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Rebecca Young’s Final Paper

Rebecca Young
Dr. Foss
ENGL 384
May 2, 2019

Of Mice and Misrepresentation: Infantilization and the “Idiotic Autistic” in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men

It is undoubtedly clear that literature in all forms acts as a vessel for societal beliefs and perceptions to be communicated through. Not only do the stories and characters in literature mimic those we see in real life, though, but the literary tales influence and reinforce societal beliefs as well. Thus, it is crucial to critically examine such works in order to gain an understanding of both the society reflected within that literature and the potential ways the literature can influence society on its own. This is especially true when considering works which discuss such critical topics as disability and its place in society. In the particular field of disability studies, the reinforcement of societal perceptions is key to any discussions of literary representation. We must, then, analyze such literature closely in order to best understand the roles of literary works in forming and perpetuating these perceptions. This can be done in many ways and for countless works of literature, but the case this essay will be examining is that of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, focusing on the representation of autism in Lennie’s character. By analyzing Of Mice and Men’s Lennie through the lens of autism, we can recognize and problematize the prolific stereotype of the burdensome “idiotic autistic,” especially in the context of infantilization.

Before critically analyzing the kinds of representation of autism seen within a text, one must first analyze whether or not autism is represented in the text at all. As autism is found across a broad spectrum, and is not always easy to diagnose, this can be a difficult process. Additionally, it can potentially become problematic to diagnose fictional characters with autism when it is not a diagnosis specifically given to them within the work. In doing so, one risks making decisions based on assumptions or stereotypes, which can then perpetuate negative beliefs of autism and disability in general. When done carefully, however, and with the understanding that one’s analysis can never be concrete, analyzing literary characters through lenses of autism can allow for an ultimately beneficial reading of the text. In the case of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, we see autism represented in the character of Lennie, one of the story’s two main protagonists.

Lennie’s character is clearly represented as disabled throughout the duration of the book; by reading him through a more specific, targeted lens, however, he can be seen as a distinctly autistic character. While the diagnosis of “autism” was not seen in the society in which Of Mice and Men was set, we can take contemporary knowledge of the autism spectrum and analyze Lennie in its context. In doing so, several of his specific character traits align with diagnoses of autism, such as his sensitivity to touch, challenges focusing on and following conversations, and difficulty acting in social situations. From this information, it is reasonable to analyze Lennie as a character with autism.

By reading Lennie as autistic, the entirety of Steinbeck’s book can be more effectively analyzed in the broader context of disability studies; this is specifically applicable to disability studies when considering the stereotype of the “idiotic autistic.” Throughout the book, Lennie is considered an “idiot” (among other terms) by essentially every other character he encounters. Because his communication and socialization skills are different from those of the “normal” characters within the book, he is perceived by others as simply incompetent. This perception of autistic individuals as “idiots” is an incredibly harmful stereotype when evaluated within the greater context of disability studies. Not only does it define the person by a single characteristic (their disability), but it further extrapolates assumptions about their existence based on this single trait. Thus, instead of viewing autistic individuals as whole people, they are diminished to something less human entirely, and automatically devalued as members of society.

In addition to being dehumanized as an alleged “idiot,” Lennie’s character is incredibly infantilized by those around him. For the same reasons that he is considered an “idiot” by other characters, he is treated like a dependent child. This further reinforces the belief that disabled individuals are burdens to those around them, another prominent stereotype of the disabled community. These are stereotypes which both reflect the society in which Steinbeck was writing and the society in which we currently live, as we can still see these beliefs in contemporary treatments of disabled individuals. In all of the aforementioned cases of stereotyping, individuals with disabilities are looked down upon as lesser, unintelligent, and wholly dependent beings. This is especially true for those with autism or intellectual disabilities and is understandably problematic, especially when considering the influence literature has over societal beliefs.

As stated previously, literature both mimics the society in which it was written and influences the society in which it is read. Thus, the treatment of a single character in Of Mice and Men has the power to affect the treatment of real individuals in the world around us. When characters like Lennie are viewed as pitiable and burdensome idiots, other individuals with autism are more likely to be seen this way as well, further reinforcing this detrimental cycle of stereotyping the disabled community. While it was “acceptable” to view disabled individuals in such a light during the 1930s, when this book was written, the story carries implications for our current and future societies as well. Without problematizing such harmful views like those seen in literature, there are no obstacles to these views being manifested and perpetuated throughout the rest of society. In a book so highly praised as “classic literature,” this is even more dangerous for the disabled and autistic communities.

The implications which literary representation has for the broader, contemporary disabled community are influential to say the least, and concerning when seen perpetuating problematic stereotypes like that of the infantile “idiotic autistic.” In examples of literature such as Of Mice and Men, this is even more detrimental to the disabled community, as this literature is considered noteworthy, valuable, and even progressive by many readers throughout the world. With this in mind, then, we must be willing to problematize such literary representations of autism. Otherwise, the disabled community will continue to suffer as a result of such societal understandings of individuals with disabilities, and our world as a whole will suffer until all individuals are accepted and valued as equal members of society.

Word Count: 1,059

I hereby declare upon my word of honor I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this assignment.

Bibliography

Chaloupka, Evan. “‘Intersubjectivity and Narrative Technique in Of Mice and Men and ‘Johnny Bear'”.” Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 47, no. 3, 2017, pp. 403–26.

Hacking, Ian. “Autism Fiction: A Mirror of an Internet Decade?” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 2, 2010, pp. 632–655.

Hall, Alice. Literature and Disability. 2016.

Loftis, Sonya Freeman. Imagining Autism: Fiction and Stereotypes on the Spectrum. 2015.

Marlowe, Mike, and George Maycock. “Using Literary Texts in Teacher Education to Promote Positive Attitudes Toward Children with Disabilities.” Teacher Education and Special Education, vol. 24, no. 2, 2001, pp. 75–83.

Miller, Donna L. “Literature Opens Doors for All Children.” Phi Delta Kappan Magazine, vol. 94, no. 4, 2012, pp. 28–33.

Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. Modern Library, 1937.

The Network of Thought of Dax and Baggs

April Wobken

ENGL 384

Foss

4/26/2019

The Network of Thought of Dax and Baggs

Selene dePackh’s Troubleshooting articulately brings the message of the Autistic interpretation that Amanda Baggs conveys in her piece, Up in the Clouds and down in the Valley. Baggs describes the typical Autistic interpretation as the absence of something important; the absence of speech, of language, of thought, of movement, of comprehension, of feeling, and of perception. Though there is an absence to most perspectives, Baggs insists that there is more to it than simply an absence, rather a different angle. Troubleshooting’s Dax represents Baggs’s Autistic perspective in the following scenes: Dax’s perception of language into patterns, Dax’s struggle with heavily structured tasks, and when describing other’s perception of her due to her Autism.

