Nick Walker vs. the idea of the autistic community

Mona_Pereth

Nick Walker is the author of many essays that have influenced the development of the autistic community.  (Note that "community" in this context means "subculture.")  So it was a shock to see her put down the very idea of the autistic community, recently on Twitter.  When I asked for clarification, she wrote:

One bad result is that autistic identity politics tends to artificially increase autistic people's sense of alienation & difference from their non-autistic fellow humans, in ways that curtail opportunities for growth and connection.

I've always known that I was very different from the vast majority of people.  I didn't need the autistic community or any other subculture to tell me this.

But, throughout my adult life, I have sought out a variety of oddball subcultures as places to find fellow outsiders of one kind or another.  I am quite sure that I would have been MUCH lonelier without these subcultures.

In my opinion, the autistic community satisfies real needs and could potentially satisfy even more needs, of many more autistic people, if it were bigger and better organized than it is now.

I don't consider full-blown autistic separatism to be a good thing.  But, while autistic separatists do exist, they aren't very common, as far as I can tell.  Among the autistic adults I've gotten to know via the autistic community, most are still doing what they can to live their lives in the neurotypical world and to get along with neurotypical folks as best they can, but use the autistic community as a place to find people who can understand them much better than anyone else can.

The relatively few autistic separatists and Aspie supremacists in the autistic community are not, in my opinion, sufficient reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

On the other hand:

Nick also wrote:

Another bad result is that bullying is widespread in autistic communities, and many victims of autistic-on-autistic bullying are so stuck in their sense of autistic identity that they think their only options are to stay in abusive autistic communities or to have no community.

These are indeed real problems.

But I think these are problems that can be solved or at least mitigated.  They are not, in my opinion, a reason to give up on the very idea of the autistic community.

I've been involved in a variety of oddball subcultures throughout my life, and I've studied the early history of some of them.  As far as I can tell, most small subcultures go through phases in which there is an extreme amount of bullying and general drama.  Typically these phases happen when a growing subculture is still very small and stigmatized.

A few of the examples I'm aware of are:

1) The feminist movement in the late 1960's.  See Jo Freeman's famous essay  Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood.

2) The Pagan community in the 1970's.  Back in the late 1970's, I remember seeing a newspaper called Earth Religion News that was full of really nasty infighting.

3) The lesbian subculture around 1980, especially in cities other than New York City.  My impression was that the infighting wasn't nearly as bad in NYC as it apparently was in a lot of other places.

... and a variety of other, more recent examples I won't name.

About 15 to 20 years ago, I remember remarking that subcultures in the throes of extreme infighting were going though what I called an "underground sleaze phase."

The important point here is that a subculture's underground sleaze phase can be just a phase.  A subculture can grow beyond it, once the subculture becomes big enough, diverse enough, and well-organized enough.

In order to outgrow its underground sleaze phase, a subculture needs to consist of a wide enough variety of groups (both in-person and otherwise) and services so that people have choices about which group(s) to join and which services to use.  So, if people get badly treated in one group, they can easily find another, better group.

Once a subculture gets big enough and diverse enough, group leaders must earn their right to lead by actually being good (or at least decent) leaders, and likewise service providers must actually provide good services in order to earn money from the community.  In a sufficiently large and diverse subculture, neither leaders nor service providers can get away with being bullies merely by virtue of being the only game in town, nor can they have any chance of gaining a monopoly by merely dissing the competition.

Another thing that can help a lot is for people in the subculture, especially leaders, to develop an appreciation of the need for dispute resolution procedures and conflict resolution skills.

As I see it, the two main underlying problems of the autistic community, as a subculture, are:  (1) we are still too damned small and unorganized and (2) too few of us have any appreciation at all of the need for well-thought-out dispute resolution procedures, or of the need for widespread training in autistic-friendly variants of conflict resolution skills such as assertiveness (without being aggressive) and active listening.

Both of these problems are fixable.  They can't be fixed immediately, but they can be fixed over time if enough of us see the need to do so.

What will NOT help to fix them is leading figures in the autistic community dissing the very idea of an autistic community.

verity

I have met a few ASD separatist and even encountered ASD supremacists. Like most extremist you can't really reason with them.  The opposite extreme is also an issue and I find that neither help advocacy much and they spend most of the time reducing the discussion to a good vs. bad, black an white.

