...ARTICLES

16/11/2024 - The Case For And Against Autism Parents - The Internet's Most Infamous "Warriors" of Disabled Children

Content warning: This article contains discussions about ableism against Autistic people, eugenics, medical fraud, and child abuse.

Being Autistic in the 21st century where many of us have unlimited access to the internet is an odd experience. Having been someone who spent a bit too much time on the computer as a kid to teen, I've seen how the discussion around my condition has morphed and changed, and even splintered off into sub-communities with their own methods of operating, and it's one that's lead me to have a very conflicting view towards my own Autism.

I don't really like the idea of sharing my entire medical history with the internet, but I'll give a very basic timeline of my past with Autism just for context reasons. It started when my parents were noticing signs of Autism in me from as young as 2 years old, with many notable developmental delays that lead me to struggle in my growth. If medical professionals were actually competent at their jobs, I'd say that I would've gotten my official diagnosis as young as 4 years old, but of course that didn't happen for reasons I don't wish to disclose. I would eventually get that diagnosis at the age of 7, and again at age 10, after seeking out a private specialist who was revered in the local community as someone who understood Autism on a wider scope, or at least the widest scope you could have in the mid-to-late 2000's.

I'm not sure why I don't remember my parents explaining what Autism was and what it meant for me to have this diagnosis, but I went through a good chunk of my life feeling so alienated and isolated from my peers because I never grasped what having Autism meant, leading me to a childhood of a borderline obsessive amount of internet usage in place of actual, tangible friendships with my peers (Just what every child with developmental problems needs.) Through this, I'd almost 'rediscover' what being Autistic was all about, leading me to realize that I had a name for why it felt like I could never connect with anyone past a superficial level, why certain sensations were physically painful to experience, why certain interests captivated my entire attention that I sometimes rendered myself unfunctional... As I read more about the condition that's been attached to me for as long as I can remember, I felt a sense of relief in knowing that being Autistic meant something, and that I wasn't just broken beyond repair. For once in my life, I belonged somewhere. I had a community that I could call home, I had a place where I could share these experiences with other people and actually have other people relate with me.

On a less positive note, however, I've also had to bear witness to some of the worst, dehumanizing ideas be flung around the internet by people who are so unabashed about how they feel about the developmentally disabled. Understandably, with this being the internet, there's an unsurprising lack of accountability when it comes to way people treat disabled people, but I still think more people should have way more shame when they start calling one another slurs and leaking addresses over Autistic people being "cringe." In my opinion, though, I think it's always worst when it comes from parents of Autistic children, many of whom have children with higher support needs under their care who cannot live without assistance from another human being, which end up being their parents or family members. Unfortunately, with how terribly uninformed people are about Autism, this leads to many parents partaking in questionable to downright horrific parenting choices in their attempts, or lack thereof, at raising a child with a developmental disability. Do I even need to mention the anti-vax movement?

Dubbed 'Autism Warrior parents,' or just 'Autism moms/dads' by the greater community, this term refers to parents of Autistic children who have become somewhat of a trope when it comes to the different kinds of people you can find in and associated with the Autism community, due to their incessant need to center themselves as the 'true victims of Autism,' as well as their overall ignorance and carelessness towards learning how to properly parent an Autistic child. You'll commonly see them in dedicated groups on social media that aim to share information about caring for an Autistic child - the legitimacy of information fluctuating from slightly dubious to downright eugenicist - but many discussions end up degrading into pity parties of grown adults with learned helplessness who can't bear to understand that they were never in control of what kind of people their children end up becoming. At their worst, Autism parents can be downright abusive, and it's made all the more tragic by the way this kind of treatment is supported and encouraged by the online spaces that they're apart of. From parents proclaiming that vaccines cause Autism, to some even literally poisoning their children with bleach in the hopes of 'curing' them, Autism parents have become some of the worst offenders in further stigmatizing Autism and demonizing Autistic people.

