For All Our Mothers, Yours and Mine, Then, Now and Forever

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

–Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” a plea for disarmament, reconciliation and peace following the American Civil War.

. . .

Mother’s Day for Peace
by Ruth Rosen.

Honor Mother with Rallies in the Streets.The holiday began in activism; it needs rescuing from commercialism and platitudes.

Every year, people snipe at the shallow commercialism of Mother’s Day. But to ignore your mother on this holy holiday is unthinkable. And if you are a mother, you’ll be devastated if your ingrates fail to honor you at least one day of the year.

Mother’s Day wasn’t always like this. The women who conceived Mother’s Day would be bewildered by the ubiquitous ads that hound us to find that “perfect gift for Mom.” They would expect women to be marching in the streets, not eating with their families in restaurants. This is because Mother’s Day began as a holiday that commemorated women’s public activism, not as a celebration of a mother’s devotion to her family.

The story begins in 1858 when a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis organized Mothers’ Works Days in West Virginia. Her immediate goal was to improve sanitation in Appalachian communities. During the Civil War, Jarvis pried women from their families to care for the wounded on both sides. Afterward she convened meetings to persuade men to lay aside their hostilities.

In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, proposed an annual Mother’s Day for Peace. Committed to abolishing war, Howe wrote: “Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage… Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs”.

For the next 30 years, Americans celebrated Mothers’ Day for Peace on June 2.

Many middle-class women in the 19th century believed that they bore a special responsibility as actual or potential mothers to care for the casualties of society and to turn America into a more civilized nation. They played a leading role in the abolitionist movement to end slavery. In the following decades, they launched successful campaigns against lynching and consumer fraud and battled for improved working conditions for women and protection for children, public health services and social welfare assistance to the poor. To the activists, the connection between motherhood and the fight for social and economic justice seemed self-evident.

In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day. By then, the growing consumer culture had successfully redefined women as consumers for their families. Politicians and businessmen eagerly embraced the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers. As the Florists’ Review, the industry’s trade journal, bluntly put it, “This was a holiday that could be exploited.”

The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans how to honor their mothers - by buying flowers. Outraged by florists who were selling carnations for the exorbitant price of $1 apiece, Anna Jarvis’ daughter undertook a campaigning against those who “would undermine Mother’s Day with their greed.” But she fought a losing battle. Within a few years, the Florists’ Review triumphantly announced that it was “Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched.”

Since then, Mother’s Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry.

Americans may revere the idea of motherhood and love their own mothers, but not all mothers. Poor, unemployed mothers may enjoy flowers, but they also need child care, job training, health care, a higher minimum wage and paid parental leave. Working mothers may enjoy breakfast in bed, but they also need the kind of governmental assistance provided by every other industrialized society.

With a little imagination, we could restore Mother’s Day as a holiday that celebrates women’s political engagement in society. During the 1980’s, some peace groups gathered at nuclear test sites on Mother’s Day to protest the arms race. Today, our greatest threat is not from missiles but from our indifference toward human welfare and the health of our planet. Imagine, if you can, an annual Million Mother March in the nation’s capital. Imagine a Mother’s Day filled with voices demanding social and economic justice and a sustainable future, rather than speeches studded with syrupy platitudes.

Some will think it insulting to alter our current way of celebrating Mother’s Day. But public activism does not preclude private expressions of love and gratitude. (Nor does it prevent people from expressing their appreciation all year round.)

Nineteenth century women dared to dream of a day that honored women’s civil activism. We can do no less. We should honor their vision with civic activism.

Ruth Rosen is a professor of history at UC Davis.

. . .

With love, hope and commitment.

In Search of Awareness

or, The Ghost of Easters Past …

For those in search of Autism Awareness, I suggest you start by turning OFF your television.

.

As a child, my experience of Easter was mixed. My early memories include the fun, the frivolous, and the unfortunate, the curious and the catastrophic, the “renewal” of spring and the crushing blows of “pragmatic” but uncomprehending nature, human and otherwise.

My lifelong agnosticism is not born of illiteracy regarding religious matters, as I was practically raised in the Presbyterian Church. I was as aware as any child of the significance of Easter in the Christian tradition. But like any child, my own perceptions were confined to the flow of my own experiences, whether pleasant or painful. My awareness of the commercialization, and the inevitable dilution of meaning that comes with it, came much later. And later still, other associations crept in.

