The Allegedly Manipulative Child

In my research and thinking on how to treat psychopathic kids, I realized one big issue is how to deal with manipulative behavior. In order to effectively treat psychopathy in kids, it's vital that the kid notbe able to use manipulation to get what they want.

So when I saw a book called The Manipulative Child (by EW Swihart and Patrick Cotter) I thought I'd found a useful resource that might give good ideas on how to manage psychopathic kids. I was wrong.

The big problem is that this book, contrary to its' title, is not actually about manipulative kids! At the start of chapter two, they say:

"We noticed that most descriptions of manipulation assumed or implied that these behaviors were guided by conscious thought. From novelist to scientist, all assumed manipulation to be consciously planned behavior. When we looked at our patients who were manipulating their way through life, however, we discovered just the opposite: They did not seem particularly aware of how they were operating or why they were doing what they did."

So, they've redefined manipulation in a way that conflicts with everyone else's definition of manipulation. The reality is, conscious, planned manipulation is a psychologically meaningful category of behavior, which is what most people call manipulation. Their 'unconscious manipulation', in contrast, lumps together a pile of behaviors motivated by a pile of different things, and labels them with what most people consider a very loaded and negative term. When people think of a manipulative child, they do not think of a kid who lacks confidence and needs a lot of support. They think of a callous, selfish kid who deliberately tricks others into doing what he or she wants.

And this sets the tone for the victim-blaming prevalent in this book. From pages 37-39, they talk about a girl who was the victim of two separate attempted rapes. They talk about her acting seductively and not knowing how to say no, and imply that she's at fault for the attempted rapes (though they briefly admit that the boys' behavior couldn't be condoned). Firstly, contrary to stereotypes, acting seductively does not put you at higher risk of rape - acting insecure does. This is because rapists want an easy victim, who won't resist. The idea that seductive dress leads to rape is identified as one of a cluster of beliefs known as 'rape myths', beliefs which are more frequent in rapists and which lead to lower sympathy for rape victims.

They also blame the victims of bullying - one kid, for example, they say was being bullied because she reacted too readily. While her high reactivity may have been what got her singled out instead of some other kid, fundamentally she was bullied because there were bullies in her classroom. And the failure to recognize this not only teaches her that changing herself is the way to deal with bullying (a dangerous lesson) but leaves the bullies unrecognized and untreated. Being a bully is a risk factor for some pretty serious psychological problems, and some very adverse outcomes in life (such as becoming a chronic criminal). In fact, bullies often fare worse than their victims over the long run. Early intervention can help, but as long as we blame the victims, the bullies won't get the help they need.

They also think learning disabilities are often caused by kids avoiding work and manipulating people into helping them when they don't really need it. As a result, these kids don't learn the basic skills. On pages 10-12, they discuss a dyslexic 17 year old who was 'cured' by simply teaching her phonics, and claim that her problem originated by her deciding to give up because some kids were better readers than her. They also claim that the association between ADHD and dyslexia is because ADHD kids don't like reading instruction and try to avoid it.

Avoidance behaviors can play a part in developing learning problems, but in many cases where a kid is seeking too much help, this is a sign, not a cause, of learning problems. They also have a good point about how not learning basic skills sets up the kid for failure - this doesn't mean the kid's failure to learn the basic skills wasn't due to a disability. There's a big difference between a 6 year old and a 17 year old, so a 17 year old's ability to learn phonics doesn't mean she could've learnt it at 6. Some kids simply mature a bit more slowly, so they get ready for basic reading and/or math skills around (for example) 8-10 years instead of 6 years old. In a standard school system, often these kids don't get the chance to learn the skills when they're ready to learn them, because they're expected to already know them by then.

And one last example of victim-blaming - on page 37, they discuss a girl whose parents ask her why she got a low mark, and she replies "I was so upset by you and Dad fighting, I just couldn't concentrate." This is portrayed as 'putting the blame on her parents and trying to make them feel guilty'. Well, when I'm listening to two people I love arguing with each other, I can't concentrate! Parental conflict does have an averse impact on children, and part of this can be a decline in marks. This is not shifting blame - it's quite possible that this girl truly was unable to concentrate because of her parents arguing.

They also discourage parents communicating clearly with their kids. They recommend that you not ask kids 'why' they do things, because a) most kids don't know why they do the things they do, and b) it implies if you give a good enough answer, you won't be punished. Both of these are valid points, but they ignore just how valuable asking why can be. Firstly, if people introspect regularly, they learn to understand themselves better - this is why talk therapy so often asks you why you do what you do. Struggling to answer this question about your own actions teaches you how to analyze and understand yourself.

And secondly, when kids do give an accurate answer to this question, it often suggests a useful solution to the problem. If the kid doesn't want to wear his/her shoes 'because they're too tight', maybe he/she needs a larger size of shoes. If the kid doesn't want to go to school 'because Johnny always picks on me', maybe you can find a way for him/her and Johnny to get along, or maybe Johnny needs help learning not to pick on people. If the kid doesn't want to go to Grandpa's house 'because Grandpa sticks his hand in my pants and it feels weird', then it's time to call the police and keep the child away from Grandpa for his/her own safety.

When you understand why a kid does what they do, you're going to be more effective at dealing with it. And even though a kid's report of why they do things isn't always accurate, it's foolish to completely dismiss that method of gathering information on their actions. Obviously, you should also look at all the other evidence - the ongoing pattern of behavior, their body language, other people's reports, etc - but why would you ignore one of the most valuable sources of information on what's going on inside your kid's head?

Oh, and one minor complaint - they suggest the rule of 'homework first, then other activities'. This can work for some kids. But other kids find school so stressful that when they get home, they don't have the energy for homework. If you try to get them to do homework right away, you'll have a fight on your hands. But if you let them spend X amount of time doing something they like, and then insist on homework, they'll be a lot more cooperative. The key is timing it right, so it's a) not so soon that they can't relax first, b) not so late that they're tired and delays will infringe on sleep, and c) at a clear transition instead of interrupting something.

So, sadly, this book has nothing about actual manipulative kids. So, what do you do about manipulative kids?

Well, I'm far from an expert on the issue, but here are some ideas:

* Communicate directly with anyone involved with your child - If your child goes to school, talk to the teachers about his or her day; if he/she visits Grandma, talk to Grandma about how the visit went - that way, your kid can't pit you against them with lies.

* Check their facts - For example, one of my cousins, while in my family's custody, made a bonfire in the backyard and exploded a paint can. When my father came home, he immediately told my father a tale of helping someone with a house fire, to explain his singed hair. My father asked to be shown the house that was burning. My cousin claimed he couldn't remember exactly where it was. My father suggested they walk around and look for the burnt house. Of course, my cousin couldn't show him any burnt house. He also had no explanation for the blotch of paint on the wall of the house.

