Search for:
Mar 30 2023
Stop blaming minority groups for mass shootings

There is a bitter irony as I begin to write this post. What many of you will not know is how I became a blogger. I wrote for an immensely popular outlet, I won’t name them, but they support Autism Speaks. I think just based on that, you can understand why I no longer write for them.

The very first article I ever published, my first outpouring of disdain at the violent hatred of the world we live in, was about people blaming mass shootings on mental health issues. To my surprise, it amounted to almost 20,000 views in 24 hours. Many felt very validated, but of course, the gun nuts of America jumped to the defence of guns. I assume they read the title and not much else.

So, here we are again. Over half a decade since that article was published. I feel it’s time to draw a line in the sand. The nonsense of the world we live in is taking too many lives.

Hearing about the mass shooting in Texas upset me. Not just because of the unacceptable loss of life, but because of the media reporting around the fact that the shooter was a trans person. I am aware that trans people live a life of near constant threats, and the focus on the shooters gender identity will not improve this.

But I am not Trans. I can’t tell you what this specific event is like because their are cultural privileges that I have, and they prevent me from understanding the reality of this particular shooting. I do, however, feel compelled to comment on the broader issue that this has once again highlighted.

Every time a mass shooting happens, it seems that the media will link it to a minority group. Somehow, there is always an underprivileged cultural subset that the salivating masses can turn their vitriol on. Mental health leads to mass murder, Autistic people are predators, Trans people are apparently indoctrinating children, and Black people are guilty of everything. The list of ridiculous accusations has gone on for so long that I won’t even begin to try and recite the whole thing.

Why does the world need to blame minority groups?

I believe this comes down to normativity and essentialism. When we consider the framing of minority groups in stories such as these, we have to consider that;

  • The world has been taught that there is one most “normal” sort of human. The right colour, brain, sexuality, gender, embodiment.
  • You are only worth as much as the body you are born into.
  • Those that fall out of cultural normality (read as; normative standards) are fundamentally less human than those that don’t.

So now we have a world of minority groups who are already traumatised beyond belief by the inhumane treatment of those with privilege beyond their own. We do become radicalised, to the extent (usually) that we will actively voice and enact dissent against the oppressive power structures of our normative world. Yes, some of us do take part in violence.

No, that doesn’t make us dangerous.

Think about it. Think about it really hard. Every country in the world has innumerable minority groups. In fact, if we measured minority as an identity itself, we would probably no longer be a minority, but instead a vastly diverse majority.

So we have a world full of minorities, and yet the vast majority of mass shootings outside of warzones happen in the US. I would venture a guess that even if you counted warzones, the US would still top the list. What is the variable that is being ignored? What can we change to make a difference.

It’s the guns.

Minority groups are not murderers. We are not the monsters you were taught to hide from as a child. Not once did I ask my mother to check for Trans people under my bed. The monsters are the lawmakers and lobbyists that keep gun laws in the US so lacklustre that a person can walk into a primary school with a semi-automatic and two pistols, ending three children’s lives, and the lives of three children.

The people who are responsible for this are the pro-gun cohort. They have the blood of those children on their hands. They have the weight of traumatised children and families that miss their loved ones. May it rest so heavy on their soul that they are forced to lay down their arms.

Stop blaming minorities for mass shootings. The problem is the guns.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Jan 5 2023
How “mental illness” disempowers the average person

Over the past decade or so, we have seen a surge in the awareness of so-called “mental illness”.

While the concept of telling people you are struggling has served a good purpose, the concept of “illness” has actually disempowered people who have these particular neurodivergences and the people around them.

Human suffering, as it stands, is a heavily medicalised field of study. It has become the realm of doctors and nurses, and this is where we become disempowered. When we experience suffering, we believe that only doctors have the responsibility to remedy that. The average person is made to feel as though they are “out of their depth”.

