Sociology of Autism course (in Virginia)

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Roanoke College, a private college located in southwest Virginia (US) is currently running a special topic course called "Sociology of Autism." (scroll down to course 361) I will be a guest speaker for this class soon.

Autism in sociology has evolved from both the autism self-advocacy movement (of which Wrong Planet is a major contributor) and from something called disability studies. Disability studies is itself heavily composed of self-advocates and critical thinkers. Disability studies has been said to come from feminist studies and black critical studies, which are both ways in which people can question oppressive authorities and put forth new, inclusive standards of normal.

Roanoke College is not affiliated with the university that I go to. I don't know how open my university is with them and how possible it might be to form a bridge between what I am doing and what they are doing. I'm happy, in any case, that they are doing this work and that people interested in joining the fight WITH autistic people for a more comfortable and fair world now have an avenue for doing that.

I was told that this will likely turn into a permanent course at Roanoke College, but it may be interdisciplinary instead of under the sociology department. If anyone is interested in taking the course, I recommend contacting Dr. Anderson and asking how you can sign up for a future class.

I presented in this class this morning and it went very well! I noticed a few things:

-The class was almost all female, which I was told was typical for undergraduate sociology
-They were interested in the legalities of formal versus informal disclosure and the ADA
-A few of them looked like they were going to cry when I talked about the Uncanny Valley and autism. I have only seen this reaction before when people have seen Holocaust photos.
-There were autistic students in the class

Can you tell me more about autism and the uncanny valley? I'm very interested in that topic.

Sure! And apologies in advance, because this can be hard to learn about. It's kind of awful.



Human beings like looking at things that are non-human and moving, and fully human and moving. We do not like looking at fully human things that do not move (dead people) or not fully human things that are moving (humanoids). Things that are not fully human might be very good computer animated humans, zombies, very good androids. These things cause most humans to experience an "eerie" or creeped out feeling.

People have causally mentioned experiencing this same creeped out feeling when looking into the eyes of: babies with adult intelligence, people with blind eyes if the other person did not know the person was blind, and people with Aspergers, again if the other person did not understand autism. The person looking into the eyes and experiencing this creeped out feeling is subconsciously suspecting that the other person is not fully human. They will sometimes even say this.

I have been reading about this for a few years. Small children on the autism spectrum do not seem to experience the Uncanny Valley when looking at humanoid robots, yet they DO experience it when looking at HUMANS. Androids are sometimes used to teach social skills to autistic toddlers because the androids don't creep out the little kids. But the published research stops there.

I think what's happening is that autistic people don't pick up and reciprocate the small muscle movements in non-autistic people, and they tend to have a general dislike and discomfort with looking at faces. The neurotypical people pick up on that and process it as "there's something wrong with this person." It could be that autistic people are also experiencing the Uncanny Valley and that's where all this self identification as non-human is coming from. They are perceiving the neurotypical person as "deeply wrong" and verbalizing it as "that is a human."

That last paragraph is what I have put together. There aren't other people that support this. There simply isn't enough academic interest in this topic. Strikingly. I don't understand why there isn't more interest.

Interesting, I'd had something alike but from later-hindsight it would make me feel guilty about that.
As I was used to a probably aspie-family, when meeting the other children for the first time at school I was completely creeped out by their appearance, I couldn't even understand them and they were all so ret*d and dirty.
I took an interest in how society worked, I would play school with my dolls and make evaluations and personalised educationplans for every doll. (Actually I only named my dolls after being schooled and I gave them plain, common names.)
Even that guilts me with the evergrowing datacollecting on childrensbehaviours, in some broad sense.

Yeah it's pretty uncomfortable to talk about. But I think the only way to get rid of the creepy feeling is to find a way to explain it. To yourself and to other people.

To anyone thinking someone else is having this reaction to you, I want to point out that you don't have to disclose that you are on the autism status in order to explain away the difference. You could say that your eyesight is a little off or that you have anxiety and that would probably be enough of an explanation for the other person to no longer feel creeped out.

That might explain why I got stared at less when I wear glasses in public. I used to be terrified of wearing glasses in public because I would be stared at more. When I wore them I actually got stared at less and I was left alone in peace. Maybe people started blaming my weirdness on my vision problems. My left eye wanders a bit, so that could be causing an uncanny valley effect.

YES! My uncle has a lazy eye. He tells people "look at the left one." I know it made ME feel better because it was out in the open and I knew which one to look at. And the glasses thing is indeed a big help for a lot of people. Red lipstick or a lot of eye makeup for women can also help.

My husband is heavily tattooed. When he was a teenager he dressed as crazily as he could, way before he was diagnosed. He says it makes him more comfortable. When he was diagnosed he celebrated by getting both sides of his hands tattooed, and his neck. That's kind of going all the way in the tattoo world. I won't do that because I still like to pass as normal. He said for him, it was his public acknowledgment of difference and saying, "I am not one of you."

I tried to get rid of the uncanny valley effect by dying my hair blue. It didn't really work because blue hair is trendy now. I wish I had enough pain tolerance to get piercings and tattoos.

Well, tattoos and even piercings can be quite a commitment anyway. What about doing your makeup more dramatic? There are tutorials on youtube for how to do the wings on the eyeliner and the eyebrow stuff.

Or earrings. Bright or very unique earrings would take people's eyes off your face entirely.