Reports from a Resident Alien

I'm really tired of the "fat" stereotype... so I'm going to apply my favorite thing to it: Math.

People seem to think that being fat means you eat grossly more than most people; fact is, it's simply not true. To gain five pounds in a year, you need to eat 48 calories extra per day. For reference, 48 calories is about half a slice of whole-wheat bread. That half-slice isn't exactly pigging out--it's little things, like a couple of extra potato chips or a whole apple instead of a half. You won't see someone gaining weight at the rate of 5 pounds a year eating appreciably more than someone at a typical weight level. And if you gain 5 pounds a year, and if at age 16 you weigh 110 pounds, then by the time you are 35, you will weigh 205 pounds... a morbidly obese BMI for anyone who was normal weight at 110.

The activity stereotype isn't very good, either. The idea that fat people sit around on their butts and don't do any exercise is pretty common, but the fact is that many fat people do exercise, some even as competitive athletes. There's nothing stopping you from gaining muscle under the fat, nor does extra weight stop you from increasing your endurance. Let's take that 110-pound person again. If they gain five pounds a year, the difference between their activity level and that of a person who gains nothing is the equivalent of taking a single flight of stairs instead of the elevator to a job on the second floor. If those two people eat the same and exercise the same otherwise--whether they run five miles a day or do nothing else--the person who doesn't take the stairs still ends up at the same 205-pound weight at age 35. (Eat 48 calories extra AND skip the flight of stairs, and you end up at a whopping 300 pounds!)

Or, y'know, it could be a natural difference in basal metabolism. 48 calories per day difference between appetite and energy output is not that much of a gap, and yet, it all adds up (see above).

The differences between lifestyles for people who gain weight versus people who don't are tiny differences--not nearly enough to be observable unless you were to look at the less typical case of gaining twenty or more pounds in a single year (at which point the difference amounts to an extra candy bar or a mile of walking per day). You simply can't say that this is a defect of character--not unless you want to assume that anything but perfection is unacceptable!

Of course, the naturally skinny people get it, too. I don't know what it would be like to be really skinny and assumed to be anorexic, but that can't be any easier. If you think about it, that's basically people assuming you are mentally ill when you are not, and that can be extremely annoying. How many times have you guys had people assume AS is a mental illness or been asked whether you are "taking your meds"? It's bad enough to have to deal with if you have a mental illness, let alone if you don't.

You just can't win.

Okay, so, Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder: Made-up malady by women in failed relationships with Asperger's men, apparently disappointed that the man they married is... uh, the man they married. Apparently, if an Asperger's man doesn't tell you every night that he loves you, withdraws when he's overwhelmed, or freaks out over having to listen to that high-pitched sound from the old TV for the fiftieth time, the solution is not to try to figure out how to fix the relationship, or learn how to communicate properly, but to divorce the guy.

(I find it amusing that in the original Cassandra legend, Cassandra got her gift of prophecy cursed so no one would ever believe her. Why? She refused to show affection to Apollo, who'd fallen in love with her beauty and given her that gift in the first place. Someone apparently doesn't know her mythology very well.)

Aspies can be jerks. So can NTs. Marriages work better when people communicate better. Aspie/NT, like any relationship, is not doomed to fail, not made to succeed, and not going to survive without effort. Marriages have a 50% failure rate. Plenty of AS/NT marriages work out just fine. But we know this. We've gone over it a hundred times.

Let's go over the opposite, then: What happens when the autistic individual isn't the abusive partner?

We already know two things: First, autistic individuals tend to be "bully magnets". Not all are; but some definitely tend that way. Second, autistic individuals, by definition, have impaired communication. Recipe for danger: Someone who attracts abusers--and then has trouble figuring out how to tell anyone they are in trouble. Sometimes, doesn't even understand they are in trouble.

I was an autistic bully magnet as a kid. I got it at school; but school was still a refuge for me because the biggest bully actually happened to be my stepfather. My mom got taken in by a charming sociopath. She was really unlucky.

Or.... was she?

See, like me, my mom's probably autistic--or, anyway, has a lot of autistic traits. She's never been diagnosed; but there's a lot about her that just about screams "autism", or at least broader autistic phenotype, to me. My grandma has stories about her having tantrums because her sandwich had been cut the "wrong" way. She has a loud, unmodulated voice. She's socially isolated. She's overwhelmed by sensory stuff like shouting children and detergents. She's fascinated with Messianic Judaism, even though she's not Jewish, and spends just about all her spare time on it. She doesn't understand the point of fiction. She gets tangled in workplace politics because she doesn't understand it.

She's a lot like me.

Well, minus executive function issues, plus dislike of fiction. Plus, thankfully, employability--and a high degree of competence.

So was my mom unlucky... or was she an easy target?

Imagine: You're a single mom. You're trying to deal with two children, one of whom has the worst behavior you have ever seen, even though privately you're trying to make sure that the badly-behaved Older Girl doesn't get labeled with that new fad diagnosis called "Asperger Disorder". You're trying to keep a job, and your co-workers are a lot more socially savvy than you; and then you come home--totally exhausted--and you have to keep a house clean and make sure Older Girl takes showers and brushes her teeth and doesn't smash up the walls.

Your culture says: Children need two parents to grow up well.

