Author: Bekah

neurodivergent student posing as a tiny rat chef / any pronouns are fine

Amiti and Bekah’s Final Attack on Foss

It seems that there has always been this labeling of the autistic individual as unimaginative, lacking in the ability to fully feel, to comprehend emotions, to accurately understand and use language. These are stereotypes constantly reinforced by even literature today, but authors like Stuart Murray, Amanda Baggs and DJ Savarese aim to dismantle these running stereotypes and to show how the autistic individual is as creative and comprehensive of language and emotion as any other non-autistic individual. Therefore, in this essay we aim to showcase the main arguments that these authors have contributed to the autistic community, laying out these stereotypes in fine detail, at times explaining their feelings about stereotypes brought upon them and showcasing the creative work of other autistic individuals.

In his book Autism, Murray outlines the conception of autism presented in diagnostic literature, breaking down the ‘triad of impairments,’ or the “idea that the core of autistic behavior can be understood in terms of deficits of three central concepts—communication, imagination, and social interaction […] that originated in the late 1970s” (Murray 25). He relates it from the 1994 DSM-IV’s criteria of “delayed or abnormal functioning in at least one of” the aforementioned triad’s concepts to dominant thought on the condition in mainstream society (Murray 18, 25). This pervasive ideology plays into the binary of what is autistic and what is non-autistic; it insists that autistic individuals, by nature’s design, cannot be imaginative or creative. As Murray aptly points out, this presentation of autism is based more on metaphor and subjective speculation. Creativity quotients exist only in the realm of testing flexibility in response to a given stimuli (i.e. testing individuals in designed settings), and to conflate the fact that many autistics respond to change or process their reality in a given way with an inability to partake in more artistic expression implies that the thoughts and connections autistic individuals make is inherently uninventive or lacking in originality within itself. Autistic individuals such as Baggs have contested this view of autistic thought as cold or without attachment or creativity. In her article “Cultural Commentary: Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours,” she describes the ways in which mainstream society views the non-autistic process of thought as “[taking] place with a good deal of cognitive fanfare, so that they can hear or see themselves thinking,” and “[involving] abstract and arbitrary symbolism of some kind,” that can “reflect back on itself.” She then juxtaposes that with views of othered, autistic thought processes as “[taking] place so quietly they can barely notice it’s there—if at all,” and with “much more direct relationships, connections, and patterns formed between one thing and another.” She states that her own relationship with the world in front of her and the patterns she notices inform her about her own interests and what she cares about and suggests that autistic thought such as this is not regarded as thought at all. If views on autistic thought processes and creativity are linked as Murray suggests, then Baggs’ words work to show the ways in which the binary of autistic/non-autistic work to erase entire portions of autistic identity and reality.

In Baggs discussion of her own experiences with autism, she explains how those with autism have always been cast apart from mainstream society. They have been deferred in subtle and blatantly obvious ways. Baggs expresses the knowledge that few people actively intend on excluding those with a disability, but the way in which our society is constructed creates, what she quotes from Cal Montgomery’s 1987 essay about wheelchair access, “physical and social customs that seem almost designed to shut me out.” This comparison paints a picture for those who are not autistic to better see the social barriers that have been formed against those with autism. Using a wheelchair is an obvious disability, it is one the open eye can see clearly on the street. Our world was not built with those who use wheelchairs in mind. It was created by and for able-bodied individuals, only recently have newer buildings been required by ADA standards to have wheelchair access. This is of course, the step into the right direction, it being a standard to have accessible design in all buildings and to not discriminate against or exclude an individual from a building because they can not gain access to it on their own.

Baggs compares this to the autistic person’s relationship to language. She explains that, “like counters, stairs, and drinking fountains, language was built mostly by non-autistic people, with the obvious results, and my biggest frustration is this: the most important things about the way I perceive and interact with the world around me can only be expressed in terms that describe them as the absence of something important.” Here she directly points out this valuable discussion on how autistic individuals interact with conventional language and that their form of interaction with it is more often that not seen, by those who do not have autism, as an absence of something. In her experience she has been made to feel by those who try to define her, that her interaction with and strategy for learning conventional language is the absence of speech, of language, of thought, of movement, of comprehension, of feeling and of perception. Instead of her being seen as a creative and unique human being, she is othered, she is told she is missing something, she is not whole, not right, that she needs to be fixed in some way or another. Instead of acceptance most autistic people are faced with this push to be treated or cured. Baggs pushes back against this by saying, “I am telling you these things not to instruct you on the particulars of the mind of an autistic person, but rather to sketch out an image of how I perceive the world, and the richness and worthiness inherent in those ways of perceiving. It is anything but empty, and it is so much more than a simple lack of something that other people have.” As Baggs points out, there is so much richness that those with autism add to our world, whether that be love, expression, a portal of growth and knowledge about a different way of being, literature, art, there’s so much an individual can add to our society, whether they be abled or disabled.