Our biggest obstacle to unified Autistic community is we aren't a personality we don't think the same we have different interests.

I actually don't approach Autistic liberation and advocacy from singular community form. To some extent I get where Nick is coming from. LGBT rights didn't come from a singular subculture it came out of several subcultures. Leadership arose within specific political structures and not as an absolute representative of a singular community.

I intensely dislike over amalgamation of movements, they loose important distinctions, and there is an unhealthy obsession with weighting disadvantage which lead to destructive internal politics, and divisive external politics.

One of the difficulties of community building, at least for some of us, is it runs counter to many of our instincts. While I don't hate social interaction, I don't desire a lot of it. At the same time I do realise the limitation of this given how interconnected the world is and how not being good or able for network has distinct disadvantages. This is something I'm looking to try an adapt as best I can.

Advocacy mostly about education of communities other then your own, which requires constructive dialogue. A support network can be helpful depending on the resources available but is only part of advocacy.

I don't claim to be a natural when it comes to community building, but  at very least we can hang out here and be comfortable being the person we are.

Mona_Pereth

Looking again at what I wrote above, "underground sleaze" is probably not the best term for the current phase of the autistic community, although it's a good term for the somewhat similar phases of some other subcultures I've been involved in.

Just as many autistic people, as individuals, have reached developmental milestones in an order different from the order in which most NT's reach them, so too the autistic community, as a subculture, has been reaching developmental milestones an an order different from other subcultures.

For example, we already have (and have had, ever since 2011) a Washington-based organization with full-time paid staff, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, that lobbies Congress on our behalf.  (ASAN was founded way back in 2006 and hired its first paid staffer in 2011, according to its history here.)

As far as I can tell, most subcultures of marginalized people don't get to have full-time professional lobbyists in Washington until after they've become much better organized, at a grassroots level, than the autistic community is now.

So in some ways the autistic community has already become downright respectable, and has been so for over a decade.  Yet it is severely lacking in grassroots muscle.

Mona_Pereth

verity said:

I have met a few ASD separatist and even encountered ASD supremacists. Like most extremist you can't really reason with them.  The opposite extreme is also an issue and I find that neither help advocacy much and they spend most of the time reducing the discussion to a good vs. bad, black an white.

Our biggest obstacle to unified Autistic community is we aren't a personality we don't think the same we have different interests.

It's not necessary for the autistic community to be completely "unified."  Indeed a healthy subculture, of whatever kind, includes a wide variety of distinct groups that sometimes work together on some things, but go their separate ways the rest of the time.

I actually don't approach Autistic liberation and advocacy from singular community form.

Me neither.  IMO we need a wide variety of groups for autistic people who have more in common than just autism.  See, for example, the various kinds of groups I mention in Longterm Visions for the Autistic Community.

 To some extent I get where Nick is coming from. LGBT rights didn't come from a singular subculture it came out of several subcultures. Leadership arose within specific political structures and not as an absolute representative of a singular community.

I think of the LGBT community as a subculture in its own right, but ALSO as consisting of lots of smaller sub-subcultures.

Anyhow, I didn't get the impression that Nick was making a distinction between a "singular community" and a grouping of smaller subcultures.  Rather, if I understand correctly, Nick now seems to be rejecting the very idea of forming communities based on marginalized identities.

Furthermore, Nick now seems to be rejecting the very idea of the autistic community, in particular, because of bullying behaviors she has encountered (or at least observed) within the autistic community.

I intensely dislike over amalgamation of movements, they loose important distinctions,

Depends on the nature of the "amalgamation" and how it is done.  To me it makes sense to acknowledge both commonalities and differences, and to form alliances where possible.

 and there is an unhealthy obsession with weighting disadvantage which lead to destructive internal politics, and divisive external politics.

Whether it's "destructive" depends on how it is done.  But I think it's important to acknowledge different kinds and degrees of marginalization and privilege within a group.

One of the difficulties of community building, at least for some of us, is it runs counter to many of our instincts.

That's probably one of our biggest sources of difficulty in organizing the autistic community.  Many autistic people just don't know how to relate to the whole idea of community or even friendship.  Based on what I've seen various people say in autistic forums, it seems that many autistic people are lonely but have no idea how to go about making friends -- and especially how to make friends in any natural way that doesn't involve a huge, exhausting amount of masking.

