Being erased. By other autistic people.

Autism civil rights has a very big problem. Essentially, so-called activists have decided that one culture, one vision, one order, one purpose, speaks for everyone who is autistic. This is wonderful for those of you who really do think Asshole from Big Nerd Blackface Stereotype Theory represents you. But it is an absolute nightmare for the rest of us.

Pets are cuter when they are little (or more about my involuntary holiday).

Again, the names, locations, and quotes relating to where I spent the latter half of February are fudged in order to protect identities. Since they have a policy of there being no photographic equipment being allowed on the ward to protect the privacy of the patients, I have to respect that.

During X-Men: First Class, one of the many accusing-sounding things that Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) says to Professor X (James McAvoy) is that she guesses pets are always cuter when they are little. That, in a nutshell, sums up the reality for autistic or mentally ill adults in today’s “enlightened” society. They spend literally billions of dollars advertising initiatives to “help” the children or adolescents. Sometimes they even throw a dollar or two in the direction of those services or initiatives. And when the initiatives that were too ignorant or cash-strapped to use the right approach inevitably fail, it is the children and adolescents they were supposed to serve, who end up bearing the real cost. As the failure progresses and those children or adolescents become adults, the costs mount. And in cases of severe failure, such as the failure to properly diagnose an individual before their twenty-fifth birthday, the costs borne by the patient become so high that it makes the value of life very difficult to see.

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.

I refrained from purchasing Prometheus because of format-pushing.

(Note: This article was written before the move to Sydney, and long before the holiday that I prefer to call MoneyMas. Circumstances have changed somewhat since I wrote it, but apart from a closing note, I will write more on the subject in a later article.)

I love Blu-ray Disc (aww really, I hear you cry). It is not just because the media offers the best home cinema experience money can buy, or that it makes the “cinema” part of home cinema far more literal. (There is a reason that cinemas do not project in an interlaced format, morons.) And it is not even because it is the first home cinema medium where the price seems fair relative to what I get in exchange. No, the reason I love it so is because when I watch older films that I only ever saw on VHS on Blu-ray Disc, I often see those older films in a completely different light. One that DVD cannot hold a candle to.

So they rereleased this disc _again_?

I am not sure what year it was that I saw it, but David Fincher‘s adaptation of Fight Club was released in the year I turned twenty-one. That year brought on a lot of embarrassments, dramas, and things I just dearly wish I could have taken back. But it was also the year I began to take my faltering first steps into home cinema. Somehow, I also managed to bluff my way into a gig reviewing test samples of the DVD-Video medium. It was strictly an amateur job or hobby, with the only real compensation being free discs. But it opened my eyes to a lot about not only how home video and its delivery media worked, but also how that side of the film industry worked.

Some closing thoughts for the month.

July is an odd part of the year from my perspective. My mother was born in the last week of it, and I was diagnosed with diabetes exactly thirty years to that day. I have already resolved that if my dream of being in the Human trials for a cure for diabetes comes true, I will ask them to do that procedure on my mother’s birthday. She will “get it”.

Just to reiterate: sterotyping hurts.

Whenever I start to really think about things like culture or how I look at others around me, I start to ask questions. Why do I see people in the manner that I do? How did we reach this point? Are the ways in which I see this person or this group of people fair? Questions like that can keep a philosophical person up at night, and I think it is only fair that these questions get proper exploration.