In fact, the responsibility for reducing human suffering is on all of us. Medication can take the edge off, but to see a true reduction in trauma that litters our society, we all have to do work. Doctors are not responsible for the environments and people we grow up with, and yet we assume they are the answer when we experience suffering as a result of those things.

Society is structured in such a way that we are likely to encounter trauma throughout our lives. It is important to move beyond normative standards of trauma and recognise the subjective nature of this abstraction. What is traumatic for me may not be traumatic for you. It does not make it any less valid.

This is why we need to listen to minorities about minority experiences, ot allows us to root out the traumatic experiences occurring in society, and not just those which we recognise. When we invalidate another person’s experience, we are contributing to the immense suffering that is currently happening in our world.

Perhaps then, it is pertinent for us to take responsibility for the role we each take in the suffering of others and ensure that we are doing good with the limited time we have on earth.

Our psychological well-being is far from being solely the realm of medics. We each play a significant role in other people’s worlds.

David Gray-Hammond 8 Comments
Jun 28 2022
More on Zeno’s Paradoxes and the issues with Autistic to non-Autistic communication

As you may have noticed from my most recent blog post, I am somewhat down a rabbit hole at the moment. In my previous article I discussed Zeno’s paradox of plurality and how it applies to the dehumanisation of Autistic people and the double empathy problem.

Today I would like to consider another of Zeno’s paradoxes and how it applies to the double empathy problem.

This particular paradox was known as the Dichotomy Paradox. Essentially, it explains that when travelling from point A to point B, one must first travel to the halfway point between the two. To then travel from that point to the destination, you must travel half way again. This continues infinitely when travelling towards a fixed destination and thus Zeno argued that you can never reach point B.

When considering communication across different neurocognitive styles, one must also consider what the goal is. If we presume that the goal is “successful communication” then the double empathy problem tells us that this is very difficult due to the different styles of communication. Despite this, Autistic people are always expected to be the ones to put the emotional labour into communicating. This has been discussed by Rachel Cullen, a recording of a livestream with Aucademy featuring them can be found here and here).

We then encounter the dichotomy paradox. Neurotypicals remain a fixed point in the goal of successful communication, while we as Autistics are constantly expected to move towards the goal by accommodating their preferred communication styles. It is as if we are constantly reaching the halfway point, and never reaching our destination. No matter how well we accommodate neurotypical preferences, we are caught in an infinite regression of distance, not achieving the aim.

This to me, highlights the deeper issue of dehumanisation and objectification of Autistics. Neurotypicals (perhaps subconsciously, sometimes consciously) consider themselves the pinnacle of humanity, a goal that all should be striving for. We know from the existence of the various compliance based behavioural interventions, that Neurotypicals do believe this in many cases. Evidenced by the fact that it is considered “gold-standard” to teach Autistic people to hide their Autistic nature.

As Dr. Monique Botha mentioned in their recent seminar, there is a reason why researchers and professionals insist on person-first language. “I want to eradicate autism” sounds much less like genocide than “I want to eradicate Autistic people”. However, both of those statements mean the same thing. This is justified because whether or not they overtly see it, neurologically queer behaviour and experience is seen as non-human. Remi Yergeau argued this dehumanisation was due (at least in part) to a perceived lack of rhetoricity in their book Authoring Autism.

Autistic people are viewed as husks, mindlessly performing nothing, controlled by an abstract spectre called autism. This then is perhaps why so many neurotypical people insist on person-first language, and ignore our preference of identity -first language. Why would they take a step towards the all consuming spectre? Surely it is better to leave such a thing trapped in that infinite journey towards a goal that is never to be reached.

This, then, is the appeal of neuroqueering to me. When I embrace my neuroqueer self, I no longer have to be trapped in the infinite journey towards performative neurotypicality. I escape the dichotomy paradox by abandoning societal expectations, and being true to myself. True to what nature intended for me. I am Autistic, I am divergent, and that divergence is a thing of beauty.

