For some reason my comment failed to publish on this post, so I'm putting it here:
This is patently offensive, and that this was allowed to go through to production this way is very telling how much farther we need to come before the general public realizes how harmful this is.
And I don't buy that "well, we're not REALLY making fun of disabled people, we're making fun of blah blah" - when you used that word, there's no way that it's NOT about disabled people, even when it's not meant that way, and to be so resistant to change use of a WORD. It's like how I saw a news person on TV say that when they used the word f****t in school, that they didn't REALLY mean gay people. It's a pathetic excuse.
I am autistic, and have had an IQ score of in the borderline range as well as in the gifted range, and have been called retard as well as a bunch of other physical and verbal abuse at school, which was justified by both students and counselors by my "weird" behavior, so I must just "expect" that treatment because I look so odd to them. Well, I can expect it and be used to it, but that doesn't mean it's right and it doesn't mean it should go overlooked.
Whatever the IQ score, whatever someone's adaptive skills or disability or whatever, it is hurtful and completely unacceptable that this passes for acceptable usage. I have know decent, kind people who have used this word, because they have absorbed it and also absorbed the justification that it's "not REALLY making fun of disabled people", but that's why this kind of thing needs to be countered - I don't want even MORE otherwise good people absorbing and using this offensive language, simply because society presents it as mainstream and OK.
Showing posts with label humanity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humanity. Show all posts
04 August 2008
The Particles of Oppression
This post is in response to this post by ballastexistenz.
I don't remember the specific moment when I realized the pattern of what was going on. It's mostly consisting of a lot of little realizations, which have been incrementally coalescing into a broader understanding of discrimination, how it applies to me and to others.
One thing I remember real clearly, though, was when I was in grade 7, unsuccessfully pleading to the counselor to let me write an incident report or to discipline the bullies for yet another assault, after all this time of it being blamed on my "odd" appearance, resulting from everything from autism to seizures to lacking designer jeans. And as she started lecturing me on the importance of attending class, I saw in the adjacent room that a girl, one of the very social, non-disabled, girls, was entering the office and asking for an incident report, and handed one right away. Being given the not-so-subtle threat of institutionalization, I saw very clearly that I was fighting in the ring with my hands tied behind my back.
One thing I remember real clearly, though, was when I was in grade 7, unsuccessfully pleading to the counselor to let me write an incident report or to discipline the bullies for yet another assault, after all this time of it being blamed on my "odd" appearance, resulting from everything from autism to seizures to lacking designer jeans. And as she started lecturing me on the importance of attending class, I saw in the adjacent room that a girl, one of the very social, non-disabled, girls, was entering the office and asking for an incident report, and handed one right away. Being given the not-so-subtle threat of institutionalization, I saw very clearly that I was fighting in the ring with my hands tied behind my back.
Also that year, around the same time, I was in the office while the counselor talked to a teacher about a student they suspected to be autistic. I had been shading the windows of a building on newsprint, and they talked about his main interest and how they were hesitant of how to approach the parents (they also used his name, though I don't remember and wouldn't breach confidence anyway, unlike the counselor), and I remember stopping what I was doing, and saying "Autistic - that's like what I am" and they continued talking, as if I weren't there or neither of us mattered. I suspected it was the latter.
That year I got the distinct impression, that to them I was naught but a test score, a number whose value had suddenly dropped. It shook me to realize, how they were concerned far more about the financial impact of my absence from school, yet were perfectly content to have me warehoused in offices, and when in class or outside, to be constantly attacked physically and emotionally, and then blamed me for my behavior, both what was naturally my behavior and that which was induced by the circumstances, and say that this was justification enough to exclude me not only from school, but potentially permanently from society.
My parents got calls, day in, day out, about my "bizarre" behavior - mostly autistic behavior and catatonic-type stuff, with sporadic seizures, and talk of medication and institutions pulling on my mind and leading me to pace the floor more vigorously and at later advancing hours with each passing day.
That year I got the distinct impression, that to them I was naught but a test score, a number whose value had suddenly dropped. It shook me to realize, how they were concerned far more about the financial impact of my absence from school, yet were perfectly content to have me warehoused in offices, and when in class or outside, to be constantly attacked physically and emotionally, and then blamed me for my behavior, both what was naturally my behavior and that which was induced by the circumstances, and say that this was justification enough to exclude me not only from school, but potentially permanently from society.
