidgety than usual because I was in a very distracting environment (the lab tests can't be done in a private room, which is how I take most of my tests; in this case it was the microscope slides that couldn't be moved; in the future it will be human specimens). Thankfully, lab exams don't include any math. Math is what I get messed up on most easily, since there are so many details to keep in my head all at once, and distractions mean I will probably drop one of them sooner or later.

Thirteen is an interesting number. It's prime, which annoys me; in my head it's a long block of space, one unit by thirteen, which doesn't divide into nice squares at all. I don't have a visceral reaction to primes, though, not like I do with some bumpy surfaces, which can be very uncomfortable to look at. I tried to get an example to post on the blog and my scalp still feels all wrong. (Seriously. Looking at a bumpy surface makes my scalp feel goosebumpy and uncomfortable. Isn't that the weirdest thing ever?)

Apparently, though, this particular prime does trigger some visceral reactions in some people. Seat 13, despite being near the front of the room with a good view of the overhead projector, wasn't taken until long after other, less desirable places had been occupied.

Their reasoning must be... "Well, I know rationally that 13 can't hurt me; but this is a test and I don't know what's coming up and it can't hurt not to sit at #13. So I'll play it safe."

Playing it safe like that is pretty classic supersition. It doesn't hurt you not to step on a crack, doesn't hurt you to get out of the paths of any black felines you may meet, doesn't hurt to walk around a ladder instead of under it (especially if someone working on said ladder doesn't have a good grip on his pail of paint). So... you play it safe.

Of course, playing it safe can go too far. It can turn into checking your door twenty-five times, because you may have made a mistake and left it unlocked, and that can really cut into your evening. It can turn into being so careful to avoid cracks that you can't walk anywhere where there will be cracks, or else stay indoors altogether. It can turn into saying seventy Hail Marys every night, just in case you have sinned unintentionally and angered God.

I am talking, of course, about obsessive-compulsive disorder... which is a lot easier to understand once you realize what superstition is, and how it affects you. OCD, in many cases, is a matter of just never being sure enough that it is not possible to prevent your loved ones from dying by touching a doorway ten times before you walk through it. Oh, you know it's silly--just like people who don't sit at seat #13 know it's silly--but there's something about you that just can't help... doubting.

I still stand by the statement that there is no mental illness that is not a counterpart of some normal human experience, which has been exaggerated and turned into an impediment. I believe this because I have been interested in the human mind for a long time, both the way it is when it works well, and what happens when things go wrong; and it seems to me that there is nothing very alien at all about the people we deride as "crazy". Oh, sure, go ahead and talk disparagingly about the aunt who tried to commit suicide, or the cousin who is home-bound by agoraphobia, or the "misbehaving" child who doesn't speak except at home... but remember all the while that the same tendencies are in your own mind.

How did I do on the anatomy test? .... I got 100%. :)

People aren't like objects; we aren't mass produced, nor is there anything similar enough from one person to another that you can categorize us into anything but the roughest categories. Even "male" and "female" leaves out intersexed and neuter people.

The problem with categorizing people is that if you say, "This group has this characteristic", then you are likely to be making a false statement, because there will probably be some subgroup that does not have the characteristic in question.

For example, "All little kids like to play tag." Well, not every kid likes to play tag; I didn't. And while most kids may enjoy it, the kids who don't like to play tag will be annoyed that you are making assumptions about them that aren't true--and some of the kids who do like it will be annoyed just because you are making assumptions.

Now, let's say you assume something more dangerous: "All autistic people are unemployed." Uh-oh. Suddenly you've stepped over the line from generalization into flat-out prejudice, because obviously, while more autistics are unemployed than non-autistics, there's no way that you can predict whether any given autistic person has a job based on their diagnosis!

People are, unfortunately, inherently unpredictable. You can't put them into categories, except in the roughest possible way, and only then if you realize at all times that there will be exceptions. All you can do is get to know each single person as a category in himself; otherwise, you risk being mistaken about things that could be very important to people.

