Rants

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Ok, bloody Brexit, how long can this crap go on for, I'm sick of it. January 31st!! ! For f sake! Will it ever get to the bloody point where we actually know what crap we will have to clean up.
Gaaaaaaaah

i feel the same blinkin' way about the phuqed up mess we'll have to clean up after [big IF] our present fools are voted out.

Ugh, I know.

Ahh our lovely crazy world, has it always been so nuts... I think so

The world used to be more nuts than it is now.

Weary of war, weary of politics, weary of terrorism, weary of people's inability to compromise. Really really really weary.

the world is getting nuttier by the second.

Okay, this rant hasn't been posting, and I don't know why, but I'm going to break it in half and see what happens. I've been trying to get it to post for the past 20 minutes now, so I'd be delighted with any utterances of disgust that you'd like to offer in solidarity to either my rant or my frustrations with computers and internets and what-nots. (Yes, I do know it's not plural.)

I've been holding in an angry rant that just needs a place to go. Four days ago, I picked up a book that I'd been really excited to read. It was about Jane Austen and characters on the spectrum. This was particularly about Pride and Prejudice characters, and that happens to be my favorite book--one I've read countless times. I didn't have any qualms about reading this book--it was a Jessica Kingsley publication and Tony Attwood wrote a foreword. Naive newbie to the label, I thought ASD would be treated respectfully.

Well, I did not have to get very far before I was degraded, demeaned, and disgusted. If you don't want to be, don't read on.

"Having occasionally experienced dinner or house guests whom I now realize were on the spectrum, I can attest that most of those visits were exhausting and unsatisfying, especially if the ratio was skewed and more than one person with ASD was present. In response to the silent, monosyllabic ones everyone else tended at first to talk more or in a livelier way to try to entice them into conversation. Eventually, their limited responses, both verbally and even facially, extinguished the effort the others were putting forward. In contrast, when the guest with ASD was one who frequently launched into monologues, the eyes of the others glazed over or else developed a twitchiness as they watched for the slightest pause to enable them to return to a back-and-forth exchange between the entire group. Either way conversation was a problem rather than a pleasure."

Reading that meant that I was reminded that people have warned others against inviting me to their dinner parties for my entire life, and I was bombarded with flashbacks of trauma I would very much like to forget.

And later, I got to learn that:

"Besides the several dozen children officially diagnosed with ASD with whom I have worked professionally, I have grown to realize that I have encountered a similar or greater number of adults on the spectrum among those I have met in my varied communities and travels. Few of them have been formally diagnosed."

So basically, the woman just stripped herself of all credibility. She only knows about autistic children--admits to knowing few diagnosed adult autistics. Yet, miraculously, a degree in language speech pathology and some ridiculously fixed ideas as to what good conversation requires are all she needs to diagnose more than several dozens of adults with autism. No history, no appointment, just observation in a social setting.

She previously detailed all her "worldly" experiences (not nearly as varied as she'd like to think--Canadians and Australians of a similar socioeconomic status, most of them white). These experiences were supposed to be proof that she has come into contact with many, many different types of people in her lifetime. That and a knowledge of Pride and Prejudice made her qualified to write a book that Jessica Kingsley found worthy of publishing and Tony Attwood found worthy of promoting. Did either read it? I mean, in just the first pages, before chapter 1, she literally admits to knowing very few adults who are definitively on the spectrum, and the entire basis of the book is that she understands the behavior of scores of adults on the spectrum! I don't know what sort of authority she has in Canada, but in the United States, a language speech pathologist can have ten thousand clinical sessions with a client and still is not allowed to make a legal diagnosis of autism--can in fact be sued for trying.


To be continued momentarily:

Last edited by mau_tie on 27 Sep 2019, 3:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

Sorry, this only seems to let me post in pieces... it's extremely frustrating

Furthermore, let's go a little up to the fact that she's worked with several dozen ASD students. Please, tell me they have a support group. Except that I taught for a little while, and you find these people everywhere, which means that those kids had ten other teachers who were no better. I will tell you that my mother (as a teacher coach) once told a teacher who was complaining about an inclusion class, "You don't deserve the honor of teaching the autistic children"--said it right in front of another co-worker (who was very relieved that the woman finally shut up). But she was an ASD grandma then, and only months away from retirement. She always stood up for the kids, but the ferocity was new. My mother might have screwed me up in a lot of ways, but she does befriend every atypical she meets. And yes, I completely changed the subject without warning, which I am told by this vile woman means that I am not at all skilled in the "art of conversation." We really need to fix that whole subject thing about ourselves, too, because it's obviously terrifying to neurotypicals when we do it, and if we don't warn them that we're about to change the subject, they may just pee their pants in fear. Oh, the fright we do give them!

Part three of ?