Over the past few years, I have become more aware of certain events in local history, the various legacies of my hometown. And today, among the other memories and associations, the annual occurrence of Easter now carries a very different meaning for me than what most people would choose to express.

This year, Easter weekend came in late March. But of course, this is not always so. In the US, the determination of when Easter will take place for each year is complicated, and thus, Easter’s position on the calendar varies widely. In 1906, Easter Sunday fell on April 15th.

.

102 years ago, today, the town of Springfield, Missouri, was still in the grip of a race riot which had culminated the night before in the public lynching of three black men in the town square. Fueled by rumors of a fictitious assault, started by a woman intent on covering the truth of her own marital indiscretions, a crowd of thousands had gathered in the town square, intent upon having their own brand of “justice.” After the customary frenzy of instigation and groupthink, the crowd of of white rioters moved to the nearby county jail, in pursuit of their quarry.

The first rays of the Easter morning sun — on that very day set aside to remember the resurrection of the Prince of Peace — could scarcely penetrate the lingering darkness of that night. By the breaking of that dawn, three men, Horace Duncan, Fred Coker and Will Allen, had been hung, burned and dismembered in the town square. By the time the Missouri governor called in the state militia to quell the unrest, the city’s black population had been lavishly brutalized, their property destroyed, many driven out of town and most others into hiding for fear that they would be the mob’s next victims.

Horace Duncan, Fred Coker and Will Allen would later be cleared of the allegations for which they had initially been jailed, and subsequently killed by a mob bent on misguided revenge. But you can’t resurrect a man after you’ve lynched him. Not even on Easter Sunday.

.

Despite the local population’s enduring resistance to having this story told, the history of these events is very well documented. And as my mother is a well-respected Ozarks historian (though she has since moved on, both in terms of career and location), I have something of an inside track on such matters. I first learned of these events a short time after I became significantly “aware” of autism, after I had finally begun to become truly aware of how many of the “Asperger’s Disorder” patterns of development had shaped the course of my life — and more to the point, how mainstream social prejudice has defined my relationship to society at large. Thus, when I learned of the events of 1906, I was well primed, and I have been hoping for some time to retrace the steps of others, and write a proper article to tell the story yet again. This is not that article.

But this story needs to be retold. As history and heritage (like it or not), but above all, as wisdom and warning. All too often, what we call “optimism” is an “awareness” born of forgetting, and of revisionism. It is the “awareness” that sustains ignorance and leads again to the endless manifestations of bigotry that plague our history. “Forgive and forget” is an empty platitude. Forgiveness itself is of utmost importance, but it is a monumental, lifelong process, not to be trivialized. Forgetting, on the other hand, is the effortless return to the collective non-conscious, the suffocation of hard-won wisdom under the deceptively comforting blanket of the herd mentality. All the social pathogens of our history fester and kill under the dark safety of that blanket, and sunlight, as it were, is the only remotely effective disinfectant we have.

Even Tombstone, Arizona had its heroes. Any community, at any point in its history, might be hailed for the successes of its more genuinely ethical and humane citizens. But such citizens, I am sorry to say, have always been a minority of their own. And as one who has endured a full measure of the mindless bigotry that Springfield, Missouri, still has to offer, I can tell you: the events of Easter weekend, 1906, are very much a part of what Springfield is today, no matter how angrily most of its citizens would deny it.

“Those who cannot remember the past” — or honestly face its relevance and implications for our present, and our future — “are condemned to repeat it.”

But for some of us, be we part of the black community, the Autistic community, or any other disempowered minority, the lessons of that past are burned into our flesh. It cannot be burned out. Not with drugs. Not with therapy. Not even with fire itself.

You say you want awareness. Good. Now you know where to look.

THIS is autism speaking — but who’s listening?

.

A few related links; a few disputed facts:

1906 lynchings grew from tensions, racism; Thriving black community died

Panel discusses effects of 1906 lynchings

Questions about the 1906 lynchings

Because someone had to do it

So there.

Next?

—

For those few who (owing to their living under a rock, I guess) are as yet unaware:

Q: Who is “katleen”?