Baggs describes her process of understanding her surroundings as starting with sensory impressions repeated long enough for her to become deeply familiar with them. Once the familiarity is established, the concept forms into patterns that evolve into a more complex network of patterns. This method applies to her understanding of sensory impressions and language. She reflects about first having to match words to their responses before she was able to understand the meaning of the words and why (Baggs). This understanding of a pattern is the dominate way she and Dax both describe understanding language. When first interacting with Chill, Dax describes the process of unpacking his words, “He’d been talking for a few before the first information made it to the appropriate parts of my brain…His sounds and expressions were coming into focus. He’d begun rephrasing what he’d probably already said…I was starting to get him synchronized” (dePachkh 3-5). Dax does not fully understand the words Chill speaks until she becomes familiar with the pattern. Even though language is universal, speech has a pattern and people must adapt and get used to each individual’s style, people all do this without thinking most of the time. Unless someone may have an accent or different dialect, the adjustment period might be a bit more difficult. The Autistic cognitive process affects her socializing, taking her at a fundamental level with each interaction, having to pay close attention to words without even understanding their meaning and ciphering through the absence of information. Dax describes herself as having to do this adjustment for each new interaction until she adjusts, she will often miss many important details of a conversation. The process is very exhausting for her and forces her to be very alert when trying to communicate effectively with others.

Baggs’s describes the autistic experience of being in the valley and in order to understand other people she must climb mountains and reach the sky, this process does not guarantee her a similar experience to those in the sky once she gets there. “It’s hard for me to climb that mountain all of the time though, so they are more rarely my experiences than those of others. Still, so many people from the mountain describe the valley only by what is not there, and that is not anywhere near a thorough enough description” (Baggs). This different experience is shown by how the contrast of Petra’s experience of Dax compares to Dax’s own experience of herself. When she first confronts Dax about having Autism she comes from an angle of doubt, saying that she does not see Dax as disabled and that Dax’s tattoo is fake. There is a stereotype that autism looks a certain way and like most unaware people, Petra seems to think that Dax is not “autistic enough” (dePackh 78-79). When Petra spends more time with Dax she realizes how much help Dax needs to function on the level that society requires of her and helps Dax complete her To-Do List. Once Petra leaves Dax struggles with her task management and is only able to catch up on her list when “The Mistake” moves in and manages it for her.

Autistic people are diminished into fragments of people merely due to their different cognitive ability that has no effect on their sexuality or possession of a soul, yet these two factors seem to include in the “package” of having autism to outsiders. Baggs describes that some of her deepest and most profound experiences from her different cognitive perception are simplified into an insulting and demeaning explanation of simply lacking language, thought, and a soul. This is reflected when Dax’s mother receives the diagnosis that her daughter is Autistic and starts treating her differently. Autism is misinterpreted into sociopathy by her mother, which is parallel to Baggs’s description of the stigma that Autistics lack a soul. Dax also reflects that people with autism are not seen as being able to have sexual desire, yet she proves that bias wrong throughout the book with explicit details of her sexual interactions and desires with/for Chill, Petra, and Angela.

Many characters approach Dax as if something is absent and she is not adequate as she is. Even though many people autistic or not, have short-comings or flaws it seems as if hers are more apparent due to the fact of her Autism. Dax does not seem bothered by her condition; she seems to function contentedly in her own skin/mind unless someone else gives her reason to feel difficulty due to discrimination. Dax does not despair about having Autism and it is like Amanda Bagg’s said, “Focusing on absence is the easiest way to describe the presence of something much more important to me than what is absent. Many autistic people have even applied these words to themselves. Some of us do this knowing full well that there is so much more that we cannot say” (Baggs). Dax seems to understand her surroundings as well as other people. The Mistake” is an able-bodied man and yet he seems to be the most challenged of all the characters: between his violence, anger, mixed signals/feelings towards Dax, and abusive behavior towards himself and Dax he seems to be the most impaired character. These narratives prove that absence can be anywhere, not just in an official “diagnosis”.

A person that is different cognitively is not seen as a human being. Hence, justifying the cruel and unusual treatment at Thunderbird Academy towards their patients and the general treatment of Autistic in modern day culture. They believe that once they have bee “treated” then they will deserve to be treated and acknowledged like everyone else until then they are not a complete human. Autistics are not offered self-agency due to the belief that Autism is worse than diseases such as measles or other preventable vaccinatable diseases. Yet Baggs and Dax show the readers that Autistics have the ability to feel deeply, desire, think deeply and express themselves through their stories.

Works Cited

Baggs, Amanda. “Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1, 2009, doi:10.18061/dsq.v30i1.1052.

DePackh, Selene. Troubleshooting . Reclamation Press, 2018.

I pledge; I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work. – April Wobken

Claudia’s Finally Essay: A Deviant Representation of Autism in dePackh’s Novel Troubleshooting

Claudia Woods
Dr. Foss
5/2/19

Selene dePackh challenges people’s understanding of autism through the formidable heroine Dax. Dax’s autistic variance and individuality is set apart from autistic representations we are accustomed to seeing in media. Dax defies stereotypes of how we conceptualize autism–and how we perceive gender and sexuality in autistic people–through her androgynous and queer identity and her relationship with sex.

From the opening of Troubleshooting, dePackh introduces the readers to Dax’s queer and autistic identities. In this dystopian novel, Dax grows up in a world where people with disabilities are forcefully marked, sterilized, institutionalized, and ‘healed’ in torturous ways. Dax’s story begins when she is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and inevitably branded with a blue puzzle piece to symbolize her autism. Dax’s mother is drowned in her desire to find a “cure” for Dax, forcing Dax into “treatments” which really consists of “chelation injections, pills that cause fevers, vomiting, and brain stimulation” (dePackh 17). Dax is reduced to an object, solely defined by her diagnoses. Because her autism marks both the beginning and the end of her humanity, Dax is not seen as a human. She is often berated with nicknames such as “small-stuff” “girly” and “little girl” even though she is both surprisingly strong and rejects anything that could encompass femininity. Most importantly, Dax is nameless. Her name–possibly the core of her identity–is repeatedly changed throughout the novel from Sophia, to Archer, to Dakini, and finally to Dax. Despite the discrimination Dax faces throughout her adolescence and adulthood, she still significantly deviates from usual representations of autism. This variation accurately portrays autism in that no two autistic people are exactly alike, but rather they vary tremendously. Dax struggles with accepting how other people view her and her autism: they believe her to be either too functional to be autistic or too slow to be human. She finds motivation in the hatred she experiences to change the world’s ableist perception of her. From a young age, Dax is a target for violence because of her autistic identity; however, unlike her autistic peers she refuses to accept this hatred in girly passivity. Dax’s self-love manifests itself in physically aggressive ways. Dax confesses that “kids on the autistic spectrum draw bullies like flies to roadkill, but I fought back. I was beaten up harder for it, but I could look at myself in the mirror without shame” (dePackh 2). Dax does not feel shame or self hatred for her autism; rather Dax finds power in knowing that she did not accept this hatred from anyone.