My parents got calls, day in, day out, about my "bizarre" behavior - mostly autistic behavior and catatonic-type stuff, with sporadic seizures, and talk of medication and institutions pulling on my mind and leading me to pace the floor more vigorously and at later advancing hours with each passing day.
I don't think I told anybody yet about how often I was just sitting in this office or that room the whole school day, or most of it. It wasn't a place for me to "calm down" or anything, and basically had a consistently elevated level of stress, which would spike at particular points, such as pending assault or the talk of the counselor.
At that point, I had little insight as to what exactly about me constituted something "autistic", but I had a definite sense that I was being treated unfairly for these things, even if I couldn't pinpoint them with words, and thus couldn't communicate well about them.
That is something that has been highly deceptive about me - my use of large vocabulary, writing skills, and the fact that I didn't have significant speech delay, hides the fact that I do often have difficulty finding the words and being able to describe important things, even when these fall under the category of what is usually considered simple. "I need a pencil", for instance, at age 10 was a phrase I needed a lot of time to be able to get out, but at another moment I could recite a 10-minute rant about things that happened during the school day, because I had spent the time during the school day to come up with and memorize the words to make this rant.
This is what I think has to do with the decreased reliability of speech for me over the last 10 years, even though communication is much better for me now. When I was 7, or 9, for instance, I knew most of the academic material being taught in class, so for one thing I could afford to "zone out" while constructing scripts and mapping out potential replies and replies to replies and replies to replies to replies, but not only that, I could also come up with the words and then memorize them.
One thing very different between 10 years ago and now: then - rote memory was good, maybe even excellent; now - rote memory is very unreliable.
That, and being in high school and college classes, even for classes I considered relatively easy and familiar in terms of the material taught, rarely was I so familiar with the content that I could afford to not pay attention to four hours of instruction (really, in first grade I really couldn't afford it either, but at that time I didn't care about my grades).
In fact, the only time that I had the luxury to "zone out" to the degree that I did in elementary school, was in high school chemistry, which for me was a review, as 2 years earlier I had studied AP Chemistry books and learned the material for the whole year in 2 weeks - though unfortunately the chemistry class did not cover thermodynamics much at all, which was a topic that I hadn't studied on my own).
In that year I took chemistry, I had been absent a lot (as with most years of public school), and when I got back to school (after weeks, almost a month being absent), there was a chemistry test. We had a substitute that day, so as he handed out the tests, I used my alphasmart to type that I had been absent for the whole chapter (which, while all the material up to that point had been stuff I'd already covered, I didn't know that for sure as I hadn't been in class to know what the test was about).
The substitute said, "Take it anyway".
Now this was quite the predicament. While I could theoretically take it anyway, and had a fair chance of doing well on it, what if it was all stuff I'd never covered before? Then, the teacher would have to make up an entirely new test for me to make up. I started typing on the alphasmart, to clarify this point, and also the fact that I had been absent the whole duration that the chapter was being taught, and the other students (as well as my absence record on the attendance sheet) verified this.
He told took the test back and told me to write an e-mail to the teacher. So I started writing it. He told me to stop typing, and I froze for a minute, then started typing an explanation of why I was typing.
After a couple minutes he called me to his desk (which I didn't notice he was talking to me until some students around me pointed it out, as he hadn't used my name).
I went up and showed him what I typed. He asked me to spell my name. I did. Then I did some typing, and asked why.
He said it was a detention slip for disrespecting a teacher. I typed "If I may ask, in what way did I disrespect you?" and he said "you didn't listen." I typed about how I am autistic and often don't respond when my name is called, much less when my name isn't used, and that sometimes I need to type things, or I can't get words out, and that when I typed after he told me not to that it was to type this explanation of why it's necessary for me to type.
(Also keep in mind that this was my first year having an alphasmart, so I was not used to defending my right to communicate, whereas most times before this I had had no choice but to remain silent.)
Then at lunch I started writing my frustration about this, and asked a friend in AP European History about the iternerary for the day, and she said that we had a unit test, and a substitute, but she named the substitute she'd had, who was a lady most agreed to be nice.
I walked into AP European History next and guess who was sitting at the desk with the pile of tests?
You guessed it. The same guy as from chemistry.
