ebk

ebk, 9 months ago

1. Many of us are caught up in this historical moment, akin to Semmelweis (handwashing) and Snow (feces in well water): WE get that Covid is airborne; nobody else listens.

Compare the bezzle spanning between, say, the moment a woman in a strategy meeting makes a sharp observation and is ignored ... and a man offers the same perspective minutes later and is roundly congratulated for his keen insight.

Re: Covid strategy, is autistic perspective the embezzled party here?

#autism #bezzled

ebk, 9 months ago

2. If so, as outcome-oriented consequentialists, is there a better response than making noise until we're heard?

Oughtn't we be quietly laying the groundwork for others to "discover" airborne transmission (etc.) as if it were their own idea—the sooner to rid the world of Covid?

Or is this the very sort of arrangement by which the autistic neurotype comes to be marginalized in the first place?

Are we really fighting against Covid?

Or for recognition?

Or, like the woman in the meeting, both?

ebk, 9 months ago

3. Other marginalized groups have been living out such questions for centuries; it's time neurodivergents build some explicit self-awareness as well.

Decades from now when everybody knows Covid was airborne, who'll recall that members of certain neurotypes knew before most anyone else?

When no one else remembers, what I'm saying is, we need to.

We need to remember our neurotribes, to themselves, to our children, literal and figurative.

Where else begin a history?

#autism #bezzled

ebk, 9 months ago

4. Framing the marginalization of autistics as an embezzlement won't make anyone famous. I'll keep talking about it, and have some tiny impact, or none.

That there's a great destiny stretching out before autistics however, should we manage, as a population, to recognize and put an end to our being culturally robbed, whether by embezzlement, pickpocketing, extortion, shakedown, fraud, etc. etc. ...

The world that would follow that, I think, is worth working toward.

#autism #bezzled

ebk, 9 months ago

@PacificNic

Agreed. It's tricky to write about what you don't know.

I know autistics best; have worked with autistic activists who changed the world; have direct knowledge of what can happen when you poke and provoke an autistic hive mind.

But, I also instinctively trust individuals who've been marginalized, because I know their perspective and allegiance will not be clouded or compromised in ways they tend to be in the non-marginalized.

So, yes, neurodivergent perspective wins, in general.

ebk, 9 months ago

@PacificNic

While we're repping our respective tribes, I should mention I'm almost certainly team ADHD as well; I've just always worked in fields where it didn't matter so much, and have never focused on ADHD as a subject matter interest. So I still don't feel comfortable speaking about it as I might.

Though of course there's a lot of known overlap, and a lot of people who only identify as one or the other may well belong to both tribes ... which in the end may be one tribe, or several. 🤷

ebk, 9 months ago

@PacificNic

I've had a post in draft I wasn't quite sure what to do with. If it please the rate-limit, I'll reply with it here.

It's essentially the intuition I first had years ago, that if I was an undiagnosed adult autistic, then there were a whole lot of us out here.

Since, the estimated ratio of autistics being born has risen dramatically; I still don't think they're very close to the truth.

In California though, where tech adepts meet assortative mating, the ratio is now 1/22.

ebk, 9 months ago

#autism

Me: Behaviors X and Y indicate an autistic neurotype is in play.

You, dismissively: But lots of people act that way!

Me:

You:

Me: nods slowly

You: drops jaw

Me: Yep. Lots of people have a neurotype in common with diagnosed autistics. And it's time to take their behavior as loosely indicative of this neurotype's true prevalence, while we wait for JAMA Pedriatics and the like to catch up.

JAMA, by the way, now says diagnosed autistics are 1 in 30.

This neurotype is legion.