Hell, no. My kid was not a litmus test of whether someone else had reformed themselves. And none of us should be litmus tests for whether people who have been nasty have learned the monumental errors of their ways.

I’m not saying that bullies/abusers shouldn’t be given a chance to change, but that takes lots and lots and lots of healing work and amends and mending of relationships and admissions of wrongdoing and other difficult steps that most people who do this shit simply aren’t interested in. My abusers sure weren’t.

Wow, did I make the right decision there.

In my case I actually get blamed every time certain bullies get banned from somewhere. Even when I have had nothing to do with it, and even when it’s their own actions rather than my request that have caused the end result. (For instance situations where people who’ve obviously stalked and threatened violence against me, have also threatened to show up places where I’m speaking. In which case I become the bully supposedly, even though I have never done the same to them, and even if rather than taking my word for it people have investigated the situation on their own, and even in cases where I was not the one (or the only one) to bring it up as a problem. I also get blamed for every action the moderator or whatever takes against them, even if I have no part in deciding that.)

In fact they seem to almost exclusively focus on me (regardless of how involved I am and regardless of how many other people are involved), the same way that when they bully me for having a particular (for instance) autistic trait, they often do not bully others with the same trait even when it’s explicitly pointed out to them. Because my actions and my traits are not the reasons they bully me. They are merely excuses to bully me. If they were the reasons then they would be publicly targeting far more people than they target. They also don’t want it to seem as if the traits or actions they claim are the causes, are as common in others as they are, or that would destroy their argument that I’m somehow unique in traits and actions in a way that makes their actions towards me justified.

And I am certain that simply my pointing out their real motivations like this will be twisted around until it is considered bullying as well.

For that matter, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were a factor in the appalling apparent tolerance of this kind of behavior, among autistics in particular–even though my first reaction is “WTF?! We should know better if anyone does!”. I know I haven’t been *able* to say as much as I should, and feel more than a little ashamed of myself for what almost qualifies as unwilling collusion.

I’m uncomfortably reminded of some thought-provoking comments on honorable behavior I ran across recently: “No one is obliged to harm the weak. It does not take courage to harm the weak. Yet, many times over the weak are harmed by cowardly folks and cowards too afraid to stand up to bullies…leading to collusion. It is a tough road to be an honorable person.”

If nothing else, that’s a compelling reason for me to work on combing my own snakes out. That’s not further victim blaming, AFAICT, just acknowledging that those snakes really do affect a person’s abilities and behavior. And sometimes it ain’t pretty, and allows the same nasty power dynamics which created those snakes to continue playing out. And producing even more of them, for yourself and for other people.

it wouldn’t be harmless even if it “just” caused pain, fear, and suffering either

Well said.

Excellent ideas on what is and is not helpful, Riel^Amorpha.

My father, who was autistic, always used to say, “Have consideration for the next person.” That was his mantra and his whole ethical system. He was always reminding us to think about the impact of what we say and do on other people. In other words, he taught us how to develop and refine empathy. It wasn’t that we couldn’t disagree with people; I come from a culture that thrives on disagreement–the more, the better. But we had to keep in mind how another person might feel about how we get the point across. We had to learn to be civil in the midst of an argument.

My autistic father grew up in the ’30s and ’40s, and raised his family in the ’60s and ’70s, before there was a diagnosis that would describe him, before IEPs and inclusion classrooms and OTs and sensory integration work, and all the rest of the things that would have made his way a little easier. He had a painful, traumatic, overwhelming life, and he was far from a perfect father, but he never went out of his way to publicly embarrass people or use his difficulties as a justification for doing so. In fact, despite his flaws, he tried to be a mensch. He didn’t always succeed, by a long shot, but he never gave up the fight either.

Of course, civility is really out of style now. Even in the autistic community, you mention the word and people treat you like you’ve just materialized out of a Jane Austen novel–as if what you’re saying is completely beside the point.

Kowalski and SBWG–I’m sorry for your hurt, and I hope you get your bearings and continue the struggle in whatever way makes sense for you.

As I say there are no icons, and no plaster saints, least of all me.