From this, there's been an understandable pushback against these types of people within a subset of the online Autism community that's pioneered by actually Autistic people. Many actually Autistic people have heavily criticized the way self-proclaimed Autism parents choose to parent their children, especially when it can lead to them becoming irreversibly traumatized or killed, as well as the ideology that leads to these completely preventable deaths and injuries from happening in the first place. Make no mistake about it, by imposing the idea that Autism is a life-ending disease that must be eradicated, you are sending your Autistic children the message that they cannot and will not be accepted, loved, or cared for unless they successfully reach the impossible goal of 'beating Autism.' You are inherently traumatizing your child by teaching them that they will not have the right to human autonomy until they have the wires making the connections in their brains forcibly ripped out and rewired, and leaving them all the more vulnerable to continued abuse and dehumanizing treatments. By preferring your children die from measles over the imaginary chance they have of being Autistic, you are showing your future children that their lives are completely disposable to you, all because you willingly feed yourself and your peers the same regurgitated, bigoted garbage tries to justify the inhumane cruelty towards Autistic children and adults.

There is, however, a double-edged sword when it comes to this pushback against Autism parents, and while the majority of it comes from very legitimized concerns about how Autistic children are commonly being raised in the 21st century, there's also the fallout that comes at the detriment of caretakers who genuinely do care about the Autistic people who need their care in order to live. There's been many instances of parents who actually put effort into learning about Autism and helping their children as much as possible becoming lumped in with those who seek nothing but pity and clout off of the existence of their Autistic children, leaving these parents with feeling a deep sense of frustration towards the Autism community that, quite frankly, severely lacks nuance.

Indeed, because of how the online Autism community has become somewhat overshadowed by the low support needs level 1 Autistic population, their narratives have been boosted to the top of social media trending pages in recent years. This isn't inherently a bad thing, as Autistic people of all walks of live deserve to have a voice in the Autism community and outwards. But that's just the thing, everyone should be able to participate, but because of the oversaturation in low support needs experiences in the Autism community, the existence of those with medium and high support needs quickly becomes forgotten about and discarded. This has lead the image of Autism Spectrum to morph into that of a monolith- the high-masking white person who is otherwise largely successful in the eyes of capitalistic society and is able to hold down a job with high qualifications and demands- or if, it's a child we're talking about, then they're probably a 'gifted kid' who's into STEM. Most importantly, it's the people who don't need the help of a caretaker who have ended up becoming the face of Autism, and have begun to push the idea of Autistic people needing caretakers out of the limelight.

After a child or adolescent is diagnosed with Autism, having relevant information, services, referrals and practical support offered not only to them, but also potential caretakers, is an extremely important part of proper treatment and intervention, especially for those with higher support needs. Because of how complex the healthcare needs of Autistic people can become, it's vital that those who may potentially have an Autistic person in their care have adequate access to the best information and support possible to, in turn, improve the quality of life of caretakers and Autistic people alike. If a caretaker remains largely uneducated about the conditions that the people they're caring for have, including how to best support us, then they will not be able to properly attend to our needs and end up decreasing our quality of life.

The rhetoric seen online towards caretakers in general, however, ends up being very absolutist, where it's believed that all caretakers will always have the worst intentions, or even that Autistic people don't actually need caretakers because that would be infantilization, of course. Besides, who even cares enough to associate themselves with the types of Autistic people who are severely disabled by their Autism that requires them to have 24/7 support? Isn't Autism supposed to be just a different neurotype, or even a superpower? But by believing these ideas, it only serves to drive caretakers out of their loved ones' community, and in turn withhold vital information that can potentially relieve the distress of those under their care.

Education is the most important tool we have in order to combat the further mistreatment and abuse that Autistic people are sadly all too commonly exposed to, both on the part of the average person who don't interact with an Autistic person on a daily basis, and of caretakers whose job it is to take care of us. Without having access to up-to-date and high quality information about the conditions that their patients have, how do we expect caretakers to give higher support needs Autistics with the adequate care they need in order to increase their quality of life? Truly, what good does it do to bar off some of the most important people in a disabled person's life from being apart of their community?

