Tag: dehumanization

Don’t hang your legitimacy on ideology

Real Social Skills

This dynamic happens a lot with autistic or otherwise socially-marginalized people:

  • You’re not treated as fully real, for your whole life
  • And you don’t even realize it, because it’s pervasive. You don’t know that it’s possible to be treated as real. You don’t know this isn’t normal.

And then you discover a group of people who seem to approve of you

  • They’re an ideological group, and they approve of anyone who shares their ideology
  • And their ideology seems plausible, or valuable, or good
  • And it has some concepts that allow you to understand things you never understood before
  • And you adopt the ideology
  • You’re accepted into the group. In a way you’ve never been accepted before.
  • And they treat you more like a real person than anyone else has before
  • And you yourself *feel* more real than you ever felt before

And so you throw yourself into the ideology

  • Passionately, completely, and sincerely
  • And you care deeply about understanding it, and using the concepts, and doing good and right
  • And so you work really hard
  • And then, eventually, this pulls you away from the ideology
  • Because you learn something, or notice something, that the ideology doesn’t cover
  • And that makes you a heretic
  • And you lose your standing in the group

And then they stop treating you as real. And then you wonder if you are real, if maybe you’re just not good enough for anything. And then maybe you find another ideological group, and it repeats over and over and over. Because you think the problem is that you just haven’t found the right ideology, and that if you find the right one, it won’t fall apart.

Until you realize that, actually, you were real the whole time. And that groups that only think their members are real people are never going to solve the problem. And that when they treat anyone as non-real, it’s a threat to you, too. Because you have to think everyone is real, because everyone *is* real. And seeing people as unpeople is always destructive.

And then you realize that the world is both better and worse than you thought it was. Worse, because there’s no ideological group that will solve everything, but the awful things the ideological groups notice are often true. Better, because everyone is already real, and genuine respect between people is already possible. Because you don’t have to wait for a revolution to be a person, and neither does anyone else.

Remembering that people with disabilities have always existed

Real Social Skills

Content warning: This post talks about institutionalization in graphic terms. Proceed with caution.

Sometimes people say things like this:

  • “When I was a kid, no one had all these learning disabilities and syndromes!”
  • “We’re all so much sicker these days. I never heard of all these diseases until recently.”

And – people who say this? You know why you never met anyone like this as a child?

Because, when you were a kid, people with learning disabilities, syndromes, illnesses, etc weren’t allowed to go to your school. A good percentage of them weren’t even allowed to live in your town.

They were kept away from people like you, and kept in horrifying conditions, so that you and other more socially valued people wouldn’t have to see them or know they existed. (It’s not your fault. You were a child and didn’t know. But it was done in your name, partly.) And a lot of them did not survive childhood because they were not given the care that would have made it possible. And this isn’t over. This still happens.

(And people with disabilities are still afraid of it happening to them).

But thing are getting a bit better – or, more accurately, people who have been fighting this evil for decades are starting to win.

So, these days, many children like those who were carefully kept away from you and your peers are allowed to grow up in families. In schools. As part of their communities. Visibly. And, this means more of them are suriving childhood.

And some adults with disabilities are now treated as adults and allowed to acknowledge disability without forfeiting adulthood. Not everyone, not yet. Not enough. But some. More than there used to be, fewer than there should be.

People with disabilities have always existed. And the fact that everyone now has to notice that they exist is a dramatic improvement. It’s a good thing that you see more people with disabilities now. It means some of them aren’t brutally hidden in institutions. Your children are growing up in a better world than you did. Remember this.

Power is not evidence: a rallying cry against dehumanization

Real Social Skills

Content warning: this post contains somewhat graphic examples of horrible things that happen to people. Proceed with caution.

There is a lot of abuse in this world. A lot of people have far more power over others than they ought to, and even necessary power is misused routinely. Even good people with good intentions harm routinely others by misusing their power.

Often, when force is used against people, they’re presumed to have deserved it. Or worse, to have deserved it because they’re a Kind Of Person who inherently needs to be treated that way. And this is bad. It allows abuse to go unchallenged and even to seem noble – in cases where if people would just *look*, they’d understand.

For instance:

Sometimes people are punished. This is not, in itself, evidence that they did something wrong, or that they are bad, or that they were behaving substantially differently from others. It’s evidence that someone powerful decided to punish them. And that’s all.

