#except barbie also commits acts of violence

[aestheticitii]

i hope one day there will be a a day in the life comic where the villains who have threatened kiran before attempt to mess with her in seemingly small ways that will undoubtedly affect her mental state but will not let breidablik's "do not hurt the summoner" clause kick in, because they've seen it work before

like maybe she has a big day soon so they try to sabotage. maybe she's holding a birthday party for someone. maybe she's campaigning for cyl. maybe she's just tired and wants to relax

but when they check on their trap, it turns out someone already sabotaged THEM ahead of time, with a calling card that's basically a colorful, orange and purple butterfly trapped in briar.

and then it cuts to a dimly lit room, with freyja laughing haughtily, revealing herself to be the one who sent the dokkalfar to sabotage them.

(freyr is there also, sighing, because he heard about the calling card and basically concluded that his sister is what those strange performers from tokyo call a tsundere)

(her fairies are also there, but sweatdropping)

why? you may ask.

yes, she may like to murder her some days. yes, she's definitely attempted to murder her before. and yes, that sort of behavior the villains were exhibiting is definitely something she'd do as well.

but that is freyja's human that they are messing with. and that is a no-no.

sure, they told her she could join, but the truth of the world is that only SHE can mess with the summoner like that.

(cut to alfonse asking if it's really okay for kiran to be so chill about the carnage that freyja caused, looking concerned because she's humming.

"why not? those punks should keep her busy long enough that she won't realize what i'm about to do to her freyr plushies."

and that's the point where he realizes his wife is absolutely nuts.)

[sauntervaguelydown]

no no I want to unpack this a little actually

To get it out of the way, Ken is obviously pulling from pop culture signifiers of masculinity, and for better or worse, there's a certain type of man who thinks Fight Club/Scarface/etc describe the Real Secret Masculine Apotheosis that women are Keeping From You. So it's entirely likely within the fiction that Ken is wearing the mink because Reddit Film Bro says mink good.

On the other hand, how does the message of the two speeches compare? Tyler Durden has very specifically designed his philosophy around the rejection of consumerism, capitalism, and self. 1. Tyler Durden rejects the idea that purchased objects will improve your life or self in any way. You cannot buy your way to happiness. Life remains empty and unfulfilling no matter how perfect your house is. IKEA is the little death, etc. 2. Tyler Durden's ultimate terroristic goal is to destroy the records of debt in the banking system, plunging humanity (he imagines) into a creditless, moneyless society of hunter gatherers. Our brief glimpse of this suggests freedom on the corpse of modern life. 3. Tyler Durden rejects the self. Self care is out. Self improvement is out. Self destruction is IN. Within Fight Club, the goal is to strip off everything except the experience of the fight. Identity is left at the door, along with "whoever you might be on the outside". what remains is the body, and the act of conversation through violence. Later, within the Project Mayhem cult, disciples literally have no names. Finally, I want to tease out the fact that Tyler/The Narrator specifically suggest: "we are a generation raised by mothers. maybe another woman isn't the answer"

Okay so what about Barbie? This movie is a literal vehicle for consumerism--a toy commercial with high production values. It's also a movie about what it means to be human. It's about the contrast between having a perfect life/house/wardrobe and depression/dissatisfaction/existential dread. The solution to this dissonance is to leave the dream house and become mortal. Leave the world of signifiers and become a thing that dies. Embracing the ephemerality of human life allows for a more meaningful experience of it. When Barbie has this conversation with Ken, she is on the verge of making this commitment to her own mortality.

Kens in barbie land are defined by their relationship to barbies. This is not at all like real life for men and women, but it is the base statement about canonical barbie land. Within the mindset of Fight Club, this is actually more relevant--the men of Fight Club, like Tyler, consider themselves defined by women, and are trying to find meaning outside of women.

anyway. Tyler here is listing off things that one earns. They are signifiers of success. Money, cars, even the white-collar uniform of khakis, these all represent fiscal success in a very "making it" sort of way. driving my Lamborghini in the hollywood hills etc.

The things Barbie is listing off are not signifiers of earned wealth, though. Barbies & Kens are immortal, they do not earn wages or save them in a meaningful sense. Beach, for Ken, represents determination at birth--it's what's on his packaging, it's his role in society, it's his destiny as a toy. The mink, the house (I think she is talking about the aesthetic of the house, not the building itself), these are things that were obtained with little to no work. They are signifiers, but not of wealth. They are signifiers of masculinity, or literally "patriarchy" as Ken understands it. Which is to say, these are objects that confer upon Ken a Place in the World. They elevate him from someone who doesn't matter to someone who does. They give him personal value.

