Don't blame autism, dammit.

[mrissa]

So I've been taking part in conversation over at jimhines's lj about sexual harassment behavior by an editor or editors in our field, and I was kind of waiting for something to happen, and sure enough, it did. It always does.

Somebody conflated predatory sexual harassment with lack of social skills, and both of them with "Asberger's," by which one can only assume they mean Asperger's syndrome/autism spectrum disorders.

I tried to be nice, but listen. Listen. I have run into both. I know the difference. And I hate hearing this crap, because it unfairly stigmatizes people who are not neurotypical, and it also excuses people who are making deliberate bad choices.

A kid I love is on the autism spectrum. He is 8. And you know what? He gets that you do not make remarks at school about other people's bodies. He gets that, as hilarious as he finds bodily function humor at this time in his life, other people's butts are off limits to him. You can explain to him that remarks about boobies are going to make girls uncomfortable and make it hard for them to learn at school, so he cannot do that stuff or it will make school a sad, unfriendly place for the girls in his class. Because he is not stupid, he's autistic. And he is eight. Okay? So if you're telling me that editors who are much, much more than eight--who are in the range of twenty-eight to seventy-eight--and who work with words telling stories of human relationships for a living--are making that kind of remark to writers they work with or may in future work with, because they do not understand that it is not okay because of their neurological condition, I am sorry, but I am not buying that bullshit, and you should not try to sell it anywhere else either.

People who have poor social skills, whether because of a neurological condition or because they were raised badly or because they have disdained to learn them or whatever other reason--those people make their social gaffes in full view of large groups. Their colleagues are never surprised to find that they have been saying inappropriate things to a particular group of people for years, because they have poor enough social skills that they don't get that they're screwing up. So they don't hide it. These are the folks who will be sitting with you in the consuite and blurt out a remark, about two notches too loud, about the size of your breasts. And if you are a kind person and feel that they might learn, you can gently say something about that not being a very appropriate thing to say.

But someone who waits until they are with someone they perceive to be in a position of less power to make their remarks? Someone who makes sure that there are no witnesses who will have the authority to censure them? Someone who makes a consistent pattern of aiming their behavior at people who will have a difficult time making the bad behavior known or a reason not to do so? That is not someone who lacks social skills. That's someone who is using their social skills fairly precisely.

There are, of course, other people who use their social skills fairly precisely. Who wait until they've been friends with someone long enough to know what their sense of humor is before they make off-color or flirtatious jokes. Who ease into that sort of thing and pay attention to reactions and get to know people as people. That's the other very tiresome problem that comes up whenever you discuss sexual harassment: the idea that any time you object to sexual harassment, you must object to all mentions of sexuality anywhere ever. I'm glad it hasn't come up in jimhines's lj, and I hope it doesn't have to come up here, so I don't have to strangle anybody with their own intestines, because I really don't have the energy. Because dealing with the rest of this crap is tiresome enough.

I discover I have more to say about autism and SF, or rather sci-fi: specifically the show Eureka. But I've gone on long enough and need to do some other productive things first. So I'll get to that later.

Comments

[braddr.livejournal.com]

Hi-5, mrissa! The world needs posts like this one.

[mcurry.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[biguglymandoll.livejournal.com]

My 10-yr-old son is high-functioning autistic (as well as putting the "H" in ADHD), and we have conversations like this less often than we used to, which is still more often than I'd like. He's old enough to articulate that his diagnosis is an explanation for his behavior - NOT an excuse for it. I had to have a discussion about swastikas and why we don't draw them (http://www.biguglymandoll.com/?p=363) a few months ago; the principal mentioned being glad we make the differentiation between "explanation" and "excuse" - which tells me that too many parents don't.

I work in IT, with any number of folks who are firmly on the Autism spectrum, and I have had to make the same speeches at work. Being able to explain someone's hurtful behavior does not excuse it. Ultimately, no one is helped by not addressing the problem - not the victim, not the "socially unaware cretin," and certainly not the *next* victim.

Thanks for posting, Mrissa - the topic is getting more airplay, but there's a long way to go.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

I'm not even going to be trying to delve into the source material here, but is the editor/s themselves explaining away their sexual harassment by saying they're on the autism spectrum or is it just speculation from the peanut gallery? If the latter, I wonder how the harasser in question would feel being armchair-diagnosed as having an OMG MENTAL ILLNESS. I wonder if they would think, Oh, that's a good front, I should make use of that! or, Holy shit, they're saying I'm RETARDED, or something. I mean, a jerk is a jerk so there's no outcome I can imagine in which the harasser in question would actually take something positive from this whole thing.

