aspie rhetor

I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since the age of eight. The narrative is a familiar one: I couldn’t see the chalkboard at school, walked into telephone poles, made head contact with dodge balls more often than usual. I remember my first trip to the optometrist, a small balding man with a penchant for incomprehensible soccer truisms, and I also remember him announcing that I had a birthmark in my left eye in addition to very high eye pressure, the latter a potential risk for glaucoma.

I never had a gradual adjustment period with my glasses — the doctor insisted that I could only remove them when I bathed, slept, and played soccer (and I didn’t play soccer, and wasn’t quite sure why he kept droning on and on about soccer). Once I started wearing the glasses — bright pink frames encasing mammoth lenses — colors grew darker, faces became less fuzzy, and I could see the contours of my hand again.

Shortly after I’d adjusted to re-seeing, my younger brother got ahold of my glasses and popped out one of the lenses. My mother hadn’t the time on this particular day to purchase an eyeglass repair kit, and suddenly, without my glasses, I couldn’t filter between sounds. One of my parents would speak to me, the sound growing as muddled as my vision. My father, also known as The Impatient Parent, grew angry and very loudly demanded to know why I wasn’t answering him. After I replied that I couldn’t hear very well without my glasses, he grew angrier and sent me to my room.

I reflect on this particular day of my third-grade life, trying to recount what I heard exactly. My senses have always had a tendency to jumble, to blur: sometimes I’m unable to discern which “input” is driving me nuts, or one particular input converges with another, or I just totally lose track of all input and enter trance mode.

Yet, I think that sensory dysfunction wasn’t — and isn’t — the whole story here. Lately, I’ve been super conscious about my eyes, where they look, how often they dart, whether they meet with another pair of eyes. And while I’ve always felt that eye contact is “unnatural” for me, I’ve never really thought about why this is so. And tonight, during book club, I realized where my default “gaze” landed in a group where autistics are the majority: the lips.

I can’t decipher a person’s emotions based on the dilating of pupils, the half-closure of eyelids, the flicker of irises, the subtleties of eyelash movement. But I can recognize a smile, a smirk, a frown, a tongue. And if I combine those lip movements with the volume level of a person’s voice, I’m much more likely to reach an accurate emotional interpretation than I am if I’m focusing on eyeball gymnastics. I wonder if the eight-year-old me interpreted hearing synaesthetically, as an alternative form of nonverbal communication, one that made more sense than pure auditory listening. As a child, I’d sometimes move my lips and would assume others could “hear” me — because I sometimes couldn’t discriminate between the words in my head and the words escaping my mouth. Even today, I have voice modulation issues: it’s difficult for me to speak in the perfect “inside voice,” to recognize whether I’m too soft or too loud. Even when I whisper, my voice sounds loud to me.

Certainly, my eye contact and voice modulation “differences” were more visible and pronounced when I was younger — but, in some ways, those differences were more acceptable then than they are now. An eight-year-old who refuses to look at her teacher and speaks in mousy (and/or non-existent) tones is read as “shy” and “cute” and “silly.” It’s not so cute and silly now.

My eighth-grade Drama/English teacher made me her eye-contact-and-voice-projection project. I’d stay after school and she’d force me to look at her. While talking loudly. While robotically moving and hand-ticcing. I soon became her body-language project as well: I was perpetually stiff and stimmy.

This past summer, I pulled out videos of my eighth-grade performances, plays where I somehow managed to land large roles. Upon hitting play, I reeled away from the TV screen, semi-mortified: my hand gestures looked as if I were doing a really bad version of the robot dance. And my voice — I couldn’t quite see my face, so I couldn’t quite read or hear everything — but it sounded very aspie-like. Very non-typical.

“Stare at the bridges of their noses,” Mrs. H would say. “Look at the back wall. Move to stage left. No — the other stage left. Lower your hands. Hands at your sides — put your hands at your sides. Pick up the quill — and stop wringing your hands. Stop wringing your hands. Count to three between each sentence. Count to three after every punctuation mark. Louder. Louder. Look me in the eye. ”

I feel as though I’ve naturalized “mortified,” as though I have embodied a state of mortification. Watching old videos and looking at old photos is almost painful — and yet, it shouldn’t be.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d been diagnosed much earlier, in kindergarten. Who would I be now? How much more or less would the autism have been beaten out of me? Would I even attempt to pass? Would I have felt more confident in being the autistic me, rather than the faux-NT me? Would I like and appreciate my younger, videotaped self more?