* Reward actions, not emotions - Children can't control what they feel, or don't feel. It's possible to control your feelings to a limited extent, but not completely, and this limited control isn't going to be learnt by rewarding the right emotions. Instead, rewarding emotional expression tends to teach kids to fake the right emotions and hide the wrong ones.

We're Not All Sexual

Many people have complained about the portrayal of disabled people as asexual. Although I really don't understand what it's like to have your sexuality denied and ignored like that, I do understand that it's not a good thing.
But there seems to be a tendency to assume either that disabled people in general (or in certain categories) have nothing in common with normal people, or to assume we're not really different from normal people - or only in superficial ways. In terms of disability and sexuality, this comes off as either assuming all disabled people are asexual, or assuming all disabled people are just as sexual as anyone else.
The latter assumption is what I see many disability rights activists expressing, when they talk about sexuality. They discuss sexuality as something universal to all human beings, including disabled people. Some acknowledge sexual differences such as being gay, but they still say that everyone has sexual feelings.
Well, not everyone does. Certain disabilities, such as intersexing conditions and autism, are associated with asexuality. Not every autistic or intersexed person is asexual, but a certain number of us are. We exist, even if your claims that all humans are sexual deny our existence.
It's especially bad when sex education materials do this. As a pre-teen, I got sex education that denied any sexual differences - even homosexuality - and left me confusing nonsexual liking for sexual attraction because I didn't realize it was possible for me not to have crushes on boys. I don't really blame my school for not telling kids about asexuality, because it's so rare, they probably didn't know about it. But there are sex education books out there for autistic kids that also suggest that everyone has sexual desires starting in puberty - and asexual people are not rare among autistics, especially autistic girls. There are also some autistics who develop their sexuality later than usual, typically in their twenties, and therefore are asexual as teens but not as adults. I'd estimate that at least a third of autistic teens will have no or very little desire for sex. A third of your intended audience is a lot of people to ignore.
And I think a big part of this is the idea that saying disabled people - any disabled people - are asexual has been portrayed as a nasty stereotype. Somehow, even acknowledging that we exist, that we aren't interested in that sort of thing, seems to be taken as denying that we're real people with emotions. Well, no, asexual people are not emotionless. We're not incapable of love, because love does not just mean sexual attraction. It's possible to love a close friend, a parent, a child, or a sibling. And that love is just as real, and can be just as passionate, as sexual love.
I don't think it's a bad thing at all to be asexual. In fact, I'm glad I am - it seems to save me from a lot of angst, since I'm not constantly looking for Mr Right. I just wish there wasn't this idea that sexuality is fundamental to every person. Our society is obsessed with sexuality, but we're disability rights activists, we're supposed to challenge society's assumptions.

Positive Stereotypes 2

In reply to my recent post about seemingly positive stereotypes that are disliked by the people they're applied to, one person brought up the problems with the 'Asians are good at math' stereotype.
This brings me to another type of positive stereotype - one that does readily allow you to take the perspective of the person being described, or ask their perspective. And this is the type of stereotype I see some people actually liking and accepting for themselves. In the autistic community, an example would be the stereotype that autistics are good with computers, or have excellent spatial skills. I've seen several autistics link their 'autistic pride' with these stereotypes, so clearly these are stereotypes that can be used for positive self-identification.
But these stereotypes, too, have problems with them, and some people dislike these positive stereotypes. It's my impression that the people who tend to dislike such stereotypes are the people the stereotypes don't fit. The Asians who are average or poor at math and the autistics who are average or poor at computer skills or spatial skills are the ones who tend to complain about these stereotypes (and others on their behalf).
I think there are two parts to this. Firstly, inaccurate stereotypes, whether positive or negative, can lead to misunderstanding. For example, an Asian getting C grades in math might be criticized for not working up to full potential, when in fact xe is doing the best xe can. Or an autistic might be encouraged to look for a career with computers, when xe has be constantly retaught how to start one up. If people don't realize that this individual doesn't fit that stereotype and never will, then there will be much frustration and angst when they try to make that person be what they aren't.
But there's a deeper issue than that. Many times, these positive stereotypes are an attempt to assert the worth of a devalued group. Certainly, that's the case with autism - I've even seen people use the stereotyped autistic talents to argue that we shouldn't all be aborted when or if they develop a prenatal test for autism. (Personally, I suspect that developing a prenatal test for autism will turn out like it has for MR - we'll find out autism is a multitude of different condition, some of which can be tested for and some cannot.) In a context where these stereotypes are used to prove our value and justify our very existence, there is an implication that a person who doesn't fit those stereotypes is not valueable, and should not exist. This implication, naturally, is very concerning to those who don't fit the positive stereotypes, and to people who care about them. As an autistic with low-average spatial skills (Raven's Progressive Matrices score 80), this is something I have personal experience with.
I've written about this before. I always think of Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer in this context. It seems that rather than just saying 'difference is not a bad thing, and everyone is valueable', some people try to prove the worth of various differences by finding some special talent associated with that difference. But that does nothing to assert the worth of people who lack the talent you've named, nor does it challenge the underlying idea that difference is a bad thing.

Seemingly Positive Stereotypes

Some people may be surprised at how rights activists sometimes object to stereotypes that seem positive, such as the 'noble savage' or 'innocent retard' stereotypes*.'Why would they be upset about being portrayed positively?' people ask. In reply, many activists fumble with comments about not wanting to be seen as different or wanting to be viewed as people, which often don't clarify much.
I think I've figured out one of the real problems with those stereotypes. It's a matter of the perspectives they suggest. When you think of a 'noble savage' or an 'innocent retard', you typically don't think of that hypothetical person from xyr own perspective. You think of these people from the perspective of an observer. And how would you go about understanding their perspectives? You can't ask them - the 'innocent retard' would probably not understand the question, while the 'noble savage' would reply in some riddle you can't understand. At least, that's the perception, and comments from people viewed in the lenses of those two stereotypes will be interpreted in those ways.
Native people and disabled people are not like nondisabled whites. We all have things in common, sure, but there are also differences, and often the stereotypes catch an element of those differences. But they hide the most important perspective on that group - their own. If your stereotype is of someone you can't imagine being, yet can predict the actions of, then it's probably not a stereotype that the people described will be happy with.

