The Standard Review

The Restrictions on Protesting Laws

The stricter the laws are for how, when, and where people can generally protest the ways they are governed, the more the lawmakers are allowed to consistently amend laws unjustly, and be obsessively controlling as well as unsympathetic to the public needs. There are few restrictions in the United States on the number of ways that industries can inspire the public to part with their financial resources and our public institutions teach apathetic consumerism rather than responsible citizenship.

In any relationship (whether it be between two individuals or one individual and a group of like-minded individuals) trust is the most important element for healthy progress. If government officials in the United States wanted to show that they had faith that the nation's citizens could competently make policy decisions concerning our own fate, they would be encouraging us to get more involved in making those decisions and provide us more opportunities for doing that.

If those who govern the nation truly wanted to inspire and encourage the majority of the public, they would first establish a healthy confidence in their relationship with the public. When the public can clearly see that the motivation of their leaders is corrupted, they are less likely to trust in themselves to be able to achieve anything within that government by anything less than corrupt methods.

The ideal of "can't we all just get along?" is often a way to discourage trust rather than build it. Confusion about trust is how ideas are suppressed and all forms of government are allowed to reinforce their corrupt ways. When people let go of their responsibility to be discerning of whom they should trust and whom they should not, they will be more likely to either trust no one or trust everyone, which leads to trusting no one when their confidence is betrayed.

The qualifications for protesting against a law or even just a social norm begins with networking. If within a network, people achieve authority in unjust ways, trust is again betrayed and the network becomes ineffective.

If a network of people chooses to stick too closely to a set of rules or guidelines by which they determine the validity of any individual's idea, they will be unable to fight for anyone's individual rights because they don't honor individual rights within their own group.

If the ideas of the network's leadership can't be challenged and the guidelines for what constitutes a valid idea doesn't vary from the guidelines of the system that the network is trying to change, the result will be nothing more than an unhealthy subservient relationship of the network with that system. With this unquestioning devotion, there is no challenge, no individuality, no diversity, no responsibility expected of the system, and therefore no progressive changes can be expected.

Psychology and psychiatry are part of an industry which is quickly outgrowing its usefulness beyond its ability to control and manipulate people. The person that someone should trust with their own mental health should have obvious and understandable motives that coincide with their own. Trust is one of the most vital elements (if not the most vital element) for encouraging good mental health. If a professional and/or public official who is unworthy of that trust is demanding it, they are preventing you from thinking independently and encouraging irresponsibility for you both, which is contrary to good mental health for either of you.

The best way that a person or group in authority can establish the most oppressive means of control is by making either too many rules or too many contradictions within their set of rules. With no practical ways to be obedient there are no ways to avoid the consequences whenever someone chooses to use your lack of adherence to any one of those rules as justification for punishing you. This is the overwhelming oppressive method for the psych industry and how they create an unhealthy co-dependent and shame-based  relationship with the consumers of their products and services. Ultimately the needs of individuals get sacrificed for the industries royal collective needs.

In the few years that people who are considered "bad thinkers" (people with mental illness, learning disabilities, neurological impairments,pathological misconduct, etc.) have been networking to create government changes in how we are treated, the industry as well as the government has been working tirelessly to politically stifle these groups by funding them and creating incentives for the people who lead them to comply with their demands. So far, given the increasing numbers of people now dependent on the products and services they offer, they have done pretty well at achieving their goal.

Public Mental health services in the US have shown its corrupt alliances and inappropriate management so that trusting such professionals create a dependent relationship that impedes an individual's mental health rather than aids it.

Autistics and our families who have sought help from public agencies have always had nothing but these services to depend on. The rules and guidelines for public schools are very similar to that of other institutions such as jails, nursing homes, group homes, and mental institutions. The guidelines within these public agencies are becoming more similar all the time. The federal government is also taking more control of agencies that were previously run by the state and the private insurance industry that serves as the public financial agents are taking a stronger role in creating the laws for this population that will serve their own interests.

Autism has its own language now within US politics, which was mainly influenced by charities promoting research and treatments that are harmful. People can't just speak that language and expect the changes because the language is backed by industries with motivations that won't change. The only real opportunity we have for change is more people with more radical ideas, which are less sophisticated and less acceptable by these current political figures being involved in the process.

Unless the political efforts for creating better conditions and opportunities for autistic people encourage more radical independent(and therefore, more practical) views, which promote neurodiversity rather than excluding neurodiverse thinkers, those efforts will support further corruption instead. This promotes mistrust, defensiveness, and hopelessness, and adds to the difficulties we have with interacting with others in healthy ways.

If people are going to depend on the government and industries aligned with the government to solve their problems, they can't be irresponsible and neglect the corruption they see. Anything less than radical change supports the radical corruption that is now very prevalent within that system. If people are going to encourage people who think outside the box to be included in more public affairs we're going to have to focus more on changing the box than the people who don't fit into it. Otherwise the box itself will become narrower and ultimately more corrupt in order to ensure its narrowness.

Improper Use of Restraints

When civil rights advocacy groups began organizing in the US and began getting recognized for affecting governmental policy, the legitimacy of their concerns was not so dependent on the political policy maker's descriptions of who they (the advocates) were and what their role was as it today.

Especially recently when advocates for mental health began demanding change, the government quickly took steps to fund their efforts and organize the advocates in large groups. This way the advocates could be taught how the policy makers would allow them to see the policies they make in a strict way in order to limit individual and independent views.

This especially discourages people who are abused the most in public programs from using their voice in order to influence the needed changes in the public policies that affect them more than anyone else. These policy makers demand that personal experience must only be validated when it comes from someone who can meet their high standards that include being articulate, personable, and approved by a community that is judged to be important.

Fewer people are being employed and the quality of education along with the number of people who have an opportunity to be educated is lowering. The population who is given fewer opportunities pursuant to this are the most vulnerable to economic fluctuation and therefore more likely to be placed in public programs.

The diagnoses based on the DSM are increasing at an alarmingly faster rate than the accommodations needed for this group are being provided. While there can be benefits to the increasing number of diagnoses, if the accommodations don't accompany the diagnosis at a similar rate, the diagnosis becomes more of a hindrance to people based on the negative connotations people associate with it .

The increased dominance of the psychology industry has greatly influenced our culture. Unfortunately, it is still an industry that is designed to serve the general public rather than those whom they label.

Autism advocacy that doesn't reflect the importance of these issues can't be trusted any more than the untrustworthy policy makers that they claim to be trying to influence.

The policy makers know very well the cycle of misbehavior that is caused by the lack of radical changes in policy, and yet they still insist on the validity of small and incremental policy changes.

Public agencies must adjust to this reality even though it's rarely mentioned:


"To determine how many prison beds will be
needed in future years, some states are actually
basing part of their projection on how well
current elementary students are performing on
reading tests."





Public systems in the US are very motivated to resist change, and they work very hard at narrowing the focus of the public so the people who seem to them to be least important don't speak up about by how they are mistreated.



I appreciate and agree with what a representative of the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) has written here:



Current Barriers in Federal Law, Policy and Programs That Limit Community Integration:

"Today, there are more than four times the number of people with severe mental illness residing in our nation's jails and prisons as in psychiatric hospitals. In most major cities, people with severe mental illnesses comprise as much as 40% of the homeless population. These are tragic outgrowths of deinstitutionalization without adequate community services and supports."

AND:

"In NAMI's view, the social experiment of deinstitutionalization of people with severe and persistent mental illness, while well intentioned, failed hundreds of thousands of consumers and their families over the last four decades. The reasons for this failure are complex. However, in NAMI's view some of the factors have led to the breakdown of public mental systems in many states include:
*failure to properly invest in community-based housing and services,
*lack of accountability in ensuring that public mental health agencies focused limited resources on people with the most severe illnesses
*inability of states and communities to follow and adopt best evidence-based practices in their public mental health systems, and

bullet    legal barriers that prevent the most severely ill individuals from accessing needed treatment."

