Fairness: the vulnerability law, What to expect

The law of vulnerable adult groups covers us ethically, it establishes that we must not be taken advantage of, financially, or emotionally, by anyone engaging in any type of support relation with us. Any support relation, that could be a formally employed or charity placed support or aspies showing each other support in the self organised scene.

Oh so nothing bad or hurtful ever happens in an autism service? ... obviously not so, but all bad happenings are breaches of vulnerability, the protection against them is there notionally and conceptually. Its enforceability in practice is what needs building stronger. The defined duty to vulnerability includes to prevent corruption, and what prevents corruption is transparency and accountability. So all losses of direct voice and accountability for aspies about service issues are breaches of the vulnerability law capable of contributing to suicidal feelings in persons made more vulnerable. Hence structures like ANS and regular participation in the autism local plans can never be taken away. ANS's imminent issue of a book compiled from a spread of ordinary aspie life experience, An Ordinary Life Too, will greatly strengthen the body of facts that establishes this. It will advance the accountability over uncorrupt protection of vulnerabilities, that comes from strengthening the claim of permanence upon these participative structures.

What does this mean you can expect in Elas, and any Asperger society self-organised independently from the problematic big charities?

• You are among folks who know it would be liably against the vulnerability law ever to turn socially corrupt and backstabbing to escape from answering a fairness issue, like the former Phad charity in Fife did which led very quickly to its break-up and demise in 2011 a bad outcome for all.
• Fairness is never an obsession. Fairness is never called an obsession, because fairness is a red line ethic, and red line ethics are never obsessions.
• For any fairness issue in your life that affects your relationship with any other members, e.g, something which their own invitation involved you in and resulted in an unfairness.Your pursuit of it, time unlimited, will automatically have the reliable solidarity and backing of the rest if the group. No one will ever dismiss it as an autistic rigid thought pattern or obsessive.
• You will never accidentally catch any member doing that when they think you are out of hearing. You will never be let down by a friend with a long back period of discovering this way that they were never real.
• You will never find the group dug in to stay noncommittal about your fairness issue.
• You will never see this include a member refusing to reverse a serious mistake that had worsened the wrong, such as the mistake of apologising to the party that wronged you after being lied to by them.
• You will never see the group suspend a normal routine of going for a drink after meetings, and instead all hasten home uncomfortably, by reason of wanting to avoid the issue.
• You will never hear anyone express in blunt words and a cutting tone of wordly-wise macho boredom the emotionally abusive view that you may have to live with a social injustice unsolved.
• You will never hear anyone argue that fairness to you should fall in the greater interest of the group.
• You will never find that the group get sick of the subject and start to sanction or socially reject hearing about it, when that leaves you with them expecting you to live in acceptance of it.
• You will never hear anyone use the word "unfortunately" as a weapon for any of these maltreatments of you.
• You will never see another member continue to belong to, and hear him keep mentioning its place in his social life, anything which has wronged or unjustly excluded you, if he has said nothing about efforts on your behalf to change that. Particularly if his own invitation had led to the wrong happening in the first place.
• You will never have anyone believe that you should live in acceptance of, and stop fighting, a wrong which has not happened to them.

These are not points that any autism group, any group in any support scene, can discuss and decide not to accept. You will not suffer these things because the group will ensure conscientiously that each other know, that it would break the vulnerability law, with many potential lines of liability, for any of them to exploit anyone's vulnerability by doing any of these unfair unsupportive things to them. They are all acts of emotional abuse, for they betray and kick away wellbeing and result in exclusion experience. Hence they all risk, as is well established illegal, well-motivating suicides by it. They are all actions whose breach of the vulnerability law is serious enough that they risk life. The members of every aspie group have a duty to ensure each other's awareness of this, to be vulnerability compliant.

You do not have to be a suicide risk to have this protection, e.g, you may be articulate enough with writing to fight back, but the group will know that if they wrong you they cause suicidal ideation in a less articulate person who sees it happen and encounters any similar wrong, now or later. So, because the group dares never wrong that person, they dare never wrong you either. Backing for total literalist fairness is your claim of right.

