One hundred and fifty years ago this week the first shot of the Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter.
This is the beginning of a long sesquicentennial commemoration, so there will be plenty of time to hash over the various historical controversies in the four years to come. I would like to make just one observation at this point.
The modern world should be grateful for the brief existence of the Southern Confederacy. Without the Confederacy, and its complete and utter political and military incompetency, the institution of slavery would probably never have been abolished. On the contrary, the slave holding states were probably just one southern-dominated Supreme Court decision away from extending the logic of the Dred Scott case in such a way that slavery would be the law of the land, south and north. The South, prior to succession, had at its disposal all the political muscle that was required to protect its interests.Only by abandoning these institutions to form the Confederate states did the South deliver up to the abolitionists the necessary political power and raw numbers that would be required to make the legislative and constitutional changes necessary to abolish slavery forever.
Then, having put all its eggs into the lone basket of southern sovereignty, the South proceeded to wreck that as well by pursuing a military strategy that was out of sync with its resources as well as with its actual political objectives.
The end of slavery in this nation stands as something of a miracle. The Constitution, as written by the Founding Fathers, is rigged to make the ending of the institution all but impossible. The successive political crises of the 19th century leading up to Lincoln's election make clear that the South was not prepared to give an inch on slavery and the North had neither the political muscle nor the focused will to make a sustained frontal assault on slavery, as it existed, in the South.
Yet, in just a few years, slavery, as a legal institution, was gone.
Only the South itself had the power to end slavery. Through its own pathetic incompetence, that's exactly what it did.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
Amy Wetherby, Red Flags, and Female Genital Mutilation
I'm going to discuss Amy Wetherby's talk last month at the Atlanta Autism Consortium. But before I do, I need to touch on the subject of female genital mutilation.
Specifically female circumcision.
Female circumcision is the removal of a girl's (and I say "girl" because it is usually performed on children) outer sexual organs including, but not limited to, the clitoris. This procedure is performed primarily in certain Islamic and African societies. By removing the primary source of physical sexual pleasure, the parents and religious leaders who engage in and sanction this practice hope that the girl will have less incentive to follow their physical desires and engage in sexual activity which would bring shame to their families. Of course this is an issue that that can be looked at from many angles but for the purposes of what is to follow let's understand the essence of what female circumcision is. It is parents, in collusion with enabling authority, and justified by ideology, attempting to suppress the natural inclinations of a child so that that child will be more likely to behave in a culturally prescribed manner. The child, for her own good, cannot be left to lure of her own essential nature.
Now, hold that thought.
Amy Wetherby is on the faculty of Florida State University where she is associated with something called the First Words Project, which is, as the name might suggest, another attempt to push the "diagnosis" of autism to a still ever-younger age. What Wetherby is currently working on is a test that would allow a "diagnosis" of autism straight down to the toddler level.
Starting off her talk, Wetherby put on an impressive demonstration of her own compete intellectual mediocrity. Coming off as particularly overly-needy, she spent the first few minutes all but begging for someone to collaborate with her on some future project. Finally, we got down to why she was here: detecting autism is in the very young. To that end, the First Words Project has developed a questionnaire for parents, sample questions of which were presented in her power point presentation. Such as: Is the child interested in objects? Does he collect things? Blah, blah, blah.
Now this would be the point where, if I had decided to pursue my usual line of questioning, I would have popped in. One slide on the power point listed autism as consisting of entirely negative traits. One single graph used the word "deficit" at least seven times. No autistic- like trait could pass without the words "warning" or "red flag." Children who didn't get the diagnosis of autism "passed" the test.
But, it turns out, according to Wetherby, that "diagnosing" autism at 18 months is "way harder than you can imagine." To be honest, Amy Weatherby, during her talk, came across as, at least to me, borderline stupid. So I actually would have no problem imagining that almost any project that would involve a moderate level of intellectual rigor might indeed be "way hard" for someone of Ms. Wetherby's intellectual caliber.
Wetherby then proceeded to show a series of short videos of very young children seated with their mothers in clinical settings and asked the AAC audience to play, in essence, Find the Autism. As she showed each video, she would ask the audience questions like "Is there something different about this child?" and "Are we worried?" The audience, which was, to the best of my memory, about half filled with ABA and PBS clinicians, responded like they were sitting in for a taping of Oprah. Little gasps or soft cries of "He's not looking at his mother!" were elicited with each new video.