You think: My Older Girl hasn't got a proper father. She needs a strong father who can handle her misbehavior properly. She won't listen to me. I'm not strong enough.

You conclude: This family needs a father.

And here comes this man... tall, muscular, charming... romantic. He helps you find a new car after you skidded on a gravel road and flipped the old car upside down--an accident that still has you in nervous knots every time you touch a vehicle. He takes you on walks. He listens to you. He says he'll work so you can stay at home, like a proper mother is supposed to do. And... he says he can handle your badly-behaved Older Girl.

Your life seems like every problem has just been solved. Weeks after you meet him, you marry him. Life is going to be perfect now.

And the nightmare begins.

Autism often means you don't read people very well. You take things at face value, because you expect that other people naturally tell the truth, just like you do. It works out great for relationships--if you love a trustworthy person. If you love a sociopath, you're trapped.

Autistic people often make the perfect victims. In many cases, we don't even know we're victims. My stepfather had my mother so thoroughly deceived that it took years for her to understand that he wasn't in college, didn't have a job, and hadn't actually spent her savings on tuition.

He had her so thoroughly deceived that she mistook abuse for discipline, or believed him when he said that I had simply been so badly-behaved that he couldn't help himself. A man was only human, after all. And he wouldn't do it again. In her mind, I think, she really believed he wouldn't.

My stepfather said that if my mother ever called anyone--or if she ever let me call anyone--then my sister and I would go to foster homes and be raped.

My mother doesn't trust the government--something he encouraged--so she believed him. It was the lesser of two evils to let him stay. Besides, he had said he was sorry. He would never do it again.

I tried to tell people anyway. I told a teacher and a Sunday school teacher. Each time, my stepfather explained that I was just a crazy little drama queen. I was badly behaved, you see. I had tantrums. I was immature.

When he yelled into my ears--he must have known I had hyperacusis; seen me cover my ears at loud sounds--he would tell her that he was only trying to make me listen. When he hit me, he would point out that he hadn't left a mark, even though I had marks from him holding me down and headaches from his yelling. After the first time he bent my glasses, he learned to take them off beforehand, so he wouldn't damage them.

There was no real evidence. Just a harried father trying to subdue his obviously badly-behaved daughter.

My little sister learned to hide. She became a non-entity in the house--always in her room, drawing horses.

I never learned to hide. I insisted on truth; and when I didn't see truth, I pointed it out.

Mommy, the Emperor's got no clothes on. Why is that, Mommy? I thought you said people had to wear clothes. I have to wear clothes. The rules should be the same for everybody. Why hasn't he got any on?

I was never badly damaged. I hurt my wrist once when I fell--I was never the best at keeping my balance; and being shoved while standing on the bottom few steps of a flight of stairs didn't help any. That was the worst of it. Most of it was really very minor.

It isn't the physical, you see. You can get all sorts of physical injuries from playing hockey or something of that sort, and they're not too bad. You put on an ice pack and you wait 'til you can move again and you get back out on the field. I hadn't got any injuries near as bad as what high-school athletes get every day. It's not the physical injuries; those are just incidental. The real point of it is to turn you into nothing--to subsume your personality into an extension of the abuser's will. It's all a mind game--all about making you so afraid that you can't think, so afraid you can only freeze and cower and beg. If he likes, a real expert can torture you without ever touching you.

I found out I would rather be a brat and take whatever I got than lose my identity. I learned that you could be screaming and begging and curled up in a corner, and still in your head be thinking about your next move. I learned that there was a part of you, if you could keep it for yourself, that would not listen to fear. I learned that if you got angry enough, nothing mattered anymore.

I was, you see, a rebellious teenager.

He yelled at my mother, too. I remember hiding in my room with a tape recorder, trying to get proof that my father mistreated my mother. I imagine she was going through her own hell at the same time I was going through mine. My memories don't include a lot of what happened to her; I suppose I was still young enough to be focused exclusively on my own life. I think he hit her a few times, though not as often as me.

When my stepfather deceived my mother, he forced her into becoming a sort of accomplice--made all the worse because she didn't perceive the force he used.

When he deceived her, took advantage of her trust, he took her ability to protect her children from her.

I think that is one of the worst things you can ever do to a woman--especially a woman like my mother, whose whole life revolved around her family.

He got in trouble with the law. I turned in evidence, scared out of my wits but having been well-educated in the matter of living with fear. Probation meant more mind games, less hitting. I left for college. He visited me; he, on the brink of marital collapse, and I struggling to live on my own at least five years too soon. We had a good long conversation, oddly amicable. My mother was causing him stress, he said, trying to change him. She was a manipulative bitch. She wouldn't stop nagging him. She was probably crazy. Actually, that was the problem, really; my mother was crazy. She was obsessed with nutrition and Messianic Judaism and wouldn't let him live his own life. She was controlling. She had to have everything her own way. He was going to leave her.

Then he did leave her.

Slowly, I recovered. My sister, too, after she ran away from home to live with my cousins. My mother... Well, she's too afraid now to marry again. She lives with her boyfriend. He's neurotypical; and he's her husband, really, in all but name; a good man whose physical disability and consequent early retirement give him time to pursue his hobby of refinishing antique furniture. I've seen his work; it's very good, very detailed. It takes patience to work with old wood like that--patience and gentleness. He can't walk very well; I guess, oddly, that reassures me. My littlest sister, the surprise baby born when I was a teen, still at home, can run fast enough to get away from him if she ever has to. I don't think she will have to.

