#and to be fair i also had learning issues/neurodivergency and was ignored in public school

[spurgie-cousin]

the friend who made that cute ofrenda is one of the few people who i can yap about fundie shit with, but she wasn't familiar with the Bates. so I gave her a rundown and her first question was honestly something I've thought about before lol:

[thequintessentialqueer]

I've suspected that I'm on the spectrum for a while but feel weird about self diagnosing and talking to my friends about it and was wondering if you would mind talking about your personal experience with self diagnosis? Also how debilitated must a person be to have this? And can the amount they are debilitated vary depending on what else they're coping with and still be valid?

I’m formally diagnosed as ADHD-I and suspected to be on the autism spectrum, but not officially diagnosed. I was diagnosed as ADHD after fifteen hours of testing. they also said they had considered autism spectrum disorder as a second diagnosis, as my childhood profile matched perfectly. the reason they ruled it out? well, ADHD and autism have a lot of overlap in symptoms and traits, so they wanted to treat my ADHD before diagnosing anything else. okay, fair. ADHD and autism are very frequently comorbid, but fine. I can accept that. but their other reason? “you write poetry and have an interest in activism. those are not typical for people with autism, as they require abstract thinking and empathy.” here’s my take: if the only reason I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic is because my special interests/hyperfixations aren’t fucking stereotypes (because contrary to popular belief, autistic people are human beings with varied interests and passions…….who knew???), I can confidently say that those reasons are terrible. if those are the only things that prevented the diagnosis for a disorder I otherwise match perfectly, well, then I AM autistic. their reasons were outdated, ignorant, and uninformed. I have many autistic friends who share my interests and my commitment to activism: they are valid, and so am I. and so are you. the thing about diagnosis is that regardless of whether you do it, or your family doctor does it, or a specialist does it, it all comes down to examining your history and experiences and matching them to a list of traits that are frequently shared by people with that label. there’s no magic to it. there’s no trick. it’s just asking “do you experience this?” “has this happened to you?” “do you think about this in this way?” and answering honestly. there are definitely benefits to formal diagnosis. being diagnosed as ADHD means I can access medication that helps me manage my symptoms and exist more comfortably and well within a world that wasn’t designed for me. but with autism, I was never looking for a treatment. I don’t want to be medicated or cured. I don’t want to be put through abusive therapy designed to make me act allistic. learning about autism on my own terms and finding community online helped me fill in the gaps in my life and work through the shame and discomfort and humiliation that I grew up with. it gave me affirmation, coping strategies, and people who I could relate to. for me, that was all I needed, and I didn’t need a doctor to diagnose me in order to access it. sometimes formal diagnosis is necessary to access the help you need, but if that’s not what you’re looking for, and you can’t or don’t want to go through the diagnostic process (where unfortunately you’re very likely to encounter a lot of ignorance and ableism), you don’t have to put yourself through that. you know yourself. you’ve done the research. you exist in an age where all of medical knowledge is a click away, and if all you want is a word for how your brain operates, and a community of people who get you, well, then welcome! you’re here! you’ve found it! and yes, circumstances will have an impact on how debilitating your symptoms can be. I know that with my ADHD, I have much worse symptoms when I’m sleep deprived, hungry, stressed, etc. it’s also understood that environmental factors have a huge impact (upbringing, family life, education, support systems, etc). I was raised by very disorganized, chaotic parents (one of whom is now diagnosed as ADHD as well, and the other who is considering seeking diagnosis): as such, my biggest struggles are with tidiness, planning, time management, etc. at the same time, my mum’s realization that I was very unusual, and her choice to home-educate me to spare me from bullying and being made to feel like a failure in an academic environment had a hugely positive impact on me. she nurtured my special interests, helped me follow my passions, didn’t force me to do things that made me miserable (even including eating foods that gave me sensory issues: to this day, she always makes sure to cook me something she knows I can eat without being distressed!), and affirmed my worth in every possible way. a lot of adhd and autistic (and otherwise neurodivergent) kids grow up with very low self-esteem because they’re made to feel inferior within a system that wasn’t built for them. I know with adhd in particular, the drop-out rates, alcohol and drug abuse rates, incarceration rates, etc are very high compared to non-adhd people. I credit my academic success in my late teens and adulthood to my mum; if I had been in school my whole life, I wouldn’t have believed in myself and the results could have been catastrophic. what is disabling in one situation can be an asset in another; yes, ADHD and ASD come with impairments and challenges. sometimes really fucking huge ones. but a lot of the things that we struggle with are socially constructed and enforced, not innate to us. we live in a society that demands that we work and/or go to school full time; that we hold a job in order to survive; that we focus on and do things that don’t interest us; that we be able to socialize based on very specific parameters; that we constrict our emotions in public and only express them in ways that are considered acceptable to neurotypicals. we live in a world that is not designed for our brains, and that world makes our impairments disabling/debilitating. anyway, massively long response just to say that self-diagnosis is valid. I would still recommend getting some kind of counselling or therapy if you’re able to, just because growing up autistic or otherwise neurodivergent comes with a lot of pain, and it can really help to work through it with someone whose job it is to listen. (just keep in mind that there are a LOT of awful therapists out there and you should never stay with one who you don’t feel you can trust or talk to. the first thing my old therapist told me when I met her was that if I didn’t feel like she was the right fit for me, I could make an appointment with someone else and she wouldn’t be hurt at all, because it’s about my wellbeing above all else). at the end of the day, this is about your wellbeing. so if autism as a word feels like home, you’re home. find others like you and share with each other the joys and the pains of having this kind of brain. look for resources online. figure out what works for you and what doesn’t. use this knowledge and this identity to try to create a life for yourself that isn’t always hurting you.