There are lots of forms that oppression can take, and to those who are so accustomed to it that it is sewed into the daily fabric of their lives it can, at its mildest forms, be taken as annoyance, at its serverer forms, be taken as a "bad day".
The most important lesson to be taken away from the observation of these particles of oppression, though, is that each of them, regardless of size or impact, constitutes an increment of oppression coalescing with the other particles of injustice, however major or minor.
26 March 2008
My Neighbor Autism
When I describe the ways I perceive things, or the reasons why I misunderstand non-autistic cues, when I react to painful stimuli or have trouble understanding something "simple", people will often point to my invisible neighbor autism.
They may give that "ohhh...I see" look that tells me they really didn't see, but rather were imagining, my neighbor autism. They may shake their head, get frustrated, or walk out of the room to leave me to my devices because they don't want to deal with someone who is self-injuring. Then later when talking to a friend over a cup of coffee in the lounge they may say, "Do you know who her neighbor is?"
Sometimes, they say, my neighbor moves in, and then in a hushed, whispered voice, say, "She lives with autism, you know."
The fact is that I have no neighbor called autism. But that is not what disheartens me most. It is the fact that people tell me - and not always overtly - that I ought to be ashamed of that neighbor. There are a few things I would like these people to know:
It is not more politically correct (or dare I say - Appropriate?) to address autistic people as "persons with autism". The rationale for this is that in using "person-first" language, you are not defining the person by the fact that they're autistic. It is supposed to be an acknowledgement that - yes, we really are human just like everybody else.
All this sounds very nice and good and all. But it's not that simple.
That and besides, political correctness means nothing if that's the only way you attempt to respect someone. For instance, it doesn't matter if you say "mentally challenged" or whatever is the latest term in preference to retarded; if you treat the same people as a nuisance or an embarrassment then your two cents of political correctness have been wasted.
The fact is, using an adjective descriptor of a person is not itself an insult, a denial of the person's humanity, or somehow supposed to define the entire person. It can be used that way (as in the man who sees a woman upset and says sneeringly, "typical female"), but that's not how it's usually applied. It is usually applied just as a plain descriptor ("I am female", "I am gay", "I am tall", etc.). The fact that the average person would have a much larger reaction to "I am autistic" than to "I am tall" mainly has to do with the fact that most people are not familiar with autistics and the fact that the only knowledge most people have of autistics tends to be skewed to the highly negative perceptions.
It also alarms me that somehow by separating autism from a person that this is supposed to reaffirm the individual's humanity. Perhaps this is part of the ghost of refrigerator mother theories and mythic interpretations of autistics as changelings. Our differing body language, our misunderstanding of non-autistic social cues, and the idea that we are autistic because of cold, un-nurturing mothers, have all been incorporated into the distortion that depicts us as less human.
But the best way to fight this ignorance is to inform people that because we act different doesn't mean we're uncaring or indifferent to people. Not to claim that our imagined neighbor autism really is something to be ashamed of.
15 December 2007
Tact and Advocacy
I sincerely would like to apologize about some of the insensitive people who claim to speak for the autistic community but in truth don't.
I am not strictly describing pro-cure NTs. There are also autistics who get on my nerves because not only are they narrow-minded, but they show no interest in expanding their understanding and perspective.
Of course these people are in the minority. It is unfortunate, however, that Alison Tepper Singer can be put on a video claiming to raise "awareness" as she describes the only reason she didn't kill her autistic daughter was because she had a normal daughter too and even be praised for her "courage", while a few narrow-minded autistics who state their views without presenting them in any kind of logically comprehensible OR emotionally sensitive way are demonized as "nasty self-advocates who want to take our kids' services away."
Like extreme views of anything, people are far too prone to get rigid and nasty about them, autistic or NT. I do not consider myself a "radical" or "extremist" for opposing the idea of cure. I tend to define these terms by the way a group or individual goes about achieving their goals. Of course, there are cases when the goals themselves are extremist and dangerous: who would argue that the advocacy for genocide, racist Social Darwinism, or war-mongering are not of themselves dangerous? Likewise, just because there are dangers to the ways that religious fundamentalists, such as of Christian and Islamic denominations, doesn't mean that everybody who is Christian or Muslim advocates for death to America or persecuting gays.
I hate it when autistics who don't have much of any of the disability aspect try to speak for everybody just as much as I hate it when non-autistic people try to speak for us. It's just no use.
