My parents made the mistake of not aborting me. And ABA, CBT, talk therapy, support groups, anti-depressants — none of these things have exorcised my autism. Sometimes, when I go to conferences, self-important parents like to pretend that I’m not really, truly autistic, that I have, in fact, outgrown my autism in the most spiritual and inspirational of ways. Because, honestly, haven’t I heard? The good and faithful autistics all recognize the depravity that is autism and work hard, so tear-inducingly hard, to make their disordered brains and disordered bodies disappear. That my disordered self could still exist… that I even want my disordered self to exist… such a pity. I’m so autistic that I cannot fathom how soul-sucking autism really is.

If I will not make my autistic self invisible, then they must. And if “evidence-based practices” won’t do the trick, ableism just might. So, I’m here providing a few suggestions for further infantilizing me, for facilitating a neurotypical brand of the Second Coming:

1. Remember that, while I may exist physically, I do not exist semantically. Pairing autistic and adult in the same sentence, for example, is a no-no. Other off-limits words include woman, citizen, activist, colleague, and anything with a –sex affix.

2. Although I might be an adult in the chronological sense of the word, stress that I will never be an adult in the developmental sense of the word. There are many ways to assert neurotypical dominance in this regard. You might, for example, correct my use of the words depression and anxiety and replace them with sad feelings and worried feelings. When I present at conferences and seem a bit too comfortable in my empowered adult status, you might knock me down a few rungs and ask me at what age I was toilet-trained. And, every time I remember to bathe, you might write me a 1,000-word email, CC four or five of my family members and/or former employers, and tell me how proud you are of me.

Other infantilizing measures might include, if you’re a soprano or alto, using a sing-songy voice and speaking only in rhyming couplets. But, hey, don’t take advice from little ol’ me. You’re the neurotypical — you’re the adult here.

3. Remind me that I am incapable of empathy and perspective-taking. If I disagree with you, tell me how self-centered I am. Emotionally speaking, I’m forever lodged in the terrible twos, and I’ll just never understand how bad you have it.

4. Emphasize that, unlike real adults, I cannot maintain mutually beneficial friendships and will always fail to meet your emotional needs. Condemn my black-and-white thinking and preach to me about shades of gray. If I pick up on your sadness and attempt to console you — make it clear that you’re not sad, you’re lachrymose. You’re not depressed, you’re bummed out. You’re not upset, you’re very upset. There’s a difference, and I damned well need to learn it. To facilitate this process, draw cartoon faces on the back of your business card and instruct me to keep it handy in my wallet.

This is important shit.

5. Never give up on the messy, imperfectible project that is me. No matter how many times I tell you how cruel you are, no matter how many times I tell you how patronizing you are, no matter how many times I tell you how proud I am to be autistic — keep working on that disappearing act. Remember how glad you are that you’re not some bitter, twisted, ungrateful, disordered half-person like me. Remind yourself that I’m so lucky to have such a wonderful, personal savior like you in my life.

–

This post brought to you by a big a move, a new job, and my lack of existence.

I should start off by saying that I’m glad, very glad, that they invited me to attend. Moreover, if they host another institute next year, I hope I’m re-invited. In fact, I hope they they invite a heck of a lot more self-advocates. While there, I was told that the attendance tally was somewhere around 110 people and that only three attendees were autistic. This seems to be par for the course with the autism-centric conferences I’ve attended, unfortunately. It’s not a happy sort of feeling.

Not only were the autistic people missing — so too were the parents. The only parents there, generally speaking, doubled as service providers or professional advocates (e.g., teacher’s aides, psychologists, ASA officers). The sad irony? All of the presenters, to the point of redundancy, stressed how important it is to include family members and self-advocates in “the conversation” — yet there were hardly any family members or self-advocates in this particular conversation.

The highlights of the conference, for me, were Pat Cloppert’s presentation on middle school, as well as the presentation on adulthood by Tom Fish, Benzion Chinn, and Patrick Meehan (the latter two being autistic self-advocates).

What I really, really have been itching to write about, though, was the keynote speaker — Sally Rogers of UC Davis. I knew things would be rocky when, at the start of her talk, she made a shout out to Geri Dawson, Autism Speaks’ Chief Science Officer. (One of our protest signs during last year’s AutSpks walk was: Congratulations, Columbus! You’ve just paid Geri Dawson’s salary. Heh.)

