Lent – Autistic Civil Servant

“I bind unto myself this day…”

The world is full of injustice and that can become overwhelming, particularly for autistic people who have a strong sense of integrity and honesty. To cope we may need things to cling on to, either ideas or “stims” or things staying the same. These might be the things that make sense when everything else doesn’t. As a civil servant, I maintain impartiality and objectivity by being clear that democracy is what matters – the Government has been elected by the UK people, and what matters to me is my determination to deliver the agenda of the people who have been democratically elected. In less elevated moments, though, I also need to do is to distract myself with something to fidget with or otherwise keep my hyper-sensitive senses occupied and not causing me stress. Things to cling onto can be big or small.

“Do the little things…”

Much of our public discourse is about big ideas and big clashes – the kind of thing you get on Twitter. People see something wrong and “call it out”, possibly challenging the entire world view of the person who made the original statement. As an example, it’s remarkably easy to find spats between Christians and atheists on social media where each just says the other is wrong, rather than seeking to convince or even engage. I’m not sure that’s how the world gets changed though – for every Road to Damascus conversion (in either direction) I imagine there are a lot more gradual bits of persuasion through coming to see your opponent in debate not as an enemy but a fellow human being. Easy to say, much harder to do, obviously.

Getting a hearing

You see something wrong and you call it out. What you’re saying is true, so why don’t people listen? The world is full of injustice and that hurts and needs to stop. Unfortunately, telling people what they’re doing wrong can make them double down on it. Challenging people can make them lash out in their own defence, hardening their position. It may take a more (hopefully) Christian approach to get things done.

How to change the world

It’s all too common for autistic people to be victimised, which is an extremely bad thing, but how to change it? Autistic people can be total prats ourselves, and we’re capable of bigotry and just as many bad things as any other human. So it’s not that we’re poor little people who need the world to look after us like helpless children. It’s easy to get very angry about the ways in which the world is cruel to people who are different and that anger can be absolutely right. But anger may not be the best way to change things right now.

I get very angry about a lot of things – including how my fellow autistics get treated all too often. But in order to change that I (we) need to persuade the world to see us as fully human. Boring, normal and ordinary. And shouting angrily at people may not be the most persuasive way to do that. We’re approaching the season of the Christian year when people thing about how their lives could and should be better: the season of Lent. It’s a big trait in Christian thinking that rather than telling other people off, you should sort yourself out first. Being an example of how the world ought to be is more effective than wagging a finger. And I’m fully aware that Christians are not always particularly good at doing that and self-righteously wagging a finger at other people is sooo much more fun than being a better person yourself. So much, so human.

Why did You make me broken?

It’s a weird moment when you face that you’re disabled if you have religious faith – or at least it was for me. Getting my autism diagnosis was hugely liberating in that I could stop blaming myself for the autistic behaviours I have. Up until them I’d regarded them as moral failings such that, for example, failing to make eye contact was being selfish. If I did it, it was my fault, it meant I was a bad person, and should try harder. The diagnosis took that guilt away but it also meant that – with my Christian hat on – I had to confront why God would have chosen (in His Infinite Wisdom) to make me autistic. When He could have put a bit more effort in and got my brain wired up “correctly” in the womb which would have saved me a whole lot of trouble. I write frivolously, but you can see the issue.

Coming to Faith

Today – the Fifth Sunday in Lent, or Passion Sunday – happens to be the anniversary of my baptism and confirmation as an Anglican Christian while at University. I had been attracted to Christianity as a teenager by things like the fact that it came with a holy book to read – you could get quite a long way with it by understanding and quiet thought. I also like the fact that liturgical church services follow a pattern, and I’d been picking it up while singing in various choral services at University. Broadly, unexpected things are not supposed to happen in Anglican choral worship and that suited me very well. I enjoyed the calm of the predictability, unexpected organ stop changes excepted. The rhythm of the church year is also good – there are lots of nerdy patterns and sequences to get your head around. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch to see “it’s the 14th Sunday after Trinity so the altar will be green today, the set psalm has stuff about floods in it so it’d be a good moment to sing some hymns about water” as a type of liturgical trainspotting.

Mothering Sunday

What does it feel like to hear a doctor or psychiatrist say “your child is different”? It’s a relief to know what the issue is and to be able to do something about it I’m sure, but it might still be a huge emotional impact. The moment of diagnosis is a turning point and life may never feel the same again. No matter how much a parent might choose to embrace it, “different” is seldom going to feel comfortable. The moment of autism diagnosis of a child comes to parents at a range of stages of childhood, adolescence (and adulthood!). By then the parents may have a strong idea of who their child is, and the image of “autism” may not fit with that. “Autism” can carry prejudices and stigmas that descend on the family, potentially overwhelming the parents. I’m not a parent myself but I wanted to say something today – on Mothering Sunday – about the task of parenting people who turn out to be not at all what society was expecting.

“I bind unto myself this day…”

Defence against all our enemies

If you’re autistic, some days it feels like the whole world is against you. Autism carries a lot of stigma and autistics are suffering minor (or major) aggressions and cruelties every day in every country in the world. I imagine a lot of that is because human beings tend to fear people who are different. People who are different but it doesn’t show can be particularly worrying – autism being an invisible disability means that society can get “caught out” by us. Has any autistic person honestly never been told “you don’t look autistic?” I suspect if we all did “look autistic” somehow, then society would feel more comfortable about being able to categorise us. Not having a badge that says “autistic” can cause people to imagine we’re just like them and feel somehow deceived when it turns out we’re not. I’m proud of my autistic identity, but I’m also a bit worried about some kind of visible symbol of it, since marking out groups as different with badges doesn’t have a good history.

I’ve said some days the whole world feels like it’s against autistics, but how does that manifest itself? Classic minor aggressions can be things like questioning someone’s diagnosis; “You can’t be autistic – you’re nothing like my child/relative/neighbour etc”.

Outward and inward attack

Autism carries a lot of stigma and autistics are suffering minor (or major) aggressions and cruelties every day in every country in the world. Unfortunately, while many of those are from other people, which is bad enough, quite a few of them are from within our own heads. It seems to be an autistic trait to beat oneself up over the slightest thing, and having started we can find things hard to let go. We’ve spent our whole lives having to live in a neurotypical society that wasn’t built for us, and so it’s probably not all that surprising that we pick up some of that society’s prejudice even against ourselves.