really great example of prejudice

Post Reply New Topic

This just blows my mind - and reminds me why I'm going back to get my Ph.D. - I submitted a really short and not very comprehensive article on AS and academic issues to a fairly minor journal on academic stuff (I'm still arguing with them over publishing this and I don't want to cause myself any more problems - but you can bet I'll give the journal name later on if needed)
The first email I recieved from the editors said 'this is really interesting - we haven't thought of this before, what made you pick the topic? I certianly think this would be a good article' so I said, in bigger words, ''cause I have AS' and the next email said 'you are speaking with too much authority on this subject, wouldn't you rather make it a personal account?' - bear in mind this is all referenced in APA style with two pages of references at the end.
So I sent them my resume and my teaching history and all my degrees and we'll see if what they have to say changes - I was just AMAZED at the difference - I suppose so many of my role models have AS that I forget that the outside world still feels this way . . .

I am astonished, but maybe not surprised to see how they admired your work, but when you admitted your personal knowledge of the subject they couldn't reconcile your obviously high function with their own idea of what "Asperger's Syndrome' or 'autistic' actually is.

You know as well as anyone how people want to wave away any information that challenges their own ah. . well, I won't say prejudices, but I will say entrenched ideology of how they have ordered their minds to think of autism or any spectrum issues ( if they think there is a differentiation at all.) The obviously patronizing view of how autism/AS looks like from the outside does not reconcile with how we see it from the inside and frankly, most of those out side observers are embarrassed at how they actually FEEL (not think) about their reactions to us. In their defense, it is a gut reaction, as the non verbal clues can be indicative.

Perhaps speaking to this will open your article to people easier. After all it is comforting to see Dr. Grandin as a fluke but realizing there is a a whole group of folks that they might even have met and not known (and they don't know what politically incorrect language they might have used) have been "dual cultured" in both the autism and the neurotypical cultures and excel in both. .

I wish you all the best!

Merle

I don't understand sometimes why people think they get a better view of a topic from someone outside the topic rather than inside. Unless you have experienced something you can never really understand it.
If I want to know about muslims I ask a muslim, if I want to know about farming I ask a farmer etc I think that sometimes the view of one person can be limited so you ask several, or in your case you appear to have researched and referenced wider than your personal experience.
The one that really bugs me though is health-visitors who visit mothers but don't have children themselves, just quote what they read in books and think the mum's don't know anything. Should be the law that part of qualification for health visitor is they must have at least one child.

Maybe they assumed, based on your e-mail, that although you've done research into AS on your own, that you haven't actually had any formal education regarding AS, like maybe a Masters, or at least a Bachelor's or something. It seems like you hadn't informed them originally of any qualifications you possess (having a disorder doesn't count as its own qualification to write academic articles about it, even if you've done a lot of research). Would there be any way for you to post a PDF of the article or something? I'd be interested in reading it.

To explain myself more fully, I think they might be wondering whether you have clinical experience with AS. Because really, if you're writing about the experience of people with AS, and the only person with AS you know is yourself, that really is kind of a personal account (unless *every* assertion you make is referenced to the literature). You can't even call it a case study, I think. But it's hard to make that determination without reading the article, which is why I wondered if you could post it. But now that you've sent them your credentials, I should think their opinion will change. If it doesn't, *then* I would be suspicious of their objectivity.

Because our personal experiences and opinions tend to skew results. This is why double-blind studies are often considered so important in research. Even if your test subjects are unaware of whether they're part of the control group of the group being given (for example) a test medication, those administering the tests, if they know who is who, will generally see a more pronounced effect. This has been proven, inside knowledge can destroy objectivity, and often even more so in studying mental disorders. I'm not in the least bit surprised at the change in tone, because there will be an expectation - an expectation based on proven fact - that the accuracy of animalover's study is compromised because of his position. That's just the way it is.

And you'll get a certain point of view when you do that. If I ask a Muslim whether the Angel Gabriel actually spoke directly to Mohammed (PBUH), I'd expect an answer of "yes." You ask me, I'll say no, Mohammad was just a very clever guy who hit upon an excellent way to unite the tribes of the Arabian peninsula for his own personal gain. Whose opinion do you trust, the Muslim or the non-Muslim? I'm a Christian, if you ask me about Christ I'll say He's the Son of God, to a Muslim that's heresy of the worst kind. Whose opinion do you trust? It may be my faith, but I'd hardly call myself objective on the subject.

I disagree in the strongest terms. Just because we don't have personal experience in a subject doesn't mean we can't be skilled at our job. I'm a man, I've had a number of urological problems, and I actively try to choose female doctors, because I tend to find that I'm given more time to explain my situation, and they're more careful in their examinations. Their lack of a penis doesn't seem to hamper their medical ability in dealing with mine.

I think what bothered me most is that they didn't ask for my qualifications UNTIL I told them I had AS - it was like it suddenly became important when they found out I was autistic - like maybe I just accidentally banged all those words together or something . . .
I referenced everything - in fact, I've been accused of referencing too much - I figure as much as I talk about plagurism in my classes I should never be guilty of it myself - so it is obviously not my opinion (any more than any research is) and there are no personal stories at all in there . . .

It's a bit weird, I'll admit. But I'm withholding judgment until we can see how they reacted to learning of your qualifications. Please keep us posted.

I can think of four possible reasons besides prejudice (which is, of course, a possibility):
1. Maybe the thing asking you about why you were interested was meant to be taken as a request for qualifications.

2. Maybe actually they really *want* personal accounts, so since you're obviously capable of giving one, they'd rather you did that than wrote an academic article, since more people are capable of writing academic articles than are capable of writing personal accounts.

3. Maybe they assumed at the start that you had an academic interest and therefore assumed you had credentials, whereas when you told them it was a personal interest, they then realized you might not have any credentials per se.

4. And finally, just because an article references all its sources doesn't mean that article is impartial or accurate. I'm sure that, given enough time, I could write a well-referenced article "proving" that the moon is made of green cheese. Just because something cites its sources doesn't mean that something is scientifically valid.

It seems weird: I have recently been asked to help some researchers out, after they saw me analyzing some autism research online, and after they also met a research team who had an autistic person as part of the team. They were stunned at how few other researchers (can be counted on one hand it seems) see autistic people as colleagues or potential colleagues rather than as specimens. They were considering themselves lucky to find an autistic person willing to work with them, and meanwhile most researchers aren't even looking.

And I continue to be stunned how long it takes researchers to actually start looking in directions that autistic people have been talking about for years and sometimes decades.

we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -oscar wilde-

Yeah, that's the one that I thought was the most likely when I first read it.

Your communications with them were literal- they couldn't accept that at face value.