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.

a famous aspie does not mean all is right for us.

Let's see. You've come for a look at what aspies are all about because you heard the news about Susan Boyle? Splendid: here's what the media should be telling you. Are they?

• Our heightened physical sensitivities, including to fabric and heat, are biologically incompatible with dress codes and make them an assault on our physical wellbeing. Our existence abolishes all work dress codes and school uniforms. This has been known for years and the big charities have not been choosing to push it.
• Because some aspies find it easier to focus on the written word than the spoken, there is a correlation between aspies and child authors. There is a succession of books by aspie child authors, and there is a child cruelty offence done in long history of big charities' total avoidance and failiure to publicise that there are WRONGED child authors, like me, whose chance to write was destroyed by harmful school pressures and homework.
• With the big charities' big failings to speak for us where needed, you can see how seriously we have needed the voice developed for us, to contribute into professional awareness and policymaking, by the AUTISM NETWORK SCOTLAND, developed out of Strathclyde University and now a part of the national strategy. It's invaluable, and its creation is the great success of the scene in Scotland. So IT NEEDS COPYING IN EVERY COUNTRY. If you are outside Scotland do you think your aspies deserve not to have any ANS?
• The NAS is to be complimented on attending properly to striking off its contact list a bent autism legal service that advised me to surrender in a dispute with a council tax malpractice where I was in the right by statute law and won. There needs to be a media consumer exposee of bent services that will prey on their clients instead of stand up to councils - you want to know more, you need it publicised.
• Likewise you want to know that aspies' local groups can't be corrupted and seized control of by malpractisers bent on hushing up emotional abuses, as happened to a group near us, defunct since stood up to by an earlier post on this blog describing its malpractises: 28 Feb 2011, Invitation to an autocratically restricted group's members to escape it and join us.
• It's only the same common sense that all the details should be published of the ways we have been harmed by schools and by child psychiatry. Aspie kids not safe until these things stopped, and how do you stop them unless you have heard widely what they are? In a safely non-deletable way on paper: for it's no good putting them in an Amazon e-book where the site's lawyers reserve a power to turn round and say, no no no, delete to be on the safe side. So the media are turning their backs on child safety unless they read this and chase after these things' publishing.
• Where competitive jobsearch utterly has never worked for us, the approach that works is to have aspie employment services who talk through both our strengths and our limitations with an employer to work out a working niche for us. But more ethical accountability upon these services is needed, to prevent the malpractice of them turning round and claiming that a third party problem that arises after you are in a job is not in their remit to deal with. By obvious definition, a remit to support employment automatically includes any problem that affects the work's doability or the work environment's justice in any way. This an item I am holding Edinburgh's new local Autism Plan responsible to put right locally.

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