Happy Father's Day 2015

I want to wish everyone out there a Happy Father's Day. I am grateful to have had my dad support, respect and give helpful advice for my various ways of life and ambitions, such as my bottle cap and ethnic musical instrument collecting, my Buddhist practice, my arts, writing, former filmmaking desire, art, repurposing, blogging, Disability Studies, and mostly my advoacy for the autistic people. I would also like to make note of various autistic fathers and fathers of autistic children in general. Many have worked and strived hard to find the right schools, as with my parents. Their are several who have done so through divorce, unemployment, disease, and such, as I have seen on Facebook and elsewhere. They have also practiced and promoted autism acceptance, rights, inclusion, and led various groups such as the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, the Autism Network International, the Autism National Committee, the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, and the Autism Society of America, while also challenging the abuses and excesses of various movements such as Autism Speaks, Applied Behavior Analysis, the Judge Rotenberg Center, and various Autism "Awareness" movements.  Happy Father's Day.

 Autism Acceptance isn't just a series of acts. It's a lifestyle.

 -myself

Autistic Pride Day 2015 from Leadville, Colorado

Out in the woods where my mom and stepdad bought a vacation home in Colorado may not seem like a happening place for June 18’s Autistic Pride Day created by the former autistic rights organization Aspies for Freedom (which has since disbanded and reformed into the ASDCommunity and the Autism Friends Network, abandoning the term “Aspie”-referring to Asperger syndrome-in an attempt to be more inclusive), but when you are in a wooden house with no entertainment within walking distance you find a way to make it work.  I have walked along abandoned train tracks finding many large smooth stones perfect for drawing the symbols my autistic kin have created, in response to the autism puzzle piece, which we have felt is no more empowering than labeling us as child schizophrenics or children of refrigerator mothers.  In the first picture is the symbols created by others, and the second one, some of my own.  The third and fourth are my new Facebook profile pictures and cover photos respectively.

                First I might mention this is only the second time I celebrated it in my life, and have made a resolution each year to come up with a prompt from other autistic’s to write a post based on.  Last year’s was from the page Thoughts from a Female Aspie, which had a post saying, “So this cure of yours that’s in the works, Exactly which parts of me would it remove? My Memory?  My Gift?  My Quirks?  My Personality?  My Thought Process?  My Lifestyle?  I don’t want to be cured of Aspergers at that price.”  This year however, I got behind in finding a prompt, went with what I had already and choose “I’m not a puzzle.  I’m a person.”  Like the oldest one in the book.

             There are two rainbow infinities, the symbol of the former Aspies for Freedom, and one against a winged heart, created by autism’s very own Kelly Green.  The blue and white infinity was created by Janet Sebilius and used by the Metis in Canada.  The heart itself was just a generic symbol first generated around the time Autism Acceptance Month was created in response to the alarmist Autism Awareness Month.  There are pink and purple people embracing each other, used by Britain’s the National Autistic Society, as well as an orange and green coil and jump, from Autscape UK.  There is a pie chart, created by autistic Andrew I. Lerner, interestingly enough making a peace sign (as if to say the pieces fit in peace), then a butterfly with a transparent left wing, created by the autism organization, the Hidden Wings Foundation.  Also an orange spark from the Celebrate Autism Foundation, a blue ribbon with rainbow stars created by autistic CarolAnn Acorn.  The one that looks like a mismatch of rainbow colors, the rainbow scribbles, was created by James McCue to represent “beautiful chaos.”  There is also a white tree with rainbow colors reflected in the water, like my profile picture with me meditating under it like the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, which was created by Stephanie Tihanyi.  The snowflake was created by JoeyMama, representing how all autistics are unique, and the rainbow moebius ring was created by Oddizms.  There is also a horse symbol, which I have no idea who created or what it has to do with autism, but just know some autistics have benefited from equestrian interaction and think this symbol was probably just a joke among us. 