In essence, Rogers stressed the now common refrain about the importance of early intervention. And the neuro-normative biases of this presentation smacked me in the face, minute after minute. Rogers described “deviant” behaviors and “language delays deviance,” and then talked about eliminating “atypicalities” through therapy. More than once, she described autism as having “isolating effects” (you know, rather than mention anything about how a neuro-normative society isolates autistic people because they’re “deviant”), and she also posited that she wants to see “less disability and more function.”

Some of the assumptions undergirding her talk, assumptions that make my skin crawl:

• It is better to be non-autistic than autistic.
• All autistic behaviors (including, but not limited to, stimming, repetition, prosody, ways of communicating or expressing) need to be eliminated.
• Autistic people’s challenges primarily arise from being autistic — this, as opposed to autists dwelling within a one-size-fits-all world. (I’m not saying that autism doesn’t cause challenges. I am saying, however, that representing autism/autistic people as a big bad problem to be eradicated is 1) flagrantly ableist and entrenched in a medical model of disability, and 2) deflects attention away from that ableism. I’m sure I’m saying other things, too. I just haven’t decided what else yet.)
• One can train away autism.
• We need to take as gospel all of the common, dehumanizing ideologies associated with functioning labels, or what it means to be a “functioning” (and thereby more human and desirable) person.

Toward the end of her talk, Rogers showcased several video clips: autistic babies vs. NT babies. And something really disturbing (I think) happened: when she prefaced a video with here’s a typically developing baby, the audience cooed, laughed, reacted happily. When she prefaced a video with here’s an autistic baby, the room grew silent, solemn, non-responsive.

Pop quiz! Which one is disturbing, and which one is TEH CUTENESS OMGBBQ? </humanity fail>

I don’t laugh at babies. Unlike the pope, I don’t kiss babies that are thrown my way. I admit it — babies and I don’t jibe. In that moment, though, I wished I were a baby-liking sort of person — that at least I would have been reacting, laughing, or goo-gooing over the many cute autistic babies.

I don’t think that cute and autistic are mutually exclusive entities. And it’s disturbing to me that service professionals do not find (or behave as though they do not find) those whom they serve to be adorable, cute, beautiful, intelligent, or funny. Unless those whom they serve were to become “more typical,” that is.

At only one point did the audience react positively toward an autistic baby: when Rogers claimed that this baby, because of intensive therapy, was “virtually asymptomatic” and “as cute as can be.” Then the audience laughed.

*headdesk*

I figure that a good post-hiatus post might involve what I’ve been up to lately that is non-dissertation — that is, teaching. This past quarter, I taught an undergraduate section of Intro to Disability Studies, the second time I’ve taught this course. And in the fall I’m teaching a special topics in literature course called Authoring Autism. I kind of figure that folks who read my blog will have a lot to say about the autism class in particular.

Above is an image of my course flyer — I’ve been posting these across campus. I decided on going the “famous people who might have been autistic” route not because I like to retrodiagnose dead people (I loathe doing that, actually), but because 1) retrodiagnosis is one among many topics I’d like my students to critically engage this fall, and 2) I was hoping to attract students, especially from the humanities, to my class. Class enrollment is up to 18 people, which is pretty good for a special topics course. < /explanation>

I’ve drafted a syllabus for the course, which you can find here in PDF format. I’d like to emphasize that it’s a rough draft, and I’m already making changes in the assignments, schedule, and readings (i.e., I’m adding in materials from the neurodiversity special issue of DSQ, giving students more memoirs to choose from, figuring out potential guest speakers, etc.). I’ve also included my course description behind the cut — at root, this is a course that considers how autism and autistic people are represented across media.

I am, however, open to suggestions. Ohio State terms run 10 weeks in length, so we’re limited with our time. But I’d very much like to find out what others in the blogosphere would like to see in a class like this.

Course description: Public discourse on autism has reached critical mass. It’s hard to open a newspaper, change a TV channel, or browse a Facebook profile without catching something about autism—the epidemic, the puzzles, the children, the charities, the discrimination. The CDC currently touts a 1 in 110 autism incidence rate; former Playboy bunnies claim that our government is poisoning children with heavy metals and dairy products; popular TV shows feature unemotional autistic characters with savant-like super powers; and college programs are molding the most autism-centric cohort of disability service professionals our country has seen to date. If we’re to believe anything we encounter in the media or popular literature, we can certainly believe that autism is everywhere and has the potential to touch anyone at any time.