However,unfortunately, society treats atypical behavior with punishment. The illusion that normal behavior can be defined and achieved is a way of stimulating economy and protecting government decisions from being suspected of corruption.

While ABA treatments are sold as a way to protect autistics from self-injury,the goals of ABA programs are geared toward encouraging and protecting standards of appropriate social behavior.

Not only is bogus science being used to describe autistics as monsters, which lead to them being treated with all kinds of dangerous drugs but the penal system and the public education system are holding autistics hostage to meet their political goals of more governmental control.To gain this control the autism spectrum is defined as a spectrum of people whose behavior ranges from bad to worst.

A society that demands typical behavior for the benefit of their economy and the control of misfits cannot define a spectrum of bad behavior without treating the people who are categorized in this way as morally unfit and attacking those people's characters. Once the government labels people with having a bad character, they can justify all sorts of punishment.

One product that the US government is proposing in order to attain this type of control is Applied Behavioral Analysis. They need to be able to sell the idea that their product is safe and effective, but they have no way of hiding the fact that it will further malign the character of autistic people as well as many others diagnosed by the DSM.

It is very dangerous to have a commercial product that is designed to enforce a standard of behavior, which defines social misfits as dangerous. There is no proof that autistics are more violent than anyone else but once there is a standard behavioral treatment which is widely accepted for autism, it will be very difficult to prove otherwise whether it's. true or not.

Professional politicians have learned that advocacy groups often pose a threat to their agenda. In order for those groups to gain acceptance into the political arena which the professional politicians control, they will demand compromise from those groups.

The mental Health system has always been mainly a method used to protect the public rather than serve the client. However, as public mental health programs have expanded their services to include more treatment for drug addiction and rehabilitation for criminals more people than ever with a diagnosis of mental illness are treated with the same moral assumptions that have traditionally been attributed to addicts and criminals.

NAMI is primarily a parent run organization for family members of the mentally ill who had recently been shown to have 75% of their funding coming from the pharmaceutical industry. They have declared their political ambitions and defined their organization by supporting Kendra's Law.



Something I believe is VERY important to remember about this law is:

"According to OMH’s Final Report on Kendra’s Law, 63% of people being court-mandated under Kendra’s Law are identified as Black and Hispanic (OMH Final Report on Kendra’s Law 3/1/05). The OMH Report opens up with the following introduction: “Kendra’s Law was named in memory of Kendra Webdale, a young woman who died in January, 1999 after being pushed in front of a New York City subway train by Andrew Goldstein, a man with a history of mental illness and hospitalizations.”

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!!

"The implication here is obvious. The question of violence and mental illness is as old as psychiatry itself. What most people don’t know is that Kendra’s Law is merely the culmination of old policies and old laws, which have been re-packaged under a new name. (None Dare Call it Treason, John A. Stormer, Chapter IX, Mental Health, 1964; the Tragedy of Sane People Who Get Put Away, Albert Q. Maisel, Reader’s Digest, February 1962)

At one time these laws were passed - allegedly - to protect “the mentally-ill” from themselves, today they are passed - allegedly - to protect society from “the mentally-ill.” All of which, by the way, have never worked. Which is why we are sitting here today!

The reason why these laws had to be repackaged was because the constitutional rights of the person made it difficult to apply them. So in order to eliminate this roadblock, the advocates of forced treatment latched onto Kendra Webdale’s tragedy to convince the public that this was not an isolated incident, but the beginning of a terrifying new wave of crime - knowing full well that fear and emotion all too often override reason and rationale."

Also:

"Ironically, in 1999 - the very same year Kendra’s Law was passed - the Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health concluded that minorities:
• have less access to, and availability of, mental health services
• and are less likely to receive mental health services when needed"

irony?


Also there's this:


"In fact, in August of 2003, Nicholas Regush, former producer of ABC's Nightline and World
News Tonight with Peter Jennings, queried in his online column, Second Opinion:
"Where is the science that supports the need to use coercion so often when it comes to the treatment of patients, as opposed to, say, offering a wide range of community-based services? In all my research on violence for a book published several years ago, I had not seen one credible study showing that society has more to fear from patients labeled "mentally ill" than other people in the community. For example, there has never been any appropriate follow-up of patients that has determined whether the absence of treatment leads to violence. The very foundation of forced treatment is ideology and fear-mongering and not science."

AND NAMI openly admits:

"Interestingly enough, nowhere throughout their 23-page report on Kendra’s Law does NAMI quote any independent research. They openly admit that their research is based solely on discussions with a selected group of 20 families and 40 local NAMI leaders. They make no attempt to conceal their bias and their report is full of lead-in statements such as “OUR research found… and “WE found overwhelming evidence…"

Sound familiar? It does to me!

This argument that is made for the encourage Kendra's law is very similar to the arguments to encourage statewide PBS.


# 2 on NAMI's Ten Best Practices for Schools list:

"Train school professionals in effective and research-based teaching methods and behavioral interventions, including positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS – as described at www.pbis.org)."

Then there's this that tells about the US psychiatric system:

"Sadly, these abuses are merely the tail end of psychiatry's long history of patient abuse and failure. A large book could easily be written on the continual state hospital abuses committed, investigated, prosecuted and documented. Here are just a few from the last 60 years to show that, psychiatrically speaking, times have not changed:

    *

      In the early part of last century, both public and government concern over deteriorating conditions inside U.S. mental institutions caused the American Medical Association to act. In 1931, the AMA hired a physician named John Grimes to conduct an investigation. He came back with an unexpectedly disturbing portrait of overcrowding and woefully inadequate patient diet. Facility attendants were found to conduct themselves like prison guards rather than facilitators of rehabilitation. Dr. Grimes concluded that the primary purpose of state hospitals was not medical but "legal."8
    *

      In 1944, an Ohio grand jury investigating conditions at Cleveland State Hospital, where several patients had died after being beaten with belts, key rings, and metal-plated shoes, summed up the state of affairs: "The atmosphere reeks with the false notion that the mentally ill are criminals and subhumans who should be denied all human rights…"9
    *

      In May 1969, then-Illinois State Attorney Edward Hanrahan issued a report at the request of then-Governor Richard Ogilvie, on conditions at the Chicago State Hospital and the Tinley Park Mental Health Facility that found that “All varieties of crime were discovered at both institutions…. Patients were assaulted, murdered and raped by fellow inmates and employees.”10
    *

      In April 1987, Pennsylvania State Public Welfare Secretary John F. White, Jr. formed a special task force to investigate Byberry State Hospital, a now-closed state institution with one of the most horrifying records of patient death and abuse. In September of that year, the group issued their report in which it said that patients were being neglected, beaten and sexually abused. The report called for “immediate and drastic action to reverse the history of neglect, poor management, absence of treatment and rampant abuse.”

Another thing to keep in mind regarding this population is this:

"Research and advertising sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry led to the widespread belief that the newer medications were indisputably safer, more effective and well worth additional billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Pharmaceutical profits soared.

Since the n, the life expectancy of those treated in community mental health centers has plunged to an appalling 25 years less than average.(1) Life expectancy may have fallen by as much as 15 years since 1986.(2) Indications are that the death rate continues to accelerate (3) in what must be ranked as one of the worst public health disasters in U.S. history."

 

My question is this; How much do you think changes to the system will occur in the next 60 years if radical demands are not made?

Look at all the other advances we've made in so many areas in the last 60 years. Now we have so many more people being diagnosed with mental and psychological problems than before. Can we really trust the government that has done nothing more than this for the past 60 years to make decisions about the welfare of this population without radically challenging their motives? "

So, who are the Protection and Advovacy and what role do they play in protecting the traditional typical standards for how this population is treated?