If parents are given the most relevant information and access to the relevant resources needed to properly care for their Autistic children, we'd might even see less abuse cases based on ideas that Autism is something that is equivalent to a terminal illness that requires cure methods that are just like literal torture methods. The reason why parents even come to the conclusion of "I must poison my child with bleach to get rid of their autism," is because of how education around Autism has been a massive failure on every front possible. Same reason with why people fall into the alt-right pipeline, because they're largely uneducated about how the world works and blinded by the misinformation thrown at them constantly.

While it would be pedantic to blame this failure on the group of teenagers who use TikTok regularly, this is just another symptom of the overall lack of knowledge that people even have on Autism to begin with. It's only natural that people will want to push back against the stereotypes of Autism in order to remind the uneducated majority that Autism isn't monolithic, but what good does that do when you deny the stereotype from existing in the first place?

Much of the flack that self-proclaimed Autism Parents get online is well-deserved, but it's doing our community a major disservice when we completely shut caregivers out from it, as if they don't also have the same rights to access education and resources to best help their loved ones, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Caregivers of Autistic people serve an incredibly important part of our community, including parents and guardians, and while those who are doing legitimate harm to their children need to be called out, we also aren't doing our peers with higher support needs any favours when we outright deny the idea that Autism is a genuinely disabling condition that can lead someone to be nonverbal and require of heavy support. Whether or not it's embarrassing for low support needs Autistics to come to terms with, caregivers will always share a space with us in a disability-focused community. So, if we truly want the best for our siblings with higher support needs and want Autism Parents to not be such a blight on the name of autism, then we have to be willing to share our resources with them.

11/11/2023 - Willfully Drowning in The Fountain of Youth: An Essay on Self-Infantilization

Infantilize

verb
usually disapproving (also infantilise)
uk/ɪnˈfæn.tɪ.laɪz/ us/ɪnˈfæn.tə.laɪz/
To treat someone as if that person were a child, with the result that they start behaving like one
(Via Cambridge Dictionary)

To begin this blog post, I'd like to quote from Toni Morrison and her commencement speech to Wellesley College Class of 2004, in which she says: "While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being exoticized into eternal juvenilia."

We don't live in a fair world, we don't live in a world where good morals actually matter and people are exploited in a number of ways for the sake of driving up profits and draining people of the very beings they once were. We, instead, live in a world where governments and corporations can exercise control over their people, where real people groups are used as scapegoats to capitalize on existing economic anxieties and shift blame away from government or market forces, and where the ideas of great power through aggressive nationalism are glorified to justify violence and war, particularly in the Global South by Western powers.

Of course, if you're keen into political terminology, you'll know that what I'm describing is fascism.

Fascist and capitalist ideology and governance has been on the rise for the past few decades, and it's been able to do this through the wide range of dehumanizing techniques these authoritarian political movements and governments have in their arsenal. It may come in the form of suppressing the opposition into hiding using fear tactics, overworking the working class to the point of exhaustion and defeat that they don't even have the energy to fight back, or even viewing civilians through the lenses of being incapable and powerless against those who are higher up the social hierarchy. Corporations and governments are very good at making people feel as though they're lesser- less intelligent, less hardworking, less capable- and one of the methods they use frequently is infantilization.

Being a form of discrimination, infantilization results in the people being infantilized feeling disrespected, and even a sense of being dehumanized. Indeed, we can see it in things such as infantilization being one of the five dimensions of sexual harassment of women, forcing the elderly to give up their autonomy and privacy when we send them to retirement homes, the way in which racialized people groups are treated as lesser and like their feelings must be sensitively danced around, the paternalistic behaviours that unwillingly envelope disabled people into a life of denial of their basic autonomy, corporations being able to generate hoards of money by exploiting the poor and disenfranchised by seeing them as incapable... Infantilization is a powerful tool used in oppressing entire people groups, forcefully inflicted on thousands of people to keep them complicit in the exercise of power by the oppressor.

But what's become glaringly more obvious in tandem with the rise of fascist ideology and the progression of late-stage capitalism, is the fact that many people are responding to the state of the world - and it's general lack of opportunities for meaningful self-actualization of millennial and generation Z adults - by acting immature and infantilizing themselves to a concerning degree.

