So That Was 2008

Well, that was 2008, the year I was convinced I would not see coming to an end. With the most certainty one can have about what will happen in the course of a few hours, I will in fact be making it to 2009. In a sense, it scares me. This is for several reasons. One is the fact that I’d pretty much pulled myself through the year by holding on to the idea that, no matter how hard life would be, it’d be over before the end of the year. Of course, the idea that I’d die before the end of 2008, also scared me, because I was supposed to focus on the future so much. This was particularly in the spring, when there seemed to be soem perspective on the future, but I knew it to be relatively distant in time – too distant for me to oversee.

However, in a sense, I pushed away my suicidal thoughts, that had been with me since late 2007, in early 2008 by thinking I’d die before the end of the year anyway. Some depressed people use an imminent death as a reason to become suicidal, but I used it as a reason not to be suicidal. This caused my life to improve in some ways, in that I gained privileges, was enabled to go home and connect to the Internet again. In fact, objectively, my life from around the summer on should’ve been quite enjoyable: I have a boyfriend whom I see at least twice a week, I have plenty of time for my hobbies and interests, and I can do my Open University psychology courses (which is really just one of my hobbies, I’m not likely to enroll in the degree program anytime soon) in a relatively manageable pace. And indeed, for a while, I learned to find enjoyment in my life activities. After all, if I truly were going to die before the end of the year, why was I wasting my precious time worrying about it? How would I like to spend my life if I had only this limited tiem? Well, it’s pretty much how I ended up spending my life – except of course the future planning that I have to do. I, however, tried to pretend that there is some future when doing planning with the social worker, and just have as much enjoyment as I could the rest of the time, but I still failed mostly – in both ways.

In October, I suddenly realized that maybe my life wasn’t going to end in 2008, and I alternated between impulsive plans about my future and feeling depressed and slightly suicidal (as in wishing that I would get into a car accident or something and reading about death online, but never really planninf to actively kill myself) for the next two months. From early November on, it was mostly the latter, because it was made clear to me many times that my plans were not going to be followed through on: going home was not an option because student housing would kick me out, Werkenrode doesn’t want to plan for me living with them in any way at all until I’ve changed enough, and I have not and am pessimistic that I ever will, and I was turned down by the mental health living assistance agency. This meant that I was back at the point where I was in December of 2007, only it was one year later, and this was not a positive thing.

Of course, you would say, there were some enjoyable aspects about my life in 2008. As I said, I started dating my first boyfriend this year. While this is a good thing indeed, I find it particularly hard to see that. Similarly, in 2007, I had more social contacts than I had before, for example with people in the student housign complex. However, I was still overwhelemd, depressed and eventually suicidal. It is kind of strange: when I look at how I’d want to live my life, I wouldn’t change much, but I still feel overloaded.

Overload. Is that the thing I’ve been writing about ever since 2004, and each year writing my review and resolving to change that in the coming year? I’m not sure, since I didn’t discover the word till 2007, but I think it is. Maybe the correct term is different – after all, in 2001 and 2002, I referred to it as “compensation”, ie. compensating for my blindness -, or maybe there is no correct term at all, but I think it’s pretty much the same. Maybe it is due to a problem in executive functioning, as the psychologist at the Deventer training center for autistics hypothetized. Maybe it is due to something else. Can I change it? I’m not sure, but I’m currently quite pessimistic. I always ended my yearly reviews with the hope that I’d improve my life (in this respect) in the next year, but I can’t say that now. It’s all just too unclear for that. And that is probably the hardest thing about living past 2008: each year, I was certain that in the next year, I’d be taking steps to improve my life and thereby lessen the feeling that the world overwhelms me, and I knew at least partly which steps to take to achieve that goal. I always had some belief that within the next year, there’d be some important change that would improve my situation in this regard. Not anymore: while 2009 is going to bring at least one important change – in that I will leave my current ward -, I’m pessimistic that it will change my mental status for the better. And, after all these years of resolving to change and not achieving the goal, I feel that this time it’s just, well, not really going to get any better – and I’ve lost the hope that any turn of the year, to 2009 or else, will do something about this stuff.