My cousin trying to turn my face toward the camera

Stimming is more fun than Santa

I realize that, lately, a dominant theme of this blog has been about de-binarizing disability. Yet, being a binary would be so much easier to identify with than being a “mild” autistic, than being an aspie who can generally pass. (And I suppose that this “easiness” is the problem with binaries — so unrealistic, so simplistic, so twofold.) Sometimes I wonder: do I have autism or passism?

Yes, I am proud to be autistic. But Asperger’s isn’t all sunshine and butterflies.

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PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals) launched a new ad campaign three weeks ago in their fight against cow milk:

I’m not entirely sure where to start here, PETA. First of all, though I realize that ads meant for billboards and quick web visits are meant to be image-heavy and textually sparse, you’ve provided a whole lot of misinformation in your few measly independent clauses. In asking the lovely “Got autism?” question, are you trying to be sardonic and rhetorical, or are you in fact addressing the 20 million autistics who currently occupy planet earth? Because, sure, I’ve got autism, and no, I had no idea that studies linked cow’s milk to autism. But perhaps your “study” is actually synonymous with what I would call “total crap.” Just a thought. Although, since I’m autistic, it might be that my inner thesaurus is operating on some totally whacked out, casein-induced frenzy. Or how about not?

Anecdotally, some autistics note amelioration of their “symptoms” — e.g., isolation, meltdowns, sensory overload — when they’ve removed dairy and wheat from their diet. (Of course, PETA, you would never crusade against wheat.) However, this “improvement” is anecdotal and not scientific. It could be that some autistics experience food intolerances or digestive problems. But, see, there’s a big problem with this “link” word, PETA, because any protective parent who reads this will assume that milk has been shown to have a causative impact on autism, which it simply doesn’t. There are plenty of vegan autistics who are just as autie or aspie as ever. I suppose, on the positive side, if people were to assume that milk does cause autism, then maybe they’d get their kids vaccinated and stop with the mercury-poisoning mantras.

And then there’s that frowny face, PETA. The Cheerios are a nice touch, really. I’m glad you didn’t use Fruit Loops, because then that might play into the assumption that only autistic children are worth giving a crap about.  But the frown — oh, the frown. I may have difficulty with nonverbals and facial expressions, but I think I’m accurate in concluding that Mr. Cheerio Face is quite weepy and pathetic. Basically, PETA, you and Mr. Cheerio Face are making the assumption that autism is a sad, sad thing. And, quite honestly, it’s not. Autism is a way of life, much like veganism, minus the liking of food-with-freaky-textures thing.

On another page, you write:

Autism is a brain disorder that causes sufferers to have extreme difficulty communicating and relating to others. It is often marked by anti-social behavior like screaming and obsessive repetition of actions, which takes an enormous emotional toll on sufferers and their families. PETA has created a billboard to alert the public to the connection between this devastating disease and dairy-product consumption. …

Anyone who wants to alleviate or avoid the devastating effects of autism should give cow’s milk the boot and switch to healthy vegan alternatives instead.

Again, PETA, you’ve mixed up some pretty important facts. Autism isn’t a disease.  It isn’t something that you wake up with one morning; it isn’t something that you catch on the subway; it isn’t something that goes away. Autism is a neurological condition, a condition that affects how one’s brain is wired. Autistic brains and autistic existence aren’t devastatingly anything, unless you’re claiming that they’re devastatingly awesome.

You ask, “Got autism?” I say, “Yes, I do.” Somehow, though, I don’t think you were ever asking me anything in the first place.

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I don’t really know where to start. For those who are unfamiliar with what’s been going on since July 16, Michael Savage, a conservative shock jock, claimed 99% of all autistics were fakers who needed better parenting:

“I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ … [I]f I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, ‘Don’t behave like a fool.’ The worst thing he said — ‘Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.’ That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.”