A: “I Am Kathleen.”

Q: Oh, you mean “Kathleen.” Don’ look so “leejun” to me. Whyzit such a big deal?

A: Because the “subpoena” [PDF] is a retaliatory abuse of power, and a compound civil rights violation, contrived with intent to intimidate a very large group of citizens … and because “WE ARE ALL KATHLEEN, NOW!“

Shoemaker’s Witch-Hunt: An Open Letter

[Lists of dozens more blog entries in support of Kathleen Seidel can be found at Holford Watch, and I Speak of Dreams, and The Voyage, and Natural Variation, and ....]

[WARNING: extreme satire ahead!]

To The Right Honourable
Clifford J. Shoemaker
Attorney At Law

Dear Mr. Shoemaker,

While skimming the “subpoena” [PDF] you recently served to Kathleen Seidel, my attention was drawn most powerfully to item #5 under “Documents and Things to Produce.” I was struck that the list in question reads like an honor-roll of weblogs whose common focus is respect for Autistic human beings. Admittedly, I was disappointed that neither my name, nor my ubiquitous online moniker, nor any of the titles of my online journals or weblogs, past or present, appeared anywhere on your list. Now, considering how sporadic my activism and writing have been over the years, I suppose I can’t complain.

Nevertheless, this omission suggested to me a possibility I had not previously considered while reading about this subpoena. On impulse, I surfed over to Seidel’s weblog and checked something. Sure enough, with the exception of one botched html tag that your office didn’t bother to edit out, your list is an exact copy of the list of weblogs and sites that appeared in the side bar of Seidel’s blog page under the heading “Autism & Disability Sites & Blogs” [EDIT: several new links, including my own, have since been added].

Now, if I may say so, Sir, that’s some damned fine investigative work on your part. Gotta love them netertoobs, huh? Never has it been so delightfully easy to “round up the usual suspects.”

As any marginally experienced “blogger” knows, inclusion of weblogs and websites in such side-bar “blogrolls,” as they are called, is overwhelmingly arbitrary and opportunistic, a spur-of-the-moment hit-and-miss accumulation of links. Thus, I did not appear in Seidel’s side-bar simply because she had not encountered any of my writings “at the right time,” such that she would feel momentarily prompted to toss my link(s) into the list. This, despite the fact that my last weblog entry explicitly references an instance of Seidel’s past activism, and in fact, links directly to the relevant page on her website; despite my having made such references to her work on countless past occasions; despite even the fact that she and I have had direct e-mail contact in years past. And, most damningly, I only yesterday posted a comment to her weblog, in which I included links to legal resources and information about “anti-SLAPP” laws, and to the “Bloggers Rights” resources at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. While her omission of my link(s) on her blogroll was a reflection only on my own negligence and/or limitations, there is no mistaking my years of unbroken admiration for Seidel and agreement with the spirit and content of her work.

And thus, it is now made apparent by what “criteria” you determined just which “co-conspirators” to implicate in Seidel’s activities. You could just as easily have copied the list of contributors to the Autism Hub weblog aggregator, or the blogrolls of any one of a thousand different weblogs or sites, and your resulting list of potential “perps” would have been no less random, and no more predictably relevant to the case in question. In fact, as it is blatantly obvious that you are simply carpet-bombing random schoolyards here, I’m surprised you didn’t see fit to implicate all of the more than 18,000 members of WrongPlanet.net — the vast bulk of whom are predictably and passionately sympathetic to Seidel’s views on autism, cognitive diversity, and social activism.

It should be noted, of course, that a significant majority of the “co-conspirators” you seek to intimidate are also, like Seidel herself, quite hostile to the contemporary business practices of the “Big-Pharma” juggernaut you so vaingloriously purport to be opposing. Likewise, my own contempt for the glorified drug-pushers is a matter of public record. But those facts are surely nothing more than a minor inconvenience to you. After all, when there’s money to be made, I’m sure that such an unflinchingly adept legal mind as your own would have no compunctions about misrepresenting the interests of tens of thousands of mere citizens — especially when most of the citizens in question have already been deemed by popular opinion to be of little or no value to society.