That little girl--the third of us, the one that grew up without abuse--is confident. She's growing up well. She seems happy. I listen to her formal speech and hear her talk about Macintosh computers and how she really doesn't mind not having a lot of friends, and how she's written her first novel. I hear her play the harp, tinny over the long-distance telephone line, with the same musical talent my whole family has--except, appropriately, for my stepfather's tone-deaf attachment to repetitive country songs. I hear her talk about studying philosophy for the first time--she doesn't know she's studying philosophy, but she is--and declaring that she wants to make up her own mind about religion. I caution her: Really make up your own mind. Don't just believe the opposite of what you hear because it's the opposite. Okay, she says. Logic first. Don't just believe what people say. Check things out first. Make sure it makes sense. Listen to both sides.

If you are naturally trusting, it's so very easy to get trapped in an abusive relationship. If you have trouble communicating, it's so very hard to get out. If you have no real social life, you're very easily isolated so the abuse isn't noticed. If you have trouble thinking about the world around you, you may not even know you are being abused at all.

My sister and I survived. My mom survived. We are happy again. Not everyone is so lucky.

The problem of autistic people in abusive relationships is very real. It could be a spouse; it could be a parent; it could be an aide or a teacher or even a co-worker or fellow student. If anything, autistic people do not need to be taught to be more agreeable. We need to be taught to say, "No. This is wrong. This is not fair. Stop. No more."

And we need to be believed when we say it.

I've seen this a hundred times: A kid's got some kind of a diagnosis, and suddenly the parents have this stupid idea in their heads: "Our child is disabled. That means he has to have everything done for him." So they tell him that he's helpless and he's incompetent and he must not try to do anything, and must rather find people to do it for him. They tell him by doing things for him, by not letting him decide things for himself. They tell him by saying, "Oh, you don't have to do that; it's hard," instead of saying, "Oh, that looks hard; let's find a way to do it." They teach him that he's incompetent.

I met an 18 year old girl with CP. She had one weak leg and one weak arm. She was a really good friend and an amazing writer. I met her when she went to college and lived on her own for a year. Then I went home with her for Christmas and I found out her parents were still cutting her food for her and tying her shoelaces, and they had never let her learn to drive, even though there was no reason not to learn (given one-handed controls), and never made her do any chores. Her ten year old sister had more responsibility. Her parents didn't trust her at all, even though she never did anything dangerous or impulsive.

When she had problems keeping up with schoolwork, and when her parents found she couldn't keep her dorm room clean, they made her come back home. Then they made her live in a group home. She could have been a writer; a really good one. But her parents taught her she was incompetent. I don't know if she'll ever get out of the system.

Parents like that make me really angry. I don't care how disabled your child is. Treating him like he can't do anything for himself, over-protecting, doing things for him, is not going to help him reach his potential. I understand that someone with a disability may benefit from staying at home longer; but doing it like that, directionless, with no plans for the future and no purposeful way to spend your time, is just asking to have your kid feel as useless as you act like he is.

There's lots of arguing about whether Bill Gates, Thomas Jefferson, Einstein, etc., were/are autistic... Some people are trying to prove they were; some, that they weren't. This isn't exactly about that, but about what we read into the idea that famous and/or successful people are autistic.

There's this fallacy that keeps on popping up: "Einstein was autistic; so that means because I'm autistic too, my autism shouldn't be a setback and I should accomplish great things." Not so fast! You can't transfer every characteristic of one member of a group to every other member; that's poor logic. It's like saying, "My cat is black; therefore every cat is black." Einstein's autism, or lack thereof, says nothing about your autism, or your other talents.

Einstein was probably autistic; but he was also highly intelligent, creative, and had a great amount of persistence. Most people don't have that degree of mental agility, or the willpower to use it to the degree that Einstein did. He might still have made those contributions to physics if he were NT; we don't know. He might have done it a different way--gathered a group of like minds and bounced the ideas around until they made sense, maybe. Or he might have used those talents in a different way.

But you can't swing to the opposite, either: "Some autistic people never accomplish anything; so that means I won't either." Some NTs don't accomplish anything, either. Some NTs become world leaders and CEOs, but not every NT should expect to become one of those. And what's your definition of "accomplish anything", anyway? Do you have to have a Nobel Prize to have had a worthwhile life? Do you have to have a Ph.D.? Even a steady job? Not really. Not everyone.

Then some people say that people like Einstein and Thomas Jefferson aren't autistic... it always seems to smell of the implied reasoning that "These famous people weren't/aren't autistic, therefore autistic people aren't capable of the things that they did". They may or may not have been autistic (though I think they probably were/are); but even if you were to prove they are not autistic, that still wouldn't say anything about autistic people in general.

The chances of an autistic person achieving something are less than an NT achieving the same thing just because the NTs greatly outnumber us. Most autistic people will never be Bill Gates or Einstein. Neither will most NTs. Of course, that doesn't mean a few of us won't accomplish great things; it's just that neurology doesn't predict that we will or won't. (There's something to be said for the tendency of neurodiverse people to have original ideas; but original ideas are not enough without the ability to put them into practice.)