We need to raise up our fellow Autistics, high above the dichotomy of neurotypicality and neurodivergence. We need to embrace a world in which these words are redundant in meaning because no one group has the power to oppress another; and when our fellow Autistics are lost in the dark, we need to shine our own light, and guide them back to the daylight.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments
Sep 3 2021
Apparently Autism needs preventing?

The world is not okay.

We are not okay.

Autistic people are not okay, S10k has served as a stark reminder that we are treated as a burden upon not just the people that we love, but society as a whole.

Autistic people are subject to woefully inaccurate and outdated stereotypes that do a great deal of harm to us as a community. For a long time the Autistic community has pushed back against the idea of a linear spectrum, with the “severely disabled” at one end, and bright young mathematicians at the other end. Despite this we still have the likes of Simon Baron-Cohen espousing the need to preserve the young men who have mathematical skill, should a cure or pre-natal test be developed. This says a lot about his views on Autistic people as a whole. It’s eugenics, funded by a capitalist society that decides the value of our lives based on our financial productivity. Eighty years since Hans Asperger “saved” the useful Autistics, while dispensing the lives of those he deemed unworthy, we are still fighting for the right of all Autistics to exist, regardless of special skills or capitalist worth. In 2021 are we witnessing Simon Baron-Cohen morphing into the Hans Asperger of the 21st century?

The truth is, Autistic people are more than a medically diagnosed group. We are an identity-based minority, with a rich culture. A culture that we are excited to share with the world, even in the face of the worlds abject hatred of all that diverges from the neuromajority.

We are everywhere, we are your doctors, your lawyers, your shopkeepers, your shelf-stackers. We entertain you as artists, actors, directors. We are your friends, family, neighbours. Even if we aren’t yet identified (largely thanks to those inaccurate stereotypes skewing the diagnostic process).

We are human.

We have thoughts, feelings, emotions.

We have deep empathy and compassion. It can be overwhelming. S10k is overwhelming, which is how it felt last week when Spectrum 10k was announced, by non-autistic researchers, led by two non-autistic men who have strong links to organisations abhorred by the Autistic community, and supported and promoted by white men, cure culture, and an all round attitude of being pro-eugenics.

S10k has been peddled by people who are not autistic, don’t understand autistic culture, and don’t even understand the nature of this research. Indeed, nobody understands the nature of this research because of the secretive nature of those in control. The truth has been obfuscated in an attempt to gaslight Autistics into giving their DNA to those with ill intent, or for future use by those who mean us harm.

“There’s no way that we can ever say that a future political leader or a scientist won’t use the research for eugenics.”

Simon Baron-Cohen

Are we really at the point, in 2021, where we have to beg for our right to exist?

Because if that is the case, we are collectively pleading with you to boycott this study.

How can we ignore the fact that Baron-Cohen and Gerschwind have previous ties to Autism Speaks and Aims2Trials. Both of these groups are known to either look for a cure, or fund those who are.

Why are we pleading? The effects of this betrayal by society have taken a huge toll on our collective mental health. In the week since this has launched, the damage that has been done has been immense, imagine what further damage this study could do if left to fulfil it’s aims.

The study claims to be looking into the causes of poor wellbeing in Autistics. They already know what causes it, and it’s not in our DNA. It is, however, quite possible that the thought of our parents having the choice to abort us does cause the poor wellbeing they claim to be so invested in preventing.

Imagine what the Autistic community could do with that money; We could train the whole of the U.K on improving mental wellbeing for Autistics, training on supporting us in a disabling environment.

Are you Autistic? What would you do?

Will you stand by while our DNA is misused by those who seek to destroy us?

Please, do not give your DNA to these people. Do not allow them to destroy the rich culture that we have spent decades cultivating and nurturing.

Sincerely,

The Autistic Community.

This article was a collective effort by the team at Boycott Spectrum 10k and the Autistic community at large.

Please join us Twitter tonight at 7pm BST by following the link below.

@BoycottSpect10k

To read and sign the full statement against S10k, click here.

David Gray-Hammond 6 Comments
Verified by MonsterInsights