Dear Issy

Trigger Warning: Attempted Murder, Ableism, Hate Crime Against an Autistic Person

So there's a flash blog for Issy Stapleton that is a thing. Yes, as the flash blog Autist I am fairly heavy in the running of this, as per usual.

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Dear Issy,
I want you to know that you deserve to exist. I want you to have the best life you can, and I want it to be your life, and I don't want anyone to take that away from you. I want you to be happy, whatever happy means for you, and I want you to be satisfied, whatever satisfied means for you. I want you to know that the way you are is OK. The whole being in the hospital because your mother tried to kill you thing isn't OK at all, not in the slightest, but it's not your fault. No matter what anyone tries to tell you, the way you are does not justify what was done to you. You're a person, with all that entails. You deserve to exist. You deserve to live.
The problem isn't with you. The problem is with your mother trying to kill you, and the problem is with her thinking that the status woe is a good way to describe raising an autistic daughter, and the problem is with her thinking that she had any right to make a decision about someone else continuing to live or not. It's with a society that encourages the parents of disabled children to take a martyr status. It's with a society that sympathizes with murderers and attempted murderers. Note how none of things are you being autistic or you being broken or wrong. You're not broken or wrong and you're not the problem. Never believe that you are the problem.
I want to take you away from all this and let you be somewhere that you'll be safe and where constantly triggering your fight or flight while making flight impossible (just taking a guess that your violence may be related to that) won't be a thing. I want you to be somewhere that accepts the person you are, not the child who never arrived, and where you won't be pushed to be the child who never arrived.
There may be people who say that they need to do horrible things to you because of the way you are. They're wrong.
You deserve to exist. You deserve people who care about you, really care, the kind of caring where they want you to have what you want even when it's different from what they think you should want. You are not broken. You are not a mistake. You are a person, with all that entails. Your life has value. You are not a burden. You are allowed to take up space. You deserve to exist. You deserve to live.

用中文谈自闭症

This is basically the stuff I said to my academic director on campus in Tianjin, since she wanted to know more about how autism applied to me, and also the difference between autism and Aspergers.

On the difference between the two:
问“Aspergers”和自闭症者有什么不同，要看是DSM里的不同，心理家用的不同，或普通人认为的不同。在DSM－IV，不同在一个人有几个自闭症的特点。如果特点够了，三岁前能知道有这些特点，应该是自闭症。如果特点是少一点的，两岁前开始说话，能说“Aspergers。”心理家知道这一部分，而他们也会认为“Aspergers”是清一点的。普通人常常以为所有的能说话的自闭症者是“Aspergers”的，有可能以为所有的自闭症者会害得自己。（实际上，好多的自闭症者不是那样做的，有“Aspergers”的会那样做。）看我的能力，人大多认为我肯定是“Aspergers，”而我的自闭症的特点比较多。

On what's going to be relevant to me in the classroom:
老师要知道我不能一边看像注意听一边真的注意听。我动来动去，手里玩儿小东西。我不太会看老师的眼睛，可能不会看老师。
如果我摔了，说“OW！”我大概摔的没有那么厉害。我国什么都不说，可能真的受伤了。
有时候，我不能说话。英文和中文“不能说”的时间没有那么大的关系。无论能不能说，我还能打字。我也能写，但是我泻得很乱。
要知道我想什么，要看我的手。看我的脸儿你会猜错。

And the best part? She just believed me, on all of it. So much easier than dealing with folks who think that they must know how my brain wiring affects me than I do. (wow that actually sounds kind of silly. how my brain wiring affects me, I mean.)

I love explaining my autism to people who know they don't know!

That's not sarcasm, by the way. Explaining what I need and possibly why to someone who thinks they know all about autism is really hard, because what I need and what people tend to think all "people with autism" need is really different. I don't care if the dorm you stick us in is dirty as long as it's not of the "going to make me sick" kind. I don't care if the restaurant you want to take us all to is dirty as long as it's not of the "going to make me sick" kind. I probably don't even care if it's loud. I care that the noises aren't of the specific kinds that will trigger my sensory issues, but general loud isn't always a problem. Crowded subways? Crowded bus? Navigating new locations? Fine, fine, and fine. And of course, my education can go just fine without my being "table ready." Demanding that I be so is actually where we're going to get into trouble!
And the things I do need? Might not be unusual, but they're not things that you would think of for a small child, which means that people probably won't think of them: people hear autism and tend to think of small children, not adults. Touching me without warning is bad. Flash photography is bad. When I can speak, I'm pretty impressively verbal, but yes, selective mutism is a thing. "If I'm hurt and I say 'ow' as it happens, it's probably not serious, but if I'm silent that's a bad sign." That's not something people usually expect. But it's the way I am.
The extent to which it is better? I'd rather explain this stuff in Chinese without dictionary access (that's what I did right before I started writing) than explain to someone who thinks they know when they don't. But the info that my academic director got? One of the things in it was that each person would be different and you should see how it applies to them. That's one of the most important things, I think: none of it is going to be universal, though much of it will be good as prompts of "is this accurate" or for letting us modify to how we specifically are. Having a fairly specific prompt is really helpful for me.