On the Internet, I have encountered many pro-cure people who viciously attacked me even when I wrote about understanding that it can be very difficult for parents; my NT mother has had much trouble with me, and I do not have as many special needs as some others (such as, I can't brush my hair, but I can do toileting; I can speak, but often get overloaded and can't).
Remember everyone: assholes are assholes. Some of them happen to be autistic, some of them happen to be NT. It doesn't mean that either group is more prone to such attitudes.
Autism, while a disability that should receive supports, accommodations, and adaptive skills, should not be eradicated or looked at as wholly negative. I don't want a cure, but I also don't assume that the people who say they want one are bad parents/hate their kids/insert other stereotype.
I believe in diplomacy. This doesn't mean we have to be wishy-washy, roll-over-and-do-what-the-NTs-all-tell-us autistics. We can criticize the foundations of the ideas in favor of cure without resorting to ad hominem attacks on those who support it. Especially this is true since the word "cure" is often used to describe developing adaptive skills (such as speech and toileting), which I do not believe is cure.
While it is still very important that we not concede on helping parents to understand that being nonverbal is not a jail sentence, if the individual is capable and willing, some of these things are useful skills. We should focus more on the WAY the skills are taught, to see that they are not being coerced, that the individual is not made to feel inferior for "autistic behaviors." These, after all, are requisite to human equality, and I have no intention of conceding these goals, which need not be compromised by employing some empathy.
As to the divisions. They are Everywhere.
HFA, LFA, AS? Touch of AS? ND or curebie? Retards and computer geeks. I get pretty sick of it. Especially it annoys me when people use the word 'retard' as an insult. It is to me like using the word 'gay' as an insult. When I was in elementary school, I heard people say, "That is SO GAY - you're so GAY" so much that I preferred the word homosexual. It surprised me much when this summer I got my hands on a copy of The Advocate and some books about the gay rights movement, and I learned that the preferred term in the gay community is just that - gay. Why? Because 'homosexual' was too medicalized a term, one used often when it was a diagnosable disorder voted in by the APA and voted out again in 1973.
Why did I bring this up?
I am not sure at this point if I really forgot my topic or if I was trying to utilise a rhetorical strategy. In any case, the existence of a word alone does not make it offensive or acceptable. In fact, devoid of the usage and origin and other available context, a word has absolutlely no meaning, and is merely a string of the shapes of the letters to form it, and the sounds it would make if one were to produce it.
The problem lies with kids growing up thinking that if someone is gay or retarded, then they are less valuable and worth mocking. Growing up, I frequently got called both. I wonder how many grade-school kids get called "retarded lesbo?"
The fact is, whatever category people try to group me (or anybody else) into, to force-fit like the puzzle piece so many seem to think goes well with autistics into the narrow configuration so many would like to see me fit, I just can't, and I won't. Even though on the surface I resemble the math-and-science-obsessed Aspie stereotype, and that aspect of it is true, it is impossible to put someone in so narrow a box without losing a few chunks of the individual.
I tend to relate more to nonverbal auties who use a speech device than to the highly verbal aspie who has trouble with social skills. My social skills are actually pretty good; though eye contact and body language for me are atypical (in the case of eye contact, virtually nonexistent), and these are not instruments I use to augment my social understanding. Fortunately, the high school I attend is generally accepting of different people, so the fact that I spend 90%+ of my time at school rocking and moving my hands and occasionally getting up to pace, or those days in tae kwon do that I just can't speak at all, these don't affect friendships adversely for me. At my other school, where I repressed most of these behaviors to the best of my ability out of fear, I had the understanding of a select few, the sympathy of a few more onlookers who recognized injustice - most of whom did nothing to support my efforts, however.
So as we recognize that these labels are often used as dividing lines and demeaning labels, that we are not so simplistic as to fit them - no one is - we must also consider that not everybody is being a big NT meanie who wants to take away our rights and abort us. True, we cannot be weak and submissive, or we will only be worse than ignored, but being rude will work to this unfavourable end as well.
So please, I urge all budding activists, who seek to impact the posautive change that I have begun my journey to realize, to employ tact wherever it is necessary. Of course someone who outright insults you with an ad hominem attack loses that privilege, but where the individual is not making a direct attack that is meant to villify, then please employ this tact. It is difficult at times, and what helps me is to write my angry, emotional stuff down on a separate file, then post a logical, tactful reply. (Not that I always succeed - I am sure that I have slipped up. My crowning achievement in this area is when in response to a YouTube video in which a parent referred to the autism "epidemic" as a "slaughter" I kept my cool for a 500 word response limit.)