Now among the "red flags" that the spectators of these cherry-picked mini-movies were supposed to look for was, of course, meeting eye gaze, but also things like whether the child was "overly focused."
"Overly focused?"
After the meeting I asked her about this. She told me this would include a child doing the same thing over and over in an hour period of play. So, I asked if the child playing with blocks for a full hour would count as overly focused. Her reply: It depends. If the child is working on building one thing then the answer would be yes. If the same child instead spent no more then ten minutes on any individual block construction then the answer would be no. So, I guess, "over-focused" really means "focused."
One video moment that particularly stands out: a toddler sits at a table with his mother. A "researcher" (or whatever the woman in the video purports herself to be) puts a little wind-up spring-loaded toy in front of the child to walk across the table. The child reacts with delight. Next video: It's six months later. Same kid. The SAME toy is put in front of him. Rather than react with the same wonder to yesterday's news, the kid picks up the toy and brings it close to his face, seeming to, at least to my eyes, closely examine the toy's locomotion mechanism. Little gasps of horror from the audience.
At this point Gregory Abowd, sitting directly in front of me, turned back to me and noted that this kid had the makings of a future engineer. His comments happened to precisely mirror my own take on the matter. In fact, for perhaps the first time, our thinking seemed to be precisely in sync.
The two of us proceeded to push back on the interpretation that a child's display of precocious intellectual curiosity should be viewed as a "red flag" for anything. Wetherby's defense was to simply state that this sort of behavior is outside the normal "baseline" for a child in this age group.
Barbara Dunbar at this point chimed in to agree with Wetherby. The behavior displayed by the child in the video was not in accord with what a child in that age group should be doing.
Now the Floortime Atlanta website describes Barbara Dunbar as a "licensed psychologist... (who) specializes in assessment and treatment of young children with developmental and learning disorders. Her focus is on working with children with autistic spectrum disorders and their families" so I guess she knows what she's talking about.
"So," I asked her, gesturing to the child in the video, "what is he doing?"
Dunbar could only shrug that she didn't know.
She doesn't know what he's doing.
But she knows he shouldn't be doing it.
Then again, maybe, just maybe, Ms. Dunbar doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about after all.
And so it went. Wetherby noted that they tried to gauge whether the child was engaging in repetitive behavior, another "red flag." Behavior was not counted as repetitive unless they saw it three times in a row. Well, that's simply not the definition of "repetitive," an everyday word that everyday people understand. If I write a paragraph about ABA and mention "ABA" in three successive sentences that is not necessarily repetitive. If I were to thrice-use a phrase like "primal reckoning," that most certainly would be. If there's a hard yardstick for measuring an easily understood but subjectively defined word like "repetitive" I sure would like to see it. Adding an arbitrary parameter (Why three? Why not two? Or four?) in and of itself doesn't accomplish anything. In her own talk, Wetherby used the words "red flag" so many times I gave up counting and on three completely separate occasions compared autism with cancer for the purposes of making exactly the same point. Whatever else you might say about her talk, it certainly was repetitive. That doesn't make her autistic. It just demonstrates that she's a meandering and uninteresting speaker.
According to the FSU site, one of Ms. Wetherby's area of interests is "Diagnosis of language disorders." Perhaps this faculty member of the School of Communication Science and Disorders might consider seeking a grant to study tapes of her own sub-par power point presentation skills. It might be all around win-win for all concerned.
And it just kept going. If the toddler shows interest in the wobbling of a spinning plate, look out, that's a danger sign! Now I'm no child expert like Barbara Dunbar but I would argue that a wobbling spinning plate is inherently interesting. It's a process that has a beginning, a middle, and an end with myriad variations that all stay within some very confined physical parameters. And it may be the perfect introduction for a youngster to unstable systems. A toddler repeatedly spinning a plate and observing the simultaneously chaotic and systematic way that it comes to rest is probably absorbing all manner of information about how the physics of the world he finds himself in works.
