Read this.

From Asperger Square 8: Neurotypical Privilege.

I've been thinking for months that something like this needs to exist, did the barest beginnings of typing a list up in late June, but then realized that intersectionality was getting in the way of declaring many things autistic-exclusive. What Bev and several people in the comments have compiled is really what I wanted to get at.

That's not to say that autistics are the only ones who lack many of the privileges listed, but there's a specific way of phrasing things here that's useful and doesn't demand all the parenthetical remarks that I was inserting.

Diagnosis and something that sounds a bit fishy.

I took the ADOS today. I'm now autistic rather than "Asperger's." I don't feel fundamentally changed.

I'm being told that it's best I start the Regional Center application process tomorrow.

The fishy-sounding thing is this: I'm being told that I need a guardian appointed through the Regional Center in order for anyone to get Power of Attorney if I'm unconscious and unable to make medical decisions for myself. I questioned whether this was really necessary, as non-disabled people are able to sign forms to grant others Power of Attorney. Apparently I can't do this as a disabled person unless I have a guardian? That sounds really bizarre to me, and given what I know of guardianship/conservatorship, I don't want to rush into it. But I'm being told I must do it before eighteen or it will get too difficult.

Does anyone know if the statement I heard on that topic is accurate?

Eep.

I was on vacation and came back to my Statcounter to find a surge in people coming to my blog. It's less nerve-wracking now than before I determined the cause. I'm also a bit relieved that I never modified those posts. After my mother read those particular entries last fall, she told me it would have been better if I acknowledged that such "intentional communities" are good for some people and that I was only speaking for myself. I couldn't do it. It might have made the post more palatable to some people, but the particular power structures involved are wrong no matter who's concerned.

On another topic entirely, I'm very tired of how phone-focused many doctors are. I've not been able to email my medical doctors or my psychiatrist (I don't even have their email addresses) and it's made certain things very difficult. Speech may be supposed to be more authentic, but when I speak in medical or psychiatric contexts, I tend to end up reciting stored dialogue about how I'm fine when I'm not "fine" at all. There's a psych med I started a few weeks ago that I'd really like to get off of (Lamictal), but the only way I have of contacting my psychiatrist between appointments is by phone (she claims that she gets a better handle on how I'm "really" doing that way), and that's not workable for me at this point in time.

I had to climb out from under the virtual rock I've been hiding under for this!

Most of the World Autism Awareness Day articles I've read have felt like a slap in the face. I thought that I would take a break this morning by reading skeptic blogs instead of media hype, but I ended up reading about the details of Jenny McCarthy's latest nonsense and where infectious disease outbreaks would be most likely to occur in California. It wasn't exactly the most uplifting experience!

I burrowed under term paper duties for most of the rest of the day (after affixing an "I am not a puzzle" button to my backpack, which will remain there for the rest of the month). Then I searched out the official site. From there I found a link to Obama's statement on World Autism Awareness Day.

I'm stunned, and, for once, it's in a good way.

"We celebrate the contributions of individuals with autism, their families..." We're mentioned first. Not as an afterthought, not forgotten entirely. First, and not as burdens.

There's emphasis on barriers, stereotypes, and discrimination before treatment. That's as it should be. The first three are what hurts, rather than the mere fact of being.

"Self-advocates" in the first paragraph. Not just helpless children. Self-advocates. We have agency. I knew that, but it's been acknowledged publicly as part of an awareness event, by a major public figure (understating here, I know!).

There's mention of treatment and more person-first language than I'd like, but it's still something I never expected that I'd see. And the fact that I am seeing it has me far happier than it should.

Also.

I'm attending AutCom in Ann Arbor.

If anyone is actually interested in meeting me, the identification information in my post about Autreat is still a pretty good guide to recognizing me. Two things though: my hair is dramatically shorter than it was at Autreat and my stepmother Michelle will also be there. Much of the time, it's likely that I won't be accompanying anyone, as we're going to split up on Saturday to cover as many tracks as possible. (Though if there's a talk that I think is especially important, I might drag one of them to it.)

I'm sorry.

Anyone who's been witness to all of my online decisions these past couple of days has probably come to the conclusion that I'm panicky and quick to make hasty (and often bad) choices.