We can think of wealth, in the world of Fight Club, as also something that confers personal value. It is what differentiates men who don't matter from men who do. Men with cars matter. Men with good jobs matter. Men with money matter. Ultimately, even the difference between immortal kens and mortal men is the same: the desire to be someone with value.

The speeches Barbie and Tyler give mirror each other in this way: you are not the signifiers of value that tell an uncaring world "I am a person, pay attention to me". You already are a person. When you rely on external validation to prove to yourself that you matter, you've already lost the game. Being alive, the experience of being alive in this body, is truth; everything else is illusion. Tyler Durden says this because he wants you to find meaning through him. Barbie says this because she wants Ken to find meaning outside of her.

I find it interesting to compare Tyler Durden's radical methodology of self-destruction to Barbie's ultimate choice to become human. Don't get me wrong, Tyler Durden is a hypocritical cult leader who forcibly castrates politicians and Barbie is a literal children's toy. Obviously it's not the same. But they are both undergoing a kind of enlightenment through casting off the trappings of worldly success and therefore becoming... something new.

Maybe all the things you thought made you you aren’t really…you. Barbie (2023) / Fight Club (1999)

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Will you do your fave book? Or if you already did it, the next fave? And so on...

Short opinion: I am constantly torn between wishing that The Beginning was twice its actual length and being in awe that Applegate manages to cram so much into a sparse 156 pages.

Long opinion: 

As I mentioned here, #54 is actually my favorite book in the series.  I’m probably the only fandalite on the planet for whom that is true, but I am a complete and utter sucker for tragedy. And this is tragedy in its purest form.  Tragedy is frustratingly hard to find in contemporary American stories, because it offers no happiness or culmination at the end.  Bad guys don’t always get punished; good guys don’t ever get medals from princesses or happy retirements into the sunset or reunions with lost loved ones; the very notions of “bad” and “good” get irreversibly complicated.  A tragedy is the story of well-intentioned and deeply sympathetic protagonist(s) coming to a bad end that is at least partially one’s own fault, at least partially the fault of random Shit Happens, and entirely coherent and fitting with the tiny cascade of random events that led to the fall of a lightning-struck tower.  

The purpose of comedy (i.e. stories with happy endings) is easy entertainment.  The purpose of tragedy is to inspire fear and horror through making the audience wonder whether it is possible for each of them to meet a similar end.  With the arguable exception of Cassie, every one of the Animorphs gets his or her own tragedy in the end.  This series is a war epic about the costs of violence.  It was never going to have a happy ending.

Rachel’s loss, in the opening moments, is the most obvious character culmination of the series.  She has been struggling for months if not years to define herself outside of the war, attacked on all sides (her best friend, her boyfriend, her cousin and field commander, her own mother) for the very role that they all nonetheless demand that she perform in order to keep them all safe, not only from the yeerks but from themselves.  Rachel has been the team’s first and last line of defense since the EGS tower battle (#7), and has all-but taken on the title of trash collector since becoming the one to handle David (#22).  Killing Tom is her final act of protecting her found family; completing the suicide run is her final ability to use her comfort with violence to do something good.  She might have done and even become terrible things, but she ultimately succeeds in turning that terror against an even greater evil in her last moments of life.

Arguably the next domino to fall is Tobias.  I’m with Cates: his is the ending I find the least satisfying, because it devalues his friendship-cum-familyhood with Ax.  However, I also can’t say that Applegate didn’t set that ending up.  As early as #13 Tobias shows worrying signs of codependency with Rachel; as early as #3 he proves willing to retreat into his hawk side when the going gets tough.  The scene where “Ken and Barbie” disturb his self-imposed exile through their simple reminder of humanity suggests that Tobias’s retreat isn’t nearly as complete as he’d like it to be, but then he’s never been able to escape being human no matter how hard he tries (see: #3, #33, #43, #49).