*Cries*

Trigger Warning: Erasure, ableism, meltdowns

I am dealing with too many messes right now. Just too many. The Feminist Wire is still being horrible. They said they were engaging, but that kind of involves talking to the people having the problem and they're not doing that. At all. Even the thing where they said they were engaging (conversation off this tweet)? Wasn't doing that. Mama Be Good may be an awesome parent of an Autistic kid, but she's still a parent, not herself an Disabled person having access issues with their call. Part of her awesome is the fact that she recognizes that, and actually talked some about why them talking only to her on Twitter is bad. And I've sent them an email that's been unanswered since August 29, which is before the tweet where they claimed to be engaging. And just a reminder that they did, in fact, think that this was a possible solution to cognitive inaccessibility.

Dear Alyssa,
We appreciate your feedback and comments.  We've discussed the concerns, and rather than rewriting the CFP again, or creating multiple versions, we invite you (and others) to share your own interpretation of the CFP with your communities.  This seems to us the most reasonable and helpful way to proceed.
Best wishes,
Editorial Collective

I tried that, by the way- it didn't go well. We did find someone willing and able to translate, but since The Feminist Wire isn't talking to me anymore, or really to any of the actual Disabled people who have issues, much at all ever, we don't know how accurate it is. It feels like maybe they're doing the "ignore them and maybe they'll go away" method of social media crisis management. So I may have escalated, and Thinking Person's Guide to Autism tweeted at them too. (I asked them to.) (I have some issues with TPGA, but I can be pragmatic and this is a sufficiently clear-cut issue that I thought they might tweet. I was right.)

That's The Feminist Wire.
Now China.

I'm in China! Yay! Also, my medical exam didn't have a stamp across my picture from the doctor because that's not something we do in the USA. It's just not. The doctor doesn't even have a stamp for that. So I and everyone else in my program had to re-do the medical exam, including a fasting blood test. It was loud and busy and crowded, so I was pretty overloaded by the time we were done. And instead of going straight to food? Because it's now noon and no one's had breakfast and I didn't have dinner either? We go to the entrance-exit administration to get residence permits. Guess what they want? PHOTOS! Guess what else they want? To take them themselves! With flash! Such a strong flash that I'm jumping a foot from it while I'm not even in the same room! Yeah, that's not a thing I can do, and certainly not while overloaded and really hungry. Cue first public meltdown of the day. In the entrance-exit administration of Tianjin. Yup. That's great. /sarcasm. Then we got food as a group, and, um, spending what I would normally spend on a meal and a half to eat at a place that's overall less noisy but has more of the sensory issue sounds and not actually get full? Yes, that's wonderful. And the suggestion? Eat more for dinner. Oh, wait, we're supposed to do something right after this with people showing us how to get to the other campus, which is something I'm supposed to remember. NO I CAN'T STILL BE HUNGRY FOR THAT, YOU WANT ME TO REMEMBER THINGS. Also we only got 15 minutes break between these things, which I spent curled up in a ball having a quiet meltdown in my room. Which meant that I wasn't able to get food. So I go downstairs to meet people. And it's pouring, so I don't have my laptop, which means I don't have AAC. And I'm only semi-verbal, even in Chinese. They decide they're going to wait for the rain to slow down a bit before doing the thing, so I tell them I'm getting food. They come up with lots of other things they think I should do, and I'm all out of politeness energy, so what comes out is “如果我们不是现在出去的，我是现在找吃的。” (If we're not leaving right now, I'm finding food now.) In response to a suggestion that when we leave (which we're not doing because we're waiting for the rain to let up some) we can get me food. Which isn't actually a good thing to say to a teacher. Students are supposed to be deferential and all. BUT teachers are also supposed to look out for the well-being of their students! And they weren't able to do that.
Then once I was back, they wanted me to introduce myself. I've actually got a script, but I was kind of mute at the time? So I wound up gesturing and no one understood what I was trying to gesture and then I wound up curled up in a ball under the table having a second semi-public meltdown. Yup. So I'm kind of scared now, since I melted down at least semi-publicly twice in a day and my program is super-selective and all.

That's being in China.
Now stuff back on campus in the USA.

Um. eCampus says I'm just a grad student now, and I was just an undergrad over the spring and summer. These are false. I've been both since Spring 2013 and will remain both through Spring 2015, when I graduate from engineering and Chinese. Enrollment services, who do most of the eCampus stuff, think I should talk to my advisers. But wait! If I'm not enrolled, I don't actually have advisers, do I? Thankfully my advisers who I should have are still acting as such, because they are cool like that. It's also messing up my financial aid, because you can't get aid for programs that you're not enrolled in and as far as aid goes, eCampus=reality. The problem is that eCampus is not matching up with reality, and I've never been able to make enrollment services fix anything without showing up in their office before. So once again school is messing stuff up. See also: reasons I don't trust schools to do things right ever ever ever. At least my Chinese adviser has said that if there is anything she can do to help, I should let her know. I told her that going to Enrollment services and yelling at them might be it since I've never gotten them to fix anything without going there in person before. : /

So that's my life. I've also got various papers to write, and the Chinese flagship people are now thinking I shouldn't take the math class I want because of the hours it meets (it's evening) and ugh. Stop. The amount of messiness I deal with to get and keep classes and stuff I want/care about? Fairly high. For stuff I don't much care about? Near zero. So you all should probably just let me have the classes I actually want? Like, the language classes are being described in ways that sounds like they fall under "obnoxious stuff I'll deal with so I can have my direct enrollment classes." 