One way in which Dax stands apart from other autistic individuals is her direct eye contact with people. Dax receives her first nickname, Archer, as a young child for scrutinizing people’s faces “as if they were under a microscope” (dePackh 2). She finds solace in being a ‘bad’ autistic. By diverting from stereotypical expectations, Dax is able to reclaim her autistic identity. She declares, “I’m autistic, but I don’t look down and away like a good autistic, I stare” (dePackh 3).

Unfortunately, Dax also experiences horizontal ableism from other people with disabilities–even her own friend, Chill. Chill accuses Dax of not being like “other autistics” but Dax refuses “to be categorized without a fight…” (dePackh 2). Dax doesn’t struggle with her Autism, she struggles with how other people perceive her Autism. She struggles with the compulsion that she must effectively change the way other people view and treat her. Whether these expectations stem from genuine or hurtful places, Dax deals with both.

Dax is used to being underestimated by others, but she experiences the opposite with Petra. After Petra, Dax’s lover and advisor accuses Dax of “forging her identity,” Dax is quick to defend her autistic identity, “I’m autistic as hell, actually, test out more severe than a lot who don’t talk. ‘Mild’ autism isn’t how I experience being autistic, it’s how you experience my being autistic” (dePackh 78-79). Dax ferociously holds onto and defends her own understanding of her autism. Despite neurotypical people explaining to her what autism is and how it should be experienced, she never loses touch with her own conception and experience of her autism. Despite Dax’s vulnerable identities, she emerges from the beginning as an untouchable force that cannot and will not be defined nor measured by others.

While Dax varies from the typical representation of autistic people, she also rejects femininity and its gender roles. Dax rejects femininity in her presentation, her friendships and romantic relationships, and her spunky aggression. Dax proudly professes, “My sexual wiring was in place, and the touch of androgyny from the surgery didn’t necessarily hurt an edgy attractiveness” (dePackh 33). Dax’s androgynous appearance – with her shaved hair and hatred for the color pink – and queer identity sets her apart from other female characters. Dax never pretends to be someone she is not. Reflecting on her childhood, she recounts: “No matter how many disgusting pink dresses my mother tried to keep me in, I never wanted to be the princess; I wanted to be the one who won her” (dePackh 18). As a young girl, Dax understood her queerness and harnessed her sexuality. Dax takes on a role within lesbian relationships as sexually dominant. However, autistic individuals are rarely seen as “desiring subjects or objects of desire… And when sex and disability are linked in contemporary American cultures, the sexuality of disabled people is typically depicted in terms of tragic deficiency” (Mollow, Mcruer 1). Representation of sexuality in autistic people, like Mollow and Mcruer suggest, autistic people are represented as asexual and inexperienced. Dax’s character defies these narrow-minded and inaccurate portrayals, redefining what it means to be an autistic person and a sexual being. Often dePakch challenges this asexual expectation of autistic individuals and gives readers an autistic character with not only sexual desires but queer sexual desires. As dePackh is suggesting, individuals with ASD have sexual needs and desires, are interested in romantic relationships, and have similar experiences and behaviors just like neurotypical people (Dekker 2017). dePackh’s scenes even border on pornographic at times, in Dax’s sexual encounters with Petra. Dax initiates their first sexual relation quite dominantly. Right before consensually jumping on Petra, Dax reflects, “I kissed her before I knew what I was doing, but I knew exactly what I was doing when I slid my hand down…” (dePackh 82). This incredible sexual desire surpasses all expectations of autistics. In dePakh’s representation of Dax, she provides a new, more encompassing depiction of autism.

This kind of linguistic awareness provides the groundwork for new understandings of people with disabilities as fully human. It follows from that theory that people with autism are empowered by constructions of their identity are that individualized, affirming of difference, reinforcing of personal dignity, and dynamically interpreted in the context of everyday living situations (Bumiller, 971).

By writing a queer, autistic character like Dax, dePakh is challenging societies representations of autistic people and redefining gender and queerness as they relate to autism. This reclamation has the ability to broaden neurotypical people’s perceptions of autistic individuals and empower the identities of autistic people. Although Dax’s identity as a queer, autistic woman is repeatedly targeted throughout Troubleshooting, by presenting herself androgynously, exhibiting behaviors unlike autistic stereotypes, physically defending herself, and engaging in queer, sexual relationships, she reclaims her vulnerabilities and redefines what it means to be Dax.

Word Count: 1233

Works Cited
Bumiller, Kristin. “Quirky Citizens: Autism, Gender, and Reimagining Disability.” The University of Chicago Press Journals, vol. 33, no. 4, 2008, pp. 967-991.

Dekker, Linda P et al. “Psychosexual Functioning of Cognitively-able Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder Compared to Typically Developing Peers: The Development and Testing of the Teen Transition Inventory- a Self- and Parent Report Questionnaire on Psychosexual Functioning.” Journal of autism and developmental disorders, vol. 47, no. 6, 2017, pp. 1716-1738.

dePackh, Selene. Troubleshooting: Glitch in the System. San Francisco: Reclamation Press, 2018.
Kafer, Alison. “Feminist, Queer, Crip: Imagined Futures.” 2012, pp. 1-17.

Krista’s Final Essay: Autism and Sexuality in Troubleshooting and The Kiss Quotient

The non-disabled community has a long history of desexualizing disabled people. No matter the disability, it is assumed that they will never be able find love, have a relationship, or engage in sexual activity. Troubleshooting, by Selene dePackh and The Kiss Quotient, by Helen Hoang, both novels with autistic, female protagonists, break this stereotype, showing that these women are, in fact, capable of having and maintaining sexual and romantic relationships. Troubleshooting tells the story of an autistic woman navigating the dystopian deterioration of the United States and heightened discrimination against persons with disabilities. The Kiss Quotient is a romance about an autistic woman who wants to overcome her awkwardness with intimacy and sex, so she hires a male escort to give her sex and dating lessons, only to fall in love with him. Though the protagonists of both novels break the stereotype of disabled persons being asexual, only Scope from Troubleshooting finds empowerment in the intersections of her gender and disability, whereas Stella from The Kiss Quotient buys into the submissive stereotypes that accompany her gender and her disability.

Scope finds empowerment in testing the limits of traditional gender roles, while Stella’s femininity makes her frustratingly submissive. In working for Bern, Scope embodies a dominatrix persona which she continues to perform in future relationships. In all of her relationships and sexual liaisons, she is the initiating partner and, with both Angie and Chill, she is the penetrating partner with an artificial apparatus. In intercourse with Angie and Chill, they are restrained—by choice—but Scope is never restrained, giving her the clear upper hand. She is also on top during intercourse. Scope describes herself as a lesbian, a deviant sexuality in which the power dynamics are unclear. Scope, who might be described as Butch, takes on the traditional role of the male in her relationships with Petra, in initiating and ending it both times they get together. In her relationship with Chill, he and Scope switch gender roles, he following the more submissive script and she following the more active script. In their first sexual encounter Scope “held him down by his neck, straddled him, and told him to unzip” (dePackh 178). Later in their relationship, Scope notes, “[h]e moved into the most submissive position he’d ever offered me, urging me to take what I owned, raising his skinny bum with his inked arms stretched back so I could grip his wrists” (207). Though Scope identifies as female and Chill identifies as male, in their relationship, their gender roles swap. Despite living in a dystopian society that tries to dehumanize and disempower her, Scope asserts herself in her relationships claiming power when she can.

