ASD Heroes and Where To Find Them

Seeing a neuro-atypical hero who resembles yourself is jarring.
Seeing one that defies toxic masculine stereotypes is thrilling,
bad probably for business.  People prefer reductive stereotypes.

Throughout my life I've been kindly described by friends and family as 'marching to the beat of a different drummer'. In less supportive circumstances I've met people who take an immediate and intense dislike to that difference.  When I was younger this often involved a gathering of like minded people and me getting a beating.  It persists into adulthood and frustrates many of my attempts at socializing.

As an adolescent I tried to harness the anger I was feeling in those beatings and express it physically, but just couldn't. The thought of hurting someone else while I was in a rage was something I couldn't bring myself to do. I recall several instances when a part of me was impassionately observing my assailants. The look of sheer, savage joy on their faces was utterly foreign to me; it's something I couldn't begin to emulate.  Knowing that this kind of viciousness is pretty common in human beings is one of the reasons I'm so cautious with them.  I've yet, at nearly fifty years old, laid knuckles on anyone else in anger, it just isn't in me though I've often wished it were - it would make being male much easier.  I suspect my gender dysphoria is at least in part due to this sense of alienation with what most consider to be appropriate male behaviour.

Being the bottom feeder it is, media is only happy to capitalize on this base, stereotypically reductive male behaviour.  Unless your hero is an aggressive sociopath he isn't a real man.  You'd be hard pressed to find any male hero that isn't written into this bizarre little box and then used as a dimensionless plot device to drive adrenaline fueled violence.  For men looking for another way of being male that isn't founded on this mythology, there isn't much out there.  For a neuro-atypical male the opportunity to see heroes that in any way reflect my experience is pretty much a zero game, I never see anyone like myself on film.

Last weekend we went to see Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the latest Harry Potter film. I'd almost been talked out of seeing it by CBC's movie critic Eli Glasner, who seemed to dislike every aspect of the film, but especially the main character, Newt Scamander, who he described as awkward and unlikeable. I don't disagree with Glasner's analysis of the plot, I think JK(Rowling - the author) tried to fit too much into one film and it gets a bit jumbled (I'd love to see an edited version that cleans up the plot), but when it comes to Eddie Redmayne's character Newt I was annoyed at Glasner's neurotypically prejudiced response to his complex, non-typical heroism. Fortunately, I'm not the only one:

(at 9:12 on): "Newt exhibits the characteristics of someone on the autism spectrum. He's awkward in social settings. He doesn't like being touched. He feels intense empathy for others but has trouble connecting to people and making friends... careful viewers will notice his aversion to direct eye contact.... Newt's social anxieties are not framed in the stereotypical ways we've come to expect from Hollywood."

That description of what ASD can feel like certainly resonates with me.  What a stark difference it is to every other male hero you see in film.  Newt's neuro-atypicality allows JK to avoid the toxic masculine stereo-trap while also presenting a viable alternative hero.  Many examples are shown in the video above of the kind of sociopathic, violent movie hero we show our boys in film.  The majority pick this up quickly and then weaponize it socially as shown in Ontario's recent boys' private school scandal or pretty much any sports locker room.  Fantastic Beasts has managed to side step the stereotypically male hero, but avoidance may also be its downfall.

I'm glad we didn't let Glasner talk us out of seeing Fantastic Beasts.  His dislike of the main character is in tune with criticism found all over especially North American reviews and another reminder of how hard it is to find a male movie hero who isn't toxically reductive.

Fantastic Beasts goes well beyond toxic masculinity by actually showing us a nuanced, non-stereotypical ASD hero, which is quite frankly astonishing, and perhaps unique. The instinctive dislike of him by most people (as evidenced in pretty much every movie review you'll read) reflects my own experience and will be why the franchise fails.  It will become yet another reminder to those on the ASD spectrum, or any male that doesn't want to put on the toxic masculinity society expects of them,of  just how peripheral they are.  Reductive toxic male stereotypes are the only ones that sell.

We're surrounded by toxic masculine heroes that trivialize what being male could mean to all men while at the same time encouraging gender driven violence.  Fantastic Beasts' ASD hero sidesteps this trap and breaks these conventions.  It's a shame that it won't sell to the North American public because it doesn't pander to their prejudices.  Fortunately, it's doing better on the rest of the planet.

