Aspies For Freedom

That's it. That's the unassailable truth. "Different from = Inferior to" -- and the persons of power and privilege define The Other.

This dynamic applies to virtually all Them v. Us power differentials.  Male / female, white / black, straight / gay, rich / poor, Nurotypical / Neurodivergent.  "They" not only conduct the studies, they write the histories, make the laws, run the government, create the inages in the media, etc., etc...

I'm always amused when people who don't understand feminism complain about feminism -- while benefiting from it in so many ways. But there are always those (I think they're called Republicans) who think blacks should stay on the plantation, gays in the closet, and women in the kitchen.

Feminism didn't force women to leave their homes and get jobs -- it just gave them that option. The economy, persomal choices  and rampant consumerism were the compelling forces.

I've never heard it called "the power of naming" -- but that struck me as a perfect term for it.

The people who are of the dominant culture/race/gender/orientation/social class have the power and privilege to define themselves as Good and Normal and Appropriate and Superior and Blessed. The ultimate manifestation of this Power and Privilege is that they also get to "name" (define, label, etc.) those who are NOT of the superior group -- and that "name" is, in fact, a stigma.

Jewelie, when I was working on my Masters in Counseling Psychology, one of the schools of psychology we studied was Feminist Psychology, which dealt with the idea that the person could not be adequately understood without considering the oppressive sociocultural context the person lived in. It struck me then that although the ideas grew out of feminist theory, the implications held true for all people of "stigmatized" groups.

"Before anyone gets upset, note that I used the word "historically".  As it is 4am, I'm not inclined to look up references, but it is a fact that negative adjectives were technically assigned to women, in the past.  Current men reading this, if any, please do not take offense."

I take offence at the suggestion that feminist thinking is 'fact'.  It's no more 'factual' than any other biased thinking, including patriarchal expression (and I'll note that 'patriarchy' sent men to die in muddy trenches...millions of them).  Believe me, many negative adjectives (and a good few unpleasant nouns) have been levelled at men over the millenia, by both men and women.  Your example loses any validity as 'fact' when taken out of context of a masculinist and an equitist theory - one side of the story is just that, storytelling.  Facts need to be a bit more objective than that.

I take offence, too, at your suggestion that only men might take offence.  Feminism is not compulsory, mandatory or necessary thinking for women...even if you could find a coherent school of feminist thought.  In fact (and it is a fact - and an unsurprising one), feminist academics, activists and fellow travellers can no more reach an agreement about what is right and best for 'women' than men could for 'men' or 'society' or 'our tribe'.  Note, I say "no more" - I also say "no less".  At any rate, I know plenty of feminists who would chastise you for apologising to men - and plenty of women who actually like men, sex, babies and so on who are only too keen to say "I'm not a feminist".

Right, I'll go and read the actual thread now.  I might post about that later....

Excellent points.  I'm working on writing something making the analogy between neurotype and gender, as an offshoot of a comment I made to a family member that curing autism because autistics have a harder life and are discriminated against would be like if the early suffragettes had gotten sex-change operations so they could vote instead of lobbying for women's sufferage.  Which got me thinking, many of the pro-cure arguments about autism could also apply to femaleness, to a certain extent now but especially in the past.  Women have less earning power than men, just as autistics have less earning power than non-autistics, so is it acceptable for parents of daughters to give their little girls testosterone shots to increase their earning power?  So why would it be acceptable for parents to try to drug or change their children's neurotype to increase their earning power?  Autism is a part of who we are, just as gender is part of who we are.

There are some feminists who are only interested in themselves and their own, just as there are in any group.  There are some people who are pro-neurodiversity but don't care about any other social-justice issue, or don't even care about neurodiversity for anyone except people whose neurodivergence is exactly like their own.  It's unfortunate, but there you are.  The point of the suffragette analogy is that you shouldn't change your child's core identity just to keep your child from being discriminated against.  You should work and lobby to change the discrimination instead.  The fact that autistics have a harder life is no excuse for wanting to make autistics into non-autistics any more than sexism is an excuse for parents to try to turn their daughters into sons.

Deaf culture may be a better analogy, but the problem is that many (most?) hearing people don't accept Deaf culture as valid.  The same is true of gay/homosexual culture (although I do often use the analogy that homosexuality was considered a disorder until 1973, just as ASCs are considered disorders now, in response to assumptions that "disorder" is some kind of scientifically verifiable designation).  We need an example of a social minority group that is successful, not only in law but in the public mind, in establishing itself as a valid alternative way of being.  