Maybe they're not even alive. I don't know. I trust your analysis more than a bunch of pages of comments, though, and I'm glad you said this!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I linked this; obviously I am grateful you said it, and said it very clearly. So yeah. Thank you.

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. There are more words, but they do not want to cooperate right now. So thank you shall have to suffice.

well, now I've gone and done it.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

I imagine he will ban me from his LJ, but I just posted:

"Asberger's case?"

You don't even know how to spell Asperger's.

My son has Asperger's. He is clean, he does not drool, and has worked very hard to master etiquette rules. He is considerably more polite than you are, actually.

He's also more polite than I am, because he would never say: Go fuck yourself, you disablist piece of shit.

[mycroftw.livejournal.com]

Self-diagnosed Asperger's, but I definitely have the "don't intuit social rules, and can't relate behaviour X with feeling Y without training" bit. And yeah, it comes out sometime in Remora behaviour (I'm better at that now, though), and other socially inappropriate ways.

But with almost everyone I've met or read about on the Autism spectrum, especially me, the key is "intuit" and "without training". I now read North American body language about as skilfully as your average Egyptian, and I've been given enough 101 in various places to be able to go *look up* and *learn by textbook* specific things that didn't work or I didn't parse properly - provided I parsed the situation well enough to look it up.

In other words, We Can Be Trained - as long as others realise it is something trainable.

In other other words, I'm violently agreeing with everyone here - especially the "it's an explanation, not an excuse" ones. "Excuse" would be "he can't understand the situation". "Explanation" is "he can't see the situation until it's explicitly pointed out".

[stone-bitch.livejournal.com]

Thank you for speaking up for those who can't. Thank you so much.

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for this, Mrissa.

A couple years back, a writer I was LJ "friends" with made an offhand remark characterizing offensively socially inept people as having Asperger's. I found this so hurtful and, well, offensively socially inept. It was also shocking, because up till then I'd been mostly enjoying his posts (and looking forward to his books), and he had seemed a very humane, open person. But that he could unthinkingly belittle the real struggles (and strengths) of people with Asperger's--people like my son--was, to me, a demonstration of staggering insensitivity. Given the attitude toward perceived criticism he'd demonstrated in some other posts, I decided it would be counterproductive to challenge him on this issue, so I just quietly unfriended him and removed his books from my to-read list.

Whew--sorry I went on like that, Mrissa; I guess I hadn't realized how much that incident still bugged me. I've never written about it before (and I don't intend to mention the author's name, since it's always possible he's revised his thinking), so thanks for providing a space where I felt safe to do so. And thank you very much again for standing up for people Autism Spectrum Disorders and the people who love them.

[eclecticgypsy.livejournal.com]

Here from arianhwyvar.

This. A THOUSAND times this.

[mermaidnchains.livejournal.com]

Linked here by Shadesong. You have no idea how badly I needed to read this. I have an autistic 4 yr old daughter, and even with her not speaking or having social skills in the 'less than 2 yr old' level, even SHE knows on some level what is and is not socially acceptable to do in any given situation.

Autism spectrum persons learn unacceptable behavior just as readily as neurotypical ones do. And they should be educated, and treated accordingly when they break those socially acceptable rules - not excused for it.

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

Here from other people. And I appreciate, deeply, this paragraph:

People who have poor social skills, whether because of a neurological condition or because they were raised badly or because they have disdained to learn them or whatever other reason--those people make their social gaffes in full view of large groups. Their colleagues are never surprised to find that they have been saying inappropriate things to a particular group of people for years, because they have poor enough social skills that they don't get that they're screwing up. So they don't hide it. These are the folks who will be sitting with you in the consuite and blurt out a remark, about two notches too loud, about the size of your breasts. And if you are a kind person and feel that they might learn, you can gently say something about that not being a very appropriate thing to say.

Because, yes. Because, sometimes, ASD does result in people being so clueless as to blurt out that remark, two notches too loud, about the size of your breasts. Or sit on the bus and explain to you, very earnestly, how they hate women because all women are awful because the women in their life have done X and completely miss the part where you, the person they are talking to, are a woman. (I get kind of frustrated often in discussions of this kind of thing and want to say, yes, sometimes people with ASD have had the good fortune to either have been taught or accidentally learn how to hack their brains into understanding Appropriate Behaviour or at least how to figure out what it is; some haven't, and yes, will actually come off as assholes because they have never had this learning. And they are still ASD, and that's still the major contributor to their behaviour.)

But it's a very, very different kind of hurtfully clueless than that of an actually effective sexual predator. It's still hurtful, and people still deserve to protect themselves from it, and the people doing it need to learn to stop. It's information: it tells you how to proceed. It doesn't make what's done okay.

But it really, REALLY is different from the other kind of nasty and wrong.

. . . /mini-rant.