Part of what I find so fascinating about Jake’s character arc (fascinating enough that I wrote a goddamn novel or two on the subject) is how much his family story starts complicating this hyper-normative idea of married-parents-two-kids-fenced-backyard-golden-retriever-nice-neighborhood-white-upper-middle-class familyhood starting right in the first book, and how it only makes things worse once the war is over. Jake’s family continues to look “perfect” (i.e. normative) from the moment he first gets home and joins his brother and parents (and resident yeerk) for a home-cooked dinner in #1 all the way up until the alien inside his mom is firing a dracon beam at him from the front seat of her minivan, putting the first scar on the otherwise flawless siding on the facade of their two-story McMansion in #49.  So it’s only natural that Jake’s first thought on committing fratricide in the immediate aftermath of mass murder is to wonder “how would [he] explain this to [his] parents,” and it makes a fair amount of sense that he basically tries to retreat back to that safe haven he (unlike all of his friends) has before the war begins (#54).  But Jake can’t go home; home isn’t there for him to retreat to anymore.  His desire to retreat back to his childhood home borders on pathological, since in many ways he’s older than his parents have ever been, and he’s gone beyond the point where he could ever hope to give his burdens back to them.  

And then there are three.  And then two.

There are two details about Ax’s role in the final book that I find really fascinating.  The first is that line (which I quote all the time, because I find it so revelatory) where Cassie describes herself and Marco as “the only two real survivors” of the war (#54).  Why isn’t Ax included in the list of “survivors” along with Cassie and Marco, even though he’s alive and (physically) well at the time?  My guess would be the hints that he is, in his own way, just as addicted to risk and violence as Rachel ever was.  He doesn’t know how to survive without the war, which leaves him “looking for trouble” in his “boredom”—right up until he recklessly stumbles upon enough “trouble” to get his entire crew killed (#54).  That chapter also contains the other fascinating detail: it’s labeled “Aximili,” not “Ax” the way his chapters are in all the Megamorphs books.  Ax has at least partially given up on the identity he fought so hard to forge throughout the entire book series.  He has retreated back into being what his society expects him to be: a leader, a warrior, and an andalite who does not concern himself much with alien cultures.  He continues playing that role, apparently indifferent to what is happening with Tobias and the others on Earth, right up to his death.

Quick side note: I find it so cool (by which I mean excruciatingly painful) that each of the Animorphs gets what they wanted in the first books in the series—and that those dreams prove to be so hollow once achieved.  Rachel gets eternal glory, and the ultimate thrill ride along the way (#2).  Ax surpasses Elfangor in reputation and respect (#8).  Jake fulfills his daydreams of being treated as a superhero (#2), and of going home to his family (#1).  Marco gets to be not only “an entire episode of Stupid Pet Tricks” but quite possibly the most famous person alive (#2).  Tobias escapes his life and manages once and for all to “fly free” (#3).  Cassie finds a non-violent way to change the world (#4); she even gets to be a horse for a while along the way (#29).  And it’s nothing like any of them thought it would be.  None of their childhood dreams have much feasibility or even appeal by the time they are some of the weariest, most mature and worn-out adults of their generation.  Only Cassie manages to find satisfaction in getting everything she ever wanted.

Only Cassie… because Marco’s not quite a “survivor” either.  He brags about his fame and materialism, sure—but then we’ve never been able to trust Marco’s narration.  (See: the amount of time he spends obfuscating and/or lying to the reader in #30, #25, #15, and #35.)  If you ask Marco outright, everything’s fine and it always has been.  But then Marco describes Jake and Tobias showing up with an offer of a suicide mission as “everything around me turned translucent, like it was all fake… an old reality emerged from beneath the illusion” (#54).  Even before that scene, it’s striking just how much time Marco spends obsessing over Jake.  Marco freely admits to Cassie that he acquired an eagle morph for the specific purpose of following Jake around to spy on him, spends almost half the alleged description of his own life talking about how poorly Jake is functioning, and actually talks Jake into leading his crazy suicide mission for Jake’s own sake.  What Marco doesn’t mention—and what we can assume from Jake’s own narration doesn’t happen—is him actually picking up the phone to call Jake and ask him if he wants to talk.  The flash and glam and seven cars and heated pool and personal butler are yet more misdirection; Marco’s not okay.  He’s just telling us about all the ways Jake’s not okay because that’s safer than admitting his own vulnerability.  Jake says “Marco, you were bored out of your mind” and Marco unhesitatingly agrees (#54).  Marco spends so much time trying to convince everyone of how very happy he is with materialism and Hollywood glam that he fools Cassie, he fools Tobias, he all but fools himself… but he never fools Jake.  Which is why he has to keep Jake at arm’s length, no matter how much his guilt at doing so might eat him up as he’s sitting around watching Jake watching Rachel’s grave in the middle of the night.