So, I hereby invite you to add my name to your list of witches to be hunted down and burned, and be assured, none of this will reflect badly on so noble a figure as your esteemed self. A personage of your stature may harass the entire blogosphere with impunity, and look good in doing it. As for Autistics, and those who are naïve enough to respect them, who cares what they think? No one reads their weblogs anyway. They have nothing to say, and no right to say it, and that’s as it should be, since they’re not really human anyway.

In my case, owing to my status in this society of yours, dispensing with me should be even easier for you, both legally and morally, than wiping a squashed gnat off the windshield of your new Rolls. Since I live in subsidized housing, and since my family pays my rent and all my meager living expenses, I have no direct financial dealings with anyone. That means I have no financial records of any kind. And that means I should make an extraordinarily easy target for your sporting pleasure — you can frivolously implicate me in any number of alleged “crimes,” and I will have absolutely no means of defending myself. In fact, countless members of the Autistic community you’ve targeted are every bit as powerless as I am. We’re like fish in a barrel, just waiting for your next round of target practice. Easy meat. We promise to be short work for you. Like drowning lame kittens in a gunny-sack. Great fun!

In other words, Bring It On, Big Man.

“WE ARE ALL KATHLEEN!”

Sincerely,

David K. March

Autism Awareness: “Wait — you’re saying that YOUR prejudice is a ’symptom’ of MY autism?”

So, the dreaded “Autism Awareness Month” has arrived, and thus, the seasonal deluge of parental angst and professional avarice shall soon be upon us.

For my own part, I will indeed be attempting to participate in the “Blogging for Autism Awareness” project. Here, have a button:

As words are often in short supply for me (well, coherent ones, at least), I expect I’ll mostly just be linking back to various classics in autistic self-advocacy and disability rights genres. But for this stab, I’m going to indulge in a bit of self-quotation, plus links…

Who will teach journalists how science works?

Scientific Blogging’s Michael White has a very interesting new piece (link below) on one aspect of how science is often (mis)represented in popular media. I don’t feel inclined to argue pro or con on any of the particulars of the case he examines, although I do have a great deal to say on the broader issue of how our society presently handles matters pertaining to scientific progress. But I’m saving that rant for later. As for the answer to my opening question, I’ll offer up this little “hint”: it won’t be our increasingly corporate-dominated education systems. Not the way things are going, at least.

However, I think Autism Hub readers, especially, will find many strikingly familiar themes in Bad Science Journalism and the Myth of the Oppressed Underdog — especially in light of [*cough*] recent events in The Great Autism Debate.

Share and Enjoy.

Evidence of Barm

(or, “Data?! We don’t need no stinkin’ data!“)

So, the Gub’ment conceded that one girl’s quasi-autistic characteristics might have been aggravated by some jab or other … and that’s conclusive proof that autism is caused by vaccines. Gawd, I love America! Big Pharma must be peeing their socks in delight over this spectacular distraction from their real atrocities. And what better way to help marginalize dissenters and their pathological obsession with “fact-checking”?

Well, who knows where scientists and autistics get their crazy ideas, anyway, and who cares? For normal people, sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth, and researching the netertoobs goes something like this:

Update On Posts Blocked by NYU/CSC “Town Hall”

As was made clear by events on and following Tuesday, Feb. 26, NYU’s Child Study Center failed to live up to its promise of providing an open forum for discussion of children’s mental health (though they would have us believe otherwise). However, it would appear that Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz is gradually making good on his subsequent promise to reply via private e-mail to those posts which were blocked.

As evidence, I have just received a reply to one of my posts, which I will be deconstructing shortly for your enjoyment the purpose of furthering open dialog.

Moreover, the e-mail reply DID include, as expected, a copy of my original post, and presumably, this will be the case with all such replies. What that means is that those of you who were blocked will have a second chance to re-insert your voice into the sphere of public debate where it belongs.. If you wish, when you receive your reply, I will be happy to add the text of your original post to the current list of those that were gagged blocked by Koplewicz and crew. (yes, I know — I still need to polish up the list’s introductory text — bear with me)

I’ll add your post(s) to the list ONLY with your express permission, and if you prefer that your entry be listed anonymously, please let me know. If you would like your name/handle to link to a blog, website, or e-mail address, please provide those details as well. PLEASE SEND POSTS, permissions, and other details to me at my primary e-mail address — and please include “NYU/CSC” in the subject line so I’ll know it’s not spam.