Maurice Frank

NAS slaps aspie grassroots in the face again

The multiple signed letter to the NAS's trustees, just last year, on ordinary aspies' dissatisfaction with NAS's lack of accountability and responsiveness towards us, us on whose behalf NAS supposedly exists, might never have happened. NAS's Scottish director Jenny Paterson has shown, openly in her emailed reply to an enquiry from ELAS, that the big charity culture continues as determined as ever to seek to get away with arrogance.

This is a one-off answer, which an ELAS enquiry on their general standard of responding to contacts extracted. It followed 7 months of total silence from her towards the personal contact previously made. Hence it does not follow a spurt of correspondence. Yet she is rude enough to write a bureaucrats’ closure, a proclamation of final answer:
"this is my final position on our campaigning plans and priorities, and I am unable to offer any further assistance regarding child authorship."

Even nasty bureaucrats usually only do that after a spurt of correspondence when they have run out of evasions. She does it in her one-off late answer to something she had simply sat silent on for 7 months. See how aggressive that is? Hostile to an issue of maltreated aspie kids, an agenda the whole time against them and doing anything for them. Also she does this deviously so as never to actually answer what she was asked! For she was asked simply to mention that wronged child authors exist, in every literature that mentions or advertises successful child authors. That is not campaigning that needs any resources or time priorities allocated to it. She answers only to the practicality of big extra campaigning then rudely shuts down all contact with her on child authors at all, KNOWINGLY LEAVING NEVER ANSWERED THE SIMPLE NO-EFFORT ACTION THEY CAN TAKE!

Even her timing is sneaky: she sent this email on Sep 20, just 2 days AFTER the Autism Europe conference here in Edinburgh, which had NAS involvement, had ended. Avoiding this being out as an issue at conference time.

All autism workers and projects: you can’t ethically afford any connection with NAS, with an organisation that behaves like this.

The hidden wave of women with undiagnosed Asperger’s

A new story on increase of aspie self-awareness in women. seventhvoice.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/the-hidden-wave-of-women-with-undiagnosed-aspergers-syndrome

But it agonisingly says some of them are getting rejected diagnoses and interpreted to have personality disorders instead, by closed minded conservative psychologists, likely men. THIS LONG INTO AUTISM AWARENESS.

I have commented there on what support we the whole aspie scene need to give to these women. It's simply what I have always said is what all the undiagnosed newcomers need, as remembered from when I was one: and clearly the NAS is still doing nothing to provide or advise them on this. Simply, they should join the aspie scene in some form, first, while they are still undiagnosed. So that they are backed up by our perception of them before they go for diagnosis. Before the diagnoser can say no, he is landed with having to explain that backing from other aspies to the grounds for why you are one.

Maurice Frank

reforming the law of harrassment

The ASSGO site's parliamentary petition (UK level) petition.parliament.uk/petitions/161325 on changing the law of harrassment to be adaptable to lack of social insight. To stop it being applied manipulatively to oppress an autistic person so as to always blame them for situations one-sidedly and lead to life control by the likes of ASBOs or restraining orders.

30 degrees and where is the NAS?

A petition for Boys to be able to wear shorts in hot weather instead of trousers at secondary schools has my fervent solidarity, that can't surprise anyone.

But look at the obvious fact: such a petition should not still be necessary, after at least c15 years of sensory issues being openly known about through the autism scene. The continued existence of school uniforms at all, and of this gender discriminatory cruelty in them, is a mass maltreatment of kids by all the autism charities that have not chosen to campaign against them. The NAS, all this time, has said nothing opposing school unforms at all. Its leaders have sought to hobnob around with politicians and enjoy careers for thenselves based on the NAS just being formulaic and unchallenging in the stuff it says. By it leaving aspie boys, both diagnosed and missed, suffering a bodily abuse. Including in 30 degree heat, as the parent making this petition cites.