[disparition]

I want to talk about this whole “punching nazis” thing, which I have been thinking about for some days.

To start, let me clarify that I have no moral or ethical qualms with Richard Spencer getting punched in the face on tv. I’d be happy to see it happen again.

But I do have a couple issues with much of the dialogue that has emerged in the wake of this event.

A lot of the people suddenly talking about nazis right now are people who didn’t seem to even realize they existed in this country prior to this election.

A lot of people seem to have gotten some strange ideas about how and where nazis are typically encountered, or who they actually are.

So, I’d like to talk about some of the times in my life when I’ve encountered nazis.

Before I do that, let’s try to establish a definition. There are a lot of different stripes of fascists and white supremacists out there, with varying agendas and varying degrees of organization. In the US we’ve got many types, ranging from the KKK and Aryan Nation to various unorganized skinhead rabble to the newish group calling itself the Alt Right. It seems easiest, at least for the sake of this argument, to lump those all together under one general “nazi” category. But does that really make sense? I’ll come back to that. But for now, in most of the examples I will describe below, these were people who openly called themselves such.

Also, I want to establish a bit about who I am. I don’t like to discuss any of these things publicly, but I also feel like I kind of have to, to explain where I am coming from. So: I am Jewish, I am bi, I am neurodivergent. Due to this last thing, I have certain issues navigating the physical world. I am physically fit but not athletic. I have very little self defense training. By occupation I am a musician.

And lastly I want to point out that these examples are from 15-20 years ago and describe some of my earliest encounters with these forces to provide context. And I’m going to start with some clear cut cases:

I first became aware of the existence of modern nazis my first year in high school. This was in the suburbs of San Francisco. I had a few friends who were into punk music and culture. I heard about “white power punks” and nazi skinheads who would sometimes show up at shows. When I started going out I would see them every once in a while. When I started going up to the city, at that time there were places that were absolutely notorious for nazi skinheads. I never interacted with them, I always steered clear of them, and never really fell in with the punk scene anyway. But that’s when I first became aware that there were people in modern America who called themselves nazis and directly advocated for white supremacy.

To be honest I did not think of myself as their “target” because (in my mind, at that time) Jewish culture in the SF Bay Area was practically invisible and unlikely to be on their radar. In fact I didn’t think too deeply about who their target was. I mostly thought they were crazy people who loved violence and called themselves “nazis” because it was the meanest thing they could think of, that they were in favor of “white power” because it was so obviously wrong. At this time, there was fair amount of tension in the state around the issue of immigration from Mexico. But it did not occur to me then that there could have been any relationship between the xenophobia I saw expressed by mainstream circles in conversations about Proposition 187 and the blatant, violent white supremacy expressed by the skinheads on the periphery of local punk scenes. (also please note that I am aware that not all skinheads are nazis and that there is an anti-racist element within skinhead culture as well)

In college, in Pittsburgh, I lived on a store with a convenience store on one end. One of the people who worked in this store was a skinhead who wore a jacket covered in various white power/“rock against communism” band logos. He had a group of similar buddies that often hung around nearby, a couple of whom had aryan nation tattoos. On several occasions when I woke up in the morning I would find leaflets distributed up and down the block decrying the Holocaust as a “Jewish scam to make money”. These flyers were attributed to Church of the Creator, one of the more active neo-nazi groups in Pennsylvania at that time. Every once in a while I would cautiously engage in arguments with some people on the fringes of that crew of guys who hung out in the area. Things were sometimes tense but never got physical. Soon after 9/11 most of them disappeared. I don’t know why or where to.

While traveling alone in Slovenia, I nearly ran into a parade of about 40 skinheads chanting and marching in the street while I was on the way back to where I was staying. I do not know what specific group they were affiliated with but wore patches with the common “celtic cross” symbol used by far right/white nationalist groups all over the world. At that time, fascist graffiti covered Ljubljana.

Those are just a few of the more blatant examples from that time. These experiences were not rare. The KKK and various neo-nazi groups held public parades and rallies all throughout this period, and sometimes showed up as counter protestors or forces of violence at protests for progressive causes. They marched through downtown Pittsburgh - with the local government’s blessing - and many other cities in that region.