In The Kiss Quotient, though Stella gains a degree of empowerment by being the initiator and paying client, Michael’s masculinity and higher level of sexual experience gives him more power in their relationship. The power dynamics of sex work are complicated. In discussing the power relations of the money exchange for female sex workers, Anne McClintock points out that the moment of money changing hands is “a ritual exchange that confirms and guarantees each time the man’s apparent economic mastery over the women’s sexuality, work and time. At the same time, however, the moment of paying confirms the opposite: the man’s dependence on the woman’s sexual power and skill” (Anne McClintock 1992, 72). In this case, Stella is the one paying for Michael’s services and her money is her only source of power in the novel; in fact, by the end of the novel, Stella has donated enough money to the medical center to cover all of Michael’s mother’s bills, the reason he was escorting. She says that she wants to give him the choice to escort or not (Hoang 309). But, as McClintock notes, after the transfer of money, the power dynamic shifts back to the sex worker as the client relies on his experience. Throughout their relationship, Stella is always asking Michael if she is doing the right thing when it comes to their sex lessons. Despite being a sex worker, which is traditionally seen as a disempowering job, Michael’s masculinity makes him feel that he has a responsibility to take care of Stella, even though she has way more money than he will ever have. Even during their first meeting, Michael acts overly protective of her, feeling anger and jealousy when he hears about other men she has been with. Toward the end of the novel, Stella and Michael have broken up and Stella is trying to date other people. Michael sees her and punches the man she was with. Stella attempts to go home alone but Michael follows her. She asks him to leave her alone but he ignores this and basically stalks her until she gives in. Although she is in love with him throughout this and does really want to get back together with him, it still demonstrates how little power she had in their relationship.

Though both Stella and Scope face challenges and discrimination as a result of their autism, Scope is the only one who claims the identity and uses it to her advantage. Scope is institutionalized because of her disability and the violent perceptions people have about autism. While in the institution, she is asked to prostitute herself for the enjoyment of Sam, a prison guard, and Angie, a fellow inmate. Though Scope doesn’t want to do this, she manages to spin the situation to her advantage, improving her life at Thunderbird Mountain in exchange for sexual acts. The only time the reader sees Scope as not in control of her relationships is when she is with the Mistake. Here Scope is taken in by his kind offers of help after they have both lost their jobs. The Mistake manipulates her until he is in control of her house, money, and new job, and then he begins to abuse her. Scope is aware that he is using her, but she also recognizes that her disability makes it impossible to free herself from him: “As a solitary autistic, I needed him and he knew it” (dePackh 115). After enduring several years of abuse, Scope comes back into contact with the Dark family, whom she thinks can protect her. This gives her the support she needs to beat the Mistake senseless and leave the house, after which she is taken in by Chill. After the Mistake, Scope makes the vow that she “will never be touched against [her] will—ever, by anyone—again” (177), and then she is the one to initiate a relationship with Chill in which she is the penetrative partner and the one calling all the shots, deciding if they will remain together, deciding when and if they will have sex. Scope claims her autism. Though she recognizes her limitations, she never denies that autism is part of her identity. When Petra first meets her, she thinks Scope is faking her disability. Scope tells her, “‘Mild’ autism isn’t how I experience being, autistic, it’s how you experience my being autistic” (78). She also uses the stereotypes about autism to her advantage, managing to get the passwords to hack into the her work’s computer network: “He muttered something about me not being smart enough to use it…I bowed my head and followed Luce Dark’s advice about letting people think I was as dumb as they wanted to” (131).

Conversely, Stella feels a lot of self-doubt and self-loathing because of being autistic. She doesn’t think she is good enough for Michael because of her autism. She does not believe he would want to stay with her if she was not paying him. Throughout the novel she refers to herself as “nuts” with a negative connotation when she thinks about her obsessions and other tendencies that come with autism (Hoang 57). She thinks “[sh]e’d be less” in Michael’s eyes if he found out about her autism (136). Although Michael and Stella end up together at the end of the novel and he doesn’t reject her when he finds out, Stella never comes to a place of self-acceptance independent from Michael’s love, which is overprotective and infantilizing. There is one moment after Stella and Michael have broken up that she claims her autism: “She saw and interacted with the world in a different way, but that was her…she would always be autistic,” but when she tries unsuccessfully to be with someone else, and then goes back to Michael, her self-acceptance seems hollow (287). Instead there is the insinuation that Stella ‘overcomes’ her autism to find intimacy, love, and good sex.

The female, autistic protagonists of Troubleshooting and The Kiss Quotient both demonstrate that disabled people can be sexual beings. But while Scope finds empowerment through defying gender norms and using the limitations of her disability to her advantage, Stella slips into the submissive stereotypes that accompany females and people with disabilities.

(Word Count: 1490)

Sources

dePackh, Selene. Troubleshooting. San Francisco: Reclamation Press, 2018.

Hoang, Helen. The Kiss Quotient. New York: Penguin Random House, 2018.

McClintock, Anne. “Screwing the System: Sexwork, Race, and the Law.” boundary 2, vol. 19, no. 2, 1992, pp. 70–95.

I pledge…Krista Beucler

Unconditional Support No Matter the Diagnosis

Kaitlyn O’Gorman

ENGL 384

Dr. Foss

30 April 2019

“The tragedy is not that we’re here, but that your world has no place for us to be. How can it be otherwise, as long as our own parents are still grieving over having brought us into the world” (Jim Sinclair, Our Voices)? The role parents take on when they choose to bring a child into the world is to love unconditionally, protect, and support that child no matter what, including an autism diagnosis. While there are many parents that do accept and embrace their child’s diagnosis; many other parents treat their child’s autism diagnosis the same way one might treat a stage four cancer diagnosis. However, an autism diagnosis does not equal the end of a child’s life and autism is not masking a child’s true personality, this is their personality. In order to make an educated analysis of the parents of autistic children it is important to read not only from the parental side but also from the first-hand experiences of an autistic self-advocate; Julia Miele Rodas a disability studies scholar and Melanie Yergeau an autistic adult; give this insight. Both Rodas and Yergeau share situations in which parents of autistic children have failed to be what their child needed, instead of being their child’s unwavering support system, out of fear and shame parents forget that their autistic child is a person and begin publicly sharing their child’s personal struggles as a way to make themselves feel better.