It's a Gift, You're Not Owed Anything

I'm just finished attending a conference by the Association for Research on Mothering, where me and my mother presented regarding the 'war on autism'. I've got a lot more comments to make that are inspired by this conference, but here's one.
Very often, parents of autistic kids talk about feeling 'cheated' out of something by having an autistic child. Here's an example:

"I prayed before I ever had kids that god would give me children that have no mental or social problems. I believe that god ruined him. What if the best my child can do is work as a greeter at Wal-mart, how does one accept your child is doomed, ruined, a waste of human life?"
http://autism.about.com/b/2008/09/16/an-autism-mom-says-god-ruined-my-child.htm

At ARM, I've been hearing about the concept of matriarchy and the gift economy. A gift economy is based not on exchange, but on gifts and fulfilling needs. And according to the advocates for this model that I've just met, the prototype of the gift economy is a mother raising a child.
And this really clarifies a big problem with statements like the above quote. You are not owed anything by your child. You are giving them a gift, a profound, life-creating gift, with no strings attached. They may give you a gift in return (and I think all children have the potential to give their parents such gifts, if their parents can see it) but you are not owed anything.
My younger brother has a tendency to interpret 'maybe' as a solemn promise (although he seems to be outgrowing this). And that's exactly the mistake that these parents are making, when they feel cheated by a child not being like they expected.
You are not promised a normal child. You are not even promised a child. You are giving the gift of life to your child, with no guarantee as to the results of this gift. Your child could live only a couple of weeks in utero. Your child could grow up normal and then die unexpectedly at 17. Your child could grow up to be a greeter at Walmart rather than the high-powered executive or whatever that you'd hoped for. You must remember that your hopes for your child are just hopes, not guarantees. You have not been promised anything, you have not made a contract with your child, you've given them a gift. And that's what it means to have a child.

We're Not Silencers, We're Silenced Too

Traditionally, the people talking about childhood-onset disability and expressing their views of it have been professionals of various sorts. If you read stuff about childhood disabilities from older time periods, before the 1950s or so, it's hard to find anything written by nondisabled parents of disabled kids - it's virtually all doctors, teachers, psychologists, etc. It's less so now, but many parents still get what Peggy Lou Morgan calls the 'dumb parent treatment'.
As a result, it seems like some parents become very vigilant about making sure their voices are heard, rather than 'experts' who know nothing about their lives dictating what's going on. This is a good thing. It's an adaptive response to being silenced. It means you are advocating for yourself and your child, and both of you stand to benefit from it.
But when these parents meet disabled self-advocates (especially, it seems, when parents of autistics meet autistic self-advocates), too often they don't turn this off. They don't see us as different from professionals in the field of autism. And when we start to say that we need to be heard, rather than just having parents of kids like us talk, and we say things about parents not understanding their children and making mistakes, the parents see it as 'yet another expert come to shut us up and tell us what we're doing wrong'.
And the reaction that is a good and productive thing against the know-it-all professionals who aren't listening to parents gets directed at people trying to speak up about their own lives, and the lives of others like them. People who are even more silenced than parents of disabled kids, whose voices are less often heard. And these advocate parents end up reinforcing and perpetuating oppression against their own children.
What parents need to remember is that just because you are the one being silenced and treated unfairly when talking to professionals, doesn't mean that's true in other circumstances. You can be the perpetrator of oppression in one setting, even though you're the victim of it in another setting. Parents need to remember that fighting back against oppression can seem to the priviledged ones like oppressing them, and that you can be more priviledged than another group even though you're part of an oppressed group too.
And most importantly, parents need to remember who and what they are fighting for. They are fighting for their children. And we, (in the group sense) are their children. Parents should imagine their child, grown up and able to speak or type their self-advocacy, talking to other parents about what they want for children like them. Would you want those parents to reply the way you have?

Disability Teaching a Lesson?

The next Disability Blog Carnival is at Barriers, Bridges and Books. On that blog, Terri recently posted a reminder about the blog carnival, in which she said:

"What have you learned or become that you might not have without and encounter with disability? Have you become a medical expert, education specialist, behavioral manager, mechanic, efficiency expert, law specialist, problem-solver, activist, interpreter, ambassador, poet? Or something else that I haven't thought of....Has your faith, creativity, determination, efficiency, patience, impatience, techno-savviness, assertiveness, connectedness, sensitivity, sense of humor or some other trait grown or been changed? Any of the above? All of the above? None of the above, but something else entirely??"

That question assumes that disability is something that entered your life at some point, changing your life from previously not involving disability, or not to that degree. As such, it is profoundly inapplicable to someone like me.
What if you never had a life without disability?
It reminds me of this video, in which Amanda Baggs says:

"One of the things you mentioned was that there was an advantage in being disabled from birth in that you're doing all your adjustment as you grow. I'd actually take it farther than that -- being disabled from birth, there is nothing to adjust to."

It is this adjustment from a nondisabled life to a disabled life (and I'm using this to apply to those with disabled loved ones as well) that brings those kind of 'lessons' that are relatively easy to name and describe.
Whereas for me, I know things I would not have known if I was neurotypical, but I can't really name them as things I have 'learned since before disability' because there never was any 'before disability'. I was born the way I am. I may have regressed somewhat at 18 months, but even if that was something I'd have perceived as an unexpected and significant change in me (rather than just growing up or reacting to my circumstances) I can't remember that far back. I didn't have the experience of growing up as a standard person, fitting in with others and our society so fundamentally and identifying with the standard tale' of how people in our society live and what they are like. Instead I grew up with others treating me like I should be or should have been the standard person, but I wasn't.

