I've been doing a lot of reading lately, about people who are different. I've found that there's a lot out there about being on the receiving end of different kinds of prejudice, and I am very grateful for those who do that kind of writing. It has inspired me to answer somehow. Today I reached some important revelations about what I was doing when I was younger and I was so fascinated by the stories of the people who were the targets of such behavior. In response, here I write an open letter to the little girl I was around first or second grade.
To the little girl who wants so badly to be different,
It isn't just your imagination. The prejudice you're sensing is real, and it has real causes in things that are just under the surface of who you are. Your mind really does work differently, and there's a proper name for it. It's called Asperger's Syndrome. In third grade, you will meet a boy who has it and doesn't like you, so you won't have much to do with him, but your class will be taught about what it is in ways that you'll hear but not understand until you look back and remember about him four years later. In fifth grade, there will be a boy who identifies you before anyone else does, and you'll feel a little sorry for him because he claims it as his own identity even though it's obviously a medical diagnosis.
And then, in sixth grade, you'll get the diagnosis for yourself and realize that you know exactly why he did.
You've been bullied all your life, little girl, and it will get better, but it will never go away completely. Your mommy will try to teach you how to deal with it and ignore it, but that isn't what you're looking for. This is:
Your concerns are real. Your worries are real and have good reasons for being there. You aren't just undergoing some twisted rite of passage--you're being attacked because your classmates can tell that you are different and want you to change. And your job, which will be hard but very much worth it, is to hold on to yourself.
You are going to be persecuted, just like you'll find out in fourth grade that Jesus promised--and the other half of that promise will be fulfilled too: the rewards will be great. Hold on to that promise. It'll help you survive a lot of trauma in fourth grade, and seventh grade, and tenth grade, and twelfth grade, and also in the spaces between the hardest fights. Pray, even when it's hard to find the words. Ask for help, but don't believe anyone who tells you that your senses are lying. The funny high-pitched noise that comes out of the TV is real too, and anyone who can't hear it just doesn't have hearing as sensitive as yours. You are different because you can see things, hear things, and do things that other people can't. You are different because you can't help these things.
There are other people out there who are different for other things they can't help, like where their families are from or what they look like or how they understand themselves. You're already fascinated by them--good. You're looking to their histories because you want to identify with them--to see your own life mirrored in what they have to face--and because you want to do something to make up for how other people have treated them. Keep listening to their stories and learning from their struggles, because you can learn a lot from them. You'll learn how to treat them with the respect everyone deserves, and you'll learn how to demand the same from the people who are hurting you when your turn comes to tell your own story. The most important thing you'll learn is that people who are supposed to be big and responsible and powerful can be wrong, and that they need to be challenged when they are.
I know you're looking at these stories because you're so desperate to see some kind of truth that will explain what you're seeing in the world. Keep looking. The truth is in there, even though some of these stories aren't about "your" people. Oppression is a real thing, and because you see it you have the responsibility to fight it. Because you are of a few of those groups, you have a story in there yourself. You don't know what you are yet, but when in due time you will find out what identities are in your blood and heart and mind. Value your own identity, and the ones that you can only watch and fight for. Don't forget that for every one you aren't a part of, you will one day know and love someone who is. Don't forget that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." All kinds of bullying are wrong, and if you can you should stand up to the bullies.
There is no forbidden knowledge. Don't worry about what the teachers say--it's okay to sit down and study everything you want to learn about. Learn about science, and when two books disagree ask questions about why. Immerse yourself in history, and you will have lived over a hundred years' worth of questions and culture and growth by the time you are old enough to look out at the present day. No matter what anyone tells you, this is worth learning about. You have the ability to be more than you are expected to be, and that is how you get there.
People will hate you for who you are. People will threaten and insult you for daring to exist. Worse, people who mean you well will try to make you hide yourself and harm yourself because your safety is uncomfortable to people who will hate you no matter what. If you realize taking that advice is hurting you, draw the line. Your safety is important, and your body belongs to you. By the time you reach seventh grade--as you'll calculate in second grade because of books you're reading and liking, that's the first year of junior high school and the year your body will start changing to look more like an adult--you will need to know that how you look to other people is less important than simply being able to navigate life without being hurt. If performing the woman-act interferes with your ability to do everyday things like going to school, the first priority should be to be able to do your everyday things. Mommy will talk a lot about priorities. You will set your own, and it's okay if they don't always agree with hers. Existing is the first priority.