Also, please correct me if I'm wrong, but deafness doesn't affect anything except hearing, and sexual orientation doesn't affect anything except sexuality (biologically, I mean--obviously at the social level, there's other issues of discrimination and such, but neurologically, being deaf and/or gay doesn't make you different).  So maybe it's easier for mainstream-typical people to see them as being an "us" rather than a "them" because, with the exception of the obvious differences, they are.  Whereas with autistics, we can't say "aside from superficial differences, we're all the same inside," because we're not.  That's why I like gender as an analogy.  Men and women have different brains that process information differently, just as autistics and non-autistics do.  But it's more accepted to say that men's brains and women's brains are different but equal.  The same needs to be accepted of autistic brains and non-autistic brains--they're different yet equal.

Response to R19:

Why does this forum attract so many Rush Limbaugh types? I'm always amazed that there are members of oppressed and targeted groups who remain so actively, diligently ignorant of how systemic privilege works.

I grew up among red-neck racists, so none of  jiggeryqua's defense-of-bigotry arguments are new to me. I guess bumper-sticker beliefs like his endure without change because the people who spew them never give them serious thought and never read anything that contradicts them by introducing reality.

If I had never thought, never read, never gained any life experience, perhaps I would think the same way.


>> Bravo - people have been searching for the unassailable truth for the whole of human history.

No similar urgency has characterized the search for 6th grade sarcasm, so you needn't lead with it.

The fact that this truth ( i.e., cultures define differences in terms of superior and inferior, and it is the powerful and privileged who reserve the right to do the defining.) is unassailable is supported by your failure to refute it. In your attempt, you merely hauled out a handful of standard bromides that bear no rational examination.

>> Feminism undermined women

I assume you will, at some point, write a long incoherent essay illuminating that vacuous assertion? Since it's just an unsupported bit of nothing, there's nothing to respond to.

>>
It doesn't take power and privilige to define the Other

Of course it does. Defining others is an assertion of power and a luxury of privilege. People in the disempowered group can shake their fists and call names all they want, but they lack the systemic influence (power) to make those names stick. Disempowered groups are denied access to the societal levers that move our cultural perceptions. Powerful and privileged groups define themselves and define others. To think otherwise shows a stunning ignorance of history and human society. It takes a   social revolution for outsider groups to define themselves; defining the other side is simply not how it works


>>  Power & privilige can help, but they are measured in individual circumstances.  

Because you say they are? They are measured in both individual circumstance and a larger social/group context. And in both cases membership in a powerful, privileged group carries (surprise) power and privilege. How laughable that you argue to the contrary.  

Individuals are not mechanical things that operate in a vacuum. We all live in society, and our identities are formed and perceived in that context. We have multiple group identities and from some of those we derive power, privilege an prestige. Other identities are socially stigmatized. That, too is unassailable. Were it not true, AFF would not exist. I could explain more, but perhaps your should just try reading some books.

>>
If I walked alone into a black bar in segregation USA, back in the day, I would have neither - and I would face prejudice.

When someone presents this argument (and it's a hugely popular contention among racists and simpletons) I sigh and realize the ultimate futility in talking to them. They have not arrived at this argument by intelligent thought, and intelligent response will not enlighten them.

Nonetheless, here is the response:

You argument is saying "If I were momentarily in a time and a place that I would never be in, I would be the momentary victim of racism."

First of all, the assertion that you would have neither power nor privilege in that fanciful situation is erroneous ( it is an assumption based on your non-understanding of white privilege and your categorical labeling of all black people as racist) --but we'll just wave you though for the sake of expedience.

The larger point is that black people dealing with white racism are not experiencing living one optional moment in an irrelevant fantasy. They are experiencing a life in a social, historical, multi-systemic context of racism. No options. They can't walk out of an imaginary bar. They have no way of avoiding a government, economy, educational system, history and culture dominated by white interests. There is a vast difference between your fantasy bar and multi-leveled institutional racism.  

To subject yourself to your absurd reverse-racist fantasy, you would have to actively seek out a moment where you would be an outsider on the basis of race, go without motivation to a place you would neither want nor need to be in, and -- even then -- you have no idea whether you would actually be discriminated against. It's incredibly racist for you to presume  they would respond to you as if they were some white-hating monolith. It's more likely that they would not actively dislike you until they got to know you. And after your one minute in Fantasy Bar, you walk back out into the world of white privilege.

(Backstory: I grew up in an all-white town. As an adult, I lived 22 years in Oakland, CA, generally considered a "black" city. I now live in a Latino area and my partner and I are the only whites.  I teach in a school that is 14% white. I know much more about life in your imaginary scenario than you can imagine.)