Personally, I'd rather watch an hour of spinning plates wobble to their respective stops than listen to another five minutes of Wetherby's red flag bigotry. From what I gather from her presentation, it would seem that one of the primary symptoms of autistic "regression," which must be guarded against at all costs is simple intellectual curiosity about how things work. Well, it's easy to see how Amy Wetherby could engage in such a pathologicalization since, as demonstrated by the parade of speakers to come through the AAC, curiosity is clearly outside the "baseline" of the average behaviorist and their assorted allies.
In the end, Amy Wetherby does what she can, for a buck, to suppress the natural inclinations of the child so that he or she will be more likely to behave in a more culturally prescribed manner. For their own good, Amy Wetherby and her kind cannot leave these children to the lure of their own essential nature.
One may argue about exactly how slicing a young girl's clitoris off morally compares with the targeting and deliberate squashing of a young's boy's budding intellectual focus and natural curiosity about how the world works. But I think its fair say that those engaged in either practice are engaged in variations of the same tyrannical theme.
Simply put, they are both monsters.
Walt Guthrie
Specifically female circumcision.
Female circumcision is the removal of a girl's (and I say "girl" because it is usually performed on children) outer sexual organs including, but not limited to, the clitoris. This procedure is performed primarily in certain Islamic and African societies. By removing the primary source of physical sexual pleasure, the parents and religious leaders who engage in and sanction this practice hope that the girl will have less incentive to follow their physical desires and engage in sexual activity which would bring shame to their families. Of course this is an issue that that can be looked at from many angles but for the purposes of what is to follow let's understand the essence of what female circumcision is. It is parents, in collusion with enabling authority, and justified by ideology, attempting to suppress the natural inclinations of a child so that that child will be more likely to behave in a culturally prescribed manner. The child, for her own good, cannot be left to lure of her own essential nature.
Now, hold that thought.
Amy Wetherby is on the faculty of Florida State University where she is associated with something called the First Words Project, which is, as the name might suggest, another attempt to push the "diagnosis" of autism to a still ever-younger age. What Wetherby is currently working on is a test that would allow a "diagnosis" of autism straight down to the toddler level.
Starting off her talk, Wetherby put on an impressive demonstration of her own compete intellectual mediocrity. Coming off as particularly overly-needy, she spent the first few minutes all but begging for someone to collaborate with her on some future project. Finally, we got down to why she was here: detecting autism is in the very young. To that end, the First Words Project has developed a questionnaire for parents, sample questions of which were presented in her power point presentation. Such as: Is the child interested in objects? Does he collect things? Blah, blah, blah.
Now this would be the point where, if I had decided to pursue my usual line of questioning, I would have popped in. One slide on the power point listed autism as consisting of entirely negative traits. One single graph used the word "deficit" at least seven times. No autistic- like trait could pass without the words "warning" or "red flag." Children who didn't get the diagnosis of autism "passed" the test.
But, it turns out, according to Wetherby, that "diagnosing" autism at 18 months is "way harder than you can imagine." To be honest, Amy Weatherby, during her talk, came across as, at least to me, borderline stupid. So I actually would have no problem imagining that almost any project that would involve a moderate level of intellectual rigor might indeed be "way hard" for someone of Ms. Wetherby's intellectual caliber.
Wetherby then proceeded to show a series of short videos of very young children seated with their mothers in clinical settings and asked the AAC audience to play, in essence, Find the Autism. As she showed each video, she would ask the audience questions like "Is there something different about this child?" and "Are we worried?" The audience, which was, to the best of my memory, about half filled with ABA and PBS clinicians, responded like they were sitting in for a taping of Oprah. Little gasps or soft cries of "He's not looking at his mother!" were elicited with each new video.
Now among the "red flags" that the spectators of these cherry-picked mini-movies were supposed to look for was, of course, meeting eye gaze, but also things like whether the child was "overly focused."
"Overly focused?"
After the meeting I asked her about this. She told me this would include a child doing the same thing over and over in an hour period of play. So, I asked if the child playing with blocks for a full hour would count as overly focused. Her reply: It depends. If the child is working on building one thing then the answer would be yes. If the same child instead spent no more then ten minutes on any individual block construction then the answer would be no. So, I guess, "over-focused" really means "focused."
One video moment that particularly stands out: a toddler sits at a table with his mother. A "researcher" (or whatever the woman in the video purports herself to be) puts a little wind-up spring-loaded toy in front of the child to walk across the table. The child reacts with delight. Next video: It's six months later. Same kid. The SAME toy is put in front of him. Rather than react with the same wonder to yesterday's news, the kid picks up the toy and brings it close to his face, seeming to, at least to my eyes, closely examine the toy's locomotion mechanism. Little gasps of horror from the audience.
