Moreover, this school of thought is likely to encounter stiff resistance from those who are disinclined to accept arbitrary rules and facile explanations like ‘Because I said so’. The inquisitive, intelligent child is unlikely to accept ‘This is wrong because I said so’ or ‘Don’t call your sister names or you’ll not be able to play video games for a week’ as an acceptable reason to avoid doing something. To such a child, an authority figure does not have ‘natural rightness’ vested in them, and fear is not an adequate motivation to avoid doing something. Rather, that child should be taught moral principles in a fashion that emphasizes their intrinsic value, as opposed to extrinsic rewards or penalties for doing something that is seen as immoral or inappropriate relative to the environment.

This happens to be one of the reasons why I am opposed to Christianity in its literalist forms: its morality is based on God’s eternal judgement, rather than morality for its own sake. Instead of teaching people to be good simply for the sake of being good, correct behaviour is predicated on avoiding hellfire and eternal damnation. Is it not better to behave morally simply because it is right, rather than being selfishly motivated out of fear of an Almighty God?

In my case, I do not feel as awkward at front any more, mostly because I have learned how to adapt to some things, and cannot say that I am as hostile to participating socially out here any more. I think actually participating in class has helped me a great deal; it has helped me to find a “niche”. M.D. has still not found that yet, but I think he will, eventually. After all, I have been here for almost two years, and he has only been here for just over six months.

It is nice to have other people around again; it reminds me of the “old days” (~2007, before my arrival, and early 2008) when we would routinely have different people around doing things that interested them, instead of the same set of a few people. I think that having things around that interest all of us seems to draw people back out. Even with the feigning non-plural constantly, having individualised activities seems to help. Before, everyone was doing the same things, and our front’s needs were different, if that makes any sense.

There seems to be this mindset that those suffering in ‘have-not’ countries are ‘less worthy’ of life, and that it’s really not ’sustainable’ to treat them because ‘oh, they get diseases anyway’. That attitude is just ridiculously callous, honestly, because who are you to determine the value of other human beings’ lives? It’s not their fault that they happen to live in a country that was ravaged by imperialism or a bad economy, or both. It’s only by an accident of birth that people in the US, the UK and other Western countries have access to treatment that people in these countries don’t have.

It reminds me (H S-K) of the idea that disabled people’s lives are less ‘valuable’ and are disposable, and that it’s just ‘okay’ to let them die just because ‘oh, they’re not able-bodied anyway, and won’t “contribute to society”‘. Again, who are you to determine who can and cannot live in that way?

I mean, just having a disability doesn’t strip all meaning from life. We’ve lived with ours for 23 years, and that doesn’t stop our collective life out here having meaning. It doesn’t make our life here worth less than anyone else’s, and it just really, really disgusts me that people can just SAY and ACT as though some people’s lives are worth less. In the same way, being a citizen of a poor country doesn’t make you worth less, either. You’re still alive. You still have basic needs and wants that should be fulfilled, just as anyone else’s should be fulfilled. That attitude, in my opinion, is partly responsible for the spread of HIV and other preventable diseases.

(yes, Public Kerry means Public Socio-Political Rants.)

You are not any ‘better’ than other members of your group simply because your system structure is one way, or because the colour of your skin is lighter than someone else’s, or because you use the standard dialect of the language as opposed to a regional or ethnic one, or because you’re more or less ‘flamboyant’ than other gay men. All it does is feed the mentality that everyone is ‘angry’ and ‘fractious’, and doesn’t help when we’re trying to be seen as equal in society. (I’m mainly talking about Western society, as I’m an English member of an American system who has only ever lived in Western countries. I don’t want to presume anything about non-Western societies, as that’s a bit out of my depth.) You may find ‘ghetto’ culture obnoxious (I often do), but that doesn’t make yourself better than its adherents, and it doesn’t make stereotypical ‘ghetto’ people less worthy of civility and equal rights. The same applies to flamboyant gays, or plural systems that don’t fit into the ‘plural community paradigm’, or anyone else who is marginalised within their own minority groups.

I’ve written about this before, mostly about the way some members of the plural community act. Seriously, there is nothing wrong with being a trauma-split, median or non-trauma-based ‘proper’ multiple system; why attack others for it, and set yourselves up as ‘the right form of plural’, depending on what part of the plural subculture you belong to? Just…whatever, seriously.

