
How an autistic writer changed the way novelist David Mitchell sees his own son - jdnier
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.4167729/how-this-writer-with-autism-changed-the-way-novelist-david-mitchell-sees-his-own-son-1.4203896
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jdnier
Some excerpts from his first book give a sense of the depth of his (Naoki's)
internal experience:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhPKpte3E78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhPKpte3E78)

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4ccc0f9200a7a
I'm autistic and this passage is disturbing to me:

"It upended many of the ... sort of inherited pieces of wisdom that I thought
I knew about autism. For example, that people with autism can't emote, or that
they don't have emotions, or they can't imagine that they're inside the head
of someone else. And also, that they don't have imaginations, or don't aspire
to other areas of life more than a day-to-day survival. Naoki, even when he
was writing as a 13-year-old ... seemed, internally, to be as fully-
functioning and as capable of — if not enjoying life, aspiring to enjoy life —
as a neurotypical child. So this made all the difference for us."

Our basic humanity is a revelation to people, even our parents, and they have
to learn about it from books when we're right there. I swear that a lot of the
clinical language around autism is normal people projecting. I mean, think of
the terrible things he admitted believing about his own son, and tell me
that's not a theory-of-mind or empathy impairment.

I've never thought, "Gee, normal people are different than me. They must be
robots unlike myself, the real human being." There's obviously someone IN
there, also in animals. People don't actually have a hard time thinking that
their nonverbal animals are people, but they have a hard time thinking
nonverbal people are people.

Really stop and think how fucked up it is for the stigma to be THAT
dehumanizing. Try dating when people believe this stuff about you.

While people are going around assuming I don't have a mind, they also get to
cause me a great deal of sensory discomfort, totally oblivious to the fact
that they're doing it. Hooray for you, loud motorcycle guy! Nice lawn, asshole
with a leaf blower!

[http://wearelikeyourchild.blogspot.nl/2017/02/sometimes-
its-...](http://wearelikeyourchild.blogspot.nl/2017/02/sometimes-its-not-me-
its-you.html)

If you read a passage like the one I quoted and it's a revelation to you, you
should NOT pat yourself on the back for feeling aware and tolerant. You should
feel ashamed for having spent your whole life until that moment making
autistic people's lives shitty. And you should resolve to learn compassion for
all sentient beings and meditate to make the world suffer less.

I appreciate the guy for his honesty that I could quote him to make a point. I
think the reporter already decided it was a feel-good story, so they didn't
probe into darker aspects of Autism Parents.

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/at-the-mercy-of-
imbeciles...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/at-the-mercy-of-imbeciles-
comments-on-aba/)

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/lacanian-
psychoanalysis-a...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/lacanian-
psychoanalysis-aba-and-the-children-who-wont-speak/)

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/this-is-autism-awful-
bitc...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/this-is-autism-awful-bitch-abuses-
child-on-tv-audience-suggests-circus-or-concentration-camp-for-him/)

The fact that normal people can watch CHILD ABUSE and not understand that it's
child abuse is much worse than me being blunt about describing the reality of
why autism sucks, which is normal people.

I don't think normal people should feel good about autism right now. Why don't
we just get rid of vaccination to prevent people like me from being born?
That's pretty normal. It's not like eugenics is a new idea. Everybody knows
Asperger cherry-picked the patients he reported and described them that way so
the Nazis wouldn't kill them, right? (See Neurotribes)

They sterilized 2 of my great aunts for epilepsy. Both later committed
suicide. Normal people did that, and it's normal to think that way now.

Something nobody ever thinks about: if this guy didn't understand his son was
sentient for a long stretch of time before reading an autism autobiography, do
you think maybe that contributed to his son's problems with mentalization and
emotion regulation? Do you think that's a little bit invalidating, which when
it happens chronically gives people borderline personality disorder, which
makes people injure themselves? I REALLY question what's autism and what's the
effect of normal people having autistic children.

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/imagine-
if-1-in-68-childr...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/imagine-
if-1-in-68-children-born-to-white-families-were-black/)

Anyone can read online about why autistic adults think the standard treatment,
ABA, is abusive. That's the not-feel-good part of "neurodiversity."

After years of "treatment" and talking about their kids in front of them like
they're not there, parents then turn around and blame AUTISM and direct funds
to prevention instead of doing anything to improve my life and the lives of
people worse off than me. In fact, they're extremely hostile and dismissive of
autistic adults, which is the world they're creating for their children. Other
people have said this before me, for years.

Even more unpleasant truth: bullying and dehumanization are necessary features
of capitalism, and it's white men's fault more than anyone else's.

[http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/slave-owners-thought-
free...](http://thesubjectsupposedtoknow.us/slave-owners-thought-free-market-
capitalism-was-a-humanitarian-outrage/)

Feel bad about autism today. Thanks.

~~~
sethjgore
I hear you. The same goes for deaf children being born to hearing adults. The
treatment they get often is horrifying, yet being deaf myself, I understand
the horror of the parent. "how the hell am I supposed to talk with my child,
how can I raise it..."

World is equally dismissive of deaf people, adults and children alike,
especially those who choose to sign rather than to speak and try to hear,
which is often futile.

Sign language is exceedingly cheap and every single one of us can learn it
from birth and even earlier than spoken languages. It is the de facto,
noninvasive linguistic solution for all deaf children But we as a society
dismiss it immediately because, hubris and interia of social norms. the same
is for preventation of autism.

I know two loving parents who give all of their time to two of their autistic
children, but I can see their effort take toll on them. They cannot go
anywhere without their children throwing a fit. It is sad. It is a struggle
for us all. Especially you!

The same is true for deaf children whose parents neglect them over dinners,
over events, the deaf child is alone and neglected. We have fought for more
awareness in the last hundred years, and its slowly getting better, but the
stigma is still there.

But do I blame the "white man"? It is baseless and reductive to "Skin Color".
That's why nothing ever moves forward. Because we keep on criticizing the
ownership of skin pigmentation.

It is baseless to label the whole light-skinned party for the vain crimes of
greed and prescriptive thought.

Rather, I blame the rich, ego-filled man. The rich, ego-filled people who are
the criminals. The people with a western view of the world, dismissing all the
richness of humanity for riches of cash and vanity. The western thought.