Thank you,

–DKM

How NYU/CSC’s “Town Hall Meeting” SHOULD Have Been Done - A Coincidental Demonstration

For over two months, they continually protested of their eagerness to listen, to welcome the voices of the concerned, to come together with all and work hand-in-hand to help the children …

Mmmmmm-hm.

Via the purely unrelated vehicle of yesterdays’s liveblogging on the ongoing scandal surrounding the political lynching of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, Harper’s legal affairs contributor Scott Horton and Firedoglake.com accidentally delivered a seamless demonstration of what an online “town hall meeting” should look like.

Just Because…

Happily, I have just been informed that I have been added to the incomparable Autism Hub lineup, and by way of introduction, I can think of nothing more appropriate than:

 

There was a fish called the gillygoofang…

which swam backward to keep the water out of its eyes.

 

The gillygoofang bewildered all the trout in the brook,

not because it swam backward to keep the water out of its eyes,

but because…

 

 

[From The Gillygoofang, by George Mendoza, illustrated by Mercer Mayer, The Dial Press, Inc., New York. Now out of print.]

Some thoughts on helping, and “helping”

[UPDATE: For a bit more on this delightful topic, see Andrea's "So-Not-Helpful Fixers and their Malcommendations." Cheers.]

[reposted from my less-than-formal rantspace]

Everyone wants to appear helpful. Trouble is, rarely are any of us willing to do the extremely hard work of figuring out just exactly what help, if any, is actually needed. And when we fail to prevent our motives from being ruled by the social compulsion to appear helpful [and/or, the drive to promote our own careers ... hint, hint], our rationality is invariably compromised by conflicting interests, and we are almost absolutely guaranteed to screw the pooch. In such cases, unless we just happen to get lucky enough to guess right — which is a bit like playing the lottery with someone else’s money — then we are very likely to end up harming the person we’re so hell-bent on “helping,” and perhaps (OMG!) ourselves as well.

The Real Town Hall

This page has been created to serve as a public-access repository for any and all of those posts which NYU/CSC saw fit to block from appearing in their “Town Hall Meeting.” The purpose of this repository is to:

1) give voice to those many concerns and questions which were blocked by NYU/CSC,

2) show the stark contrast between those posts which were blocked, and those which were allowed by NYU/CSC,

3) show that the “open forum” that NYU/CSC promised, and still claims to have provided, was in fact nothing of the sort.

Call for posts that were blocked by NYU’s “Town Hall Meeting”

['CUT-TO-THE-CHASE' EDIT: For those of you who tried to participate in the NYU/CSC "town hall meeting" only to find that they were blocking your posts, YOUR VOICE CAN STILL BE HEARD. If you happened to save copies of your blocked posts, I would be pleased to add them to the growing list I have so far, which will be published here. If you didn't save a copy, you may have one available soon -- NYU/CSC has since promised to reply to all blocked posts by private e-mail within the next few weeks, and those e-mails will likely include a copy of your blocked post. I'll add your post(s) to the list of silenced voices ONLY with your express permission, and if you prefer that your entry be listed anonymously, please let me know. If you would like your name/handle to link to a blog, website, or e-mail address, please provide those details as well. PLEASE SEND POSTS, permissions, and other details to me at my primary e-mail address -- and please include "NYU/CSC" in the subject line so I'll know it's not spam. For explanation and further details of the event, see below.]

—
—
—

As some of you may know, New York University’s Child Study Center (creators of the recently aborted “Ransom Notes” campaign) hosted what was advertised as a “town hall meeting” on the topic of childhood mental illnesses. For weeks, they had been “inviting public participation and input,” which was to take place, supposedly, in their forum on Tuesday, Feb 26, 2008.

But what you won’t likely know unless you participated in the forum is that countless posts were BLOCKED for no apparent reason — except, perhaps, that the host, Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, saw no reason for any post to appear at all unless he personally intended to respond to it. He asked no significant questions of any participant, and showed no apparent evidence that he or his organization were seeking input of any kind.

