Frustrated with others

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I attended a convention over the weekend called Penguincon. They have several panels on varying subjects. One that I attended was on the subject of consent.

I had an idea of what they meant with the term consent but I was curious so I attended.

It sucked.

It came up in an answer to the second question by the panel host that his idea of understanding consent required someone to read body language to truly know if someone is actually consenting or not consenting or revoking consent.

I responded saying, I have high functioning autism and I suck at body language. They came back that I should learn it.

I'm thinking to myself. I just turned 33 years old just over a week ago. I've been trying to learn how to process and interpret body language for 33 years. I have failed to effectively learn body language like a comparable NT of similar age would have over the last 33 years.

The panel hosts and others margianalized away autism by making it the equivalent of being in the geek community and that other non-autistic people have similar issues. Which made no sense. There are geeks both with and without autism. There are geeks without autism who do and don't have body language interpretation issues and there are geeks with autism who do or don't have body language interpretation issues.

I admitted that I stayed away from social contact with strangers. The cost/return isn't great enough and it's always awkward.

I was told I should still know body language. I was told to study body language, which I've been doing for the last 33 years and struggled with and failed at on several occasions getting me in trouble.

I realized they didn't have an answer to give to someone who is autistic and they didn't have an understanding of what some of the problems autistic persons have, I just poker faced my way through the rest of the panel and played minesweeper on my phone.

I blame what I call the, "Sheldon Effect," where Aspies are made cool, and all setbacks become amusing quirks to the degree that everyone who has even a minor interest in something thinks that they're, "in the club." Comic book, video game, and pop culture conventions tend to be rife with these types. When confronted with sensory or behavioral things, they usually back off because really being socially inept is kryptonite to them. They're making AS a clique as a social tool, anyway.

Unfortunately, it is an NT world, and there is a bit of a tyranny of the majority when it comes to things like behavior interpretation/modification panels. Maybe next time this Con comes around, someone can set up an Aspie thing. Getting together in groups is pretty much herding cats, but a Con is likely to have a higher number of Autistic and Aspie folks.

Personally, my experience with body language includes my peers looking at me like I'm insane and telling me that a girl was hitting on me, when I couldn't detect it at all during the conversation. I just entered my thirties, too, and I don't think I'm any better at figuring it out now.

If there's a next time, reply by saying that this is like telling deaf people they should just learn French by listening to French radio. In autism the problem isn't unfamiliarity with the language; it's the inability to perceive the language in the first place. If you can't tell whether or not the radio's on in the first place, you can't even think about learning a new language from it. And if you can't tell whether body language is happening in your direction, and never will be able to, then you can't learn to decipher it, now can you.

Of course, if you have to explain all that to them, you're right, they aren't likely to have anything helpful to say to you.

Consent to what?

In most situations that require consent written consent is a good idea--the only situation where I hear this term used that isn't a rights issue, like photography or recordings, is sex. There, it seems the guideline should be: if you aren't absolutely, positively, totally sure, act as if there is no consent.

Seems like a weird thing to be talking about at a linux/scifi conference. I don't think a lawyer would advise people to try to read body language, particularly if they are bad at it, as a way of determining consent to anything...

These questions are why I attended. I was curious and I was really dissapointed. It ended up being about anything social in general whether it's sexual to minor social things like joining a conversation. It was kind of confusing because near everything they did, they referred to the body language aspect. They did make a distinction between legal consent and non-legal consent. There was an actual lawyer in the room but she wasn't one of the people running the pannel.

Almost all of the panels in Penguincon are attendee driven. You can propose a panel and run it. Next year I'm going to do a BoF for both parents/guardians with children who are autistic and adults with autism and a panel on pyrography if a friend of mine wants to. Maybe I'll run it by myself. BoF means birds of a feather and there are no people who directly run the panel as it's an open forum.

Overall, Penguincon is not just a linux/scifi con. It has several tracks. I attended part of the LGBT/Alt-life style, Writing/Lit, and Gaming tracks.

Just the word pyrography seems cool. I had to Google and was amazed to find this:


Sometimes I love people so much.

It sounds to me like the "consent" panel was myopic and gripped by an oversimplified idea which they found mesmerizing and so they could not see past their own glittering mental construct to the real problem you presented. So enthralled by their own shiny vision, they gave you a really dumb response. Something to file under "Stupid Human Tricks" and forget about, I would think.

I'm not that good. I actually suck at free style drawing.

If you go through the link to my Deviant Art page, you can find some of the things I've pyrographed. I take stencils and use them to create a design.

Cool, I checked out your DA page.

Love the 1st Royal Goblins!

Nice artwork at your blog!

About consents. I newer been able to figure out any body language. If I tries I mostly found that the spoken and body language says different things. Jus make me confused.