diverse language forbidden

Paul Wady is an activist + writer on autism who does an Edinburgh Fringe show on it annually. I have seen a lot of the silly radical language politics he describes going on for several years + getting ever purgier + more factionally radicalised. Today Paul shared on social media:
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An ethos has been invented in which the term Neurodiversity Movement means people who reject and ignore the severely disabled and autistic, and won't hear anything negative said about being on the spectrum. Which is of course absurd. This seems to be something we have to address daily.

It was invented by people with different motives such as Anti Vaxxers, ABA practitioners and people who hate being autistic. Also people who just plain hate being. Finally a certain BE CURED OR BE DAMNED attitude?

I might also venture to describe them as 'Wannabe NT's'.

Assertion of this definition of the term, invariably takes the form of people ignoring anyone trying to reason or debate with them and just going around in circles. Saying her and over that they are right. It's not sane.

If you meet anyone on social media who ignores what you say and just replies any way they want, for example when you describe the loose umbrella term autism as anything but a disorder and that's that - you can predict what you get back. It's a disorder and that's that. No amount of reason seems to get through. But the bizarre thing is, they must understand what you are trying to tell them.

Personally I see it all as relative and you have to have the conditions/symptoms of disability to be disabled rather than one condition that always means you are.

So thank you to everyone doing this. Without such facist eugenicist attitudes, I would not have been able to so clearly define my ideas and attitudes in the field of self advocacy. Keep up the good work - because people can spot when someone does not listen to reason or have the ability to engage in a rational dialogue.

12 Feb 2020

yes you can call a cool swaggery comedian sick

It may well be most prudent for the thinking aspie not to go to any Fringe comedies at all. But a few thoughtful ones on worthwhile subjects do happen. It's so chancy, when you see one billed on a subject worth bothering with, whether the billing is true or whether it's just an attention grabbing device for just another rough biting jerk who wants to spend an hour talking about social humiliations and child maltreatment.

Kevin Precious is a particularly bad case of the latter. Revile and avoid his show. It included a joke about having cancer. He is the next show on straight after our annual aspie visitor Paul Wady's show at the same venue.

Precious is a humanist who used to have to schoolteach religious studies. That sounds of interest to anyone anti-school, and the show's billing sets up a prospect of hearing a lot about intellectual conflict with a system.

No that's not what you get at all, He did not suffer any conflict, he was allowed to teach study of religions witbout asserting that any one is right and to tell the parents he had no belief - and that's about all his material on it, 5 minutes' worth. There is no critique of school at al, despite lots of harsh jokes at its miseries, including against the character of PE teachers yet not making the obvious deduction that there should not be any PE. He is a offputtingly blunt voiced earthy macho type, that's visibly why he has no spirituality!

Most of the show is about Jimmy Savile and the same worn out offensiveness that all the satirical comedians have followed in the time of high child abuse awareness - of making lots of purportedly angry political satire about it, that turns THE ABUSE ITSELF into a joke, and an instant audience laugh trigger.

Why is this not deemed an offence and just as unacceptable to the victims as the crime itself?! References that would not be accepted in more serious talking get actively flaunted in comedy to make the comedian cool, and thid has gone on for years endlessly. It's because folks fear sounding uncool if they criticise comedy - the same reason as why no campaigns or child protectors who can do anything against Blackadder's incitement of and siding with bullying, have ever wanted to, in 32 years since that episode was made. But when you say that about Blackadder, serious minded folks get the point perfectly - it works liks the Emperor's New Clothes, just need to say the visible truth that is not getting said.

So it's the same for stand-up and satirical comedy that goes on at great length and detail about child sbuse. It is another offensive exploitation of the affected folks, an exploitation of them, another act of not caring in a socially including way, a compounding of the actual abuse. It merits anger and moral reaction.

Maurice Frank

2 Fringe shows not to go to

I never like socially aggressive comedy and regard its existence as a big social problem, and 1980s alternative comedy particularly as a big brutaliser of society, that made life oppressively harder for all interactively disdvantaged groups, including us aspies then unrecognised. But when the Fringe is on I have found it worth going to see Free Fringe stand-up comedians whoee shows are about politics. Not so much to laugh as to observe seriously whither the wind is blowing, and if they come from another country or perspective, pick up insights.

This year that has had 2 particularly bad results. The culture of comedy offensiveness may have made it no longer worth doing. 2 SHOWS NOT TO GO TO:

"Australia still fucked" by Kieran Butler. It starts off as promised, insight into the tragic racist trends in Australian politics and where they came from. But at the end it turns offensively graphic about child molestation, and then he made fun of Madeleine McCann. I showed the collection bucket person exactly what I thought of that. This is a comedian _ who MADE FUN _ of Madeleine McCann.