I won't say they're wrong, because they're probably not.

Anyway, what happened was that either my mother or my stepfather discovered this blog (and all my others) on Tuesday night, and I panicked. I didn't want them having access to my identity like that, so I re-named some accounts, closed others, opened others, and locked this blog. At the time I intended the lock to be permanent.

It's not now. After three days, I'm much calmer regarding the whole situation. I may be careful about what I write here in the future, but I certainly won't make my archives inaccessible. I don't think I have anything major to fear, at least from reactions to anything written on this particular blog.

I just spent time at another residential-farm/institution's website reading the rationale for why agricultural life is good for autistics.

There's something I want to establish, for the record.

I am a city person.

Yes, I am autistic. But I am still a city person. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I love the concept of having access to university lectures, concerts, well-stocked libraries, groups of people (yes, autistic doesn't mean asocial), and convenient public transportation. I don't love being surrounded by loud noise and sirens at all hours, but I'd rather find a place not on a main throughway or find a way to handle it with earplugs/noise-cancelling-headphones/anything-else than live on a rural farm.

SAGE Crossing's rationale/justification for concept has no similarity to my experiences, and clashes horribly with my worldview in general (that we should create a culture of inclusion). Theoretically a rural setting might be "safer" for autistic-me. (But is it for someone with my chronic illness? I think me-with-cystic-fibrosis is far better off in a city with nearby medical facilities.)

And there is no way that I'm going to live in a farm just because I flap my hands. People who flap their hands are allowed in cities too, for the record. And if all people who annoyed other people were sent out to the countryside, there would soon be so few people in cities that they would no longer qualify as cities.

Also, what the hell does needing to be anesthetized for routine medical procedures have to do with needing to live on an institution-farm? It seems like SAGE Crossing is just throwing out random stuff about autistics and assuming that people will infer we can't be included in society based on these disconnected, irrelevant things.

The point of intentional communities is that they're *intentional.*

Bittersweet Farms is not an intentional community.

The point of intentional communities is that a person *intends* to live there. If they decide they no longer want to, they can leave. They make decisions about their own lives.

If a person is placed into a community by someone with greater power, forced to stay there unless the person with greater power moves them out, and has important decisions about their life made by those people in power, then they're not in an intentional community. They're in an institution.

Yes, even if it is on a farm. Yes, even if they are doing work on said farm.

And no, I will never willingly consider such a living arrangement for myself, even if I think intentional communities have the potential to be really cool, because Bittersweet Farms, and the Sacramento-area farm-institution in the very early planning stages are not intentional communities.

The rantling above was triggered by one of my parental units telling me that she was interested in attending the planning-discussion meeting because before she had met my father, she was considering living in an intentional commmunity. She and my father still want me to attend the meeting, because they think that maybe I could urge them to take autistic perspectives into account in this whole process.

Perhaps I'm just too cynical and jaded, but I'm not sure it's worth bothering. At most I can only realistically imagine an autistic getting a token role in this planning process. There's no way we can get a majority. Even if we did get a sizeable minority, the power structures will still be the same, and they're the most dangerous part of the whole thing.

Googling the name of the person in charge shows that they're a Rescue Angel and that they were somehow involved with the Green Our Vaccines Rally. I know what that means from an autism-science perspective, and I'm not happy with it, but I don't know if it would have any significance from an institution-masquerading-as-pseudo-utopian-community-planning perspective.

Possible Change in Tone Upcoming

This blog will be turning into a general blog for content-containing posts that will likely be mostly autistic/disability-advocacy related, but that may not all be.

This loosening of internal subject-rule criteria comes about as a result of realizing that strict rules for myself were making it impossible for me to write *anything* here.

Tone change will hopefully come about soon, though my brain is not at peak functionality. I went to Autreat, and just got back from Texas on Sunday, and am leaving next Sunday for a trip to the Virgin Islands. Then I have a week at home, then I'm going to Petaluma the next weekend to go to a Dar Williams concert, and then I start school the Monday after that. It's all very confusing for me, and at the moment, I'd like to cut out the mega-vacation. :-/