                I know, there are so many symbols, partly as I think each represents the uniqueness of different autistic communities, and as there are so many ways we have responded to the puzzle piece, which I have felt has become merely a socially acceptable way of calling someone the R-word.  I didn’t even include various autistic representations against it because I felt like showing symbols that did not make reference to that logo.  Anyway, I’ve created a few of my own, such as the porcupine, representing autistics ability to defend themselves even if they as a community are smaller, and eventually conceived it for the community I started at the University of Central Missouri.  Also, kind of as a secondary logo, I created the kaleidoscope, representing the diversity of the autistic community, and the fluidity, as opposed to fixedness of our abilities.  There is a well, which I created with inspiration from a quote from my granddad about some self-promoting autism awareness campaigns, which are “a mile wide and an inch deep,” whereas a well provides water, which is essential to live.  Also, in line with that way of thinking is a lone bison drinking from water with the rest of its herd in the distance, a commentary on autistic’s so-called “loner” nature.  There is a yellow, green, and red triskele, those colors being used for color-coded badges in Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and Autism Network International meetings representing either being open to talking, only wanting to talk when one initiates the conversation, and not wanting to talk at all, representing how these three moods alternate among us individuals with time.  I have a similar design using rainbow colors, giving a unique take on autistic spinning.  There is a lotus, representing psychologist Dr. Laurent Mottron’s “Six Traits of Aspie Perfection” (Logical, Intuitive, Creative, Original, Direct, Resilient) by which I don’t agree with this separatist “Aspie” term being used to rate autistics, but a mere commentary on how that was the first time in history a person’s autism was seen as anything other than a burden.  I have a key, representing the key to unlocking autistic’s hidden potential and the potential of our community as a whole.  Two symbols going along the same line are a sun and moon symbol and a sun dial, representing our unique sense of time.  My two favorites are a tree branch with a fruit at the end (representing our ability to take risks to achieve success), and, to represent the beauty of our unique way of seeing and perceiving things, a squirrel climbing down a tree, with its tail and the shadow of its tail making a heart, while the sunset, in fact with its green ground, makes a rainbow.  I think having all these unique symbols is good, and I encourage my fellow autistic to create their own (as long as they aren’t puzzle pieces or crying children), because I believe local autistic communities and their own needs are important, and a common dream, rather than symbols, can unite us.  I have had great success with these symbols, even groups suggesting to sell necklaces with one such as the kaleidoscope to raise money with some interest for myself, which is the least bit important to me, but I won’t say no to it altogether.  But be warned, that if I do not like one particular aspect of a group, whether it’s its ethical, operational, or commercial aspects, I will not let it use these symbols if I had a choice, even if I made 99% interest.  As for everyone here, even if you are not autistic or know someone who is, Autistic Pride Day is for everyone, as there are millions who enrich our world today with this condition, from supposedly autistic Thomas Jefferson and Stanley Kubrick to modern openly autistic Daryl Hannah and Ladyhawke Sparrow.  I know this post is a lot to grasp, so thank you for keeping up with it, and Happy Autistic Pride Day.

 

Memorial Day Post 2015

Today is Memorial Day, and I myself agree with the sentiment of respecting individuals who giveup lives, freedom, and economic comfort in the name of protecting our own. As nations developed, militaries became necessary to protect the individuals and society from the outside, police to protect individuals from threats on the inside, and national guards to safeguard the countries internal affairs. To protect people from reigns of religiously-sanctioned monarchies, the concept of democracy-elected governments-developed, and to safeguard this, the concept of freedom of speech, freedom, of religion, and freedom of press, and to ensure this literacy and economic stability for individual people had to be promoted by schools, while our armed forces elected (usually) on the promise of securing these necessities, but the fact is these people are ordered by governments, who are increasingly being elected with large businesses, churches, and special interest groups being counted as individual voters (Citizens United), along with the wealthy people who run them. I've lived in this country my whole life, and would never dream of leaving this country if it were not necessary for my own personal safety, but I cannot, without feeling the weight of inconsistencies, call this the land of the free when it was among the last country in the West to abolish the official owning of human beings, and nowadays the last country in the West to allow people the right to marry the love of their live in the name of an All-loving god, and deny families and individuals the right to have their living expenses of wealthy individuals who live off their labor, and spends more money the rest of the world combined to lock people up with nodecrease in crime, while the government uses its tax money to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, while governments subsidizing the rich decide debates on poverty based on free-loaders, while groups suffering from centuries of unpaid labor are shot fornon-lethal crimes, when only a portion of the population are guaranteed clean air, drinking water, and land, when it raises tax revenue from draining the resources and labor force from oppressed countries for minimal compensation, while men and women are sent to war for the expenses of the wealthy and have their survival needs neglected, while the "burden" of raising a disabled child is used to minimalize the burden on society for locking them up, when the law does not go far enough to deny impunity to men who would use women for their sex slavery and call the resulting life-long burden a gift from the divine, when politicians agree to protect a child only until it grows up in poverty or waits voiceless without a family until years when bureaucratic regulations have been negotiated, when diversity and multiculturalism is dictated on the terms of the dominant groups, and when individuals can live off starvation wages, seventy-five cents for the dollar for women, wage discrimination for ethnic minorities, shortcuts around protecting people's ecosystems, collections of tax-payer money, fictitous trade-offs in the Third World, and increased barriers to higher education, and call it "their hard-earned money." Indeed, until large businesses, religious fundamentalists, misogynistic frat boys, and self-promoting parents no longer control the fates of women, the poor, LGBTQs, and disabled people can I truly feel comfortable calling this the Land of the Free.