Sometimes children are put into segregated programs. This is not evidence that they benefit from segregation, or that they are a kind of person who needs that. It’s evidence that someone powerful decided that kids Like That don’t belong around the real kids. And that’s all.

Sometimes teenagers are sent to harsh programs for bad kids. This is not evidence that they were bad, that they deserved it, that the programs benefited them, or that they are fundamentally different from other kids. It is evidence that someone powerful decided to send them to a program. And that’s all.

Sometimes people are institutionalized. This is not evidence that they are dangerous. It is not evidence that they need to be locked up for their own good. It is not evidence that they are a kind of person who can’t be free. All it’s evidence of is that someone powerful decided they weren’t really real, and needed to be separated from the real people. And that’s all.

Sometimes adults are described as having no mind or having the mind of a little child. This is not evidence that they are incapable of thought or communication, or that they’re a kind of person whose choices don’t matter. It is evidence that someone powerful decided not to listen to them. And that’s all.

Power is evidence of power. And that’s all. And keeping that in mind makes it possible to notice what is actually going on, and to treat people a lot better.

And when you understand that power is not evidence, there’s the horrible part, because you have to notice the abuse and the horrors you used to be able to ignore.

But there’s also the wonderful part. Because you realize that everyone is real, and that nobody needs to be treated as an unperson. And that this horrible brutality and dehumanization is completely unnecessary *and that it can be stopped*.

And if you remember, if you can keep in mind that everyone is real and that power is not evidence – you can become trustworthy. Some people are the targets of pervasive dehumanization efforts, and – if you are able to see this as absolutely unjustified, on a core level, if you can be trusted to see others as real *all the time*, you can prevent these efforts from working.

This is an important skill to acquire. It can save lives (sometimes, including your own).

When you notice dehumanization

Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Okay, but what do you do when you realize you’re being dehumanized?
I’d say a few things:
Notice that it is happening
  • Pay attention to what’s going on
  • If you feel horrible after an interaction, try to figure out if that person did something you know is dehumanizing
  • Keeping a log can help, if your mental configuration makes that possible (for some people, a way that works is to send yourself emails when things happen)
  • Telling someone else what’s going on can help, if you have someone you can trust
To the extent that it is in your power, get away from people who treat you like an unperson.
  • Don’t hang out with people who don’t like you
  • If you can, working for someone who respects you helps a lot
  • If you’re living with a person who is treating you like an unperson, and you can move out, it’s probably a good idea
Don’t push yourself too hard to fix it
  • Extracting yourself from dehumanizing treatment is really hard
  • Sometimes, when you realize that this shouldn’t be happening, it can be tempting to think that it’s your fault for allowing it to happen.
  • It’s not your fault
  • People shouldn’t abuse you
  • And it’s not your obligation to convince them to stop. They are doing something wrong and it’s *not your job* to solve this problem for them by teaching them how to behave. Even if you understand the problem and they don’t.
  • And it’s important to get distance from people who treat you this way, but it can be really hard to do so.
  • It’s not your fault that it’s hard.
  • Don’t beat yourself up if a lot of time passes and you’re still surrounded by people who treat you like an unperson. It can be hard to resist.
  • Don’t give up, either.
Try not to help people dehumanize you
  • Part of the way dehumanization works is by convincing the targets that they’re not really people
  • And also convincing them that all problems are their fault
  • And that if they stay out of the way and do everything right, they’ll be almost human
  • Remembering that you are a person helps
  • Even when you have to do what they want and say what they want, you don’t have to believe everything they want you to believe
  • You are a person. Anyone who doubts this is wrong.
Seek out the company of others who treat you like a person
  • Any respect you can get helps.
  • Even if it’s just online. Or just in person. Or just occasional.
  • Even if it’s not particularly intimate. Finding people to discuss your rock collection with who respect your rock knowledge can help.
  • And just – not everyone dehumanizes others. Some people know that all people are real.
  • Interaction with people who know that people are real helps, both because it gives you experience being treated as real, and because it gives you concepts to notice and object to dehumanization.
Block and ignore people who are mean to you on the internet
  • You’re better off without seeing their nastiness
  • And refusing to engage with it is good practice for realizing people shouldn’t do that to you in person

Autism awareness for aides

Real Social Skills

flannelfrog asked:

I recently got a job offer to be an in-school aid for a gradeschooler I know with aspergers and I’m genuinely afraid to take it because, while I have teaching experience, I’ve never been an aid before. I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong and mess the kid up for the rest of his life. Do you have any advice for me?