Special Accomodations and Proving Disability

It seems to me that a lot of disability accomodations go about it the wrong way. They have a certain thing everyone is supposed to do a certain way. When a disabled person says 'This is not fair. I can't do it that way' (or they can't do it as well as expected) then the system says 'OK, prove to us you are disabled, and we'll put you in a special category that get to do it a different way.'
There are several problems with this model:
a) it depends on labels and testing for disability. If you're undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, you won't get the help you need, even if you know that you need that kind of help. Even with an accurate diagnosis, you might not quite meet their criteria and still not get any help. (For example, some autistic assistive communication users have lost needed services because they now score over 70 on an IQ test.)
b) just because it's not as desperate for normal people as it is for you doesn't mean it wouldn't be helpful to them. Very often, disabled people can signal a problem that affects many people, simply because it affects them more. But if you single them out for help, the others with less acute needs for the same thing don't get it. For example, one study tested the use of voice recognition software to create 'subtitles' on an overhead as a professor spoke. This was intended for several deaf students as an adjuct to signed translation, but several hearing students also started looking at the display. Some people, like my mother, find it easier to understand text than speech, even though they aren't labeled with any disability.
c) it singles out the disabled person as a 'special case' rather than treating them as part of the group. Because there is no accomodation for differences except in extreme cases, other students may come to resent the disabled student for getting special bonuses (I remember how upset I got when the teachers let my CP classmate chew gum in class but wouldn't let me do it) or else pity them for needing those accomodations. Granted, there are many reasons for normal people to have negative views of disabled people, and changing this one thing won't eliminate that completely. But it will help.
What is the alternative? Make accomodations available for everyone, like they do with curb cuts, elevators and talking walk-lights ("the walk-light to cross college drive is now on. Bee-dup."). It won't really lower the quality of performance in a class if kids are allowed to type essays rather than writing them longhand (of course, they should all be getting practice writing longhand, too) or a professor passes out notes to their lecture to any student who wants them. In cases where there truly is a different need, such as teaching different subjects to a developmentally delayed kid than to their classmates, there are two options - either let people self-select which system to go with, or accomodate everyone regardless of labels (with this specific example, a system where children work on units and go to the next one as soon as they pass the earlier one would work well).
If we do it this way, undiagnosed disabled people will still get the help they need, disabled people won't be singled out as 'special needs', nondisabled people who'd benefit from certain accomodations (such as gifted kids) may be able to get them, and the time-consuming, wasteful and adversarial beaurocracy of determining who gets help will be eliminated. Even if we don't do this for every accomodation, we can do it for most of them and get similar benefits.

The Social Value of Demand Avoidance

I read a great book called The Wind Singer. In this book, a set of twins live in a very regimented, controlling walled city called Aramanth. One of them, a girl named Kestrel, is one of the story characters I've identified with the most. She is very idealistic, passionate, and stubborn. She is demand avoidant, though I wouldn't say she has the clinical syndrome characterized by that, because she's not autistic enough.
Anyway, no one in Aramanth is really happy, or at least not as much as they would be in a freer society. But most people can cope. Kestrel, however, can't cope, can't accomodate herself to her environment, so she's the one who changes it.
I'm not sure who it was, but someone once said that "The reasonable man accomodates himself to society, but the unreasonable man expects society to accomodate to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." The way I see it, demand avoidant people are the 'unreasonable' people in that saying. We're like the canary in the coal mine - the same unpleasant things that others can tolerate are intolerable to us. Teachers with rigid ideas, rigid lesson plans, rigid teaching styles aren't really good teachers for most kids, but they are terrible teachers for demand avoidant kids.
I remember thinking about one girl I know with Rett Syndrome that she might in some ways be better off if she had meltdowns. Because she really needed to know what was expected - if she didn't know, she was confused and functioned much more poorly. But that's not that overtly unpleasant to other people or disruptive to the system she was in, and it was easy to confuse that with her disability. Whereas another girl I worked with, who screamed, self-injured and bit people when her routine was changed - well, everyone working for her made sure to keep a regular routine going, because they couldn't handle her like that. (Of course, in other ways the Rett girl was better off not acting like that - she didn't get hurt, she was probably less upset, and her helpers didn't get scared of her. Also, she was exposed to more things, some of which she couldn't necessarily handle, but some of which was educational or enjoyable in various ways.)
As for demand avoidant autistics, a good example is ABA. Most autistic self-advocates are either opposed to ABA in general, or at very least opposed to most/all ABA programs actually in operation. On Youtube, there are a lot of videos of autistic kids getting ABA, and seldom do those kids seem happy. They seem to be putting up with something unpleasant in exchange for a reward. ABA is all about the child accomodating other people, with no recognition that the child needs to be accomodated by others as well. And the ABA-treated autistics I've met all seem to have very low self-esteem (either that, or they used to and have recovered).
Now, most autistic kids can tolerate ABA, and make progress in an ABA program. Demand avoidant kids aren't like that. I've written elsewhere about how I would have acted in an ABA program, based on my behavior in a controlling school - this is typical of children with the subtype of autism defined by demand avoidance. And because of that, the advice about educating kids like me strongly discourages the use of ABA. I heard one parent say that she wished this syndrome wasn't considered an autism spectrum condition because the standard autism treatments don't work on these kids - I say, based on my experience with autistic kids of all kinds, that the methods that work well with kids like me also work well (with adaptation of course) with all sorts of autistic kids. And with none of the ethical issues of ABA.
Which brings me to my last point. Demand avoidance has a social value in sending the message that there is a problem here. But one danger is that the demand avoidant kid will be treated as an exception, and get what they need, without any benefit to the rest of the children who have a less obvious need for the same treatment. Just because a child doesn't absolutely need a certain environment doesn't mean they won't be better off in that environment. It's like if you saw the canaries in the coal mine having trouble breathing and just said "Oh, canaries need better air than this" without taking into account that the same air is harming the miners to a milder degree. We need to listen to the messages that these 'canaries in the coal mine' are sending.

Accepting Imagination Deficit

Autistic people are said to have an imagination deficit. At first, when I heard that, I outright rejected it, saying things like 'the people who think autistics lack imagination are the unimaginative ones'.
In my case, I've come to realize that I actually have a form of autism in which imagination is usually a talent, certainly not a deficit. Based on that, I've been researching 'creatively gifted' kids, to better understand what that actually means.
But it just occurred to me that if, as I believe, there are some people who are inherently more creative, there must also be people who are inherently less creative - just as the presence of intellectually gifted kids requires that there also be developmentally delayed kids. Whether these unimaginative children are autistic or not, they, too, are part of neurodiversity, and should be accepted for who they really are and viewed as valuable individuals. But whereas I have no trouble accepting both gifted and delayed kids, I find it hard to accept unimaginative kids.
What would unimaginative kids be like? Well, according to this study, they'd be tolerant, practical, reliable, dependable, responsible, logical, understanding, appreciative, good-natured and sincere. To me, that sounds mostly like a mix of good organizational skills and being a people-pleaser. I can accept that people like that are useful, that they counteract some of the problems creative people tend to have, that while creative people tend to be better at coming up with ideas, these people would be better at actually implementing them. But I think of the joy and beauty of creating something new, and I don't really feel that those things make up for not having that.
Now, I'm sure I'm not being fair to them. Likely, things that have little appeal to me bring a similar kind of joy to them. I know I'm doing exactly what Amanda Baggs criticized here, but I don't know how to stop from doing that. Or, as Zilari explained in a comment on the above post, part of my checklist of things someone must have in their life to be happy is 'creating things'. It's certainly part of what I need in my life to be happy, but clearly not that way for many other people. But I just can't imagine how someone could be noncreative and happy that way.
I'll just have to keep working on it.