And then there’s Cassie.  Cassie who I’ve compared to an anti-Susan Pevensie, Cassie who finds a man who treats her right and uses power for good without resorting to violence.  Marco, who was the last to join the war effort, might have eventually been able to find equilibrium if he’d been willing to get a haircut and get a real job (X). Cassie, who is unafraid to work on her own and leave her team when something needs doing and they can’t help her (#19, #29, #43, #44), is already living a new normal.  Jake is right when he says that Cassie’s “a one-woman army,” and he’s right that she’s “the soldier who has fought her war and moved on.”  The two Animorphs with the least “addiction” to the war emerge from the other side the most intact (#22). Cassie’s never going to be the same person she was, but she understands that.  She doesn’t try to hide from the past, she doesn’t try to retreat into it; she picks herself up and figures out a way to live on her own.  She shows that there’s hope for life after war, but also that there’s no returning to childhood.  She lives, and keeps on living, even after two (maybe three, maybe five) of her fellow Animorphs have been eaten alive by the war.  Because right from the start, Cassie has been comfortable with leaving her team behind—and in the end, she leaves her team behind, and she can’t save a single goddamn one of them.

It’s not a happy ending.  It’s not a comforting ending.  It’s not the kind of ending that suggests people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.  It doesn’t offer the comfortable reassurance that the right ends will justify any means.  It’s the kind of ending that gets in your head, burrows down deep, reads through your memories, and won’t leave you alone.

Don’t get me wrong: I love these characters.  They were my heroes and my idols and my ink-and-paper friends throughout my childhood.  They’ve taught me as much as a lot of real people I’ve known in my life, and there’s a part of me that does want them to live happily ever after.  But if they did, they would lose a lot of the realness that makes them so precious and so painful to love in the first place.

[surly01]

This Week In Doom: What Muslim Ban?

Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on February 5, 2016

Hampton Roads Light Brigade at direct action January 31, 2017

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

–Pastor Martin Niemoller

Our foreign policy requires an externalized enemy, as our economy requires a state of permanent war. Were peace to break out across the world, the US economy would shudder to a halt within 60 days.

Ever since Reagan announced "Morning in America" we have been tempted with the promise of returning America to the golden postwar era when white male colossi like Patton, Marshall and MacArthur strode like heroes astride a grateful world. And the corresponding postwar boom in which American industry sold everything it could make to a prostrate world. Who paid for it with money we lent them.

Trump's call to "Make America Great Again," prints nicely on red ball caps but is short on specifics. One example put in practice is the recently announced Muslim Ban, giving color of law to demonization of the Muslim "other." [Note: On Friday night, U.S. District Judge James Robart blocked the entirety of trump’s de facto Muslim ban from taking effect. His ruling, which applies nationwide, froze all relevant provisions of trump's executive order.]

In a recent Harper's article, Lawrence Jackson ruminates about the leaders of the Atlantic-facing victors, usually known as "the West:"

The most arrogant inhabitants of these nations …understood themselves to be the ordained directors of human beings across the globe, across space and time. They were committed to civilization by the sword. Yet not even Reagan was mighty enough to reinstall the American militants who ached to battle the Russians and the Chinese. Reagan took to politics for what he couldn’t achieve in his original profession, acting. He stood in the shadow of John Wayne, a cultural hero who… declared that the problem was that the values of white rule weren’t being exported vigorously enough. Wayne’s films gave audiences a steady dose of what historian Richard Slotkin calls “regeneration through violence.” Both civilization and capitalist bonanza depend on violent encounters and imperial expansion. If the country is to be healthy, it needs some frontier populated by some brand of enemy.

After 9-11, to forestall a "peace dividend" breaking out, America's best minds concocted the Global War on Terror, a concept plastic enough to permit many interpretations, and unwinnable enough to guarantee the Permanent War Economy. Having recently defined that enemy as brown people planet-wide coming for our golfs and guns, now they have infiltrated our borders! Clear and present danger! Wearing hijab! Sharia Law in our streets! Can female genital mutilation for Barbie be far behind?

Enter trump. In our empathy-free times, we think little and care less about what such reckless decisions mean to individuals. Today I am going to challenge you to care.