"I can make you Tory" by Leo Kearse. I am complaining to the Fringe in support of the person he victimised: and for aspies safeness of social space so that hooligan injustice can't happen is a matter of accessibility. The Fringe bills itself as caring about accessibility. Never seen anything remotely like this before.

Hardly 10 minutes in, he started having an unduly nasty go at an audience member for nodding! Actually for nodding! how bullying is that? Even though the person explained that his nodding had been a sign of agreement! Kearse refused to feel complimented and insisted the nodding was offputting, and several times mockingly asked if the person had a neurological disorder - itself not an attitude favouring accessibility. Then he switched his hostility to another audience member some distance from the alleged nodder, who had defended him. This person defended himself to banter rubbishing, which annoyed Kearse, and rightly would not accept having bitingly worded fault or blame pinned on him by Kearse. Kearse would not drop it without having an insulting closing jibe at the person, yet started blaming this person for disrupting the show, by an exchange that Kearse had started.

I was the first uninvolved audience member to promptly walk out in loud solidarity with the wronged person and his friend.

The exchange eventually stopped but not for long. Kearse delivered a couple more lines of his act, then rounded them off with another jibe at this person. A total treacherous contradiction of having claimed to be disrupted, to go after the person again. Obviously rightly the person objected. Straight away another man at the back stood up in an apparently official capacity and ordered "Leave now" ! An audience member targetted and bullied by a performer, then accused of disruption for taking the performer's own goading bait, then insulted by him again then thrown out for saying anything. This performer is a hooligan bully and audience abuser.

Aug 12 update: Today in the parade in South Queensferry's annual fair, a brass band was playing Waltzing Matilda! In a world of growing mutual apartheid closed doors between countries and anti-outsider nastiness, of Brexit and Manus Island, we casually play music that evokes other countries and think of it as part of a happy occasion, without spirits dampened by the tragedy. We still like to immerse ourselves in the world musically, when we are cutting each other off in real travel.

Aug 17 update: on Kearse's show: a stamen is part of a flower, btw - "Thank you for bringing this to our attention I have had a stamen form the performer who has stated he feel it was a forum of heckling. As we are a free festival venue we host the show but don’t run the programing etc. We are sorry this was not in the taste of what the festival is all about but our performers are free to remove anyone from the show they feel are heckling etc. " ... " I hope this has not put the venue in a bad light with yourself and we would be saddened by this."

Ludicrous end line. Patently it puts the Three Sisters venue in a bad light with any thinking person. They merit and need some being saddened! they need to cry over whether it's worse to ve saddened or publicly maltreated.

seen a light?

Comedy billed as not for the easily offended usually fairly certainly means not for me. I'm ever so'seeeeeerious, ya see, with a sick world of injustice always at the forefront of thought, and seriously down on all the ethicality of everyone who has an emotionally cruel sense of humour, which is indistinguishable from being an emotionally destructive person seriously. 1980s alternative comedy was just a fashion statement for blatant bullying and violence, for delight in destroying everything anyone cares about.

But there is a very real practical question around how referring to injustices in comedy sometimes helps the serious impact against them. Like the old Berlin Wall graffiti "Jump over and join the party". Like Life of Brian. When is comedy that refers to injustices ever constructive? Ever not just a further kicking in suffering's face?

When it is open to thinking about. When it is not an act of bullying aggro with a socially intimidating effect. The way all that distressingly aggressive 1980s alternative comedy fired up all that is ugliest in peer groups, is why it failed to get across the serious political messages it sometimes hoped to.

Fringe stand-up performer Abigoliah Schamaun makes you think, because every time she crashes through an offence barrier she actually pauses and reflects on it, checks out how the audience feels with it. It gives the whole question of offence a significantly different feel. It is more survivable for the audience, and each time you wonder whether it is more justified for the performer, because you are not just getting hammered by it, passively. For usually that aspie unfriendly helpless position, take whatever I throw at you and like it, is the relationship an audience who feel ever so super-cool really have towards a comic who wants to make them sick. An audience who have the fairness of their own feelings acknowledged are in a stronger feeling, better feeling, less pushed around, position.

Seriously don't want that light bulb she eats to be real, or she won't be performing for long. No audience can pass on the reason for doing it, because there isn't one.

Maurice Frank