At this point Gregory Abowd, sitting directly in front of me, turned back to me and noted that this kid had the makings of a future engineer. His comments happened to precisely mirror my own take on the matter. In fact, for perhaps the first time, our thinking seemed to be precisely in sync.
The two of us proceeded to push back on the interpretation that a child's display of precocious intellectual curiosity should be viewed as a "red flag" for anything. Wetherby's defense was to simply state that this sort of behavior is outside the normal "baseline" for a child in this age group.
Barbara Dunbar at this point chimed in to agree with Wetherby. The behavior displayed by the child in the video was not in accord with what a child in that age group should be doing.
Now the Floortime Atlanta website describes Barbara Dunbar as a "licensed psychologist... (who) specializes in assessment and treatment of young children with developmental and learning disorders. Her focus is on working with children with autistic spectrum disorders and their families" so I guess she knows what she's talking about.
"So," I asked her, gesturing to the child in the video, "what is he doing?"
Dunbar could only shrug that she didn't know.
She doesn't know what he's doing.
But she knows he shouldn't be doing it.
Then again, maybe, just maybe, Ms. Dunbar doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about after all.
And so it went. Wetherby noted that they tried to gauge whether the child was engaging in repetitive behavior, another "red flag." Behavior was not counted as repetitive unless they saw it three times in a row. Well, that's simply not the definition of "repetitive," an everyday word that everyday people understand. If I write a paragraph about ABA and mention "ABA" in three successive sentences that is not necessarily repetitive. If I were to thrice-use a phrase like "primal reckoning," that most certainly would be. If there's a hard yardstick for measuring an easily understood but subjectively defined word like "repetitive" I sure would like to see it. Adding an arbitrary parameter (Why three? Why not two? Or four?) in and of itself doesn't accomplish anything. In her own talk, Wetherby used the words "red flag" so many times I gave up counting and on three completely separate occasions compared autism with cancer for the purposes of making exactly the same point. Whatever else you might say about her talk, it certainly was repetitive. That doesn't make her autistic. It just demonstrates that she's a meandering and uninteresting speaker.
According to the FSU site, one of Ms. Wetherby's area of interests is "Diagnosis of language disorders." Perhaps this faculty member of the School of Communication Science and Disorders might consider seeking a grant to study tapes of her own sub-par power point presentation skills. It might be all around win-win for all concerned.
And it just kept going. If the toddler shows interest in the wobbling of a spinning plate, look out, that's a danger sign! Now I'm no child expert like Barbara Dunbar but I would argue that a wobbling spinning plate is inherently interesting. It's a process that has a beginning, a middle, and an end with myriad variations that all stay within some very confined physical parameters. And it may be the perfect introduction for a youngster to unstable systems. A toddler repeatedly spinning a plate and observing the simultaneously chaotic and systematic way that it comes to rest is probably absorbing all manner of information about how the physics of the world he finds himself in works.
Personally, I'd rather watch an hour of spinning plates wobble to their respective stops than listen to another five minutes of Wetherby's red flag bigotry. From what I gather from her presentation, it would seem that one of the primary symptoms of autistic "regression," which must be guarded against at all costs is simple intellectual curiosity about how things work. Well, it's easy to see how Amy Wetherby could engage in such a pathologicalization since, as demonstrated by the parade of speakers to come through the AAC, curiosity is clearly outside the "baseline" of the average behaviorist and their assorted allies.
In the end, Amy Wetherby does what she can, for a buck, to suppress the natural inclinations of the child so that he or she will be more likely to behave in a more culturally prescribed manner. For their own good, Amy Wetherby and her kind cannot leave these children to the lure of their own essential nature.
One may argue about exactly how slicing a young girl's clitoris off morally compares with the targeting and deliberate squashing of a young's boy's budding intellectual focus and natural curiosity about how the world works. But I think its fair say that those engaged in either practice are engaged in variations of the same tyrannical theme.
Simply put, they are both monsters.