Quite the opposite, in fact…

By way of example, here are three of my own most “controversial” posts that were silenced in this “open forum”:

ME: “Dr. K., In future public service campaigns, what steps will you be taking to ensure that the language/imagery you use will not inadvertently lead to further emotional harm, inflicted on a day-to-day basis via the attitudes which propagate throughout society, upon those you wish to help?“

BLOCKED

ME: “Dr. K., Do you believe that Autistic adults have anything useful to contribute to clinical/professional understanding of what it means to be an Autistic child? And what about other psychiatric conditions? Are the personal experiences of any such adults to be regarded as being of any potential use in understanding mental health, other than simply serving as examples of that which is disordered, and must be corrected?“

BLOCKED

ME: “Do you feel that professionals and researchers in psychiatry are accountable for the attitudes which they themselves instill in others, attitudes which can be clearly shown to propagate throughout society and thus have a direct, daily impact on an entire class of human beings numbering in the millions?“

BLOCKED

And even more surprising, many of the posts I’ve seen so far that were attempted by others were far more tactful than my own — and yet, they simply weren’t allowed to appear.

As a result (or perhaps by design), the forum turned out to be little more than another podium for Dr. Koplewicz himself to disseminate his own views on how children should be treated, which, almost without exception, involves plenty of medication. As evidenced by his involvement in the infamous Paxil Study 329, as well as his own heavily promoted books, Dr. Koplewicz is always adamant that children are under-medicated, and he routinely advocates using the very latest (and most profitable) of psych-meds, many of which are poorly tested even for adults, and may not be tested for children at all. Now, in some cases, such medications are well-known to be helpful, sometimes even in cases of otherwise ethically questionable “off-label” use. To a great many of us, however, the kind of treatment he advocates is nothing short of using children as guinea pigs.

But you’d never know that from reading the posts in his “town hall meeting.” While Dr. Koplewicz occasionally talks about promoting awareness and acceptance, or eliminating stigma, it often comes off as gratuitous, and is always by way of reiterating his own agenda: that psychiatric treatment is the first and only priority, and scarcely anything else is even worthy of mention. This forum was no exception to his well-worn rhetorical patterns — and even the most politely dissenting voices were not to be heard…

IS THIS ACCEPTABLE? I think not, and it would seem that I’m not alone. In discussions of what happened there, several people have shown an interest in compiling a list of those posts which were blocked by Koplewicz and/or the forum’s moderator(s). The list would then be posted online, likely with some degree of analysis and/or critique of the event, to show just how “open” the forum in question really was. That’s assuming I/we can collect enough entries such that it will have a significant impact.

SO, for those of you who participated in the “town hall meeting,” and happened to save copies of your blocked posts, I would be very interested in adding them to the short list I have so far. If you didn’t save the text of your attempted posts, but can reconstruct them with reasonable accuracy, that would be okay too. I’ll add your post(s) to the list of silenced voices ONLY with your explicit permission — bearing in mind that others may be blogging/posting the list — and if you prefer that your entry be listed anonymously, please let me know.

PLEASE SEND POSTS, permissions, and other comments to me at my primary e-mail address — and please include “NYU/CSC” in the subject line so I’ll know it’s not spam.

Thanks, and best wishes,

–DKM

WIRED: “Yeah, I’m Autistic. You got a problem with that?”

[UPDATE: (thanks to codeman38 for the heads-up) This article is now available in standard online format (under a new title), for your viewing pleasure and convenience: The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know. Enjoy!]

The latest issue of WIRED Magazine has a new article on Autistic intelligence. Discussed are Amanda Baggs‘ YouTube videos, and Michelle Dawson’s collaboration with Laurent Mottron, among others. Excellent article — another must-read for the self-advocacy community … and an unequivocal in-your-face at the bulk of mainstream research and professions.

Blurb and links:

Traditional science holds that people with severe autism are prisoners in their own minds, severely disabled, and probably mentally retarded. Don’t tell that to Amanda Baggs, an autistic woman who achieved viral fame with her YouTube video “In My Language,” which has so far received more than 350,000 hits. Wired contributor David Wolman gets inside the life that Baggs has created for herself, which includes blogging, hanging out in Second Life, corresponding with her friends, and a “constant conversation” with the world around her. Wolman’s conclusion: Much of past research about autism and intelligence is catastrophically flawed…

Main page for March, 2008 issue:
http://www.wired.com/services/press/2008/march

Full article [PDF], “Yeah, I’m Autistic. You got a problem with that?”:
http://www.wired.com/images/press/pdf/autism.pdf

PS: PASS IT ON. ;-)

NYU’s “Ransom Notes” campaign: How Will It Work?

