The Tyranny of Normal

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A thoughtful contribution on this always relevant topic:

https://www.academia.edu/1539557/The_Ty ... munication

Most of it seems to be opinions stated as facts. Someone might have put in their blog what they personally think (you know, how blogs are meant to work?) and the person who wrote this and quoted them has stated it as universal for everyone with autism. Also is very one sided and wants to separate HFA from LFA from what I can tell. Seems to imply that nobody with HFA is impaired by their autism on page 4. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. I don't know, that's just how I read it. I can't take anything that talks about "privileged" and "identity" seriously if I'm being honest, I just don't understand it. That's just my opinion.

There is a lot that I dislike about that paper. In fact I disliked it so much that I could not get beyond the first two pages, so I am going to give at another try, later and try to suspend judgment until I've read it through--out of respect for you and your views, B19.

Right from the start, I was repulsed by the tone. It's not exactly jargon, but a pseudo-professional idiom. It sounds just like a sociology/critical theory paper--and that's not a compliment. It's like hearing a police officer talk about a "vehicle" when "car" or "truck" would do, or people using "utilize" when "use" would convey their meaning precisely. This is a feature of academic writing that I loathe.

I find this kind of thing very hard to take:

Then there is the coercive us of "we." "We think this." "We think that." Oh really? Speak for yourself!

This stylistic device is needlessly segmenting the readers into those who are neurotypical and inside the presumed "we" and those who are not and fall into "those who are neurologically different from the dominant norm" and it's saying, "this isn't for you. I am not talking to you. You aren't we and don't count." It's the Autism Speaks problem.

But I will struggle to overcome these intial reactions because there must be something good deeper in there or you would not have posted the link.

This paper is opinion piece with content not much different from a compilation of tumblr posts.
The author's husband has a "diagnosis" of high-functioning autism and they made this "discovery" together (the quotes are the author's quotes).
I can't take this paper seriously due to lack of any original research, the neurotypical syndrome nonsense, made-up untested hypotheses about autism presented as fact with no evidence, and general lack of any deep knowledge or understanding of autism or autistic people.

It IS a sociology paper, so that's not surprising. It looks like a cursory survey of opinion posts with some speculation about future research areas - more intended for researchers who are looking for leads than for drawing conclusions. There's a lot of flowery language, but the paper appears to be directed at other sociologists, and how they talk amongst themselves is their business.

The personal pronouns are a little jarring though. At least in STEM fields, papers are written in third-person passive and personal pronouns are generally not accepted.

What is more interesting than the paper itself - which basically amounts to 'here is one point of view, here is another, here are places you can look them up' - is that some researches are starting to read about these things and consider them in other work.

Quote:

"What is more interesting than the paper itself - which basically amounts to 'here is one point of view, here is another, here are places you can look them up' - is that some researches are starting to read about these things and consider them in other work"


Yes ^, that's my take on it too. An example of the "cracks" appearing here and there which are inimical to the reigning dogma and traditional narrative of autism. I hope this process will accelerate.

It's just sad when someone sets out to write something that sounds like the subculture they are in rather than trying to communicate clearly. This happens in all fields, has been discussed and analyzed extensively and there are all kinds of forces behind it, but the best technical writers never do it.

Of course, the jargon that is necessary must be used--that's part of being clear. Some ideas are hard because they are inherently hard. But to use "specialized language" when it is absolutely not necessary and obscures meaning is terrible practice and "everyone does it" is not an excuse.

It's particularly jarring when a writer uses clauses that declare her to be "in the communication discipline" with a focus on marginalization of groups through "normative discourse."

At the end of the paper, the author asks, "How might it be if we NTs were freed from socially normed expectations?... What if we actually said what we wanted to say in clear and unambiguous terms rather than cloak our thoughts and feelings in socially proscribed niceties?" I think part of the answer to that question is that we would not see much writing like this and everyone would gain from that.

I did read the whole thing, but it was extremely hard work. It reminded me of the several times I attempted to watch Paul Verhoeven's "Showgirls" -- it's a theoretically interesting subject, but an almost unendurable experience.



Yes, that is good. And there are plenty of interesting leads to ideas in there, if you can break through the language that encases them.


If this paper helps to change that, it's a good thing. I just hope the culture of the field will move toward a less obscurantist style. The message of the medium of this language is completely at odds with the paper's stated goals.