Walt Guthrie
Monday, March 28, 2011
Danielle Trixie and Galas
In the course of running this blog, I've made an amazing discovery. Based upon analyzing page hits, it would seem that pictures of Danielle Trixie are more popular than any of my opinions on the Marcus Center. Roughly 150 times more popular. I know, I know. It's weird. I have no explanation for it.
So allow me to throw out my latest search engine bait. Danielle Trixie and Galas from a shoot last year.
Monday, March 21, 2011
My "Dear God No!" Experience. Part Four
So after waiting around for about forty-five minutes with a tiny little bomb taped to my chest, the crew is finally ready to shoot.
So, let's do the walk through. I'm urinating by the side of the building. (Really, Jimmy? Really? That's my one moment of acting glory in front of the camera? Pissing on the side of a building?) Finish. And as I'm zipping up and turning around. Bang! I catch a bullet in the chest.
Wait...did the blood squib actually just go off? While we were doing the walk through? While the cameras weren't rolling?
Squib detonator guy: "What? Oh sorry. Thought you were filming."
Director Jimmy Bickert gives me a shrug and points to the next guy to take my place. The soon-to-be immortalized "Dear God No!" IMDB credit listing for "Pissing guy" was now destined for someone other than myself.
And my shot at stardom was gone as quickly and as capriciously as it had appeared..
Or at least that's how it appeared at the time.
So, let's do the walk through. I'm urinating by the side of the building. (Really, Jimmy? Really? That's my one moment of acting glory in front of the camera? Pissing on the side of a building?) Finish. And as I'm zipping up and turning around. Bang! I catch a bullet in the chest.
Wait...did the blood squib actually just go off? While we were doing the walk through? While the cameras weren't rolling?
Squib detonator guy: "What? Oh sorry. Thought you were filming."
Fuck!
And my shot at stardom was gone as quickly and as capriciously as it had appeared..
Or at least that's how it appeared at the time.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Playing Nice (At the Feb. 11 AAC Meeting)
Well, it seems I need to be more respectful.
That at least appears to be the message coming from Don Mueller, executive director of the Marcus Center.
But I'll get to that.
I'm not going to have a lot to say about the last Atlanta Autism Consortium meeting. This is because Dr. Leslie Rubin, from the Morehouse School of Medicine, is, by far, the most boring and content-free speaker I've heard yet at a Marcus-related event. If any of you wanted to know what year CHoA moved from this building to that building or who suggested who for what position at Marcus in what year, well, this was for you. For anyone else, it was excruciating back-in-the-day inside-baseball.
In the course of the two hour meeting I brought up exactly two points.
The first was in response to Rubin's question about why the rates of autism diagnoses might be rising so dramatically. Rubin acknowledged that this phenomenon might be partially explained by a broadening of definitions or an increase in public interest, but then added that there had to be more to it than that. He provided no evidence that those answers might not be sufficient in and of themselves.
I suggested that an explanation for the rise might lay with the fact that a lot more people get richer off an autism diagnosis now than in the past. Gregory Abowd offered at this point that there was nothing unusual about that and medical professionals of all stripes might have just as much financial incentive to find a false positive as a Marcus Center employee. I was under the impression that cancers and tumors were the sort of things that actually showed up on medical scans and other physical tests. But what do I know? Although I didn't raise it at the time, I think far better counter-analogies would be not regular medical doctors but other "experts" who preyed on whipped-up social hysteria to discover hordes of previously unknown scapegoats. Medieval witchfinders and prosecutors uncovering satanic daycare sex-cults come readily to mind.
My second point came after about the umpteenth time Rubin suggested that everyone in the room-- "researchers," parents and adults on the spectrum alike-- should devote themselves to working hand in hand toward a common goal. I observed that of the adults on the spectrum who attend the consortium meetings, the number who support more financing for either the Marcus Center or ABA in general is precisely zero. I asked, in a tone that I think reflected the non-rhetorical nature of the question, if anyone at that meeting knew if such an individual even existed. In the brief back and forth that followed no one came out and put me in my place with a simple factual refutation: "What about Joe Blow? He's had ABA and he's with us 100 percent!"
If the therapies of the behaviorists are so effective, where are the adults who, having benefited from them, are now advocates for these same therapies? Their absence from this debate is extremely telling. Now, to my mind, there can be at least two possible reasons for this state of affairs.