I don't mean things like owning lots of stuffed animals or being interested in cartoons - though I will touch on this aspect later - because I think there's nothing wrong with doing these things on the surface. I mean things like avoiding your responsibilities, seeking for others to coddle or pamper you, relying on the praise of others for all of your validation, and being reactionary because you're unable to manage and express your emotions in a mature manner. It's a matter of having defeatist thinking, believing in the messages that are expressed loud and clear by your oppressors, and surrendering your rights to privacy and autonomy because you think to yourself "What kind of power do I have in this world?"

It's no wonder that things like therapy speak and mental health culture have become hot-box issues in relation to people's lack of willingness to take accountability and responsibility, because we've become conditioned to desire convenience in the form of assuming that the people on the other side of your actions appreciate you using whatever cards you can draw up to excuse your immaturity instead of owning up to your actions. Those who are probably online too much can likely relate to the idea that mental health and self-care have become somewhat of a "fad" in social media spheres, where people grasp at concepts like boundary-crossing and gaslighting and emotional labour to deflect criticisms, like a shield made of glass. When the glass breaks, however, you're left with feeling like (or even, being told that) you're a toxic person because not everyone in the world can make them feel safe all the time.

The world is also seeing a stark rise in the anti-aging industry, and things like social media have only served to pedal these ideas out into the public and, thus, corrupt CEO's who can and will use the rising trend in self-infantilization to bait people in with ways into keeping themselves looking as young as they could ever dreamed of- but I wouldn't say they'd feel any younger with the techniques that are given out there. TikTok creators are happily recommending things like "anti-wrinkle straws," applying serum to your face to get "glass skin," even recommending that people control the way in which they emote their fucking expressions to prevent the formation of wrinkles. People have become convinced that, maybe if we try hard enough, we can prevent the inevitable process of aging- almost eerily similar to how many believe that, if a person were to work hard to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps," can achieve anything, as if there aren't circumstances which occur at birth that determines the many factors that get in the way of this theory. Although, I think we know that this is easier said than done when our opportunities to assume personal responsibility are being taken from us, it's especially ghoulish knowing the systems that are saying this to us.

The truth of the matter is, there are very few opportunities left for any of us to actually make an adult life possible due to the socioeconomic, cultural and technological factors that came as a result of the current state of the world. Of course, there's no saying that every single adult has to marry someone, settle down somewhere and have children - and it's always welcomed to push back against this White Eurocentric line of thinking - but it's less about the fact that all of us have no interest in having a life like this, but the fact that it's physically impossible to have this life anymore. Cost of living is at an all-time high, with inflation and worker mistreatment rising, which in turn is causing some of the worst epidemics of mental and physical health problems, drug addiction, and crime to occur in history. Rent and housing is impossible to cover for if we also want to afford food, healthcare and clothing, of course we haven't settled down and had children yet!

If I am to put my own anecdotes in here, I'd like to mention that I don't think it's inherently wrong or bad for an adult to have childish traits. Besides, am I really one to speak when, as of typing this, I'm sitting in my bedroom filled wall-to-wall with so many pieces of my toy collection, to the point where they're beginning to overflow, and I loudly enjoy media that would seemingly only appeal to preschoolers? What authority do I have to speak on the topic of self-infantilization when I gladly indulge in these interests, you ask yourself? But if I'm being honest, I think this is exactly what gives me the unique perspective I have on this subject, because of the fact that I have experience in creating a healthy balance between growing into adulthood and keeping in touch with my childish traits, and how favouring one or the other can have detrimental effects.

As a multiply disabled person - namely, physically and developmentally - I also have the experience of my peers and the world I live in as a whole forcing me into a state of being an eternal child. Too often do people see me, a developmentally and physically disabled person who doesn't try to hide the fact that he is developmentally and physically disabled person, and assume that means that I consent to being treated like a baby animal before I'm treated like a human being. They expect me to act like a child, even when I'm reaching my mid 20's, all because of my status as a disabled person. Sure, my interest in toys and children's cartoons doesn't do me many favours, but these people would still treat me like a child even if all of my interests were mature, even if I have perfect emotional maturity. I don't necessarily care if the people who do this have "good intentions," because I still experience the brunt of their belief that they're better adults than any disabled person could hope to be.