Nobody is right all of the time.

Whatever I write, somebody is not going to like it, wherever I write somebody will not like the company I keep.

One person I respect may have opinions I don’t like. Another person I respect might also be wrong too. I will not be “bullied” into keeping only the company others tell me to. (that goes for all sides)

You can criticise me for failing to to say what you would like me to. Indeed perhaps you ought to, because how else will I (or anyone else) reconsider what we do if you either remain silent or put me out of mind forever.

Beyond this episode it has to be asked, (and indeed I was brought up for this before this recent controversy broke out) do we gain anything by insulting the likes of Bob Wright, Jenny McCarthy, J B Handley, because look at it, it’s one rule for the “in group” and another for the “out group” whichever way you look at it.

I made a huge error because I lost my temper, and then compounded it in my blog. It’s nothing whatever to do with Kowalski, or SBWG at all.

And there is so much WTF here I can scarcely begin to process it, but I have to say that from the outside of whatever crap-circle those folks are trying to perpetuate, it looks utterly absurd. I mean, for one thing (and I don’t mean this to be insulting) you happen to be terrible at “deliberate image-management”. If you were really as conniving as the defamers claim, you’d think you’d have managed to consistently fit one stereotype or another, or to at least maintain the appearance of a constant set of abilities/disabilities. Moreover, they can’t seem to make up their minds as to whether you’re some sort of incredibly successful schemer or some sad, pitiful, deluded soul who doesn’t have a clue who she is and clearly needs to be told (by a cadre of concern trolls, naturally).

And the people who come along and decide to take their crap seriously seem somehow to not even notice how nonsensical it all is. Which I am sure has something do with…the real, everyday nature of plain old evil, which I bet goes unnoticed by many simply because it fails to resemble, say, Hitler. The way I conceptualize evil is that it’s a very mundane phenomenon (i.e., not anything “supernatural”) that has a whole lot to do with what could be termed “destructive distortion of reality”.

As in, I see it as evil to perpetuate the idea that someone is (depending on the day of the week) a scam artist or a poor pathetic insight-void creature when in reality they’ve just led a somewhat complex life, and been subject to a certain degree of bad luck that could have happened to any similar person in similar circumstances (and I do not just mean you here, I have also seen this happen to several others over the past few years). I see it as evil to insist that it would actually have any sort of detrimental effect on reality if gay couples could legally marry throughout the USA (to give another example, just so nobody sees this as just being about autism-related stuff, or [particular person]-related stuff).

In other words, to me evil often looks like a type of refusal to see things as they are in conjunction with a drive to make the fake-thing someone has built up in their minds suffer, or go away, or just plain stop inconveniently existing. Even though none of those outcomes would actually solve anything.

Because I have noticed that bullies who are also autistic seem to be sort of trying to redefine autistic awkwardness (common to many of us) in terms that require you to be a complete jerkass. As if they somehow “can’t help” making bigoted misogynistic/homophobic/etc. comments, and that anyone who calls them out on this crap is “penalizing them for being autistic”, and particularly for being a *male* autistic. When as far as I know, holding particular negative beliefs about a particular demographic is not a general feature of autism, nor does NOT being a bigoted jerk mean someone is “less autistic” than someone else.

And meanwhile, these folks get away with saying a whole lot of crap, while the rest of us continue to get penalized for things like the inability to be concise, difficulty with informal language, unusual vocabularies, focus on consequences rather than intent/feelings, and numerous other things that absolutely sure-as-heck DO mean we often have communication breakdowns with others.

And I am getting so tired of this sort of thing, and of bullies being able to capitalize on the misinformed stereotype that “autism, when it’s not the feces-smearing kind, means a jerky male who doesn’t know how to talk to girls and is frequently very angry”.

….and I am not entirely sure where I was going with that, hopefully more later…

By the way there were a couple comments on this thread I haven’t approved. Those were both not because there was anything wrong with them but because either the comment or the inevitable answer to the comment is not something I want bullies reading and getting ideas about. I rarely do that but in this instance I did. And I hadn’t been organized enough to email and explain.