While the cause of autism is still greatly unknown there are several hundred theories, the ones that stick the most are the theories that place the child’s parent at fault. Parent’s are often given the blame for their child’s diagnosis which not only results in undue shame but it also plays a big part in how a parent will react to and treat an autism diagnosis. Rodas writes in the “Introduction” of Autistic Disturbances, about one particular parental response that has unfortunately received a lot of attention. Celebrity Jenny McCarthy wrote an autism parent-memoir titled Louder Than Words, in which she describes her heart shattering upon learning her child’s diagnosis and states how “everything I had thought was cute was a sign of autism”, (McCarthy, 66). McCarthy could have accomplished so many things with her influential power but she chose to write her book, Louder Than Words, in such a negative tone that it only adds on to the problem. The problem is not that some children are born with autism it is the response mothers and fathers have towards their child’s diagnosis.

McCarthy used her book to identify autism as a “plate of shit” (McCarthy, 65), when she could have created much needed awareness for other parents like her. She could have maintained her adoration of all the cute things her son did and told the world how much of a blessing it is to watch her son grow and learn. Instead she made a mockery of autism and created a fear mongering memoir for everyone to read. Rodas mentions that “at the same time the doctor locates hs patient… the mother loses her child” (Rodas, 16), however this does not have to be the case. It is up to the parent to choose whether or not they will condemn themselves and outcast their child or embrace the diagnosis and continue to love all the cute things their child does.

Now to hear from Yergeau, an autistic self-advocate as she recounts the “shitty narratives”(Yergeau, 3) her mother would recite in her introduction of Involution. Yergeau was born autistic but did not receive her diagnosis until she reached adulthood. Although her parents were never aware that their child was growing up with autism, Yergeau feels as though they must have known that “there was something about her” (Yergeau, 1). Yergeau notes that what is typically authored by non-autistic people tends to cast a less than hopeful light on those with autism, “media accounts of autistic people communicate the sensationalism of savant-beings who are at once so extraordinary yet so epistemically distant and critically impaired” (Yergeau, 3). The previous statement only accounts for what the media says about autism however, this can also pertain to what parents of autistic children say as well. In Chloe Silverman’s Understanding Autism, one parent mentions “if you hang around [autism] parents enough, all we talk about is poop” (Silverman). Yergeau recounts that her mother’s favorite stories to tell about her growing up also had to do with young Yergeau smearing feces everywhere. Another thing to consider when thinking about shared narratives such as “poop talk” the parent is really only talking about themselves, “parental poop talk is perhaps the most effectively loaded of all poop talk… it relates smearing, eating, and rectal digging in graphically humanizing terms… The humanization in autism poop talk, of course, is rarely about the human whose poop has been thrust into the spotlight” (Yergeau, 3). While it may be true that by sharing these narratives with other parents of autistic children it gives parents a comforting sense of normality within the community, these narratives are not given with the proper consideration as to how this exposed information might affect the child.

There is so much mystery and countering arguments surrounding autism that it is understandable to be taken aback upon learning the child’s diagnosis. After this brief moment of shock it is now the parent’s duty to obtain as much knowledge they can so that they can overcome, adapt, and provide the best life for their child. There are several ways parents can go about this research; first, they should always ask their child’s doctor for any and all information or advice they can provide. Secondly, there is a growing community of parents who also have children with autism that are more than happy to share what they have learned with other members of the community. When all else fails the internet is a wealth of knowledge filled with research articles as well as self-advocating articles written by autistic adults. However, it is important to remember that while we know more about autism than we did ten years ago, it is still largely a mystery and not all the information put out on the internet is entirely true. Most importantly parents can not ignore the diagnosis out of fear or embarrassment. By receiving their child’s diagnosis parents are being given an answer and the opportunity to truly get to know their child. The parents are now able to learn how to properly and productively work with their child to increase their overall success in life.

The parental role no matter what the situation or diagnosis, is to protect their child. This means maintaining a level of strength and privacy for the child so that the he or she does not have to grow up battling stigmatization from their own mother and father. This means supporting and encouraging the child to continue working for improvements. Rather than feeling ashamed or sorry for themselves parents of autistic children should be working together to reach new milestones. These parents should be creating blogs and writing memoirs to inform the general public about the real truths of autism. The media and medical offices have and will continue publishing the negative stories about autism; parents have the opportunity to share the joy their child creates and accomplishments they make.

I Pledge…. Kaitlyn O’Gorman

Word count: 1,225

Work Cited

McCarthy, Jenny. Louder Than Words , 2007.

Rodas, Julia Miele. “Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe.” Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe, University of Michigan Press, 2018, pp. 1–30.

Sinclair, Jim. “DON’T MOURN FOR US.” Don’t Mourn For Us, 2002, www.autreat.com/dont_mourn.html.

Yergeau, Natalie. “Introduction: Involution.” Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. Accessed 30 April 2019

Daley’s Final

Daley’s Final Download

Makayla’s Final Paper

Makayla Harrington

Dr. Foss

English 384

April 30th, 2019

1152 Words

Autistic Narratives Should Be About Autistic People

When speaking about communities that are too often misunderstood, the specific narratives that readily available to outsiders are crucial to the community, and directly impact how society views them. Stories about autism are often not centered around the autistic person themselves, but the caretaker, or some other person in their life. Historically speaking, parents of autistic children have not, by any means, had it easy. There are some reasons why parents are often centered in autistic discourse and stories. There was once a very popular and now outdated, but still relevant belief that parents are the root cause of their child’s autism. Additionally, there’s the aspect that parenting an autistic child, like most other disabled children, is sometimes harder and requires more/different care than a non-autistic child. But those two things still don’t justify the rising amount of parents victimizing themselves, because when they do that, they’re failing to make opportunities to speak about their autistic child about the child themselves. However, I believe that while parenting an autistic child is hard, and a roller coaster, and worthwhile, and whatever other adjectives one can list, it’s ultimately not about the parent, but the child. And the constant shifting of narratives from being about the parent instead of the autistic child themselves ultimately hurts autistic people, and is unjustified.

Stuart Murray’s book, “Autism,” is an excellent source on multiple topics involving autism, but in chapter nine of part two, he talks about the history of psychoanalysis used for research and treatment. In the nineteen sixties, one of the most common thought, “causes” for autism was having distant parents. The most influential doctors who advocated for this now disproven theory was Bruno Bettelheim. To quote Murray on Bettelheim, “Bettelheim’s attitude towards parents was savage. He claimed that they prevented ego development in their children because of their own inadequacies, and his continual use of language that stressed parental ‘coldness’ or ‘rigidity’ produced despair among those who had children with autism” (Murray, 57). This is now an outdated and disproven approach, and as a society we have once again gone back to understanding that we don’t know what causes autism. However, it was so widely spread in the disability and psychiatric communities back in the day, that the effects of this line of thinking are still present in modern times.

