Bullying, Human Rights

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I am Autistic. I need to talk about the bullying that I face.
 
This world places me in a category referred to as "developmentally disabled".
 
This is a group of people who think differently. But their way of thinking is not accepted by the establishment who rule this world. Their gift to think different is seen as a defect and they are abused and bullied when they are told this lie over and over again. They are told that their way of thinking is wrong and that they need to be treated to fix that.
 
In the specific example of Autistic people, they have been defined by the definition of Autism. This definition of Autism that is used to vilify Autistic people is to say that Autistic people have a brain disorder. The real brain disorder is that of the bully who has absolutely no conscience and empathy when they bully someone who is different. And then when the person who is labeled with a disability shows any reaction of being provoked by the bullying, the bully will use that disability against the person. When an Autistic person is bullied and then responds in an attempt to communicate they are being bullied, the emotions of being upset are invalidated. Whatever the Autistic person does to tell the bully to leave them alone, the distress of being bullied is attributed to Autism, and the bullying continues.
 
Child abuse happens when all of the child's strengths are misunderstood, despised, and ignored by the parent, and the child is treated over and over again as someone that only has defects, and not as a unique individual. They are abused and bullied when they are not accepted for who they are, and everyone tries to change them.
 
Autistic people are a group of people that has no rights. Their different way of thinking is used against them. They are treated as having inferior thinking when it is said they have a brain disorder. Such a label results in invalidating every thought that an Autistic person has. This makes Autistics a target to be bullied. Because Autistics are treated as defective humans with inferior thinking, any expressed complaints of being abused and bullied is regarded as invalid expressions only to be ignored. This creates a vicious cycle that leads to more exponential bullying.
 
This bullying is the source of a lot of traumatic stress. When a person labeled with a developmental disability is bullied and then begins to show signs of PTSD, the same exact bullying that is causing this distress is relentless, and continues on without relief. The bully who has absolutely no conscious and empathy, blames the victim for the stress that is being caused by being bullied in the first place.
 
I have been stalked and bullied by the police. This is one such incident that happened to me. I was on a bicycle. Two police cars would be on the same road coming from behind and pass me, continuing in the same direction I am heading towards. Then they would drive into side streets and loop around and come out of another side street just as I was approaching that side street. One police car came out of a side street and then the second police car came out of another side street. When the second police car did that I screamed out to the cop "Are you following me?" The cop asked me what I said and I said to the cop that he is following me. He told me to keep pedaling or I would be down on the ground. I kept on pedaling. I complained to the district attorney's office. They never did connect me directly to the district attorney. I spoke to a detective. I complained about the cops stalking me and the physical threat that a cop gave to me. The detective that I spoke to told me to never contact him again.
 
This stalking that police do is a real problem for people who are developmentally disabled. I am going to give another example.
 
When I drive at night, I have been stalked. I have been stalked by cars that follow me. When I make turns they make the same turns and keep on following me. This has happened too many times to be a coincidence.
 
Almost every time I have ever been stalked by a car following me at night, it has turned out to be a police car. With only it's headlights on, it has all of the appearances of a crazy person driving a typical civilian car. In my nervousness of having a stalker stalking me, I would commit a driving violation. The cop would stop me and give me a ticket for a driving violation he witnessed me do while he was stalking me. The points add up to me having my license suspended.
 
I need legal help to get my license back. When I get my license back, when I have any car stalking me at night, I am going to call 911 on a cell phone to report a stalker. When it is nighttime, I have no way of knowing that it is a police car when only its headlights are on. Cops watch me closely to look for anything to charge me for. When they stalk me on the road like that, they put me into the situation of having a stalker and in my nervousness they entrap me into using my fear of a stalker as a crime to charge me for. In the future when any cop wants to abuse their power against me, I have to be just as vigilant to report any crimes they are committing against me and make it so not worth it for them not to bully me.
 
It is illegal to record the police, but a 911 call gets recorded. Being stalked at night when I drive is exactly the kind of situation that requires calling 911. I have to dial 911 as soon as the cop begins the stalking. I have to stay connected to 911 the entire time I have interaction with the cop no matter how much he tells me it is illegal.
 
Autistic people exist on this earth, and police see us as easy targets to bully. When police commit crimes, we can't complain to the police because they look out for each other. There has to be an appropriate law enforcement agency to complain to when police commit crimes.
 