This report by Protection and Advocacy (P&A)says:




"Whenever we open a newspaper, turn on the television, or go on the Internet these days, we hear about another child dying or being injured in school while being restrained or secluded. Some may think these are isolated incidents, but, when Protection and Advocacy (P&A) agencies across this country report that school children have been killed, confined, tied up, pinned down, and battered, this is clearly more than an isolated issue - it is one of national concern.

P&As have been advocating for students and their families on education issues for over thirty years, a period of unprecedented change and opportunity for children with disabilities as fewer and fewer are relegated to institutions or special facilities. After years of struggle by parents and advocates, the educational rights of children with disabilities was, at least by law, firm established in 1978 with implementation of the Education for the Handicapped Act (EHA), the precursor to the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This promise of a free, appropriate, and public education has expanded the opportunities for full inclusion of students with disabilities. Yet today, many parents still face major challenges in obtaining full access to the education system their children are entitled to."

AND:

In 2001, 31 State P&A systems reported 1250 deaths, of which 410 were investigated. In 2002, 27 State P&A systems reported 1,777 deaths, of which 972 were investigated. P&A systems efforts to investigate these incidents were affected by such factors as challenges by public and private facilities to P&A access to clients, facilities, and records, which had to be resolved by the court; inadequate information from the reporting facility; and lag time between the fatality and the notice to the P&A systems. Investigations conducted by State P&A systems included highly publicized deaths, often brought to their attention by the media (many States had no mandatory death reporting requirements to cover residential care and treatment facilities in effect). Findings substantiated that residential facility staff either used excessive physical restraint or provided inadequate medical care.

This is P&A:

P&A Programs
•    PADD (Protection and Advocacy for People with Developmental Disabilities)
•    CAP (Client Assistance Program)
•    PAIMI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness)
•    PAIR (Protection and Advocacy for Individual Rights)
•    PAAT (Protection and Advocacy for Assistive Technology)
•    PABSS (Protection and Advocacy for Beneficiaries of Social Security)
•    PATBI (Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury)
•    PAVA (Protection and Advocacy for Voting Accessibility)


"Going to trial is not the only tool P&As use to enforce disability rights against abuse and neglect. A public report may be made giving findings and recommending action, they may work with facilities for cooperative monitoring, or they may provide training and technical assistance to people with disabilities and institutions.

P&A Funding
Federal monies provide the base of financial support for the programs, most of which are non-profits with typical board management. Funds are allotted based on population, although the smallest states are guaranteed a minimum amount for most programs. While some P&As operate on these federal funds alone, others supplement with other federal or state resources, or even conduct private fundraising.

The number of inconsistancies in the goals of all these agencies that are alloted funding under this same umbrella are too vast to comprehend. To have any real power they must employ independant investigators who report their findings to the public."


     

As an agency that takes the place of a regulatory agency, P&A perpetuates government standards that require all abuse cases to be resolved through litigation. Just as any law firm will do, they will tell you which agencies that are supposedly within their jurisdiction that they, in reality have no influence with at all. For the few people who even make it to their office whom they aren't able to ignore, they have a multitude of  methods for discouraging their clients. One common method (which is of course used by all bureaucratic agencies) is endless discussions and letter writing filled with useless bureaucratic speech.




Also,the P&A program operates as 50 state agencies with with $34 million a year from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association (SAMHSA), or about one-tenth of the agency's discretionary mental health budget.


Purpose and Method of Operation:

 "The program primarily supports SAMHSA's Capacity goal by expanding the availability of protection and advocacy services. The program directly supports the Mental Health System Transformation priority area and the Seclusion and Restraint priority area."





Today the group TASH is following in the footstep's of NAMI by claiming that "better" restraints and seclusion performed by ABA specialists are the answer to how restraints and seclusion are being abused by people who are untrained by PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports)


The Alliance to Prevent Restraint, Aversive Interventions, and Seclusion (APRAIS) is led by TASH (formerly The Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps).



Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) says:


"The TA Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports has been established by the Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of Education to give schools capacity-building information and technical assistance for identifying, adapting, and sustaining effective school-wide disciplinary practices."




While P&A was established in 1986 to provide the public with more independent investigations, today it is not only inadequate and mischaracterized as a method for independent investigations but it is also preventing the radical changes that are needed by the corruptive influence they receive from government funding.

Those who are able or even feel empowered enough to apply for their services are typically those with the most education and ability to meet their high standards. Those who are in the most need are typically not a part of this population. This is how the status quo is protected and the radical changes that are needed are not heard by the general public.


Those who are classified as having high risk behavior by the behavioral specialists (which of course would include autistics since autism is seen by ABA specialists to be a behavior disorder) includes the need for emergency restraints and police officers if deemed necessary by the staff.
 
This is how some who use Florida's PBS project describe at risk behavior (5 % of this 20 % are considered high risk and are treated more severely than the others).


At risk students (estimated 20%):

 At Risk:
􀂫 Disruptive
􀂫 Talks out
􀂫 Unprepared
􀂫 Talks back to teacher
􀂫 Uses inappropriate language
􀂫 Tardy
􀂫 Defiant
􀂫 Refuses to do work
􀂫 Difficulty taking turns
􀂫 Refuses to share
􀂫 Out of seat
􀂫 Aggressive
􀂫 Not dangerous or violent (my note: they estimate that only 5% of this top 20% will be determined dangerous or violent)
􀂫 May have low academic achievement

This says also:

Generally these students


Poor peer relations
􀂀 Low academic achievement
􀂀 Difficulty adjusting to school environment
􀂀 Chaotic home environment

􀂀 Low self-esteem

There is no way to constantly emphasize to the rest of the world that typical eye contact is synonymous with honesty and at the same time not relay the message to those who respond atypically that they are dishonest. People being put in a behavioral program will reach that negative conclusion about themselves, especially when they are reminded consistently that typical responses are imperative.

The same is true for typical methods of showing empathy and the ways that theory of mind declares their responses to mean that they are empathetic.

Societal norms that declare a short attention span as the sign for a person who is undisciplined, aberrant, and lazy, is not going to make an exception because someone has a diagnosis that describes them as having difficulty due to executive functioning deficits.

ABA and Positive Behavioral Supports will not distinguish someone's behavior due to a diagnosis as separate or different than someone else with similar behavior who is instead seen as lazy and aberrant. The assessment and the treatment will both be the same.

There has never been anything accomplished resembling the goals that are expressed by statewide PBS programs. The claim that such a program will reduce restraints and seclusion is very misleading at best. All similar ways that human rights has been sought in the past have not only failed but have reinforced old, harmful, and unjust public control that has always led to more abuse rather than less.

The demands of industry define intelligence and competency and therefore, the public programs and schools where intelligence and competency are evaluated often use their power and control to determine people's character. This determination of people's character becomes more arbitrary as the demands of industry need to remain fleeting in order for them to maintain power and control.

This leads to the corruption of power and control so that arbitrary rules can be used to justify exclusion and abuse. We can't be expected to trust behavior modification standards until or, unless the modificationists show that their own behavior is subject to modification when what they do is inappropriate for serving our needs.

Instead of reducing the abuses of restraint and seclusion in the way that it is being advertised, the goal of this legislation is to demand that the ABA/PBS industry be contracted to create more control within public educational systems, which are already too often seen as daycare centers, which more closely resemble a penal system than somewhere the majority of the public can attain an education.

If this industry secures such an all-inclusive contract to assert their brand of control,more people who are already disenfranchised will become even more that way and be subjected to even more abuse.

