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cllynchauthor · 5 years

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On Aspie Supremacy and the Aspergian

CW: bullying, suicide, aspie supremacy

I feel the need to talk to you guys about what has been happening on autistic twitter lately surrounding the autistic website The Aspergian. I write for The Aspergian. Here are some of my articles:

https://theaspergian.com/2019/05/04/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/

https://theaspergian.com/2019/04/19/person-first/

https://theaspergian.com/2019/04/05/7-cool-aspects-of-autistic-culture/

While I am white, cishet, and speaking, I am in the minority at The Aspergian.

The majority of contributors are mostly either LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, or high support needs.

Here are some of their contributions:

https://theaspergian.com/2019/10/10/stopping-the-stigma-against-people-with-disabilities-interview-with-sbsk/

https://theaspergian.com/2019/09/09/10-signs-i-was-transgender-but-didnt-know-it/

https://theaspergian.com/2019/08/08/the-cage/

Despite this, the name The Aspergian makes many autistic people uncomfortable. Several ASAN members have spoken out condemning the name.

In these days of #AltAutism, the autistic dark web and other aspie supremacists have turned the word Aspergers into a borderline slur.

Aspergers and “Aspergian” are becoming dog whistles for function labels, white supremacy and incels.

The founder of The Aspergian knows that. That’s why she named it The Aspergian.

With every pro-RPM, pro-Neurodiversity, feminist, intersectional article The Aspergian publishes, it gets left wing values all over Aspergers. If you google Aspergian now, all you will find are social justice articles.

And the AltAutism folks HATE IT.

But so do a lot of autistic advocates, for whom “Aspergers” conjures up a lot of trauma.

The founder has trauma from it too, though.

https://twitter.com/theaspergiancom/status/1185068296636375040?s=21

Image Description: screencap of a tweet from @TheAspergianCom reading

When I first told my closest living friend about being autistic, it was the first person I'd told other than my husband. This was her response:

Below is a screencap of a text conversation. The friend is talking about her autistic son saying “at this point I’ll be fucking happy if he ever calls me mom and stops trying to attack me.” Then she says “I think your autism is fucking bullshit.”

Image description: screencaps of more tweets reading:

Though she knew I was going to be tested, she'd continued to use the word Asperger's. I'd been helping her through the process of understanding her son and autism. I loved her deeply. I still do. But she blocked me on social media and told everyone before I was ready to come out.

So instantly all my social media was flooded with all these speculative and veiled comments I could only see portions of, and I was humiliated. I was a new mother struggling and lost my support system. She thought it was sinister I used the same label as her son. Minimizing.

Autism was my diagnosis. She didn't know that I was made to believe I was possessed by demons in my youth or all the hell I'd endured and all the struggles I had like being the last person in my school who learned to read six years late. She knew an articulate adult.

Image description: the next person I told, things went even worse. She outed me in local Facebook groups where I was the admin and parent groups. I had postpartum anxiety and severe breastfeeding aversion but my child wouldn't eat food. So it was BF constantly or a feeding tube. And no meds for me.

So I thought maybe the problem was me saying autism instead of Asperger's. My husband was aspie and always identified that way. I'd been a teacher with largely autistic classes for years. Those with that diagnosis were often intellectually disabled.

Image description: My best friend and one of my oldest and closest friends, both autistic, had committed suicide, and the two living best friends I had blew up my whole social circle. I was afraid to seek help, afraid to go in public, and brutally reframing my whole life and reliving traumas.

I needed help. I joined about 20-30 autistic groups and made the mistake of saying that I was aspie. I didn't want to be insulting and have another incident like what happened the first time I told someone. It didn't go well. I had no idea of the stigma at the time.

And I had no idea why I was being called a supremacist, shiny, a Nazi, ableist, etc. I argued against those claims because I'm definitely not those things. I thought I'd entered a den of extremists. I got booted. Then another group I entered started with, "Oh, there's the Nazi."

In that tweet thread, Terra goes on to say that it occurred to her that her best friend who had recently committed suicide might have sought out the autistic community before he died. And she went to look and found that he had posted and been dogpiled in the same manner. The day before he died.