With this supposed increase in autism has come an increase in texts about autism (across media, across genre), much of it volatile and emotionally charged. Our main objective in this class, then, is to consider the rhetorical import of these texts, to develop an understanding of autism as a complex and crucial part of the human experience, to examine the ways in which able-bodiedness (or neurotypicality) has become an invisible default. We’ll work together in exploring how the authors of these various texts aim to persuade an audience that their view is the most emotionally, ethically, or logically sound view. To that end, we’ll also investigate the many important issues—legal, social, cultural, medical, political—currently at stake in the autism world. Throughout the term, we’ll continually engage popular, literary, and scholarly representations of autism in print, film, and the blogosphere in light of the following questions: What does it mean to be an autistic person? What does it mean to be an autism parent, professional, or advocate? What does it mean to author autism?

Perhaps the one thing I like most about Ohio State is that I’ve rarely had to physically stay in a library while here. I’ve been able to search for and reserve books online. I simply dart into the science and engineering library, grab the book I’ve digitally reserved, and dart out. Very little interpersonal interaction involved.

Libraries, at least at the educational institutions I’ve attended, have always involved lots of people and lots of distractions. And though reading rooms tend to be quieter than cafes or street corners, the silences are overwhelmed with noise — pages turning, clocks ticking, coughs languishing, air circulating — and the visual stillness is overwhelmed with eyes and other unreadable body parts.

Nonverbals abound in libraries. Nonverbals and I don’t always get along.

Upon learning that 1) the library was open today and 2) hardly anyone was there, I ventured out. I managed to stay for nearly three hours, probably a record of some sort for me. I went there to work on my dissertation prospectus, which is ending up a multimedia project. Instead of sifting through book-like things, I had aimed to record photos, video, and ambient noises. Eventually, I located a suitably lonely table, turned around, and found myself parked in front of several rows of the Journal of Mental Deficiency Research. (Which was right near Autism, the journal.)

I defaced some scholarly journals with post-it notes.

Journal of Mental Deficiency Research, with a post-it that says 'pathology (to the max)'

In one of the "enlightening" Autism articles from 2003, an author mused about an autistic child's "entry into the domain of symbols" (a.k.a. so-called normal speech, you know, the only kind of symbolic thing that's worthy of anyone's attention). I went notecard-happy on several cognitive studies/psychology periodicals, including the Journal of Traumatic Stress. DX that, symbol arbiters.

This collection was in dire need of some pathologically ineffectual charity. And I had no shortage of pity-laden bandaids.

Recycling that tired idea of there being one "true language." Because goodness knows that what autistic people use isn't language, isn't even symbolic.

Try harder: Advice for researchers everywhere, myself included.

On October 11, I helped to lead an ASAN protest against the Autism Speaks walk at Ohio State’s campus. As I now have the benefit of being three weeks removed from the protest — as well as reading/hearing/seeing reports of other ASAN-led protests across the country — I feel a sense of accomplishment. I’d certainly never organized a protest before — and I’d only attended my first protest this past June, which was a disability rights protest against Ohio’s proposal to cut funding for community supports (and Ohio’s proposal to increase funding for nursing homes, ack). In June, I took notes about chanting and marching, and the chorus of Our homes, not nursing homes! is still present in my brain. (We were loud. And we were quickly hoarse.)

I suppose, on some level, I feel perpetually frustrated here at Ohio State. Our protest didn’t receive media coverage, which was a disappointment — though, to be honest, I’m not the sort of person who likes to be noticed, per se. (I’m not media material. I’m quiet-and-behind-the-scenes material.) But I also suppose the good news is that, really, Columbus’s Walk Now for Autism hardly received any media coverage itself. There was a quick spot on NBC4 (which was to be expected, given that one of their anchors has an autistic son and the station itself co-sponsored the walk), as well as a photo slideshow on The Dispatch website (the Columbus newspaper). Though my search for pro-Autism Speaks media coverage wasn’t entirely exhaustive, I doubt there was any other coverage (at least any other coverage of note). I taped all the news shows that evening, and no one else mentioned the walk. NBC4 seemed to monopolize it.

But back to the frustration: On campus, Autism Speaks seems to be everywhere. And it’s partly a matter of manpower and resources — they’ve got more than we do. By far. And our university president keeps uncritically singing their praises (to the point where we’ve drafted a petition and plan on standing on a street corner and asking passersby for signatures). I tire of seeing their flyers daily — flyers that variously portray autism as an epidemic, a puzzle, a burden on taxpayers, a fate worse than a combination of fatal situations. And I grow even angrier when I see flyers that read Got questions about autism? We’ve got answers!