Demonstrators march from a Department of Homeland Security office through the West Loop on Feb. 1, 2017 against President Donald Trump's ban on refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Several weeks ago, I listened to a Ted Talk by Deeyah Khan, raised in Norway by an Afghan mother and Pakistani father. Khan recounted the rejection and isolation felt by Muslim kids growing up in the West, and the way they get squeezed between two worlds. At a time when executive action careens towards an unconstitutional ban on immigrants fleeing the very countries we bomb, this talk opened my eyes—and ears.

Khan recounted the story of how she had to subsume her own dreams for her life and take on those given her by her father. To be famous, he said, “it's either got to be sports, or it's got to be music." So he threw away her toys and dolls at age seven, and was given a ratty Casio keyboard. She practiced music for hours each day.

Khan started singing and playing, and became good enough to perform before growing audiences. Let her tell it:

I became almost a kind of poster child for Norwegian multiculturalism. I felt very proud, of course. Because even the newspapers at this point were starting to write nice things about brown people, so I could feel that my superpower was growing.

Until one day, she was headed into a store for candy, and found her way blocked by a man intent on making sure she understood who really ran things in Norway.

There was this grown white guy in the doorway blocking my way. So I tried to walk around him, and as I did that, he stopped me and he was staring at me, and he spit in my face, and he said, "Get out of my way you little black bitch, you little Paki bitch, go back home where you came from." I was absolutely horrified. I was staring at him. I was too afraid to wipe the spit off my face, even as it was mixing with my tears. I remember looking around, hoping that any minute now, a grown-up is going to come and make this guy stop. But instead, people kept hurrying past me and pretended not to see me.

So she learned that when faced with persecution of brown people, white people tend to not want to get involved. But her fellow brown people would have her back, right? Not exactly.

Some men in my parent's community felt that it was unacceptable and dishonorable for a woman to be involved in music and to be so present in the media. So very quickly, I was starting to become attacked at my own concerts. I remember one of the concerts, I was onstage, I lean into the audience and the last thing I see is a young brown face and the next thing I know is some sort of chemical is thrown in my eyes and I remember I couldn't really see and my eyes were watering but I kept singing anyway. I was spit in the face in the streets of Oslo, this time by brown men.

The threats continued and the oppression, this time from her fellow Muslims, got worse. And it took the edge that we often hear that the Islamic world visits upon women:

The death threats were endless. I remember one older bearded guy stopped me in the street, and said, "The reason I hate you so much is because you make our daughters think they can do whatever they want." A younger guy warned me to watch my back. He said music is un-Islamic and the job of whores, and if you keep this up, you are going to be raped and your stomach will be cut out so that another whore like you will not be born.

Her family realized they could no longer keep her safe, so they sent her to London. She resumed her music career, but with similar results.

Different place, but unfortunately the same old story. I remember a message sent to me saying that I was going to be killed and that rivers of blood were going to flow and that I was going to be raped many times before I died. By this point, I have to say, I was actually getting used to messages like this, but what became different was that now they started threatening my family.

Eventually after transitioning to work as a maker of films, she moved again, this time to the US. She makes this point:

What most people don't understand is that there are so many of us growing up in Europe who are not free to be ourselves. We're not allowed to be who we are. We are not free to marry or to be in relationships with people that we choose. We can't even pick our own career. This is the norm in the Muslim heartlands of Europe. Even in the freest societies in the world, we're not free. Our lives, our dreams, our future does not belong to us, it belongs to our parents and their community.

So this lack of freedom to choose personal autonomy is what we decry in our conflict with Islam: "Islam is a death cult." "Look how it treats women." Yet compare and contrast with the policies announced and espoused by the current trump/pence regime.

Trump wants to completely ban abortion, with exceptions only for rape, incest, or when the life of the woman is in danger. He's backed this up by showing support for a ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. He has also said there should be "some sort of punishment" for women who seek abortion if outlawed.

He has said of Planned Parenthood, which provides low-cost family-planning services, cancer screenings, and other health care to millions every year, "It is like an abortion factory, frankly."

Mike Pence said he wants to see Roe v. Wade on "the ash heap of history", and has a long record of attacking reproductive freedom in his state.

Also on the books are rollbacks of all 25 of the grant programs managed by the Office on Violence Against Women, housed in Justice. The grants, established by 1994’s Violence Against Women Act, go to organizations working to prevent domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, and elder abuse. Perhaps to be expected from an administration that features a principal with a history of domestic battery.