I am not strictly describing pro-cure NTs. There are also autistics who get on my nerves because not only are they narrow-minded, but they show no interest in expanding their understanding and perspective.
Of course these people are in the minority. It is unfortunate, however, that Alison Tepper Singer can be put on a video claiming to raise "awareness" as she describes the only reason she didn't kill her autistic daughter was because she had a normal daughter too and even be praised for her "courage", while a few narrow-minded autistics who state their views without presenting them in any kind of logically comprehensible OR emotionally sensitive way are demonized as "nasty self-advocates who want to take our kids' services away."
Like extreme views of anything, people are far too prone to get rigid and nasty about them, autistic or NT. I do not consider myself a "radical" or "extremist" for opposing the idea of cure. I tend to define these terms by the way a group or individual goes about achieving their goals. Of course, there are cases when the goals themselves are extremist and dangerous: who would argue that the advocacy for genocide, racist Social Darwinism, or war-mongering are not of themselves dangerous? Likewise, just because there are dangers to the ways that religious fundamentalists, such as of Christian and Islamic denominations, doesn't mean that everybody who is Christian or Muslim advocates for death to America or persecuting gays.
I hate it when autistics who don't have much of any of the disability aspect try to speak for everybody just as much as I hate it when non-autistic people try to speak for us. It's just no use.
On the Internet, I have encountered many pro-cure people who viciously attacked me even when I wrote about understanding that it can be very difficult for parents; my NT mother has had much trouble with me, and I do not have as many special needs as some others (such as, I can't brush my hair, but I can do toileting; I can speak, but often get overloaded and can't).
Remember everyone: assholes are assholes. Some of them happen to be autistic, some of them happen to be NT. It doesn't mean that either group is more prone to such attitudes.
Autism, while a disability that should receive supports, accommodations, and adaptive skills, should not be eradicated or looked at as wholly negative. I don't want a cure, but I also don't assume that the people who say they want one are bad parents/hate their kids/insert other stereotype.
I believe in diplomacy. This doesn't mean we have to be wishy-washy, roll-over-and-do-what-the-NTs-all-tell-us autistics. We can criticize the foundations of the ideas in favor of cure without resorting to ad hominem attacks on those who support it. Especially this is true since the word "cure" is often used to describe developing adaptive skills (such as speech and toileting), which I do not believe is cure.
While it is still very important that we not concede on helping parents to understand that being nonverbal is not a jail sentence, if the individual is capable and willing, some of these things are useful skills. We should focus more on the WAY the skills are taught, to see that they are not being coerced, that the individual is not made to feel inferior for "autistic behaviors." These, after all, are requisite to human equality, and I have no intention of conceding these goals, which need not be compromised by employing some empathy.
As to the divisions. They are Everywhere.
HFA, LFA, AS? Touch of AS? ND or curebie? Retards and computer geeks. I get pretty sick of it. Especially it annoys me when people use the word 'retard' as an insult. It is to me like using the word 'gay' as an insult. When I was in elementary school, I heard people say, "That is SO GAY - you're so GAY" so much that I preferred the word homosexual. It surprised me much when this summer I got my hands on a copy of The Advocate and some books about the gay rights movement, and I learned that the preferred term in the gay community is just that - gay. Why? Because 'homosexual' was too medicalized a term, one used often when it was a diagnosable disorder voted in by the APA and voted out again in 1973.
Why did I bring this up?
I am not sure at this point if I really forgot my topic or if I was trying to utilise a rhetorical strategy. In any case, the existence of a word alone does not make it offensive or acceptable. In fact, devoid of the usage and origin and other available context, a word has absolutlely no meaning, and is merely a string of the shapes of the letters to form it, and the sounds it would make if one were to produce it.
The problem lies with kids growing up thinking that if someone is gay or retarded, then they are less valuable and worth mocking. Growing up, I frequently got called both. I wonder how many grade-school kids get called "retarded lesbo?"
