Everybody's Talking About no dress rules ?

The scene of popular demand overturning the teacher's rules, in Everybody"s Talking About Jamie, when Jamie's classmates force his admission to their school prom in a dress, achieves a direct brilliant case example of both dress rules and authoritarian teacher culture being wrong. Whether or not it was made so intentionally, that is what it shows. It needs saying so and using so, against those systems. Its TV elite makers Film4 won't do that, we should.

The film has just premiered, the theatre musical was around for several years. Films with school settings are usually unwatchable: there has long been a US-led film norm where it is as predictable as clockwork to show traumatic bullying scenes, usually with no just resolution and just with the character implausibly rising above them. They spin a bigotry against kids by presenting such scenes as part of childhood, instead of as the preventable product of an ill-designed barbaric institution herding captive inmates around in large groups like cattle with no care for peer compatibility, which has the same results among adults when done to them.

So this film has to be complimented as more bearable than most school films, because it avoids showing any long scenes of bullies winning, and you always know its whole message is that Jamie will win. While the story includes an inevitable presence of toxically masculine boys' prejudice, and in its early scenes that prejudice's dominant place, it always avoids showing such scenes through to a nasty denouement. It makes use of being a musical for this: as soon as it has to show an emotional confrontation moment with the toxic boy arise, it goes straight into a positive song, so that it can keep up its gender liberty message.

It's really interesting, how its tie to show positivity and winning for a cause that has become popular forces its hand not to follow school films' usual destructive trope of having nasty peer grittiness immovably win. In the process, it shows how that trope's gloomy cowing effect on society is part of school's effect so.

A concern is that the film Jamie's character comes across so perfectly stereotypically gay that the toxic-masculines could extract a reinforcement of prejudice that only that character wants to do what he did. A straight drag queen story remains needed. Of course the story's whole value is that it is based on a true story of a valuable victory, Jamie is gay, and overall, toxic masculinity is fought well by telling the story. But to counter that drawback it needed a writing in of cross-dressing's influence on a straight boy too. That is a lack.

It rubbed in a life-defining gender related hurt for me, with my autistic spectrum physical sensitivity to textures, called a "sensory issue", giving a comfort need for shorts. Its school uniformed scenes of course have every boy encased in trousers, while in the same temperature, many girls with substantial uncoverings of legs. Every sight of that is emotional agonies to every sensory issues male who suffered, by both gender and age, both logically ridiculous, both uniform and school peer cultures against shorts. Indicted by its imaginable contrast with the Australian lesbian school film Ellie and Abbie ! on at Grassmarket last week.

Sensory issues are biological grounds against all dress rules, known for 20 years now, but still clearly unknown to the Jamie story's writers. Sensory issue identities still have none of the same popular following as gender identities, though they merit it equally logically. As a result, subject to trans support's seriousness against bullying which must be scrutinised sceptically, the solution now offered to straight sensory issues boys is to temporarily feign as transgender for school's duration. Though gender politics has brought praise to the boy skirt protests that now happen every summer, still no prominent voices speak out against how in 1986 Blackadder barbarically openly incited bullying of shorts and laughed at victim trauma. Blackadder's cast need forcing to meet all those boys, televised.

Maurice Frank
21 Sep 2021

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

common sense asserting of your fair place socially could get you criminalised

www.change.org/p/uk-government-house-of-parliament-uk-prime-minister-reform-of-protection-from-harassment-1997-act-stop-the-wrongful-criminalisation-of-individuals-with-conditions-that-affect-social-understanding?recruiter=69061609&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-lg-no_src-no_msg&fb_ref=Default A petition by ASSGO on the law on harrassment passed in 1997 after a media panic about stalking.

We need to be careful that able autistics have a normal citizen's capacity and hence not to lump all autistics together with learning disability and mental health in arguments about lack of insight into an action's social effects. Some actions are totally fair and logical and fall foul of PC. So I'm not wholly happy with the petition's wording. But have signed because it is an important civil liberty point for all autistics to prevent logical fair sensible actions of assertion of fair place in society, from getting classed as harrassment because a malicious person unfairly has a stronger social influence and power base.

For we already live in a time when it has become logically impossible for straight men to take any step at all towards acquiring a partner because absolutely any such action can count as an offence of sexual harrassment and get us into trouble. This at the same time as music and TV still peer pressurise for partnering. A total mixed message in the culture, saying to all straight men: we assume you have failed or are suffering unless you do something which we might charge you with harrassment if you do.