This when at the NAS's own conference in Aberdeen on 27 Mar 15, Luke Beardon described personally knowing a case, again through the NAS! of a man whose school coping and outcomes had been unjustly entirely wrecked by this uniform abuse, which made him totally unable to focus in exams.

Maurice Frank

You pass on the word

See, I want wronged child authors publicised, circulated more into public knowledge as an issue. Exposed as an issue. The world is still too oblivious, and that is a further abuse of every victim.

There is a site on youth mental health, with health links on it, that I have succeeded in getting to remove their link to Luke Jackson's notorious F+G. I had put to them the damage and emotional wrong done to abuse survivors if any book attributed to a child author is publicised without publicising that wronged child authors exist.

I say attributed because the Times of 16 Aug 2002, among other profiles, revealed that it was not an unaided child author work at all, as it was structured into a book by his mother and would not exist without that.

Getting the link wiped is better than not doing anything, it's a success to count as necessary - but it's not what I actually wanted. What I wanted was to get wronged child authorship mentioned on their site, publicised to a further audience. They had an obvious logical duty to do that after they had had the Jackson book link on their site for some finite period. They could have kept the link so long as they told about wronged child authors.

Instead: "I’m sorry for any anguish this has caused by including this link on our website. At the time of producing the content for this page we were linking to information and resources we thought would be useful for our audiences. Following your concerns this information has now been removed so as not to cause any further distress."

Kindly put, but - this is more of that terrible human problem of avoiding responsibility for facts, avoiding taking positions. They have chosen avoidance of the whole thing, instead of the act of compassionate help to hurt wronged oppressed kids, the action of actually passing on the word about wronged child authors.

You pass on the word.

Maurice Frank

Something not right

Idea. Should we try writing the words "Something not right" in autistic spectrum sites? In hope that folks searching on the idea of something not right will find autism info, which they would never have thought to search for. Try it out here.

This comes from a conversation with an aspie of my age, but of much more recent diagnosis even than me, and I found 35 an unjustly late age for it, and more accidentally discovered than me too. At least I have always known that my strongly felt anti-school cause led rationally to discovering aspieness, from its impact on school problems, at the tipping point of 2002-3 when there emerged a self-organised aspie scene no longer under the medical umbrella.

It is screamingly unjust frustrating and upsetting, that in unknown numbers there are unknown aspies out there, who have heard of autism, can't miss all media that mention it, but no connecting of it to themselves has occurred to tbem. Some of whom will eventually discover it by chance, e.g. from someone else's reaction to a problem, maddeningly late in life, and with all the baggage of relief and vindication and self-explanation. The implication of the chanciness all caring aspies will choke on. That some who would feel the relief and the liberation from unfair social challenges, who would welcome the aspie scene's support and join in it keenly, never will, because the chance will never come and they will live out their lives with social unfairness and withdrawal without ever knowing about aspieness. If we pass them in the library or on the train we can't know it.

We must do anything we can think of about it. It's a key reason why the hidden disabilities need maximum banging on about. Conditions you may not at a glance notice exist, or notice in yourself as a familiar condition you have heard of or that carries any bodily difference: just as society for long missed that they exist, you can miss having them. So you need prompting to contemplate whether any hidden disability matches with personal problems you are aware of. But not a mass screening of everyone by doctors, we can't want that because not everyone would accept it or answer the questions and it would be too connected to sinister mental health screening. Indeed it's important to have the aspie scene supportive of your grounds for diagnosis before you go to the doctor, in case they are too little autism aware and want to see it as mental health instead.

In his long life of missing it, tbe aspie I spoke to mentioned he had a feeling of "something not right". I realise I have often heard a sentiment like that - though I never felt that way, because it was so obvious that school and unthinking laddish characters were what was not right, not me. But social frustrations and difference to the cool kids can often make folks feel not right. It is clearly a sentiment in the lives of many undiscovered aspies at risk of remaining missed for life. So might some of them search on the concept of "not quite right", as part of exploring their feelings and trying to understand life and their feeling? It must surely be fair to try to make that search lead to learning about being aspie.