DJ Savarese is the perfect example of an autistic writer who has created some beautiful pieces to add to our list of literary works in whole. His poem “Alaska,” analyzed and interpreted by his father Ralph James Savarese in “Prologue: River of Words, Raft of Our Conjoined Neurologist” from See It Feelingly, is a creative poem that uses an analogy for his relationship to his autism and having need for a facilitator. He writes, “the trees hurt their great places, they lose their treasures, their lying leaves tread. freed there branches they try to yearn freedom but they fear it. trying to get freed points out their great hurt yearning long.” Here he uses what Ralph James explains is a literary stable called pathetic fallacy, where he “stages the problem of separation as one confronting the natural world.” DJ compares his yearning for freedom, for independence, for a separation from reliance on his facilitator to the trees yearning for freedom, freeing little bits of themselves, like their branches. This poem not only demonstrates the creative use of language by an autistic writer, but it conveys the message that autistic individuals can feel and relate to their world and the people in it.

Conceptions of autism in relation to what it is not are common, given the deficit model of psychology; this representation carries out into other areas of society and presents a static, one dimensional lived experience. These stereotypes can prove harmful for the autistic community by erasing portions of their identity and therefore their place within the society we live. Through our examination of these stereotypes’ origins with Murray and their impact on autistic individuals’ relationship with themselves and society at large with Baggs, this paper brought us to analysis of work by autistic poet Savarese that exists in opposition of these beliefs. Our point is not that autistic individuals that meet the exact criteria do not exist, but rather that autism presents in a variety of different ways outside of the given binary and that the reinforcement of ideals that suggest otherwise needs to be challenged.

Sources

Baggs, Amanda. “Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1, 2009.

Savarese, DJ. “Alaska”

Savarese, Ralph James. See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professor. Duke University Press, 2018.

Murray, Stuart. Autism. New York, 2011.

WC: 1467

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Bekah’s Response to Take Back the Night (4/16/19)

Take Back the Night was a beautiful display of forging ahead with trauma; the open discussion of the ways in which healing is not linear and individuals are more than what happens to them was something I had largely never experienced outside of one-on-one discussion. Acknowledging the ways in which we can help each other absolutely alleviated some pain, though having to face the fact that I hardly know anyone without trauma from abuse presented more, even if it was of a different sort. I can say that events like this, that present the positives of therapy, work deeply in conjunction in my mind with all of the work toward reclamation and self-diagnosis. Disability envisioned as an identity rather than a deficit, and therapy offered as support rather than a cure; individuals with trauma as survivors rather than victims, and medical practitioners as individuals that validate you rather than subject you to more trauma through incessant evaluations. It is the side of psychology I like to see; the side that encourages individual voice, agency, and identity.

Natalie Illum’s poetry really ate at me; it kept entirely with the theme of my earlier points about the widespread (and often cyclical) nature of trauma. The story of the open mic in particular made me simultaneously full of feeling and hollow of thought. There is something about the communication of trauma by and for survivors that moves so differently. She made a comment between pieces about the compacting of physical and emotional abuse and the emergence of language such as gaslighting to help individuals communicate their experiences, that furthered my feelings on that. The reality that language as it stood could not match the implications of toxic actions hits really hard, but knowing that survivors have formed and popularized their interpretations of the acts they will likely never get closure on hits much harder. When she asked us to consider the prompts of what abuse taught and what surviving taught, I was terribly perplexed, but when she read the piece she described as her response to the prompt, I felt more at ease. So often trauma and disability narratives are asked to veer into that realm of adversity as enlightening, but this was not that; this was about finding your own feelings after being denied access to them for so long, rather than finding ways to make your scars pretty for the world. This is the first time in a really long time that I have witnessed wounds being reopened and rediscovered for reasons outside of inspiration porn/trauma porn/poverty porn and it hurt but it also sat really well with me.

Side note: read/listen to/support Tanaya Winder’s poetry! Her expression of healing is incredibly moving, and she is terribly supportive and sweet!

