Equality Tribunal, Dublin July 2 2009

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Gaye Dalton V. Aspire (The Asperger Association of Ireland)

First, two disappointments:

I won't have the result for weeks, and I honestly have no idea which way it will go. My main concern being that Equality Law is more concerned with directly comparative discrimination than outright prejudice.
It was a confidential hearing, which means that I really can't go posting reviews on the web

Regardless, I there are some things that I can talk about, like myself, and how I feel.

I can't believe I actually found the strength to go through with it. The only reason I did is that I could never have forgiven myself if I hadn't, and if I learned one thing from the hearing it is that I was more right than I knew to go through with this, and that Aspire consistantly attach insufficient importance to our best interests.

I already had my result when they HAD to regard me as an equal to spend 8 hours using every trick in the book to fight me face to face.

Once you have no choice but see someone as an equal, it is impossible to go back, however hard you try...but that is no guarantee of integrity.

I regret that I did not know how to put my evidence better.
I regret that I could not have afforded a really good solicitor, but I couldn't afford a solicitor at all.
I regret that because I am an Aspie I just do not have what it takes to put in the "people time" to have turned this into the class action it should have been.

On the plus side

I now have two real friends for life, in the Aspie fashion, whereby even if you haven't been in touch for years, they are there for you when you need them, whether it is to support you, dig you out, or just have a chat...and that means the world to me. If Aspies hugged, I would be hugging them still.
I suspect that one person, on the other side was actually paying attention, on a far deeper level than how to save his own carcass and will never be quite the same again, in a GOOD way for all of us.

The hearing dragged out for what may well have been the worst 8 hours of my life, and it is only having it over that I realised what kind of cloud it has been over my life for the past two years (which is, admittedly, a better deal than having the matters it related to hanging like a black cloud over my life for the rest of it).

It has been the catalyst for 2 years in which I finally lost all capacity to detach from, and tolerate group dynamics. These have also been two years in which I finally began to drink too much for the first time in my life.

I learned, over and over again, that, in pursuit of what they percieve to be power, an Aspie can stab you in the back just as easily and ruthlessly as an NT.

But then, I always knew AS didn't come bundled with a harp, wings and halo, and what is more it does not HAVE to for us to have the right to be treated as moral and intellectual equals, particularly in how we are presented and represented.

I knew it would be bad, I actually thought it might have been worse and until I actually got to the hearing I was not at all sure the cumulative stress would not push me to suicide one dark drink sodden night, and a few times it came very, very close, but that needed to be my secret until afterwards.

I need you to know that, because unless you do, you will never know WHY I did it, and if you do not know why there will have been no point in doing it at all.

Most people (whatever they say) do things for some kind of personal gain, if not money, then power, or popularity. To me power = responsibility, a substance I find about as appealling as cat's wee, and popularity was always just a stressful problem to be avoided or solved, and now even more so.

So what did I stand to gain?

Nothing from Aspire, whatever happens now, they never offered anything of more help than harm to me in the first place, and now it is genuinely in their best interests to seize any opportunity to harm me, previous experience suggests that I should brace myself for personal repercussions that I fear will be of the covert kind that I will not be able to defend myself from, and sooner or later, particularly in these hard times, I may well not be able to survive.

I am a little different to the normal Aspie, I interiorised my AS at a very early age. Interiorisation is when you cope with a challenging condition by perfecting the art of concealing it to the exclusion of all else. I suppose it is a bit like anorexia, except the obsession is with looking "normal", and behaving "correctly", rather than being "thin". I am driven by an unconscious need to produce the perfect "facade" that leaves me tormented over every possible slip for years afterwards.

So, superficially, I look far more "normal" than any other Aspie I have ever seen. It's all an act, not to decieve, but just to "pass" and communicate, in some way, because I never learned anything else to do interactively, and I honestly do not have an interactive "self" I can relax and "be". I don't mean that I am afraid to relax and be myself, I mean that my actual "self" does not interact at all, like a catatonic, though in isolation I am as far from catatonic as anyone could be.

It takes all I have to produce a very few hours a week...never enough to work or network with people, just enough to deal with essentials like shopping, and a little to spare to be able to spend a very little time with the people dear enough to me to be worth it.

To get to that hearing (let alone THROUGH it) took the same kind of effort as an actress preparing a major film role.

Over the years I am more and more exhausted and less able to cope. I feel as though one day there will literally be nothing of me left inside at all, and when that happens, the still perfect facade will suddenly crumble, leaving no trace behind at all.

Another aspect of interiorisation is a more general kind of perfectionism.

To see the lives, talents and potential of people with AS arbitrarily thrown away over and over again, to see their self esteem constantly undermined and eroded and to see them constantly obstructed by groundless prejudice and stigma hurts me in a deep and personal way that I cannot quite find an analogy for...

I supposed the closest I can come is to compare it to having to watch the senseless desecration of something very sacred.

Worse, so far, the motivation behind that desecration has invariably been petty and selfish as far as I can see...that burns me up inside.