Digby Tantam's Reply

I emailed Didgy Tantam awhile ago with a reply to his article Malice and Asperger Syndrome. I've now received the following reply:

"Dear Ettina
Thank you for your interesting observations. It is possible that you do not meet the criteria that Elizabeth Newson used.
Best wishes
Digby Tantam"

That's all? Just 'you might not have PDA'?

'He/She Can't Help It'

In large part, the groups I act most autistic in (not meaning 'upset autistic' which some people seem to think is the when someone is most noticeably autistic - sometimes to the point of equating autism with being upset - but monologuing, tangential, stimming, etc) are the groups I feel most comfortable in. I act this way more with my family than with anyone else, and in my family I show the whole picture instead of parts of it (acting both disabled and intelligent), but in some groups of non-family I act more autistic than in other groups.
The big reason is the stigma that acting strangely has. Those developmentally disabled people who get 'therapies' are very often trained out of behavior that, like my own odd behavior, is harmless (or at least less harmful than a lot of normal behavior that isn't treated by any 'behavior programs'). Flapping your hands (provided you have enough room) isn't going to hurt anyone. Odd social behavior like launching into monologues can easily be dealt with by just negotiating with the other person (like when my father says he needs to concentrate on driving so I should stop talking) just like a lot of typical behavior is negotiated. But I've met a boy whose teacher was constantly interrupting him when he flapped his hands, and heard of people being alotted only 5 minutes per day to talk about their interests - if they're well-behaved. Can you imagine someone telling you to stop every time you fiddled with your hair (or some similar mannerism) or saying you can only talk about things you're interested in during a set 5 minutes every day?
If you are disabled, you are expected to try as hard as you can to conform. If you're mildly disabled, you probably can conform reasonably well in many settings, and even though your disability doesn't disappear, the other people can pretend it has. If you're severely disabled, you can't conform no matter how hard you try, or you may not even realize you're expected to conform.
Most people know that some people can't conform, even if they try their hardest. They're still supposed to try as hard as they can, but society makes some allowances for them because 'they can't help it'. I think this is a big part of why so many people think it so important to define abnormal behaviour as 'voluntary' or 'involuntary' instead of recognizing that it's really a spectrum, and part of why there's a big division between 'high functioning' and 'low functioning' and between 'bad' and 'disabled' (when the behavior is the same - eg not responding when someone says something to you, or interpreting a command literally when that's not the intended meaning). If you can conform, you should - even when there's no good reason for that particular rule.
Some people who try to train disabled people to conform would protest that 'if they act this way, they'll get teased' (or not be taken seriously, etc). And that is a big part of how society enforces conformity - by rejection and punishment of those who don't conform. But society has two distinct methods of enforcing conformity, and the 'helpers' who try to get us to stop acting weird are using the second method. It is indeed gentler, but that doesn't mean it's OK. The focus is not on those who punish not conforming, but on those who aren't conforming. An analogy that might help illustrate is if you told a gay person 'don't let people know you are gay because some people beat up gays'. That's better than beating them up yourself, but most people these days don't think staying in the closet (conforming) is a good way to solve the problem of homophobic violence.
I've mostly learnt to conform the harder way. I was bullied a lot at school for having unusual interests, running circles around people, getting upset and crying, acting immature, and anything I did that most kids didn't do (or that I did differently, such as being clumsy and awkward in physical activities). My teachers bullied me as well - telling me that I was doing math wrong when I followed different steps or didn't 'show my work', trying to make me stop being interested in the topics I was interested in, etc - but even if they hadn't, the fact that they focused on me instead of the bullies in their attempts to stop the bullying sent the same general message. In public, if I flap my hands or squeal, people stare at me and sometimes act scared of me.
I can control these odd behaviors for the most part, and more importantly to our society, I look like I can control them. I look normal - not just my physical appearance, but also that my speech and general bearing look (even if I weren't trying to conform) close enough to normal that most people don't realize I'm disabled. Even people who know me for awhile - though they know I'm eccentric - often wouldn't realize I was disabled unless I told them. Actually, by and large, the few people who realized I was disabled without being told (or looking for it, like a psychologist) have been bus drivers, because of my difficulty navigating by bus. Note: even if you are visibly disabled, you can look like you're able to conform in certain ways - eg if you are a well-spoken person in a wheelchair, people are likely to assume you can't control motor problems, but most of them will expect you to refrain from covering your ears and screaming when you hear an alarm go off.

A Different Kind of Autistic

I'm seriously thinking of quitting from autistic advocacy and going out on my own.

Not that I don't think it's OK to be autistic. But I'm not standard for an autistic person. Yes, I know there's a lot of variation, but the vast majority of autistic people have certain traits in common with each other that I don't have in common with them.

That, in itself, doesn't make me any less eager to be involved with autistic advocacy groups. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way I am, and I don't see anything wrong with the way most autistics are either. But some people seem to think recognizing I'm not like most autistics, and that there is a diagnostic category someone invented that describes me much better than just 'autistic' does, is something I should not do.

If they could give evidence why I'm not different from most autistics, I'd pay attention to it. On other occasions I've misunderstood descriptions of autistic traits and assumed I was different from people because of that. But they haven't commented at all on whether or not I am a different kind of autistic person. They've just attacked the only label I've found to describe people like me. They've just said I'm not supposed to define myself that way.

Why? Well, because it's Pathological Demand Avoidance. And 'pathological' is a bad thing (which is why I've renamed it Newson Syndrome, which they've completely ignored) and 'demand avoidance' is assumed by them to be - I don't know what, but something really offensive, rather than just 'avoiding demands' (which I actually do). And somehow saying I fit into this category is supposed to mean I think I'm pathological and bad.

And they don't even question the idea that PDA is a bad thing. They insist that description can't possibly be a neutral way of describing someone, even if you rename the condition. Somehow, the fact that autism was described just as negatively, if not more so, by Leo Kanner and yet they call themselves autistics doesn't seem to matter. It's OK for them, but not for me.

I finally found kids who sound just like I was when I was younger, and read descriptions of adults a lot like me. And because I tried to look for adults like me among the broader community of autistics, I get attacked. Why do they get to define themselves, but I don't? Why do they get to define my reality for me?