One thing that did interest me was the NT Theory of Mind idea. It was sort of at odds with my understanding and experience. While I have had a ToM for as long as I can remember, I do tend to think that my perspective is somehow right, natural and privileged. It's not that I don't recognize that others have their own thoughts, but in the absence of evidence as to what those thoughts are, I assume that they are a lot like mine, when this is often not the case.

This is pretty much the opposite of the idea that "NT Theory of Mind = Everyone thinks like me, except when shown to be otherwise." The thing that makes NT application of theory of mind different, as I understand it, is that they have more senses informing them about each other's thinking and feeling states, so they are capable of fine tuning their apprehension of the inner states of others with that greater volume of social information.

In passing, I was also really put off by the opening CS Lewis quote. We live after the Final Solution, the liquidation of the kulaks, the killing fields of Cambodia, Serbia, Bosnia and Rwanda. The perpetrators of these atrocities did not position them as being for the good of the victims, but rather for the good of the living who would no longer have to share existence with the victims. Given this, I don't think the quote is defensible or acceptable as a rhetorical device.

If this paper were stripped of such polemic devices, and in the style of clear standard prose, rather than journalese, it would really help reveal the ideas that it surveys.

I don't think sociologist like wading through this kind of language any more than anyone else does, but perhaps that is my deficient ToM at work. Maybe there is nothing they like more than wading in it?

She did describe this as an essay, which implies that it is an opinion piece written from the perspective of what a person knows or thinks they know. She at least she didn't call it a research paper. What bothers me the most about this piece is that she admitted that she is a Social Justice Warrior, and now she has a new cause. This isn't science, it's politics.

Where does she say that? I did think this sounded very SJW. I would check again but that paper makes me unreasonably frustrated.

You'll find what I refer to is in pages 2 and 3.

Adamantium wrote: "If this paper helps to change that, it's a good thing. I just hope the culture of the field will move toward a less obscurantist style. The message of the medium of this language is completely at odds with the paper's stated goals."

I think the sociologic vogue for "post-modernist discourse" (which kicked off in the 1980s sparked by the influential writing of Michel Foucault) is here to stay for quite a while yet. I do know the annoyance you express, it can be very dense at times I agree. (They do that because Foucault did that, and in an attempt to step outside and re-view or re-think the "dominant narrative"). And annoying though post-modernist language is, the dominant narrative does need challenging and rethinking, a point we are likely to more united on (I think).

I've read some wonderful sociology in my time - like Erving Goffman's work - and the remarkable insights of Ivan Illich. They both did their work long before post-modernism became the prevailing and acceptable fashion in sociology; they write in clear and accessible English; they publish books which, though intellectual, you do not need a degree in sociology to interpret - they bridge the academic and real world gap well. They were interested in sharing their work with other (real) people, not simply other academics.

The current "hegemony" imposed in sociology departments is post-modernism; and despite the radical reputation, sociology departments (as in all the soft social sciences) impose comformity from the top down. If the Head Of Department is a post-modernist, then so must everyone on his or her staff be - or else... (this is where aspies can get into trouble...by challenging the enforced conformity ethos)

I am all for more challenges much more frequently to the dominant narrative of autism, even if it must come in this dense language of the post-modernist vogue.

There is no sharp, absolute division between science and politics. Science can be very political - behaviourism is a stunning example - and scientists hold their own political views which can affect the science they choose to do in a number of ways.

I read it carefully, and she doesn't say any such thing.

More to the point, you create a false distinction between science and politics. Science has never existed outside of the context of politics. Newton, Einstein, Leeuwenhoek, Curie--not one worked totally outside of politics.

I find the language repellent, but the idea is not really contestable, particularly if one takes the definition of "rhetorical" as "expressed in terms intended to persuade or impress:"

The volume of discussion on these topics on WP is evidence of the truth of this contention.

I don't think the ToM idea is wrong for many autistic people.
It seems only wrong for the most mildly affected who have many neurotypical traits, including ToM that is not outside normal variation.

But is it presented accurately in the essay?

In my opinion, the whole ToM section of the essay is inaccurate and meaningless.
The "everyone thinks differently from me" idea of ToM in autism has no evidence and the author only cites the person who coined the ridiculous neurotypical syndrome as the origin of the idea.