You've got to make a total paradigm shift... thinking about people is not the same as thinking about facts or things. Each person is not just another human being, yet another example of a species, but a whole world all by himself. You can't put people in categories; they just don't fit.

Unique people strengthen a society.

That's because there are lots of different problems that society faces; and some of them will be easily solved by average people; but some are very difficult unless you are unique. It doesn't even have to do with intelligence; just difference--if you need to drive a nail into a wall, a tape measure won't do; but there's nothing superior about a hammer versus a tape measure, really; you need them both at one time or another.

A society with lots of variation in it has more resources to combat the different problems that face it, like having a big tool box with lots of different tools in it; the more diversity there is in it, the better. A society is stronger and more flexible when it contains diversity of all sorts, including not just neurological but racial, cultural, gender, and age differences too. Even in a purely pragmatic sense, supporting differences between people, and mediating clashes between different groups, is worth it for the benefits that a diverse population brings.

I've been looking at some Web sites for parents of kids, and people with, Down Syndrome.

I've never once seen a mention of a cure.
I've never once seen a parent talk about wanting not to be a parent to their child anymore.
There are self-advocacy groups--people with DS speaking for themselves--actually set up and encouraged by the parent groups.
The sites often make a point to recommend DS folk make their own decisions.
The pictures of the people with DS are always flattering--pictures that catch them smiling, or doing something they enjoy, or hugging their families.
If they acheive only a limited degree of independence, it's seen as an accomplishment and not a failure. For example, "[Person] lives in an 'apartment' in her parents' house."
Without fail, DS groups seem to say, "We love them for who they are. We love their differences."
Without fail, they talk about the person's own interests and hobbies as important, rather than as "behaviors" to be snuffed out.

Why the difference? Why are we photographed lining things up, with our backs to the camera? Why do they so want to cure us? Why are we seen as pathological instead of simply different? Why do they never seem to love our differences?

Down Syndrome advocacy has come a long way, there's no denying that. But autism... Why hasn't autism followed the same path? We are arguably at about the same level of disability, though with a much wider range (from high-functioning to profoundly disabled...).

The one difference I see is in social skills. DS folk may be clumsy socially, but it seems that they develop their social skills further than most other skills--often further than the NT norm. That's normal: When a brain has a weakness, it compensates in another area. And social skills seem to be an area that allows feedback and reward most easily to the brain of a Down Syndrome child--naturally they gravitate towards it, just as anyone with talent in any area often spends more time using that skill.

On the other hand, here we are, with autism: IQs often fifty points higher, but social skills usually fifty points lower. And our brains compensate, too: We learn about those things we love--our special interests--until we become experts on them. Some of us even develop savant skills. Arguably, our strengths are just as useful to us as the strengths developed by people with Down Syndrome.

So why the difference? Why have Down Syndrome people made all this progress with self-advocacy (yes, there is more to be made, but the accomplishments so far are impressive); and people with autism haven't? Maybe DS has had more time; maybe it's because they know what causes DS, and that they can't cure it in the forseeable future.

But I think the biggest cause is that, on average, NTs will listen to the Down Syndrome people, and not to us.

NTs act as though they're wearing metaphorical blinders: They look first at a person's social skills, and judge him by those, before any other criterion. They don't seem able (at least not without training and an open mind) to see more of a person than what he communicates to them. So we're considered "empty shells" (for the low-functioning) and "dangerous loners" (for the high-functioning)... but Down Syndrome people, with the same functioning level and the same level of happiness, are seen as different but essentially human.

Is it our difficulty communicating the fact of our humanity that has so hampered us in obtaining acceptance?

A "scientific" theory I've heard bandied about in the autism community is that high-functioning autism (especially Asperger's) is actually the next step in human evolution--that since we have special abilities (which we often do), this must mean we are better than NTs... I disagree with this idea.