While I don't hate social interaction, I don't desire a lot of it. At the same time I do realise the limitation of this given how interconnected the world is and how not being good or able for network has distinct disadvantages. This is something I'm looking to try an adapt as best I can.

We need to find ways to build and sustain both  friendships and groups with less social interaction than is desired by most extroverted NT's.

Mona_Pereth

P.S. to my previous message above:

verity said:

Advocacy mostly about education of communities other then your own, which requires constructive dialogue. A support network can be helpful depending on the resources available but is only part of advocacy.

In my opinion, support and advocacy are both important, and they complement each other.

Amity

My observation on autistic communities...

There are concerns around control and trust, leading to protection of 'the self' by any means necessary...

An autustic sense of self is difficult to develop... based on personal experience.

As with anyone there are many conditioned layers of 'I should be xyz', people will be at various stages in this process or comfortably set in their ways.

Some past members wanted Neurovoice to be exclusively Autistic and left because it was not... for us though, experiencing segregation in our communities and observing its long term impact is enough evidence that separatism does not build a balanced community and inbuilds barriers to progress.

Personally... I sense the way forward is through alliances between broad communities of disabled people, something similar perhaps to affiliated labour unions.

State resources for people with disabilities will always be scarce and those provided will typically prioritise disabled people who can support or contribute to an economy.

Division in disabled communities seems to be a natural consequence of this approach, 'the haves and the have nots'. Complacency from those who's voice can be heard.

For me this ties back into the sense of self and the approach to valuing is an example of interjected societal values, unhelpful ones, broadly speaking, internalised abelism.

How can a person have a semi-solid sense of self if one of their core beliefs is that they are 'less than'?

And around the cycle seems to go... control and protection, self interests, conditioning, limited resources, division, complacency, interjected values and the struggle with the 'sense of self'.

*These are simply my meandering thoughts on this topic

verity

Anyhow, I didn't get the impression that Nick was making a distinction between a "singular community" and a grouping of smaller subcultures.  Rather, if I understand correctly, Nick now seems to be rejecting the very idea of forming communities based on marginalized identities.

I wouldn't blame Nick for that. A community as a concept that is is difficult pin down, except when formalised. We all know what a civilisation or even  society is, but what is a community outside of clear geographic boundaries and where it not mutually exclusive of any other group? Most people understand it as a bit more that people just passing by in a place or virtual location. It has a some sort of group interaction that is desired, some Camaraderie or sense of belonging.

I personally think it involves cooperation, but this is difficult to achieve without some sort of ideology or political movement, my experience is over a decade of trying is people on the spectrum are quite suspicious  of community building initiatives and to be honest not necessarily interested in cooperating outside of their personal interests. This is not meant as a criticism, I think communal life doesn't suit all people on the spectrum even if some rule based folk may be OK with it. They are more then happy to meet up and interact, even organise sometimes,  so long as we can with withdraw and focus on our own stuff without and implied duty to the community. Conflicts arise when there is a set idea of community objective becuase folk have very different ideals and we have seen that.

Why a person might not like a certain Autisic community? Probably not the same reason why another doesn't like that community. They may believe they are the same an perhaps some are, but much of the time what unifies them is simply the grievance rather then their similarities. This present a challenge for community building because of a difference in expectations. 

This is why I'd be hard pressed to say that the overall community of Autistic people is a community in the same sense that other subculture within might form a community, it is just a collective noun for ASD folk. 

Also a lot of identity politic is very US focused at the movement, and also Western European focused. Different societies would have cultural implications for living as an autistic person.

darkcloak_dragon

Amity said:

Some past members wanted Neurovoice to be exclusively Autistic and left because it was not...

What does "exclusively Autistic" mean? They wanted no non-autistic people allowed? Or they wanted autistic but not aspergian people allowed?

Amity

darkcloak_dragon said:

Amity said:

Some past members wanted Neurovoice to be exclusively Autistic and left because it was not...

What does "exclusively Autistic" mean? They wanted no non-autistic people allowed? Or they wanted autistic but not aspergian people allowed?

No non Autistics allowed, so for example a member who had been open about their familial autism and personal diagnosis of ADHD would not have been allowed under that approach, or if allowed would have been relegated to second class status.

Segregation doesn't work, I see it here in Northern Ireland today, I see it  throughout world history. Inclusion however, seems to create a more balanced ecosystem.