WC: 459
I pledge: Rebekah Stone

Bekah’s Response to Leanna Giancarlo’s “They Called Me Crazy”: The Mad Scientist Trope and Pushing the Boundaries of Knowledge (4/16/19)

This lecture dove straight into the history of animosity between science and religion with discussion of scientists as individuals either without a mind or without a soul. Dr. Giancarlo ran through as many major cinematic depictions of the mad scientist trope as possible, from the original in Metropolis (1927) to any number of Frankenstein films (1910, 1931, etc.) in order to juxtapose the common characteristics and motivations with depictions of science from the viewpoint of the church. This involved heavy analysis of science’s driving goal or motivation—while many would argue it is a scientist’s desire to play god, others would suggest it is to better mankind. Dr. Giancarlo explained this as the crux of the madness or soullessness debate, given that such clear guidelines for what is god and what is man establishes what is normative behavior and aspirations for man. Therefore, madness is created as a label for any individual with intent to deviate from the norm.
While this presentation of facts followed a decent logic, I feel that certain aspects of the lecture did not sit well with me. Disability studies is nothing if not interdisciplinary—my academic experience and research desires are nothing if not interdisciplinary. I cannot help but feel that a trope such as the mad scientist, which Dr. Giancarlo admitted rose largely in response to the use of science for warfare, should be addressed as a response to the inherent divorce of science from humanities. When a case is presented, as it was in this lecture, of a real live scientist such as Fritz Haber, known for his work in the fixation of nitrogen to fertilize the land and feed the nation, whose labor was co-opted by the government for violence (specifically, gas chambers), it not only presents science as something that is inherently good, only corrupted out of happenstance, but as something that is doing its best as is. I, like many other disabled activists, cannot stress enough that science could do better and is obligated to do so. Yes, scientists can have good intentions and they can make wonderful creations—countless accessibility devices and therapies have been created, often times by disabled scientists—but this does not mean that intentions outweigh impact. The field as a whole must take a reasonable level of accountability and enforce a standard of curriculum that rounds out their understanding of their impact. I study psychology! I know how little even the social sciences care to educate us on our torturous past and present, and how much what we learn is actually rooted in eugenicist ideals. We have a crisis in the field of only reporting the results we favor; we have institutional problems of favoring the privileged and therefore endorsing wildly biased ideals! Pretending that ethics boards are enough to topple power dynamics, or that learning the “objective facts” of science is enough to ensure scientists are doing the best they can is unacceptable. As a scientist, I feel obligated to accept the criticism the mad scientist trope provides. I may not be responsible for all of the violence done through scientific means, but I am obligated to know my history and to prevent any further damage. Just as my position as a white, able bodied woman, I feel obligated to accept criticism, to know my history, and to challenge the systems that inherently benefit me as they stand. Recognizing these privileges does not posit us as god-like nor as soulless, it merely presents us with an opportunity to do better.

WC: 586
I pledge: Rebekah Stone

Bekah’s Response to Elizabeth Donaldson’s Psychographics: Graphic Memoirs and Psychiatric Disability (4/9/19)

This lecture, starting with disability rights’ iconic “nothing about us without us,” and leaping into discussion of the deep need for disabled voices in representation of mental illness, forced me to reevaluate some of my own thoughts and feelings on tropes I had normalized growing up.
I have always been inherently bothered by tropes of disturbed, mad, or mentally ill villains for the obvious perpetuation of neurodivergence as criminal, so when she made reference to the romanticization of the Joker character, I was entirely on-board. That stereotyping has real live consequences—just look at how many laws there are that ask the state to identify mentally ill individuals by their danger level first, humanity second! When she made reference to the demonization of asylums via Arkham Asylum, though, I was entirely unsure of my own feelings. I am by no means anti-psychiatry or against any other accessible, nontoxic form of healthcare, for that matter; obviously so much of disability rights activism has been centered around the right to access these institutions. I suppose the most annoyance I ever truly got out of demonizing institutions in fiction is that it has allowed unaffected individuals—namely, neurotypicals—to distance themselves, finding the medical tortures and abuse to be a thing of the past, if real at all. Maybe it even deepens that fear neurotypicals have of disability because they feel that such maltreatment is the only option? I truly do not know; I cannot identify the tropes as the cause of the disconnect between myself and others when I would describe the horrendous things doctors had gotten away with right before my own eyes—that surely has more to do with an inability to empathize with a lived experienced outside their own, one that their privilege kept them from seeing—but it definitely helped widen the gap. However, in dissecting popularized depictions of medical institutions and mentally ill characters, I feel more understanding of the ways in which creating such tropes can demonize institutions for those that need it and interfere with their right to treatment.
In the past couple days, I seem to be coming back to the thought that these portrayals, while potentially based in some reality, cannot be the only representation available. It has linked in my mind as similar to the way deinstitutionalization activists had to fight for the right to treatment and the right to refuse treatment. Many felt that fighting for the “negative” right detracted from the “positive” right and vice versa; positive representation of healthcare may seem unrealistic, even if in an effort to destigmatize the experience for some (or even if simply in an effort to imagine a world where healthcare is not so taxing) it may be seen as taking away from the negative experiences portrayed, and the negative portrayals may be stigmatizing or depressing the individuals needing some positive representation. In the same way that disabled creators should be allowed to express their experiences of maltreatment and abuse through fiction without bearing the weight of having to imagine better institutions, disabled creators should also be allowed to express their positive (imagined or otherwise) experiences with institutions through fiction without feeling responsible for the general ignorance of neurotypicals. I suppose this is simply another situation in which polarizing depictions can only be resolved by more diverse, authentic representation.