>>  I treat people as individuals,

Do you? I would love to hear you expand on that. It's a constant talking point for racists and it sounds good while cloaking a multitude of ****** up assumptions and insinuations.

>>  Can you justify treating them as part of an homogenous labelled group?  

1) LOL! So much comedy comes from juxtaposition. This ludicrous charge comes after you have railed against your homogeneously  labeled women and feminists and declared that any group of black people -- even imaginary ones-- act homogeneously to discriminate against you in that bar that lurks down the dark street of your imagination. Are you that un-self-aware or is it what we call projection?

2) Every person is an individual. I make my living and lead my life treating them as individuals. That includes an understanding of what makes them the individuals that they are, and that requires a much greater awareness of their group identities -- and what, in fact, constitutes individuality -- than you seem to grasp. If you don't get that, then you do not treat people as the full individuals that they are, but as the fragment of an individual your prejudices allow you to acknowledge. So though you may -- in your own limited and misguided way -- intend to to treat them as individuals, you could not possibly do so. You can only treat them as the individual that your narrow mind can imagine.


>> ...  of other-sexuals...well you said 'gay' but I take offence at that word...

Of course you do. Because it is an example of an unacceptable group naming themselves. You would prefer that gay people accept whatever name the appropriate Powerful and Privileged (in this case, heterosexual) deign to slap on them -- even something as idiotic as "other-sexuals".

And please don't disappoint me -- please rush to say that your objection is based solely on your grave concern that those other-sexuals have stolen a perfectly good word (gay -- a word you were getting a lot of valuable use out of ) and ruined it.  You'll need a better excuse than your love for the purity of the English language. Your spelling and syntax prove your contempt for language. And you'll have to overlook the huge percentage of words with multiple meanings and the principles of linguistic evolution.


  It's indicative of a closed mind

That's comical since you expressed nothing suggesting actual thought and not even any sloganeering post 1950. You hit the trifecta -- sexist, racist and homophobic.


' you started by declaring an 'unassailable truth'.  

Indeed. But I merely said that it was unassailable. You proved that it is unassailable.

I grew up among red-neck racists, so none of  jiggeryqua's defense-of-bigotry arguments are new to me. I guess bumper-sticker beliefs like his endure without change because the people who spew them never give them serious thought and never read anything that contradicts them by introducing reality. If I had never thought, never read, never gained any life experience, perhaps I would think the same way.

Do you attack everyone who disagrees with you?  I guess if you believe you've identified an unassailable truth then you'd feel justified doing that - but it's your behaviour that is ignorant and bigoted (and unworthy of this forum).

I am not a redneck, but go ahead and use that word like other people use 'poof', if it helps you feel superior.  I do not defend 'bigotry' (I'm challenging yours, right now).  My 'beliefs' are no less valid as arguments than your 'beliefs' (oh, the power of naming).  My considered opinions on all sorts of issues have changed over time (43 years of experience so far, including experience of gender, race, class, sexuality and other prejudices directed at me and others).  I do not 'spew' my thoughts (oh the power of naming...), I merely disagree with you.  I give everything serious thought, MaxtheBigot, and it's childish and ill-mannered of you to suggest otherwise.  I've read widely, thought deeply and experienced much.  How sad for you that all that leads me to a truth that isn't shared by you

The parapraph of yours I've quoted is a kneejerk, rabid response to someone who dares to disagree with your 'unassailable truth' - it looks like you're going to go on to deal with specific things I've actually said (though given that that first paragraph is an unfounded, ignorant, but comprehensove attack on me suggests that any points raised will be taken out of context, twisted and/or met by the dogmas and doctrines that characterise your 'unassailable truth').  You see, I know you're wrong (significantly so in that first paragraph).  You know[/1] you have no idea whether you're right or not.  So the only point of that paragraph must be a hopeful attempt to convince equally ignorant readers that you're right.  

The vast majority of readers, of course, are going to know that they don't know, that things are generally more complicated than your 'unassailable truth', that anyone claiming an 'unassailable truth' is probably a gullible muppet and that they'd rather their forum didn't become an outlet for your bile.  Go do something useful with your anger and pain, Max.

Right, let's look at the points you've cherrypicked:

[i]The fact that this truth ( i.e., cultures define differences in terms of superior and inferior, and it is the powerful and privileged who reserve the right to do the defining.) is unassailable is supported by your failure to refute it. In your attempt, you merely hauled out a handful of standard bromides that bear no rational examination.
There aren't many 'facts', Max, and they're limited to what we might think of as the 'hard sciences'.  Social sciences just produce theories - Hitler regarded his view of the Jews as unassailable fact, for example.  I did not 'fail' to refute the claim you've just made (you didn't make it earlier), though I did chip away at it, coincidentally, by reminding you that power and privilige are locally constructed; that power is something you give to people and that 'cultures' are being defined by you - from a position of power and privilege, apparantly.  You failed to rationally examine any of my 'bromides', by the way - it doesn't count just to say that they can't bear it.