I need a proper place of oversight to complain to when police commit crimes against me. When I am a victim of a crime, police are negligent to protect my rights. I am actually treated as a sub human, second class citizen when police subject me to an involuntary psychological evaluation when I try to report crimes done against me. When I don't have the same exact equal rights as anybody else to report a crime that has happened to me, then we have a serious problem.
 
Politicians have to listen to what Autistic people go through when they are bullied in this world their whole lives. But they don't. Politicians don't listen to Autistic people because if they did listen to us, the parent run Autistic organizations can make life very difficult for the politician. Politicians have nothing to gain by listening to Autistic people directly. It is more productive for their political careers to serve the parents of Autistic children. Why listen to one Autistic person when there is so much more to gain by listening to the parents of Autistic children. An Autistic child has two parents, two sets of grandparents, a bunch of aunts and uncles, and all the cousins of the parents. By ignoring the Autistic person, and only listening to the family, the politician has so much more to gain in votes and contributions.
 
I can't complain to the police about the police. This is a difficult process for anyone who has ever had a problem with the police. Autistic and developmentally disabled people exist in this world. These are the people who are exponentially most likely to be targeted by the police.
 
I have to talk to the politicians, but they are not listening. The politicians are only listening to the families of young children. The politicians are not interested in doing anything to stop the bullying that Autistic children go through and the lifelong bullying they will face when they are adults.
 
I have tried to communicate with the politicians. The only thing left to do is to go public and talk about what is happening. I cannot do this alone. The only way things can ever change, is if there is a public outcry. People are only interested in causes when it only affects them. The only way change can happen for an oppressed minority is when that minority assembles together with a united voice demanding change. To some degree, Autistics are doing this, but we are being ignored. This cause hasn't quite gotten into the media, and that has to change.
 
A bully at their worst is a bully that does psychological bullying. They leave no tangible evidence behind. This is the equivalent of someone who commits the perfect murder by making the body disappear. If ever questioned about it, they lie and twist it around by claiming that their actions are positive and that they are really helping the victim.
 
PhDs write in journals that Autistics don't have empathy, while at the same time giving absolutely no empathy to Autistics about the bullying that they go through.
 
It was in the news a that a woman with Aspergers Syndrome committed suicide. She wasn't allowed to work in the field that she majored in. A person needs to fulfill their dreams in order for life to be worth living. She felt isolated in a world where she was so different. With the right support network, an Autistic person doesn't have to feel like they are the only one.
 
It was only because of rare and unusual circumstances that this even got into the news. Ordinarily an Autistic person committing suicide would not get into the news at all. I want to look into the statistics of suicide and find out just how many suicides are Autistic and couldn't take any more how this world treats them.
 
This world is headed for a tipping point. I don't see any way to avoid it other than to integrate the skills of people who think differently.
 
The following quotes describe tests used to detect what empathy skills Autistic people have.
 
"People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties with communication and social interactions which likely stem from problems with social cognition, or the ability to understand the thoughts and emotions of others."
 
" In the proposed project, the predoctoral fellow will use a more realistic Empathic Accuracy test to explore social cognition in ASD. In the Empathic Accuracy test, participants attempt to identify the real emotions of people in videos, rather than still pictures or cartoons. This task requires the integration of verbal cues, non-verbal cues, and information about social situations in a flexible and dynamic way which more accurately simulates true social interaction. This test will be used to examine how people with ASD use different types of information in a social context to understand what other people are feeling, as well as to examine the neural pathways involved in understanding realistically portrayed emotions. Using a more realistic measure of social cognition in the study of individuals with ASD may improve our understanding of the biological underpinnings of social difficulties in ASD, and may aid in the development of interventions to improve social functioning."
 
PhDs write in journals that Autism is a brain disorder. With that said, all of the thoughts of an Autistic person become invalidated. Autistic people are completely left out of the loop to be allowed to say what life is like for them.
 
PhDs say that Autistic people do not have empathy. "People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties with communication and social interactions which likely stem from problems with social cognition, or the ability to understand the thoughts and emotions of others."
 
What is being done to Autistic people is exactly what a bully does. Autistic people are placed in a class that is considered to be less than human. Their thoughts are invalidated, resulting in them being ignored. It is said that autistic people don't have any empathy, while the people who are saying this don't have any empathy when they completely ignore the bullying Autistic people go through, while everything they are saying about Autistic people is creating and perpetuating the bullying situation.
 
Once you establish that a group of people as being inferior, it sets up that group of people for limitless bullying. This has to be the worst kind of bullying one can experience up to the point of physical violence. In some ways psychological bullying is worse because it is so subversive, it can really traumatize someone psychologically.
 