First of all, Asperger's does involve disability, even if some of the special skills/interests involved tend to cancel it out. Put any Aspie in a room with flourescent lights, a lot of people making small talk and wearing heavy perfume, and a droning air-conditioning system, and you will see the disability part of it!

Second, what about the rest of the Spectrum, as well as those whose special abilities do not cancel out their disabilities? Are they evolution's mistakes? And can we really afford to be so clannish as to say, "We're better than everybody else--but you people, who face the same trouble we do but don't have the same skills, are just mistakes"? Not nice. Also, it's just another way of trying to avoid the tag of "disabled", and thereby to make yourself look better... rather than working towards making "disabled" a neutral description of whether or not a person needs help to fit the society around him, which is what we all ought to be doing. I've said it a hundred times: Separating the Spectrum along some arbitrary high/low functioning line can only hurt autistics.

So... Asperger's: Special abilities. Definite advantages, but not the next step in evolution... so what is it? I propose that autism, Asperger's, ADHD, and many neurodiverse conditions which enhance abilities in one area at the expense of other areas, will increase as a function of specialization in the modern era... People no longer have to have general skills. Now that our society is so specialized that one tiny area of skill can be a person's entire profession, neurodiverse people who have those skills are more likely to meet, marry, and produce more neurodiverse children with similar skills--skills that society will, in turn, take advantage of.

I think the human race is slowly splitting up into neurological "races". Just as the different physical races developed when people lived in specific climates and developed certain body types to best take advantage of those climates, different brains are beginning to develop to take advantage of the niches in our specialized society.

All these specialized brains are considered "disabled" because they are not in the normal parameters, because in their areas of weakness they require help to live in typical society... We seem to focus only on the areas of weakness, and because we tend to define "disability" as something horrible, we think it's a bad thing to be specialized unless the other areas of skill are at least at normal levels.

My opinion--no, it isn't a bad thing. In the future, if the disability rights movement succeeds in granting the disabled the right to live and work based on their strengths rather than held back by their weaknesses--as it surely will, just as the civil rights movement did--we may actually have a society composed of people so specialized that the vast majority would, by today's terms, be called "disabled".

Posted for BATT.

OK, for those of you who don't know, Jerry Lewis does a telethon to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy--basically a day-long show with various stars doing acts, during which he shows off a bunch of kids with MD, cries about how pitiful they are, and begs for money.

Most people think he's doing this out of the goodness of his heart. Actually not. He's paid. So are the stars on the show. So are the people who run the corporation--such as the president, who has a six-figure salary.

Most people know that muscular dystrophy is a horrible disease that kills you by the time you're twenty.

That's because that's what Jerry Lewis tells them. Jerry Lewis is wrong.

When Jerry Lewis says "muscular dystrophy", he's actually referring to 40 different diseases--only about a quarter of which shorten the life span at all; many of which are adult-onset diseases (and does he mention this when he shows cute little kids? Nope); some of which do not even require the use of a wheelchair; some of which progress so slowly that the person can easily die of other causes before the muscular dystrophy becomes life-threatening.

Most people with MD are not children, because most people with MD do not die in childhood. They live to be adults, even elderly adults. (One famous example: Stephen Hawking, whose ALS makes him almost as famous as his brilliant theories regarding black holes, quantum physics, and the structure of the universe. And, incidentally, ALS is considered to be one of the worst types out there.)

So basically, what we have here is a guy who uses a bunch of kids (who don't fully represent the disease he's trying to portray) and a bunch of skewed information (that doesn't give the full story) to get money from people, in order to pay a bunch of stars, the people from his own organization, and, oh yeah, some of it goes to the people he's actually saying it'll go to.

You say: Okay, so let's do this differently. Let's say Jerry Lewis gives us the right information, discloses that only 9 cents of every dollar go to the people with MD, and uses poster adults as well as poster kids. Would that make it OK?

Nope. Not remotely. Why?