Dear god. My colleagues, students, and professors might go to these people for answers?

I also love (not) how some of their past campus fundraisers have included things like Mary Kay parties, sorority cookouts at midnight, or shop-a-thons. Their events sound so autistic-unfriendly that, if it weren’t so egregious, I’d find it utterly hilarious.

I’ll end this post with photos. Several of these photos have circulated the blogosphere by now, so I’ll try and post those that weren’t featured (that I know of) in other blogs. The protest was very successful: nineteen people braved the throngs of “puzzled” walkers. We endured angry honks, middle fingers, haughty walking mothers, and entitled white men yelling, “You’re a bunch of f—ing idiots!” But we also had productive conversations with parents, and we were even thanked by autistic people who had been dragged to the walk.

This is me holding a sign reading "Autism Speaks does not speak for me"

Tim Jensen holds an orange sign that reads "Nothing about us without us"; Chris Lindemann holds flyers; Kate Comer holds a sign that reads "Diverse NOT Diseased"; and Jonathan Buehl holds a yellow sign that reads "Nothing about us without us"

Jonathan Buehl; Brenda Brueggemann with a sign that reads "Disability Rights"; me with a sign that reads "I can speak 4 myself"; Jason Smith with a sign that reads "First class autistic, second class citizen"; Justin Rooney with a sign that reads "I can speak for myself"; Meg Evans with "People not puzzles"

Jeffrey Strasser, "*Autism Speaks* against us"; Stephanie Ballam, "First class autistic, second class citizen"

Everything is really loud. The wind clanging the blinds together. The guy upstairs walking to what I presume is his refrigerator, given the sound patterns. Me typing. Me talking — even when people tell me to speak up. (I’m always loud. Don’t they get it? Loud, loud, loud.) Cars — need I say more about cars? The hallways at school, filled with feet and hands and mouths and papers and hair and eyelids and trashcans and mop buckets and plastic wheels and cellphones and clocks (some living, some dead) and doors and windows and air units and keyboards and beeps and teeth and light switches and flickering fluorescents and benches and…

I am home today, writing. And reading. I’m just wrapping up a five-week writing course, a course that I taught and enjoyed and feel exhausted over. The quarter system is fast-paced. The half-quarter system is even more fast-paced.

Scissors make noise. As does cardstock. But cutting out rainbow infinity signs is a welcome break from grading, a more welcoming sort of noise:

Crickets.

Right now, our group has two big plans. The first is event-planning for Autistic Pride Day, which falls on June 18. The whole of April is dedicated to autism awareness, but the awareness preached in April tends to be of the medical sort, the sort that hyperfocuses on cure and prevention and alarmism. Our plans for the event have not been solidified yet, but we’re aiming for something that celebrates autistic culture. We’d been tossing the idea of holding an autie picnic in some prominent locale (e.g., the capitol lawn) and printing up a bunch of pamphlets that describe autism positively for passersby. We also have artists, writers, and possibly musicians in our group, and we’ve thought about asking those individuals to showcase their work, if they feel comfortable. We’ve decided to combine this picnic idea with another: we’re hoping to meet with a few state reps on the morning of June 17 and talk to them about ASAN, neurodiversity, and Autistic Pride. After that, then we’ll segue into the picnic and fun stuff.

The second item we’re planning is going to require a good deal of elbow grease: we want to visibly protest the Autism Speaks walk in Columbus on October 11. For a number of reasons, Autism Speaks doesn’t coalesce with neurodiversity activism. First of all, none of the Autism Speaks leadership positions are occupied by autistic people. Moreover, Autism Speaks frequently employs alarmist rhetorics in their depiction of the spectrum, e.g., comparing autism to lightning-strike stats, pediatric cancer, and AIDS. According to their organization, inviduals on the spectrum are inherently suffering and pitiable people who present an excessive burden to families and society. Autism Speaks’ main goal involves cure and prevention, and instead of directing their funding to support autistic individuals in their everyday lives, the group focuses on eradicating autism (or eradicating autistic people).