Several piece of advice:

First, shift the way you’re thinking about this.

The problem before you is how to do right by a kid in your care. Thinking in terms of wanting to avoid doing something wrong and messing the kid up for the rest of his life is going to make it harder for you to do right by him.

You’re going to do things wrong (you’ve done things wrong in every teaching job you’ve had, it comes with the territory); and it’s going to be important for you to acknowledge and fix your mistakes. Making possible mistakes, even serious ones, a referendum on whether you are a good person, makes it a lot harder to do right by others. I’ve written about that before, here.

Treat him as a person

  • Almost universally, autistic people are treated as though they aren’t quite real, especially by caregivers
  • Often, they think of this as looking past the autism to see the real person
  • But the autism is part of who he is.
  • Don’t attribute some things to him, and others to the autism. He is real all the time.
  • He is a real person. Already.
  • Your job is not to cure him. Your job is to support him and help him to develop his abilities. Learning to do more things will not make him any less autistic, nor should it.
Do not try to make him indistinguishable from his peers
  • Because, seriously, what kind of a goal is that?
  • He’s worthwhile as a person, and he’s different from most other people, and it’s ok.
  • He has better things to do with his time than fake normal.
  • Being able to do awesome things is way better than being able to look normal while doing pointless things
  • It’s ok to be different.
  • Don’t pretend that he’s really just like everyone else, or that he will be when he grows up.
  • One of the most important things you can teach an autistic child is that it is ok to be autistic

Forget everything you think you know about the difference between autism and Asperger’s syndrome:

  • People whose diagnosis is Aspergers syndrome are autistic
  • Autistic people who can speak are disabled
  • There isn’t actually any fundamental difference
  • Except that people considered autistic are often seen as incapable, and people considered to have Aspergers are often seen as faking their difficulties
  • Assume disability and ability, and that you will have to figure out how that works for the person you’re working with

Learn how he communicates.

  • All autistic people have some sort of atypical communication
  • Some autistic people are really good at hiding it, and looking normal at the expense of understanding what is going on.
  • Autistic children, particularly boys, often pretend to be acting out in order to mask disability. Be mindful of this possibility.
  • A good percentage of the time, when autistic people repeat things over and over, they are trying to communicate something and aren’t being understood. Be aware of this, and learn how to make communication possible in this situation.
  • If he seems not to understand something, do not get angry and assume he’s just being defiant or lazy
  • Some things are really really hard to understand, even though they seem simple to people with typical development
  • For instance, an autistic child who has been isolated might find fiction other kids their age understand completely incomprehensible because they can’t relate to the experiences and relationships it describes

If he makes repetitive motions, assume they are important:

  • A lot of autistic people rely heavily on motion to think well
  • Or to communicate
  • Or to understand things
  • Or to find words
  • Or to regulate themselves.
  • If you prevent an autistic person from making repetitive motions, you’re probably also preventing them from doing things like understanding what’s going on, communicating, and learning self-control and interaction.
  • Do not value a typical affect over learning and communication.
  • Do not say “quiet hands” for any reason ever. (Unless you’re saying something like “people shouldn’t tell you ‘quiet hands’”)

Do not make him follow rules the other kids are allowed to get away with breaking

  • Because that’s unfair, and humiliating
  • And it also prevents peer relations
  • It also prevents him from learning how rules actually work, which is a vitally important skill, especially for people who are likely to spend large parts of their life subject to arbitrary decisions made by people with too much power over them

Do not confuse him about consent, and help him learn what consent is

  • If something is an order, do not phrase it as a request. Doing so teaches people to be incapable of saying no.
  • Ask a lot of questions that actually are requests, and go with what he says, even if it’s not the answer you wanted.
  • If he always says yes when you ask him things, assume this is because he has been taught to be incapable of saying no
  • Ask questions in ways that remind him that saying no is possible
  • Or questions in ways that don’t seem to create a compliant option and a defiant option at all.
  • For instance “do you want to stay inside today, or would you rather play on the swings?”
  • But questions that are real. Not forced choices in which each option is basically compliance.