Denying women reproductive freedom has long been the Holy Grail of Christian Dominionists who have never gotten over The Pill. The Pill gave women the ability to control pregnancy, and with it far more autonomy over their lives. Couple these efforts with the assault on programs that combat violence agaist women, and you begin to trace the outlines of a program to re-chattelize women that sounds positively… Islamist.

Consider in the singular example of Deeyah Khan how Islamists treat women, and realize that this story is re-enacted across the world millions of times over. Then compare with announced trump/pence policies designed to deny women access to services won over decades of activism and legislation. It would appear that the difference is merely one of degree. Policies to repress the rights of women stem from the same shrunken root: an insecure manhood and a need for control. Women, beware short fingered vulgarians and the men who serve them.

Surly1 is an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere, and once quit barking and got off the porch long enough to be active in the Occupy movement. Where he met the woman who now shares his old Virginia home and who, like he, is grateful that he is not yet taking a dirt nap, and like he, will be disappointed to not be prominently featured on an enemies list compiled by the incoming administration.

[hellogerbils]

Code Gray

It was a safe place to have a complete breakdown and not worry that everyone was judging me or laughing at me. We’re all in there for the same reason – we can’t function – and we don’t magically start to function behind locked doors and on medications. Medications can take weeks to work; this was a short-stay unit with the average length of stay being three to five days. 

But I was not okay. I was literally not in my right mind. I had to adjust to stopping my old medications and starting new ones, and I had horrible anxiety attacks during which I actually begged for a padded room. They called security on me after I stabbed the wall with a pencil and I asked the guard if he could tase me. The warnings of Code Gray; combative patient broadcast over the loudspeaker didn’t help my state of mind. I thought it meant there was a shooter in the building. It took a while to sink in that the warning was because of me.

At thirteen days on the ward, I was already the veteran. I was the only one there for her first hospitalization, and the one who ended up being kept the longest, after finding out there really is no such thing as voluntary commitment. Sure, you can leave any time you want…as long as you are not declared unfit for release by your doctor and then ordered to be detained. So basically, you sign in voluntarily, and if you try to leave, they commit you. 

Not that I didn’t need it. But I hate not being able to control what happens to me, and I hated that they wouldn’t give me a discharge date, so I tried to leave. I already knew they had called the police after I checked in, as a failed suicide-by-cop in probably the lamest attempt ever, which included writing to the local Superior Court judges to let them know it would be a justifiable shooting. I had agreed to surrender my firearms and I gave up my house keys so they would be gone when I got home. 

But they ordered me to be detained until I could be sent to a long-term facility, so I started asking some of the other patients what the state hospital was like.

“What you in for? You try to kill yourself?”

“Uh…sort of…actually, I’m an autistic sociopath.”

Another woman spoke up: “What’s that? Like serial-killer shit?” 

From across the room, a clinical-sounding monotone: “Actually, most sociopaths are not murderers. They just don’t feel emotions in the way other people do. And since she’s autistic she doesn’t bond with people either.”

That’s pretty much it, to put it very simply. Although no one displays 100% of the symptoms of their illness or personality disorder 100% of the time, generally I do not feel emotions and I do not form attachments to people. Clearly there are exceptions; I attach very well to other autistic people and I can feel emotions that stem from involuntary, innate survival mechanisms. But there is a reason I don’t cry at work and why it’s nothing to me to be exposed to horrific images of pointless violence – I don’t empathize. Not because I don’t care that someone’s child has died, but because in my mind I’m simply performing a task at hand. I am an artist and human remains are my medium. I am motivated by a desire to do well at my job and I enjoy the challenge of working on remains that are considered non-viewable. But it’s just not possible for me to think, this could be my kid. It isn’t my kid. It’s my job. I think part of the reason I can do it so well and really hone those skills is because I’m not overwhelmed with emotion.

There are degrees and variances of severity of any mental illness, though these are not measurable. Either a person needs treatment or does not; can function independently or cannot. I seem to have the ability to interact with people on an interpersonal level if they are experiencing crushing grief. Maybe because I know what it’s like, or maybe because I’ve been doing it for so long.

 So, much in the way that not all people with schizophrenia hear voices and not all depressed people are suicidal, there are times when I feel almost like a regular person. Sometimes I even want to be around other people and know what it’s like to have relationships and conversations, though I frequently bungle this because I don’t know how to act. 