Our goal is for this protest to be peaceful: we hope to gather a large number of people and stand on the sidelines with large posters and signs. We also plan to write letters to the local Autism Speaks chapters, as well as their sponsors, before the event takes place. In our latest ASAN meeting, we discussed the difference between being “strong” and “militant” in our goals — strong having the better connotation. Given the events happening on the Ohio State campus recently, many of us are incredibly frustrated with Autism Speaks. Those of us who have written to them have been ignored or brushed off, and any disagreement we have with their methods or end goals is chalked up to us being so-called black-and-white or unempathetic or literal-minded disabled people who don’t know how bad we (or they, the poor families) have it.

A bit hard to read because of the wind, but the banner
is hanging from a sorority house. It has a puzzle piece
and Autism Speaks written on it, and is hanging for a
fundraiser called “flippin fuzzies.”

How are autistic people supposed to react when we see people wearing t-shirts like this? “Grateful” that people think of us as puzzles, as missing a few cognitive pieces? In what way is that not insulting?

How are we supposed to act when campus Greek life displays banners like the one above, or gives interviews like this one? Or when local grocery stores claim that a pseudo-eugenics organization aligns with their core values? I shudder at the thought that my peers, professors, and students might think of me and other autistic people as diseased, devastating, and lacking in “proper” brain function — everything a matter of deficit, deficit, deficit.

…hence, the protest.

This news came as a crushing blow. Kelly joined the band in 1974, right after Eldorado, and stayed until 1983. He was a large part of the well-known, popular, successful ELO line-up — my favorite line-up. Kelly’s voice perfectly complemented Jeff Lynne’s.

ELO was a large part of my childhood, and still occupies a rather sizable portion of my adult life. I’ve been hooked since about the third grade. Kids often teased me for obsessing over ELO, for claiming Jeff Lynne as my so-called “crush.” I was a child of the 80s and 90s. ELO broke up when I was two. Asperger’s probably predisposed me to like adults better than my peers, and I frequently wished that I’d been born in the 60s — because people my parents’ age were the only ones willing to tolerate my monologues about Roy Wood’s hairstyles or the metaphorical significance of “Livin Thing.”

During my adolescence, I would only listen to music that I could somehow connect back to ELO. (e.g., The Moody Blues were acceptable because Bev Bevan, ELO’s drummer, played with Denny Laine and the Diplomats for a bit, and Denny Laine eventually sang lead for the Moody Blues. Likewise, Denny Laine’s connection to Wings made Paul McCartney acceptable, though McCartney was also acceptable because Jeff Lynne produced his album Flaming Pie and also worked on the Beatles Anthology.) When I dropped out of school in ninth grade, Jeff and Kelly’s harmonies — and the histories and trivia surrounding those harmonies — carried me through some emotional rough patches. My aspie special interest helped to keep me grounded in a lot of ways.

In eighth and ninth grade, I grew desperate to have ELO posters, to amass anything and everything related to ELO, no matter how tangential.  I collected LPs from flea markets and proudly displayed the duplicates as if they were posters. I also began drawing ELO members and affixing their cartoonish likenesses to my walls:

Richard Tandy & Kelly Groucutt. Drawn when I was 15.

My drawings make me laugh when I consider the amount of detail I pored into sketching the band members’ hairstyles. Such detail presents a stark contrast with their penciled faces, which are amazingly blank and bare.

Jeff Lynne. Drawn at age 15. I mailed this to him with a birthday card. He never responded.

I’m still reeling from the shock of it all — of Kelly Groucutt not being here. It’s hard to fathom. My weekend consisted of me listening to Kelly-heavy tunes such as Sweet Is the Night and live versions of 10538 Overture. I’ve pulled out his 1981 solo album, his OrKestra songs, his work with ELO Part II/Orchestra. All such lovely, lovely songs.

]]> http://aspierhetor.com/2009/02/25/before-we-go/feed/ 0 http://aspierhetor.com/2009/02/02/mixed-metaphors/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mixed-metaphors http://aspierhetor.com/2009/02/02/mixed-metaphors/#comments Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:49:32 +0000 Melanie http://aspierhetor.com/?p=196 What is it with the autism spectrum and the word umbrella? Talk about a mixed metaphor. When I think of the metaphor that is “spectrum” — that is, in literality, a band of light — the umbrella trope perplexes me. If one is under the umbrella of the autism spectrum, we usually interpret that to mean “one has a type of autism, which is a disorder with various presentations.” But I keep getting a conflicting image in my mind — as if an umbrella is shielding us from a light source? Or the light source forms an umbrella? Or…?