Conversely, we have no difficulty understanding larger-picture social issues, like culturally-sanctioned oppression and the privilege that stems from that. I’d say that’s a bit of a special interest of mine, honestly. That sort of social messiness is something that’s fairly easy for most of us to understand, actually. (M.D. is a bit of an exception, because he has a hard time with organised philosophical or sociological thought.) It’s a matter of understanding the big picture, but not really getting the little picture. (In fact, this describes a lot of our ‘autistic deficits’ in general, like our visual processing problems–we can notice if an area is messy or clean, but we will not always notice *why* something is considered out of place when someone complains about it.) That means that I (I’ll use myself as an example) can talk to you about why sexism, imperialism and homophobia intersect with each other in post-colonial society, but I might have a harder time working out why I’m offending you personally, unless you tell me exactly why.

Some people seem to have this mentality that they own your identity, for some ungodly reason, and how dare YOU define yourself? This mentality usually comes from people who have some inherent bias against the group you say you belong to, or people who have this idea that they’re experts on how other people work. We’ve seen it happen with transgender people–people will keep barrelling on using inappropriate pronouns even when the person comes in looking, sounding and acting like their own gender identity. One clue to their birth gender, though, and their presentation becomes entirely irrelevant. Sorry, person with an Adam’s apple, apparent flat chest and deep voice–I will now address you with female pronouns because your birth name was obviously very feminine, and no man could ever be given such a name! Because I know you are not a real man, I won’t give you the dignity of being addressed as one. (Or for a trans woman: Sorry, obviously feminine-looking person! I will now call you ‘he’ for the rest of the conversation because I know that the name your parents gave you was ‘Robert’, and no woman could ever be named ‘Robert’.) Because, you know, I OWN YOUR IDENTITY, and I have EXPOSED you for the FRAUD you are!

Trans people aren’t the only ones who’ve run into this stuff, though–it’s happened to plenty of other people. ‘Oh, you tell me you can do this? Well, that’s all good and well, but your medical records say you were diagnosed with autism, and people with autism [sic] can’t do that.’ ‘You’re upset because someone didn’t respect your identity? It happens. Move on.’ (Hi, your privilege is showing.) ‘You’re not interested in science. Come on, let’s get you some nice Barbies to play with. You like Barbies.’ ‘You’re just one person with many facets. You can’t be separate people.’

I find it…really fucking presumptuous that people can act this way, and get away with it. I talked about this about five months ago in ‘Invalidation with a Smile’. It’s just ridiculous. How hard is it for these people to understand that others’ identities do not belong to them?  My identity is MY OWN, thank you, not for every Tom, Dick and Harry to analyse, dissect, deny, wave away or reshape. It’s mine. Sometimes I need to remind myself of that, but it sure as fuck is MINE.

The most disgusting thing about this attitude is that you can’t confront it without someone thinking you’re an asshole for it. ‘Oh, they just made a mistake. They couldn’t have known better.’ ‘She’s just trying to help.’ ‘Why not look on the bright side?’ (No, I do recognise the bright side, but that doesn’t prevent me from seeing how fucked-up things can be. I don’t have to have one emotion about every single issue. Sometimes I can have mixed feelings. Sometimes I can be ambivalent! But then again, I’m supposed to be a one-dimensional personality, right? Not actually a person.)

We can relate to this. Although we’re no longer in a situation in which we’re being taught ABA-style methods for ‘acting normal’, we still feel the ‘need’ to act normal whenever we’re surrounded by others. And right now, that’s just about all the time. It makes dealing with an already stressful situation even worse, because any ‘weird’ behaviour would either be made fun of, or would be asked about constantly, where we are. We ’stim’ because we find it soothing, and because it relaxes us, and to be robbed of another means of relaxation just makes matters worse. We also feel that we have to modify our posture and speech. (We sit up straighter when others are around, but when we’re alone or around people who really don’t care about how we look, we tend to have more ‘economical’ posture. This depends on who’s fronting, though; some people tend to slouch more than others, no matter where they are.) There’s also the relative lack of downtime, which isn’t healthy, either.

For example, we often calm down by talking aloud to one another. (Some of us talk to themselves, too, even when other Fenners aren’t around.) Talking aloud helps us to process certain thoughts better. Unfortunately, if we were to talk aloud in front of some of these people, it would be very conspicuously ‘weird’, especially because our voices are distinct, and it would be an obvious conversation. We also say things repetitively to calm ourselves down. This, too, would look strange and ‘inappropriate’. We also have a few fine- and gross-motor stims, too, like hand-flapping (which we were apparently ‘trained out of’), doodling things in the air, tapping our fingers, and twitching. All these things comfort us, but they would cause a great deal of discomfort to others around us, so we try not to do those things where other people can see. But since we’re constantly around other people–ones who don’t know us well, that is, and wouldn’t understand why we did what we did–that really eliminates most of the time we have to simply relax and do things that comfort us.

There’s also the aspect of pretending to be nonplural, which is also a drain on our energy, but this is more about the autistic stuff. Richard’s currently writing an essay about that he’s going to add to the main articles page when he’s finished with it.