While the theory that distant parents are what cause autism isn’t nearly as common now, it’s one of the first huge movements in the autism community that take the control, and the story, away from the child. We know that this dangerous line of thought contributed to mindsets that are still present today, but it might have also contributed to the start of the community justifying and being complacent in the focus being shifted from autistic children to their parents. In the present day, we still really don’t have any evidence about the cause of autism. However, hopefully whatever future research and conclusions are made in the future shifts the focus back onto the autistic person, instead of their caretaker, thus producing more accurate results.

In households belonging to autistic individuals, especially “low-functioning” or younger autistic people, the parents are the decision makers. They decide about what therapies, and more often than not, what strategies and approaches are taken to better teach and integrate their child into society. It’s a complicated issue, because shouldn’t the parents get a say in what happens to their child? The answer is yes, they should, and there should be a place for them to talk about shared experiences with other parents of disabled children, and tell stories to raise awareness. The issue comes in when the majority of speaking opportunities- and almost every day is a speaking opportunity, only on a much smaller scale- are dedicated to parental struggle caused by having an autistic child. This is particularly harmful when the parent’s viewpoints of how autism has affected their family are consistently and constantly negative, and/or drastically different than the autistic child’s perspective of how living with autism has affected them.

To quote Murray again, “Far too often, the heat and light created by autism controversies are disassociated from the realities of those who have the condition, and a lot of energy is wasted that could more profitably be used in thinking about actual autistic lives” (Murray, 76). But how does that happen? The reason why the discourse strays away from how to improve the lives of people with autism, and understand it better, and onto things that many autistic people don’t care to put research funds towards, like finding a cure, is because autistic people aren’t the ones speaking or making the decisions. Instead, it’s the caretakers, or someone who knows someone with autism. Even sometimes people who aren’t really close with anyone who has autism. This is dangerous because due to the lack of narratives from those with autism, the stories that the general public hear are often all negative. The stories become about how it’s hard to dress their child, or go to public gatherings, or do various things, and not about how often the child is happy, or their interests, or what it’s like to be in their shoes. This makes it harder, and less likely that people who have not known anyone with autism to view autistic people as people, becauses instead of being represented as a complex person, they’re seen as one-sided, static children who cause problems, which is a dangerous way for society to see them,

Then, it gets to the question of how and why are parents inclined to tell their own story instead of their child’s. Parenting a disabled child can come with a lot of frustration, just like any other child. It’s natural to want to talk about how autism affects them personally, instead of their child. Another important thing to consider is the aspect of “signing up for” disabled parenting. Excluding adoption, the majority of autistic people’s parents didn’t expect to have a disabled child, and so the unexpected amount of care that they need can leave parents feeling exhausted and burnt out. But, when one has a child, they’re accepting the chance of having a kid who isn’t exactly how they expected.

In conclusion, the parents of autistic children have a huge role in the community, and it’s crucial that the narratives that they tell are about their children, painting them in a complex light. Through being more conscious about how they’re advocating for and talking about their child, they can entirely change how society views the average story of an autistic child’s life. While parents of autistic children have been harmfully, and wrongfully been criticised in the past, and potentially have more difficult times being a parent, there’s still no reason good enough to justify why the majority of autism narratives being spread should be centered around the parent, instead of the autistic person themself.

Works Cited

Murray, Stuart. “Autism.” Academia.edu, Routledge, 2012, www.academia.edu/1160813/Autism.

I pledge, Makayla Harrington

Carly Rose Hughes’s Final Paper [Final Exam Papers]

Carly Rose Hughes
Dis/Lit Final, Prompt #2
Dr. Chris Foss
April 30th 2019
Word Count: 1,200
The True Definition and Value of Autism: A Descriptor of Unique Traits
Prompt: (2) a thesis-driven argument relevant to disability studies that engages substantially with one or two of the theoretical pieces from the final unit.

Autism shows itself in different ways with varying levels of severity among the people who identify as having it. This is because autism encompasses a spectrum of traits, making it a sort of umbrella term for behavioral and social functions that society perceives as deviating from the “norm”. Because of this, people with and without autism alike can have differing experiences with autism, which can often lead to conflicting views and opinions of what an autism diagnosis means. This confusion about autism is made worse by the fact that Autism is hard to diagnose because of its lack of concrete , reliable characteristics. There is no agreed upon definition of autism even in a medical sense , causing many people, especially parents, to view autism as a disease that needs to be cured for a child to have a happy and successful life. This attitude is shown in Julia Rodas‘s Introduction and “Un-Conclusion” of ‘Autistic Disturbances’ ,with descriptions of PlayBoy model Jenny McCarthy’s parenting of her child with autism. Through analysis of her parenting choices combined with other autistic scholar’s view points, it is clear that it is not autism is not what needs to be cured for people with autism to be successful, but instead it is society’s view and treatment of people with autism that needs to be rethought. In this way, if Autism’s definition were societally re-framed away from its negative and nebulous medical connotations and instead viewed as a valuable personality trait which makes a person who has it who they are; harmful misunderstandings of autism would be eradicated and relationships between people with and without autism could be enhanced.

To fully understand society’s perpetuated misconceptions of Autism, it is imperative to have knowledge of the uncertainty of diagnosis which contributes to a general societal fear of a diagnosis. Autism is problematically associated with medicine in the way that people assume that since it is diagnosed, it must be a disease, and if it is a disease, it must be cured. However, “even at the beginning of the 21st Century, we don’t know what Autism is,” (Rodas/Murray). This is firstly because autism does not show up as a concrete, visual, or biological difference in any medical test. Instead, diagnosis is based on analysis of a person’s behavior. Author of Autistic Disturbances backs this up, saying: “..we have no way to measure it [Autism] but by its external manifestations,”. Knowing that diagnosis is closely tied to behavioral qualities, it is clear that Autism “…belongs to and is entwined with individual autistic identities”,(Rodas, Autistic Disturbances) meaning that there are many types of traits that can be associated with autism, and different types of people can have it. This reality is most likely because autism is part of a person’s individual identity, and is just a way to describe behaviors that can be seen as unique. As more people come to a doctor seeking an explanation for certain behaviors, more behaviors and actions become associated with a diagnosis of autism, contributing to further confusing nebulous-ness, which contributes to a higher amount of problematic fear of autism.