Terra Vance is desperately anti supremacy. But she is also desperately anti bullying. And she felt that if people couldn’t say “I’m autistic” without losing loved ones and “I’m aspie” without being called a supremacist, then autistic people were being put in a very tight corner.

Especially since Aspergers is still an extant diagnosis pretty much everywhere but North America so people are getting shunned from the autistic community because of their DIAGNOSIS.

That’s why she named it The Aspergian.

And you know what?

The aspie supremacists HATE IT.

They hate that their dog whistle is now a popular and booming hub of Neurodiversity, anti-ABA, and intersectionality.

They hate that The Aspergian is republishing deleted Wikipedia articles of autistic nonspeakers, which the autistic dark web worked hard to get removed.

They hate that we promote FC and RPM and other AAC. They hate that we keep claiming that autism and Aspergers are the same thing.

They don’t want to share space with nonspeakers and black women. They’re a bunch of altright white incels and The Aspergian is getting autism and neurodiversity over their shiny high functioning boots.

Worst of all, we’re reaching PARENTS.

Our most popular articles are not aimed at fellow autistic people. They are aimed at NTs, parents, laymen, trying to educate them about autism.

My article on ABA went viral and made so many ABA therapists angry. It was beautiful.

Imagine description:

“And by some strange magic, we took off suddenly, going from like 100 views per month to over 100k, then 200k, then more and more. We heard a lot of stories that were not being heard. There are parents who read our site to learn about their children posthumously after suicide.

One mother told me that if she had found our site earlier, she would have known that her son's "aspie" diagnosis meant that he was fully autistic. She is filled with regrets. We hear from lots of people who had no idea that they were supposed to have these autistic struggles.

We hear from people in lots of non-white majority countries where autism acceptance and awareness is years/decades behind what a difference our site has made because they had no idea. They weren't reading other blogs and now they are. Now they are understanding autism.”

Understanding autism from a neurodivergent, autism-acceptance, Autism-Speaks-Is-Bad, anti-ABA, pro-AAC website.

The ADW HATE that.

So what do they do?

They stir up shit about the name. The autistic dark web have a bunch of sock accounts which they use to deliberately stir up shit among the #ActuallyAutistic tag on twitter so they can screenshot stuff and repost it out of context to further discredit autistic people.

So they know the ND crowd resent Aspergers. So they deliberately stir up crap about The Aspergian’s name and everybody eats it up.

They also spread lies like that we are racist and don’t have any contributors of colour (they block the BIPOC contributors who argue against this lie).

Image Descriotion:

Tweet from Riah Person (a black autistic advocate) saying

“The .@theAspergianCom has writers

• with I/DD

• that are nonspeaking

• with research background

• that are deaf

• that are blind

• with physically limiting disabilities

• that are autistic BIPOC

• that are autistic LGBTQ+

• with no formal writing skills

The list goes on”

They claim that we plagiarize. But in fact each contributor owns their own content and is free to publish in other places and often they do.

But mostly they bitch about the name.

And I get it. I do. Aspergers brings up a lot of bad feelings and associations, especially since the anti-ND movement started pushing the “Asperger was a Nazi” stuff in order to discredit Steve Silberman’s book Neurotribes.

But we can’t make Asperger’s a slur. It’s still an existing diagnosis all around the world. Happily it IS being removed from the ICD 11 in 2022 but it’s going to take decades to change the assumptions around that word.

Terra wants “Aspergers” to become synonymous with autism. No difference. No barriers. No judgements. Not because she loves or even identifies with Aspergers. Her diagnosis is autistic and she calls herself autistic. But she doesn’t think autistic people should be bullied over a label. It smacks of exclusionism.

The founder of The Aspergian feels that no autistic person should be bullied to the point of death or near-death because of their diagnosis, or because they have been trained to say they have Aspergers so NTs won’t pull the whole “you don’t look autistic” crap.

The autistic community, of ALL communities, should be the most understanding of misunderstanding. We should be the most able to understand that people don’t always mean what it sounds like they mean.

“Aspergers” is not a slur. It is not a supremacist term. At worst it is an outdated functioning label. At best it is a synonym for autism.

And it won’t become a dog whistle. Because The Aspergian won’t allow it.