Autism plus high intelligence, good pattern-matching, or creativity can often mean you compensate a great deal for the autistic traits; or else you mentally brute-force things that NTs do by instinct and learn them that way. (Did anybody else memorize an idiom dictionary as a kid? Worked for me.) So in the cases where people are capable of being the best in some field, their autistic traits might simply not be as obvious--especially if they're trying to hide them!

I should mention, for the record, that you can't officially diagnose somebody long-distance like people have done with Jefferson or Einstein. You can only make an educated guess. If you can interview family members and read the diary of the person in question, your guess might have a pretty small margin of error; but it'll never be as small a margin as if you had conducted a proper interview with the person himself. So I guess questions like "Was Einstein autistic?" can never have certain answers, though I'm just about as certain about him as you can be about any historical figure.

We're just human. Just like NTs are different from each other (no, really, they are), autistics are different--very different--from each other. What any given autistic person accomplishes says nothing about what you will accomplish. We don't make the argument that "Many world leaders are NT; so that means every NT is cut out to be a world leader," do we? Most NTs would go nuts trying to run a country! Neither should an autistic person try to become Einstein. Don't be a stereotype, even if it's a positive stereotype; be yourself.

It seems like I see a lot of people with a diagnosis blaming everything that's bad about their lives on that diagnosis--why people treat them badly, why they don't have a romantic relationship, why their parents want them to be different, why aren't happy. This might seem OK at first, because that means you don't have to blame yourself; but it also means you feel more and more pity and helplessness--not good things to get trapped in. (And beware when parents blame everything on their child's autism. Therefrom come biomed addicts.)

But blaming either yourself or autism gets you nowhere. The only reason you should be looking at the cause of a problem is to get the information that leads you to the solution. Otherwise, asking "why" is wasted time.

The idea that 'autism is bad' can really ruin your life. It means you start to think, "I'm trapped; I can't help this; I don't know how to do this," and the only way out is the cultural idea, "Overcome your disability". There's no middle road left--either you "overcome" or it's a tragedy. But happiness and autism aren't mutually exclusive--in fact, I am quite certain that, were you to do a survey on the subject, it would turn out that we are happy at the same rate as NTs.

When you have a problem, don't blame it on autism and assume you have to solve your autism or the problem will never go away. Look at the problem on its own terms, from all angles. Get creative. Get help, if you need it. You might even learn that some autistic trait or other is actually the solution to the problem.

You don't need to be neurotypical to be happy. You don't have to be "high-functioning", nor have some special skill that you only have because you're autistic. Autism doesn't even have to give you any advantage at all. You don't have to justify your existence to the world: "Yeah, I'm autistic, but look at what I can do!" No. Much as certain autism "charities" would like you to think so, the value of your life is not based on whether you'll ever have a highly-paid job, a girlfriend, or the ability to speak. Nor is it based on how little you "cost" society. Forget all that. Forget what you're "supposed" to be and focus on who you are.

A while ago I decided, "Well, Jenny McCarthy's book may be horrible; but  I really don't have the right to say that if I haven't read it."

So I checked the book out at the library.

I read the book.

It's not as bad as they say.

It's worse.

McCarthy's son, Evan, is three years old. We first meet him in the middle of his first big seizure. For the first third of the book, we are left to assume that he had the seizure after a vaccination and that this is what caused his autism. Reading the second third makes it evident that Evan was autistic all along, and his epilepsy merely caused a regression. He also has allergies and an inefficient digestive system, and he catches every bug that comes along.

The mother herself is... well, I can't diagnose someone just from having read her book, but I would say borderline personality disorder. Every time she talks about someone in the book, they are either a villain or a saint. The neurologist is "brain-dead". Her husband is an idiot who doesn't want Evan to be "fixed". (Yeah, she says 'fixed'. Not even cured or recovered. Is it just me, or does "fixed" sound even more offensive to you?) Her DAN! doctor is a saint. So are the therapists. Her emotions are either way up or way down. She yells at the doctors. She's constantly either crying or jubilant, depending on whether Evan is flapping his hands or saying "mommy". If she's not feeling perfect, her husband doesn't get any sex. (Really, does she have to write about that?) She's black-and-white on Evan, too. Before his diagnosis, her child is perfect--intelligent and patient and kind and loving. Afterwards, he's trapped within his autism, it's a horrible tragedy, and she's trying to pull him out through some kind of metaphorical window. I got the idea that she basically wants Evan to be "her child", rather than to be Evan.

Evan's case of autism is fairly typical, probably combined with something like irritable bowel syndrome. (I don't actually think the GF/CF diet was a bad idea. It's easier on his system. But it's got very little to do with autism.) An objective observer would probably see that Evan was autistic all along, regressed due to seizures, and progressed again once they were under control and he was more easily able to digest his food. I would agree with the objective observer, except I'm not objective--I'm horrified and angry and I keep on asking myself, "Is this really the way the world sees us?"

They make full use of the cancer comparison. Autism, of course, is worse than cancer because people don't bring you food when your child gets diagnosed.