This turns teachers into stock brokers that only invest time and energy in the ones they believe to be the most likely to succeed. This creates an even stricter policy where assumptions are even more encouraged simply for the sake of convenience and expediency.

If a government is already known for only seeking incremental and temporary solutions to problems that are obviously the result of a larger problem that they don't want to admit responsibility for, what do you think will happen when they find more diversity in those within their behavioral based public programs that don't respond in the ways they predict? Will they expand their understanding and become more inclusive of the more motivations they had not understood?

Any radical change would require them to admit the first plan they had was a bad one. I think they would be more likely to narrow their standards and tighten their control. In turn they would ultimately label even more people as trouble makers and in turn limit their options for being more productive. This would make their solutions seem even more necessary and the cycle of dependence and shame would be perpetuated.

When behavior is demanded in overly strict ways, mainly for the purpose of control the chances of that causing a negative reaction are greatly increased. The potential for such demands to cause a worse situation rather than a better one is increased if the person receiving the demands can't trust the one making them.

If a government gets overly demanding of a strict set of standards, which includes too many innocent behaviors that can just as easily be seen as different, more behaviors will need to be classified in fewer ways and more motivations for those misunderstood behaviors must be assumed. This means that more people will be seen as threats, more people get punished, and we become an even more violent society and even more prone to fewer liberties for everyone.

Considering Autism Supports

The most important thing to know about autism is what autistic people need, and I don't see that being discussed often enough. Many autistics aren't diagnosed and are even treated bad by other autistics. People often focus on unproductive or even counter-productive things when considering how to support each other and how to obtain support for all autistics. Sarah at Cat in a Dog's World  has written an important post here about how self diagnosed autistics are mistreated. (I highly recommend reading it along with the discussion that follows.)

So many people whom I have encountered aren't being factored into the discussions about autism that I see. This has led me to explore the reasons that so much misinformation are allowed and even encouraged. People believing that autism is such a mystery seems to be what allows for so much ambiguity about what autistic people need. The ambiguity serves as a gateway to allow cultural bias to influence much of what is believed about autism.

The industry that provides commercial treatments for autism also depends on the financial gains that come from being able to define what autism is. If the public does too much exploration into who autistic people are, and what we need, the industry that provides treatment will have to make adjustments. This industry has shown that they see these adjustments as being too expensive to make.

I originally remember the word high functioning referring to someone who was mentally retarded. This meant they were mildly retarded rather than severely. Unfortunately, the term high functioning being applied to any category of people is a way of telling the public that they have some type of socially unacceptable defect but yet deserve more respect and dignity than those in the same category who are seen as lower functioning. This social mindset is applied to autistics.

Competence is judged by someone's ability to fit into a box that the public has agreed deserves support. The more autism a person is seen to have the less support they are seen to be deserving. People who are considered "higher functioning" are seen to deserve more. The less that is required to mainstream someone the more likely they are to become an important person.

The public support for anyone who is considered to have these deficits must be based on how close the individual appears to be able to conform. The goal must be for them to be neurotypical. How the ideal appears to the public must be controlled by those who offer the support.

Neurodiversity and the social model of autism is a threat to public systems and private therapies that depend on people's worth being based on the narrow and typical social hierarchy of performance.

Claiming that worse symptoms qualify a person for more aid creates many misconceptions about what autism is. It helps those providing the support for others to believe this will help them but ultimately all they will do is give that person more charity or demand more normality from them in unreasonable ways.The industry depends on this.

Autistics fighting among ourselves and evaluating each other in the same ways that these public systems and private commercial treatments evaluate us is serving the commercial agenda of keeping things the same which ultimately hurts us all.

The medical model of autism depends on autistics being seen as having a deficit in the way that we think. Deficits in a way that a person thinks means that the person is either unintelligent or mentally ill. Since sanity is thought to be acquired through narrow brand of formal education, mental illness is seen as a lack of intelligence.

Intelligence provides a person with sex appeal and shows them as deserving of respect and dignity. It shows the person as a provider to others rather than a burden to society. The money being spent on curing autism tells society how to view our worth. It shows society that we are a burden rather than being providers.

Our culture teaches people to take advantage of anyone they can so being vulnerable is being unprepared for "real life" and therefore, not worthy of respect or honor. The most vulnerable people are considered unintelligent. The bottom of this spectrum is the lowest of the food chain and therefore, seen as by many of the decision-makers and the propaganda spreaders as the ugliest, meanest, and the part of the population that must be disposed of for the profit of good productive smart citizens.

We as a society also place much importance on an ambiguous notion of maturity in similar ways that authority is often demanded rather than earned. Being mature is a way that people are respected more. Maturity is based on age specific criteria which thereby automatically define people with a developmental disability as immature and therefore, less worthy of respect and dignity.

How autism is seen means everything. Encouraging dangerous autism therapies and encouraging the cure autism mentality is not done without a price. I hope more advocates will look at the effect this is having on autistic people and adjust their efforts accordingly.

Designing Inmates with Behavior Modification

Too often I hear people simply discussing whether government should play more of a role in our lives or less. Unfortunately, this can distract people from focusing on how to deal with the problems within the government.

The United States has often chosen to institutionalize people for the sake of convenience and profit, since they began as a nation. The Indian's and Africans were among the first populations to be used and abused by Europeans, who "settled" this land by the institution of slavery.

The problems this institutional mindset has caused throughout the years need to be addressed but since it isn't, choices often have to be made to justify institutionalization which in turn promotes that type of thinking.

I think eugenic ideals are promoted when people allow government decision-makers to conveniently and expediently encourage institutional thinking among those who are considered society's misfits.

Behaviorism is one type of psychology (or mental discipline) which has been used to categorize and herd the masses in systematically oppressive ways. The United States is  further allowing this system to infiltrate our culture by teaching it in public schools to young children.

Right now the industry of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) is attempting to have the US government train teachers in public schools to teach their brand of discipline to children. They have made their product seem more user-friendly with a type of ABA called Positive Behavioral Support (PBS).

The way to sell behavioral programs for residential and/or educational institutions are by first showing how the current behavior is bad and needs to be controlled, then showing how those who are untrained by their program are abusive due to being untrained, and finally by showing how comprehensive and detailed their approach will be for solving the problem. This is how PBS is now being sold for creating laws, which will demand public schools to purchase their product.

The myth of an epidemic of autism is being used to aid their promotion of this product being bought by public educational systems.. Their claim is that autistics are typically violent, the teachers are unprepared and become abusive based on their unpreparedness, and that their comprehensive and detailed discipline will provide the answer for this chaos.

In a nation which is known for institutionalizing (residential institutions) more of their population than any other, introducing such a product for controlling the behavior of children is dangerous to even consider.

Behavior modification is used to determine how we behave as consumers. For stimulating our economy being taught to be consumers is the most important goal of our capitalist government. Institutional thinking promotes and is supported by the pharmaceutical industry as well as many other commercial interests that the U.S. economy is heavily dependent on.

PBS is also being used as a behavioral modification program for dealing with the population of misfits (who would otherwise be disenfranchised) known as the disabled including disabled adults.

There are also residential programs known as Behavior Modification Facilities. One such facility  which is known for it's terrible abuse is the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center. Wikipedia says this about the objections to those facilities:

This industry is not without controversy, however. Disability rights' organizations, such as the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, oppose placement in such programs and call into question the appropriateness and efficacy of such group placements, the failure of such programs to address problems in the child’s home and community environment, the limited or no mental health services offered and substandard educational programs. Concerns specifically related to private therapeutic boarding schools include:

    * inappropriate discipline techniques,
    * medical neglect,
    * restricted communication such as lack access to child protection and advocacy hotlines, and

    * lack of monitoring and regulation.