Feminist Wire's Call Translated

It is an optimistic, still super-wordy but with easier words, version of the call for submissions. Apparently someone actually could do that. Yay!Since this one was neither created nor shared by The Feminist Wire, the social media crisis is still on. Details on that found in earlier post.
Because telling disabled people "If you think accessibility matters you do it" isn't acceptable.
Filling their submissions with essays on why that stuff isn't acceptable and on why making sure the people you're "inviting" to contribute can understand the invitation? Totally a good idea.

This is a guest post by Amanda

We have noticed recently that more people in academia have taken an interest in talking about disability. For instance, at a recent conference on "Cripistemologies," people who study disability talked with people who study gender and sexuality about many topics, including animals, chronic pain and injury, and how transgender people express themselves and are seen, especially focusing on their bodies.

We like to bring together different areas of study and talk about how they can work together, and we think it's important to talk about justice and injustice and how they affect how we think. But we're not sure how to feel about the fact that people from other academic fields suddenly want to talk about disability studies, especially since people who study disabilities have been thinking and talking about important things for a long time before now. How does it affect disabled people when people talk about disability as a way to understand the relationships between humans and animals, for example? We need to talk critically about what it means for disabled people when able people use their lives and experiences to make points that aren't about disability justice.

So that's why we thought we needed this forum. We ask: Why are people who didn't talk about disability before talking about it now? Whom does it affect, and how, to talk about disability as part of discussions about other kinds of injustice? Is it harmful to disabled people when able people use their lives and experiences as a metaphor for other things? How will it affect the field of disability studies that already exists, when people in other fields of study start paying attention to it? Will the academic study of disabilities by people in other fields have an effect on the people in disability studies who focus on real-world experiences and meeting real needs? And how can the academic study of disability learn from activists and people who work to improve the lives of disabled people?

We also thought it would be good to talk about disability itself, and we hope this forum will provide a safe space to do so. Here are some questions and ideas we hope the forum will talk about:

What is it like to be disabled in the 21st century? How are disabled people's experiences different because of where they live, the technology they can use, how much money they have, their race, and the fact that some disabilities are invisible?

What different kinds of identities (race, gender, class) are often forgotten when we talk about disability and disabled people's experiences, and what kind of harm does that do?

We think race, class, and gender are the three big ways that people are classified that affect their lives. What's the best way to talk about those without forgetting about or ignoring disabled people's experiences?

How should feminism address disabilities? What is it like to be a disabled feminist?

When we talk about “disability” like it's just one thing, does that cause us to ignore the many different kinds of disabilities and the many different experiences of disabled people?

What are some good and bad things about crip feminism?

What are good things that people and organizations do now to challenge ableism?

What is disability? What does it mean to be disabled?

Which people and what topics are missing from the conversation about disability?

How do other kinds of discrimination and injustice interact with ableism?

We welcome you to submit things you have written or created on the topic of disability. We want all kinds of submissions, even visual art! Our guidelines and submission form are here (link to accessible guidelines incorporating all the requirements for this specific forum AND the general ones, and if possible, make these less annoying). If you have questions about something you'd like to submit, email us at feministwire@gmail.com.

If you'd like to send us a submission, please send it by October 10, 2013. The forum will be in late October and early November.
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And have a link pile of all the posts relevant. Including this post. 
https://twitter.com/yes_thattoo/status/372905836009373696
https://twitter.com/yes_thattoo/status/373047824268554240
http://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/2013/08/see-you-and-social-media-crisis.html
https://www.facebook.com/yesthattooaut/posts/385772201549948
https://www.facebook.com/TheFeministWire/posts/639654089385812
http://yesthattoo.tumblr.com/post/59647010589/yes-that-too-see-you-and-a-social-media-crisis
http://timetolisten.blogspot.com/2013/08/feminist-wire-you-may-not-colonize-my.html
http://timetolisten.blogspot.com/2013/08/more-on-trending-and-monoliths.html
http://thatautisticthatnewtownforgot.blogspot.com/2013/08/inaccessible-language-and-tfws-call-for.html
http://neuroqueer.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-feminist-wire-id-like-word_7551.html
http://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/2013/08/so-much-for-interpretation.html
http://chavisory.tumblr.com/post/59874700134/yes-that-too-so-much-for-interpretation
https://twitter.com/mamabegood/status/373060889269637120

http://yesthattoo.blogspot.com/2013/09/feminist-wires-call-translated.html