One word: Pity. As in, the patronizing attitude that makes someone feel oh-so-good to be doing something for "those poor, poor People With Disabilities".

If you don't have a disability, think about it this way.

A disability is something that means you're different from other people. It might mean that you need mechanical assistance, assistance from an aide, medication, or just more guts than most people to live a decent life in a world that doesn't quite fit you.

OK, so let's REALLY stretch that "disability" definition, to these symptoms:
--Stomach pain
--Persistent muscle weakness and tremors
--Irritability
--Decreased cognitive function
--Obsessive thoughts about a single subject

Disability? Not by the current definition. I just described a person who's been too busy to eat all day; and now it's dinnertime.

OK. So let's take our hungry "disabled person"--call him Ted. Ted has a need that, if not met every few hours, will cause him to experience these symptoms. And then, let's transport him to a society where people have developed the ability to photosynthesize from sunlight; chlorophyll in their skin allows them to survive easily just by drinking mineral-rich water, as long as sunlight is available. (Here's where it gets sci-fi. I am a nerd. You have been warned.) So Ted, in his society, is diagnosed with Hunger Disorder and thus falls into the category of "disabled". How does this affect him?

First of all, Ted's disability is visible. Everyone who sees him sees that he has pale skin, rather than the green color of everyone else's. This immediately marks him as a Person With a Disability. In public, people generally ignore him, because they're too uncomfortable around him. They don't know what to say or what to do; they're afraid of being embarrassed. On the other end of the spectrum are the people who are constantly solicitous. They help him up stairs, when he doesn't need it, because they know his disability makes him weak. They patronize him, because they know that when he's hungry, he's cognitively disabled and can't think as well as everyone else. They speak slowly and loudly, because obviously Ted can't hear them over his obsessive thoughts about food unless they speak to him as though he's a child. Their view of his disability clouds their view of him completely, until they see nothing but his disability.

Second, Ted has to find food somewhere. In a society where everyone lives by photosynthesis, food is probably a specialized substance, made by a pharmaceutical company. He has to get a prescription from a doctor; the doctor, who wants Ted to be a good little patient and take his medicine, is generally uninformative, and doesn't give Ted much choice about what his treatment will be. Only if Ted insists, asks questions, makes a pest of himself, and becomes a "problem patient", will the doctor give him the information he desires. And even then, it's assumed that it's just the irritability of hunger talking--if Ted weren't caused by his disability to think the way he thinks, he wouldn't be irritable about not being informed; he'd be a good little patient and take his medicine, because, hey, who wants to be disabled?

So Ted gets his food. It's disgusting, because it was developed by people who don't eat, and don't know what it's like to taste food. They never asked people like Ted, because obviously it is the doctor and the therapists who know what's best for Ted. Were Ted to offer suggestions about changing the way food is made, he would be essentially patted on the head and told, "That's nice; now let the professionals handle their business."

Ted sometimes has to eat in public. When he does, people stare at him. Some people think it's disgusting; and they wish he would just stay at home, indoors, where they won't have to be disturbed by his disability and the thought of his suffering. Increasingly, Ted does so. He eats in private, where no one will see him. He starts wearing green make-up, to try to look more like the people around him. He hides his disability. He chokes down  his food and accepts that this is the best way to live with his hunger.

One day, Ted has a daughter and names her Tabitha. (Never mind how he managed to marry, in a society that thinks disabled folks and romance are mutually exclusive.) She's cute, but her skin is pale, too, just like his. She's hidden away, put in special education, and Ted prays for a cure.

One day, Ted gets a call from a guy named Lewy Jerris. Jerris is holding a big telethon to raise money for kids like Tabitha, and he wants her to be on it. Ted thinks, Hey, this sounds great! She can help raise awareness, and maybe we'll find a cure for Hunger Disorder!

