It is like this…

I cannot respond to messages and say I am okay. I am not okay. I am not okay in any sense you can imagine. I think that a lot of people in a bad situation desire what I think of as real change. That is, they desire change of the kind where people look at the situation and deem it to be unacceptable, then act accordingly. Every protest of a situation that is not acceptable, from those in favour of Australia’s idiot government extending national health insurance to cover disability to Herschel Feibel Grynszpan‘s shooting of Ernst vom Rath, has that goal.

Congratulations, passives, you make me ashamed to be autistic.

I have written a lot of strong words about “the autistic problem” in this journal, and elsewhere. Words that I am sure have made many people, even fellow Powell types, gasp in shock. So here is another lot that will likely make jawbones hit knees. Today, the passive side of the autistic community, the pleaders and beggars who have no idea how much they hold us back, have done something that Autism Speaks have spent millions of dollars trying to do, and failed.

An open letter to Blizzard Entertainment

Ladies and gentlemen of Blizzard Entertainment,

You do not know me. I do not really know you, either. But given that I pay a lot in order to partake of a product you make that you clearly put many hours of tireless effort into, I dare say that you know even less about me than I do you. And of course, I am just one customer out of what you claim to be millions worldwide.

Stereotyping part fifty million.

Another big problem I have with the autistic civil rights movement in its current incarnation is that one group seems to believe its view of itself should be applied to all groups. A good example of this in recent months is a publication called Loud Hands. You see, there is a stereotype, based largely on diagnostic criteria and psychologist writing, that has it that autistic individuals rock about like badly-made chairs or wave their hands about like a six year old who has watched too many rap star videos.

Passivity is robbing me of my will to write.

Writing is a hard job. There are some people, I will not name names, who seem to mistake writing for just being a hobby or not a “real job”. There are also people who have said that writing is the only profession where one can work for hundreds of hours on a project, not get paid, and have it all considered normal.

Racism, the traps in its definitions, and what we can learn from same.

As I have hinted before, I really love to draw parallels between the struggles of racial minorities such as black people in America and the autism civil rights struggle. Whilst there are significant differences between them, there are also overlaps that have equal significance. So it is worth having a think about the manner in which minorities are discriminated against, and the lessons that autism civil rights activists can learn from same.

Semantics matter. Semantics can be exceptionally important.

It seems no matter how much I try to leave this subject alone, the issue of word choice and how it can impact in ways that the politically correct clearly never gave a stuff about keeps coming back to haunt me. Being so linguistically inclined that one can read at what you jokers call an adult level at age three has that sad effect, I suppose. But lately, the proclamations by defenders of so-called person-first language that it is merely a matter of semantics have me shaking my head.