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makoyiTitle: The Obsessive Joy of Autism
Author: Julia Bascom aka![[wordpress.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/1225b00cee13/-/s.wordpress.org/about/images/wpmini-blue.png)
juststimming
Review:
Not a fanfic, but so worth sharing because so much of what neurotypicals - be they writers, teachers, family etc - are taught about autism is from the outside looking in and that's just not good enough. I don't know how many people are aware, but sometimes there's a really huge gap between what something looks like from the outside and what it's like from the inside (what's called the "lived experience" of it). This gap between what it looks like and what it is leads to a lot of misunderstanding. If the only view you ever see of something or someone different is from the outside, it would make it very difficult to write a character like that realistically. It would also make it too easy to disregard that person's point of view entirely, to take for granted that its fundamentally wrong and that they're pitable for it. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff about autism is written by parents and doctors and teacher, for parents and doctors and teachers with the implication (or sometimes its far to blatant to merely be called an implication) that autistics themselves don't have any insight, aren't worth talking to or writing for which is not only wrong but actually makes me really angry sometimes.
And this is why I think it's great to see the contrast between the way stimming is normally viewed (as wrong and disordered and distressing) and the way it's described here. This essay is really beautiful and happy. It's an autistic speaking about joy and about joy with autism and its so cool. Before you write a fic where someone is autistic, you should really read it. Or, you know, read it anyways... because its all infectiously happy and made of awesome. If you like it, check out some of the author's other writings too.
In case it wasn't really clear on the difference between external indicators and "lived experience", here's another example that might help illustrate: When a Special Ed teacher learns that some kids may have trouble in school because they have an Auditory Processing Disorder, they're taught a list of indicators: child has poor listening skills, child has trouble focusing in noisy environments, child confuses words that sound similar (like bike and bite), child claims they often can't hear what was said but hearing tests show perfect hearing, child has trouble following verbal directions unless they're given one step at a time, etc. And those are observable outcomes of APD, but it's not what it's actually like to have APD. That's more like these (which happen with varied frequency): hearing a sentence with some syllables mutated ("Megan wanted that fox to walk by again," becomes: "Megan want than fan to walk by again" or words are simply misheard "then" to "when", "bike" to "bite", or even "wet" to "red"), some syllables are lost completely like trying to follow a conversation on a cell phone with bad reception, trying to focus on a single voice in a room where many are speaking is difficult because all the voices blend together into a confused muddle, spaces between words can be lost too (Do you know what a sentence sounds like with all the spaces removed? It's a long string of syllables like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, only even more meaningless), and if you're sitting between two people having a conversation with each other then sensory overload is inevitable because trying to switch processing focus back and forth between left ear and right ear is fine for a few minutes but rapidly becomes grating in nearly physical ways (think fingernails-on-the-blackboard). That's a pretty big gap in understanding and that gap has implications in the way we think about APD and the people with it and in what coping strategies we teach to manage it.
The Obsessive Joy of Autism (on Wordpress)
Author: Julia Bascom aka
juststimming Review:
Not a fanfic, but so worth sharing because so much of what neurotypicals - be they writers, teachers, family etc - are taught about autism is from the outside looking in and that's just not good enough. I don't know how many people are aware, but sometimes there's a really huge gap between what something looks like from the outside and what it's like from the inside (what's called the "lived experience" of it). This gap between what it looks like and what it is leads to a lot of misunderstanding. If the only view you ever see of something or someone different is from the outside, it would make it very difficult to write a character like that realistically. It would also make it too easy to disregard that person's point of view entirely, to take for granted that its fundamentally wrong and that they're pitable for it. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff about autism is written by parents and doctors and teacher, for parents and doctors and teachers with the implication (or sometimes its far to blatant to merely be called an implication) that autistics themselves don't have any insight, aren't worth talking to or writing for which is not only wrong but actually makes me really angry sometimes.
And this is why I think it's great to see the contrast between the way stimming is normally viewed (as wrong and disordered and distressing) and the way it's described here. This essay is really beautiful and happy. It's an autistic speaking about joy and about joy with autism and its so cool. Before you write a fic where someone is autistic, you should really read it. Or, you know, read it anyways... because its all infectiously happy and made of awesome. If you like it, check out some of the author's other writings too.
In case it wasn't really clear on the difference between external indicators and "lived experience", here's another example that might help illustrate: When a Special Ed teacher learns that some kids may have trouble in school because they have an Auditory Processing Disorder, they're taught a list of indicators: child has poor listening skills, child has trouble focusing in noisy environments, child confuses words that sound similar (like bike and bite), child claims they often can't hear what was said but hearing tests show perfect hearing, child has trouble following verbal directions unless they're given one step at a time, etc. And those are observable outcomes of APD, but it's not what it's actually like to have APD. That's more like these (which happen with varied frequency): hearing a sentence with some syllables mutated ("Megan wanted that fox to walk by again," becomes: "Megan want than fan to walk by again" or words are simply misheard "then" to "when", "bike" to "bite", or even "wet" to "red"), some syllables are lost completely like trying to follow a conversation on a cell phone with bad reception, trying to focus on a single voice in a room where many are speaking is difficult because all the voices blend together into a confused muddle, spaces between words can be lost too (Do you know what a sentence sounds like with all the spaces removed? It's a long string of syllables like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, only even more meaningless), and if you're sitting between two people having a conversation with each other then sensory overload is inevitable because trying to switch processing focus back and forth between left ear and right ear is fine for a few minutes but rapidly becomes grating in nearly physical ways (think fingernails-on-the-blackboard). That's a pretty big gap in understanding and that gap has implications in the way we think about APD and the people with it and in what coping strategies we teach to manage it.
The Obsessive Joy of Autism (on Wordpress)