So they go on the telethon. Tabitha gets thirty seconds of air time (and that's more than most, because she's cute). Jerris describes her as a "poor cripple" who might not live to grow up (which is true, if she doesn't eat); he talks about how much of a burden she is to society, how much has to be spent to care for her, and how horrible it is to have to eat. He talks about the horror of her pale skin, and how it imprisons her.

He also talks about his audience. He says that those who give are saintly people who are helping this poor child to survive, that they are paying to help find a cure. He makes them feel good about their charity, about helping someone who is obviously so disadvantaged that she is only half-human. After all, she will never properly feel the sun on her skin, nor know the joy of going anywhere without having to bring food. She will never understand how wonderful it is to look "beautiful" (because, you see, pale skin is an obvious deformity, and thus ugly). Little Tabitha is turned into an object of pity, someone to whom people can give to make themselves feel better about themselves--what kind, generous wonderful people they are, to help someone so disabled! Tabitha should feel grateful and indebted to them!

In their world, Ted and Tabitha are horribly disabled.

In our world, they're normal... or else, in our world, everyone's disabled.

So what's the difference? Well, in our society, most people have the limitation of having to eat. In their society, they don't. Who's defined as "disabled" is more a matter of what society defines as "disabled" than the actual reality of the matter--which is simply a person who happens to be different, who lives in a society that doesn't fit his needs.

Disability isn't near as big a deal as people make it out to be. Everyone has limitations; and a disability is simply a limitation that most people don't have. People are people--with or without those limitations.

Here in our world, we have grocery stores and restaurants. People take care of their "Hunger Disorder" as a matter of course. In fact, they enjoy eating: Making specialized dishes, passing recipes down through generations, adding food to just about any social occasion. That's something Ted and Tabitha will never know because in their society, having to eat is shameful. On the other hand, their ability to stay indoors as much as they want, and never to have to depend on full-spectrum lights during prolonged cloudy weather, is seen as part of their "illness", despite being completely beneficial to them.

We have limitations; we also have abilities others don't have. Just like Ted and Tabitha's green neighbors can never know the joys of eating an ice cream sundae, a neurotypical person will never understand how wonderful it is to immerse yourself completely in a subject of interest. And unless accident or disease interferes, I'll never be able to participate in wheelchair basketball or whiz down the sidewalks of a college campus so fast that (true story!) the Dean himself makes an announcement that wheelchair-using students must keep their speeds below 5 mph!

Disability means that a person has a need. Hunger means that a person has a need. In both cases, the reaction should be: Fill the need, and listen to the customer when he suggests the way we ought to fill it. And, just like we don't see each other as "people with 'hunger disorder'", there's no reason to let somebody's disability become our entire definition of that person. Just as we celebrate our need to eat, many people celebrate their disabilities--and why should we think that odd? A disability is part of our identities; and it's a great thing to know and like yourself for who you are.

We are different; we are human. We are not to be pitied--at least, not unless you also pity yourself for your own limitations.

See also: This post, about pity, and how it can hurt...

Here's an extra credit paper I wrote for my Child Development class, which discusses the effects of culture on my life. My prof liked it so much she gave me two extra points over what she'd promised! Needless to say, this was very encouraging--but what was even more encouraging was her note:

"May I ask a favor? I teach briefly about AS in my classroom. May I have your permission to share some of your insights, explanations, and attitude w/ students to come?... Your message is far too important for our future "professionals" to miss..."

I had been rather frightened about mentioning AS at all, thinking I might end up sounding self-pityish; but eventually I decided to be honest, since the reaction of the culture around me to disability has definitely affected my life--from my mom's idea that AS isn't a disability and shouldn't be diagnosed, to the friends who notify me when I say something stupid, to the people who patronize me when they learn I'm autistic.

But I guess it's been worth it--the chance to, indirectly, tell people that autistic people are just people, and that autism isn't some horrible specter that steals a child's soul, but rather a differently wired brain... well, that makes the "What will she think of me?" feeling in my stomach quite worth it.

