Thread by @kiralio

@AnnMemmott @__INSA__ As an autistic person with a pathological fear of making mistakes, I am compelled to say -- paraphrasing Lacan -- that what makes a fear pathological is not that it is incorrect, but that it interferes with your ability to live.

@AnnMemmott @__INSA__ The classic example is a man who flies into a jealous rage, imagining that his wife is cheating on him. His wife is, in fact, cheating on him -- but the jealousy is pathological in the sense that his reaction will only make it harder to figure out what he wants and to realize it.

@AnnMemmott @__INSA__ Your framing kind of nibbles around the edge of this -- the bit about active resistance is especially good -- but I think the framing, or phrasing, is actually very important. Your framing doesn't distinguish enough between moral judgment, diagnosis, and treatment/strategy.

@AnnMemmott @__INSA__ It's true that the social rules people use to police autistics are unfair. There's a moral obligation not to do that. But if you're right, & it's INEVITABLE that they will, that apologizing and mitigating are all they can do... that actually limits their moral responsibility.

@AnnMemmott If we're faced with conditions that are both unfair and inevitable, then changing *our* response to it is the only thing left to us. I normally resist this quite strongly (very few things are truly inevitable) but a large part of me fears you're correct, so let's unpack it a bit.

@AnnMemmott If autistic people are forced by circumstances to push back against a society that is hostile to us and *helpless to be anything but hostile*, then learned helplessness is natural, but not healthy. We have to overcome it even though the burden is completely unfair.

@AnnMemmott We would need, in effect, a "combat literature" of autism -- a manual to things we don't easily perceive, how to master them, how to disarm what can't be mastered. Anything less would put the quality of our lives *completely* at the disposal of neurotypical people.

@AnnMemmott Mental health practitioners often do embed moral judgments in their diagnosis & plans for treatment. They're only human, and you're right to push back against it.

But as long as our blameless response makes our life worse, we need a way to describe and counter this.

@AnnMemmott I think disabled people struggle with this principle because we often don't have much of a communal tradition. There's some, but we often have able families, able peers, etc. When that's who socializes us, we don't always have clear role models for surviving within oppression.

@AnnMemmott Look at feminism, look at black radical movements, look at labor movements -- all of them have a powerful current of self-respect and agency, a tactical and psychological description of how to overcome the obscene odds stacked against them.

@AnnMemmott Now, to step back for a minute, I don't think society is completely helpless to stop hurting autistic people -- not even in advance of actually doing it.

We should not only ask them to stop, but make clear, specific demands and use leverage beyond just sympathy to attain them.

@AnnMemmott But a crucial part of wielding power, and not just begging for mercy, is seizing any tool available to us to survive. This includes unlearning our natural responses, and treating any habit that impairs us, and that we can change, as -- well, pathological.

@AnnMemmott It's especially important that we don't characterize learned (and thus un-learnable) responses as an inherent part of being autistic, or at least, that we conceive of them as temporary; as something that can fall away and be replaced when we achieve our version of liberation.

@AnnMemmott Anyways, I enjoyed your article and it gave me a clear position against which to articulate my own, which is very valuable to me even though I disagree with you on some points. And if you've read this far, thank you for returning the favor, and I've love to hear your response.

@AnnMemmott @threadreaderapp unroll