Don't let anyone tell you that being different is bad, or that you aren't different. You are not capable of everything that everyone else can do, because you are capable of things that other people can't even imagine. You will know what you can and can't do before you are old enough for people to believe you. Keep telling the truth as you understand it, no matter what. They will come around. And--as you will understand instinctively--it will pay off.
When your feelings tell you something that doesn't make sense in the world you're told you live in, stop and think about it. You are living in a world that isn't fully real, that has been made for you to have a childhood in. The books you find will give you doors to other worlds--some are real, some are not, and all are worth exploring. You'll learn a lot of things about people from them. But the world you are living in is missing some important information that will come back to hurt you later in life. There is a part of your heart that the people creating that world want to erase from existence. They want you to follow a straight line through life that won't necessarily work out for you, without ever looking at the fact that you are designed to be able to do something else. They've already taught you to be confused by it, even though you're already seeing it. You can--and you do--fall in love with girls, the same way that you have been told it is only possible for girls to love boys. You already have had one girl you loved that way, and although you will never see her again after the first week of second grade, there will be others. They will make you wonder--she has made you wonder--if you are a boy on the inside, but don't worry: it doesn't matter whom you love; you can be a girl anyway. There will be boys, too, but that side of yourself is already accepted and you will never have any shortage of help in growing that way. Some grown-ups, even Mommy and Daddy, have tried to force you to ignore the other side of yourself. They think it is healthy for you to believe that that kind of love does not even exist, because they have been lied to and told that it is wrong to love another girl that way. It is NOT wrong. It is part of who you have been all your life, and it is not any different from how Mommy and Daddy love each other. As you grow up and the false world slowly falls away, you will see that you are not the only person ever to ask these questions; far from it, there are many. We are a minority, and one that is often fought against, but we exist and always have. We make people uncomfortable, by existing as girls who can and do fall in love with other girls--just like we make people uncomfortable by existing as people with Asperger's who look at the world and see things that most people don't notice instead of things that most people do. It's the same thing, really: seeing things and people differently.
You are different, and you see the world differently. Never be ashamed of that. The greatest commandment in the Bible is to love God, love others, and love yourself; never let anyone take that away from you. Never lose your will to learn, either; you will become a better person if you pay attention to everything. When something doesn't feel right, stop and think about what's going on. Ask questions. If someone tries to shame you and shut you down for asking a question, ask more questions. Learn how to forgive and whom to forgive, and watch people until you understand why they do things. Ask more questions about that. And always tell the truth, even when you're shivering with fear--as I am writing this now. Honesty is worth any cost, any shame, any harm.
As Mommy will tell you many, many times,
Honor. Courage. Commitment.
Our core values, in the Navy. Learn what they really mean, and live them.
With love and great good wishes,
Iuliana Amata
Your future self
Showing posts with label me versus stereotypes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label me versus stereotypes. Show all posts
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Daleks
Last year, my family took a trip to England. While we were there, we were delighted to discover a museum-like-thing called the Doctor Who Experience. My dad, who has been a Doctor Who fan since college, had gleefully introduced my brother and myself to the show just the night before, and so of course we were all thrilled by the prospect. (My mom just tagged along with her nerdy family, which she seems to be very accustomed to doing because it happens so often.) Half of the "Doctor Who Experience" was a little museum displaying a wide variety of props, costumes, and even sets from the actual show (I GOT TO SEE THE ACTUAL INSIDE OF THE TENTH DOCTOR'S TARDIS, AND HIS ACTUAL SONIC SCREWDRIVER!!!) and other such things that (as demonstrated in the last set of parentheses) would make a diehard fan scream with delight, but the half salient to what I want to write about tonight was an actual Doctor Who experience, in which the Doctor whisks you away in the TARDIS and you wind up more or less living through an episode of the show. In one instance that starts out nervewracking but turns pretty funny by the end, you get kidnapped by the Daleks.
