The Tyranny of Normal

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I have made my own views on TOM clear in previous threads so will not deviate into that here, and will quote my compatriot StrangerInGodzone instead:

"where is the unbiased research about autism? So much of what’s being done by scientists, doctors and other professionals seems to take as its starting point that we are inherently flawed or substandard, and thus that any way in which we differ from NTs is an inferior or ‘pathological’ way of being, ‘proof’ of our ‘faultiness’."

http://strangeringodzone.blogspot.co.nz ... el/respect

Here is another perspective, on reasons for "autistic only space".

Please do not make the assumption that because I post a link, I automatically agree with everything in it. It is actually quite a rare event when I do.

One word used in sociological language (probably millions of times in any one day) is "hegemony". It's a clumsy sounding word - it even looks sort of wrong somehow on the page; though it's possibly the most important single word in the discipline's longer history (ie in the decades before postmodernism was the vogue and after). It is a central concept, the one word I think everyone in discussions and topics like this thread could perhaps benefit from knowing about; generally it's not used and is an obscure word outside sociology texts and departments.

I like this blog entry (NOT by a sociologist!!) which uses 'normal' language to convey examples of hegemony with ordinary words used well to convey her points clearly on how hegemony can affect 'an ordinary citizen' in everyday life and our medical institutions.
http://ethicalnag.org/2015/05/09/hegemonic-assumptions/

PS I deeply admire the blogs of Carolyn Thomas; her other blog, called Heart Sisters, is magnificent in achieving its purpose.

Reduced social cognition/ToM are my natural state of being, I consider it quite normal, so it doesn't seem deficient to me. I think a lot of SJWs try to make value judgments all the time, much more so than scientists are making value judgments. I never met any scientist who made as big a deal of autistic people being deficient as SJWs try to convince me that they do. SJWs may also judge that it is better to have ToM than not, and try to convince others that all autistic people have high ToM, but just communicate it differently, or other rationalizations that don't make much sense from my perspective.

I have met quite a number of scientists who are justice warriors in various ways, including social justice. And this is not a local thing, they exist in all Western countries in numerous examples. They are not always very popular with those who seek to control the 'hegemonic' ideas from top down though, the two tribes in science faculties exist in a sort of cold war. It is not a rare thing at all in academia.

I think some people like SJWs often overreact about results of science research.
They tend to exalt the results they agree with and go the other way on ones that deviate from their views.

Scientists do that to scientists every day.

During the Internet era, the term "social justice advocate" or SJC and its history became increasingly smeared and distorted in trollish blogs and by outright trolls, some of the psychopathic persuasion. The result seems to be that (particularly in the US) the trolls have turned the nomenclature SJA/SJW which indicates someone who supports human rights for all and related matters, into a perjorative.

This outcome and the hate-speech addenda seems fairly unique to the USA, 99% seems to come from there.

For a more realistic history of SJ advocacy:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice

Last edited by B19 on 06 Sep 2015, 6:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.

There is opportunity to do more research in science to get closer to the truth.
New methods and reults constantly appear, and working theories are constantly evolving to explain and predict phenomena.
In social justice, it seems more like a set worldview, then grasp onto what fits and reject what doesn't from science results.
Then, SJWs try to convince others that their views are the truth, even speaking in science terms that autism is definitely this or that.
I never met any scientist who was so convinced of their theories as SJWs are about their views without evidence.
Most scientists I know consider multiple different theories, and ideas change so fast, it is hard to keep up with the latest focus.
This is true in both my autism-related projects and non-autism projects.
No scientist I know speaks so definitely on what is true or not in autism as SJWs do regularly.

I would say that it is the behaviors of SJWs that turn off regular people, no matter what country they are in.
I don't think the psychopathic people smearing SJWs has basis in reality.