It's funny how much difference a diagnosis makes. She loves him and his autistic traits beforehand. Afterwards, she hates autism, is determined to fix him (what, is she looking for autism doctors under "Repairmen"?), and is willing to torture him (yeah, she said 'torture') to get him better. (The torture in question involved not opening his playroom door until he said "open", even though he plainly communicated his desire to have her open it. It resulted in the kid's being trapped in front of that door for quite a while. His therapy is pretty barbaric, too; she describes him screaming through most of it.)

Apparently, he didn't have a lot of tantrums before the diagnosis, either. Believe it or not, autistic kids do know what their moms think of them. And most of them object to having their every waking moment controlled by adults who insist that they must act one particular way and no other.

After I read that, I had a tantrum of my own.

I will have to pay the library $26.75 for a book that has been destroyed... It's worth it.

For those of you who don't know, Redbook is a magazine aimed at women in their twenties and thirties. Most of the articles have to do with the typical women's-magazine things--weight loss, sex, fashion, boyfriends, husbands, and occasionally "serious topics" like breast cancer or sexual harassment. This is the group of women who are at exactly the right age to have a child newly diagnosed with autism.

They've just finished a three-installment series on autism, and I'm afraid my blood pressure may never be the same. The articles are emotional, packed with buzzwords, and give absolutely no insight into what the autistic child, a two-year-old named Ryan, might be thinking and feeling about the whole matter. The impression I got is that the article treats Ryan more like an object than like a person; his progress seems to be attributed entirely to his therapy and treatment, rather than the fact that learning is what two-year-old children do.

Losing My Little Boy
We are introduced to Ryan, who has the "terrifying diagnosis" of autism: he is "slipping away from" his mother Nicole, who is worried that he will never "tell her, 'I love you'" and seems to mourn not being "a normal mother". Nicole puts together a plan to treat Ryan, including biomedical, behavioral, and sensory-integration therapies. Every waking minute of his life is scheduled for one therapy or another, but Nicole is "still certain she's not doing enough".

What Autism Does to a Mother
This segment focuses on how Ryan's autism affects his mother Nicole. She feels isolated, unable to talk about her child to other young moms; and the other moms seem to be avoiding her because they don't know what to say. She cancels his playgroup because she doesn't want him to be judged for his behavior. When Ryan screams during his first occupational therapy sessions, she turns to Jenny McCarthy's book, which gives her hope that Ryan may recover. She meets with a DAN! doctor, puts Ryan on a GFCF diet, and believes that the diet is responsible for Ryan's showing her a toy three weeks later. Ryan begins progressing, learning new words and smiling on cue. Nicole organizes an Autism Walk.

“We Need to Pull Ryan into This World”
Ryan has made more progress. Nicole is overcome when he calls her Mommy. She still has trouble redirecting his stimming, and is heartbroken when he rejects hugs. She gives him regular B12 injections. Nicole resolves, "I need to pull Ryan into this world, and not let him stay in his other world". She refuses to take him out of a store when he has a meltdown; it takes "countless" such occurrences before he can tolerate a 45-minute shopping trip. She gets Ryan into a playgroup with typical children but still feels like an outsider. Nicole decides on the Lovaas method of intensive ABA for Ryan, 40 hours a week. Ryan has his third birthday party.

I wrote a letter to the editor. It will likely not be published. I ask anyone who has a subscription to Redbook to cancel it and tell them why.

It has also been suggested that we ought to write letters to the advertisers who publish ads in the magazine; they probably provide most of their income.

Here's my letter; the address to write to is either the address you see in the letter or else e-mail at redbook@hearst.com.

Redbook Magazine Editorial Offices 300 West 57th St. 22nd Fl. New York, NY 10019 Dear Editor: I am a 25-year-old autistic woman. I have closely followed your series on autism; and, to be honest, I was disappointed. People are afraid of what they do not understand, and the way autism is portrayed worsens the panic. The isolation Nicole felt was a product of this fear, of the idea that autism is something foreign and mysterious and horrifying. Autistic people and their families are isolated much more by fear than we ever were by autism. The article seems to say that autism has only two possible outcomes: A cure, or a tragedy. This is not true. I am autistic, and I am happy. I contribute to society. I have always loved my family, even when I wasn't good at saying it. Autism is a part of my personality; without it, I would not be myself. We do not need to be "saved from autism"; we need what every other person needs--a chance to learn. Teach us to communicate; teach us to interact; but above all, accept us and our differences. Yes, we think differently; we act differently; but they are differences that anyone can understand if they just take the time to listen to us. Fundamentally, we are simply human, like anyone else. Sincerely, (name)

Regarding writing Letters to the Editor:
1. Keep it short--a few paragraphs. Mine is just pushing the limit. If you can't fit it on one page with room to spare, you're ranting.
2. Don't bring up more than one main subject.
3. Stay polite; if you use profanity or insults, they make it seem like you can't make a point without them.
4. Don't use jargon; remember that your readers are not biologists, geneticists, psychologists, or doctors.

If you have trouble writing letters, here are some ideas:

• What is the biggest incorrect assumption they make about autism? (There are many, actually. Pick one.)
  
• What impact would the articles have on a mother with a newly diagnosed child? On a child who just found out about his diagnosis?
• Ryan is only two years old. Autism changes as you grow up. Focusing intensely only on a young child may make the reader assume that autistic people will always be the way they were at two unless someone intervenes.
  