One, as stated, adults on the spectrum who have benefited from, and are now advocates for, behaviorist methodology exist only only as hypothetical constructs. At least locally.
Two, those who work at the Marcus Center are so lazy, or disinterested in the humanity of the children who have been in their care that they make so much money off of, that they have simply failed to keep up with any of them once they have ceased to contribute income.
In any case, pointing out the obvious --that a single solitary adult on the spectrum had never attended an AAC meeting to support the methods of the behaviorists-- was apparently simply too much for Mueller.
It was shortly after this brief exchange that he brought up that it was incumbent upon everyone at the meeting to be respectful of everyone else. I then inquired as to the subtext of that statement. No subtext at all, Mueller assured.
Oh yeah, except that there was.
After the meeting I walked up to Mueller to inquire further as to the nature of the message he had intended to send with his remark.
Turns out it was about me after all.
Now it is true that I have suggested that the Marcus "researchers," and behaviorists in general, don't know what they're doing. I have stated explicitly that I believe that they are engaged in fraud. I also have noted that their language towards the autistic is indistinguishable from racism. But I have always done so, within the confines of the AAC, (as opposed to, say, here where I'll just come out and say that someone like James McPartland is a douchebag for his self-described abusive treatment of socially-isolated children) in what I believe to be a respectful manner. As I have previously stated, I have treated them like the scientists I know them not to be.
Mueller suggested that he, Gregory Abowd, and myself should have a meeting. This meeting would, I gather, based upon what was said during our very brief talk, center around what subjects I may or may not be allowed to bring up in the future. The only two subjects that were brought up by myself at this meeting were 1) the Marcus Center might have a financial interest in over-diagnosing "ASD" and 2) that no adult on the spectrum has ever come to the AAC to support the methodologies of the Marcus Center or behaviorists in general. So, I gather, this is what being respectful means to Mueller: don't bring up points or ask questions that might suggest that the Marcus Center or the behaviorist community as a whole, or in part, is either incompetent or engaged in intellectual fraud. I, and my compatriots, should sit silently at the meetings while we are called every manner of derogatory name dressed up in medicalized techno-babble. We should accept every one of their crackpot theories (even the ones that contradict each other. Oh wait, that would be all of them) as they are presented and be grateful that there are people who have devoted their lives to curing us, even if they don't seem to have a clue as to who the fuck we are.
In other words, in this equivalent of an interracial dialogue, they are free to call us "niggers," and we are to address them as "sir."
That, I imagine, is what Mueller wants. But maybe not.
We're see. In any event, I've accepted Mueller's invitation for a meeting.
I understand that it is possible that my banning from future AAC conferences will occur at this meeting. And that's fine. The continuously-stated purpose of the AAC meetings has been to bring together all voices who have an interest in issues related to the autistic spectrum. If I am banned, or have my privileges to speak or question curtailed, then it will be clear, to my people at least, that that claim is just one more fraud residing inside the walls of the Marcus Autism Center.
That at least appears to be the message coming from Don Mueller, executive director of the Marcus Center.
But I'll get to that.
I'm not going to have a lot to say about the last Atlanta Autism Consortium meeting. This is because Dr. Leslie Rubin, from the Morehouse School of Medicine, is, by far, the most boring and content-free speaker I've heard yet at a Marcus-related event. If any of you wanted to know what year CHoA moved from this building to that building or who suggested who for what position at Marcus in what year, well, this was for you. For anyone else, it was excruciating back-in-the-day inside-baseball.
In the course of the two hour meeting I brought up exactly two points.
The first was in response to Rubin's question about why the rates of autism diagnoses might be rising so dramatically. Rubin acknowledged that this phenomenon might be partially explained by a broadening of definitions or an increase in public interest, but then added that there had to be more to it than that. He provided no evidence that those answers might not be sufficient in and of themselves.
I suggested that an explanation for the rise might lay with the fact that a lot more people get richer off an autism diagnosis now than in the past. Gregory Abowd offered at this point that there was nothing unusual about that and medical professionals of all stripes might have just as much financial incentive to find a false positive as a Marcus Center employee. I was under the impression that cancers and tumors were the sort of things that actually showed up on medical scans and other physical tests. But what do I know? Although I didn't raise it at the time, I think far better counter-analogies would be not regular medical doctors but other "experts" who preyed on whipped-up social hysteria to discover hordes of previously unknown scapegoats. Medieval witchfinders and prosecutors uncovering satanic daycare sex-cults come readily to mind.