The fact is, whatever category people try to group me (or anybody else) into, to force-fit like the puzzle piece so many seem to think goes well with autistics into the narrow configuration so many would like to see me fit, I just can't, and I won't. Even though on the surface I resemble the math-and-science-obsessed Aspie stereotype, and that aspect of it is true, it is impossible to put someone in so narrow a box without losing a few chunks of the individual.
I tend to relate more to nonverbal auties who use a speech device than to the highly verbal aspie who has trouble with social skills. My social skills are actually pretty good; though eye contact and body language for me are atypical (in the case of eye contact, virtually nonexistent), and these are not instruments I use to augment my social understanding. Fortunately, the high school I attend is generally accepting of different people, so the fact that I spend 90%+ of my time at school rocking and moving my hands and occasionally getting up to pace, or those days in tae kwon do that I just can't speak at all, these don't affect friendships adversely for me. At my other school, where I repressed most of these behaviors to the best of my ability out of fear, I had the understanding of a select few, the sympathy of a few more onlookers who recognized injustice - most of whom did nothing to support my efforts, however.
So as we recognize that these labels are often used as dividing lines and demeaning labels, that we are not so simplistic as to fit them - no one is - we must also consider that not everybody is being a big NT meanie who wants to take away our rights and abort us. True, we cannot be weak and submissive, or we will only be worse than ignored, but being rude will work to this unfavourable end as well.
So please, I urge all budding activists, who seek to impact the posautive change that I have begun my journey to realize, to employ tact wherever it is necessary. Of course someone who outright insults you with an ad hominem attack loses that privilege, but where the individual is not making a direct attack that is meant to villify, then please employ this tact. It is difficult at times, and what helps me is to write my angry, emotional stuff down on a separate file, then post a logical, tactful reply. (Not that I always succeed - I am sure that I have slipped up. My crowning achievement in this area is when in response to a YouTube video in which a parent referred to the autism "epidemic" as a "slaughter" I kept my cool for a 500 word response limit.)
24 November 2007
The Transparency of Hysteria
This was an essay I wrote for my Literature and Composition class. It is about Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, and I relate it to autism issues. Hillary Clinton at one point is mentioned; it could have been many people I would have mentioned, but as she is influencial in politics in general, I chose her mention.
The odd page numbers used in citations are from our class textbook. This essay, minus grammatical and spelling corrections and the like, took approximately one hour ten minutes and was restricted to about three pages double spaced in length, so it is not so thorough as it could be, but rather serves more as an outline for a project of greater depth.
Literature and Composition III
7 November 2007
The Transparency of Hysteria
As significant spatial and temporal distance removes people from personal involvement from a situation, the relevance of historical incidents of injustice increases in direct proportion with the time passed since the injustice occurred. Human history is smattered with repeats of mistakes – lessons learned, then promptly again forgotten. An illustration: the international community, following the Holocaust, responded with the vow of “never again.” Yet, less than a century later, the same community has taken little to no action in response to the genocide in Sudan. Another lesson briefly learned, studied, and then forgotten to move on to the next stage of the progress of civilization. In the same way as the importance of remembering the misdeeds of the past increases for such events as genocide, so must humanity step up to the commitments made upon the apologies and restitution made following the Salem witch trials.
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a perfect example.
Those who exist along the fringes of societal norms – be they women or communists, the homeless or the disabled – are used as the scapegoats for society’s problems. In the case of Salem, the fear lay with the sin and discontent of the community; in more modern times, the fear lies with the very same, though it manifests in various and less obvious guises.
In the United States today, secular values are at the very least tolerated, and a politician (or most other public figures) would face mockery for claiming that the Devil has infiltrated the country and poisoned the national community with sin. However, few who have made equivalent claims, substituting Devil with (insert unpopular ideology) and sin with (insert whatever condition or state is feared – and indeed it often still is sin), have been recognized as practitioners of quackery or purveyors of paranoid thought. Rather, such individuals are lauded for their obscenely ignorant claims, as society is “pulling Heaven down and raising up a whore” (876; Act III), allowing the culture of conformity to strengthen, feed upon its own fiery flesh. Such a lauded individual was Abigail Williams; more recently, Senator McCarthy (for his perpetuation of the Red Scare) and Hilary Clinton (for her propagation of eugenics ideals with regard to the autistic community) stand out. These signs of modern hysteria are evident, at least as evident as they were during the time of the Salem witch hunt. Just as one can justify the ignorance of Hilary Clinton by placing the blame on the conviction of the autism cure charities that they are working to save children, so can one divert the blame from Judge Danforth and Hathorne, as they were working under the belief that they were instruments of God. It is far easier to condemn in retrospect the irresponsible actions of a society, just as it is far easier to forgive in the current times actions of equivalent irresponsibility.
