tw: victim blaming
My…adventures in often falling on the wrong side of the who to fear divide when profiling who is dangerous and scary and going to commit a senseless act of violence.
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Yet another mass killing. Yet another tragedy. It is terrible. It is horrible. It is wrong.
People are scared.
People are looking for a group to be scared of.
Ladies, gentlemen, other august personages, I am the monster you are afraid of. For my entire life I have been. The reasoning changes, but I always come down on the wrong side of the line. I am always who the media, the talking heads, the papers, now the blogs, who the people you listen to tell me to fear.
And this makes being me terrifying. It makes being me unsafe.
First,
it was being an abused child from what they call a broken home. Abused children commit all sorts of violence, you see. We are dangerous and unpredictable because we grew up with violence and that is all we know. We are ticking time bombs, we have no empathy, our dysfunctional unstable home lives have made us fragile at best, cold blooded killers at worst.
So isolate us. Keep your children away from us. Warn every one that we are dangerous because of what our families are like. Make sure that everyone knows that we-not our abusers, but we-are the scariest thing on the block.
Do you remember all the news reports and such emphasizing the terribility of home lives of serial killers and mass murderers during these time periods? I do. I do in great detail-because I remember relating. And I remember staying up nights horrified that they were a glimpse into the only future open to me. I was 9 years old and scared shitless that my only career option was as a mass killer-because the media had everyone convinced that’s what happens to children with childhoods like mine.
And because the other adults around me made it very clear that I was the scariest thing on the block.
I was isolated. I was alone.
Then that went out of vogue.
For about 10 minutes I was safe.
Then another terrible tragedy happened, and they found a new scapegoat, and I was in an even more precarious position than before: the new problem was children and teens who were bullied.
I have been able to write about my parents. I have not been able to write about the bullying I experienced without being too triggered to function. It was that bad. Again, I was dangerous.
Again, people were telling their nice, ‘normal’ children to stay away from the bullied children. Isolating us-making us further targets. And making us more alone. Warning everyone that we were dangerous, the scariest thing on the block again-this time I was scary not just because of my family, but because I got locked into lockers by my peers. We are dangerous and unpredictable because we didn’t have the skills and characteristics to not be at the bottom of the pecking order of middle school.
So obviously the answer was to isolate us more lest we ‘snap’, to fear us and let bullies to their thing, rather than to do anything about bullying. We are damaged, terrifying, violent, dangerous, irredeemable. We are the middle school monsters of your nightmares.
Again, I was the middle school monsters of my own nightmares, too. Literal nightmares, I’m talking. Still everything around me was telling me that because of things outside my control I was destined to go out in a blaze of violence and take as many people as I could with me. That was the career path being offered to me. Never mind that I knew (and still know) exactly nothing about weapons more volatile than bows and arrows, never mind that I am reluctant to physically defend myself, much less be the aggressor, this is what life had to offer me.
Because I was a target, because I was different, I was still what everyone feared. Everyone was telling you to fear me. No one even thought about the bullied kids seeing these news reports. They just knew about you normal folks, and that you needed to be safe from people like me. They couldn’t tell you a single thing about the mass killers except that they were in this one category-so, literally, they told you a single thing-and that single thing was what made them dangerous.
It made me dangerous.
Isolate me. Make me alone. Fear me. Abuse me some more. Make me more dangerous. It doesn’t matter, I am unsafe no matter what you do. The news-all the news-says so.
And now. Now I am 30 years old.
I am still literally losing sleep, wondering if or when that transformation is supposed to happen. I know logically it will not happen. I know I have no interest in hurting anyone. I know the statistics on who actually commits this sort of violence. I know my history is not going to magically impart a knowledge of guns or explosives or a desire to hurt a large number of people. My anger and hurt do not manifest that way, they never have, and that is not going to change.
But now autism is the scapegoat du jour. Now every time someone does something violent, they are speculated to be autistic. And, just as some killers who were speculated to have crappy home lives actually did, just as the Columbine killers actually were bullied, there is a possibility that there will be a mass shooter who is Autistic.
But that does not make all of us dangerous. The immediate speculation makes my blood run cold.
It brings bile to my throat and a panic to my chest.
Have we learned nothing? Have the bullied children and abused children and medicated children and other scapegoats who have done no violence learned nothing? Passing the hot potato is a relief, but it is wrong.
Passing the blame down to another group without power hurts people.
They will be isolated. They will be alone. They will be hurt.
I do not want another child, a single other child, to be hurt by their peers for being ‘dangerous’. I do not want a single other child to be thought a ‘ticking timebomb’ by the adults in their life. They treat you with fear and they treat you with loathing when they are afraid of you.