My second point came after about the umpteenth time Rubin suggested that everyone in the room-- "researchers," parents and adults on the spectrum alike-- should devote themselves to working hand in hand toward a common goal. I observed that of the adults on the spectrum who attend the consortium meetings, the number who support more financing for either the Marcus Center or ABA in general is precisely zero. I asked, in a tone that I think reflected the non-rhetorical nature of the question, if anyone at that meeting knew if such an individual even existed. In the brief back and forth that followed no one came out and put me in my place with a simple factual refutation: "What about Joe Blow? He's had ABA and he's with us 100 percent!"
If the therapies of the behaviorists are so effective, where are the adults who, having benefited from them, are now advocates for these same therapies? Their absence from this debate is extremely telling. Now, to my mind, there can be at least two possible reasons for this state of affairs.
One, as stated, adults on the spectrum who have benefited from, and are now advocates for, behaviorist methodology exist only only as hypothetical constructs. At least locally.
Two, those who work at the Marcus Center are so lazy, or disinterested in the humanity of the children who have been in their care that they make so much money off of, that they have simply failed to keep up with any of them once they have ceased to contribute income.
In any case, pointing out the obvious --that a single solitary adult on the spectrum had never attended an AAC meeting to support the methods of the behaviorists-- was apparently simply too much for Mueller.
It was shortly after this brief exchange that he brought up that it was incumbent upon everyone at the meeting to be respectful of everyone else. I then inquired as to the subtext of that statement. No subtext at all, Mueller assured.
Oh yeah, except that there was.
After the meeting I walked up to Mueller to inquire further as to the nature of the message he had intended to send with his remark.
Turns out it was about me after all.
Now it is true that I have suggested that the Marcus "researchers," and behaviorists in general, don't know what they're doing. I have stated explicitly that I believe that they are engaged in fraud. I also have noted that their language towards the autistic is indistinguishable from racism. But I have always done so, within the confines of the AAC, (as opposed to, say, here where I'll just come out and say that someone like James McPartland is a douchebag for his self-described abusive treatment of socially-isolated children) in what I believe to be a respectful manner. As I have previously stated, I have treated them like the scientists I know them not to be.
Mueller suggested that he, Gregory Abowd, and myself should have a meeting. This meeting would, I gather, based upon what was said during our very brief talk, center around what subjects I may or may not be allowed to bring up in the future. The only two subjects that were brought up by myself at this meeting were 1) the Marcus Center might have a financial interest in over-diagnosing "ASD" and 2) that no adult on the spectrum has ever come to the AAC to support the methodologies of the Marcus Center or behaviorists in general. So, I gather, this is what being respectful means to Mueller: don't bring up points or ask questions that might suggest that the Marcus Center or the behaviorist community as a whole, or in part, is either incompetent or engaged in intellectual fraud. I, and my compatriots, should sit silently at the meetings while we are called every manner of derogatory name dressed up in medicalized techno-babble. We should accept every one of their crackpot theories (even the ones that contradict each other. Oh wait, that would be all of them) as they are presented and be grateful that there are people who have devoted their lives to curing us, even if they don't seem to have a clue as to who the fuck we are.
In other words, in this equivalent of an interracial dialogue, they are free to call us "niggers," and we are to address them as "sir."
That, I imagine, is what Mueller wants. But maybe not.
We're see. In any event, I've accepted Mueller's invitation for a meeting.
I understand that it is possible that my banning from future AAC conferences will occur at this meeting. And that's fine. The continuously-stated purpose of the AAC meetings has been to bring together all voices who have an interest in issues related to the autistic spectrum. If I am banned, or have my privileges to speak or question curtailed, then it will be clear, to my people at least, that that claim is just one more fraud residing inside the walls of the Marcus Autism Center.
Friday, March 4, 2011
My "Dear God No!" Experience. Part Three
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Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Danielle Trixie In the Woods
Danielle Trixie came through town on the first weekend of the year warm enough to do an outdoor shoot. Let me pander to you enough to put a couple of the shots here. And let me pander to the search engines by mentioning the word "naked" in close proximity to "Danielle Trixie."
I'm beginning to figure out how things around here work.
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