The description of Jenny McCarthy’s view of her son Evan’s autism diagnosis demonstrates this problematic fear of diagnosis, because her view directly ties fear of diagnosis to a fear of her son’s personality by subconsciously demonstrating how autism is a part of his identity. McCarthy says that her son was labeled autistic based on “…the boy’s play in the doctor’s office,”. (Rodas, Intro to Autistic Disturbances) This shows how tied to behavior diagnosis is, proving assertions from the last paragraph. Rodas continues : “When the doctor reveals to [McCarthy] that such behavior is characteristic of autism, McCarthy, her “heart shattered” observes “Everything I had thought was cute was a sign of autism,’”. This is obviously a reaction of grief in McCarthy, however, it is not based in reality. Her feelings imply that her son’s value does not exist anymore because his personality is one of what she perceives to be disease. In this way, she is grieving “…over the loss of the normal child [she] had hoped and expected to have.” (John Sinclair ‘Don’t Mourn for Us’) However, she had not thought that her son’s characteristics were bad or significant of sickness before the diagnoses, which drives home how flawed the associations that people without autism make are when it comes to a diagnosis of autism. Because Evan’s diagnoses was so clearly tied with his personality and his diagnoses was “heart shattering” to McCarthy, it seems that this mother it seems that to McCarthy, Evan’s autism is significant of Evan’s lack of personality, or at least lack of a valuable one. In this way, it is obvious that when addressing autism behavioral functions in lieu of a diagnoses, it is often times the parent’s conception of what autism is that needs to change so that a person with autism can receive the most fulfilling relationships with the people around them possible, and therefore the most fulfilling life possible. John Sinclair supports this by saying that “This grief over a fantasized normal child needs to be separated from the parent’s perceptions of the child they do have: the autistic child who…can form very meaningful relationships.. If given the opportunity,”.(Sinclair, Don’t Mourn for Us).

Since autism is a description of someone’s behaviors and personality, it is an unalienable part from who they are. An autistic person’s actions are natural to them, and are worthy of love and support, especially from their parents. The autistic part of their identity is essential to making them who they are. A quote that captures this idea can be found in the novel Troubleshooting by Selene dePackh, when main character with autism Dax/Scope describes her view of herself : “Autism is what I am…it’s not something I can beat any more than I can beat being small…”(dePackh, page 211). So just like a physical characteristic, autism is just another valuable aspect of a person’s identity. In this way, Evan McCarthy still had the same traits with and without the autism diagnosis: the autism diagnosis does not change who he is or what value he should have. He is still the same “cute” child his mother Jenney thought she had. All of this is directly supported by the main idea of John Sinclair’s piece “Don’t Mourn For Us”, saying :

“Autism isn’t something a person has, or a “shell” that a person is trapped inside. There’s no normal child hidden behind the autism. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person–and if it were possible, the person you’d have left would not be the same person you started with.”

If society’s view of autism wasn’t viewed through a misconstrued medical lens; parents such as Jenny McCarthy would not be as affected by their child’s autism diagnosis. Parents would understand that it autism is not a trait they can free their child of, but a trait that deserves love and support through realization does it is part of who their child is.

Citations

dePackh, Selene. Troubleshooting: Glitch in the System: Book One EBook: Selene DePackh: Kindle Store. Reclamation Press, 2018
Don’t Mourn For Us, John Sinclair. Autism Network International Newsletter, Our Voice, Volume 1, Number 3, 1993. Referenced in 1993 International Autism Conference Speech. Accessed online at : [http://www.autreat.com/dont_mourn.html]
Julia Miele Rodas, “Introduction” and “UnConclusion—Because the Butterfly: Autistic Infinitudes” from Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe . Accessed on Class Website, Week 15 Readings.

Stephanie Rizzo’s Final Paper

Stephanie Rizzo

I pledge.

384 Dis Lit final

Autism in Literature

Frankenstein. Anyone who hears this word can only think of one figure: a monster with green-tinted skin and huge hands that was intentionally created to be a figure that produces terrifying acts, at least that’s how the media portrays it. Frankenstein was written as a horror story. It is graphic and scary, yet also addresses a large issue in our society today: inclusion. The creation inflicts fear on people and is seen as an individual representing fear and disgust, it is literally named “the creation”. Looking at this work through a modern lens, we could easily see how the creation could be a representation of disability, specifically autism.

When Donaldson came into our class, she made some amazing points about how different disabilities are expressed in literature as opposed to in movies and social media. She talked about how the media portrays having a disability, such as autism, as beautiful. For example, she mentioned The Joker, who is usually played by an attractive actor and has a mental disability. Literature tends to show the negative side of having a disability. We can definitely see this in Frankenstein. An individual with a disability are not bad people by any means, but society sees them as incapable and not human; however, that’s not the case in most situations.

Our society tends to show disability as a quality in an individual as a negative trait. A stigma is automatically placed on those who are perceived as different, and this hinders their inclusion into society. As a whole, the world we live in has a general fear of disabilities, instead of seeing disabilities as a new perspective to look at things. Our communities today seem to have an issue with inclusion. People often do not know how to interact, or sometimes even coexist, with a person that has a disability, specifically autism. In Frankenstein, we see this when the village exiles the creation and forces him into hiding because they are scared of him and do not know how to react to him just because he looks different. We can see this in our schools today. It seems as though we always hear a new story about a problem with inclusion in schools. However, this worldwide problem with inclusion is not new. We can read about society’s fear of autism dating back centuries. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was first published in 1818, and 201 years later, we are still facing the same dilemmas in society: inclusion of individuals with autism. Although Frankenstein was a progressive book for the time, it was written when people still had a hard time grasping how to incorporate a person with autism into daily life. This problem often stems from the fact that able-bodied people inflict their own fears of acquiring a disability towards those who do live with a disability. Many people seek and find comfort in keeping themselves distanced from people with disabilities because they do not know how to act or treat a person with a disability. In Frankenstein, the people in the town are terrified of the creation and don’t know how to act around him. Mary Shelley portrays the creation as a monster that is basically incapable of existing as a human. Victor Frankenstein is disappointed in how his creation turns out when it comes to life, “I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I had created” (Shelley, 93). He feels as though his creation looks like a vicious monster and further chooses to ignore and ostracize him based off his appearance. This is an issue we have in society today.

This can also be seen in Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay’s poem “Misfit”. He writes

“My hands, as usual, were flapping.

The birds knew I was Autistic;

They found no wrong with anything.

Men and women stared at my nodding;

They labeled me a Misfit.” (Mukhopadhyay, 7-11).

Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay is a modern writer. He also happens to live with what is known today as ‘low functioning/ severe’ autism, meaning he communicates nonverbally. He grew up in India and moved to America with his mother; he never had the chance to attend public schools and has been ostracized throughout his life. We can compare how Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay is treated in modern day to how the community in Frankenstein treated the creation. Because both individuals may look different from what our social standards consider ‘normal’ they must be scary and bad. Shelley wrote “… I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country” (Shelley, 184-185). Victor Frankenstein did not create his creation to be evil, however society saw it as a figure of destruction and terror. He was not built with the intention of being a horrifying murderous monster. Based on the fact that he was different then they were the community around him forced him into that role.

Some readers have expressed that the creation could be an expression of an individual with autism. He is non verbal, much like some people with autism and he seems to have no understanding of social cues. It seems as though Shelley could have written this in modern day and intentionally wrote the creation to have autism because of his language and social development, which connect to qualities of autistic language, even though autism was not a known term at the time it was written. In addition, it also shows the concern about the creature’s having a voice and being heard and how it is relevant to modern concerns about voice and agency in the autistic community. Many people with autism feel as though as they are misunderstood and as though some able bodied people do not understand their actual needs. The creation just wants to experience human connection and relationships, but is denied this opportunity when Victor Frankenstein refuses to make another creation to be a mate for the first creation. Victor is scared to make another because he does not want to have two monsters running around town, he thinks one is bad enough.