There were protestors at those marches, and there were people who fought the nazis directly, but the general consensus in mainstream liberal circles at that time seemed to be that nazis had the right to march just like anyone else, that any violence against them would be bad. It certainly wasn’t at all common to hear college educated, NY Times-reading liberals talking about the glories of “punching nazis”. This is a problematic but very complicated phenomenon: they were to be tolerated up until the point at which they’ve come into power.

But let me explain why _I_ didn’t go around punching the nazis I saw, during those times when I encountered them personally. To some extent, part of me did follow that logic mentioned above, but that’s not the real reason. The real reason is pretty simple: most nazis are a lot better at fighting than I am, they do it more frequently, they usually travel in numbers, they are often armed, and in almost every circumstance when I’ve encountered them the odds would not have been remotely in my favor had things gotten physical.

Richard Spencer was alone and unarmed standing in front of a video camera busily talking about an internet meme while he was sucker punched. This occurred in broad daylight in a very crowded, open area with a ton of media and police present. While I applaud the anonymous puncher for seizing upon that opportunity, that’s not really a typical situation in which one encounters nazis.

Recently, Richard Spencer posted a video in reaction to this incident. In this video he mentions that the Alt Right will not succeed if they are unable to be who they are in public. I’ve seen a lot of people pointing to this video as a sign of victory over the Alt Right, a sign that they are scared. I think the latter half is true but not the former. What Spencer is saying is that they are going to ramp up security. And I would anticipate that these people will begin to receive even more protection from the current administration.

So, this is one conclusion I’d like to leave here - in most cases “punching nazis” means getting involved in serious physical violence in which your life will be at risk. And that risk is only going to increase in the future. Fantasizing about punching some idiot talking about a frog on tv is fun, but I think it ignores the realities that many have faced and many more are about to face. And while many of us have disabilities that hinder us in this department, I think it would behoove anyone who is serious about getting physical with fascists to study and learn how to do so before getting involved in a situation you are unprepared for. I would also think long and hard before making that demand of anyone else. But that’s not the most important point.

I’d like to circle back to talking about definitions. The examples I gave above are obvious. These were people who, in almost all cases, were openly wearing the actual logos of white supremacist organizations. So let me bring up a different example:

About one year after 9/11 I was in Budapest, taking an overnight train to Amsterdam. I had a spot in a sleeper compartment on a train. I got on and a couple other passengers came in. One of them was a young guy, a little older than me (I was in my early 20’s at this time). He spoke English very well and we got to talking. It turned out he was an Austrian who worked in finance. Middle management at a major bank. He bought us a couple of beers and we were getting along. Inevitably, the topic of 9/11 came up. Seemingly out of nowhere, he explains to me how “there were no Jews in the building that day”. He then goes on to explain how 9/11 and the entire War on Terror that was then unfolding was all a Jewish plot to direct money to Israel’s armed forces. And hinted that the Holocaust was a similar plot. I tried to argue with him for a bit (without letting on that I was Jewish) but it was nearly impossible to get through to him, and he soon became surly and then passed out. I tried to do the same. But what caught my attention was that this man was well spoken, dressed conservatively, he looked every bit the upper middle class finance professional. It was difficult to imagine him in a street fight. No one would have described this person as being on the fringes of his society.

Up until a year ago, if I told this story to a European, or to an American person of color, they were unsurprised. But if I told it to a white American their reaction would usually be “yeah, well, that’s Europe for you”.

But that’s never been the case.

One common narrative is that many of the groups of fascists have figured out that they aren’t going to get very far if they are seen just thugs who march around on the street wearing in leather jackets getting in scraps. many of them have figured this out some time ago, and have been infiltrating mainstream education and corporate life. And yes, that is happening.

But there is a big problem with that narrative: it ignores the fact that many of America’s institutions and businesses are, themselves, organizations that promote white supremacy. Many of our banks, many of our police departments, our prison system, much of our media. Does these mean they are all “nazis”? Not really. But what it does mean is that white supremacy is not some outside force that just suddenly popped out of Steve Bannon’s suitcase. It’s been here for a long time. It is deeply engrained in our society. Fascism is not some new danger that we suddenly need to prevent from being “normalized” - for much of America, fascism has been the norm for a very long time.

Here’s my point with all of this: sooner or later, Trump will be defeated. This regime is monstrous, but I have seen the power and anger and sheer volume of opposition to it, and I do not think that this regime will last. My worry is, once this most obvious of enemies is defeated, the liberal establishment will go right back to completely forgetting that white supremacy and fascism are a major problem in this country. The sad fact is, even when Democrats in power, even when the POTUS is the most progressive sounding person electable, the nazis are still here, white supremacy is still here, fascism is still here. And not always on “the other side”. We need to remember that, we need to keep pointing to them and ostracizing them and speaking out against white supremacy and fascism even when it looks like things are more comfortable, because that comfort is a trap.