The rush to blame autism after tragedies at schools

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This is a painful time for the AS community. Despite the unfairness of it, despite the fact that we are frequently the targets of school violence, rarely perpetrators, the search for a single thing to blame the Parkland shootings is on, and autistic people are being smeared as I type this, in interviews with survivors by media.

It's a very sad time for the survivors, and their desire to find something to blame is understandable. Blaming autism is the easy, default position. The blamers are not challenged about their own peripheral ideas about autism, the source of their ideas, the misinformation they may have absorbed, the misleading myths, stigmas and stereotypes that they have previously absorbed. Nor can they be. As "super-survivors", their statements are taken as said. It would be too insensitive, given their distress, for enlightened interviewers at this time to confront them with facts they are too distressed to absorb or understand. And most of the interviewers are not enlightened. They work for organisations which have a long history of othering and stigmatising people of the ASD spectrum.

So the autistic become part of the secondary victims in these tragedies. It is open season on the ASD population again. We need to keep this in perspective: it won't be pretty, and it will be hunting season for a while. I truly fear for those hundreds of thousands of AS pupils, already reeling from the typical history and impacts of bullying at school, now about to cope with more of it, in various forms. I hope that Wrong Planet can provide leadership, support, and a balancing voice. I hope that here we can support one another through the hurt, dismay and outrage many will be feeling about being scapegoated again. I hope that something positive can emerge, like a real will to stop the cruel bullying of AS people at schools. I am painfully aware that people who already have PTSD from sustained and severe school bullying may go into a downward spiral as a result of being scapegoated for violence they have nothing to do with, and would never dream of perpertrating. No-one is standing by their side except for groups like ASAN and Wrong Planet and a few voices in the wilderness, ignored by the media, the talk backs, and all the usual sources of stigmatisation and othering.

For now, this piece from Alex Plank after Sandy Hook:
https://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/opin ... index.html

Be safe and stay safe if you are a school pupil in the USA. You may have to take special leave for a while until the hunting season dies down.

Protection and support and safety for AS students in USA schools is foremost in my mind today. Your well-being through this terrible time is paramount, and there will be no leadership on this from the school authorities, who should show a duty of care to their AS students, but will not. They will continue the wilful ignorance and blindness to the bullying of AS students and the more extreme likelihood of this now.

During this hunting season of cultural blame scapegoating autism, can we please make an effort to support all members who may be directly confronted by the cruelty of backlash. It's their support and safety which needs to be paramount to the AS community now.

I write this feeling a heavy heart and great sadness.

I am also aware that we will very likely receive web traffic here from the curious who believe the myths and blaming that is now ferocious, so I would like to take a few moments to introduce myself and tell you who I am.

I am a mother and a grandmother of AS children and grandchildren. I am a conservationist, a nature lover, and as anti-gun culture as one could possibly be. None of my family have harmed anyone, in any way. I was an orphaned child, and grew up in a culture that did not know what Asperger's Syndrome was. I was a gifted child, who was bullied relentlessly at school. I was an accomplished student at University, who won Senior Academic prizes. I was married to an AS husband, who also had been savagely bullied by "normal" children. Through family and interpersonal support, and understanding and acceptance, we have survived the othering process that the neurotypical culture has put us through. We live with the scars of this. They are mostly healed, though triggering events such as scapegoating can reopen those scars, and cause more pain.

We are not mentally ill, we are not killers, and we will never will be. We are people, like yourselves, who despair at the antecendents to violence. Autism is not one of them. I can understand that you may be caught up in the hysteria and the pain and feel desperate to explain and blame. Please notice this impulse, and step back from it. You will only create new victims if you do not. This is a time to learn. Please be willing to learn, not scapegoat.

There is one glaring and disturbing fact that gets lost in the rush to blame autism: all the school shootings in the USA have been perpetrated by males. But autism affects males and females of all ages. There are millions of young AS women in the USA, and given its gun culture, a great many of these are likely to have access to guns, though they are not represented in the school shooting carnage.

These are inconvenient facts for the purveyors of ASD sigmatisation. If you have visited Wrong Planet for answers, I invite you to think about this long and hard. Most of the male shooters are not on the ASD spectrum. This part of the picture gets quickly obscured in the rush to the default position of blaming autism and autistic people.