“What if you saw an old lady carrying a heavy bag of groceries and the bag broke…would you stop and help?”

People like to present hypothetical what-if scenarios, usually to try and “prove” that I’m not really a sociopath or perhaps because they want to hear someone actually say, “No, I wouldn’t help; I’d kick her oranges into the street and throw mud on her.” Of course I’d help, and I have helped in similar situations – once where a kid alone in the gym dropped a barbell on his neck, and another time when a woman alone in a handicapped stall had fallen out of her wheelchair. I’m sure there have been others, but these two stood out because there was an immediate risk to the person involved and thinking about whether I had the time or desire to help out just wasn’t an option. I sprang into action and I believe anyone else would have as well. 

But part of a willingness to help others stems from a desire to “pass” in society. I am willing to act in certain ways that assure I can live independently and work in my field. Sometimes that includes forced social interaction and small talk, which is nerve-wracking for me. Sometimes it includes exposure to unpleasant stimuli that is torture for an autistic person. Most autistic people have sensory processing difficulties, with certain stimuli being too much to handle. Eye contact usually tops the list, and we force ourselves to make fleeting, intermittent eye contact or to stare at a person’s nose or forehead in hopes they won’t know something is “wrong” with us.

For me, along with eye contact, stimuli that literally drive me crazy are the sounds of multiple human voices; disembodied human voices; and the feeling of water on skin. This is why I don’t watch TV or talk on the phone, and why I hate showering…but I will get in the shower so I can “pass” as a neurotypical (normal) person. I can usually watch cartoons, since the voices do not sound human, and I can also talk on the phone with people I personally know, since I can easily picture them.

Are sociopaths violent?

Not always. But one does not get such a diagnosis without first capturing the attention of mental health professionals, meaning you first have to be noticed as someone who is a danger to herself or others. In my case, I was determined to be both, and my danger to others was considered to be partly due to the long-term use of a certain medication (Prozac) and partly due to the way I learned how to live. My earliest memories all include violence and being turned over to the state. Theoretically, it’s possible to unlearn such personality traits that developed as survival mechanisms, but it’s extremely unlikely for this to happen in an adult. I’m just not motivated. I care about my job and the handful of people with whom I’ve been able to establish some kind of connection. Managing my mental health is only for the purpose of staying out of the hospital, not for becoming a better person overall. 

But I still want to become a better person in the eyes of a select few. Maybe I can be improved, if not fixed.

“As a child, did you torture small animals? Attack adults? Mutilate dolls? Trash others’ belongings? Get suspended from school? Get expelled?”

Yes to all, I answered as the forensic psychiatrist continued to pick my brain. He asked if I watched a lot of violent TV. I watched no TV…yet I staged an elaborate torture scene with other kids’ Barbie dolls. While other kids cut off Barbie’s hair, I cut off her arms and legs, drew slash marks all over her body, and set her up on the floor of the Barbie mansion with a bunch of Ken dolls standing over her. For some reason, I had dressed them in Barbie’s clothes.

I asked the doctor if he was familiar with the case of Mary Bell. He wasn’t, so I told him. She was a British girl who, at the age of ten, killed two smaller boys by strangulation, carved her initials into and sexually mutilated one of them, and bragged about her crimes. She was sentenced to an indefinite prison term and was released in her early twenties…and she got married. Became a secretary. Had a daughter. Had a granddaughter. She never offended again.

 “So if she could one day be normal, is it possible that I could be as well?”

“Yes…yes, I think with continued treatment, you will not be a danger to anyone…I had one more question. As a child, did you also throw things?”

Throw things?! Is this the clincher? Is he not yet certain that I have psychological problems? If I say I have no recollection of throwing things, do I get sent home? I had confessed to – before the age of eight – setting fires, biting kittens until they were bleeding, and staging Barbiedoll mutilation scenes, and this doctor wants to know if I threw things. 

I sure did. One day, I got to school early and filled an old sock with mud, and repeatedly threw it against an outdoor wall. Later I got called into the office. The mud-filled sock was in a cardboard box on a desk (was it really necessary to save it?) and the principal asked, “Can you explain this?”

Another thing about autistic people: it’s common for us to take things extremely literally. I explained it. It was a sock full of mud. I guess it wasn’t the explanation he wanted to hear. 

Finally, after a life filled with violent acting out in an attempt to establish some kind of control and feel bigger for once, I was ordered to be held involuntarily and indefinitely.To be continued…