WC: 573
I pledge: Rebekah Stone

Bekah’s Response to August Gorman’s Descartes and the Madness Argument (3/26/19)

From what I understood of this lecture—and I cannot pretend that was much, in the grand scheme of things—there is perplexity to the way in which Descartes mentioned and then quickly abandoned the conception of madness as a challenge to proving the existence of an entity. Dr. Gorman led this discussion by first exploring the ways in which philosophy and mental illness have been known to interact through the case of Phineas Gage. Gage, the man we have to learn about in every psychology course to have ever existed, sustained a traumatic brain injury (specifically injuring the frontal lobe) and supposedly had a large change in personality and behavior. This obviously really impacted the ways in which we view humanity (mind, body, soul ‘n’ whatnot), but that is not exactly where this talk went with it. According to Dr. Shelley Tremain, this purported change in personality came about in response to differential treatment and ableism post-trauma; this ableism, baked into the sciences, raises a lot of questions for philosophers interested in discovering ethical approaches to disability. With that in mind, there was a circle back to Descartes’ argument. I still have no real idea where I stand on that; I imagine there is validity to the idea that he ditched it in order to avoid being stigmatized. What got me interested in the lecture, though, was the whole explanation of the principle of charity (not assuming the worst argument possible is intentional) and the principle of humanity (actions as close to your imagined own) as correlated and potentially undermining of neurodivergence. It reminded me of Dr. Alisha Gaines’ talk about a year ago on the ways in which many white ‘allies’ have responded to racism; the gist of that being that so much ‘allyship’ has historically centered the privileged self and based itself on the contention that if an experience is ‘unempathizable’ (for lack of a better word) to the masses then it is not worth considering and/or dignifying. In the same way that a dreaming state has often been likened with madness, perhaps as a ‘more accessible’ form of mental illness, white ‘allies’ have a deep history of parading around in blackface in order to witness (witness, not experience) racial discrimination ‘first hand.’ It all ties together in my head with assumed experiences over lived experiences; Gage’s condition medically being assumed over his condition socially, etc. (I am truly hoping at least 2% of this response made sense).

WC: 410
I pledge: Rebekah Stone

Bekah’s Response to Julia DeLancey’s “The Flag of Imagination”: Surrealists and Artists on the Schizophrenia Spectrum (2/19/19)

This lecture began with an overview of disability models, psychoanalytic perspectives of psychology, and surrealist principles, leading up to discussion of Hans Prinzhorn’s Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922). Dr. DeLancey described Prinzhorn as having had a history of education in art and psychology, and she used his work to open up conversation on the fetishization and othering of the neurodivergent in multiple ways. Psychology at this time was all about Freud; everyone had an unconscious mind and symptomatic behaviors were merely indicative of latent thought needing to become manifest. Surrealism, an artistic movement of the time intending to challenge societal conventions by opening up the aforementioned unconscious mind, fixated on the minds of children, “primitive” (non-Western) cultures and societies, and the mentally ill. I contend that this fixation is not only fetishizing and mystifying, but a practice of cultural voyeurism. It is not the easiest argument to make, given that culture typically implies group identity, and mental illness had no clear-cut definition, but I am stickin’ with my gut on this one. The medical model aimed to eliminate disability, though medical institutions held more than just disabled individuals (insert long history of institutionalizing individuals over sexuality, gender, politics, etc.); institutionalized identity is broader than that which the surrealists aimed to objectify and appropriate. They wanted the edginess of all those that had been othered, but they specifically wanted the psychiatrically disabled; they wanted a lived experience they could never have, even if they tried (which they did, of course, with drugs). More bluntly, surrealist interest in the art of the mentally ill did little to encourage the creators or grant them autonomy or freedom; even Prinzhorn’s work pushed no boundaries. At best, it co-opted trauma narrative and commodified their creative endeavors (which, even with payout and consent, definitely played into saneism and infantilization for the way it was carried out).