Support him in navigating the difficult and often hateful world he lives in

  • Do not make him play with kids he dislikes, even if this means he doesn’t play with anyone
  • There are worse things than being alone. Being surrounded by people who everyone insists are nice and your friends, but who actually don’t think you’re real or treat you well is much worse than honest loneliness.
  • It’s possible, and likely, that there are very few kids, or even no kids at all, in his group who it is a good idea for him to spend time with
  • And even if you think he’s wrong about this, it’s a decision he should be making for himself (and his judgement is probably better than yours)
  • When kids or adults do bad things to him (and they will), you usually won’t be able to make them stop. You should tell him that what they’re doing is wrong, and that it’s not his fault.
  • Knowing that it’s wrong, and that others know it’s wrong, helps a lot.

Some things you should read:

  • Ballastexistenz From the beginning. Every post. It has a lot of fundamentally important things about power, and dehumanization, and about seeing people as real. This blog has a lot of the best things that have ever been written on this topic.
  • Rolling Around In My Head is also a really good blog, written by a disabled man whose professional work is supporting people with disabilities. He says a lot of things worth knowing. Also his book Power Tools is important for understanding how this power dynamic works – and your environment and training will put pressure on you not to understand it.
  • Loud Hands: Autistic People Speaking is a really important book about autism and the world written by insightful autistic people. Buy it and read it and understand it, and it will help you to do right by this boy and others

Trying to detect dehumanization

Real Social Skills

I’m really good at telling when people don’t quite think I’m a person, but I’m not quite sure *how* I detect this. I’m trying to figure it out.

A good part of what’s in this post is probably wrong, because this is really hard to get a handle on. And *some* of these things are sometimes the result of other things, like communication problems.

But here’s a draft list of things I think that I detect as signs that someone doesn’t see me as a person:

  • There’s kind of more of a pause than usual, and then what they responded to wasn’t really in reaction to what you said. They’re reacting to some imaginary person.
  • They don’t seem to understand what you’re saying, but they don’t ask any clarifying questions.
  • They don’t answer your clarifying questions.
  • They look at each other a lot, but not you.
  • They try to insist on talking about your feelings rather than the problem or concrete thing you want to talk about.
  • They tell you in authoritative tones what you are thinking or feeling or need or want, and they’re not open to corrections.
  • They completely ignore you when you say things that don’t fit their agenda, to the extent that you start doubting that you actually said it.
  • They go on and on about how smart you are, but they don’t seem to want to discuss anything else with you.
  • They expect effusive gratitude for mundane acts like getting something down from a shelf they can reach that you can’t.
  • Their body language shifts dramatically when they’re interacting with you; it’s really different than how it looks when they’re interacting with others. 
  • They have a voice they use with adults, and a voice they use with young children, and they use their little-kid-voice with you.

Thoughts, anyone? Which of these things am I wrong (or right) about? What other signs are there?

I think a good percentage of y’all know exactly what I am talking about, but it’s really hard to pin down.

Interacting with marginalized people who do valuable things

Real Social Skills

Sometimes people do unusual things, things that people like them are not expected to do, things that might even be taboo. 

This happens to autistic folks, men who do childcare or raise their kids or otherwise “women’s work”, women who do many things, people with other disabilities, children and teenagers who accomplish things, basically any group of people who are often not expected to do things.

And sometimes people who want to support them end up making things worse. This is too abstract, so I’m going to give an example. This is not specifically a women’s issue; I’m using that as an example because it’s one I’ve seen a lot:

Say, a woman is the first female research scientist. And that she’s overcome a lot of opposition to get to this point.

And now that she’s finally gotten to the point of being allowed to do research that other people take seriously; 90% of the time what people want to talk about is her gender. About what it’s like to be a female whatever or the first female whatever.

Even when she’s come to give a presentation on her research – people who ask questions at the end all ask about what it’s like to be a female scientist and not what she’s actually presenting on.

And it’s hard to assert boundaries about this without just being seen as an uncaring bitch.

Many of the people are just curious, sometimes in a creepy way. Some people asking about it are hostile, and want to show that they really don’t think women should be allowed.

But sometimes, the hardest thing to take is people who want to tell you how great it is that you’re a female scientist, who mean to be supportive, but who are still really intensely focused on the freaky female part rather than the scientist part. Because, then, even the people who like you aren’t really taking you seriously, it’s *always* about the thing, the freakness.

And even then, it can seem like people are assuring you that you have their permission to be a freaky female – and being treated like you need permission by supporters 

And it’s so much better to be taken seriously on the terms you care about, on what you’re actually doing.

So, be careful about that. The best way to support someone who is doing something important and stigmatized is to value the thing they’re doing, and take them seriously as someone who does it.