During the time of The Crucible, however, secular ideals were not at all valued. The idea that witches may not exist in the world was outside of the societal expectation, and surely any belief outside of the realm of the mainstream must represent a belief outside the realm of humanity. Such a person as could not remember every commandment, or who might lie or grumble or act in any way that would break conformity of belief, was automatically transferred to a lesser status, a status of rank lesser than that of a true human being. Elizabeth acknowledges this degradation of character when she firmly stands by her beliefs and tells Reverend Hale that “if you think that I am one, then I say there are none.” (858; Act II). It was for this reason that it wasn’t until those with “weighty names” were hanged that people began to question the validity of the trials. Similar to this precedent, until the “higher-functioning” range of the autistic spectrum was made known, there were essentially no non-autistic people arguing against a cure. On the artificial hierarchy, those who look and act so vastly differently from the expectations to which human beings are socially judged may be disregarded as not even people, whereas someone on the spectrum who earns a college degree is held at a more “respectable” level, and so by mere academic merits the worth of the whole person elevates in the eyes of others. No one even took notice of even the possibility that there is an unjust war being waged against a group until someone of “weighty name” (such as Albert Einstein or Bill Gates) is speculated as being part of the group that the majority wishes to eradicate. This mechanism was the driving force behind John Proctor’s dilemma. Just as this is relevant to the characters of The Crucible, to those implicated in the HUAC, and to autistics, so it is relevant to many other groups and other time periods. Surely the pattern will not cease after the vogue hysterias of the day subside.
When Miller wrote The Crucible, many were pointed to as the source of America’s vulnerabilities and struggles. These supposed communists were said to be undermining the country, weakening its foundation. These strategies of diverting attention from issues and their solutions to the seductive proposal that “it’s their fault; let’s get rid of them” rings startlingly in resonance to the key of propaganda as was promulgated in Nazi Germany. It is fortunate that the United States did not set out to create death camps for communists or anything along these lines, but it is nonetheless built upon the same strategies of ideology that led to those tragedies, particularly when one keeps in mind that the eugenics movement got its tremendously popular start in early twentieth century America, and that the kind of sterilization laws that Nazi Germany implemented were modeled after equivalent laws in the United States. Miller addresses this by the testimony from Giles Corey’s anonymous informant that Thomas Putnam instructed his daughter to vilify the name of Jacobs in order to acquire personal gain (Act III). For this reason, such tactics cannot be dismissed. Miller intended to use this play to warn future generations of this fact, that travesties of justice recur, and recur with a greater frequency than it is preferable to believe. In order to avoid this scapegoating of people, we should evaluate prejudices towards the unfamiliar, and to look at the marginalization of those who lack power (for they may revolt), and to regard such people as much people as any other, for if there is no one to scapegoat, then people must look to themselves and to their society that they have created as the source of their discontent and the promise for their future, for any person may next fall into that category of the undesirable person and become a casualty of the cracking foundation.
The odd page numbers used in citations are from our class textbook. This essay, minus grammatical and spelling corrections and the like, took approximately one hour ten minutes and was restricted to about three pages double spaced in length, so it is not so thorough as it could be, but rather serves more as an outline for a project of greater depth.
Literature and Composition III
7 November 2007
The Transparency of Hysteria
As significant spatial and temporal distance removes people from personal involvement from a situation, the relevance of historical incidents of injustice increases in direct proportion with the time passed since the injustice occurred. Human history is smattered with repeats of mistakes – lessons learned, then promptly again forgotten. An illustration: the international community, following the Holocaust, responded with the vow of “never again.” Yet, less than a century later, the same community has taken little to no action in response to the genocide in Sudan. Another lesson briefly learned, studied, and then forgotten to move on to the next stage of the progress of civilization. In the same way as the importance of remembering the misdeeds of the past increases for such events as genocide, so must humanity step up to the commitments made upon the apologies and restitution made following the Salem witch trials.
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a perfect example.
