And re neurodiversity, yup, if I try and point out the neurodiversity of the human population I’m considered a blasphemer… autism is such a religion these days.

No autistic person represents others, certainly none represent all! And some have the self righteous audacity to put their child forward as ‘the face of autism’ (as opposed to ‘a’ face of autism) and I’ve worked with hundreds of kids and adults with autism and no one of them is THE face of autism.

One day people will say, this is dyspraxia, this is speech aphasia, this is selective mutism, this is agnosia, this is co-morbids, this is health issues, this is family dysfunction, this is personality disorder, this is dissociative disorder etc presenting individually or in combination AUTISTICALLY, Until then, we’ll watch cats chase their tails.

As a woman with many physical, health, and cognitive problems/differences besides the ones that get me called autistic, and who has a psych history, is lesbian, mixed-class, etc. I really understand what you mean about discrimination. People want us to be tidily swept into an autism box and nothing more, and if we are different in many other ways, we get called inadequate, too autistic, not autistic enough, etc. And people want neurodiversity to be all about autism and autism alone when it’s a word that means far more than autism.

Meanwhile when I ended up on television equal amounts of people… many from the so called neurodiverse community said I was too autistic or too low functioning (not my word!) and therefore made autistic people look bad. (If that’s neurodiversity I don’t want it.) Then an equal amount of people said I was not autistic enough and too high functioning (also not my word) for them. And I want no part in that mentality either. Then a small but vocal group of people said that I wasn’t autistic at all because not fitting enough stereotypes, and that is worse than the other two combined. What none of them got was I never asked to be representative of all autistic people. Never claimed my experiences were universal. In fact I think my experiences only fit a small group of people considered autistic. But I was trying to get out there the idea that all kinds of people were valuable. My video was made for a girl with cerebral palsy not autism. It was also made for everyone who gets discounted for communicating differently whether disability or ethnicity or anything else.

And everything got warped beyond recognition. But underneath the distortions I still remained, quite real and quite different from what people saw.

warmly,

Donna *)

You might find the great philospher Ludwig Wittgenstein had a very useful idea about classifications. He said many of them are really about “family resemblances.”

Most of the articles on the web seem to tell you too much about arguments between philosophers. So I am trying to copy some passages from Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigations.” You may find these passages useful in thinking about “autism” as a classification.

Just before these copied passages, Wittgenstein says that the meanings of many (but not all) words can be thought of as their use in the language we speak. To get a good look at this use, he says we can think of language as playing games with words. Then he says, and I copy his passages:

…

Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations. – For someone might object against me: “You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language.”

And this is true. – Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all – but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all “language”. I will try to explain this.

Consider for example the proceedings we call “games.” I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? – Don’t say: “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’” – but look and see whether there is anything common to all. – For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! – Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences to the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost. – Are they all “amusing”? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.

I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than “family resemblances”; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. – And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.

…

But if someone wished to say: “There is something common to all these constructions – namely the disjunction of all their common properties” – I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: “Something runs through the whole thread – namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres.”

…

For how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw one; for none so far has been drawn. (But that never troubled you before when you used the word “game.”)

“But then the use of the word is unregulated, the ‘game’ we play with it is unregulated.” – It is not everywhere circumscribed by rules; but no more are there any rules for how high one throws the ball in tennis, or how hard; yet tennis is a game for all that and has rules too.

How should we explain to someone what a game is? I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: “This and similar things are called ‘games’”. And do we know any more about it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what a game is? – But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary – for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all! (Except for that special purpose.) No more than it took the definition: 1 pace = 75 cm. to make the measure of length ‘one pace’ usable. And if you want to say “But still, before that it wasn’t an exact measure”, then I reply: very well, it was an inexact one. – Though you still owe me a definition of exactness.

“But if the concept ‘game’ is uncircumscribed like that, you don’t really know what you mean by a ‘game’.” – When I give the description: “The ground was quite covered with plants” – do you want to say I don’t know what I am talking about until I can give a definition of a plant?

…

[Marginal note by Wittgenstein: Someone says to me: "Shew the children a game." I teach them gaming with dice, and the other says "I didn't mean that sort of game." Must the exclusion of the game with dice have come before his mind when he gave me the order?]

One might say that the concept ‘game’ is a concept with blurred edges. – “But is a blurred concept a concept at all?” – Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?

Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that we cannot do anything with it. – But is it senseless to say: “Stand roughly there”? Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand – as if I were indicating a particular spot. And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way. – I do not, however, mean by this that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I – for some reason – was unable to express; but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way. Here giving examples is not an indirect way of explaining – in default of a better. For any general definition can be misunderstood too. The point is that this is how we play the game. (I mean the language-game with the word “game”).

And there the quotes end.

I do not know if this is too abstract for your brain’s processing methods. I know you have more trouble getting ideas in than in writing them out. Perhaps you can talk about this with a friend, and find it useful in thinking about “autism” and about your idea of a “salad” of “autistic traits.” If it is not useful, just forget about it. What you say about the “autistic salad” is perceptive and true. Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblance” might make it easier to answer your critics, that’s all.

Yours very respectfully,

Frank John Reid

Brian: You’re all invdividuals!
Crowd: We’re all individuals!
Solitary Person: I’m not..

It is human nature to want to create groups to allow us to identify “us” and “them”, it’s pretty tribal and I think is too deeply rooted in us to change any time soon. But that doesn’t mean it should be protected from criticism!

I too have watched and continue to watch the many movements, cultures, communities, societies of both neurodiverse and neurotypical peoples popping up around the world…in all manner of spaces and places…in virtual spaces, media spaces, community places, health places, intellectual spaces, government spaces of policy construction, legal spaces, institutional places…I think you get my point!

I am also a watcher and explorer of many other ‘movements’…cultural movements of oppressions such as those of indigenous peoples around the world, those of (dis)ability or differeing ability, those of different sexuality/gender and so on.

The world is made up of many shifts in social and cultural movements at all times. To even suggest that there is A neurodiversity movement seems limiting in itself…to use the shifts in womens position in the world as an example, it’s a little like suggesting there was THE ‘feminist movement’ in the 1970′s when in reality there have historically been many different shifts in gender balance seperately and simultaneously all around the world in many times of the past and present and most likely into the future.

I’m not sure WHAT the ‘neurodiversity’ movement actually is myself.I see alot of discussion and shifts in thinking relating to both ‘normality’ and difference of this thing called autistic. Thus, to me there are many ‘movements’ occurring which have members who consider themselves neurodiverse or autistic. I think it’s great for individuals to find others they can feel a ‘place’ with and to create ‘spaces’ where its alright to be different. I think it’s great if some individuals advocate for the rights of people who are being oppressed or disadvantaged. I think it’s great to throw open the doors of social reality and continue exploring the range of difference in humanity. There are a great many posiitives…

There are some negatives too as Donna often discusses…and I don’t see any harm in keeping it in balance by remembering that difference crosses through and beyond the neurodiverse and neurotypical.

Additionally, I see no harm in ‘critiquing’ movements or individuals within them, if critique is to assess the positives and negatives of something…