( The paper... )

There's no good reason for our culture to expect women to put on uncomfortable clothing, cake goo all over their faces, and act as though they're much less capable than they are. That's just not what being female is all about.

Here's what being female means for me:

Being a girl is about being the glue that holds things together... being the person who notices all the little things the men don't notice... being the person who can work forever, even if she's not strong... the supporter, the generalist who knows a little about everything, the person who can do all the little things that nobody else notices because they're noticing the big things. Being a girl is knowing how to organize things so that they work smoothly, how to predict what the people and things in your circle will do, how to make sure everyone lives up to their potential.

Females are protectors--of friends, of family, of the things they love. Being female means feeling things more deeply, caring less about appearances and status, and working behind the scenes to do all the things that nobody notices, but without which nothing could ever be done.

I'm not sure where that fits on the feminist/conservative scale. Probably somewhere in the middle... Girls are different; but we're meant to be different; and we're not inferior (or superior) to guys. And I'm glad to be one.

I've seen this theory coming from people in the autistic community: We're less prone to violence, more logical, more creative. So we must be superior to the run-of-the-mill human being.

Prejudice aside... "Next step in evolution"? I don't think so. We're just as advanced as the rest of humanity; no more, no less.

But there's no denying that we're different.

We're nowhere near as far away from generic humanity to say we're a different species. What we are is a more specialized form of human.  We still interbreed; we still share a common language; we still love and live with and enjoy the company of NTs.

It's a lot like being a pure-bred dog. You breed a dog to herd sheep; he isn't any better or worse than one you bred to retrieve ducks. And neither of those specialized breeds is any better or worse than a generic mutt with genetics from all over the place, no specialized natural talent, and a lot more flexibility.

We're like the purebred dogs of humanity... We're specialized. We gave up the versatility and toughness of the generic human, in exchange for high level of natural talent in isolated areas. There are more specialized "human breeds" than just Aspie--ADHD, dyslexia, and many forms of learning disability and inborn personality disorders confer both weaknesses and strengths onto the human possessing those genetics.

Like a purebred dog, we're prone to problems based on our specialization. Many dog breeds are associated with medical problems, with temperamental vulnerabilities, or with special needs when it comes to feeding and grooming. We Aspies are like that, too. We have vulnerabilities and medical problems and special needs.

And yet, people still breed dogs; and people who use working dogs use dogs bred for those purposes. Why? Specialization. If you buy a beagle, you can be pretty sure it will have a good nose and a talent for tracking. No such guarantee with a mutt. You just put up with the baying and the difficulty of obedience-training; because you want a beagle, and the benefits don't come without drawbacks.

The world is growing ever more specialized as we grow ever more interconnected. A hundred years ago, people made a lot of the things they needed themselves, and things you ordered from across the country were special. A thousand years ago, self-sufficient communities were the norm. And ten thousand years ago, we were entirely self-sufficient, living in family groups. Today, people are insanely specialized. One person is a part of a global community, providing services to thousands of people and receiving services from just as many. It makes sense to specialize on just one kind of product or service; with so many people in your community, you can afford to become an expert on just one thing because you can depend on others to be experts on other things.

This specialization is essentially creating "human breeds"--just the way that dog breeds are created. People gravitate towards what they're skilled with; and they meet other people skilled with the same things. They marry; they have children; and over the generations, "breed traits" are created and intensified. Aspies are just one such breed, introverted, intellectual, obsessive, logical; we fill the niches that require those traits.

If the world becomes ever more interconnected and the trends in commerce and production which now exist continue to exist, NTs--the adaptable, hardy "mutts" of humankind--may become just one of many subspecies, no longer the majority.
Aspies are here to stay. The world needs us. There are things we can do that others can't; things we're suited for that others aren't. And with the extreme interconnectedness of the world, our weaknesses can be compensated for by the strengths of others, just as we compensate for their weaknesses with our strengths.

It's strange that such a generally asocial population was created by the general interconnectedness of modern life... but I think it's a theory worth testing.