I do not want another kid loathed because the media decided to pin the blame on their brain. I do not want another child being isolated, gossip about why to steer clear spread through whispers and subtle finger pointing.
NO.
I do not want another child to have nightmares like I did-like I still do-of being some sort of sleeper agent who has no other career path because of self fulfilling prophesies. I cannot even explain what this fear is like, and the fewer people who understand it, the better.
This has got to stop.
It’s to late to stop for my sake. The damage was done by the time we got to “bullied kids are dangerous”. But it is not too late to stop for the sake of today’s autistic children.
This pretty much. Every time a mass killing happens, the media latches onto whatever sensational fact about the perpetrator that they can (true or not) and make that the next big thing that leads to violence. Nobody cares that it only serves to stigmatize people who already have it hard. The current trend is to blame autism and mental illness. I have seem multiple conversations to the effect of “we need to bring back mental institutions to ship crazies off to so they can’t hurt anyone.” I have seen people straight faced talking about starting government run eugenics programs to “remove unstable people from the gene pool.”
I want this cycle to end but I know that the more horrible the news stations can make it for the people they target, the more sensational it becomes for them to broadcast. They won’t stop until they have literally started panicked mobs and mass killings of the people they blame for the violence. And then they will gleefully report on the mobs and find a new target to focus on. -_-
![bookworm24601:
sistercrow:
goldenheartedrose:
josephineanes:
This is a fucking joke. Genetics is NOT THE ONLY cause of autism, sorry to burst your bubble, angry uneducated annotator. “[the donations] go towards finding a cure, and there is no cure..” Yes, there is no cure, so money goes towards FINDING a fucking cure you ignorant asshole. You really think the money being donated is going to waste? You try finding the cure to a disability so complex that it has its own spectrum, it differs greatly from case to case, and there are multiple causes, known and unknown.
An apology to your son for trying to reach out to the many who are unaware of autism and trying to find a cure? How about an apology from the FDA for thimerosal in vaccinations throughout the 90s. Bashing an organization designed for research in an area where it is STRONGLY needed is ignorance. This sickens me.
Oh, look, curebie bullshit on my dash! Wonderful!
It’s not like vaccinations have been proved time and time again to not have anything to do with autism.
Or like, you know, just being alive is linked to autism.
Wow. Look at the ignorance going on here.
Yeah, autism is not caused by vaccinations. A massive study found that vaccines did not cause autism (wait for it) YEARS BEFORE that conspiracy theory actually sprang into being. That’s right, the study to see if vaccines caused developmental disorders was conducted BEFORE the controversy about their safety.
Also, FUCK OFF. Many many many autistics don’t want to be “cured” as “curing” us would mean literally changing who we are. Most of the autistics that do want to be cured (hint: even if they do, that is still their choice and not yours to make for them) want to be cured because they have internalized a lot of harmful messages and because they are treated like shit by society and like burdens by heir families.
A$ is a terrible organization that makes money by spreading fear and misinformation about autism and actively promotes the eradication of autistics.
On the up side, this is an amazing letter. A++, parenting of autistic person done right.
Okay, everyone. CALM DOWN!!!!! Look, the truth is that no one, NOT EVEN THOSE WITH AUTISM OR WHO HAVE A FAMILY MEMBER WITH IT, understands autism. We (MEANING EVERYONE!!) have no idea if it’s a disease or not, if it’s psychological, or biological, what causes it, if there’s a cure, NADA!!! We DO know a few things that AREN’T true, such as the whole ‘vaccines cause it’ thing, just like we know that human beings have had autism for centuries; just like we’ve had people with cancer, or red hair, or brain deformities, or two eyes with different colors, or polio, etc.
The only thing we know for sure is when someone has it. We know the signs and we figure out the best way for them to thrive in our society. But even then, since we don’t know what CAUSES it, finding out if someone actually HAS it, and ISN’T suffering from something else is a challenge.
Bottom line: EVERYONE NEEDS TO STOP CRITICIZING OTHERS ON BEING IGNORANT ABOUT SOMETHING THAT NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT!!!
As for the whole ‘finding a cure’ thing: the way I see it, we should try to find a cure (IF one exists) so that way people who WANT it, can GET it. Besides, in order to find a cure, you have to find a cause, and I’m over a hundred percent positive that even those who DON’T want a cure, at LEAST want to know the PROVEN cause(s).