Autism Positivity Day 2015 Post: 7 Years after Embracing My Identity

Today is Autism Positivity Day, and, conveniently for me, it almost coincides with the day where seven years ago I decided to fully embrace the fact that I am an autistic man, not man with autism, but autistic, with a Capital A. I know seven years is not much of a period, but for me, this coincides with the time I finally got my Bachelor’s degree, after seven years of college, fighting uphill against two college environments that for an autistic were hard to adjust to. Yet, in that time, I also started and led collegiate organizations on both campuses that stressed an environment where autistics could be themselves. I also started two autism blogs, which have now together garnered over fifteen thousand views in over sixty countries, spoke to children at an autism camp twice—which I had formerly attended as a teenager, the high school students of my former school for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the Psych Club, Pursuit of Happiness Day forum, and the 2015 Spring Leadership Conference at UCM, wrote for the Autistic Speaking Day blog, the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network of Kansas City, the Horizon Academy (my high school) newsletter, the UCM Muleskinner, KCTV, the Kansas Legislature, JCCC’s Autism Beyond the Diagnosis 2008 Conference, and Autism and Neurodiversity in the Classroom on the struggle of the autistic community. I would also write The Friend of Autism Pledge, donate artwork to the Mission Project Housing for people with I/DD, and make poster presentations for Disability Awareness Week in 2013 and 2014, and Autism Acceptance Month in 2014 at UCM. I would also graduate UCM’s intellectual and developmental disability THRIVE program two years before I became the first, and so far, only THRIVE student to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree, although many did go on to become regular students at UCM and other universities. The thing is that my life has changed so radically, as have others I’ve heard, from embracing who I am, something I have only truly done for less than a third of my life.

                But despite all this, I actually feared telling my story to just anyone. I feared I would become an idol for “inspiration porn,” which is frequently the tone of any disabled person who rises above societies abysmal expectations of them, or, worse, overcoming autism. At no point was I free from self-doubt that largely seems to go unheard of with autistics like Temple Grandin and John Elder Robison. I questioned my decisions frequently and even blamed myself for whatever suffering came the way of my fellow autistic UCM students. In fact, if it were not for my meditation, spiritual life, true friends, family, and fellow Autistic Student and Peer Organization, JCCC Autism Spectrum Support Group, ASAN-KC, Camp Encourage, Horizon Academy members, various autistic and ally Facebook friends, I literally do not think I would have survived the last four years of completing the collegiate autistic advocacy experiment in Warrensburg. At every point, I encountered opposition from people who claimed to be true friends of autism and am still learning much of the backhanded nature of their acts. Many said to me that given our societies unaccommodating nature of autism, these people did the best they could. However, all of them had in fact acted selfishly. Over my time at UCM, I learned four valuable lessons of how to get autistics to create a community that truly embraces people like us, including:

1.       Do not, under any circumstances, use the puzzle piece. Yes, the puzzle piece may be very well known, but if groups advocating for autistics care about us more than the group, they will sacrifice their commercial success for individual’s welfare. Any point where the name of autism advocacy is used to gain a competitive edge over others is almost certainly for selfish reasons. What really annoys me these days about the autism puzzle piece is that it seems to be a socially acceptable way of calling someone the R-word. Yes, every autistic person is unique, but I found rainbow mosaic or kaleidoscope symbols (not with just primary colors) also represented every autistic person’s uniqueness in a cohesive, natural way. A kaleidoscope’s changing ways can also represent autistic’s struggle to adapt to society.