Behavioral psychology is known for its expedience in the way that goals are achieved. This lends itself to be seen as most appropriate in institutional settings where convenience and expediency are most important. However, the goals that are mainly achieved in public residential institutions are those of the staff and what the institutions consider their main function, which is to separate and contain people for what they see is the safety of the public. Such expediency has always produced terrible long term consequences.

Behavior modification is used in jails to teach institutional living as a way of life to those who are institutionalized. The only way to justify the claim that this is being used in jails instead for rehabilitation is to show how people returning from jail into society are less likely to misbehave and commit crimes. The statistics don't support that claim.

There is also no support for the claim that autistics are typically violent and yet the goal or the marketing campaign of PBS is to show how teachers who are unprepared to deal with autistics being violent need to be trained in their discipline in order to restrain and seclude this population in a more "civil" manner.

This article says describes residential mental institutions in the following way:

 "Criminals are treated better than mental patients," Levine says.

and:

"The public is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in a system that's flawed and violates the civil rights of those who must use it," he says. "We must put an end to the state institutional system."

Unfortunately, while there are goals to shut down more state funded mental institutions, the focus on this goal has often prevented people from looking at the underlying more pressing problems with how institutional thinking is being promoted in so many other ways.

I don't see the goal of closing more institutions as a first step to changing the attitudes which are encouraging institutionalization the way it is being described. This being described as the first step has too often been used to distract people from the broader more important goal of changing the attitude which continues to affect this population when they leave this residential environment.

The walls of institutions are providing for abuse to go unnoticed. Unfortunately, many of the mental disciplines (such as behaviorism as it is used as a method for control) are either allowing or even promoting abuse to the degree that much of the general public is desensitized to even abuse that everyone can see.

Even much of what is described as inclusion only promotes institutional thinking in a way that it is traditionally used in inappropriate ways.

The answer to the disenfranchisement of people is not herding them into public programs where they can be controlled more efficiently. We need to find ways to encourage independence and success among those who are now being considered misfits. Attempting to control and normalize people's behavior is a contradiction to that encouragement.

Fitting Behavior for Autistics

In our modern sophisticated world learning a lot about how people think in different ways and why they do is seen as impractical and not cost-effective. It makes more economic sense to demand conformity rather than understand and accommodate diversity. This mind-set encourages the practice of treating people who do think differently with very little unbiased exploration into the reasons for it.

When people look for the answers as to why some people act in different ways they too often set a standard which makes one type of behavior better than another by simply making the other look worse. This is ultimately impractical and self-defeating because this motivation will cause the boundaries to shift when ever the observer begins to look too much like the one that is being observed.

Of course people learn to behave based on what they see in their environment. This is taught in formal education as the study of sociology. Of course people adapt in ineffective ways to their environment, which can also be defined as morally wrong in order to preserve a peaceful culture. This is taught formally as the study of psychology.

It is often also ignored how our aspirations for certain types of behavior are defined and promoted in ways that serve commercial products.

There are no treatments that I know of which are described as treatments that have an understanding of autism beyond what is described with the medical model of autism. This means that an autistic person who needs any type of help from a public program (or most any other program, for that matter) must begin by having the way they are seen be based on all the misunderstood views and the ugly stereotypes which accompany the medical model of autism.

These options provided for autistic people to get any type of aid will continue to be limited by the medical community until people promoting the social model are willing to be more bold in broadening the understanding of autism, encouraging autistics to have more say about who they are, and what they do, and not allowing autistic people to be pawns in the commercial and political games marketing agents play.

In order to market a product in a commercially driven society that need for the product being seen is essential before the aid will appear to have value. I don't see any way to promote a product otherwise. Marketing a particular formal conforming behavior does more borrow on society's conformist attitudes to sell a particular brand. It often also further advances the view that conformity is essential to survival. 

What this means for marketing psychological answers is that a paradigm must be encouraged where something or someone looks good at the expense of something or someone else looking bad. A social model of autism that doesn't take into account that this is the part of the medical model that we have to contend with is doomed to make no positive changes at all.

Encouraging education and helping people to become productive is sold with a punishment vs. reward view of behavior and the most efficient way to sell punishment is by teaching people that the behavior which needs treatment is morally bad. Being ineffective does not create the emotion with which people have learned to base their buying habits. Emotion comes from seeing something as bad and something else as good.

There isn't a lot of reasoning used in evaluating treatments for autistics because reasoning doesn't create the emotion for people to buy something.

The problem is that with such emotion and allowing marketing campaigns to create and dictate that emotion to their potential customers will not allow them to do much reasoning outside of what becomes an emotional trap. The emotion causes chaos for parents of autistic people, autistic people themselves, and people who treat autistics. Ultimately, this encourages chaos in the environment where autistic people are treated.

Behavioral interventions for autistics like ABA and ABA/PBS depend on chaos for the emotional environment that aids in their marketing efforts. This environment not only allows for assumptions, but it depends on the assumptions which are necessary to encourage the product they offer.

Identity politics teaches us that we need to fight for our rights based on the category we identify with. Being identified like this also then allows for a marketing campaign to target people with this identification. Marketing campaigns are likely to use an unethical means for promoting their product and are likely to create tension, lack of trust, and fighting among autistics who have trouble seeing their worth or others apart from the standards we have been shown.

This environment teaches us that there is high functioning autistics versus low functioning autistics in such a way so that the most profits can be made for treatment companies. It teaches us how to look at autistics as poor unfortunates who need pity and salvation (which also leads some people to believe that we need to be eradicated).

Behavior models are very similar when treating people in public institutions such as school, mental institutions and group homes, as well as jails. Promoting these programs will make our behavior (which is described by the program as inappropriate) seem more similar to amoral and unethical behavior so that ultimately autistics will be treated more like criminals.

Unless advocates are very clear in describing how the social model is not like the medical model, the medical model (along with all the commercial and political demands which that model creates) will define too much of our future and dictate how we are all seen. How we are evaluated as behaving will too often be based on the relationship we have to the standard that has shown our behavior to be invalid if not reprehensible.

Superior Thinking Traps

Achievement of authority and/or class is how someone's sanity is decided and authority is achieved by following a narrow set of standards that serve the small group of people who decide those standards. The standards are learned in formal educational settings. Planning a strategy in competition in this way is a method of creating an offense. Offense in a game with such few boundaries (and boundaries which must remain fleeting and unattainable by most people) is the best, if not the only, defense.

Academics participate in exclusive debates not only to sharpen their knowledge and skills but also to sustain the exclusive ways they are revered in society. Once it becomes a competition like any other, the merit of the idea is based solely on someone's ability to sell it in the same way all commercial products establish their worth.

Because academics decide what is true based on what serves them as a commercial entity more than any type of objective investigation into the truth it can be used in many types of manipulation on the masses of people who don't have any opportunity to get this education. The current educational system both prevent most people from getting an education and labels them as thinking in inferior ways when they don't get the education they have prevented. This is how commercialism is maintained.

Claiming that education is a way to liberate the masses in a place like the United States where most people don't have an opportunity for an education becomes a tool of oppression instead.

In the United States, the class system is still more important in determining a person's value than anything else. The way that groups of people are discriminated against does make it more difficult for those within that group to achieve a higher class, but it is the class itself that ultimately defines their worth rather than the discrimination against a group they belong to.

The current educational system was created to serve industry. In the same way, the industry survives based on a hierarchy of what particular jobs are worth, the educational system must do the same to serve and preserve the industry of education.

Disability rehab in US was originally geared toward helping soldiers injured in the war. Mental disability was aided by a psychological process for those recovering psychologically from the horrors of war. As different types of thinking are seen as a threat to both industry and military (especially in the US where the military is one of the largest most important industries) the culture is gravitating toward putting all types of thinking that have been labeled inferior (such as learning disabilities, psychological maladjustment, and neurological impairment) into the same category of inferiority for the sake of convenience.