Maurice Frank

The item the customer chooses is the item the customer chooses

I no longer go to Holland + Barrett. Not that I went there much, give how dry in the mouth most of their stuff is. I have returned my points card to them, repudiated and cut in half, with a strongly worded note and email.

It's not because there was anything wrong with a bought item - in my view. It's actually the offensiveness of the opposite situation - the till cashier having the arrogance to insist on changing an item that I thought was okay and did not want changed, and when I was in a hurry. It was nothing more than a single vegetarian scotch egg! For which, their shop in Dunfermline Kingsgate mall, on the cashier's opinion not mine that it was "all broken", ignored that I was in a hurry and persisted in expecting me to wait tor them to change it, until instead I stormed out not buying anything. As it was labelled reduced and the replacement would not have been, they were also attempting a rip-off by this.

As I have told H+B: For customers in some vulnerable social groups, who I have experience of working with - that's not only autism - changing their chosen purchase for another against their will would constitute illegal monetary taking advantage of. This case flags up against H+B that prospect. No literal minded aspie can disagree with that. H+B stands under shadow of being a place of risk to go to, risk to more manipulable customers and insulting offence to all customers.

Until H+B stands nationally committed to blank cheque automatic backing of the wronged customer in absolutistly absolutistly every case ever. And H+B would not do this. Its customer services e-address, for which its website promises "we'll respond within 24 hours", never responded at all. Either to the first email warning that unless they gave the right answer I would repudiate my card and never go them, nor to the copy of the notice I handed in with my cut in half card to their biggest local shop. It's critical to civil liberty and not having controlled lives, that high handedness by shops must never exist and must never win.

Maurice Frank

BBC openly prevents a civil liberty question getting answered

For a month, here www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b077n7ks/scotland-2016-12042016 is a BBC election debate broadcast Apr 12.

There is a question on mental health. It is in progress when, at time 39:52, Claire Muir of Psychiatric Rights Scotland, a survivor of sectioning that was proved wrong after the event, raises the civil liberty question of mental health sectioning. She tells them about the United Nations, UNCRPD, now taking a position against forced mental health treatments, for their bad and traumatic outcomes in many cases, and seeking for all countries to abolish them. You then see the BBC presenter immediately switch the debate back to resources and stigma, so deciding that the point on forced treatment will not be answered, and she saves the 4 politicians from having to answer it. She directs them away from it.

And indeed, none of them do answer it. Citizens' safety, your safety, from a loss of liberty, was shut out of politics, on open TV and by the broadcaster that never stops claiming worldwide admiration. Now do you still trust the BBC? Or kid yourself other than that it is part of a political class intentionally filtering and manipulating the range of issues to be recognised?

Maurice Frank

phased avoidance

SHARED ON FACEBOOK. VERY INSIGHTFUL:

YOUTH: I think I'm [insert neurotype, sexual orientation, or gender expression.]
SOCIETY: No you're not. You're too young to know that. You're just going through a phase.
ADULT: I think I'm [insert neurotype, sexual orientation, or gender expression.]
SOCIETY: No you're not. If you were, you would have known a long time ago.

'tis a bit serious innit?

Be angry, be very angry, because a celebrity tells you not to. Be angry because they have a public voice but you have no voice in answer.

Stephen Hawking's interview in the Radio Times (not a mag I've actually bought for a generation): oh no don't be angry because then how will you have any hope in your life, just laugh at yourself instead. The media select in favour of messages like that, to give to audiences whose own lives have been less fortuitous so are less easy to just shrug off with levity. By definition, any celebrity's life has turned out well and they are in no place to give throwaway advice to the rest of us to be accepting. That's what self-deprecating and laughing at your own misfortunes is - accepting, a choice of docility.