• The articles didn't address the prevalence of dangerous, ineffective, and expensive alternative medicine treatments for autism--despite that the child in the articles had many such treatments.
• Challenge the idea that autistic people don't love others (or don't see that others exist).
• Talk about an autistic person you know (or talk about yourself); give a realistic picture rather than the alarmist viewpoint.
  
• Challenge the idea that an autistic person must either be cured, or he will have a hard, lonely, possibly useless life.
• Present the idea that autistic people and their families are isolated by prejudice, not truly by autism.

Use the e-mail address if you can't afford a stamp... Paper letters seem to be more impressive, though.

Oh, and if you have a blog and have comments on the article, spread the word and ask your readers to write letters as well.

Genius doesn't make you better. It only means you have a skill that's above average.

Disability doesn't make you worse. It only means you have a skill that's below average.

Neither genius nor disability changes your worth as a human being.

Autism is a neutral trait--a characteristic of a person just like (but affecting more of one's life than) being blue-eyed, female, left-brained, gifted, fat, Christian, German. Et cetera.

Self-esteem includes accepting yourself for who you are, and being proud of who you are.

It's good to be proud of any of your traits, including being autistic. Both benefits and drawbacks help define you; they are what make you unique.

When you are open about and express acceptance of your own autism, you employ the most powerful known technique to promote acceptance of a minority: A personal experience with someone from the minority group. Thus, autism pride helps not only you but others.

It's unrealistic to claim that being autistic makes you better than anybody else--because no matter how many positive autistic traits you have, they do not make you intrinsically more valuable than the most disabled autistic person with the most negative autistic traits.

Autism pride is a matter of identity, not superiority.

There's a big gap between Aspie and NT; and there have arisen two different cultures which naturally seem to oppose each other.

In the past, NTs have seen people on the autism spectrum as inferior, retarded, or weird: At best, we're eccentric geniuses; at worst, we're almost nonhuman. As a result, the low-functioning have been subjected to unneccessary drugs, restraints, and behavior "therapy" little better than dog-training for humans; while the high-functioning have "only" been bullied, abused, and ridiculed by their peers and even those in authority--especially during childhood. And, in the future, those of us found to be autistic before birth may simply be aborted.

Our communication difficulties don't account for even half of the problems we have with communicating with NTs. We also have to deal with prejudice (theirs and, sadly, our own), fear, and the expectations that we must think exactly like every other (NT) person out there; and if we don't, we're frightening enigmas who must somehow be mentally deficient. When we are accepted, we're often accepted only for our skills, or accepted by people who want to "fix" us: We become people's projects, befriended out of pity.

As the autism spectrum comes together in an Internet subculture, an interesting phenomenon is taking place. Anyone who can type, including those who are nonverbal, can join this community. And, strangely enough for people whose brains are not strongly wired to communicate or to connect with others, autistic people are beginning to feel that they are part of a group--a very diverse group, to be sure; but a group, nonetheless.

And with this group identity comes a sense of "us versus them"--and, inevitably for imperfect people, reverse prejudice.

To put it simply, many people on the autism spectrum, especially those who have been subject to abuse of one sort or another, are prejudiced against neurotypical people.

Why is that?

While we have met a lot of NTs, most NTs have met only one or two people with high-functioning autism, and likely none at all with low-functioning autism. What's more, most don't know the first thing about AS/autism. They have these stereotypes of someone "stuck in their own little world", rocking and staring into space and doing amazing feats of memorization and mental math. For an NT, that stereotype seems to be enough: Autism isn't a big part of his life. But for those Aspies with whom he comes in contact, it's a big problem.

NTs don't usually connect AS/HFA with the shy, greasy-haired girl who's obsessed with cats, or the loud, obnoxious kid who doesn't know when to shut up about nuclear power plants, or the guy who can do anything with a computer but still doesn't know you're not "supposed" to carry around scientific calculators in your shirt pocket. They just classify those people as "nerdy" or "weird" or "retarded"; and once those people are in those categories they, at best, ignore them. And yet, this is what AS/HFA is.

Befriending someone who is different--especially in a distasteful way--means risking a lot. Social reputation can diminish. Embarrassment may result. Other relationships may be endangered.

Yes, growing up Aspie is hard. We all know that. But being an NT isn't all that great, either: If, as an NT, you befriend someone who is "weird" and unpopular, you risk a lot of trouble from others.

The biggest problem is that, often, the most ruthless and unprincipled NTs rise to the top. Every time I look at these people, they're gossiping about each other and clawing their way past other people to get up the social ladder, and they're stabbing each other in the back for no particular reason other than the other person is a social impediment... Half the time, their own social plots get so convoluted that they don't know who their real friends are; and they end up marrying people they don't even like just because of their hormones! Not to mention they're so society-driven that they'll get caught up in crime and drugs and who knows what else just to "look good".

Those NTs who escape these problems are called extraordinary simply because they are willing to risk themselves to reach out to others, to put others first. And those extraordinary people are the ones who can change the world.

That's because there's a good side to being an NT, too. To know what others are thinking, to be a part of something larger than yourself, to be able to work together to accomplish more than you could do on your own: These are NT strengths.