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Thoughts on a Sermon

Last Sunday, I went to church with a friend, who is a member in some type of pentecostal church. Oh well, it calls itself evangelical, but I found out that this is one of the names commonly used by pentecostal churches in the Netherlands, because of the negative, sect-like connotation to pentecostalism. In her church, the minister held a sermon based on readings fron Jonah. I always thought that the tale of Jonah and the whale was just a children’s game, but it is apparently based on the Bible. Jonah is ordered by God to go to some non-believing city to preach, and indeed heads off, but goes instead to another city. While on the boat to that city, God causes a storm that almost breaks the ship. Everyone on board prays to their respective gods, except for Jonah, who is asleep down in the ship. After nothing works, they figure out that Jonah must be the cause of the storm, and they throw him overboard. Jonah is then eaten by a fish and stays in its stomach for three days and three nights. While there, he starts to pray, and God causes the fish to vomit and spit Jonah out on a beach. Then, God orders Jonah to go to the non-believing city again, and he goes and preaches, but only the bad news about God’s judgment. However, the people in that city have heard that Jonah drowned and now see him in their city alive, and it gets them all to convert to I assume that must be judaism since it’s in the old testament. The point of the sermon was that God is calling you, and you can listen or decide to turn your back. If you turn your back, that’s fine, but you will likely wander seeking another path to follow – like Jonah, who didn’t choose to just stay home, but rather went onto a boat to another city rather than the one God commanded him to go to. The world can help you, of course – like in the story of Jonah, when he arrived at the harbor, there was a ship to the city he wanted to go to immediately -, but it’s the question whether the world will help you keep on the right track. However, God supposedly isn’t a god who will give up on every human who ever turns their back onto Him – after all, even the most faithful believers will sometimes not listen (Jonah used to be a faithful follower) -, but He will keep calling you and hoping you’ll come to Him again – but this may happen at the moment when you’re most down in the depths of where you could get in this world.

There was some emphasis, as I found out there generally is in pentecostalism, on the dichotomy between God and satan (often referred to as “the world”, as if the world as a whole is bad): you follow either one, or the other, and you choose whether you want to be helped by God, or by “the world”, assuming “the world” will only help you get into trouble (with a reference to some parable). The minister referred to it as “conscience”, which comes from “knowing together”: with whom do you want to have common knowledge? There’s always somewhere some person/entity who will approve of whatever you decide to be right for you. The thing with the concept of “the world” as one bad thing, like satan, however, confuses me: firstly, it erroneously connotes that no non-Christian can have morality, because it is eitehr (the christian) God or satan. This may be true from a religious point of view, in that no doing good can be good enough without Jesus Christ due to generational curse, but in practical life of course it’s nonsensical. But secondly, more importantly, is that there is not one single road “the world” will lead you onto. Actually, this is the very problem with relying on “the world” for your decisions about right and wrong and your destined direction: which part of “the world” will you follow? The alleged wandering over the earth that satan is supposed to do, would be totally illogical if it were just what being evil, or not being a christian, does to you, but it is not so illogical given how most human connections in this world work: most people are eager to be there for one another, as long as they can find enough common ground to stand on. This was actually what touched me the most: there is no being in the world who will be there for another truly as they are.

Now, in the pentecostal church, neither is God. Even though pentecostals emphasize the personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, there’s no way that they will accept that humans come to Jesus as they are. Not that they should lie to God – one of the other points of the sermon was that God, being omniscient, will know that sinners are sinful even if they pretend in their religious behaviors to be the superlative of piety -, but of course they should first stop sinning and start obeying God, hopefully through their conviction that this is the right thing to do, not because God commands them to do so. Pentecostals take the Bible very literally, or at least, that’s what I read when I read up on this movement. I am not sure how this goes for this particular church or minister, but I for one will not take the Bible’s truths about right and wrong and the practical meaning of one’s life experiences as absolute and eternal truths. Therefore, I don’t think a literalist will understand why the sermon touched me, or rather, they will think they understand and try to convert me, because, after all, the fact that this sermon touches me proves that I am touched by God, like Jonah, in the deepest depth of my life, and should finally come and listen to Him and He will drag me out of this horrible state like he got Jonah out of the fish. In this very abstract sense, it will not hurt me: the worst that could happen, if I came to the christian God, is that I would stir up fury in the Invisible Pink Unicorn and She would make holes in all my socks. I have logical objections to coming to some particular organized religion – after all, just because a religion has 1.9 billion followers, doesn’t mean it’s the truth (in ancient Greece, the whole world the Greeks knew had their religion, and if they had had the means to go on mission, they’d have “evangelized” [or its ancient Greek equivalent] the rest of the world). But I have more practical objections to what sharing my views would get other people to think of me.

The thing is, of course it’s true that following “the world” will mean you wander. Some do it figuratively; I do it literally. Now that I have a home to go to if I get unquiet on the ward, it’s said to be all fine, but last year, the exact same behavior landed me on the police station several times and was called dangerous by my doctor. I do it figuratively, too, and the end result is a year and counting on the locked ward. I don’t think that if I suddenly start praying to God and coming to some pentecostal church and whatever, it will be solved. I take religious texts – and philosophical texts – to hold metaphysical meaning, not literal meaning. After all, Jonah could never have been in a fish for three days and three nights. But then, well… yes… so I can’t follow the whole world. This has nothing to do with religion; it’s simply impossible. And who will I follow then? Not some pentecostal minister, who is as much a human being as every other human being in my life; the simple fact that he claims to preach God’s word, does not cause him to be the keeper of truth. Well, it’s kind of, well, complicated, since there is no-one in this world who is the keeper of truth. Of course, the simplest answer is, follow your own path. A hell of a lot easier said than done.