--Explanatory Note for Non-Whovians--
Daleks are possibly the most famous Doctor Who villain of all time. Certainly they are the most consistently recurring. They are a robotic race that started out as organic creatures, but were so destroyed by a series of disasters (wars, plagues, etc.) that they wound up building themselves protective shells--which look remarkably like inverted trash cans with attached toilet plungers and paint rollers and a few other modifications that are more difficult to identify, because Daleks were created back when the show had a ridiculously low budget to work around--and taking to outer space to wage more wars. They are known to bloviate in mechanical voices in ways that make it clear that they are highly xenophobic, which is not a trait well-suited to space travel in a universe filled with aliens, and thus the Doctor is their worst enemy. They would be terrifying if they weren't so darn funny.
Being kidnapped by the Daleks, whose plungers can shoot laser beams, is generally a pretty scary thing. I was rather unnerved by it, until the Daleks that had kidnapped the museum attendees got into an argument with another group of Daleks, which mostly consisted of the two groups shouting back and forth at each other, "YOU ARE IN-FER-I-OR!!" At that point, my brother turned to me and whispered that the etiquette teacher I'd had in sixth grade for all of one lesson must have been a Dalek.
Daleks are funny, because a) they're fictional and b) it's hard to take accusations of inferiority seriously when they're coming from an inverted trash can sporting a toilet plunger and a paint roller that c) has been demonstrably defeated at various times with nothing but a wooden floor, or a pastry, or nostalgia. But while Daleks don't exist in real life, Dalek attitudes do.
Dalek ideas expressed in real life--as they were, in exactly the same words, by my aforementioned etiquette teacher--are terrifying. I can't find the words to explain why, but somehow I don't think I need to explain completely. I think it would be enough to say that my best friend and I signed up for an etiquette class thinking that it would be a fun thing to do together, learning about the nuances of old-fashioned courtesy just in case we ever wanted to know that, and were blindsided when we arrived and the first activity on the agenda was to interrogate every person about what ways that student's manners were so terrible as to warrant being forced to take an etiquette class. I was shocked into forgetting why I'd come. Later in the class, as the teacher rambled on about how this class would cause us to have better manners, but we shouldn't make anyone else feel inferior for being less refined, my friend raised her hand and said politely, "But, ma'am, you're making us feel inferior."
It was more than a fair point. It was a way of pointing out, probably mostly from instinct given that we were only twelve and hadn't really had much reason to study the subject before, that elegant manners exist for the sole purpose of acknowledging that other people deserve respect.
But that teacher looked her right in the eye and said, "You are inferior."
That was one of the most shocking things I have ever heard said--because I think that was the heart of every shocking thing that anyone has ever said. "You are inferior" so easily becomes the famous Dalek attitude: "YOU ARE IN-FER-I-OR. YOU MUST BE EX-TER-MI-NA-TED." It's funny when it's a trash can threatening you with a plunger--but it isn't at all funny in real life.
"You are inferior" becomes "it's okay for me to be mean to you," and I spiral into depression at the age of fifteen. Because people told me, for my whole life, that I was inferior--and after such a long time with no letup, I started to believe it.
"You are inferior" becomes "it's okay for me to deny you the medication your mental and physical health depends on if you taking it inconveniences me," and I spend three months of my fourth grade year showing obvious signs of mental and physical illness--and the teacher punishes me for showing those symptoms by further restricting the treatment that would solve them.
"You are inferior" becomes "it's okay for me to declare to the world at large that I hate you and everyone like you, even if I don't have any idea who you are," and thus I and many others have to shoulder the burden of trying to ignore the hate, even though it's still shocking and jarring and painful, especially when it comes up in the middle of a conversation with about something else entirely--they just have so much hate that they have to mention it whenever they can find an excuse.
It hurts every single time, and it shows up so many places--especially that last variation, which hits me right in the face all the time. Because all these things are specifically hurtful, both in themselves and because they are ways of saying "you are inferior."
To everyone who has ever been told that--and I suspect that may well mean everyone ever, period--it's not true. Not even when it's coming from people you respect, people you love. You are NOT inferior.
I was thinking that I'd write this post about this problem with respect to theological criticism, since that was what prompted me to write it in the first place, but I suppose I'll write that one later.
--Explanatory Note for Non-Whovians--
Daleks are possibly the most famous Doctor Who villain of all time. Certainly they are the most consistently recurring. They are a robotic race that started out as organic creatures, but were so destroyed by a series of disasters (wars, plagues, etc.) that they wound up building themselves protective shells--which look remarkably like inverted trash cans with attached toilet plungers and paint rollers and a few other modifications that are more difficult to identify, because Daleks were created back when the show had a ridiculously low budget to work around--and taking to outer space to wage more wars. They are known to bloviate in mechanical voices in ways that make it clear that they are highly xenophobic, which is not a trait well-suited to space travel in a universe filled with aliens, and thus the Doctor is their worst enemy. They would be terrifying if they weren't so darn funny.
