I felt the need to write this post, Its very long but Im serious. I do not want it to be taken the wrong way, I am not attacking people or having a rant, and I am not trying to stir the pot,
Im not after a debate, and I hope people with ASD are not offended that I might `be a voice`, Im speaking as much for myself as others, I see behavior in others that used to be directed at myself, I do not wish to say nothing and see it directed at others.
I just want to explain things how I see it.
I just feel it needs to be said, because I was beginning to feel quite sad at the moot and my attempts to explain certain behaviors I am familiar with was usually met with shaking heads and a refusal to accept that certain persons (more than one, at least three infact) can behave in certain ways because of disability.
If I ask most people to define various developmental disabilities according to the accepted diagnostic criteria they admit they are unfamiliar with the actual different areas it covers.
So if nobody knows what a developmental disability IS ..how are they so certain they know what it ISNT?
So I think the community needs to think about these issues. It is everybodys community. Bushcraft is for everybody. The solitude of the woods is attractive to many people for different reasons but I notice it is especially attractive to those of us defined disabled or `different` in someway and find the rat race or polite society too much to handle. Infact I dont think Ive met a completely normal bushcrafter yet. Certainly none of you lot!!
It is probably necessary to explain the behaviors of the spectrum seems as we are so often to be found hiding in the woods.
While the vast majority of bushcrafters are tolerant, good natured and accepting individuals, there are those who are not. No more so than the normal populace, but these issues should still be challenged head on to make the community a better place for all of us.
I was diagnosed with Aspergers with dyspraxic tendencies as a teenager. I spent most of my childhood quite lonely and often bullied and my attempts to hold conversations with people usually went badly wrong, resulting in hostility and making me the butt of jokes. I dealt with it as a child by withdrawing. (Others deal with it by trying harder and harder!) As I did not understand all the dynamic intricacies of social ritual I simply give up trying to engage in it. Nowadays I am an entirely different person. I am lucky to have read enough books and picked up enough tips from the asperger community to socialize and move incognito to the point where telling people I have aspergers hardly seems relevant .
I now work for the National Autistic Society and they themselves know nothing of my previous diagnosis. Its kind of a private joke Im having with myself and Im also there because I care about the way other people with autistic spectrum disorders are treated and in helping them get the most out of their lives that they can. When I see other people treated the way I used to be treated, I feel very uncomfortable and this is why I am writing this.
In short Im very familiar with the whole autistic spectrum of dyspraxia, hyperactivity, tourettes, aspergers, and kanners autism , I spend most of my time with people whos behavior is so extreme , blunt and hyperactive that members of the public literally have ran away from us.! I can handle this because I dont really care how people behave, I just accept them for how they are. It isnt that hard, it really isnt.
Socializing is actually pretty hard to do, the majority of the populace are born with an inner instinct to pick up quickly how their immediate culture communicates both directly (verbal) and indirectly (body language). Because it is inbuilt, they are baffled by the idea that somebody else may have to learn the entire pointless ritual manually.
It involves precise understanding of the ritual of conversation
Turn taking
Eye contact
Body language
Facial expression, both reading others and creating ones own.
How close/far away to stand
Speech:
Prosody, pitch, tone, volume.
Topics:
What is appropriate. What is not. (and this changes depending on the company, or how well you know them!)
Reciprocation:
Making the right noises, nods, eye brow raises and the rest at all the right times.
To learn this manually takes time, (and to be honest, why should we) Please try understand how hard it is to juggle all that manually, you would have the same trouble if you were placed in an another culture you knew nothing about. Imagine how stressed you might feel to keep making so many social gaffs and draw out their tempers.
On top of that, spectrum people have many other behaviors to manage. (of course many of us dont actually care what the hell others think of us, and we are all the better for it!)
Anyway perhaps the bushcraft community can try to be little more understanding of these problems? If people butt in a conversation, or we say something odd, or we stand too close, or speak to loud, or tell you your bottom really does look fat in them trousers then just telling us to stop doing it wont work no more than shouting at a person with a speech impediment will make them talk better. Could you imagine if a person with a bad stutter turned up at a meet, who took so long to say something it got laborious to talk to them, would you dream of responding to their hello with Just f**k off you You would be banned from the site and rightly so. Yet apparently its acceptable to do this to those whos disability is hidden no matter how much we try to explain the fact we have a recognized disability.
In peoples clamor to slag off individuals behavior they have failed to examine their responses to such behavior and ask if they themselves have reciprocated in an acceptable manner.
So if we are going to attack members for their behavior can some consistency be shown to equally unacceptable behavior in return? Or does BCUK find it acceptable to treat somebody badly on the grounds that `lots of people cheered` Sure some behavior traits of spectrum people can be annoying, odd or plain unacceptable, but at no point have myself or others behaved in a way which was bullying or criminal.
Bullying is setting people up in nasty practical jokes, being verbally abusive and back stabbing.
Criminal involves physical assault. (I have watched this at a previous meet)
We can all agree in the sober light of day it is never acceptable to treat another person that way, so can we please extend that to the campfire as well.
Like I said before, the vast majority of people are kind, probably because you are all a little nuts yourselves, but having seen an escalation of this behavior in a small number of people at the moot, I want to make it clear how I feel on the issue.