I think many good Americans have been manipulated into believing stigmas and myths about autism because it is such a convenient, largely powerless, target. Autism is just the surface of the desperation to blame, and blaming feels good to the blamers. I understand that. But we can't heal the harm of painful events by causing new harm
others, even if that harm is caused by ignorance.

Every country has its angry young men; every country has various cultural forces that likely exacerbate violent people’s grievances; not every country makes it easy for anyone to get a gun.

Is there a rush to blame Autism, though?

It's been mentioned in the news about this, but briefly in passing. It seems the official narrative's scapegoat phrase is "mental health," which encompasses many other things besides ASD. I don't see a specific attack on Autism in the headlines the last couple days, more just blaming mental health as a distraction from discussing any sort of gun control.

It doesn't hurt to be aware and cautious, though, that's for sure.

Then again, I'm not a school aged ASD student in the USA. I'm sure we have many of them on these forums and I'd be curious to hear their perspective on what, if anything, has changed in the way they're treated after this (and other similar) event.

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

I woke up this morning and turned on the radio, to a non-commercial station which specialises in nonsensationalised, incisive examination of issues. The interviewer was interviewing a student from the school in Florida where this recent atrocity occurred, and the student did "rush to blame autism", stating "For God's sake, he had autism!! ! We need to be protected from these people". It inspired me to create this thread.


Quotes about scapegoating:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/scapegoat

The bad news is that unlike Sandy Hook we cannot deny the shooter is a diagnosed autistic. At the time of Sandy Hook Adam Lanza’s autism was not confirmed, that was not until later. Autistic advocates rightly said stop speculating based on unconfirmed reports. That is not the case now.
Florida Agency Investigated Nikolas Cruz After Violent Social Media Post

Do you think that ASD school children are in danger of being singled out for even more bullying in schools after events like these? Who protects them, are they recognised as vulnerable and protected at all?

We know the harm the bullying of AS populations does, and no-one is more vulnerable than AS children at school. How are they faring at the moment (I shudder to think about it too, though I think we need to recognise the danger is very real).

I am focusing on the immediate risk for AS children right now. I am wondering if providing safe rooms for the bullied ASD children would at least be start, with trained adults rostered there to provide immediate support, liaison with the principal and parents. I think also that all incidents of bullying need to entered in a register as soon as they are known so that there are accurate records kept by schools. This would be also helpful in assessing the school's accountability to provide a safe environment for all students.

Action seems to be needed, however perhaps no-one else thinks so.

To mitigate the danger of PTSD from bullying at school, the targets need safety, validation, protection, comforting, support. Leaving them unsafe to cope alone is a vicious act of omission which compounds their suffering. Adults can make a difference, though if there is no will to do that, they become bully enablers. Schools have responsibilities to protect students, including bullied students, and there needs to be accountability for those who are colluding with the bullies by non-action.

The research suggests that the percentage of AS people who experience suicidal thoughts is 66%.

I think it might be a bit higher than that this week.

A few years ago, John Elder Robison made this comment:

The average person does not know enough about Asperger’s to know it does not turn people into mass murderers. They file that factoid away until the next time they see someone with Asperger’s. Then, instead of giving him a fair shake, they treat him as a potential killer. Everyone loses.

I think that the ignorance remains at the same level as when he wrote that, and the stigma process has magnified the loss outcomes. And it effects each one of us.

Video from Kerry Magro. Mr. Magro has also blogged for and done social media and digital content work for Autism Speaks
https://youtu.be/1m_tMFxbJIg

Former federal prosecutor responds to audience member comments
https://youtu.be/-fSp1BY8pfY

Lol “safe rooms” staffed by trained people.. never gonna happen! Schools don’t have the budgets to pay enough teachers, there’s a zero % chance they’re going to fund safe rooms staffed by trained people to respond to the one or two autistic kids who might find themselves in a bad spot.

Plus it’s the USA, they’re more likely to pay an armed guard to patrol every school than they are to pay for something like that.

Further, I agree with whoever said it’d just paint a target on those kids’ backs.

_________________
No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

So what needs to happen to make AS children safer from bullying at school? What do you think might work?