Thanks.

AI

I think this is really an interesting point and something that I have been wondering about if you combine the different “fronts” from the Autism Speaks video to the Combating Autism bill and other various articles and websites. If you look at all of this fretful talk about the stress, expense, and cost to society than really doesn’t that point back to the reasoning for the practices of institutionalization and eugenics. I find the coining of the term “Autism Czar” very ominous along with the provisions in the Combating Autism bill for mandatory screening by age 2 and identification of all persons with autism. And they also want to ID at risk siblings (at risk for what – autism?). That makes me wonder if in another 10 years there will be financial incentives or restrictions on parents who choose to procreate – just like in other parts of the world. And then you have a well financed group admittedly putting out a propaganda film for the sole purpose not to educate but influence the public thinking. Since they are demanding all this tax money to take care of things than there is a dark side to that – which allows those paying to decide the rules of the game.

AI

Kathy Grant

Frequently, incomprehensible actions get classed as “crazy”. This word is used in a lot of people’s head as a catch all for several different concepts;

-abnormal
-incomprehensible
-creepy
-mentally ill

etc. So acts of violence and abuse that fall outside of that person’t comprehension, are crazy, which mean they’re done by crazy people, which means crazy people are dangerous. That seems to be the thought process, as far as I can tell.

In my experience, abusers and other violent criminals are no more likely than average to send up noticeably odd social signals. People who’ve been abused, however, are far more likely to behave in unusual ways, partly because of post traumatic stress, and partly because abusers sometimes target people who aren’t considered normal in the hope that no one will listen to the ‘crazy’ or ‘retarded’ person. So the attempt to identify people by their ‘off’ social signals has entirely the wrong effect.

-Social ideas of “the kind of people” who abuse and kill others are often a very polite fiction that allow everyone to attribute such actions to random psychopathy, and direct the blame away from social attitudes towards children, autistic people, etc, which hold that treating certain people in certain ways is natural and understandable, and murder and “extreme” abuse are actually logical extensions of those attitudes. (People will often say, for instance, “Certain kinds of behavior require drastic measures!”, but if you ask them to draw a line between reasonable “drastic measures” and abuse, using concrete, not abstract examples, they very rarely can.)

-Since the main criteria for “mental illness” is and always has been simply that someone’s behavior not make sense to those around them, people who can’t understand how someone could kill or abuse their own child often attribute such acts to insanity, and the whole expectation/stereotype comes along with it– dirty/ugly/disheveled, behaving in “bizarre ways,” you can tell them at a glance, etc.

-The vast majority of the people we know who have been sexually abused or harassed in some way, including us, had it done to them by a “good person”– a nice, honest boy, a loving parent, a well-respected teacher or doctor, etc. Some of them clearly gave off creepy, overly touchy-feely vibes, but a lot of them didn’t, or they only started giving them off once they had the victim where they wanted them, and their public appearance and body language was different.

-There’s some appearance prejudice going on here, also– good people are attractive and “friendly,” smile, make eye contact, bad people are ugly, act suspicous and sneaky, don’t smile, look away from you, etc.

-Our mother, who did everything to cultivate the public image of a concerned, involved and loving parent who would never treat anybody badly, gave off lots and lots of overly “friendly” cues (to the point, I think, where many people saw it was fake and found it slightly creepy) and complained about “unfriendly people” who didn’t smile or make eye contact. Obviously, the aim of it was to get people to say “Someone who smiles and makes eye contact all the time couldn’t be a bad parent!”

Amanda: OK I asked because the fact that you were in institutions that tortured you and were privately owned kinda chimes in with my prejudices about private enterprise. However, abuse is probably as likely to happen in publicly owned institutions as private ones. Indeed, in Britain a report was issued outlining widespread abuse in homes in Cornwall, and now I understand *all* the institutions in the UK are to be audited.

Having a phonestheme attack here. (tic) ;) Vaunted sounds a lot like lauded, flaunted, haunt, daunt, taunt, saunter and gawdy and dozens of other similar sounding words. But it is an actual word. All relatives of boast, brag, bribe and flout, flash. Pretty much word association meaning “putting out in the open”

All of which are nearly substitable in that sentence but it’s been a while since I’ve seen vaunted as a word but I think it’s the brain grabbing the phonestheme. Phonesthemes, searchable in web-engines, are basically a theory that some words are not outright onatomatopoetic but carry some hidden archetypical morpheme or meaning quality by virtue of sharing similar sounds.

I’m perseverating. Not sure if apology is in order. Not quite on topic here, but still wanting to express what I often suppress even if it’s tangential.