Back to the first quote (isn't my transition so comforting), my therapist pointing out that she's trying to be Jane Austen stylistically. Since this is a rant, and since I am very angry at her, I will not find anything nice to say, but also, I really don't think there is. Problem rather than a pleasure most closely meets the style but that's because... oh, look what Miss Bingley says about Mr. Darcy in Chapter XI, "I am much mistaken if there are not some among us to whom a ball would be rather a punishment than a pleasure." Wow. Punishment vs. pleasure sounds much better than problem vs. pleasure. Yep, that's right. Does she honestly think there's nobody reading that who isn't able to identify most lines from the novel and find the exact quote within seconds? Don't attack aspies if you don't expect them to crush you. Twelve years after you wrote your book. On a forum you'll never read. But I am likely to have the last laugh (because you're about 30 years older than I am).

I do have a theory, though, that she's a self-loathing aspie who's too closeted to even realize that she's not neurotypical. Anybody that obsessed with the rules of conversation has to have a reason, and the reason most people become obsessed with something like that is because they had to figure it out and navigate it in a way that others did not. Also, there's other stuff... just little hints. I mean, I hope she's not on the spectrum, because I really don't want her to have anything more in common with me. Same favorite author is already way too much.

Part 4 of ?

But what really gets to me, which I alluded to earlier, was that this thing was allowed to become a book, that these quotes are not just acceptable among random people but also promoted by the people who are supposed to be supporting autistics. It's inflammatory language... she's a... hater? ableist? There's really no word that captures how awful this woman is, nor a word for what she is doing.

And how the heck is it that a person who doesn't say much is capable of ruining an entire dinner party, especially if any other person at the dinner party were remotely like their hostess, because I can easily see a woman like that insulting someone intentionally. Oh wait, she did, right before my eyes.

But no, she didn't. It's okay to say horrible things about people with ASD, because it's a medical condition, and they need to be fixed, and how else are they supposed to know how horrible they are unless people tell them? [Sarcasm]

Last edited by mau_tie on 27 Sep 2019, 1:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Part 5 of 5

To the awful woman whose name I don't remember and I don't want to reach over to look at the book and find out, it turns out that you are the problem. You have a serious communication disorder. You don't know how to be civil, for starters. Also, you practically plagiarize. You contradict yourself. You have an arrogance about you that can only be described as wildly delusional. You don't know how to read your degree (I'm pretty sure... let me know if diagnosis is within her scope of practice, Canadians). If I had been able to get past page 30, I imagine I would have been able to find some more of your deficiencies and include them in the write-up of my diagnosis of your severe communication disorder, which I can diagnose with as much if not more authority than you have used to diagnose people with ASD. Oh, also, you quoted what your daughter wrote in her journal in high school, which was that Pride and Prejudice is mostly dialogue, when you don't actually have to read English to look at my copy and see that it's not! You only have to know what quotes are and see that there are more pages without them than there are pages with them, therefore making it not mostly dialogue. Therefore, your daughter should also be tested--these sorts of communication disorders are genetic, and she is showing signs. And, of course, this in your case demonstrates that you are also hallucinating quotation marks where they do not exist. Why is this okay? How is this okay? How is it that stupid people with no authority become the arbiters of what is to be accepted and what is to be rejected? They do it as kids, and then they do it as teenagers, and then they do it as adults, and everybody lets them. I guess Jessica Kingsley and Tony Attwood wanted to get a seat at the table of one of this woman's dinner parties so they could study all the autistics who would show up and ruin it.


How does it do for a rant? Disorganized enough? Angry enough? It's my first rant, and I'm hoping it's a good one. For the first time (and I have a thread about obsessing over editing posts), I'm just going to post--submit not preview, because if I were to edit it, it wouldn't be an authentic rant.

And since I'm authentically angry, I'm going for an authentic rant.

Hello:

If I hadn't spent a good three hours on the above rant, I would not have bothered to post it given my difficulties, and if I had realized before I posted the first part that this stupid thing wouldn't let me post a second part of equal length for reasons beyond my understanding, I also would not have bothered to post it.

If you are not too annoyed with me to read about my anger, then the instructions aren't terribly complicated. Begin with the first of my now six posts that appear in a row. They are at least written in order. I did the best I could, and I did spend 20 minutes (as you can see by the time stamp) trying to make it so that I only had two posts. It just didn't work out.

anybody who is not angry, just isn't paying attention.

Top notch! You're booked - is once a week OK for you?


It's getting light and I still haven't crawled into bed, so I must resist that temptation right now - hence no more detailed comment. Obsessing over editing posts about obsessing over editing posts sounds like a grand project, I may have to pay a visit.

That was an epic rant! I hear you, and despise hypocrisy as well. You have to wonder what motivates someone to write an entire book on not letting autistics ruin your dinner party. Sounds a bit control freakish to me.