I’ve been trying to be as objective as possible about all of this — I was really, truly hoping that somewhere, somehow, something was taken out of context. I listened to the first two hours of Savage’s follow-up show (recorded on July 21), and I couldn’t bear to listen for the third hour. First, he refused to apologize. Essentially, even though Savage is claiming the out-of-context defense, his claims for “original intent” sound just as foul, to me, as the original comments pasted above. Savage denies that there is an autistic spectrum. He also believes that, quite literally, somewhere upwards of 60% of autistic people are not really, in fact, autistic.

Savage continually reiterated that the “truly autistic” were not, and never have been, the subjects of his attack. He maintained that his claims were about overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis, that he was merely trying to defend defenseless children, to help helpless children.

Nevertheless, not once has Savage offered a definition of what he feels “true autism” is. After listening, I’ve determined that he supposes true autistics cannot speak (or, at most, cannot speak intelligibly). One of his two expert guests spent quite a while discussing otherwise “normal” late-talkers versus autistic children, using Einstein as an example. While I loathe the tendency to retro-diagnose dead geniuses with autistic spectrum disorders, Savage’s show perpetuates the myth that true autistics must, of necessity, not only be nonverbal, but must also possess a low IQ. Moreover, several callers, in support of Savage, maintained that they had (or knew of) children who’d received diagnoses of autism as toddlers, yet eventually began speaking, so, lo and behold, those kids certainly weren’t autistic!

I don’t deny that overdiagnosis and or misdiagnosis occurs. Just because I’ve never met anyone in those two categories doesn’t mean that the possibility doesn’t exist. Yet, I also think that the children in those examples still might very well be autistic — talking and intelligence (or, intelligence as we arbitrarily measure it) do not preclude autism. Moreover, I’ve read more scientific literature pertaining to underdiagnosis than I have about any sort of overdiagnosis. Call it the “epidemic” or better medicine.

In reality, I feel hurt. I realize that it’s silly for me to have missed a Law & Order marathon for a shock jock’s twisted ideas, but I was curious. And with each passing minute of listening to his rants, I felt personally attacked. I’m pretty certain that he thinks Asperger’s and HFA are bunk, and what’s more disturbing are the throngs of people who wholeheartedly agree with him.

Savage and his supporters say that it’s all the fault of drug companies, that they meant to attack pharma and welfare-leaching parents. While many people with autism are medicated on something or another, there is no drug treatment for autism. Autistics may be medicated for aggression or anxiety or depression — but not for autism. (Unless their mother is Jenny McCarthy, that is, and happens to believe in unscientifically proven diets and/or chelation.) This argument seemed pretty nonsensical to me. I’m autistic and I’m not medicated. I’m in different sorts of therapy, for sure, but my aim isn’t to get a hand-out from the government. My aim is to manage my sensory dysfunction, to be able to hold an everyday conversation, to reduce my anxiety, to live a decent life with a decent job and with decent relationships, and so forth. And I don’t think that AS/HFA individuals are draining funds from some amorphous giant pot of money, as if anything we seek somehow steals from a child with classic autism, who, as Savage has so poignantly noted, needs our pity. (groan)

Savage’s conception of true autism as profound suffering and incapacity goes to the heart of a very important disability/advocacy issue: an extremely medicalized and pitiful view of disability. It is dangerous, and downright discriminatory, to assume that those with disabilities are only defined by their inabilities, by their dependencies. Per Savage, autism is wholly a trial, a tribulation, an extreme form of suffering, something to be pitied and dreaded. Assuming that nothing good or amazing comes from those with autism is extremely damaging. By this definition, those who can talk have no form of autism; those who are mainstreamed have no form of autism; those who are involved in romantic relations have no form of autism; those who blog or take pride in themselves have no form of autism. It’s as though any societal “feat” (for lack of a better word) precludes autism entirely, as though “good” and “autistic” cannot be uttered in the same sentence, as though autistic, to quote an Autism Speaks promo video, is “death.” The only hope is hope for a cure — and if anyone is able to speak, is able to write, is able to reproduce, is able to find stimming enjoyable, then they suddenly were misdiagnosed as being autistic, and they no longer need or deserve educational, medicinal, or therapeutic support.

I’ll come back to this all later, I’m sure. But for now, I need to somehow lower my blood pressure before something pops.

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Taken while attending a conference, March 2008 in a University of New Hampshire bathroom:

I hope I’ve done you justice, random bathroom-stall note. Target audience, expand!

