In Response To Connecticut

By now you know there was a shooting in Connecticut. This is a tragedy, and I wish for none of this to ever happen again. It is horrible to think about, but it happened. I wish it had not. It is wrong. Lydia’s Nameless Things Dismantle is a good response. It explains well how I feel when I hear what happened, when I think about the tragedy, the loss of life. 

I’ve stayed away from the news. I don’t really want to hear what all they have to say. I know they will blame it on my neurology, regardless of the killers neurology being mine or not. They will say it was.

I have, however, read some responses. This is my comment on one, a good one.

It is just as hard for me to imagine that the killer could share my neurology as the neurotypicals find it for theirs. The only difference is that they have the power to make people think he had mine and that it means mine is to blame, and I can’t.What his neurology actually was is irrelevant to this statement.

We can’t actually talk about this continuous pinning of shootings on autism without talking about the stigma of disability, especially disabilities that are based in the brain. We can’t  actually talk about it without talking about the power differences between Autistic people and those who keep pinning mass murder on the way our brains are wired.

People keep saying that now is not the time to talk about this, but the instant the accusation has been made, the time to talk is now. The “no politics in a tragedy” rule is broken by the attack on my neurology, and I am allowed to defend myself, no matter how political, long-winded, or anything else you could call my defense. I am not the one derailing the conversation about a tragedy. I am the one answering an attack on the very core of who I am, and I am permitted that answer everywhere and everywhen such an attack happens.

Autism does not equate to violence. Sociopathy does not equate to violence. Lack of empathy does not equate to violence. Mental illnesses do not equate to violence. In fact, it leads to disproportionately being the victim, not the perpetrator, of abuses.

Read that again. You blame brain differences that lead to being disproportionately victimized for leading people to commit crimes. That is backwards. That is the opposite of the right thing to do. That is what happens, every time. That needs to stop.

Every one of us needs to answer this, every place we see it.

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