Neurodiversity is Useful But Not Worth Nurturing

A colleague shared this display on autism from the Canadian Museum of Nature. In it they take a positive neuro-diverse view of autism and its differing strengths.  Most people would describe autism as a form of mental retardation, such is the prejudice and demand for people all thinking in lockstep like the majority does.

I showed it to my son and asked him what he saw.  He started to say, "Hi", but then stopped himself and said "Es and Ns."  I suspect his indecision and then incorrect answer (answers are always based on neurotypical expectations, not on what's actually there) would have gotten him a failing mark if this was a test question.  If it was on the literacy test, my hyperlexic son would have been considered illiterate even though he's the furthest thing from it.  When I saw it I saw Es and Ns but knew the expected answer was 'HI', so that's what I said - I've learned how to (mostly) tell people what they want to hear rather than what I see (and what's actually there).

Neurodiversity, as presented by the Canadian Museum of Nature, emphasizes the benefits that the human race enjoys as a result of it.  Having people who are able to comprehend data from a variety of different perspectives has obvious advantages, but in most cases neurotypical people will go out of their way to isolate and alienate those who they find mentally different, whether it ultimately benefits them or not.  Compliance and conformity will always trump complexity and difference.

Neurotypical prejudice especially hammers ASD influenced thinkers for their lack of social nuance, but then NTs are happy to benefit from Newton and Einstein's ASD driven detailed analysis of physics, or Alan Turing's ASD detailed focus on computing, or Nicola Tesla's ASD focused electrical engineering (there are many other examples).  In those cases where ASD produces exceptional results, NTs are happy to benefit from it even as they isolate and punish the people doing the work.  This approach often results in neurotypical people taking social and financial advantage of this genius for their own benefit.  NTs are happy to make use of ASD driven breakthroughs, but this often has more to do with how they can harness it and profit from it than it does having any kind of compassion for the people themselves.

When I was putting myself through university I worked as an automotive technician.  As people gained experience, many would move toward the sales desk, hoping to get out of the dirty technical work and into the cleaner sales end of things where management lived, but I was the opposite.  I went out of my way to take the technical roles and tried to avoid the sales side of things whenever I could.  I excelled at the technical work, quickly becoming the service manager, but had no interest in the slippery psychological side of the business.  Most business is of that slippery, psychological nature, as is a tragic amount of education.  For the people who work better at developing relationships and working their way up (which is to say most people), this is great, but for a guy with ASD it just feels dishonest.  We're not there to develop relationships that benefit our career, we're there to do the job at hand.  If I were better at the slippery psych I'd be up in management somewhere, but technical expertise isn't what gets you ahead even when that's the job at hand.

Education is a great example of human relationship building getting in the way of an important technical skill (learning).  Being willing to say what a teacher wants to hear rather than the truth as I see it is difficult for me.  I managed to earn degrees and diplomas in spite of my lack of tact and every grade I've ever been given was done so grudgingly rather than with encouragement.  What a teacher wants to hear usually isn't what's there and it's usually something designed to retain that status quo power structure built around relationship building.  If you can ingratiate yourself to the system/teacher/administrator you can count on it to help you socially climb it.  I have a great deal of trouble interacting with many managers for this reason.  They seem less interested in teaching and learning and more focused on personal advantage through networking.  It takes a special kind of manager to recognize my focus and support me in it rather than attacking me for it.

If we spent less time trying to align things socially for our own benefit and spent more time on tackling the issues themselves, I'd be over the moon, but it'll never happen, it isn't human nature.  I'm tempted to tell my son to see all the Es and Ns he possibly can and screw the rest of it, but that won't help him find a place in our Teflon coated social apparatus.  But spending lots of time and energy on something that doesn't come naturally to him (the nonsense of human relationship maintenance) means he's not developing his special understanding of the world to the best of his unique abilities.

Can you imagine if we had a school system that encouraged neurodiversity and enhanced it rather than trying to find ways to accommodate it by mitigating it into the same socially driven expectations box everyone else is content to be thinking in?  Can you then imagine a world where those enhanced, neurodiverse kids could go out into the world empowered by their differences instead of being socially embarrassed, belittled and beleaguered by them?