I've been treated as lesser by my peers for traits of mine that I had no idea were even frowned upon, for things that were beyond my control, for things that abled people would get away with doing for the sole reason that they're abled, and I've become very tired of it. Truly, what gives anyone the right to treat me as though I'm not capable of making my own decisions, coming to my own conclusions, or exercising responsibility over my own advocacy? What gives anyone the right to decide suddenly that I need my dependency on others reinforced, to keep compliant with whatever other people decide for me, and to make myself even more vulnerable to abuse and maltreatment?

Fighting back against the mistreatment I have pelted towards me on a daily basis is not only a matter of taking back my right to grow up like abled people can, but also a matter of survival. If I never have the chance to experience life for what it is - including taking risks and facing failure when they don't turn out the way I want them to - then I'm a much higher risk of experiencing violence because I haven't had the opportunities to learn how to protect myself and my community members. Just like any other pattern of abusive behaviour, infantilization can be deadly- not only because it eats away at the self-esteem and confidence of those who face it, but also because of how powerless it's victims feel in the face of danger. For example, do you know just how many disabled people never get any form of sex education or teachings about consent, despite the fact that we're at a much higher risk of experiencing sexual abuse? How so many of us go on with our lives having no idea how to report instances of abuse, because we were never taught about the signs we should be looking for?

Infantilization hurts people gravely, especially those who are part of marginalized people groups, and it only hurts ourselves further when we decide that our autonomy isn't worth fighting to get back and it's best that we just succumb to the powerlessness that our oppressors want us to feel.

No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having (or even playing with) stuffed animals, liking cartoons, wearing colourful clothing with cartoon characters on them, or preferring food generally associated to be for children. Having interests in these things doesn't automatically make you a fascist or whatever inflammatory thing someone has to say about you and your hobbies. After all, many things that are seen as "childish," like the desire for play - something that is seen in all other living species well into their adulthood - are perfectly natural things that are being labeled as such to keep us primed in our positions as cogs of the machine, to keep us from exercising our imaginations to not think outside the box and imagine what a better world would look like. I think that keeping a sense of childlike wonder and curiosity is generally healthy for us, because it motivates us to learn more about the world around us and continue to create and love with our entire beings. Besides, I think there's a sense of maturity that comes with being so unapologetic about the person you are, and sometimes that involves being unapologetic about having these childish traits and interests that make you, you.

But it goes without saying that, alongside being able to embrace the fact that you have these interests, it shows a great amount of maturity to remain willing to take action and accept responsibility, and this is something that should be seen as a gift in a world that wants to take away our autonomy as grown-up human beings who can (and should) think and act for themselves. Especially in the wake of fascist uprisings and imperialism lashing out in the corner it's been backed into, it's become even more important for us to fight for our rights to be adults and to reject the attempts at making us feel helpless, worthless and out-of-control.

If you happen to be someone who believes that you reached your peak during your childhood or adolescent years, then I hope that, one day, you can realize just how fulfilling and liberating true adulthood is compared to being trapped in a cage of perpetual lack of autonomy. You deserve to have the chance to really own your adulthood and grow up to realize the potential you have. You deserve to realize just how much power you can hold and how the way you use it makes an impact in this world.

Please, if there's anything to take away from this essay, I implore you to start recognizing when you're being forced into submission by the systems that intend to keep us complicit, and remind yourself kindly that you deserve to have the same autonomy as every other person on this planet, no matter where your interests lie.

10/03/2023 - Twitter makes me want to be dead

(This article is discussing the current state of the social media platform 'X', but I refuse to call it that. To me it's always going to be Twitter, and this is partially out of spite of Elon Musk.)

We all joke that Twitter is a cesspool of a website, and this has become especially prevalent ever since the Elon Musk takeover. Giving everyone the ability to be verified if they want to pay for it is clearly a bad idea, because now that Twitter Blue subscribers have the perk of having their posts be boosted by the algorithim so that they're the first to show up under tweet replies and trending topics, the alt-right have been able to spread their ideas with ease on the platform. Whenever anything that has to do with politics or- god forbid- human rights starts trending, you bet your ass there'll be some alt-right Twitter Blue user spewing some of the most heinous shit about the topic at hand (sometimes it'll be some conspiracy theory content, for good measure of course,) and this will be the first thing you're forced to see!