Yes this can be said even when the celebrity has had a serious disease for a long time and we as yet have not. Hawking establishes that, if you think about it. He has been wronged by biological chance - big time, besides being lucky still to live so long with it. But he has not been wronged by personal agency, by people choosing to do stupid things to his life and prospects, which they could have chosen not to do. Instead he has had a very successful life despite his physical condition, so he is in a position to be reflective on that and to choose to take life lightly. Not so any of the aspies who have been messed with by school or other youth social services. Not so anyone who has had a life opportunity stolen from us wrongly by the consciously choosing wrong action of jerks.

However physically healthy we are as yet, we have lived in a world where that is chancy and is a shadow over anyone's coping with any loss. If you laugh off a wrong you accept it. If you accept a wrong you do yourself further wrong and give the evil a victory, because you live the life it wrongly gave you instead of the life you justly should have had. Where the hell is your HOPE if you do that?

Folks who have lost careers to achieve struggle against an injustice, if they succeeded in their objective then the anger that defined their lives was clearly a good and a right choice: a right choice for themselves not just for others. Meaning and rebuilding in their life: which is hope. Sometimes though it's not a choice. Sometimes the angry path is also your only survival course of action. Sometimes the folks around you can't yet see that or are fighting against wanting to believe it, making it all harder. I did not lose any career by choosing the survival path of bringing down my teachers. Only such as who still believed the teachers' impractical fantasies thought I did.

Besides, after all the pressuring weight to succeed put on me from quite small childhood by fantasists with irresponsible imaginations, I could never have coped with having a science career like Hawking's: there was too much predecided success in it, when all the sceptical scrutiny by scientists of each other's work goes out of its way to set you up to fail. You can see the tensions and fears of that in The Big Bang Theory, including the episode Hawking himself appeared in, devastating Sheldon by telling him his mathematical theory forged in hard sweat was wrong. The bad way Hawking's ex-wife Jane experienced the peer pressure for atheism and closed minded anti-paranormalism, also shows there is no light hearted dream life in a science career. There could well be moral challenges against toeing institutional lines. There is a dishonest rot at the physics scene's core, which explains why it has been stuck in a rigid rut unable to progress its ideas much for the whole lifetime since quantum physics was discovered.

Does Hawking as a lifelong Labour supporter disagree with the anger of early socialists at unjust life conditions? That was hope in anger. Even properly peaceful civil rights movements were still angry. We owe anger most morally of all to anyone affected by murder: how sick for anyone to take life light heartedly in a world where we know it exists. How dare any of us not live morally serious low mood angry lives just for that reason? Aren't we all safer because angry journalists have gone after major miscarriages of justice? Humour sometimes has a use in getting serious messages across, but it must never replace seriousness. Because ripped-off consumers are angry and share their stories, we can keep trading standards needing to show an effort, and avoid buying beds with wooden dowel joints in the corners that can snap?

It was by anger that I discovered being aspie at all. By retaining my libertarian passion against school, by following all the new awarenesses of causes of school problems. By hating and not following any of pop-psychology's transparently evil propaganda for accepting hurts passively and letting go: that way offered hopeless loss. The aspie scene, all its writing outlets, recognition of my sensory issue and its cause, employment support taking account of it, ELAS, ANS: I got all these much needed good things, condition of life made much more just, THANKS TO STAYING ANGRY.

If I was right to continue the anger against my school that helped to discredit and close it, so was the schoolmate who wrote online here "I left that school an angry person".

Maurice Frank

Auntie Psychiatry

A recommendation for an inspired cartoon blog critiquing psychiatry,
www.auntiepsychiatry.com, by Frances Culshaw.

Vivid bright and colourful, like you can't be on these gooogle blogs, It has a great scrollable format letting you scroll a year of incisive cartoons in one sitting. It is anti-psychiatry as a system, its mechanical resort to major drugs and its dangerous undemocratic powers. Not anti every doctor, or every medicine which a troubled person using by choice has a good experience with. If they can do it right, that reproaches every time when they don't.