Previous Posts on ASD:

https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2018/04/nosce-aspie-te-ipsum.html

https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-happy-ship.html

https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/think-different.html

https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2017/11/stranger-in-strange-land.html

The Happy Ship

One of the more ASDish qualities I have is finding awards ceremonies difficult to fathom, especially graduations.  Being packed into a room with a big crowd of people is tricky enough.  Doing it under the constant threat of public acknowledgement is agonizing.  I get the sense that North Americans play this up more than in other places, so perhaps there are some cultural influences going on here too, but my savage disregard for awards seems to run deeper than just cultural dissonance.

I am in the process of weathering two days of back clapping by people who thrive on back clapping.  Their love of self aggrandizement (and don't kid yourself, graduation ceremonies are all about acknowledging and empowering the system) makes my hatred of it confusing to them.  I never feel more alienated from neurotypical people than I do when graduation rolls around.

The first was my son's grade eight graduation put on earnestly by his elementary school.  As in every other graduation I've had to weather, this one involved repeatedly congratulating the same students over and over again for being advantaged and conforming to norms in a manner so efficient that they produced outstanding results in a system designed for them.

And why shouldn't all those advantaged, neurotypical kids be awarded for these things?  They thrived in the artificial learning environment that is the classroom.  They arrived well fed and clothed and culturally aligned with the process that was about to assess them.  These students all had a clear understanding of how to manipulate that system to their own advantage.  It was amazing to see how many of the awards focused on that socializing aspect, recognizing compliance in maintaining social norms as the highest virtue.  Awards for helping to run the school appeared thick and fast with happy teachers handing them out while not having to hide their favouritism any more.

I showed up to school in Canada as an immigrant from a lower socio-economic bracket.  I don't think like other people and have trouble remembering who is who let alone how to create tight social bonds with teachers that would result in any kind of award.  My son gets to skip the immigrant thing and I've gone to great lengths to ensure that socio-economics aren't weighing him down like they did me, but I've also given him an even healthier dose of ASD than I have.  He got to sit through two hours of hearing about how all these wealthy, socially engaged and advantaged, neurotypical kids deserve to be honoured by a school system designed for them.  How do you think that made him feel?  He has struggled to finish his elementary career this week on a positive note.  And yes, this makes me angry.  Not only is the ceremony actively exclusive, but the social pressure involved in attending is absolute.

I just finished reading Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania: paddling the Pacific, so I've got nautical themes floating around in my head as I write this.  Paul is an odd duck himself.  He takes great pleasure in doing things differently and being alone doesn't freak him out in the way it does most people; I imagine he'd find graduation ceremonies as alienating as I do.

As I fidgeted in the humidity of that packed room, the idea of a cruise ship came to me.  On that happy ship are all those students predisposed to success in school.  They thrive in noisy rooms full of people, they are socially tuned to make best advantage of the entire school system, and that system is eager to reward their compliance.  Their communications skills allow them to create positive, supportive relationships with their peers, but most importantly, their teachers.  These uber-kids are like professional athletes.  They excel in an artificial environment and then get rewarded for it handsomely by the people intent on maintaining that system.

As if every day at school stepping into a shoe designed for them wasn't enough, they then get graduation where everyone gets to hear about this very abstract and specific version of excellence, for the same people, over and over again.  These are the students that I meet in high school who don't really care what Hamlet's motivations are and don't think there is anything to actually learn about human nature in literature, but they do want to know how to get the A+.  Education isn't self improvement for these people, it's a flag they wave around for social advantage.

From an outsider's perspective it feels at best patronizing and at worst like you're getting your face rubbed in it.  If you see any awards that aren't based on 'academic excellence' (whatever that means), they tend to be tertiary awards given as charity without any other criteria.  The best you can hope for is someone saying how hard you tried, but don't be patronized by that pat on the head.  For the neuro-atypical thinkers who don't work best in a classroom, but are learning all the same, there are no awards for all the books you read  (or wrote) that aren't on the curriculum.  There are no awards for all the art you made that didn't happen in class.  There are no awards for all the sports you participated in that didn't happen under the hammer of a phys.ed. teacher's critical eye.