Being kidnapped by the Daleks, whose plungers can shoot laser beams, is generally a pretty scary thing. I was rather unnerved by it, until the Daleks that had kidnapped the museum attendees got into an argument with another group of Daleks, which mostly consisted of the two groups shouting back and forth at each other, "YOU ARE IN-FER-I-OR!!" At that point, my brother turned to me and whispered that the etiquette teacher I'd had in sixth grade for all of one lesson must have been a Dalek.
Daleks are funny, because a) they're fictional and b) it's hard to take accusations of inferiority seriously when they're coming from an inverted trash can sporting a toilet plunger and a paint roller that c) has been demonstrably defeated at various times with nothing but a wooden floor, or a pastry, or nostalgia. But while Daleks don't exist in real life, Dalek attitudes do.
Dalek ideas expressed in real life--as they were, in exactly the same words, by my aforementioned etiquette teacher--are terrifying. I can't find the words to explain why, but somehow I don't think I need to explain completely. I think it would be enough to say that my best friend and I signed up for an etiquette class thinking that it would be a fun thing to do together, learning about the nuances of old-fashioned courtesy just in case we ever wanted to know that, and were blindsided when we arrived and the first activity on the agenda was to interrogate every person about what ways that student's manners were so terrible as to warrant being forced to take an etiquette class. I was shocked into forgetting why I'd come. Later in the class, as the teacher rambled on about how this class would cause us to have better manners, but we shouldn't make anyone else feel inferior for being less refined, my friend raised her hand and said politely, "But, ma'am, you're making us feel inferior."
It was more than a fair point. It was a way of pointing out, probably mostly from instinct given that we were only twelve and hadn't really had much reason to study the subject before, that elegant manners exist for the sole purpose of acknowledging that other people deserve respect.
But that teacher looked her right in the eye and said, "You are inferior."
That was one of the most shocking things I have ever heard said--because I think that was the heart of every shocking thing that anyone has ever said. "You are inferior" so easily becomes the famous Dalek attitude: "YOU ARE IN-FER-I-OR. YOU MUST BE EX-TER-MI-NA-TED." It's funny when it's a trash can threatening you with a plunger--but it isn't at all funny in real life.
"You are inferior" becomes "it's okay for me to be mean to you," and I spiral into depression at the age of fifteen. Because people told me, for my whole life, that I was inferior--and after such a long time with no letup, I started to believe it.
"You are inferior" becomes "it's okay for me to deny you the medication your mental and physical health depends on if you taking it inconveniences me," and I spend three months of my fourth grade year showing obvious signs of mental and physical illness--and the teacher punishes me for showing those symptoms by further restricting the treatment that would solve them.
"You are inferior" becomes "it's okay for me to declare to the world at large that I hate you and everyone like you, even if I don't have any idea who you are," and thus I and many others have to shoulder the burden of trying to ignore the hate, even though it's still shocking and jarring and painful, especially when it comes up in the middle of a conversation with about something else entirely--they just have so much hate that they have to mention it whenever they can find an excuse.
It hurts every single time, and it shows up so many places--especially that last variation, which hits me right in the face all the time. Because all these things are specifically hurtful, both in themselves and because they are ways of saying "you are inferior."
To everyone who has ever been told that--and I suspect that may well mean everyone ever, period--it's not true. Not even when it's coming from people you respect, people you love. You are NOT inferior.
I was thinking that I'd write this post about this problem with respect to theological criticism, since that was what prompted me to write it in the first place, but I suppose I'll write that one later.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Mater Ursa & the Rubberglue Rule of Hate Speech
Some days, I just start reading and discover that there are bad people out there. Or I'm walking around and I hear people throwing around horrible words, the kind that hurt people and make me wish I dared to turn around and yell "EPHESIANS 4:29!!!" even though I know most people don't have that verse committed to memory. (For the record, though the phrasing depends on what translation you use, it says something to the effect of, "Do not let any harmful talk escape your lips, but only that which is useful for building others up." I only know it because I'm fond of the band Building 429, whose name is derived from that verse, but it's right up there alongside John 15:13 on my list of favorite verses.) Or people throw slurs right in my face, some of which have something to do with me but some of which don't have any connection at all.