The Missing Voice

There's this one style of writing that really bothers me. It's when someone writes 'nonfiction' from the perspective of someone else who can't describe their own experience - usually a disabled child, although people do this with pets as well. An example is available here.
It's not that people do this both with pets and disabled people that bothers me. I think very often the offense at being 'treated like an animal' is about things that are problematic when done to animals, as well. And that's true in this case, although I'll be discussing why it's problematic to do this to disabled people.
Although one problem is that it can be hard to tell who actually wrote it, that's not the biggest problem either. Often it's obvious - frequent references to 'mommy thought' with too much detail to be anyone other than her, statements like 'I can't speak or write', etc. Other times, it isn't. One website I found, I actually couldn't tell who had written it - the disabled man himself or one of his parents.
In the Faces of Autism conference I went to, they asked people to put up their hands when they named certain groups of people attending. They listed parents of autistic children, teachers, therapists, etc. At the end, they said 'did we miss any group?' I and one other person put up our hands. They'd missed two categories of people - politicians and autistic people. (There's a funny Monty Python skit about this, too. You can see it here*.)
I think these are related problems. People tend to lump disabled people and their family into one group, and act as if their interests are the same. This is especially true with disabilities that are usually diagnosed in childhood and that affect communication. And lumping those two groups together almost always means only listening to parents.
Now, parents of disabled children need to have a voice, and they need to be heard. But that's not a big problem. It's not that hard to get people to listen to them. But so often, people don't even realize someone's voice is missing. They don't even realize that they don't know what the disabled people themselves actually want, how they actually view their own lives.
Back to the 'nonfiction' written from someone else's perspective. The big problem is that they don't seem to realize it's actually fiction. You can't actually write from someone else's perspective, and really get it right. I'd find nothing wrong with it if it came with a clear message that this was written by someone else trying to imagine what it's like from their point of view. I want people to recognize what that kind of writing really is - fiction. It's fiction just like a story from the perspective of a famous person (like the Royal Diaries series) is fiction. Technically, you might call it 'creative nonfiction', which is really a fictionalized account of real events. But it's not equivalent to telling the story from your own perspective or taking dictation.
Another concern I have is that people only tend to do this with those who can't tell you their own story. Imagine writing your husband's life from his perspective - not showing him what you wrote or asking him what it was like for him, just writing it. If you wouldn't be willing to do that, then why are you willing to do the same with your child's life?
This also ties in with the saying to parents: 'you are the expert on your child.' Well, you aren't the expert on your child. You're one of the experts on your child. But the one who really knows the most about your child is not you, but your child themselves. Even if you can't talk to them and find out what they know about themselves, never forget that they do know themselves in a way no one else can. Just because you don't know their perspective doesn't mean they don't have one, or that their perspective brings no new information. And your voice may speak for your child out of necessity, but never forget the voice that is missing.

* Sorry, no subtitles.

Tropic Thunder

After much searching, I finally found a trailer of Tropic Thunder that actually used the word 'retard' that so many people complained about. After watching that trailer, I'm incredulous. No, not because it's offensive. But because it isn't.
Mark Twain's book Huckleberry Finn was banned from some schools because it uses (very frequently) the word 'nigger'. Never mind that Nigger Jim, one of the main characters, is probably the most moral person in the entire story, and that young Huck Finn learns a valuable lesson about slavery, morality, and his friend Jim. The message didn't matter to those schools, just what words were used.
Here is a transcript of the Tropic Thunder trailer 'OK to be Stupid':

"There were times, when I was doing Jack, that I actually felt retarded, like really retarded. In a weird way I had this sort of just free myself up to believe that it was OK to be stupid, or dumb."
"To be a moron."
"Yeah."
"To be moronical."
"Exactly."
"An imbecile."
"Yeah. When I was playing the character."
"When you was the character."
"Yeah, I mean, as Jack, definitely."
...
"Everybody knows you never go full retard."
"What do you mean?"
"Check it out: Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man, look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Count toothpicks, cheat at cards. Autistic, sure, not retarded. You know, Tom Hanks, Forest Gump, slow, yes, retarded, maybe, braces on his legs, but he charms the pants off Nixon, win a pinball competition - that ain't retarded. You went full retard, man. Never go full retard."

Excuse me? Have these people protesting this movie paid no attention to the actual content of this trailer? First, the actor is talking about feeling like it's OK to be stupid - being able to stop worrying about coming off as smart. Secondly, his friend is pointing out a stereotype in Hollywood, one that really needs to be looked at - a variant of the 'autistic superpowers' problem Lisa described, or the 'making up for difference' I discussed on this blog. Both of these are very good things to say.
I don't think you should pick at words like this. It's the message that really counts. I don't think people should say 'that's so retarded' to insult other people, not because they said 'retarded', but because they're saying it's a bad thing to be. If they said 'you're acting cognitively disabled' instead, that wouldn't be any better. And I don't think Tropic Thunder's use of the word 'retard' is a problem, because their message is not offensive. We have plenty of real problems to deal with - this is not one of them.

Email to Digby Tantam About Demand Avoidance

I just emailed the following reply to the article Malice and Asperger Syndrome:

"I am a 19 year old autistic person officially diagnosed with PDD NOS and self-diagnosed with Pathological Demand Avoidance (technically, it was my mom who said I had it - I wasn't sure).
I've read your article Malice and Asperger Syndrome, and I don't think that is an accurate explanation of PDA. It sounds to me like you are probably describing a different condition instead.
I am not at all like Alice, Richard, Hugo, Tricia, Amanda, Felicity or the boy who lied to his aunt about his uncle's death. As for your list of TFAS traits:
* lacking obvious eccentricity and clumsiness - I am slightly clumsy and can fake neurotypical in one-on-one interaction reasonably well, so I fit that.
* seeming immature - I'm not sure how I seem. I am delayed in self care skills and have separation anxiety, which probably make me seen immature, but I am intensely interested in psychology and medicine and can talk at the same level as a professor in those areas, which probably makes me seem mature. I think I tend to look younger than I am because I don't wear makeup or revealing clothes (both due to tactile sensitivity and lack of interest in appealing to men). I don't tend to ask personal questions of other people or ask to hold their things. I do ask to hold babies or small carryable animals, but many people do so and I have the usual preliminary compliments and questions.
* conceiling disability - I do try to pass for normal sometimes to avoid bad reactions, but not to the extreme you describe. In fact, I'm quite open about being disabled and will often disclose my autism to strangers!
* lack of special interest - as mentioned above, I'm fascinated by syndromes. I'm also intensely interested in fantasy, particularly vampires, werewolves and other human-like mythical creatures.
* long periods of inactivity - I am physically quite inactive, but almost always reading something, writing something, etc. Even when I'm doing nothing, I'm thinking and fantasizing. Watching me, I doubt someone would get the impression that I'm inactive in any area other than physical exercise.
* repetitive activity is concealed around strangers - I do hide my stims around strangers because I've been bullied a lot. If I trust them to be accepting, I won't hide my stims. If I were seeing a psychologist, I would probably stim openly in front of them, because it's their job to be accepting of that.
* flying into a rage - this is where the accuracy of the description of PDA for me becomes clear. The vast majority of my meltdowns are because someone is trying to force me to do something and I get scared and stuck in resisting. For example, I'll be getting ready to leave the house in the morning, and my father is getting anxious about time and yells at me to hurry, at which point I get upset and stop getting ready - instead, I interfere with the others getting ready because my father often threatens to leave me behind. We have a long commute every day so there's no way I could make my own way in, and my separation anxiety is worse when I'm upset. And although I'm acting angry, what I am feeling is terror. I only rarely hit people, and never break things. Usually I just yell that they hate me, etc. This is not a voluntary thing - I feel compelled to do that, because I am scared.
* socially distressing acts initiatiated 'out of the blue' - the only time I ever act that way is when an earlier problem was not sufficiently resolved and I'm still upset about it (but more often in those cases I don't stop acting upset in the first place). In all other cases, there is a clear trigger, which is always either someone else overloading me (by humming, grabbing, etc) and refusing to stop, demands on me given in angry tone or demands I find unfair, or some other perceived attack (eg my parents saying hurtful things about me, or someone lying to me and persisting in the lie when I point it out, etc)
* poor nonverbal interpretation, poor scores on emotion-matching tests - I have much milder social problems than that. I do fine on emotion-matching tests and am pretty good at reading people's emotions 1:1. But I don't understand social hierarchies and self-made groups, such as who is friends with who, who is popular, etc. I also tend to misinterpret frustration, etc as anger at me, which would not show up in a test because I only react that way in real interactions - a photo of a person can't possibly be a threat to me.
* trying to wind people up because they are easier to read - this is very much not true for me! I am terrified when others are mad at me, and very upset when others are sad around me. It would make no sense for me to deliberately induce such an unpleasant situation. If I'm scared because I don't know how someone is feeling, I withdraw and try not to be noticed. I don't try to provoke them to attack me or induce sympathetic anguish in me by being upset! I only upset others when I have no choice, because I feel endangered by what they are doing to me or making me do. Even then, I try to fight them off without upsetting them too much. I tend to be passive-aggressive because of this."