WC: 311
I pledge: Rebekah Stone

Bekah’s Response to Alison Kafer’s “Introduction: Imagined Futures”

            In another one of my classes I am currently exploring the legislation of the deinstitutionalization movement and its purported association with criminalization. That sounds super dense, but the gist is that there is an ongoing movement to provide the disabled–namely, the neurodivergent–with the most integrated living possible (e.g. assisted living rather than life in a psychiatric facility) and, given that the process so far has focused more on closing inadequate care facilities than providing more comprehensive care, there has been a large debate over the level of success attained. Some scholars (Slate) argue that the movement has opened the door not for desegregation, but for criminalization via trans-institutionalization; this claim is supported by the rise in numbers of arrested/incarcerated mentally ill individuals, as well as the reality that the majority of psychiatric care in a given state is administered in carceral contexts. Other scholars (Bagenstos) contend that criminalization was a pre-existing condition and that the number of disabled individuals in jails/prisons only rose due to the increase of the population in mainstream society. The perspective I found most interesting, though, was Kevin Cremin’s; he argued that regardless of whether the movement had succeeded or failed thus far, the reason it had not progressed much over the years was that legislation chose to define integration only through what it is not and, by extension, disability by what it is not. I feel that Alison Kafer’s work converses fairly directly with an analysis such as this, given the usage of binaries and defining concepts only through the process of othering.

            My take on the entire situation is that criminalization of the disabled was absolutely existent prior to deinstitutionalization; however, because the legislation created defined individuals as only worth reintroducing to society based on their level of potential danger, a definition of disability was created that warranted excessive surveillance and evoked fear from the general public and the criminal justice system. Let’s first start with Kafer’s phrase “how one understands disability in the present determines how one imagines disability in the future; one’s assumptions about the experience of disability create one’s conception of a better future” (2). While the reading uses this most directly with the common oppositional notions that disability must either be tragic by nature or by society (i.e. medical or social model), it can definitely speak to this practice of practically speaking into existence the incarceration of integrated individuals.[1] This leads to an interesting point later on in the reading, in which a “focus from the inability of the body to the inaccessibility of the space makes room for activism and change” by way of a simple exercise in measurement of accessibility of a public space (Kafer 9). Kafer suggests this works as an example of the success of the “political/relational model” that calls for the acknowledgment of the disabled existence as politicized and I absolutely love how well it fits with Cremin’s point. In the example, individuals are not simply told what is inaccessible, but they are informed what accessibility is in order to give them the ability to imagine an accessible future. I find that this reading will help advance my point that legislation thus far has been incomplete and has, at the very least, left stigma and criminalization unchallenged.

Word Count: 582

I pledge: Rebekah Stone

Works Cited

Bagenstos, Samuel R. “The Past and Future of Deinstitutionalization Litigation.” Cardozo Law Review, vol. 34, no. 1, Oct. 2012, pp. 1–52. EBSCOhost, umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=83408541&site=ehost-live.

Cremin, Kevin M. “Challenges to Institutionalization: The Definition of ‘Institution’ and the Future of Olmstead Litigation.” Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights, vol. 17, no. 2, Spring 2012, pp. 143–180. EBSCOhost, umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lgh&AN=83474830&site=ehost-live.

Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2013. Web.

Slate, Risdon N. “Deinstitutionalization, Criminalization of Mental Illness, and the Principle of Therapeutic Jurisprudence.” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, Spring 2017, pp. 341–356. EBSCOhost, umw.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lgh&AN=123799180&site=ehost-live.

[1] To clarify, I am not suggesting that there is any association between disability and crime other than the crime of poverty/necessity; the media’s insistence that neurodivergent individuals are violent is incredibly unnerving and unsupported by facts and statistics.

icymi: uncanny magazine

Disabled People Destroy Fantasy is opening to story, poetry, and essay submissions from disabled writers through February 28th 2019! Even if you’re not disabled/not interested, I think it’s worthwhile to read Elsa Sjunneson-Henry’s essay “Disabled Enough” and consider the deep struggle to feel valid in an identity that’s so policed and otherwise stigmatized.

Here’s the link to the guidelines, hope y’all enjoy: https://uncannymagazine.com/about/disabled-people-destroy-fantasy-guidelines/

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