Being attacked with insults that have no relation to who I am--or which are concerning a trait that this person clearly doesn't know that I have--bothers me, and when I think about it it's almost worse than insults that refer to some characteristic I actually have. It hurts even when it's someone else being attacked that way, which my parents and teachers don't seem to understand, so here I'm putting it into words so I can explain it better the next time I'm asked to try.
It's because it means that they have some prejudice that's so deeply ingrained that it's become a generic insult. "I hate fillintheblanks so much that I will call everyone I want to insult a fillintheblank." It doesn't matter who they're throwing the word at, when it reaches that level, because the person who actually gets hurt will be the one whom that specific slur denotes. One white boy in the middle of the classroom calling another some Asian-specific slur might be funny to both of them, but it's rare that the Vietnamese boy two rows back will be amused. He might laugh along if he's trying to feel included, but often--far too often for that kind of behavior to be even remotely excusable--he'll feel the sting anyway.
And that's what I call the Rubberglue Rule of Hate Speech. The name derives from a little rhyme my mother taught me when I was in second grade, to wit, "I'm rubber, you're glue/It bounces off of me and sticks to you." It was supposed to be a tool to defend myself from the many insults that I was on the receiving end of back then, some of which were very... weird, but now that I'm older, I see that it applies in darker ways to cruel, stereotype-based arguments.
It may bounce off of me, but the person it sticks to is the person that word means. That applies to all stereotypes. That's why I'm offended by calling people of normal intelligence "retarded," because it's implying that being like my friends who are genuinely slow is an insult. People with severe learning disabilities can be the nicest, sweetest, and too often the most terrifyingly abused people you will ever meet. That's why I'm offended by the use of racial slurs--I may be white, but what about the friends I've practically adopted as sisters who are half-Chinese? What about my friends from school and church who are black? What about my first-grade best friend who was Bolivian, or my friends from the two years I spent in a predominantly-Hispanic community in California? That's why I'm offended by the use of "gay" as a catchall term for "bad," because after discovering exactly how many of my friends are gay how could I not be?
Yes, I left my own identity out of that paragraph, because I react much differently to people attacking me. I've grown so used to being attacked, insulted, and hated on that it just makes me freeze up or cry, so I try to leave myself out of it. My friends, on the other hand?
Don't mess with my friends. Especially the younger ones, the ones I get all maternal about. Mama Bear does not take it well.
Oh, and John 15:13? It reads, in the King James version, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
It may bounce off of me, but the person it sticks to is the person that word means. That applies to all stereotypes. That's why I'm offended by calling people of normal intelligence "retarded," because it's implying that being like my friends who are genuinely slow is an insult. People with severe learning disabilities can be the nicest, sweetest, and too often the most terrifyingly abused people you will ever meet. That's why I'm offended by the use of racial slurs--I may be white, but what about the friends I've practically adopted as sisters who are half-Chinese? What about my friends from school and church who are black? What about my first-grade best friend who was Bolivian, or my friends from the two years I spent in a predominantly-Hispanic community in California? That's why I'm offended by the use of "gay" as a catchall term for "bad," because after discovering exactly how many of my friends are gay how could I not be?
Yes, I left my own identity out of that paragraph, because I react much differently to people attacking me. I've grown so used to being attacked, insulted, and hated on that it just makes me freeze up or cry, so I try to leave myself out of it. My friends, on the other hand?
Don't mess with my friends. Especially the younger ones, the ones I get all maternal about. Mama Bear does not take it well.
Oh, and John 15:13? It reads, in the King James version, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Incoherent Ramblings
Sorry I disappeared for a week without warning; I was off doing disaster recovery work! It was awesome, even though we hadn't exactly expected for a natural disaster to crop up right where we'd been planning to have a mission trip for the past year. I suddenly have a lot more appreciation for the luxuries of life, such as drinking water.
So, I'm not doing too well with following Aunt Mary's advice to write something every day... oh, well. I'll get it figured out. Hopefully things are going to get back to normal soon.