Bullying is being taken very seriously when it leads to suicide. A lot of Autistics are not finding the help they need to stop the bullying and because of that the bullying persists their entire lives. When Autistic people are not included as people who need to be protected from bullying, that situation comes to a point of terminal despair and hopelessness. Autism is not to be used as an excuse to say that Autistic people don't suffer from bullying. Stop saying Autistic people are suffering from Autism which only ignores that they are suffering from bullying. The current definition of "Autism Awareness" is "to fund global biomedical research to determine the causes, prevention, treatments and cure for Autism." I want disclosure of how many Autistics are committing Suicide because the bullying problem has to be addressed. Autistics who commit suicide do so out of suffering from bullying, and not because of suffering from Autism.
 
There are a lot of parents of Autistic children that won't address the bullying their children are going through. This could be willful intentional ignoring of the bullying. Or this could be a complete inability to understand the thoughts and emotions of others. They are saying that their Autistic children do not have empathy while simultaneously they are withholding empathy from their children. This is child abuse that is being executed by psychotic people.
 
Bullying has to be addressed as the very first priority. The goal of parents is to cure Autism so that their children will be accepted in this world. It is the world that is messed up. Is it the people who commit bullying that have to be cured.
 
There has to be a laws that requires that parents recognize that their Autistic children need to be safe from bullying and that Autism Awareness has to be all about ending bullying. Parents who are negligent of the responsibility to keep their children safe from bullying have a brain disorder, and that needs to be cured.
 
Autism awareness has to be first and foremost about the awareness of bullying and stopping bullying before any other aspect can be discussed. Bullying has to be taken just as seriously even when the bullying is coming from one's own parents. There are parents of Autistic children that don't accept the uniqueness of their children. Such parents constantly want to change the child to the definition of themselves and won't let the child be the person they are meant to be. They make it very difficult for the child to find their own path. It is very abusive when a parent doesn't recognize their child as an independent person, and an independent thinker.
 
Even when the bullying comes from other sources other than the parents, there is an abuse that happens when the parents are neglectful about protecting the child from the bullying. When a child who is bullied tries to tell their parents who are not emotionally supportive, such parents become angry at the child, and yell at the child, and blame the child for the bullying that is happening to them. As much as the child is victimized by the bullying, the parent actually dishes out equal amounts of abuse when they treat the child with a complete void of empathy and emotional support when the child is only trying to come to their parents for help when the child is originally bullied elsewhere.
 
What is happening is that politicians are primarily listening to parents of young children. The topic of bullying is ignored. The parents only focus on creating services for their children. The function of these services need to be examined. These services treat Autistics as people who lack empathy while simultaneously no empathy is given to Autistic people when all of the bullying that happens to them is ignored and declared to be the Autistic person's imagined and disorganized thoughts. This perpetuation of parents representing their children only while the children are young children leaves the child to have to fend for themself when they become an adult, and the adult bullying that happens is a very subversive psychological bullying that lasts for a lifetime.
 
I want to say what the parents are doing is abuse and this is child abuse. This abuse is affecting Autistic people in a way to traumatize them. The more the Autistic children are traumatized by the abuse, the more the parents continue to be abusive by being ever more controlling of the child the more the child shows symptoms of being abused.
 
An autistic person could do quite well if thy are born into a caring and loving family, and their unique way of being and thinking is nurtured and encouraged. I am finding that very often, this is not the case. Too often an autistic person is born into a family that doesn't understand them, and won't accept the uniqueness of a very different state of mind. This kind of bullying from the family is child abuse. When an Autistic child is raised in this kind of an environment, this results in a lot of traumatic stress and PTSD. This bullying continues when the child continues to be treated as defective and not paying any attention to how the child is affected by being raised in an abusive environment.
 
Parents of Autistic children have a free and clear license to be abusive to their children without ever being held responsible for it. The signs of behavior that manifest when a child is trapped in an abusive situation is completely ignored when it is an Autistic child. The more signs in the behavior that would ordinarily show up when a child is being abused is completely ignored when it is happening to an Autistic child. The child is treated in a way to control their behavior when what they need is to be understood and to be given protection from child abuse. Autistic children are not being protected from child abuse. The Autistic person is left with a lot of PTSD effects. The misunderstanding of being Autistic in the first place in combination of PTST from being misunderstood and being mistreated for being Autistic, makes this planet an impossible place for Autistic people to survive on.
 