It’s interesting that, in addition to textually referencing ASD in the context of umbrellas, we’re also starting to graphically represent the spectrum as an umbrella:

[Link]

Per this visual representation, “of” becomes a possessive, as if the umbrella belongs to the autism spectrum (i.e., the umbrella of the autism spectrum = the autism spectrum’s umbrella). Still, I fail to see the connections between umbrellas and spectra in this visual. So, um, maybe the spectrumish umbrella should look like… this?

Of course, why mix two metaphors when you can mix three?

[Link]

So — not only is the spectrum something that can be encapsulated under an umbrella, but it is encapsulated under an umbrella that comprises multi-colored puzzle pieces. I’d like to say that the creator of this metaphoric monstrosity (eep! metaphor #4) created the puzzle motif as a comment toward the horror of mixing metaphors nonsensically — that is, that the trope-joining of umbrellas and spectra is puzzling, indeed. However, the puzzle motif obviously relates to the “autism as puzzle” metaphor, a metaphor that portrays autistics as “missing a few pieces.” </gag>

Of course, why not take the spectrum-umbrella marriage a [metaphorical] step further? Why not medicalize umbrellas, just like we’ve done with physics and rainbows and wavelengths?

[Link]

According to this umbrella-spectrum model, different cloth panels of an umbrella point toward specific learning differences and difficulties, a non-rain-proof continuum that makes little children become wet and distressed.

Boy with weird hair says: And I thought umbrellas were to stop me from getting wet!
Girl with missing bottom lip says: Too late. You are wet!
Girl with string hair says: Hey! That’s not very nice!
Girl with missing bottom lip replies with: Man! I always seem to say things wrong…

Perhaps if this clinical umbrella-spectrum were visually designed to be missing a puzzle piece or two, this trope-fest would make more sense? </sarcasm>

This mixed-metaphor, umbrella-spectrum rant isn’t limited to random images that I unearthed on the interwebs. People are writing books about the autism spectrum umbrella:

[Link]

This visual makes me even more confused. Which part is the visual representation of “spectrum”? Which part is autism? And what’s the metaphorical significance of the umbrella, of the huge doomsday wave? Is autism the doomsday wave? Or is the wave the spectrum that is autism — as in, a pun on the physics understanding of wavelength? And maybe autistics are like unique little wave crests, all crashing down onto helpless NT umbrellas? Or maybe autism is the umbrella, which is also a spectrum, which is also a challenge, and the wave is a challenge too, and it’s about to drown out the helpless, challenged, little autistic girl on the beach? Or maybe the author ran out of title ideas.

More umbrellas, more autism, more rain:

[Link]

Erm. This image strikes me as everything that… isn’t… lovely. I found this on autismparents.net, which linked to an article concerning the finances of families with autism.  Apparently, money falls under the umbrella that is the autism spectrum?

In the context of the original article, autism is represented as a money-hungry entity. (So, in addition to stealing children’s souls, autism likes to rob parents of their hard-earned incomes? This image would make Jenny McCarthy proud.) Another metaphor: saving money for a rainy day. Here, the rainy day has come, but the autism spectrum umbrella thing-a-majig has taken the money, so it can’t really be used on a rainy day.

Why must tropes be so complicated? Autism makes a lot more sense to me when I think of it as neurological diversity that presents with a wide variety of behavioral manifestations — makes a lot more sense than thinking of autism as an umbrella owned by a spectrum that may be physics-related but may also involve large quantities of water in the form of rain and/or tsunamis that also happen to like mooching credit cards and/or drenching and drowning children.

Yeah. I think that my explanation is more concise. And more accurate.

]]> http://aspierhetor.com/2009/02/02/mixed-metaphors/feed/ 2 http://aspierhetor.com/2009/01/20/autism-on-the-beach/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=autism-on-the-beach http://aspierhetor.com/2009/01/20/autism-on-the-beach/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:52:41 +0000 Melanie http://aspierhetor.com/?p=136

I’ve noticed a common cover design in recent autism books: that of a child, usually a boy, hovering near a body of water. In fact, the more memoirs I read, the more I tend to notice this autie-water depiction. These representations appear on books I love, books I despise, and books I feel luke-warm about. It isn’t as though the autie-water portrait appears solely on curebie diatribes or solely on neurodiverse musings. And so I wonder about these aquatically-oriented representations of autism.

Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet

The RDOS Aspie Quiz asks whether or not I have a fascination with flowing water. I’m not entirely sure how this relates to autism, but perhaps it has to do with perseveration, or attention to detail, or the fact that flowing water is very entrancing and makes really cool whooshing sounds?

Reasonable People by Ralph Savarese

Other than the quiz-question theory, my only other thought behind autism on the beach involves metaphor. Does the water symbolically represent autism somehow? Why all the blue? Are we supposed to feel a certain way, think a certain way, assume a certain way before we read these books? An old, overused adage tells us that we should not judge books by their covers — an adage perhaps devised by a cantankerous, ne’er-do-well book salesman? But we do judge books by their covers. And I wonder what we’re supposed to judge about autism on the beach.

Weather Reports from the Autism Front by James C. Wilson

I know that Wilson’s cover photo is an actual photo of his son, a happy moment from a vacation. The cover makes somewhat more sense with this tidbit of knowledge. Yet, I’m very surprised by the puzzle-piece motif on Wilson’s particularly beachy cover: despite being a parent narrative of an autistic son, I consider his work largely neurodiverse in scope. In fact, one thing I most appreciated about Wilson’s work was his frequent reference to autistic bloggers. His (positive) mention of Autism Hub blogs far exceeded references to medical manuals and statistics. He did not portray his son, nor autistic individuals generally, as a medical mystery in need of research and neurobiological scrutiny. Though Wilson claims that he cannot fully understand his son and that his son cannot fully understand him, he portrays NT-autie communication in a way that speaks to a social, neurodiverse model of autism rather than a model that seeks to eradicate autistic difference in favor of a wholly NT understanding.

Thus, the puzzle motif here is quite puzzling.

Making Peace with Autism by Susan Senator

Of course, there are many people and protocols involved in producing, editing, and publishing a manuscript, discussions and decisions that readers simply aren’t aware of, aren’t privy to. How much influence did Wilson hold in the design of his cover? His photo made the cut — but was this the photo he was originally hoping to use? Did he vie for the (ab)use of the color blue in his cover? Did he hold any sway in the puzzle configuration? Was this his cover or his publisher’s cover?

The cover of Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day makes sense: the blueness of the cover directly relates to the title and perhaps the synaesthetic topic of the memoir. Moreover, more so than the other images offered here, Tammet’s cover focuses intently on sky. Ralph Savarese’s Reasonable People also shows more sky than water, with the child’s face being framed by the expanse of sky. With Senator’s cover, it’s hard to discern whether the water ends — and, interestingly, in all of these covers (with perhaps the exception of Wilson’s), expanse or limitlessness seems to be a rather large theme.

Women from Another Planet? by Jean Kearns Miller
[omg, women can have autism?] </sarcasm>
[ETA: my sarcasm isn't directed toward the book -- which is awesome -- but toward the statement before the sarcasm brackets.]

DJ Savarese, Ralph’s Savarese’s teenage son, wrote the last chapter of Reasonable People. DJ uses FC to communicate, and a large focus of the book is dedicated to legitimizing FC as a potential channel of communication for non-verbal auties. In the context of the book cover, I find this particular passage from DJ’s chapter to be quite illuminating:

“I dream of being a political freedom fighter. I read that pure real people in especially just free waters insist my real decisions really wasted. They think well respected, tested as normal kids are the okay to teach ones. They forget those lost kids. They’re the ones like me who poke or look like they’re not paying attention” (432).

The mention of “free waters” following “being a political freedom fighter” really strikes me here. This is an image I can digest, can embrace when considering autism on the beach. There is something freeing about water, calm about blue — peaceful, to borrow an idea from Senator’s book cover.

Yet, I don’t think that the audiences for these books — or other books that sport autism-on-the-beach covers — will immediately recognize or infer the freedom element of these cover illustrations. As calming and peaceful as blue is, as free as it is, I think blue also runs the danger of being melancholy, solitary, bluesy. I also wonder what stereotypes are reinforced by these images: in each, the (presumably) autistic individuals stand alone by the water as if they are locked into their “own little world.”

This isn’t to say that autistics never go off into their own little worlds, that autistics never stand alone, that autistics never love water and beaches. But I daresay that the frequency of this alone-on-the-beach-and-deep-in-thought imagery constitutes its own weird little genre. And any time a metaphor becomes popularized in autism discourse, I think we need to examine it, to rhetorically analyze it and question it.