"Feminism undermined women".  I assume you will, at some point, write a long incoherent essay illuminating that vacuous assertion? Since it's just an unsupported bit of nothing, there's nothing to respond to.
Oh that's very good, Max - should I actually expand on that point, you already know that the response will be long (the only good ideas are short, easy to swallow ideas!), incoherent (my apologies if you find intelligent debate hard to understand), and 'essay' (ah, the intellectuals are to blame!  You're just a marxist, aren't you, max?  An angry, immature studenty type).  Since you know all that, in advance, do you also have next week's lottery numbers?

I tried to read your long incoherent essay illuminating the vacuous assertions in the next part of your post, but it's getting very dull dealing with someone who starts by insulting the poster (very wide of the mark, and rather childishly, but still...) and everything they think, or have thought, or might think.  I realise these are contentious issues, Max, and I'm sure you do earnestly believe that you are the eternal victim and I am therefore eternally the nasty nasty man.  When you've grown up some (get laid, that's my advice) we could try this again.

Meanwhile, culled from the remainder of your immature, aggressive, unpleasant and ignorant communication to me are these two gems:

(me):   I treat people as individuals
(you): Do you? I would love to hear you expand on that. It's a constant talking point for racists and it sounds good while cloaking a multitude of ****** up assumptions and insinuations.
........
(you):Every person is an individual. I make my living and lead my life treating them as individuals.

Do you?  It's a constant talking point for ignorant bigots...

It must be reassuring, Max, to have a 'truth' to cling to, but it's no more objective than the conflicting truths of Christians and Muslims, for example.  I don't need to assail your truth - it's fatally weakened by the fact that you, and your ilk, can only respond to points raised by trashing the poster, parts of the posters upbringing you know nothing of, parts of the posters psyche you will always be ignorant of, posts/thoughts that haven't been raised yet (that comes from thinking of 'anyone who disagrees with Max' as an a homogenous group) - and, saddest of all, a poster's 'spelling and syntax' (that's the sure sign of someone who has no real arguments).  

Get a grip, Max, take a look at yourself before you attack others, and please, let's keep this site free of the sort of vilely aggressive, divisively politicised, pseudo-intellectual wankery that you just posted.

The problem with arguing about "feminism" is that it's not a single philosophy; it's an umbrella term for many different and contradictory philosophies and ideologies.  There are many people who call themselves feminists with whom I disagree greatly; there are others with whom I mostly agree, and many others all over the map.  I like having the right to vote and own property and pick my own spouse, so, yeah, I'm a feminist.  But that doesn't mean I agree with the majority of the ideology that's being promoted as "feminism."

Who on earth is Rush Limbaugh, Max?  I do my own thinking...

I guess your last remarks to me are as close as I'll get to an apology for the aggressive, ignorant post of yours which started this (you were claiming a superior knowledge of 'truth', you'll remember).  Those last remarks of yours, as I'm sure you'll agree, amount to nothing more than "you're no better than me"...which was my message in the first place.  Except, of course, I don't offer my ideas as 'unassailable truth'...I just offer my ideas.  You choose to attack the person behind the ideas - unsurprisingly, this person responds personally.  And no, I have seen enough to be sure that I have little or no respect for you.  You can imagine it's because you're (what is your beef?  you are a guy, right?  whatever, fill in your own victim-status), but it's because you regurgitate political propoganda without ever trying to find the *whole* of the truth.

Now, you've referred to some lifetime of privilege that you think I've had.  Bearing in mind this is an aspie site, you think I've somehow still had more than my fair share, that perhaps servants arrive every morning (as they once did to noble women) and ease my passage through the day?  I grew up as an immigrant, so faced violent prejudice daily.  I've been attacked for all sorts of bizarre reasons - mostly by women, funnily enough (just a couple, but they understood themselves - and their sisters - to be in a position where they could physically, verbally and psychology attack men.  That's always been true, at least in working class communities).

Class...we seem to have lost sight of that power struggle in the focus on women.  Have you *ever* met a misogynist, Max?  really?  All the men I know have been raised to respect their mothers and thus their wives, and women generally.  We certainly don't hit or insult them.