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Young Females and Autistics and Sexual Predators, Oh My!

A few weeks ago, a Facebook group was launched that aims to warn young females against the potential danger autistic males supposedly pose. According to the group’s creator, autistics are more likely to be rapists than the general population. I think by now the group should’ve been removed, given how many people reported it as offensive, but not only is it offensive, it is extremely inaccurate. Here are the facts.

The whole reasoning behind the autistics as rapists stupidity is a careless lumping together of autism stereotypes. Supposedly, autism is like having an extreme male mind. This idea was populated by Simon Baron-Cohen, but only in the sense that autistics are better than neurotypicals in things that require good insight in the way systems work, and worse in comprehension of other people’s emotional states. This same difference is found between males and females. However, Baron-Cohen never said that autistics are more likely to behave like extreme males in every aspect of their lives. Why don’t we warn young females against all males anyway? And then again, of course, the fact that males are more likely to be sexual predators than females is just a statistic, and this in turn is likely in part due to the fact that female sexual offenders are underreported because of the popular myth that sexual abuse has to do with the inequality between males and females and therefore females wouldn’t ever exhibit unprovoked violence. Well, sure! Let’s warn young females – and young males – against getting into any relationships at all, huh? Stay pure, stay innocent, stay away from anything sexual until you’ve found the man/woman of your dreams and gotten married. Oh my.

The nonsensical reasoning about autistics and sexual assault goes further with a screwed explanation of theory of mind. According to the writer, autistics cannot imagine that people would have any viewpoints other than their own. Well, to be fair, the majority cannot intuitively sense another person’s feelings and/or doesn’t know how to respond appropriately to indirect messages. Of course, this could in some cases lead to sexual assult, if the perpetrator doesn’t understand that the victim is trying to communicate that she doesn’t want to have sex, or that the perpetrator doesn’t know how to respond to the situation – for example, he knows that she is uncomfortable, but doesn’t know how to comfort her in this particular situation, and erroneously draws the conclusion that having sex with her will make her feel better. Of course, if the perpetrator happens to be autistic, it is very easy to point to autism’s features as a reason for the act. However, in reality, ambiguous communication is a factor in many cases of rape, the vast majority not involving any autistic at all. In fact, I have a collection of audio lectures in legal psychology, and one of them involves exactly this: the girl believes she was raped, but the boy claims she really gave consent for the intercourse. Neither of the people involved is reported to be autistic. Willem Wagenaar, the lecturer, lists some findings about how males and females interpret signals about sexual behavior. For example, 54% of males and 31% of females believe that a woman has given consent for intercourse if she first consents but later says “No”. The discrepancy between the 54% and 31% could obviously lead to rape from the woman’s perspective, and, if the man were autistic, a feature of his disability could easily be blamed, but autism was not among the selection criteria for the people being interviewed at all. (Oh for your information, the questions were asked about what a woman would mean with the signals she sends out, so these figures are not meant to reinforce the man as perpetrator and woman as victim bias.) Besides, the statement about autistics’ lack of theory of mind is far too extreme: the vast majority of autistics do understand clear directions about what to do or not to do. Very few autistics would misinterpret it or respond inappropriately if their sexual partner told them “I don’t want sex,” and if they did rape their partner anyway, autism would not be to blame.

The writer also claims that autistics would exhibit violence if they didn’t get their way. I could explain the mechanisms of meltdown here, that don’t involve “not getting your way” at all, but I think it’s insignificant. After all, many autistics don’t become violent at all and many others, like myself, might only become verbally aggressive (which I must admit having done to my boyfriend on a few occasions, but he, also autistic, never has to me). A limited number become physically aggressive and I can’t deny that some might become sexually abusive. Then again, domestic violence in relationships in general is very common, so there ought to be an extreme number of offences committed by autistics in order to make autism a significant risk factor for domestic violence or sexual abuse. Well, there is no such statistic. Autism does not significantly increase the likelihood that someone will become a rapist, or for that matter commit any violent crime.

The group owner paints a scenario about an autistic man and a neurotypical woman in a relationship, where the autistic man wants sex and the neurotypical woman declines. The man supposedly doesn’t understand that the woman doesn’t want sex, and/or gets distressed by the change in his plans. He then rapes the woman in a meltdown. Oh well, I can’t deny that such a scenario could exist, but to be honest I don’t really see autism there. Does the writer know in how many neurotypical relationships a similar scenario occccurs? If she was raped in such a scenario by someone who happens to be autistic, or knows someone who was, she could very easily blame the autism for the act, just like she could’ve blamed the man’s muslim religion if he’d happened to be a muslim, or his African-American descent if he’d been black, or any sort of minority position if he’d possessed it, or, the most popular one, his being a male if he didn’t belong to any minority group.

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