Tolerating Suffering

I found a manga called With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child. It's a great story, I highly recommend it. But in this entry, I'll talk about one of my least favorite parts of it.
The autistic boy in the story, Hikaru, entered school after a year of integrated preschool. He found it really hard to adjust to school. Although he adjusted after awhile, for months he was crying much of the time. People would comment on it all the time.
Another example is the following, gotten from here:

"Anna stopped smiling and laughing for the entire four years she was on Vigabatrin, but started smiling again within a week after we discontinued it. We eliminated it because of our concerns about possible vision loss"

Hikaru's mother, Sachiko, was portrayed as a very caring and understanding mother of her autistic son. I don't know much about Anna's father, but I assume he cares deeply about his daughter as well. But there seems to be a much greater tolerance for suffering of developmentally disabled children than other children. My mother even shows this. When I cry or self-injure, she doesn't get as concerned as someone who doesn't know me would get. (By the way, in case I haven't stressed this enough, these are good parents. My mother and Sachiko and presumably Anna's father are all good parents. That's part of the problem - even good people act this way.)
I'm not sure why there is this tolerance for suffering. Considering the kind of people who act this way, it's obviously not hate or uncaring. And it's unlikely to be that these people truly don't think disabled people feel suffering, or feel it only mildly. It must be something else.
One possibility is that many developmentally disabled people are atypical in emotional reactions to events and in how we show our emotions. I have less sympathy for people who are upset by something if it's something that I've never been bothered by (for example, a claustrophobic in a small space). I also have less sympathy for unhappy people who are harder for me to read emotionally. Not that I don't think their feelings matter, in either case. I just don't feel as strong an emotion reaction to their suffering. And this is when I do realize they're unhappy.
The solution to this is simply to recognize it and remind yourself that just because you don't feel that way or show it that way doesn't mean the person's suffering isn't as strong as yours, and to consciously try to react appropriately.
Another possible explanation is not knowing how to help. As a result, the person withdraws and shows less obvious reaction to the other person's distress. This is also cited often as a reason that bystanders don't intervene in bullying - they don't know how to. The best solution for this is education - learning how to help. If you're a parent having this kind of problem with your child, I have several bits of advice. Firstly, pay close attention to what your child likes and dislikes, and especially how they are comforted. If they rock when upset, for example, they might find you rocking them or sitting in a rocking chair comforting. Secondly, talk to other people and research stuff to find out how others deal with children like yours being upset. Lastly, try things out that you think might work, being careful to stop if it's making things worse.
Another possibility is unconscious prejudice. Although you may overtly disagree with a position, and honestly think you disagree with that position, you might on some level agree with it. This shows up in your emotional reactions and in things you say and do without thinking much about it. It may be that some people deep down don't believe that developmentally disabled people are as capable of suffering as others are, even though their conscious beliefs are quite different. The way to deal with unconscious prejudice is to recognize it in yourself. Once you've recognized it, teach yourself different patterns of reactions by recognizing a prejudice-cued reaction and consciously correcting it, and by trying out different behavior patterns. One of the biggest impediments to dealing with your own prejudice is a strong investment in viewing yourself as a 'good person'.
A third possibility is that very often developmentally disabled people are upset more often and more severely than non-disabled people. If you know someone who often cries, you are likely to get used to them crying, and react less than you would to someone crying who rarely cries. This is appropriate if they cry more often because they show their emotions more strongly, so that mild sadness results in them crying whereas another equally sad person just gets quieter.
But this usually isn't the reason developmentally disabled people, particularly autistic people, act upset more often. Instead, it's that we're under more stress in our daily lives, exposed to more upsetting, tiring, or overloading things on a day-to-day basis than most people are - simply because most people are fine with those things and our society is built around them. Add in the higher rate of trauma and abuse, meaning that developmentally disabled people are more likely to have flashbacks and experience extreme stress.
These sources of extra stress must be dealt with. It's not acceptable for disabled people to have so much more to deal with than non-disabled people. But that's going to take a lot of work, over a long period of time. It's going to take changing the world and discovering things about disabled people that are not currently known. Any closer you can get to that goal is a good thing.
In addition, people need to recognize this. They need to realize that this person they are with is going through much more every day than most people do. Not to pity them, but to take that into account - to give them more support, to avoid adding unnecessary further stress on them, and so on. And not just fleeting reminders - those only change things for a brief time, if at all.
Our suffering shouldn't be used as justification for killing us, subjecting us to harmful 'treatments', preventing the birth of people like us, or many other things it's used as justification for, but neither should it be overlooked or treated with less concern than the suffering of other people. Our suffering is not to be expected and accepted.

