actually - Emergent Divergence

Jan 9 2023

Autistic people and criminality

Over the years, I have come across a number of stories of Autistic people and the criminal acts they have committed. Often, I find autism part of the discourse surrounding terrorism and random acts of violence. There are a number of factors at play in the development of criminal behaviour, and yet the media has a tendency to just focus on a person’s neurology.

Personally, I believe that the media focuses so heavily on people neurodivergence because it allows them to ‘other’ the criminal. When a tremendous act of criminality occurs, we don’t want to admit the cold, hard truth; given the right environment, any of us could break the law and/or behave unethically.

Being Autistic justifies the othering of criminals, we are able to place a distinct barrier between people using it. It is also indicative of the neuronormativity in society that we (as a society) can accept autism as a reason for criminality. Like many divergent neurocognitive styles, we are seen as inherently sub-human, so the public finds it easy to accept that we are dangerous or cruel.

Historically, we have dealt with ideas of criminal insanity. It provided a means to lock people away indefinitely. By denying a person’s capacity or “mens rea” on the basis of neurology, we justify inhumane treatment such as perpetual incarceration, forced medication, and assimilation by conditioning. Anyone who has been placed under section will tell you; there is a significant emphasis on how our outward expression and internal thought is “defective” and “disordered”.

So when we think about criminal acts with regards to Autistic experience, what are we missing with the medical model?

Autistic people are a minority identity. We are subject to systemic discrimination and minority stress. Knowing the links between social deprivation and criminality, we can start to form a picture of how an Autistic person might find themselves engaging in criminal acts.

We fave housing insecurity and poverty, especially by virtue of our under- or even un- employment. We are subject to structural failure of services designed to support us, not just because of our differences in culture and communication, but because we are pathologised for those differences. We are treated as challenging when we ask under-resourced services for our legal entitlement of support.

We experience clustered injustice. This leads us into life circumstances that lend themselves to criminal behaviour. We take drugs, drink alcohol, join gangs, and behave in ways that are considered antisocial. We desperately want connection, and often, we are exploited through that need by people who intend to leverage our vulnerability for their own gain.

On the topic of drug use; it provides a means to incarcerate and assimilate Autistic people. The criminalisation of drugs has a direct impact on Autistic people, many of whom live at the intersections of race, gender diversity, and psychologically distressing experiences. All of these intersections increase the likelihood of contact with the justice system.

If we want to reduce criminality and ensure that less Autistic people are absorbed into carcerative systems, we need to address the social issues in our society and the environments of Autistic people. If we can remove the multiple injustices that are faced by Autistic people, we allow for a world where criminality is not required to survive. Until such a time that this happens, it is likely that we will continue to witness revolving doors with people cycling in and out of the justice system in perpetuity.

David Gray-Hammond 6 Comments

Jan 8 2023

Cure culture and normative attitudes towards Autistic people

Nothing sickens me more than people who believe that being Autistic requires intervention. The idea that we have to “improve” an Autistic person’s “skills” is in inherently ableist. Where does this ableism come from?

The truth of the matter is that as we edge closer and closer to a post-normal society, those who have succumbed to normativity fight hard to preserve the world that they believe is “right”. We have been taught that deviation from cultural norms is a disorder, but this is an abject lie.

Society has been built upon a foundation of bigotry and oppression of minorities. When we subscribe to the idea that Autistic people are suffering or in need of intervention, we further that belief. We have centred our own normative ideas into disabled people and made our internalised bigotry their problem.

When we can recognise that the problem is not the Autistic person, we are then able to externalise the issue into the environment. If you want to know why Autistic people are suffering, look no further than their experiences of the wider world and their immediate environment.

The responsibility is not on Autistic people to assimilate into society. The responsibility lies with society to make space for the inclusion of Autistic people.

Every time you empower the curists, you set a blockade on our path to progress. If you are reading this thinking “but you’re not like my child” I would respond with this-

No, I am not, I am an adult. I would ask you to consider why you believe your child is abnormal, where you learned your standards of normalcy from, and why you believe normality to be so important. We have a right to grow and change into whoever we wish to be. No one should be trying to control our expression of the Self, or the way we think and relate to the world.

I ask only one thing of my readers. Please step away from the concept of normal. Recognise that all normality measures is how comfortably we can serve a society that doesn’t give a damn about us.

If we can’t operate at the right level of productivity, without causing a nuisance to other people, we are written off. This is the world that curists want us to fit into, a world that would sooner destroy us than make space for us to exist as whole people.

We have a write to our Self.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Jan 2 2023

10,000 to midnight: Spectrum 10k and the struggle to exist

Spectrum 10k has been part of a world for over a year at this point, and it’s existence has taught us a great deal about our place in wider society; something we may forget if we do not step outside of Autistic circles all that often.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists runs a blog which houses something known as the dooms day clock. This metaphorical clock counts down to midnight, with midnight being the point in time when society comes to an end. It has been edging closer and closer to that point over the last few year. At the time of writing, the clock is set at 100 seconds to midnight.

The Autistic community, similarly, is facing it’s own collapse, and yet we are not as worried as we should be. For me, Spectrum 10k represents the beginning of the end. This is a study that could be a turning point in both the push to remove Autistic people from the human gene pool, or it could be the moment when people realise that we have a right to exist, and we will fight for that.