Politicians have to listen to Autistic people because it is the right thing to do. There is so much in this world that is backwards. The existing situation is that it is better for a politician's career when they only listen to the parents of young Autistic children, and they ignore what happens to Autistic children after they become adults, and they ignore listening directly to Autistic people themselves.
 
When politicians won't listen to Autistic people, and only listen to the parents of young children, then the politicians must be held accountable for being accomplices in child abuse. It's time to listen. It's time for politicians to listen to Autistic people. This has to happen right now.
 

I'm a corrections officer by trade, a peace officer. So, in a manner of speaking, I'm a cop. I've been stopped several times times by cops on foot, on my bike, and in my car for various reasons, the most embarrassing being the time a cop saw me talking to myself on the sidewalk and wondered if I was on drugs. I did then what I do every time: Spoke calmly and clearly, made eye contact, and obeyed the officer's instructions until he let me go. I've never had a problem. Granted, having a badge of my own makes it a lot easier nowadays, but I've always done this.

Cops are not all power tripping bullies out to get you. I won't lie, there are some out there. But even with those, there's one rule: Cooperate. Don't scream at them, don't insult them, don't tell them how you'll sue the department if they try anything if they haven't done anything yet. Cops are people doing a job. Treat them like you treat anybody else.

I don't think it's an human rights issue. It is in a way of people not understanding autism. They instead will see you as acting strange and interpret what what they think, how they act, and how they feel around you. That's why autistic people need to educate people about autism

amen... you speak the truth well.

[Moved from Autism Politics, Activism, and Media Representation to Random Discussion]

And moved right back again... Some topics seem destined to wander.

I've never been diagnosed with an ASD, and it took me decades to figure out that I might be on the autism spectrum. But I've nonetheless been bullied. My peers perceived me as a weirdo, a nerd and an outsider, which was sufficient reason for them to dislike me. I'd like to think that if I had been diagnosed as a child, people would have cut me some slack.

What I mean is that the awareness that someone has a disorder or developmental condition can work in their advantage. People hate what they don't understand. That's what this hostility is really all about: Someone who behaves in an unusual way is threatening, because people don't know what to expect from them and what they might be capable of. Telling others that you have an ASD, and explaining what this means, makes you less of a threat in their eyes and should theoretically help others to accept you.

I completely agree with everything you say.

There is a common mentality that people with autism or aspergers do not feel feelings the same way normal people do. And so normal people will attack people with autism without feeling a shred of remorse because they believe that the autistic person has no feelings. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Autistics have very rich emotions and are very sensitive despite the fact that they have trouble reading social cues and expressing their feelings.

I have been taken advantage of by cops in the past. Most cops just don't understand autism, and some cops are just bullies, and the cops that are not bullies stick up for the bully cops. You are 100% correct. You cannot tell the truth to a cop (something that autistics tend to do). If you do, you will be punished.

Neurotypicals sometimes see autistics as unfeeling, and they are 100% wrong. They think they are abusing someone who doesn't know the difference, but they are idiots.

Yes, I agree. The problem is they harass and intimidate in 99% of all cases. They assume you to be a normal person who will act in their own best interest. But for myself I can say it is very difficult for me to tell a lie even when I know it is in my own my best interest. I want to kill myself when I tell a lie and betray myself.

Aspies have to undermine their own consciousness, their own sense of self-righteousness which is superior to the average person. To deal with a cop, an aspie must lie, they must be someone who they are not, and this is the ultimate tragedy.

While I agree that cops are not always out to get you, and tha tmany just do what they think is right, it is not like the burden of proof thaat we're not defective should always be on us Autistics/Aspies/otherwise disabled people. I have been stopped by police a lot of times for "wandering" because of the mere fact that I was trying to re-orient myself (I am blind too and use a white cane but don't have the best travel skills). On occasion, I've been driven home to my parents (when I still lived with them) in their police car, which was extremely embarassing. IN my opinion, police and other autorhity figures have a duty to learn to be respectful towards people who are different. while I think it's mostly ignorance that causes them to act stupid, not malice, a little training can possibly change that. The burden should not always be on the different people to prove that they're similar enough to the mainstream to be treated iwht dignity.

Man, I understand the frustration.

And when you are fed up enough (or fool enough) to show frustration, you get sedated.

No goddamn wonder they think we have no emotions.

People suck.

But we're here, and we have to live with it, so we might as well do the best we can.