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I watched the Oprah special on autism today, with Jenny McCarthy and Holly Robinson Peete: Their Fight to Save Their Autistic Sons.

I have a good deal to say, only, it stems from no productive part of my brain, so I think I’ll curtail all bloggerly manifestos until my minimal, thimerosal-induced cognitive resources have had a chance to de-auticize.

Oh, wait. That won’t ever happen, now will it?

I am happy that McCarthy’s son has gained speech/communication, that he is able to reciprocate emotionally with his mother. I am displeased, however, with her whole “autism is reversible!” tirade. McCarthy repeatedly exclaimed that her message was one of hope and faith for parents of children with autism. Yet, she significantly reduced her credibility with MMR jonesing and her contention that her son’s autism was “death” to her. Death?

Upon watching this, I almost feel the need to apologize to my parents for all the pain I’ve caused. I’m sorry for pooping up to my neck as an infant, as a toddler, as a pre-kindergartner. I’m sorry for rarely crying as a baby, for seeming oblivious to sensory stimuli. I’m sorry for not learning how to urinate on my own until age four. I’m sorry that you had to bring me to Easter Seals for my walking problems as an infant. (I’m sure my siblings, who were also toe-walkers, likewise apologize.) I’m sorry that I never made friends, that I never learned to play violin, that I didn’t invent the cure for cancer. I’m sorry that I can’t drive or push a shopping cart, can’t display affection in a way that is commensurate with societal expectations, can’t eat fruit or meatloaf or stuff with mixed sauces, can’t modulate the volume of my voice.

Then again, I suppose my apologies aren’t so necessary since my mother is to blame. After all, she decided to breed — and she is also autistic. Nonverbal until age four.

McCarthy credited her son’s reversal to the GFCF diet (gluten-free, casein-free diet; aka no wheat or dairy). She likened it to chemotherapy: works for some, but not all. Again, I’m glad that going GFCF “helped” her child… but CFGF diets aren’t cures.

OK. Before I rant any more, I’m going to perseverate on something more constructive, like a Law & Order rerun. I might even chug a huge glass of milk and down a loaf of bread. Just to celebrate.

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My seventh grade Language Arts teacher often commented that I crafted “interesting” story leads.

Interesting, over the years, has come to signify a catch-all word that means anything from beautiful to bile-inducing to uninteresting but so friggin strange that someone must find it interesting. I am, therefore, quite weary of interesting, and Ms. Fox’s insistence that my introductory statements possessed twinges of interestingness did little more than creep me out, quite frankly. With each piece due, I’d attempt to de-interestify my leading sentences, hoping for remarks such as creative or good, but still I’d receive interesting.

In college, professors no longer coined my essays as interesting, but rather insisted that I stop reading Flannery O’Connor and Christopher Durang. This was hard to do, especially since I enjoyed their morbid senses of humor, but I managed — that is, until I realized stop reading Flannery O’Connor and Christopher Durang in fact meant keep reading Flannery O’Connor and Christopher Durang, that it was in fact a compliment, not a command.

This blog, I think, will be a combination of many things — mostly, whatever the heck I want — but I mainly wish to explore rhetoric through my Aspergian lens, a lens I’ve always perceived as normal until told otherwise. Perhaps interesting will still be thrown around since normal isn’t applicable. But, then again, who are these normal people? Who belongs to the all-powerful majority discourse, and do they have a postal address within the continental US?

Lately, as I’ve been coming to grips with my status as an aspie PhD student, slowly outing myself to the world at large, I’ve felt more insecure. As a rule, I rarely disclose, but the few times I have disclosed have either resulted in, 0MG! I so T0T4LLY KNEW IT!!!1ONEONE!11, or Wow! You must have outgrown it/you must be super high-functioning because people with Asperger’s are retards who blow things up.

[NOTE: I've never been one for paraphrasing.]

I don’t necessarily like this AS label — I mean, it labels me. Yet, it explains me, allows me to overanalyze my strengths and weaknesses, allows me to overanalyze every rhetorical move that emanates from my socially awkward self. My autistic tendencies have their own rhetoric; they are my commonplaces; they provide context for my actions and (mis)interpretations.

I mostly, though, enjoy the logos of it all.

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