[UPDATE: NYU's controversial "Ransom Notes" campaign has now been officially halted. Huge thanks and congratulations are in order for Ari Ne'eman of ASAN, and everyone in the disability, self-advocacy, and 'neurodiversity' communities who pulled together to convince NYU to rethink their approach. Still, there are crucial aspects of our message that have simply not been heard. This must change ...]

To family, friends, neighbors, activists, weblog readers, and other fellow travelers on Planet Weird,

The advertising agency BBDO, which represents numerous US and multinational corporations including Pfizer and Glaxo-SmithKline, has produced pro bono a public service campaign, as conceived by New York University’s Child Study Center whose stated objectives include eliminating stigma and promoting awareness of what they call an epidemic of children with psychiatric illnesses.

For Posterity: Troy Duster’s “Conditions For Guilt-Free Massacre”

[reposted from my old (now-deleted) LiveJournal account]

“The most general condition for guilt-free massacre is the denial of the humanity of the victims.”

The essay below by Troy Duster is something of a buried classic in social science, as is its forerunner by Harold Garfinkel. This is a relatively brief exploration of some of the dynamics whereby individuals and whole populations are routinely manipulated into a position of consensus in favor of their own government’s participation in any atrocity, up to and including genocide. While it is obviously a bit dated, and was never intended to be an in-depth treatment of the subject matter, I know you’ll find its relevance to present-day geopolitics to be unmistakable.

“No reward for resistance; No assistance, no applause…”

[reposted from my old (now-deleted) LiveJournal account]

On Doing The Right Thing

Never said I was the most tactful shoe on the rack …

We carry a sensitive cargo
Below the water-line
Ticking like a time-bomb
With a primitive design

Behind the finer feelings
The civilized veneer
The heart of a lonely hunter
Guards a dangerous frontier…

He obviously esteemed himself an activist, and happened to be right about a lot of things. Yeah, a lot of people are. But the more I read him, the more he appeared to be clinging jealously to a notion of himself as some exceptional intellectual elite — “one of the few” who has all the answers — and the notion of most everyone else as, not merely idiots, but evil idiots. And yeah, anyone who disagrees is “one of them.”

Nagasaki - The Untold Story

I’m no huge fan of Lew Rockwell, nor am I a Christian, but this is just too good not to pass along — today, or any day. [Originally found and posted to my old (now-deleted) LiveJournal account on August 9th, 2007]

The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story

by Gary G. Kohls

62 years ago, on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic bombs (a plutonium bomb) ever used as instruments of aggressive war (against essentially defenseless civilian populations) was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew. The well-trained American soldiers were only “doing their job,” and they did it efficiently.

Rantlet on white privilege and othering — an excellent article, and my comment

First, the article:

None So Blind As The ‘Colorblind’ — by Sean Gonsalves

Not too shabby.

Now for my consequent customary rantlet, as posted elsewhere:

“…white-skin privilege - the privilege of not having to pay a racial tax for the criminal behavior of a few who happen to share the same skin color.”

That’s easily the best clarification of white privilege I’ve ever seen. Excellent article.

I would add that the popular and shallow “PC” form of “tolerance” is really just another form of “othering,” and a treacherously insidious one at that. It takes the crudest possible stereotype of “racists,” and conveniently supplies the user with an opportunity to proclaim their inherent superiority — “I’m not like those people. I’m better than that.”

(did someone say “shadow projection”?)

Genital Mutilation for Fun and Profit

Someone in the [LiveJournal "buddhists" community] asked for opinions on circumcision, and I just had to weigh in. As I have not previously covered the topic here [on WordPress], I’m reposting. Yea:

* * *

arbitrary choices, misinformation, and ethical bombshells

Having studied the issue quite extensively, I cannot support the practice of genital mutilation in any way, except perhaps in the case of adults who choose it for themselves and are well informed in their choice.