I need to fight on, and I don't just mean Aspire, I mean ALL the other affiliated organisations I waded through in the past few days, who are doing similar things, but usually on a far larger scale, but I would be lying if I said I had any more left inside to do it with.

I have known this for months.

I don't even have anything left to deal with the world in general with.

Before the internet I used to spend hours calling around trying to find some kind of help to make it possible for me to support myself, and deal with a half normal life that had some friends and maybe even a significant relationship...

...and I drew blank after blank until the frustration would send me into a meltdown, and the only way I could calm down was to WILL myself to stop thinking about it.

I only got on the internet at all for the same reason...and drew blank after blank again, with the same effect, meanwhile picking up a malevolent cyber stalker (for want of a better term) called "Sam Vaknin" who destroyed my good name and reputation on an international level, picking up every minor bully in range of his bandwagon along the way...AS WELL as the people I regularly piss off by being too smart, too alien, seeing clean through them and not needing them they way they need people.

I can't go on with that fight either, and it is redundant, because I know now that there will never be any kind of help to make it possible for me to support myself, and deal with a half normal life that had some friends and maybe even a significant relationship...and the people who pretend to offer that are just being cruel, whether they mean to be or not.

It doesn't matter now, because I am too old and worn out to change, and seeing terrible things happen to perfectly normal, happy intelligent people around me I cannot feel that I have the right to expect anyone to go on wasting resources on maintaining me indefinately, let alone helping me even if they could.

So now I am going to retire from the world and all the "public" aspects of my life, cut myself off, be alone so I can be me, walk my mountains, potter around my garden for as long as I still have a refuge away from people and the means to survive.

However, I do not believe that there will never be any kind of help for any of us...and that is why I am BEGGING all of you to take up the baton...stand up for yourselves, teach yourselves to automatically EXPECT the same recognition and respect as other people.

REFUSE to be denigrated.

REFUSE to be treated like the child of a lesser God, or indeed any kind of child at all.

Do it for the young people.

Do it for future generations.

Do it for me.

Gaye Dalton July 3 2009

Extraordinary post!

That rings a lot of bells with me. I spent most of my teens and twenties learning "how to behave correctly/successfully", obsessively/concentratedly learning how to put on the act, and, together with alcohol, dope, and no serious ties/responsibilities, managed pretty well, even very well, for a while, until I had a ( manic-depressive ) breakdown. But even before that, like you, I spent so much energy on maintaining the "act" that I had none left for actually thinking, working, studying, etc, and it was when I began trying to think and study seriously at the same time as "perform" socially, ( after a book woke me up ), that things came crashing down.

In all that time of "successful performance" I only once managed to achieve intimacy with a partner, ( out of the many I went to bed with ), and only two of my friendships from then have lasted, in one case only by almost miraculous "bumpings into" each other after years of being out of touch. And needless to say I did not manage to find/follow/build a career.

What I have discovered, very late, ( I wish I had known about this when I was 10, 15, 20 ), is that I handle responsibility, at least, ( and generally interacting with the real live world outside my head etc ! !! ), a lot better when I am not "out of it" on food opioids, ( gluten and casein ), but it takes from 28 weeks to two years of complete gluten-exclusion to see the full effects, ( casein is quicker, a few weeks-couple of months ). I "cured" my mood disorder with diet.

I think food opioids, ( by partly "switching-off" the sensory processing pathways, making physical data seem more both more distant and too close up, less substantial/reliable ), make language seem as solid as the "real world", and because it is "simpler"/apparently more "stable" it is addictive.

When I eat gfcf for long enough, ( six months seems to do it ), I find myself not only more interested in doing things other than thinking thinking thinking, reading, writing, daydreaming, etc, but doing them. Language fades out, returns to "normal" size, ( no longer sacred, the "word of God", "ultimate" reality, against which I constantly measured life and found it wanting ), and small day to day tasks, concrete physical realities, become easier and easier to handle/deal with, including people.

Well done for pursuing the case this far. AWESOME achievement!

I seem to remember that you said somewhere that you had been following a somewhat gluten-free diet the last year or two. Have you tried cutting out casein aswell?

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mechanima,
Amazing post! Shocking, stunning, courageous. Well done!! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for fighting the good fight, and for keeping us in the loop as well..

Indeed. We've been born into the battle you so incredibly beautifully and articulately put to words in this awesome post. Thank you again for what you've done to help all of us.


It's over now. It was an exhausting ordeal but it's over. You can be extremely proud of your efforts and know you played your role exquisitely. Over time, it will fade into the background and you will move on. You will heal from this. You've only barely finished the job. Now what you desperately need is to rest for a good long time, as long as you can.

So well said. You speak for most of us I think.


I truly hope you find the peace you deserve.


Thank you for the encouragement and exhortation.
We award G. Dalton the Aspie Purple Heart for bravery and action beyond the call of duty. For being true to herself and for making the plight of aspies and auties more visible to the rest of the world..

You can rest now in the awareness that you've done your part in assuring we ARE going to win freedom from discrimination and persecution!! ! And you've played an extraordinary role in making it happen.

Thank you SO MUCH...

Now I need to go away and cry...

Hi. Your post resonates with me much more than I can say here.