The problem with being me is that I really, really like to share my writing. This works when I'm writing, say, a cute little poem about how much my friends mean to me, but not necessarily quite so well when I want to write about the tough questions in my life. I created this blog as a place to wrestle with the hardest questions... but then I went and told people about it. Sigh. Maybe I should go find some less-exciting place to ask the questions I'm not allowed to ask, like "Who am I?" (The correct answer, in my case, is NOT "Jean Valjean," as awesome as he is. You want my friend Scott for that. Though I would have happily stolen his part, even though I'm a girl and have a very obviously feminine voice... and I couldn't have legally pulled off the shirt-ripping thing he did so well in a high-school play...)
Obviously, I'm rambling. I've been letting myself read again, you see, and my thoughts have gotten all disorganized. Focus, Iuliana.
I've been exploring my own secrets in my mind lately. I feel like I'm compelled to talk about them, because I prayed over Workcamp that I would become a more honest person. Because my secrets are part of me too. Because maybe if I tell the truth, maybe that will make life better for someone in the future, who isn't even born yet, who will need less help to get by in a less hostile world.
But of course I'm a coward, and that's part of who I am as much as anything else too. The truth doesn't come easily to me when I believe that it will put me in danger--and there are truths that will.
No, I didn't finish my homework. I didn't finish my college applications either, or my thank-you notes. I still didn't finish my homework. Actually, I don't understand my homework assignment at all; I was embarrassed to ask for help because then you'd see how little I had managed to accomplish. No, I can't do that--my mind just doesn't work that way.
Those were a few of the more benign ones from the past year, the ones that will only get me called a lazy brat who needs to stop acting like a hermit (and meanwhile I'm hiding in my bedroom because it's the only place I know where I can safely have my own thoughts). There are others that would lose me loved ones. There are others that could cost me my physical safety if they fell into the wrong hands, that have nearly cost others with similar secrets their lives, recently, in my city.
I hate lies, but I would be lying if I said that didn't scare me.
I guess I'm not going to be able to produce a coherent blog post in my current state of mind (i.e. so tired and hungry as to produce effects nearly identical to intoxication). I hope this is good enough.
So, I'm not doing too well with following Aunt Mary's advice to write something every day... oh, well. I'll get it figured out. Hopefully things are going to get back to normal soon.
The problem with being me is that I really, really like to share my writing. This works when I'm writing, say, a cute little poem about how much my friends mean to me, but not necessarily quite so well when I want to write about the tough questions in my life. I created this blog as a place to wrestle with the hardest questions... but then I went and told people about it. Sigh. Maybe I should go find some less-exciting place to ask the questions I'm not allowed to ask, like "Who am I?" (The correct answer, in my case, is NOT "Jean Valjean," as awesome as he is. You want my friend Scott for that. Though I would have happily stolen his part, even though I'm a girl and have a very obviously feminine voice... and I couldn't have legally pulled off the shirt-ripping thing he did so well in a high-school play...)
Obviously, I'm rambling. I've been letting myself read again, you see, and my thoughts have gotten all disorganized. Focus, Iuliana.
I've been exploring my own secrets in my mind lately. I feel like I'm compelled to talk about them, because I prayed over Workcamp that I would become a more honest person. Because my secrets are part of me too. Because maybe if I tell the truth, maybe that will make life better for someone in the future, who isn't even born yet, who will need less help to get by in a less hostile world.
But of course I'm a coward, and that's part of who I am as much as anything else too. The truth doesn't come easily to me when I believe that it will put me in danger--and there are truths that will.
No, I didn't finish my homework. I didn't finish my college applications either, or my thank-you notes. I still didn't finish my homework. Actually, I don't understand my homework assignment at all; I was embarrassed to ask for help because then you'd see how little I had managed to accomplish. No, I can't do that--my mind just doesn't work that way.
Those were a few of the more benign ones from the past year, the ones that will only get me called a lazy brat who needs to stop acting like a hermit (and meanwhile I'm hiding in my bedroom because it's the only place I know where I can safely have my own thoughts). There are others that would lose me loved ones. There are others that could cost me my physical safety if they fell into the wrong hands, that have nearly cost others with similar secrets their lives, recently, in my city.
I hate lies, but I would be lying if I said that didn't scare me.
I guess I'm not going to be able to produce a coherent blog post in my current state of mind (i.e. so tired and hungry as to produce effects nearly identical to intoxication). I hope this is good enough.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Maturity, Autism, and Normalcy
It seems that, though most people don't realize it, the word "maturity" is used as a catchall term for a lot of different qualities that (are said to) become more common among any given group as its members grow older. Some I have. Some I don't.