My son's grades look remarkably like mine.  When you get grades like that they tempt you to say fuck it to school, which I'm sure makes the neuro-typical people who deliver them feel very powerful.  Assessment for compliance.  Assessment for conformity.  Assessment for learning?  Rarely.  Sitting through graduation ceremonies only exacerbates that feeling (I didn't attend any of mine).  I had a chat with my boy afterwards and reminded him that what teachers are willing to see in the very limited classroom environment is not in any way an accurate reflection of what he is capable of.  When you have the kind of intelligence that is very difficult to observe let alone quantify, part of your genius has to be nurturing it yourself.

We're all crossing the learning ocean, but some of us know
what the waves sound like because we're out in it on our own.

All those neurotypical kids on their big cruise ship crossing the learning ocean have the benefit of a system designed for them, but many of them also forget that they're actually on the learning ocean; the cruise ship becomes their whole world.  When they have to disembark in that glittering graduation ceremony of privilege rewarded, they are lost.  They didn't learn anything for its own sake, they learned things for grades and accolades.  They struggle to find their way in a world that doesn't always reward their privilege with success, though they'll never forget that feeling of privilege and will seek it again and again for the rest of their lives.

I ended our chat with this:  embrace your difference, don't surrender to their assessment.  And if you don't want to go and watch them clap each other on the back for being privileged, then don't.  It's the dropouts and outliers who tend to invent new things - no artist ever learned their art in a classroom.  The fighting spirit you develop in yourself getting beaten up by the school system will be what makes you strong when you don't have to suffocate in it anymore.  Whatever happens, never forget that learning isn't school.  Always be learning, never let them rob you of your creativity.

Think Different

A grade 8 career fair last week had my senior computer
engineering students giving hundreds of grade 8s their
first glimpse of virtual reality.

Being one of the first to set up virtual reality in our area, I've had the pleasure of putting hundreds of students in it for the first time.

When they first find themselves in Google's Tiltbrush, students tend to either scribble in 3d, write in space or, on occasion, try and build something intentionally three dimensional because they're realize where they're working.  With a steady stream of students trying it for the first time on Thursday, this kept happening until something different occurred.

When you get a student who knows how to draw they tend to sketch quite effectively in the virtual space, though it tends to be based on 2d thinking (like they're drawing on paper).  We had a girl who had never tried VR before but obviously knew how to sketch enter the HTC Vive virtual space, but rather than working in 2d she immediately began sculpting 3d shapes.  

Grade 8 Tilt Brush No Watermark by gking53 on Sketchfab

This immediately caught the eye of the gifted grade 12 I had operating the system.  He got our attention and we watched her build out complex, identifiable 3d shapes.  What made it more amazing was that she was doing this without moving her head.  She was drawing in 3d but from a 2d perspective without even seeing what she was doing.  Everyone around the VR sets stopped what they were doing to watch something special.

Afterwards her teacher came up to me and said she was ASD and not very verbal.  I imagine the school system sees her as an expensive non-standard student but what we saw was a kind of genius.  Our gifted VR operator certainly thought she was exceptional, and not in a bad way.  Perhaps it requires an exceptional intelligence to recognize another exceptional intelligence.

***

POND Family day.  One of the largest sources of data
on neuro-atypical children in the world and based in
Ontario!  Our family is part of the DNA research and
our son volunteered to get fMRI'd as well.

On Saturday my family attended the POND Network's family day at UofT.  Having kids can often act as a kind of mirror, showing you more about yourself.  Having an autistic son has made me more aware of how neuro-atypical I am (I've learned coping mechanisms, but they aren't my natural state).

Where other people seem to require social interaction in order to be happy, I am very much an introvert.  There are few cases where I find people who engage rather than drain me.  I tend to go to ground after a week of teaching because I'm all peopled out.

The research presented by the Ontario Brain Institute was very interesting, and frustrating.  Google has been doing fantastic open source computing work doing the heavy lifting with sequencing genome data for neuro-atypical brains, but the process is still in its infancy.  We need much more data from more people and faster computers to narrow down the genomic complexities of neurological issues like ASD.  The current thinking is that ASD isn't caused by one or even a few genes, but by complex interactions between hundreds of them.  Understanding this process will require many people providing data to a massive computing effort.