As I wrote in my submission to parliament's enquiry on loneliness: "The correct awareness of safety for women and ending a sex object view of them has led to the opposite swing of a PC presumption against men in every boundary colliding situation. Men now perceive, that in any dispute over accidental social or physical collisions, whoever actually caused them, we are the ones who are more politically convenient to blame. This has gender unequal impacts on safety of acceptance to be in social spaces, hence to feel secure in them, hence on exclusion and loneliness."

This is a strong reason why the petition is right.

Maurice Frank

attack on the core of a genuine aspie scene

Picked up in conversation within Elas a morally shocking news of local group practice elsewhere, in south west England particularly. Not knowing how many groups this applies to, nor wanting to back them into a corner when it needs keeping easy for them to change away from this horrid practice, it is better not to name a particular group. Instead, to flag up that this needs checking out by prospective joiners of aspie groups in that whole reigon. There is an aspie group maybe several, run by one of the big autism charities, newcomers to the group are getting vetted, for their compatibility and whether they are disruptive, before they are being allowed to join.

Even worse, it is said to be existing women members of the group who want this nastiness done, in order to filter out men for acceptable non-lustfulness of character - that is gender discrimination and PC taken to a tarring attack on all men. For no clear line exists between social behaviour to befriend a group and social behaviour that a cliquey bully can conveniently interpret as sexual.

Both groups and charities included in these vetting practices are a direct cause of any suicides that result from the rejection experience. England still lacks an outlet like we have in ANS to pursue the cause of holding perpetrators to account on exactly those terms. Aspies who have already experienced emotionally damaging wrongs or feuds from what turn out to be other aspies, in other places, might then see the vetting charity for its own reasons decide to reject them and accept their adversary. That would be an emotional abuse.

These things are a test, and they must be kept glaringly publicly a test, of the aspie scene's genuineness in each region. For the many of us who have signed up to the message of "nothing about us without us", to speak for ourselves without going through the big charities, we know that our true voice is only through a free and tolerant aspie scene, without any purging rejections affecting who it consists of. It does not consist of the voice of the filtered favoured select of a big charity. That is a controlled puppet false scene.

The concept of "disruptive" is very obviously politically abusable. Throughout life it can be used for controlling and manipulating any group into consisting only of who it suits the folks already dominating it to have it consist of. This is a fundamental test of liberty and of being a genuine voice: any participant group of any nature that has a filter for being disruptive is an unfree facade and effectively a cult, and merits distrust accordingly. Anyone who determined to continue to pursue an item of fairness, an undoing of an injustice done to them, such as a rubbishing of their character or a kicking into an inferior social status, or a very practical exclusion that worsens their lives, can be called disruptive. Unscrupulous groups who prefer them to shut up and accept a noncommittal brushing off will do this. Every case of calling such a person disruptive is always a case of abuse.

Maurice Frank

some progress on social work

See post of 5 Dec 2010, update added to it. Not a lot of content in social work's answer but at least by defending that they are still talking about the personal case they admitted they have to do that. Have had a meeting with them at Waverley Court with opportunity to tell them more of the details.

horrific professing

A psychology professor, Thomas MacKay, got a story run in the Sunday Herald saying school uniform prevents teenage violence. Front page of today's Metro is about a terrible schoolboy gang murder in London, which on the evidence the story reported, was committed while wearing school uniform. There is the professor's stark answer.

So far from schools meriting respect as in his theory, such murders show also that herding children together like cattle into a jungle-like mass in day prisons called schools is desperately unsafe and destructive of civil order, let alone of personal wellbeing and belonging. It always was, this has always been apparent from all the history of bullying. I have a strong need to make the same case from the history of teachers misusing their power and having greedy ambitions that make the child suffer. But bullying and violence is the present issue this great big professor has argued on.

This professor is popular with politicians, he was praised in a book by Gordon Brown and he has been advising the SNP government on educational psychology. He even used to be head of the British Psychological Society. How rational is that?, 2 items the Herald story did not mention, are:
* that the professor is an Evangelical, which itself involves a psychology for proclaiming truth unsubstantiated out of thin air, and for needing to bend all psychology to match with the social attitudes in a few arbitrary ancient scrolls that oppress women and defend slavery,
* and that he has already worked in autism a lot.

Now, if he knows autism, how can he possibly not know about what are termed "sensory issues"? Our sensitivities to rubbing fabric and texture and heat, which make our bodies often biologically incompatible with narrow Victorian norms of dress and prove our physically real need for total freedom of dress. Autism proves all dress codes and uniforms a serious bodily harmful human rights violation. A sensory irritation undermines our ability to concentrate and to function well. Hence, any discomforting clothes are a serious medical assault on our bodies. School uniform trousers did violence to my body, and gender discriminatory too when girls get a choice over their leg cover and boys don't.