Another example is the piece “Communicate with Me” written by D.J. Savarese. It discusses how he feels in social situations and how he handles social interactions without over-stimulating himself. He said “Other kids who knew me in third and fourth grade asked if I can hear because my aide used to sign everything to me. Yes, I can hear, but getting nervous is ultimately deafening to me. What that means is that when I get fearful and desert the real world, I seem to detach my ears and hold my dear self hostage. At times like these, I cannot make sense of what you say, but most of the time I do hear and understand real voices” (Savarese, Communicate with Me). He talked about how individuals do not understand his needs and assume he can or cannot do some things, like learn in a general education setting or hear someone when they are talking to him. We’ve seen this throughout our studies this semester, how able-bodied individuals feel as though they have to make decisions for a person with a disability because they feel as though that person is ‘incapable’.

Society has shown that they have been scared of people with autism for years. One example of this is the amount of people who are scared to vaccinate their children because they feel it will “cause autism”. Parents in 2019 are more willing to let their children contract an infectious and possibly fatal disease than vaccinate their children. Although this study has been continuously proven false, parents would rather choose to believe a child with autism is worse than a child with a disease. This connects to society’s fear of disabilities and how the people live in fear of the creation in Frankenstein. It is clear people with autism are considered different, they can function in society and they should not be feared. Although people with autism may have limitations they are not incapable of functioning in society.

Word Count: 1375

Works Cited

Mukhopadhyay, T. (2010). Five Poems: Misfit. Disability Studies Quarterly,30(1). doi:http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/1192/1256

Savarese, D. (2010). Communicate with Me. Disability Studies Quarterly,30(1). Retrieved from http://www.dsq-sds.org/article/view/1051/1237Shelley, M. (2014). Open Road Media. doi:https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umw/reader.action?docID=1799658

Kenzie Ward’s Final Exam Paper

Characterization of Autism in Troubleshooting

The book “Troubleshooting”, by Selene dePackh, is about a dystopian world that revolves around this idea that autism is something that should be treated, and that autistic people are lesser than able-bodied allistics. The author takes these prominent issues in our society dealing with autism, and creates this perceivable future of what would happen if laws protecting disabled people went away and cure based research became more idealized. The main character Dax is an autistic woman that goes through many points in her life where she struggles to survive in this society that treats her poorly. Her struggles provide insight into the barriers autistic people face in the real world, including getting and keeping a job, cure-based research, and overall ignorance and discrimination of autistic people. In spite of those struggles, the author still depicts Dax as an autistic woman shown creating and maintaining sexual and platonic relationships and gives her other qualities that extend beyond her diagnosis, making her a positive representation of an autistic character.

Many depictions of autistic characters in media represent a very similar profile as to what is considered an autistic person. A lot of autistic characters we see in media have traits such as social awkwardness, high intelligence, asexuality, being gullible or unable to lie, and usually end up being portrayed as white or male. Even though many of these things are characteristics of autism, it shouldn’t be the only thing that describes that person or character. A lot of famous characters that come to mind include Sheldon Cooper from “The Big Bang Theory,”, Dr. Shawn Murphy from “The Good Doctor”, and Sam Gardner from “Atypical”. Although these characters can be beneficial representations of people on the spectrum that spread awareness, this specific profile focuses more on the high functioning, savant-like white males that are on the spectrum. This tends to shine the light away from those who are low-functioning, people of color, and women who also exist on the spectrum. “Troubleshooting” shines a light on those people on the spectrum, and the author successfully portrays Dax as a more positive and multidimensional autistic female character. This portrayal of an autistic person is very refreshing in comparison to the other characters previously listed.

Throughout the book, while Dax is fighting for autistic rights in this allistic and ableist society, we also get a glimpse of who she is as a person with characteristics that coincide with her autism. We see a character who takes control over her circumstances and fights for her independence and rights of all people on the autism spectrum. It is also a rare thing to see an explicit view on an autistic person’s sex life because they are usually viewed as asexual and are overall infantilized. With this viewpoint of Dax’s intimate relationships, we also get to see her as this more powerful woman who demands to be in charge of what happens to both her and her partner. In the book, we see her relationship with Chill become more intimate which entails a closer look at how Dax openly expresses her dominance. She also finds herself in a position of power as she takes her independence into her own hands. While she is in an abusive relationship with The Mistake, she finds solace in her work as she discovers the organization Polaris.

Oftentimes the portrayal we get of autistic people tends to show them hating the idea of having relationships with other people. This is just an example of an overgeneralization of a characteristic that is on the spectrum. Although making relationships with people could be difficult and uncomfortable for someone on the spectrum, we see Dax seeking and maintaining relationships with a multitude of people throughout her life. This disregards that stigma that autistic people try to avoid others as best they can because usually that’s just a misunderstanding. Even though it might be more difficult for her to feel comfortable making friends, it is important to see that certain things motivate her to do it, similar to how neurotypical people think as well. For example, the author writes, “I went up and introduced myself even though making social is usually something I’d rather scrub a free public toilet than do; stomach-twisting lust is a powerful motivator” (dePackh, 3). As a reader, this gives us another aspect of how forming relationships is something that autistic people want, and Dax clearly expresses that interest in the story. She also keeps in touch with quite a few people in her life and create close and intimate bonds with Chill Dark, Gabriel Dark, and Tom Webster.

Selene dePackh creates an almost unusual portrayal of someone on the spectrum because it is not what we usually see in books and movies. A character is usually written explicitly as part of a pity story and heavily victimizes the character and writes about how they “overcame” their hardships with autism. As an example, in the story “Of mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, an autistic character named Lenny went through many moments that involved misunderstandings between him and another character. He was written as a character that was much more infantilized than Dax which deemed him unable to take care of himself, as well as fully comprehend the actions of others. Because of this, Lenny ended up murdering a woman because he didn’t fully grasp how powerful he was and ended up dying because of it. In the story “Troubleshooting”, even though Dax is met with hardships such as being forced into prostitution, discriminated against, and abused, we are given a much more hopeful narrative where the character takes control of her circumstances.

There are many depictions of autistic characters in shows where the main protagonist is usually a straight, white male. Similarly, a lot of the narratives end up creating a character who is more victimized than uplifted in the story. The author Selene dePackh introduces a protagonist in her story that is a refreshing take on the characterization of autistic people. Dax is a multifaceted character that is autistic but is also written with having characteristics that are extensions of that diagnosis. She is an autistic character that is written in a positive light because she represents a part of the spectrum that is overlooked. She also has attributes presented to us throughout the story that creates a hopeful dialogue and represents a positive outlook on the characterization of autistic people.

I pledge: Kenzie Ward

Word count: 1069

Citations

dePackh, Selene. Troubleshooting. San Francisco: Reclamation Press, 2018.