I've graduated from high school and now I'm looking to leave for college in the fall, but I'm not sure I'm "mature" enough to survive there. I don't even know if I was really "mature" enough for high school, for all I managed to graduate. Believe you me, it took a lot of help for me to get this far, and now a lot of the support I've had to get here is dissolving while I still need it. It's going to be a struggle, and all the more so because I'm slow and I still haven't recovered from a rather traumatic, well... the past six years, really, ever since I first started secondary school.
Compounding the problem was the fact that I was also too mature for high school. Like most teenagers, I spent a lot of high school trying to figure out the answer to the question, "Who am I?" Unfortunately, a lot of the answers I found led me to conclusions that my classmates couldn't even seem to comprehend. I have never gone a single year in my memory without being the target of at least one major bullying incident, and by the time I finished high school I realized that it was because I was so obviously different from everyone else.
I am autistic, and ever since I discovered as much I have been struggling with how much to own the label. It does make me different, in demonstrable ways. I would rather be proud of my strengths than ashamed by the challenges that come with them, but even owning the name "autistic" too much makes me a target to the ignorant and a problem for my friends. But it's my life, built in, not something I can just turn off because I'm bothering someone. It's not the only thing in my life, but I can't ever get away from it even if I don't talk about it. Is it more mature to speak up, like my uncle (technically first cousin once removed) does in being part of an autistic self-advocacy protest group, or to stay quiet and let it just be the background of my life like most of my friends wish I would?
Sometimes even I forget I'm autistic. I believe the things that people say, about how I can do everything that everyone else can, that I'm no different, that I'm capable of anything. I don't look different. I've been forcibly and unpleasantly taught to observe the basics of "acting normal" that don't come nearly so naturally to me as to others. So I push myself to keep up with everyone else, but then I discover every time that I can't always do that. I'm truly good at gathering and memorizing information, but really only on the topics that are meaningful and important to me, and so I'm characterized as "lazy" because it's hard for me to force myself to fill my head with things I don't care about when there's something just one tangent away that's on a topic I have a passion for. And that's part of what my form of autism is: Hans Asperger, the doctor for whom my Asperger's Syndrome is named, characterized the children he studied as "little professors" because each had a deep and thorough knowledge about their own subjects of interest to the exclusion of most else. And I'm not good at socializing with strangers when I don't have someone I'm comfortable with around to make it easier. That's the part that's hit me lately: when too much is happening at once, I go into sensory overload until I can get away to calm down.
No, I'm not normal. And I just have to live with it. That's a form of maturity, too:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
I've graduated from high school and now I'm looking to leave for college in the fall, but I'm not sure I'm "mature" enough to survive there. I don't even know if I was really "mature" enough for high school, for all I managed to graduate. Believe you me, it took a lot of help for me to get this far, and now a lot of the support I've had to get here is dissolving while I still need it. It's going to be a struggle, and all the more so because I'm slow and I still haven't recovered from a rather traumatic, well... the past six years, really, ever since I first started secondary school.
Compounding the problem was the fact that I was also too mature for high school. Like most teenagers, I spent a lot of high school trying to figure out the answer to the question, "Who am I?" Unfortunately, a lot of the answers I found led me to conclusions that my classmates couldn't even seem to comprehend. I have never gone a single year in my memory without being the target of at least one major bullying incident, and by the time I finished high school I realized that it was because I was so obviously different from everyone else.
I am autistic, and ever since I discovered as much I have been struggling with how much to own the label. It does make me different, in demonstrable ways. I would rather be proud of my strengths than ashamed by the challenges that come with them, but even owning the name "autistic" too much makes me a target to the ignorant and a problem for my friends. But it's my life, built in, not something I can just turn off because I'm bothering someone. It's not the only thing in my life, but I can't ever get away from it even if I don't talk about it. Is it more mature to speak up, like my uncle (technically first cousin once removed) does in being part of an autistic self-advocacy protest group, or to stay quiet and let it just be the background of my life like most of my friends wish I would?