My physically real need of health and wellbeing, to wear shorts perpetually, has always been upheld by the local supported employment service, to employers and to the benefits/training system. An adult precedent of autism need can never be rejected by anyone or else they would commit a disability discrimination. But if this holds for adults, it holds for children too. It is national scale biological harming of children, that this many years into autism awareness, school uniform still exists.

Where are the big autism organisations' efforts to save spectrumite children and indeed all children, and adults in the type of jobs concerned, from the primitive body slavery of uniforms? and to stop the march of oppressive ideas like this professor's going without even media opposition ?

No oppositional letter was printed in the Sunday Herald, which thus appears to be in favour of pushing the professor's oppressive communist-style openly declared keenness to airbrush out individual identity. He openly wants the uniform to symbolise subjection to authority, in effect he openly admits it is a prison uniform. It will express values of violence to their own medical wellbeing, this he intends to make them feel respectful and positive towards adults, and this the Sunday Herald leaves unchallenged.

Not getting letters printed in national newspapers is quite normal or course, but the Sunday Herald can be a decent letter printer if you write a view that is already part of the predictable established package of progressive views. Thus I have had letters printed on proportional voting and on asylum injustice. But not on the moral desirability of exterminating tigers to protect human life, and not on this. The Sunday Herald shows an interest, not in unlimited critical thought, but only in selling already prexisting established safe attitudes on its side of politics.

Meanwhile, the professor himself can't be reached. So says Strathclyde university, for he has moved on from his visitorship there. So he is nicely shielded from ever getting notified of any medical objections to his oppressive ideas.

Maurice Frank

a letter sent from Elas to social work

To Michelle Miller, chief social work officer for Edinburgh.

We are the local group of Asperger and high functioning autistic adults, ELAS. Our support for each other includes speaking up concerning life dangers and sharing awareness of them. We are a voice heard by other services, against any of us coming to harm, getting exploited or manipulated, in positions of vulnerability.

Hence, we are alarmed to hear that social work services now deny that it is their role or their power, to intervene against any party putting us in positions of vulnerable harm, when this is outside any services run by social work itself. You say this in your letter of Nov 27 to our member Maurice Frank.

In society broadly, it is commonly known and understood that exactly this is the purpose of social work's existence. It is common knowledge when support issues are discussed in the autistic community on the web, that social work is the party who you are entitled to expect a response from to these situations. Its function is to prevent harm coming to anyone in any vulnerable position, anywhere in society, by responding on the evidence whenever evidence of ill treatment is raised. It is immaterial who runs the place where it happens.

If this ceases to be the case, then we directly ask: how are any of us ever safe, committally for certain, from bullying or discrimination or any ill-treatment in attending any service that claims to be suitable for us? All Asperger and HFA adults are classed as vulnerable. We will be endangered, in all services, if there is not defined to be any local authority to complain to with a committal automatic duty, standing accountable directly to the merits of evidence in each case that arises. This does not require you to act as other organisations' internal complaint investigator, but simply to make them do that completely and properly not corruptly, and you to take action if they defend any distressing or discriminatory practices.

You stated in your letter that the council has no role thus. The local coordinator of Choose Life confirmed that the council most certainly does have a role, as when an organisation falls under mental health she identifies a Mr John Armstrong, "joint programme manger for mental health", as having a responsibility. Yet you wrote that the council has no role at all. Do you stand by denying his function? The public would be very alarmed to know that contrary to such factual evidence, social work denies there is any obligation by the council towards autistic adults being exposed to ill-treatment in any services run by other parties than the council itself. They will recognise it as an abdication of function.

This ethical emergency now exists, gives us a duty to let all aspies know they are potentially left unsafe in any service and always have those grounds to give against using any service, unless in reply you are committal not noncommittal that social work's popularly known role is automatic not discretionary.

Update: Anyone who reads our letter can see that it was asking for a position on the safety of all aspies in using services, not an answer to a personal case. Yet social work sent us a brush-off reply saying just that they can't answer on a personal case because of confidentiality. So there is some more to know about them, they are willing to waste a month testing if we are stupid. So we wrote back, repeating that the general position for all is what we are seeking.

From our minutes, Feb 14 meeting:
"Social Work Correspondence
Another reply has been received to ELAS letters expressing concern about the way some social workers deal with people on the autistic spectrum, but sadly it was vague and non-committal in its wording."

The one good thing we extracted from them was a recognition of needing to continue talking to about the personal case. Previously they had been trying not to talk at all, so it is progress when the fact of talking becomes their defence. That is an implied acknowledgement of the need to intervene, which can be cited in other cases too - if folks know of it.