2.       ACCEPTANCE, not awareness, is a mantra for change. When young, naïve neurotypicals stop me in the streets asking them to support their cause of autism awareness, I wish to ask them, “I live with autism 24/7, and it is in my sleeping patterns, dietary habits, and even the way I move. How can I not be aware of it?” The fact that a person would automatically assume I am not autistic leads me to wonder how much their cause is really promoting awareness. Awareness tends to emphasize elite neurotypicals and institutions lending their name to the cause of autism then it does the diverse stories of autistics in our own words. It is a paternalistic relationship, enforced by the perception that autistics are basically all children, not an empowering one.

3.       Blue lights cannot be away to welcome people you wish to be fully accepting, self-respecting autistics, for their only true association with autism is the logo of an autism an autism organization (Autism Speaks) whose financial, commercial, and corporate aspects are, at best, questionable. It would be like wearing gray for Black History Month, as gray was the color of the Confederate soldiers. Instead, I wear gold, whose chemical symbol Au is the first to letters of the word “autistic”; red, the color of a heart, which has been proposed as an alternative symbol for the puzzle piece; taupe, the color of the Tree of Neurodiversity, also suggested as an alternative symbol for the puzzle piece; and orange, the color of the spark logo of the Celebrate Autism Foundation, also suggested as an alternative to the puzzle piece; or rainbow colors, not just blue, representing the diversity of autism throughout life, and the Autistic Self-Advocacy Networks rainbow heptagon symbol, also suggested as an alternative for something. No prizes for guessing what.

4.       Autistics must be empowered to speak for themselves, as individuals, and as a community, not by neurotypical parents, celebrities, school spirit faces, or institutions. While neurotypical loved ones may help, they must not talk over, manipulate, or review for approval the voices of autistics, because while many doing so do intend to help, let’s look at what picture this creates of autistics: individuals, regardless of their age, who need mommy and daddy to fight their battles. Rather than empowering images of people you’d want for your company, social life, or any aspect that is a key to autistic integration, autistics are devalued as children, much the way slaves in the American South were called “boy.” The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network meanwhile, has created resources for everything from improving autistic services to preventing murders of children to stopping disabled discrimination in organ transplants, and has made substantially more difference than elite individuals who wish to speak for autistics. For the first few years I knew I was autistic, these things—puzzle pieces, blue lights, awareness, and helicopter parents— were all I knew of the autism world. Consequently, I did not embrace my autism, and would not have done all this stuff for the autistic community if I hadn’t. I hope my fellow autistic individuals will be motivated to do the same things I have done and make this a better world for people like us.

Mother's Day Post

It is Mother's Day, and I want to say, if nothing else,that I am happy for all that I have gotten from my mother, Kitzi Dingley, including food, home, rides to school, work, friend's house, the various stamps, coins, musical instruments, and bottle caps I collect, art supplies, classes, time behind the wheel, notebooks, books, and getting help from her dad so I was able to attend the right school. Moreover, I remember her making suggestions that led me to volunteer at Ten Thousand Villages, start the JCCC Autism Spectrum Support Group, which later led me to start the Autistic Student and Peer Organization at UCM, going to UCM's THRIVE program, speaking at the Kansas Legislature for my fellow autistic, the JCCC Autism Beyond the Diagnosis Conference, going to UMKC's Disability Studies program, and her learning what it was I needed in life. I'm glad I didn't have to figure out everything in my life. I am also grateful for various mothers of autistic children, who don't feel the need to fix their children, accept their stress-related habits, communication, don't feel the need to portray them as an expressway for stress in their lives, and respect their right to be on this earth. I also want to give thanks to the various autistic mothers out there who led groups like the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, the Autism Women's Network, blog to inform the world about autistic people, and teach disabled children in schools. Happy Mother's Day!

Acceptance Is

This month (Autism Acceptance Month) the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network is posting signs that people send them that are done on their Autism Acceptance Month templates, which can be found on Facebook and e-mailed to SB@AutisticAdvocacy.org until the end of April.  So I just wanted to share it with readers, and hope you enjoy, though you can also find them on ASAN's Facebook page.

It's an orange fist (orange for the Celebrate Autism Foundations spark logo, which you also see in the background) coming out of a lotus with a rainbow infinity symbol against a winged heart, all much bettersymbols for autism than puzzle pieces, with a quatrain saying:

Guess what.
I'm autistic.
Better get used to it.
I love myself the way I am.
Got it?!

 

Four Autism Acceptance Month Cartoons

Drew them myself.  I think they're alright.

 

 

Happy Autism Acceptance Month!