To maintain the security of such an environment, thinking must be structured and the only ones who need to be encouraged to think are people who have achieved acceptance into a particular class based on their education. Again that education must also be seen as the only way that truth can be established or understood.

Nothing is more vulnerable than how a person thinks and nothing provides more opportunity for oppression. Public education has no future where the price of education and the determination of educations worth is based on whatever the market will bear.

Whether it should be or not, autism is still a part of a category of mental illness, which includes all types of inferior thinking. To understand what that means politically you can see how a group like NAMI (who began being described as grassroots advocacy) is now receiving 75% of its funding from pharmaceutical companies. The therapy for inferior thinking ( a therapy which ultimately hinders more peoples thinking ability than it helps) has become the method of advocacy for people who are labeled as having inferior thinking. This provides a very narrow context for how inferior thinking is thought of and demands that inferior thinking never include any type of diversity.

Autism Speaks is certainly the best example for showing how autism needs to be seen by our culture, which depends on commercialism, industry, and a narrow set of standards, which secure those things. These ideals supported and maintained by formal education.

However, there are many other types of similar petty differences, which are supported by other political groups so that such oppression can continue. The political compromises which people make for what seems to be their own immediate benefit ultimately isn't beneficial to them at all.

Small groups and the compromises they make are often disguised as being encouraging of solidarity for a larger goal when actually it's a very small goal and benefits the smallest number of people. This is what creates fighting and needless bickering, which is the very thing they claim to be trying to avoid. This is extremely shallow, impractical, short sighted, and oppressive.

Our culture can't afford this and most people are being held captive, by the way our decision makers are encouraging us to think we can. There is too much at stake to keep sacrificing our neighbor's survival in order to protect our own luxuries. It's too late to see this as "The rest will get their aid after I get mine and can change things for them."

We've been taught for too long that the neighbors we are hurting live far away when actually they have just been conveniently hidden. The problem is now become bad enough so the person who's getting hurt by our convenience and expedience is living right next door. It's time we met our neighbors and stopped ignoring how what we do affects them.

Ensuring the Silence of Autistics

I had a speaking role in a video not long ago which was presented at a conference where Bob Wright of Autism Speaks was also presenting. I was told that Mr.Wright spoke directly following the video and mentioned something about wishing that all people with autism could speak as well as those of us in the film.

I wish I could have told him how many times during my lifetime, I have sat in meetings where decisions were made regarding where I would go, and what I would do when I was unable to advocate for myself. Many of those times, especially when I was younger, were due to my inability.

However, what I would most like to convey to Mr. Wright and others like him is what I have learned from such meetings, from a lifetime of being a disabled autistic and being considered that way, often being declared incompetent, and also from being in institutions where it was made clear what the public saw as my place in society.

What I have learned from my experience is that not only was my ability or lack of it often influenced by how I was being treated but also the treatment was ultimately much more of an influential factor in my silence than my skill for forming understandable sentences.

This has, and still does, influence every aspect of my life. As I have posted to my blog many times, there are very few opportunities for people who have not been given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf to overcome the obstacles so that they will be able to do that.

This is not a mistake that society has made so campaigning against it has rarely if ever produced any positive results. This is clearly representative of an attitude that is meant to give more advantages to those who already have them. When people ignore the root of why oppression exists, they automatically contribute to the problem.

I wish that groups like Autism Speaks were not only seen as the problem but that more people would understand why such groups are able to become so popular in the first place. Autism Speaks didn't create the problem, they are just using what works which also makes the problem worse.

Once it is understood how widespread the problem is people will be less likely to promote commercial and political agendas that only make the problem worse in the long run. There is no merit in most efforts claimed to be politically expedient because the attitudes that create such political agendas and the public policies as they are now are too firmly established for any simple restructuring.

The way to create real change is to get more people involved who are now being excluded due to exclusive standards. This is not that difficult and won't take that much time. It's just a matter of discontinuing what is now being done to prevent the inclusion of this population. Nothing else will affect needed change nearly as much.

The people who have been in similar situations as myself and whom I have been associated with will not join a political movement where the attitude has not changed. It is more important that this population be included than for any small changes in public policy being made. Once this population is included there will be a better understanding of what needs to be changed. However, many of us know all too well what it feels like to be objectified for the objective which someone else has decided will be best for us.

"Nothing About Us Without Us" has too often been used as a slogan used by Disability advocates, which promotes exclusivity. If there was a way to get the best and the brightest included so that misfits would be able to follow, we would have seen the progress made by that approach already.

In places where this destructive attitude is so ingrained in public policy, those who see how they have been victimized by that attitude will not be able to follow until how they think, and what they have to offer is legitimized.

Whatever agendas aren't already supporting eugenics will eventually become that way, unless the attitudes that support a narrow group of people at the expense of everyone else don't radically change. When people don't acknowledge the extent of the problem, they are buying the expediency they claim will solve small problems at the expense of those who are most affected by the larger more general problem. In the long run, no one will be served by this approach.

Note: I'm reposting a request from Stephanie Lynn Keil which I think is important. I hope my readers will support this:

Finally, a productive advocacy group, NOEWAIT. I recommend everyone go visit the site, print out the documents and mail them to your congress people. I am definitely doing this. Today. I'm on the waiting list. Do something productive.

Dignified not Objectified

The most basic human right I can think of is being treated with dignity. If humans are simply, by the act of being human, seen as deserving of dignity, then most other basic human rights will follow.

Due to psychology being mass marketed the way it is, it doesn't matter so much that a particular psychological theory (or treatment that results from a theory) is meant to encourage dignified treatment or not. If those who implement the treatment are only interested in using the theory as a means for control, whatever dignity was intended gets lost in the translation.

I don't see enough acceptance in the implementation of psychology that most people being treated have rarely if ever been treated with dignity. If this population isn't who psychology is meant to serve then it is by default a means of oppression.

When this lack of being treated with dignity is due to their social class, and they are being asked to trust a treatment which is obviously being used for social reform, they are likely to ask, "If the class system is unfair (which it is) then how can a reform that accepts and promotes that class system be fair?" Without trust there is no environment for people to be helped.

Once the purposed treatment or therapy has been seen by them as part of the problem and the goal of that treatment or therapy is to achieve something, which seems to them to be based on the same type of objectification they are accustomed to, there are few chances to establish trust.

This is what I see as the biggest threat to autistic rights.

When self-actualization/awareness/humaness is a goal, people who are behaving in ways that don't appear to have reached that goal have their behavior (and what society has taught them is who they are by association) seen as an object to be fixed.

If the first step to turning that around is to teach them how to achieve dignity rather than be objectified, then the first message you have reinforced to them is that they are nothing but objects to begin with. It doesn't matter if individual therapists don't see them that way or, even if the therapeutic goal is more sophisticated than that. They will judge what they see based on what they have been taught is a threat. This will automatically be seen to them as a threat.

Too often people want to separate autistic kid's needs from those of autistic adults rather than looking at the similarities of how autistics are wrongly treated in public programs at all ages. It doesn't matter how old someone is, they won't be accepting much other learning or a lot of responsibility to change (including how to behave "properly") until, or, unless they are able to accept being treated with dignity. They must be taught that they and everyone else deserves it. People know this instinctively but yet are constantly taught otherwise.

It's not so much a matter of the government instilling dignity, but at this point they are too often stealing it (or at least discouraging it).

In public schools, at a certain age, they decide that the welfare of the mainstream is what's most important and that those who don't fit are either seen as not trying or not interested in education. This leads to the population who doesn't fit having their needs become secondary if not ignored altogether. Again their self-esteem, based on the dignity they are shown, suffers.