Currently, all that stands between us and the turning of the tide is 10,000 samples of DNA. Those 10,000 samples have the power to undermine our existence in a way that we are not yet fully comprehending. I doubt if even the scientists conducting the study are aware of the ramifications of their work; if they were, they might well pick a narrative and stick to it.

Autistic people have struggled to exist in perpetuity. Not because we are Autistic, but because the society we live in is supported by a structure built from oppresive normativity, colonialism, and bigotry. We have to tear down these structures, not just at the surface where projects such as S10k exist, but also at the root, where the coneptualisation of our personhood is misshapen and grotesque. Autistic people are not some sideshow exhibit, we do not exist to shock and astound you. There is beauty in our existence.

So, again we take up our arms, and prepare to fight the rising waters of normativity manifest in eugenics. Again we fight for our right to exist. Again we fight to have a peaceful and fulfilled life.

Those malefactors for whom the eradication of difference is a priority, will come to regret the side of history that they have chosen. We have drawn our line in the sand, we have declared our right to this space. Now we must defend it.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Dec 28 2022

Spectrum 10k is back, and now they want to exploit you

As you may remember from last year, Spectrum 10k was the project that “definitely wouldn’t be used for eugenics” but had involvement from people with links to (you guessed it) eugenics.

I won’t bore you with the details of this project’s history, it has been detailed on this website Here, Here and Here.

No, what I want to bring attention to is the betrayal we are experiencing at the hands of Autistic people, now involved in the project, who wouldn’t know their own tokenism even if they were walked up to it and introduced.

These Autistic people, paid to run consultations, with an aim to progress this experiment in the silent eradication of an entire cultural minority, want us to speak and tell them why we disagree.

As linked above, we have detailed our concerns, myself and others on the BS10k team poured literal tears into defending the Autistic community. We detailed our concerns, we lost weeks of sleep. It took such a toll on us that we are still engaging in peer support over this more than a year on.

So, when we are asked to detail this (yet again) understand that they are asking us to relive that trauma. Trauma that they are at fault for by being involved with this project. Not only do they ask us to go through this for no recompense, they are also asking as to subject ourselves to tone policing.

They believe that not only should we repeat the concerns they didn’t care enough to take note of, we should also do so without getting angry.

If you want to know why there is such suffering amongst the Autistic population, I point you to the likes of S10k and its partners. A group of aggressors who think nothing of exploiting us to meet their own wish to eradicate us.

We will not stand for it.

Our identities are built from our environment. S10k can no longer be allowed to be a part of our environment. We need to make this project untenable. We must not stop until the careers of all involved are brought to an end.

When I tell you to boycott S10k, I also ask you to boycott all future work by the people involved. Because we have to show them just how much we disagree with their actions.

You came for my community, and as a community, we will bite back. We are not the passive agents you hoped for.

We will not let you divide and conquer.

David Gray-Hammond 2 Comments

Dec 17 2022

Queerness and me

Queerness. It’s a word that I hid from for over 30 years, and yet, as I type it, I find myself feeling a deep comfort. I have long known that the space between myself and “typical” society is far greater than the purported six degrees of separation. I have at times considered that gulf to be one of existential orders of magnitude. The concept of “alone in a crowded room” is not alien to me. Nothing much is alien to me, except perhaps (at times) myself.

Being Autistic is a core part of my sense of Self. I understand myself through the lense of Autisticness, I embody my neurology unapologetically. Of course, there is far more to my experience than being Autistic. I am also Schizophrenic. Some might pity me, offering me sympathy for my mental illness. Illness is a word that does not sit right with me.

Schizophrenic, yes. Unwell? If I was unwell, should it not be quantifiable? A value that can be measured by a body that lacks the homeostasis that allows it to function properly.

No, I am neurodivergent. That doesn’t mean I don’t suffer, but I believe we must externalise suffering into the environment. Suffering does not arise in the Self, it is a function of inhabiting a space that was not meant for you.

So where does queerness fit into this?

I have come to understand that there are boundaries between the typical and atypical bodiment of the self. These boundaries are man made structures. Social conventions waiting to be transcended. Much like the way I transcend the convention of neurotypicality, delving into divergent neurology, I find myself openly subverting all expectations placed upon myself.

Queerness, to me, is not about who I love. Who I feel attraction to is such a small part of my queerness. In my universe, queerness is the subversion of a reality that has been imposed upon me. If experiencing psychosis has taught me anything, it’s that reality is not a fixed point. While being Autistic has taught me that society’s truths about what is and isn’t “normal” are closer to the machinations of a propaganda machine than anything objectively true.

No.

I am Queer because I do not belong in normative society. My neurology has made it impossible to assimilate. My queerness manifests from the urgency of an existence that requires me to carve out and defend a space to exist in. The boundary I push is the need be contained. I permit myself to take up space. I permit myself to experience my reality.

In many ways, My queerness or perhaps, my neuroqueerness, has allowed me to bookmark a place in my own story, one in which I can let go of the self-hatred for my bodymind’s tenuous relationship with reality.

It is okay to feel what I feel. It is okay to think what I think. I am no more defined by the intrusive nature of my traumatised thoughts, than I am by the colour of my hair. They are a small part of a wider human structure. It’s okay for me to admit that my sense of Self is constructed from interactions with others. We all build ourselves from the words uttered about us and to us.

Queerness doesn’t feel strange to me. It’s a liberation from the chains of normative violence. It’s freedom to think and feel without the moral judgements imposed by society through me. It is freedom from policing my own existence. It is existential liberation.