I need to place us in context. When you talk about the medical model, the school model, I’m melting down. Those models are the parenting model, and abuse is the social model, the parenting model. Everyone needs to be anti-spanking, anti-punishment or things don’t change for anyone. Spanking is abuser-making, and acceptance can be difficult for the hurt. We must be allies to all children, even to the children of the masters of the universe, or we simply grow a new crop of abusers.
We are not the only group who is abused, many groups are abused, and all appeal to be exempted from the flood of abuse, I mean, rightly so, of course.
But this is not our problem – wait.
I mean, we didn’t make this problem.
It may indeed be our problem to solve – that’s one theory, right, that the diversity of the human brain is the adaptability of the human species, that it is some divergent mind that is always finding the new way forward. In that sense, perhaps this is indeed our job to solve it – but still, the problem isn’t part of us. It is very much part of general society, isn’t it? There is some dominant group, always, and all smaller groups get the smelly end, always, right?
Isn’t that the real problem?
Honestly, I have always felt it was my problem to solve, see something, say something, and I seem to be the only one who sees it. Again, it may indeed be autistic people’s problem to solve, and . . . and I’m sorry. I diverge from the divergent too, I guess. It seems unpopular to imagine a larger problem, I mean, that makes some sense, the Cause is already an umbrella, it is the whole conversation for its members, of course. I’m sorry. The universe is an onion, and the layers are connected. If the conversation ends somewhere, that line isn’t real and true, it’s a social construction at best. The universe and life do not stay in-category.
Meaning, you can’t really speak the truth when you must “stay on topic.” If we abused ourselves, we would be the topic, not the case, or not the relevant case, we seem to be the topic when we are not the problem here, every group does. Again, we are not the only abused group.
I spent my life on the attempt to understand this larger, all-group problem. I knew I was odd, I just thought I was clever and lucky, I had an insight, a gift or a curse of some kind. I had done it, pretty much had my understanding of the problem before I had a child get diagnosed ASD and then it started to sink in about me. But not before I gave myself a rare, autistic level understanding of abuse and the mythical Human Nature. It’s been a good theory, things get clearer, more things get explained – finding out I’m autistic hardly hurts it, it’s that good. Worried me for a bit there, I admit.
It’s an answer to “why the abuse?” the question every group, and frankly every person asks but only rhetorically – really, no-one is surprised. That’s the Human Nature myth: no matter how badly they behave, no explanation is really required. ABA torture of children? Meh, dumb doctors. No reason! They just don’t know any better, and when people don’t know, of course they torture children! This is the explanatory power of Human Nature, no horror is “unnatural.” Of course.
The answer is punishment turns bad to good.
They think it’s good, threats and force, they think when their children survive it and go off to war, looking for strangers to kill, that this is “good.”
It’s what “punishment” means, bad is good, a deterrent is magic that turns bad abuse to good . . . good what? Teaching? – but it colours all identical looking abuse forever. Wars are advertised to “teach them a lesson.” The NRA tried to bring the primary schoolers’ behaviour into their defense about Newtown. Not kidding. The bad guys already know what I try to tell the libchallengeds, that we have already bought the false principle and can therefore buy it in almost any sick form whatsoever.
Not kidding.
I want us all to remember, we are asking for an end to our abuse – and their entire system is abuse, they do it to their own children on the regular. We are never going to reach smug happy abuse survivors that their abuse is a problem, they are proud of how strong it has made them – strong means mean. Aggressive and insensitive. Your “problem” is their one size fits all solution, discipline and strength, and here’s the rub – we have to stop them doing it to themselves first, or they are never going to hear anyone.
I climb the walls listening to people speak as if the abuse happens by accident, and people only have to be told. It is our entire system. It is going to take more than a leaflet campaign.
We want to do this not just to save ourselves, but everyone. The ways that we want to teach, the ways of treating us and dealing with us, people need to learn that for everyone, and that means understanding that the bad stuff happens from error and will, not by accident or automatically – and not because of anything about us as a group, but because it is the forever policy of mainstream human society. The magical Human Nature ends all inquiry, and if we are not allowed to question why the abuse, then we are not being effective, we are simply pulling babies out of the river and not minding that society throws all of its babies in the river and more importantly, not stopping it.
I’m autistic and I know it now – but spanking is still the First Cause of all human problems. It is our job to fix it, perhaps, because the abuse fails to convert the same number of the ND to its cause than it does the rest of the world, and that immunity is our superpower, maybe.
Jeff
May 2nd., 2022
Abuse with an Excuse 