As they get older they are likely to be even more objectified by public programs and put in even more situations where they are warehoused without any goals for their betterment whatsoever. The cycle that teaches them that they don't deserve dignity also reinforces how they in turn objectify others. If schools accept the responsibility in the beginning and teach dignity before anything along with not trying to force any other teaching until that goal is met, we wouldn't need the systematized objectifying boxes.

If advocacy for human rights isn't willing to look at the system that teaches the denial of human rights, advocates will by default exclude and objectify people in the same way as the system they are trying to change. Ultimately, with this happening no changes are made.

That public systems that needs to be changed rewards the best and brightest and the most popular because to do otherwise would indicate that the system which evaluated and assigned them the distinction as that way in the first place was broken. Advocates that follow that system are ultimately sacrificing peoples human rights and their dignity for very little progress. In the long run, it will be worse than no progress at all.

 

The Hostages Have Been Identified

The autism rights movement is defined by Wikipedia as a group involved with identity politics. Identity politics makes hostages of the nonpolitical (less active politically) people who identify with the same label by adhering to the same political hierarchical judgments about peoples worth. Identity used this way can hinder rather than help a group's cause. When the methods you are using for liberation are completely controlled by those who need to oppress you the result won't be liberation at all. In other words, " The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

The people who are in the most affected by political decisions are always the most discouraged from getting involved. They are usually the least educated and therefore, are thought to be unable to offer valid opinions due to their lack of how things work in "the real world". As always, this makes their experience unworthy of attention or respect so the knowledge of *their* real world is never known or considered in political decisions.

There is a corporate need for exclusion and hierarchy and hierarchy is identity politics. Confining neurodiversity, autism rights movement, etc. to being a movement of nothing more than identity politics is sentencing some people to be excluded and abused.

Here is a link to a page that I believe explains the problems with identity politics very well.:

Note: Also, here's a link for further reading on the problems of identity politics in an interview with Cornell West.

This is a link to what I discussing in this post:  Maintaining the Borders: identity & politics

Jamie Heckert

30 October 2002



Here is some of what it says which I feel is very important:

(The parts of this article are written in green)

"Identity is the process of creating and maintaining borders, creating different kinds of people. This keeps the world packaged in tidy little boxes. These boxes, in turn, are necessary for the violence and domination of hierarchical societies. There cannot be masters or slaves, bosses or workers, men or women, whites or blacks, leaders or followers, heterosexuals or queers, without identity

 Identity separates people. It encourages us to believe that 'we' are different from 'others'. Identity can also encourage conformity. How else do I show that I am one of us other than conforming to the accepted codes prescribed to that identity? This construction of similarity and difference exists whether we are talking about traditional identity politics groups like 'disabled people' or political identities like 'environmentalists'. This separation of us from them has serious consequences for political movement.

 

Identity encourages isolation. Political ghettos cannot exist without political identity; and their existence reinforces it. Not only are the 'activists' separated from the 'non-activists', but within a broad political ghetto, anarchists, feminists, and environmentalists (amongst others) often see themselves as involved in separate struggles. People who consider themselves politically active are separated both from each other and from others who do not share an 'activist' identity. Effective movement for radical social change cannot be based on such divisions.

 

Identity reduces social phenomena to individuals. Concepts like anarchism and racism are social. They are not embodied by individuals as terms like 'anarchist' and 'racist' suggest. Rather, they exist as ideas, practices and relationships. In most societies, racism is inherent in our institutionalised relationships and ways of thinking. We can and should be critical of racism, but to attack people as 'racists' can only further alienate them from our efforts.[iii] Besides, it is a dangerous fantasy to believe that 'racists' can be separated from those of us who are non-racist. Likewise, anarchism exists throughout every society. Every time people co-operate without coercion to achieve shared goals, that is anarchy. Every time someone thinks that people should be able to get along with each other without domination, that is anarchism. If we only see racism in 'racists', we will never effectively challenge racism. If we only see anarchism in 'anarchists', we will miss out on so many desperately needed sources of inspiration.

 

Identity encourages purity. If we believe that concepts like feminism can be embodied in individuals, then some people can be more feminist than others. This leads to debates about ‘real feminists’ and how feminists should act (e.g. debates regarding feminism and heterosexuality). Feminist purity allows for hierarchy (e.g. more or less and thus better or worse feminists) and encourages guilt (e.g. asking yourself 'should real feminists think/act like this?').

 

Political identity simplifies personal identity. A related problem for feminist identity, for example, is that it demands we focus on one aspects of our complex lives. Feminist movement has often been dominated by white middle-class women who have a particular perspective on what is a 'women's issue'. Many women have had to choose between involvement in a woman's movement that fails to recognise ethnicity and class issues, or in black or working class politics that did not acknowledge gender. But, the alternative of specialised identity politics could get very silly (e.g. a group for disabled, transgender, lesbian, working-class women of colour). Likewise, if I describe myself as a feminist, an anarchist, and a sex radical, I am suddenly three different people. However, if I say I advocate feminism, anarchism and radical sexual politics I am one person with a variety of beliefs.[iv]

 

Identity often imagines easily defined interests. Feminism is often presented as for women only; men are perceived to entirely benefit from the gender system. Many men do clearly benefit from the gender system in terms of institutionalised domination. If we perceive interests as inherently stemming from current systems, we fail to recognise how people would benefit from alternative systems. If we want to encourage and inspire people to create a very different form of society, we should share with each other what we see as beneficial. We must recognise that different value systems (e.g. domination versus compassion) result in very different interests.

 

Identity discourages participation. If people are worried that they might be excluded through labelling (e.g. racist or homophobic), they won't feel welcomed and won't get involved. Likewise, people do not get involved if they believe that it is not in their interests. If we pepetuate the idea that feminism is for women, men will never see how it could also be in their interests to support feminism. Or they might support feminism, but feel guilty for their male privilege. Either way, men are not encouraged to be active in feminist movements. Radical social change requires mass social movement. Identity politics, by definition, can never achieve this. Political identities, like ‘environmentalist’, can likewise become a basis for minority politics.

 

Identity creates opposition. By dividing the world up into opposing pairs (e.g. men/women, heterosexuals/queers, ruling class/working-class, whites/blacks), identity creates opposite types of people who perceive themselves as having opposing interests. This opposition means that people fail to recognise their common interests as human beings. The opposition of two forces pushing against each other means that very little changes.

 

Identity freezes the fluid. Neither individual identity (the 'who am I?' kind) nor social organisation are fixed, but are in constant motion. Political identities require that these fluid processes are frozen realities with particular characteristics and inherent interests. In failing to recognise the nature of both identity and society, political identity can only inhibit radical social change.

 

 




The mentality of identity politics (since it falls into to place with all other politics) silences people who are (by that mentality) unimportant. Identity politics is comparison politics. It is impractical and stirs superfluous debate. If we concentrated on getting those people involved who aren't we would have the right ideas to come up with the political changes that are needed. Too often we serve the system that is already in place by committing to the oppressive old methods of government.

You can't get an acceptance for neurodiversity without challenging the current system which needs to (by the very nature of what it is) not accept it.

"It may not be perfect, but can't it still be a useful strategy?

 

It is a very good strategy if you don't want to change things very much. Identity politics fits in nicely within the dominant neo-liberal ideology. Groups created around oppressed identities can lobby the state for civil rights. This idea of trying to protect individuals without changing relationships or systems of organisation is compatible with the individualistic basis of capitalism and representative 'democracy'.

 

I would never argue that a strategy has to be 'perfect' to be useful, but it must be consistent with its aims. Ends and means can only be separated in our minds. If the aim is to reduce or eliminate hierarchical social divisions (e.g. gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, class), a strategy which depends upon those very divisions can never be successful."

