Memoir Offers and Inside Look at Autism
Weekend Edition Sun May 7, 2006 (7 min 18 sec)

Mr. Nazeer, if by chance you read this, please by all means correct me if my assumptions here are off! I realize the universal health care in particular was probably a bad example – I was thinking of the American perspective when writing that.

Every day, he is fully immersed in the mainstream world, so it should not be too surprising that he views certain quirks negatively.

Additionally, if the book is any indication, he appears to be something of a centrist liberal (ala the Clintons) – the sort of person who is generally tolerant but shies away from radical concepts such as legalization of marijuana, universal health care, or, indeed, neurodiversity. Some are legitimately opposed to these things, while others simply consider them impractical.

During some of my worst periods of self-hatred, to see another person who reminded me of myself (being autistic or something similar) created an instant sense of hostility and revulsion. I’ve seen autistic people trying to distance themselves from Those Other Autistic People, too. If these are more or less conscious attitudes, what are our unconscious reactions?

I’m thinking about this in regard to how Nazeer uses the third-person pronoun (”their,” quoted early in my post) and how he writes about “autistic people” at a distance (it seems) from himself, and in the third-person. That is why I have been wondering at his final image of the autistic ark.

There already is a diversity of ways to write about being autistic. It doesn’t mean that every way is accurate. This way is at least somewhat dehumanizing.