What's needed here is to educate the NTs. We already know lots about them; and the only thing we really have to work past is that tendency towards reverse prejudice that keeps us from trying to communicate. The problem is that they don't know much at all about us. Once they know what to expect, and can replace those stereotypes with "Oh, s/he's just an Aspie"... then the fear of the unknown, the revulsion they feel when they meet with the unpredictable, can be greatly reduced.

My friends--few, but extraordinary--did this exact thing for me: They saw me, said, "Oh, she's just weird", and accepted me that way--no strings attached, no expectations of change, no pity. I like to think that both I and my friends have been enriched by this bridge across the neurological gap. I know that this is so for me.

To educate NTs about autism--the true autism, not the stereotype--would do a great deal towards communication. NTs are often afraid of what they don't understand; and they don't understand Aspies. So, to tell themselves that they do understand, and thus to eliminate the insecurity, they have these labels. Almost all the terms used are derogatory; and many of them ("nerd", for example) denote a position on the fringes of society. To protect themselves, NTs eject any who are different (and thus incomprehensible) from their social network.

Aspies have labels, too--my use of the word "neurotypical" proves that. We must take care that the label does not become derogatory, that it does not lump every NT into a stereotypical definition that contains only some of their diverse features, or, even worse, a prejudicial definition that contains only their worst attributes.

What must be done now is to educate the general public, to make autism comprehensible.

Look at Down Syndrome. Almost everyone knows about that. Sure, there's still prejudice; but the mental picture most people have of someone with Down Syndrome is pretty decent--somebody who's slow and doesn't get it sometimes, but still someone who is basically human and a lot like any other human--feelings and dreams just like anyone. People are just barely beginning to accept people with Down Syndrome into society, because they're starting to realize there's nothing very frightening about them. That comes about because now, they understand the differences; and those differences have settled into a predictable definition that their NT minds can work with. There's a long way to go there, a lot of stereotype still to break down (for example, the idea that these people are "always happy"); but it's beginning.

If that can be done with autism... if NTs can be given a true, non-derogatory mental definition of someone on the spectrum... Well, once they know what to expect, they may be able to categorize us in the right "box". And once they know what to expect, a lot of the anger, fear, and outright hostility may start to fade.

We Aspies must be careful to remain open to such a connection, to reach out to it when it is extended to us. And that means getting rid of prejudice against NTs. No matter how many times you have been hurt by a member of that group, you cannot judge the rest of the group to be like him, especially when it is a group as diverse as NTs are.

Aspies, by themselves, are generally experts in their small fields; but it takes NTs to tie all those little fields together. If either side is prejudiced, the system suffers.

Aspies are meant to be here; God means us to be here; we are not mistakes. The world needs us--our sharp focus, our logical minds. And the world needs the connections and interdependence NTs create.

If Aspie and NT worked together, they could do incredible things.

Beware prejudice.

POP Report 8 December 14, 2006 Didn't do much today, only some mending. I did get up 8 hours after I went to sleep, which was a good thing, except I went to sleep at 5 a.m. I'm hoping to get to sleep at 2:30 today. Didn't use the day planner at all, mostly because I spent the day doing just two different things--mending and playing a computer game. I'm done with the mending now, though. I need more "weekly tasks" and "daily tasks". Doing things regularly helps to create order. Tomorrow I shall incorporate exercise into my schedule--dog-walking, if Mercy, her owner, and the weather allow. Devotions, which I've become frighteningly lax about, are next.

There are cat people, and there are dog people; and they seem to fight just like the cats and dogs they love. And then there are people like me, who over-analyze the whole situation for their blogs.

People anthropomorphize their pets--that is, they see in their pets their own human nature. It's all part of having a "Theory of Mind"--assuming that other people are basically like us, basically have the same motivations for their actions, basically look at the world just like we do. That "theory of mind" works out just fine when applied to people who are more or less like you--but it doesn't work so well when you apply it to people who are very different from you (like a different culture, or a different neurological arrangement). And it hardly works at all when you apply it to animals.

I can put myself in someone else's shoes, think about what they must be thinking; but for me, Asperger Syndrome made the process of obtaining such a "theory of mind" more difficult, less intuitive. My theory of mind is more abstract, more intellectual, more learned. It is, in fact, something which I revise for every person I meet.

What other people learn to do easily while they're children--that is, group people into a mental "set" and know what to expect of them because they expect them to be like themselves--I never learned to do. So, when I relate to someone else, I assume they are themselves, different from me, and that there are many factors that must be taken into account before I can understand them. It is an arduous process; but, while slower and resulting in some socially unpalatable actions, it is less likely to make incorrect assumptions than the typical approach taken by an NT. It is also why social relationships are hard for me: To do what an NT does easily, I would have to know a person so intimately that the contact is almost threatening. I have to process consciously what is intuitive for everyone else.

So, back to cats and dogs.

When an NT--most of the people in the world--meets an animal, his "theory of mind" immediately kicks in. He sees that animal in the same way that he sees just about any other creature; he interprets its actions the same way he interprets human actions. The only difference between the way he sees animal and human is that he sees the animal through the lens of a stereotype--the assumptions he has made about its species, which he then applies to the animal and uses in interpreting its actions.

(Not all NTs see animals like this, of course, especially those who work closely with animals and their behavior, or who study animal behavior. I'm describing the usual, average reaction.)