Sometimes even I forget I'm autistic. I believe the things that people say, about how I can do everything that everyone else can, that I'm no different, that I'm capable of anything. I don't look different. I've been forcibly and unpleasantly taught to observe the basics of "acting normal" that don't come nearly so naturally to me as to others. So I push myself to keep up with everyone else, but then I discover every time that I can't always do that. I'm truly good at gathering and memorizing information, but really only on the topics that are meaningful and important to me, and so I'm characterized as "lazy" because it's hard for me to force myself to fill my head with things I don't care about when there's something just one tangent away that's on a topic I have a passion for. And that's part of what my form of autism is: Hans Asperger, the doctor for whom my Asperger's Syndrome is named, characterized the children he studied as "little professors" because each had a deep and thorough knowledge about their own subjects of interest to the exclusion of most else. And I'm not good at socializing with strangers when I don't have someone I'm comfortable with around to make it easier. That's the part that's hit me lately: when too much is happening at once, I go into sensory overload until I can get away to calm down.
No, I'm not normal. And I just have to live with it. That's a form of maturity, too:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Meet Holly and Sharon
When I was thirteen, I got bored one day and created for myself two alter egos for the purpose of populating a roleplay site I had going. They're twin sisters, and their names are Holly and Sharon Meyers. Sharon is the louder and more active twin; she is well-liked at school, and has played soccer since the age of ten. Both twins are fairly smart, but around age fourteen Sharon stopped showing interest in books and reading in favor of more popular pursuits. Meanwhile, Holly is shy and studious, enjoying her academics but happiest at church, and she always has a Bible on hand, and usually at least one other book too. Their priorities are different enough by now that they often clash and irritate each other, but Holly--being the quieter twin--is usually the one who gives in.
The site I created them for has long since died out, but I recently went back and started thinking about writing a story with these characters. I know the basic lines of it already: Holly's relationship with her faith community is tested, while Sharon's faith is suddenly forced forward in her life. I know what to put Holly through, but I'm not sure what to do to Sharon. How does one properly torture a fictional athlete? Maybe I should give her some other all-consuming hobby... make her a theater kid instead, since I know theater... but she was always a soccer player.
Maybe Sharon is injured and forced off the field, or maybe she's just cut from the team. Would that be enough? I don't know athletes well enough to know. Would starting to have her own questions work? I know what it's like for an obsession to crumble, but it's hard to tell how anything will be received by the reader.
Categories and Stereotypes
I've been thinking lately about an article that was in The Washington Post a few months ago. To the best of my recollection, it was comprised largely of complaining about how difficult it is to find an adjective that fits all black women. And it made me think: why? I'm just a little white girl, so I might not have the credentials to say so, but it seems to me that all the Post is trying to do here is find a stereotype that works--and stereotypes don't work.
The problem with trying to attach a non-tautological* adjective to any group of people, but especially such a broadly defined group as "all females of a given race," is that pretty much any adjective you pick will describe some of those people, thus supporting your suggestion for every instance of a person who can say "oh, yeah, I know a black woman who is exactly like that," but there will also be many instances of "but I know a black woman who is NOTHING like that." In my experience, the latter group tends to get ignored, because people love their stereotypes and want to keep them.
But any stereotype isn't how it is. The Post can't find an adjective that fits all black women because some black women are loud and some are quiet; some sleep around, some are faithfully married, and some don't sleep with anyone; some are poor, some are rich, some are in between, and one is the First Lady of the United States. The stereotypes don't work for a reason that's fairly obvious to me: what a person looks like on the outside has very little to do with what kind of personality they have underneath.
I've read that people talk about how annoying loud black girls are, but I can assure you (because I had at least one of each in the same class--and it was a class I really wanted to pay attention in, too!) that loud white boys can be every bit as irritating. And loud white girls. And loud Asian boys. And loud Hispanic girls. In fact, if it's their race or gender that you're getting mad at, rather than the fact that the interesting lecture is being interrupted yet AGAIN by the individuals whose private conversations never seem to end even when there is obviously something else going on and everyone is raptly attentive, the problem may be with you.
But that's just my opinion.
*I don't see a problem with saying, for instance, "all black women are female," because that's part of the definition of "women." Or "all black women are of African descent," because that's what "black" means in this context. Those statements are just rephrasing the original term, and really don't need saying. Going beyond that, however, gets into stereotyping. People do treat stereotypes as tautological... but when you look at it, "all members of Insert Group Here who are fillintheblank are fillintheblank" is a statement restating itself; "all members of Insert Group Here are fillintheblank" almost never is.
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