One of the reasons people won't let go of identity politics may be due to how doing that would make them less identified as being important if their cause was diluted by too many other people with independent views. (especially uneducated views....which means most people since most people are uneducated)

"If political identity is such a poor strategy, why is it so common?

 

On a personal level, political identity makes us feel part of something larger at the same time that it makes us feel special were different. In the short-term, this can be very successful defence mechanism. For example, I'm sure I would have been a lot more damaged by the sexist and homophobic environment in which I grew up if I had not been able to convert stigma into pride. However, feeling yourself to be different and separate from other people is not a successful long-term strategy, either psychologically or politically.

 

What's the alternative to political identity?

 

If borders are the problem, then we must support and encourage each other to tear down the fences. Two crucial tools for dismantling borders are systematic analyses and compassionate strategies.

 

We should recognise oppression is not simply a practice of individuals who have power over those who do not. Instead, we could see how forms of organisation (including institutions and relationships) systematically produce hierarchies and borders. People will only see an interest in getting more involved if they realise that their individual problems – anxiety, depression, exhaustion, anger, poverty, meaningless work,unsatisfying sex lives, etc – are not unique, but are systematically produced. Furthermore, their action will only be effective if they work to reduce all forms of hierarchy and domination. Constructs including gender, sexuality, capitalism, race and the nation state are interdependent systems. Each system of domination serves to reinforce the others. This doesn't mean we have to solve every problem instantly, but we must recognise that all issues are human issues. At the same time, we must not imagine that a particular system of domination (not even capitalism!) is the source of all others.

 

Radical politics is rarely appealing because it focuses on the evils of the world. This offers little that is hopeful or constructive in people's daily lives. If we want to see widespread social movement for radical change, we have to offer people something they value. Listening to people's concerns, caring about their problems and encouraging and supporting them to develop systemic solutions requires compassion. Offer people a better quality of life instead of focusing so much on depressing aspects of our current society.

 

We should also recognise that people positioned in more privileged categories may in some ways suffer. At the very least, people who feel a strong need to dominate and control must suffer deep insecurities, the results of competition and hierarchy. Insecurity, domination and control are not conducive to fulfilling and meaningful relationships with other people. Attacking people in 'privileged' positions does little to dismantle these systems. It also gives entirely too much credit to people in those positions – they are both products and producers of systems, just like the rest of us.

 

To radically reorganise our society, we should aim to both diminish systematic domination and suffering and encourage systematic compassion. Just as apparently disconnected and often incoherent forms of domination can reinforce and maintaining each other, so too can a compassionate organisation of society become systematic and self-sustaining.

 

Encouraging people to be more comfortable with sexuality in general has been a key focus of my own political efforts[v]. But, sexuality is only one area in which a compassionate and systematic approach has much more radical potential than politicising identity.

 

Find sources of suffering, whatever they are, and support and encourage people to find ways of relating to themselves and others that reduce that suffering. Help build compassionate, co-operative institutions (e.g. social centres, support/discussion groups, mediation services, childcare support, food not bombs). Tell people when you admire or appreciate their efforts. Support people trying to change their environments (e.g. workplace resistance). Offer alternatives to people who are involved in or considering authoritarian positions (e.g. military, police, business management).

 

Demonstrating the pleasures and benefits of co-operative, compassionate organisation offers a strong threat to the world of borders and guards. I suspect that fragmented groups, anti-whatever demonstrations, unfriendly, exclusive meetings and utopian 'after the revolution' lectures will never be quite as enticing to people outside the activist ghetto."


In as much as there is an autism community it is now following the medical model of autism in that it too often is exclusive and discourages ideas and thoughts that go beyond political pragmatism. That's not practical and if not corrected it (as a movement) will dissolve into the sea of business as usual politics, there will be no expanding of class or the low classes, and negative stereotypes that accompany being something other than neuro typical will continue and become even more common.

The Paper Factory

Originally posted on Eds autism page May 19, 2008

Sometimes agencies are developed and maintained for no other reason than to allow a certain part of the population or advocacy groups that represent that population to feel secure that what they are seeking help with is being worked on.

I have heard these agencies referred to as paper factories. The idea is that as long as they produce enough paper that contains the right words they can postpone (too often what seems like forever) doing anything about what they were assigned to do.

In order for a paper factory to really work some people's needs must be met. Politicians and political groups that create these paper factories try to appease a part of the population that will provide them with support and they in turn will assure them that some parts of their population that the agency is supposed to serve (and by that I mean the most visible and loudest part of that population) are given all they need and sometimes all they want as well.

This creates security for not only the politicians who create these agencies, but also for the agencies themselves to survive as an agency. Then the "one hand washing the other" and "political backscratching" creates a situation where the majority of unwashed hands and unscratched backs are ignored, blamed, and sometimes descibed as the casuties of a necessary evil.

I remember hearing Bill Clinton speak extensively about how many student loans go unclaimed every year. By saying that, the point that he was trying to get across was that the government was doing their part but that people were not making the effort to get these loans. What he failed to explain was how many other reasons there were for these loans and even similar grants not being applied for. The reasons are many and there are many barriers that the US government knowingly creates to prevent these kinds of programs from being accessed by the majority of the population. As is the case with agencies, the way to secure the false claims of unlimited access to these programs is by parading the few who have been successful at using these programs in front of everyone else and have those people tell everyone else how great these programs are and how anyone can access them the way they did.

The way such things work (or rather don't work) for those claiming to be promoting education are very similar to the ways things are tried with in these agencies or paper factories that I'm describing. Unfortunately they have been successful at preventing real progress by promoting the illusion of success for too long.

This illusion is also very prevalent in how many public agencies are claiming to attempt to serve the disabled. Acknowledging neurological difference is one of the biggest threats to hiding the failures of agencies claiming to serve the disability community in the United States and hiding how the old system that has not worked for so many for so long.

If the US government truly accepted that disability was, in most (if not all) cases, an issue based on a lack of an appropriate job being offered to a person who is capable in ways that were not being acknowledged by the government and the public at large, they would need to change the core of their belief system and how they do things.

I don't believe that the US government is organized enough to create the massive conspiracies that many people claim. I do however think that it is safe to say that somebody somewhere who is making major decisions about government policy knows that such things such as glamorizing mood disorders and blaming hyperactive kids while feeding them amphetamines will reduce the population of those they see as unwanted without being blamed for it.

But how can autistics who are known to have a neurological difference be contained and maintained by the old-fashioned governmental paper shuffling rules and rulers? There will need to be a strategy to train the next generation of autistics to accept what the rulers (so to speak) describe as being their defects before the older autistics get the word out and spread their ideals that describe an "autistic culture".

Of course behaviors have to be given pathological reasons and treated with behavioral therapies. Some of those therapies will be brutal but can be justified by claiming that they prevent self injury if enough influencial people describe them that way.

The claims of outside sources such as vaccinations and inappropriate foods causing autism will allow for the growth of the industry described as "therapies" along with marketing more of the lethargy and confusion causing toxic drugs that promote the pharmaceutical industry.

The one thing that will make traditional methods of isolation and exclusion look bad and ultimately less effective is allowing people to believe that differences can actually be accommodated. Tradition is protected by describing things as dis ease so that ease can be marketed based on the claim that this ease (or answer to the dis ease) will come in the form of fixing, curing, and possibly eliminating differences that we find it to be uncomfortable and/or inconvenient to support or encourage.

The accommodations that have been provided for people with all types of disabilities within the United States to be more productive has increased in an alarming slow rate in comparison to the rate of expansion and development of the products and services that we as a nation offers. Our traditional paper shuffling and ignoring people who are seen as inconvenient has created nothing but an enormous debt and a larger part of the population than ever who is seen as unproductive. While it may be difficult for some people to recognize, these kinds of inappropriate and irresponsible management practices have a way of catching up with everyone.