But when a person like me--an Aspie or autistic--meets an animal, we don't have a set "theory of mind" to apply to that animal. For the most part (Aspies are, of course, individuals, and some differ) we do not assume that the animal's motivations are the same as our human ones; we do not have a schema into which to put that animal's actions. We simply take the actions as facts, without expectations.

This lack of expectations, rather than hindering us as it does when we interact with people, now actually helps us relate to animals. Humans are not hard-wired to relate to animals; but we are hard-wired to relate to each other. When you get a human who's not hard-wired to relate to anyone--i.e., an Aspie--you get a human who has learned to interact with individuals he's not hard-wired to interact with; and those individuals include animals. Aspies aren't any more wired to interact with animals than NTs are; but we've had to learn to interact despite the lack of such wiring--something most NTs haven't needed to learn.

Here's how cat and dog lovers see cats and dogs. Notice the connotations and anthropomorphic language.

A cat lover says cats are...	But a dog lover says they're...	A dog lover says dogs are...	But a cat lover says they're...
Independent	Aloof	Loyal	Dependent
Playful	Destructive	Playful	Rowdy
Serene	Lazy	Active	Hyper
Intelligent, because they learn to do things independently	Diabolical--they figure out how to do things to annoy you	Intelligent, because they learn to do tricks	Stupidly following every order they get
Instinctive hunters	Cruel to small animals	Fascinated by how things smell	Just sticking their noses into disgusting things
Fastidiously clean	Vain	Enthusiastic	Destructive
Never smell bad	Litter boxes smell up the house	Don't mind playing in the dirt	Will roll in anything smelly they can find

What you see in that table is that so very many of those things are character judgments people usually make about each other: Vain, enthusiastic, stupid, dependent, loyal, lazy. When people look at their favored animals, they project human characteristics onto them--and give those characteristics positive connotations. And when people look at animals they don't like, they project negative human characteristics onto them.

Dogs and cats are very different. They're both companion animals; they're both mammals; but that's just about all they have in common. It's very easy, if you do not look at them as the animals they are and instead project human motives onto them, to see one of them in a very positive way, and the other in a very negative way.

It seems hard for most people to see that things may be just different--not better, not worse; just different. But that's what cats and dogs are: Just different.

When you look at cats as cats, and dogs as dogs, you see that you cannot judge a cat by dog standards, nor a dog by cat standards, nor either by human standards. They are what they are.

A cat is a solitary hunter. It does not have many social relationships beyond kitten-raising (which only the mother participates in); when social relationships between cats do emerge, they are usually between mother and grown kittens, or in a household where all needs are met and the cats have leisure time to engage in those relationships. A cat does not need social relationships to survive and be relatively happy; so, when a cat chooses to be with a human, it is because he likes that human and sees benefit in the relationship--food, physical comfort, mutual grooming. A cat is also very territory-based: Instead of being attached primarily to the other cats in his area, he is attached to his own territory. Constancy and predictability in his environment are important to him.

But a dog is different. Dogs are pack animals; the pack gives them all their needs. They are wired to know their places in the pack: Alpha male, alpha female, et cetera. A dog's sense of security comes from his relationships: He knows where he is in the pack, and he can depend on his pack-mates.  When you live with a dog, you are his alpha (or, at least, you should be his alpha--many behavior problems come from dominant dogs). He will attach himself to you, depend on you, whether or not you treat him well--but if you treat him well and keep a consistent set of laws, he will love you, because security, for a dog, comes from knowing his place and being able to predict those around him. Submissive dogs, unlike submissive humans, are happy dogs.

Cats don't need other cats; but once their needs are met, they will reach out. Dogs are made to work in a pack, as a team; but their happiness depends on the consistency and kindness with which that pack operates. A cat obtains food by his own skill; a dog obtains food by cooperation with others. Cats must be silent while they hunt; dogs use noise to communicate and to chase prey to hidden packmates. For cats, territory is everything; for dogs, pack is everything. Cats work for food because food is what directly motivates them; dogs work for praise because approval from the other dogs in the pack is vital to them. Without a pack, a dog cannot easily survive; without other cats, a cat can survive just fine.

All those differences, and hardly a similarity. To understand either species, you must see the animal on its own terms--indeed, you must see each member of each species as a separate individual; dogs and cats have individual personalities at least as distinct as those humans have.

When I was nine years old and had my first cat, a little female named Tiger, I knew very little about cats. But as I observed Tiger, interacted with her, and began to read what she was saying, I began to understand her. Tiger taught me how to speak Cat--how to see in a cat's tail, whiskers, ears, and posture, what a cat was feeling and communicating. Each cat is different--speaks its own dialect--but as I learn more about cats, I am slowly forming a "theory of the feline mind". And, by learning how each cat deviates from that picture, I understand each new cat much more quickly.

So, despite liking both cats and dogs, I consider myself a "cat person" because I understand cats more than I understand dogs; thus I prefer to spend time with cats. I am more like a cat than most human beings, because, like cats and unlike dogs, I do not depend on a social structure for happiness. But cats are indiviuals; and I have loved some individuals of the species, while only tolerating others.

Now I am living with three roommates, and each of those roommates has a dog; so I am learning to speak Dog, just as I learned to speak Cat from little Tiger, so long ago. So I may soon be able to report that I am part of that rare kind of human being: A cat and dog lover.