And even before the alt-right got their soapboxes handed to them on silver platters, Twitter began developing a culture of... well, it's hard to explain, but the best way I can describe it is: 2014-2016 Tumblr 2.0... Having been through that era of Tumblr myself, it's equally as embarrassing as it is horrifying seeing the same ideology of mental health and activism bastardization make the rounds on Twitter and TikTok in the modern era. And here I was hoping that we had all moved on from these things, but I suppose that was wishful thinking.

Still, it's easy to see why people label Twitter as being a flaming hot pile of garbage for a social media platform, and part of me has to agree. No matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, it's full of reactionaries because that's the nature of social media- outrage gets engagement, engagement gets your tweets to circulate even farther outside of your circle, and that's how you "win" at social media. Of course, I'm no saint and have been guilty of this in the past, but in recent times I've been able to recognize these patterns within myself and the social media platforms that enables my anger issues in order to tell myself when to turn off my phone. That and I've also moved all of my "discourse-y" opinion tweets to my private account where only my friends are following me.

But that's the thing with Twitter that keeps me going back to it, even after Elon has effectively gutted it and made it a husk of the platform that it once was- the connection with my friends. Believe it or not, I've been on the platform for a wopping 11 years, and while I've gone through a lot of accounts during that time, the one that's stuck around the longest is my current private account. See, if it weren't for the fact that I can have a private account that only my friends follow, where I can make text-based posts that only they can see and nobody else, I would've already moved to another platform like Tumblr for my microblogging. This is the feature that a lot of Twitter competitors lack that I feel is a dealbreaker for me when it comes to making one of them my main social media account, especially when I've had problems about people with bad intentions seeing my posts about my personal life that are supposed to be kept to my friends and only my friends.

Another thing keeping me on the platform is the fact that, since I've been on the platform for so long, I've made practically all of my connections with my friends through Twitter, and all of us picking up and moving to the same platform as our main account is much easier said than done. While some have already picked up and moved to other sites- which I try desperately to keep up with despite them not being my main platforms- most of them have continued to stay on Twitter, largely for the same reason- connection with long-time friends.

I think that's why this whole shitshow just makes me so upset and angry, because all of my connections with my friends are being put on the line because some millionaire manchild had an emotional fit while being locked into buying the platform, and as a result is so stupidly desperate to make back the money he lost that he will axe everything that doesn't scream money to his pile of money that's already a mountain tall. As of typing this blog entry, Elon has decided to toss away Circles - which works similarly to Instagram's "close friends" function where you can make posts that are exclusive to a group of mutuals whom you approve to see these posts- all because someone complained about not getting enough engagement on their tweets and because all of his friendless Twitter Blue subscribers think that it's a useless feature (hint: it's because they don't have a close circle of friends who they can confide in). On top of this, friends are getting their accounts shadowbanned and suspended left and right for no reason, and the hopes of getting their account's functions restored are close to impossible because Elon laid off nearly every remaining human employee working for Twitter Support. My friend's accounts are dropping like flies, and I have to watch as their entire archives on the platform are wiped clean and their connection with me severed, all because of this fucking troglodyte.

It's especially cumbersome when, as a physically disabled person with very low energy levels, I don't have much energy to go out and meet people in my area. This is how Twitter became such a vital part of my life, offering me a window into the outside world and a chance to connect with people from all walks of life- many of whom are also physically disabled and will automatically be understanding of my situation.

Twitter is bleeding to death, slowly and painfully, and I believe that if Elon doesn't give up and shut the platform down altogether or sells off one day, then it will continue to hemorrhage out until it's physically impossible to use anymore. A huge method of communication and human connection is going to continue to suffer an agonizing death as it's slowly disemboweled, and it's all because Mr. Emerald Mines is too prideful to consider his platform a lost cause.

TLDR; Twitter sucks but it's given me such a vital method of human connection that I so desperately need, and I hope the worst for Elon Musk.