As the sibling of a high-functioning autistic girl, and the neighbor of a low-functioning one, I’ve SEEN how stressful being a parent of a child with autism, OR just BEING a child with autism can be. It’s NOT POSSIBLE to interact with an autistic child the same way you interact with a child that does NOT have autism (Notice how I’m only mentioning CHILDREN because I’ve only ever been exposed to CHILDREN with autism). They don’t think the same way, and as such, you can’t TREAT them the same way. Because of that, some families don’t understand/can’t do that, so the children are seen as burdens and what not. It’s sad; I feel bad for the kid; but it sort of falls under the category of ‘not loving your child because he was born with a deformed hand’. You can’t fix the hand. You can TRY to fix the views of the parents, but at the end of the day, if a parent ever REALLY thought of their child as a burden, that kid is going to have to do something INCREDIBLE in order for the parents to change that view. And sometimes, not even THAT works. Regardless, YOU, as someone who DOESN’T view the child as a burden, CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT THAT.
I agree, part of that DOES have to do with society. Society makes it difficult for autistic people to thrive. Society makes it difficult for EVERYONE to thrive, except for a small handful. Changing society is possible, but it’s incredibly difficult. Really, the only thing to do about that is to spread the word and advocate and what not. Or just do what me and my sibling do, which is to politely tell society to go fuck itself by walking around an outlet mall in mismatched clothes, singing Disney songs loudly and off-key, and laughing when people give us looks.
I know nothing about Autism Speaks. Really. Except that it’s an organization that has something to do with autism. Therefore, I won’t bash it, or defend it. I just have a problem with people bashing stuff by using false information and those who go around pretending they know something they don’t.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I DON’T participate in the debates my History class gets into about politics.
*sigh*
Hey look, a person who doesn’t have autism telling people who DO have autism how we ought to be reacting to stuff, when they SAY RIGHT THERE THAT THEY KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT THE THING WE ARE UPSET ABOUT.
Also, if you want to make friends and charm people with autism, please don’t do so by comparing us to fatal diseases and inconsequential physical features. Autism is a huge part of who we are and how we see the world. Autism is not a disease. As shocking as this will be to you, we KNOW THAT AUTISM IS NOT A DISEASE. Just going off of the definition of diseases. Just because we don’t know the exact cause (the bulk of the evidence points towards it being genetic you ignorant fuck), doesn’t mean we don’t know what it is or what it does. It is a developmental disorder. Its effects are well documented and we know a lot about it. Just because you don’t doesn’t mean that nobody does. And even still, WHEN AUTISTIC PEOPLE TALK ABOUT WHAT AUTISM IS AND HOW IT WORKS, YOU SHOULD VALUE OUR OPINIONS AND LIVED EXPERIENCE AS DIRECT EVIDENCE. At the same time, autism is a very real disability, so comparing it to the colour of your hair is really dismissive and condescending.
And here is the thing: we are actually pretty good at determining if people have it. We are getting better all the time.
But wait, you don’t know anything and just wanted to jump in and tell us to calm down.
So let me educate you.
Autism Speaks wants to find a way of prenatally testing for autism. Why? So if a parent is pregnant with an autistic fetus, they will be able to abort the fetus. And while the choice to abort for any reason is a personal one in the hands of the pregnant person, this form of selective abortion is common with pretty much ever neuroatypicality out there that can be tested for. Go look up the rates of abortion of fetuses confirmed to have down-syndrome since prenatal testing for it was developed. It is staggering. As a result, the rates of people who have down-syndrome has dropped dramatically.
Secondly, if a cure is developed, I GUARANTEE that it will not be optional and up to the person with autism if the are a child (probably not even if they are adult either). Go look up the rate of cochlear implants in deaf infants. CI’s were originally intended only for those over the age of 18 who could consent. Almost immediately, however, parents of deaf infants began pushing to be allowed to have them installed in infants. I won’t get into the controversy surrounding CI’s as I am not deaf, but you can find plenty of deaf people on Tumblr who have spoken their minds about the subject.
So, lets review: You are not autistic and are admittedly entirely ignorant of A$ and why autistic people don’t like the organization but still felt compelled to make your opinion on the subject heard over ours.
A$ is a terrible organization that seeks to find testing for autism so that it can be determined prenatally. A similar thing happened with down-syndrome and resulted in a sever drop in the rates of people born with it. When society chooses a set of characteristics about people that make them less worthy of being born and actively seek to reduce their numbers in the population that is known as eugenics. I should not have to tell you why eugenics is terrible.
If a cure were found, it would involve directly changing who a person is in order to bring them in line with what society wants. This cure would almost certainly, very quickly, become something that the person being “cured” would have no choice about. This means that A$ and similar organizations are essentially seeking a way to eliminate all autistics.
When you actively seek to eliminate all members of a people group based on who they are, that is called a genocide.
And finally, you are a silencing jerk who would rather we all play nice than actually listen to what autistic people have to say about autism and the major organizations that specialize in autism that are most visible publicly.
If you want to be a good alley and help, DO SOME FUCKING RESEARCH BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb8wgwS6fv1r2i8g6o1_500.jpg)