Your Octagon Daughter

You see me staring at your daughter, your octagon daughter, and glare at me. You think I'm looking out of pity, disgust, or morbid curiosity, the way you'd stare at a car crash. Maybe I'm thinking 'poor little thing' or maybe 'why have people like that out in public?' That's what most squares think when they stare at your daughter. That's what you expect them to think.
But my look is not of pity or disgust, but loneliness mixed with joy. I sit there, fighting between my loneliness and my fear of being judged by people who, like me, have been treated harshly by society. Because you can't see it, but actually I'm not a square. I'm a triangle.
And even though triangles and octagons are more different than triangles and squares or octagons and squares, in some way we're alike, your daughter and I. Because when squares are everywhere, and square is treated as the proper way to be, anyone who isn't a square has something in common. We're all considered broken, we're all the exceptions to the rule.
And even you, in your glare, are confirming square rule. Anyone who looks to be a square is assumed to be one. I doubt you even realized I might also be different. After all, my right-angle corner looks like it could be a square's corner. And that's what everyone sees. They expect to see a square, and a square is what they see. Your daughter has no right angles for people to be confused by, but I do.
So I sit, and watch your daughter. And then you glare at me, with that protective glare, and not knowing how to explain, I simply walk away. But I wish there could have been more. I was glad to see that not everyone there were squares, and I wish you could've seen that too. Above all, I wish you hadn't been trained to expect hurtful square looks. Just as I wish I hadn't been trained to expect hurtful square replies.

Visible and Invisible Disabilities

A commonly described divide among disabled people is between 'visible' and 'invisible' disabilities. The way this difference is described is that some disabled people are readily recognized as disabled, and others can be mistaken for normal.
What many people don't recognize is that you can be invisibly disabled one moment, and visibly disabled the next. It all depends on context.
One way that a normally 'invisibly' disabled person can become visibly disabled is by who they are with. When I was volunteering with an ABA program for autistic kids, I saw one example of this. In one part of the program, there were both autistic and NT kids doing an integrated gym class (this was for the higher functioning kids). Anyway, one kid came out of the gym at the end while I was chatting with one of the therapists, and she greeted him. I knew immediately that he was autistic. Not because of his appearance or behavior, but because of the way she spoke to him. She used the same tone of voice as she did in ABA sessions, just with better grammar.
You can also be visibly disabled by being with other disabled people. In my disabled youth group, when we go on outings, it's evident that at least some of us are disabled. And we are clearly a group, without the kind of divides that often occur between disabled and nondisabled people, so those of us who aren't visibly disabled are assumed to be disabled as well. Note that this can mean mistaking nondisabled people for disabled people. Hearing children of Deaf parents, when out in public with their parents, are often assumed to be deaf because they're signing and with people who may be more obviously deaf. Even though they aren't actually disabled, in that setting they're visibly disabled.
Some people are visibly disabled in certain settings but not in others because those settings involve skills that they lack. Apart from with my disabled youth group, the only times I've been visibly disabled is when I get lost - especially on the bus. I don't know things most people are expected to know. I act more eccentric out of stress. In general, I seem developmentally disabled. Similarly, a dyslexic child in a class discussion may not be visibly disabled, but when reading aloud in class they are.
On the Internet, many 'visibly disabled' people become invisibly disabled. At the same time, although they may not actually be recognized as disabled, some 'invisibly disabled' people become more visibly disabled on the Internet. Higher-level language problems, receptive or expressive, are the most visible disability on the Internet.
This brings me to another point. You can be in between visible and invisible disability. There are certain stereotypes of people that are 'almost' disabled, such as geeks, stupid people, 'wackos', etc, who are generally assumed not to be able to help being like that, but aren't really considered disabled. Some people who actually are disabled are recognized just enough to fall into those categories. Also, some disabled people are mistaken for people who are drunk or high on some substance, such as people with balance problems or people who show visible signs of perceptual abnormalities. Actually, this is among the most obviously disabled you can be without being recognized as disabled.
So it's a whole lot more complex than just visible or invisible disability.

Reverse Discrimination

Recently, I read one black person mocking white claims of 'reverse racism'. She suggested that this is an accusation given in reaction to taking away white privilege.
When I was 12 years old, a Native girl told me I was 'too white to be a person'. Recently, I read someone mocking a white woman for being offended by the statement that 'white chicks' were untrustworthy. Malcolm X called us 'white devils'.
The same people who vehemently oppose similar statements towards other races are often willing to tolerate it towards white people. Racist jokes against white people are 'humorous' while against any other race they are intolerable.
This happens with other forms of discrimination. I've heard many women make sexist comments or jokes about men that would not be tolerated if they were made about women. Saying women aren't as smart as men is sexist, right? Then why do so many women seem fine with saying the opposite (for example, one joke states that God offered two gifts to the first man and women, saying they could chose to get either brains, or the ability to pee standing up)?
Regarding autistic rights, I see this so often in the suggestion that NTs are inherently stupid, manipulative, immoral liars, or that they are boring. Discrimination is treated as a distinctly NT behaviour, as are bullying and many other things. The same people who make claims like that are generally the autistics most prone to doing the exact things they accuse NTs of - the ones who are most prejudiced and bullying.
Now, some people claim reverse discrimination simply because they are losing the privileges they are unfairly given. This is certainly true. There are also some people who claim more traditional discrimination when they don't get what they want for very different reasons, as Joel Smith described recently. I remember someone on one listserv complaining that he was being denied some legal-type post because of his Asperger Syndrome diagnosis, but it transpired that he was in fact denied the job because he was a convicted sex offender. Now, personally, I think it's just fine to deny a legal job to someone who has shown a substantial disrespect for the law, in doing something as serious as what he'd done (I believe it was some kind of sexual assault).
But reverse discrimination does happen, and it hurts. Up until recently, I absolutely hated my skin color. White is beautiful, just as black is, but I couldn't see it. I felt personally responsible for all the wrongs that white people have done over history to other races. What I'd read never gave a hint that it wasn't just us who were racist, never discussed racism from other races. The Uyghur people, in western China, are discriminated against by the Mandarin majority. That's only one of many examples, which show that white people aren't the only racists. But non-white racists are invisible. As are many anti-male sexists, and anti-normal disabled people.
I used to think that victims of bullying were 'good guys', the bullies and bystanders were 'bad guys'. But being victimized does not make you morally superior. It says absolutely nothing about your morals. It only indicates anything about the ones who hurt you. And you should not judge an entire category of people based on the actions of some of them. It's wrong when it's done by those in power, and it's wrong when it's done back at them by the oppressed people. Revenge will not make it better, it only perpetuates the hurt.