There is no such thing as normal anyway, if you are not diagnosed with a disorder then you are neurotypical. Neurotypicality when defined with the same language used to define the spectrum disorders looks a little like this:
http://isnt.autistics.org/
Im not after a debate, and I hope people with ASD are not offended that I might `be a voice`, Im speaking as much for myself as others, I see behavior in others that used to be directed at myself, I do not wish to say nothing and see it directed at others.
I just want to explain things how I see it.
I just feel it needs to be said, because I was beginning to feel quite sad at the moot and my attempts to explain certain behaviors I am familiar with was usually met with shaking heads and a refusal to accept that certain persons (more than one, at least three infact) can behave in certain ways because of disability.
If I ask most people to define various developmental disabilities according to the accepted diagnostic criteria they admit they are unfamiliar with the actual different areas it covers.
So if nobody knows what a developmental disability IS ..how are they so certain they know what it ISNT?
So I think the community needs to think about these issues. It is everybodys community. Bushcraft is for everybody. The solitude of the woods is attractive to many people for different reasons but I notice it is especially attractive to those of us defined disabled or `different` in someway and find the rat race or polite society too much to handle. Infact I dont think Ive met a completely normal bushcrafter yet. Certainly none of you lot!!
It is probably necessary to explain the behaviors of the spectrum seems as we are so often to be found hiding in the woods.
While the vast majority of bushcrafters are tolerant, good natured and accepting individuals, there are those who are not. No more so than the normal populace, but these issues should still be challenged head on to make the community a better place for all of us.
I was diagnosed with Aspergers with dyspraxic tendencies as a teenager. I spent most of my childhood quite lonely and often bullied and my attempts to hold conversations with people usually went badly wrong, resulting in hostility and making me the butt of jokes. I dealt with it as a child by withdrawing. (Others deal with it by trying harder and harder!) As I did not understand all the dynamic intricacies of social ritual I simply give up trying to engage in it. Nowadays I am an entirely different person. I am lucky to have read enough books and picked up enough tips from the asperger community to socialize and move incognito to the point where telling people I have aspergers hardly seems relevant .
I now work for the National Autistic Society and they themselves know nothing of my previous diagnosis. Its kind of a private joke Im having with myself and Im also there because I care about the way other people with autistic spectrum disorders are treated and in helping them get the most out of their lives that they can. When I see other people treated the way I used to be treated, I feel very uncomfortable and this is why I am writing this.
In short Im very familiar with the whole autistic spectrum of dyspraxia, hyperactivity, tourettes, aspergers, and kanners autism , I spend most of my time with people whos behavior is so extreme , blunt and hyperactive that members of the public literally have ran away from us.! I can handle this because I dont really care how people behave, I just accept them for how they are. It isnt that hard, it really isnt.
Socializing is actually pretty hard to do, the majority of the populace are born with an inner instinct to pick up quickly how their immediate culture communicates both directly (verbal) and indirectly (body language). Because it is inbuilt, they are baffled by the idea that somebody else may have to learn the entire pointless ritual manually.
It involves precise understanding of the ritual of conversation
Turn taking
Eye contact
Body language
Facial expression, both reading others and creating ones own.
How close/far away to stand
Speech:
Prosody, pitch, tone, volume.
Topics:
What is appropriate. What is not. (and this changes depending on the company, or how well you know them!)
Reciprocation:
Making the right noises, nods, eye brow raises and the rest at all the right times.
To learn this manually takes time, (and to be honest, why should we) Please try understand how hard it is to juggle all that manually, you would have the same trouble if you were placed in an another culture you knew nothing about. Imagine how stressed you might feel to keep making so many social gaffs and draw out their tempers.
On top of that, spectrum people have many other behaviors to manage. (of course many of us dont actually care what the hell others think of us, and we are all the better for it!)
Anyway perhaps the bushcraft community can try to be little more understanding of these problems? If people butt in a conversation, or we say something odd, or we stand too close, or speak to loud, or tell you your bottom really does look fat in them trousers then just telling us to stop doing it wont work no more than shouting at a person with a speech impediment will make them talk better. Could you imagine if a person with a bad stutter turned up at a meet, who took so long to say something it got laborious to talk to them, would you dream of responding to their hello with Just f**k off you You would be banned from the site and rightly so. Yet apparently its acceptable to do this to those whos disability is hidden no matter how much we try to explain the fact we have a recognized disability.
In peoples clamor to slag off individuals behavior they have failed to examine their responses to such behavior and ask if they themselves have reciprocated in an acceptable manner.
So if we are going to attack members for their behavior can some consistency be shown to equally unacceptable behavior in return? Or does BCUK find it acceptable to treat somebody badly on the grounds that `lots of people cheered` Sure some behavior traits of spectrum people can be annoying, odd or plain unacceptable, but at no point have myself or others behaved in a way which was bullying or criminal.
Bullying is setting people up in nasty practical jokes, being verbally abusive and back stabbing.
Criminal involves physical assault. (I have watched this at a previous meet)
We can all agree in the sober light of day it is never acceptable to treat another person that way, so can we please extend that to the campfire as well.
Like I said before, the vast majority of people are kind, probably because you are all a little nuts yourselves, but having seen an escalation of this behavior in a small number of people at the moot, I want to make it clear how I feel on the issue.
There is no such thing as normal anyway, if you are not diagnosed with a disorder then you are neurotypical. Neurotypicality when defined with the same language used to define the spectrum disorders looks a little like this:
http://isnt.autistics.org/