Those who exist along the fringes of societal norms – be they women or communists, the homeless or the disabled – are used as the scapegoats for society’s problems. In the case of Salem, the fear lay with the sin and discontent of the community; in more modern times, the fear lies with the very same, though it manifests in various and less obvious guises.
In the United States today, secular values are at the very least tolerated, and a politician (or most other public figures) would face mockery for claiming that the Devil has infiltrated the country and poisoned the national community with sin. However, few who have made equivalent claims, substituting Devil with (insert unpopular ideology) and sin with (insert whatever condition or state is feared – and indeed it often still is sin), have been recognized as practitioners of quackery or purveyors of paranoid thought. Rather, such individuals are lauded for their obscenely ignorant claims, as society is “pulling Heaven down and raising up a whore” (876; Act III), allowing the culture of conformity to strengthen, feed upon its own fiery flesh. Such a lauded individual was Abigail Williams; more recently, Senator McCarthy (for his perpetuation of the Red Scare) and Hilary Clinton (for her propagation of eugenics ideals with regard to the autistic community) stand out. These signs of modern hysteria are evident, at least as evident as they were during the time of the Salem witch hunt. Just as one can justify the ignorance of Hilary Clinton by placing the blame on the conviction of the autism cure charities that they are working to save children, so can one divert the blame from Judge Danforth and Hathorne, as they were working under the belief that they were instruments of God. It is far easier to condemn in retrospect the irresponsible actions of a society, just as it is far easier to forgive in the current times actions of equivalent irresponsibility.
During the time of The Crucible, however, secular ideals were not at all valued. The idea that witches may not exist in the world was outside of the societal expectation, and surely any belief outside of the realm of the mainstream must represent a belief outside the realm of humanity. Such a person as could not remember every commandment, or who might lie or grumble or act in any way that would break conformity of belief, was automatically transferred to a lesser status, a status of rank lesser than that of a true human being. Elizabeth acknowledges this degradation of character when she firmly stands by her beliefs and tells Reverend Hale that “if you think that I am one, then I say there are none.” (858; Act II). It was for this reason that it wasn’t until those with “weighty names” were hanged that people began to question the validity of the trials. Similar to this precedent, until the “higher-functioning” range of the autistic spectrum was made known, there were essentially no non-autistic people arguing against a cure. On the artificial hierarchy, those who look and act so vastly differently from the expectations to which human beings are socially judged may be disregarded as not even people, whereas someone on the spectrum who earns a college degree is held at a more “respectable” level, and so by mere academic merits the worth of the whole person elevates in the eyes of others. No one even took notice of even the possibility that there is an unjust war being waged against a group until someone of “weighty name” (such as Albert Einstein or Bill Gates) is speculated as being part of the group that the majority wishes to eradicate. This mechanism was the driving force behind John Proctor’s dilemma. Just as this is relevant to the characters of The Crucible, to those implicated in the HUAC, and to autistics, so it is relevant to many other groups and other time periods. Surely the pattern will not cease after the vogue hysterias of the day subside.
When Miller wrote The Crucible, many were pointed to as the source of America’s vulnerabilities and struggles. These supposed communists were said to be undermining the country, weakening its foundation. These strategies of diverting attention from issues and their solutions to the seductive proposal that “it’s their fault; let’s get rid of them” rings startlingly in resonance to the key of propaganda as was promulgated in Nazi Germany. It is fortunate that the United States did not set out to create death camps for communists or anything along these lines, but it is nonetheless built upon the same strategies of ideology that led to those tragedies, particularly when one keeps in mind that the eugenics movement got its tremendously popular start in early twentieth century America, and that the kind of sterilization laws that Nazi Germany implemented were modeled after equivalent laws in the United States. Miller addresses this by the testimony from Giles Corey’s anonymous informant that Thomas Putnam instructed his daughter to vilify the name of Jacobs in order to acquire personal gain (Act III). For this reason, such tactics cannot be dismissed. Miller intended to use this play to warn future generations of this fact, that travesties of justice recur, and recur with a greater frequency than it is preferable to believe. In order to avoid this scapegoating of people, we should evaluate prejudices towards the unfamiliar, and to look at the marginalization of those who lack power (for they may revolt), and to regard such people as much people as any other, for if there is no one to scapegoat, then people must look to themselves and to their society that they have created as the source of their discontent and the promise for their future, for any person may next fall into that category of the undesirable person and become a casualty of the cracking foundation.
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