A moment occurred in the presentations when a parent asked how close they are to being able to give a biological rather than psychological diagnosis for ASD.  He asked because students with a physical disability will have the earth moved to be accommodated, but students with psychological disabilities are generally warehoused and ignored, especially if they aren't problematic.  The example he gave was in education, where a school will spend tens of thousands of dollars on ramps and elevators for a student in a wheelchair to be able to access the building and integrate with their peers, but won't offer a fraction of that to a student with a neurological issue.  This got a round of applause from the audience.

The speaker had an even better answer.  She said this is awkward because she's a psychiatrist and the issue isn't whether or not this is a physical or mental diagnosis but instead an indictment of the government and society in general's stigmatization of mental illness.  It doesn't end at mental illness though.  If you aren't neurotypical, you aren't accorded the same rights and access to care.  The goal should be to enable all people to reach their potential, the type of diagnosis is irrelevant.  This got a big round of applause too.

It also raised some hard questions around how we treat difference of thought.  My son has a great deal of trouble organizing and completing linear tasks, but he can make diabolically difficult lateral connections.  Having a conversation with him will force you to think laterally in ways you never had before (unless you're too stupid or lazy to make the effort, in which case he sounds nonsensical).  I'm a pretty good lateral thinker, but the connections he makes are astonishing, yet he's considered substandard because he's not at the level of his peers in a loud, socially driven classroom.  He almost failed French because he wouldn't speak it in front of the class - the kid with social anxiety and ASD wouldn't perform like the other kids would.  He's sat in a desk in a row in a crowded, loud classroom with neurotypicals who thrive in this environment, and then he's told he doesn't stack up to them.  Their accommodation is to give him access to a support room twice a week.
I often think that if the school system doesn't destroy him, my son is going to grow up to do something exceptional precisely because he doesn't think like everyone else.

If you look at a movie from the '80s you'll find that we've come a long way in how we treat gender and sexuality differences.  If you watch a film from the 1950s you'll see that we've come a long way in how we treat racial differences, but differences in how we think are still a place of stubborn prejudice.

Last year at a Head's meeting I suggested that neuro-atypical people should be in teaching.  They will cause it to change by offering different approaches that might improve the system as a whole.  Our head of guidance thought this was ridiculous.  Outliers shouldn't be teaching or even in education.  Education should be about moulding students to society's expectations.  I've never felt more disenfranchised by the education system than I did at that moment, and I've frequently felt disenfranchised by it both as a student and a teacher.  I guess people will always find a systemic reason to identify and diminish another group of people for their own benefit.

When my son was first diagnosed with ASD I was hoping for a cure, now I believe that he isn't thinking incorrectly, just not the same as most people, and that can offer us all a social advantage.  It would be very shortsighted of us to try and stamp out that difference.  His ability to make lateral connections of thought might one day allow him to solve a problem in a way that no one else could even conceive.  This is assuming the education system doesn't beat it out of him.  Instead of exploring his differences of thought he's repeatedly forced to perform neurotypical tasks in a substandard way and then rebuked for it.  There is no point in his day where he's allowed to explore his intelligence in the way that a gifted student is because his mode of thought is deemed foreign.

A good place to start would be to take away the distinction between physical and psychological diagnosis and treat all students to the same support.  That might mean breaking down the systemic, grade based process of education by introducing purely individually driven learning goals and achievements.  My son may not graduate on time because the system he is in seems designed specifically to not work with how he thinks, but he'll get there eventually, and it would be nice if he wasn't constantly being told he was a failure when he does.  The chances of him going on to develop his unique talents in spite rather than because of his education would be much greater if he doesn't feel like the rest of society thinks him a loss.

Education, like socio-economic status, is an invented sense of superiority.  If you do well at something designed specifically for you, have you really done anything of value?  If you struggle to do well in a system specifically designed to work against you, are you a failure? Neurotypicals might not be able to use their customized education to grant themselves social advantage any more, but can you imagine an education system in which every student was able to minimize their weaknesses while maximizing their strengths without some shortsighted idiot judging them?  The human race would flourish in the diversity of ideas that would bloom from those graduates.  We only have to get past our prejudices to get there.

***
Austim & History - where would we be without these people?
8 Inspiring People with ASD

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