Class played a huge part in the pointless slaughter of millions of men during WW1 -would it really have been a victory, Max, if they'd conscripted women too?  No society that does that to millions of men can legitimately be referred to as 'patriarchal' - certainly not to the point that it becomes the sole defining factor.

You mention Hitler up there, Max - he relied on people like you to bolster the idea that all the problems could be solved by blaming them on the 'other' who had been oppressing 'our group' for ever.  Women *are* human beings, Max - at least one, then, will be Hitlerian.  It only takes one.  The rest will be a mixed bag of all those *human* qualities and failings that define men.  You can argue that men define society, if you must (devaluing women *again*), but you can't, with a straight face, argue that women could define it 'better'?

Jiggs, in all honesty I cannot bring myself to wade through another jiggeryqua diatribe. If it's any better than the others, I'm sure someone will PM me with all due astonished excitement.  You've demonstrated that the world has taught you very little 43 years, and sadly you have nothing to teach in return, consequently you're not the sort of person I would invest much time in. Perhaps someone else will. I suspect not.

Bless, Max - maybe the grown-ups will be able to see the difference between my telling you I have no respect for you, and your telling me no-one will have any respect for me.  Many people do.  Some of them are women!  Few, if any, are adherents to orthodoxies, since all 'unassailable truths' are merely cherished falsehoods and it is not in the nature of the zealously orthodox to respect the 'other'...

When you claimed your 'victim' status, Max, did you imagine it also gave you liberty to rescind your obligation to be a decent human being?

Oh, Max, here you go again.  I realise some of the posters on here are likely to have all sorts of problems, but surely even you can see there's little value in the kind of personal attack you're making (and escalating)?  I happen to disagree with your political orthodoxy (mostly because it's wrong, very, very wrong).  That's going to happen, Max - whatever your political beliefs (they are beliefs, not unassailable truths - you conveniently skip over anything I've said which demonstrates how wrong some of them are).  Naturally enough, when your 'unassailable' beliefs are challanged, that's discomforting for you.  But don't shoot the messenger, eh?

I see fundamentalism much the way Hyke does, Max - and I see it in you: "rigid thought pattern that gives a group of people a feel of security; we're right, we've got the truth, everybody else is wrong in the end."

I'm going to skip your appallingly aggressive paragraph about my 'victim status'  - I'm sure you'd like to reserve 'victim' for certain specific classes of people (and at the same time use 'victim' as a form of insult to other people who have been attacked by your reserved classes of 'victim' - literally adding insult to injury.  Good victims and bad victims, Max?  Really?  Remind you of anyone else's thinking...?)

I'm going to skip over your closing remarks too - I don't know who you're trying to convince?  I know you don't me, you know you don't know me, so really it's only your fellow travellers, any who share your orthodoxy, who will want to share your deliberately offensive view of me.  Luckily, as I've already pointed out, I have no respect for you (as an individual), so you're bullying stance (and that is what it is, Max, wakey wakey) is rather futile.

I will consider your numbered points:
1) I didn't start with sarcasm - I started by disagreeing with your 'unassailable truth' and you jumped straight to some unfounded (literally 'ignorant') personal attacks on me.  Is everyone entitled to an opinion, Max?  How do people 'earn' the right to disagree with you?? Are some posters less welcome than others? How do you judge that when you don't know them - except by the criteria you seem to have chosen: people who agree with you vs people who question your simplistic, limited, selfish view of the world?

and 2) You feel free to turn up in my face, Max - I would enjoy your impotent rage in person,  and yes, I would say what I have said here to your face.  Then you'd attack me, and look - you already have your excuses for attacking me laid out!  How convenient!  How lacking in any moral high ground!  How just like the people you attack!  How just like every self-righteous, other-hating fundamentalist ever....

GuessWho, take sides if you must, but if Max keeps posting about me like that I'll keep responding.  Here's something I observed as a teacher - watching a group of primary pupils, supposed to be engaged in an activity, but two of them were talking.  One of them, the bigger one, suddenly lashed out and punched the other in the face.  I broke it up, saying I would have no violence in my workshops.  She said "He hit me first!".  He hadn't - I'd been watching them...but she already knew that authority was far more likely to blame the boy and forgive the girl.  That 'oppression of women' is also visible in when male victims of DV report incidents to the police - 75% of men who report attacks by their female partner are themselves arrested.  "Whether the stone hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the stone, it's going to be bad for the pitcher".

I sometimes work in schools, or with school groups, leading creative or environmental workshops  or other activities.  I've done a lot of drama work with groups of all ages and abilities, including curriculum-based targets, assessments and reports.  But I've never called myself a teacher or trained as an educator (except for Earth Education, which bears little relationship to commonly accepted models).