That Jureric article is an ableist mess. I’d read it before, but reread it after reading your essay, and it definitely falls into the category of Ableist Academic Articles Which Piss Me Off. The assumptions and condescension are just so blatant. Her assumptions that Grandin didn’t “really” write what she actually wrote are infuriating, and remind me of the way slave narratives were produced and received in antebellum America. Narratives such as Harriet Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” are preceded by a foreword by a white abolitionist simply because the white reading public could not accept that a former slave could write such a narrative on her own. I read Oliver Sacks’ introduction to Grandin’s “Emergence: Labeled Autistic” in the same light. For an academic to be perpetuating this crap is obscene, but unfortunately not surprising with regards to autistic people.

I find Jureric’s idea of “autistic writing” rather odd in many ways. I’m officially diagnosed and I can generally write for clarity to an extent that exceeds most non-autistic people. I have been recognized as talented in this area since I was around six years old, which is when teachers started using my writing as an example to the other students. Despite having a lot of the typically autistic problems with socializing, I’ve always been very interested in and capable of constructing narratives which make sense. As a kid I often approached my life (and my imaginary lives) as written narratives to be constructed in my head. I still do this, actually. And I think one of the reasons my mother suspected that I might be on the spectrum originally was the fact that I can be so eloquent in written prose, yet often struggle to communicate verbally (unless I script).

It’s not just Jureric’s classification of “autistic” writing that doesn’t make sense. It’s the assumption that non-autistic writing follows a clear logic, is “reader-centered,” etc. I’ve read a fair bit of undergraduate writing, having tutored undergraduates and now being a grader of undergraduate papers. I assume that most of the papers I’ve read are authored by neurotypical students. And yet problems with logic, transitions, audience awareness, and all of that are quite common–in spite of the fact that both institutions I’ve worked at are considered elite. But Jureric would have us believe that these issues are the exclusive domain of autistic people.

That’s part of what I don’t like about making autism pathological: it obscures the common humanity between autistic and non-autistic people and makes it seem as though non-autistic people don’t struggle with writing and other tasks. Uh, no. That’s just wrong. Some autistic people are easily accessible writers; some are not. Same with non-autistic people. And all published writers rely on other people to help improve and clarify our work; that is the entire function of editors.

Grandin’s published writings are apparently not legitimate examples, yet Jureric doesn’t extend the same standards to her own peer-reviewed academic article. Now that really doesn’t make sense.

(Why Grandin as her only example, by the way? Though it’s true that some of Grandin’s work was co-authored, whatever that means, there are plenty of autistic writings that aren’t.)

I might have to blog about the Jureric article now.

Our gendered division of male and female personality traits and activities always sets off a red flag in me. These expectations do not seem to me at all respectful of individual choice when they tell us we are abnormal for our natural preferences. Can we not embrace a gender identity without conforming to gender norms? I never played with dolls, I was too busy building forts and playing soccer; I loved horses (only thoroughbreds, and some Arabians) but not unicorns, I sewed dresses for their color and texture but never played dress-up and never cared for fashion. To this day I have no idea how to console someone, or tell them what they really want to hear (“you’re not fat at all!”). Yet I believe I am very much a woman, and quite happy with that, though discontented at the assumptions made of us. Perhaps it the narrowness of our norms that is the problem, not the people who cannot fit into them?

It is difficult for me to fit into others’ shoes. My feet are incredibly narrow size nines…

Oh my gosh we might be shoe twins!! I have rather narrow feet (not super-narrow, such that I need Narrow-width shoes, but narrow enough that normal shoes can be loose on me) and my shoe size varies between eight and a half and ten.

…oh, look, we’re talking about shoez. Clearly we must be Real Women after all!

[T]he next day my guidance counselor asks if my father has ever touched me. (And me, being ever the literal-minded autistic, says “yes”…)

Hah, I might well have answered that way, too, if anybody had ever asked me that question. I am also hugely literal-minded; I was not accepted into the gifted program in my school district even though I aced the written test because I refused to speak to the teacher conducting the interview portion. I suspect I did this because I thought I shouldn’t talk to strangers.

I’m a number meant to be avoided. A number meant to instill fear and alarm. A number meant to warn parents that I could happen to them.

Yep. I actually had a friend (yes, a friend — our relationship progressed beyond the point I’m about to describe) who felt a kind of superstitious fear of me, fear that I had been sent into his life as a kind of symbol of the Divine Retribution to come, in the form of profoundly disabled children. (This friend was of a deeply religious and superstitious bent, and his sister had once caught him making fun of another kid with disabilities, and told him God would punish him by making all of his children disabled. That he retained this into young adulthood, and that it affected him so deeply as to make him deeply conflicted about our friendship, astonishes me. And not in a good way).

As to Tony Attwood’s prediction that typically developing girls might take an autistic girl under their wing and teach her to fit in, I have to say I never experienced this. I never got the infamous “Mean Girls” treatment, either, though; most girls just ignored me, as I ignored them.

Stephanie: The stacks at our new library were remarkably quiet on New Year’s Eve. I might try it again sometime, though I think this library often tends to be crowded because of its newness.