#actuallyautistic #autism #suicide #bullying #advocacy #aspie #aspergers

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yeonchi · 4 years

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Doctor Who Series 12 Review Part 3/10: Orphan 55

Air date: 12 January 2020

So, it’s been a couple of weeks since the last review. While I usually like to start writing the episode reviews right after I’ve watched them, circumstances have required me to mull on my thoughts for a little while. If current affairs and other fans’ reactions to this episode are any indication, this one’s going to be a doozy, so I’ll get right into it.

This episode’s spoiler-free thought: “I finally found one of the things I was looking for.”

Major spoilers continue after the break. I’ll be talking about the main topic of this week’s review after my thoughts and verdict for the episode.

The third episode paradigm

It’s looking like the third episodes of each series are dedicated to tackling issues in society and as such, they tend to have quite a few SJW red flags. Series 11′s Rosa tackled racism while this episode eventually turns out to be tackling climate change and global warming.

At the same time, it seems like the writing is too focused on the issues that it sometimes neglects to explain particular plot points. In Rosa, we hear that Krasko killed around 2000 people, but we never hear who the victims were or what Krasko’s motivations were (I would presume that it’s racism). As for this episode’s neglected plot point, that’s coming up next.

Ryan and the SJW tipping point

It’s already the third episode and Ryan is still getting some character development. I thought Yaz was supposed to be the focus of this series. Despite this, however, the unfortunate thing has happened - the SJW agenda has finally made a negative impact on the story for me.

After the Doctor helped Ryan get rid of the Hopper virus, he meets Bella, who had also been infected with said virus. It is revealed that Bella is seeking to destroy Tranquillity Spa, owned by her mother Kane (who she initially claimed to Ryan as being dead), because she left Bella and her father when she was little. Ryan connected with Bella on the topic of missing parents, but somehow the story fails to have Ryan relate to Bella with how his father abandoned him, but was able to reconcile with him in the end. However, I’ll give Ryan credit for making an attempt to act like the Doctor while dealing with Bella.

I don’t really mind the Ryan/Bella shipping in this episode, but the real downer of the episode’s conclusion is that the Doctor seemingly leaves Bella and Kane to deal with the Dregs because they had too many people on the teleport with a minute until a massive bomb goes off. Instead, we get a little lecture on how Orphan 55 doesn’t have to actually happen and how we (as humans) should “be the best of humanity”. I thought Ryan was gonna go all Donna Noble there (I think Tosin Cole could pull it off) and beg the Doctor to save Bella and Kane - for all we know, it’s not a fixed point in time or anything. The Doctor could just return them to where they came from relative to their time.

You know, for a series whose episodes are supposed to be 50 minutes long, this episode fell short by three minutes and a bit - this was also the case in The Witchfinders. If we used this scene from The Fires of Pompeii for comparison, then even with the rest of the episode as it is, you could still fit in a scene where the Doctor saves Bella and Kane and have them listen to the Doctor’s speech in the TARDIS. This is how you don’t let the SJW agenda get (too much) in the way of a good story.

Other general thoughts

Doctor Who has covered parallel universes on occasion along with alternate timelines, though they usually get cancelled out in the case of the latter. However, this is seemingly the first time that we see a possible future story. Assuming that alternate timelines are parallel universes themselves, I could write it off as the Time Lords facilitating simple travel between universes, except we just saw in the last episode that the Master killed all the Time Lords.

God, Vilma’s acting is so over the top, especially after Benni goes missing and all the chaos starts. I guess that’s what happens when you hire boomers and make their characters stereotypical. There are two things that Vilma’s acting reminds me of, namely Shakespeare’s plays and Greta Thunberg. You could leave Vilma and Benni out of this episode and nothing of value would be lost.

Speaking of those two, why does Vilma act so surprised when Kane tells her that she killed Benni? It was literally his final request. Then again, it’s like telling someone that they want to be euthanised minutes before they die without warning. Boomers should just all die lol.

They made catgirls/foxgirls an actual thing with Hyph3n. Oh wait, this isn’t anime, so they’re more animal than human.

Tokusatsu reference time. The Dregs seem to resemble the Sheerghosts of Kamen Rider Ryuki or the Orphnochs of Kamen Rider 555, but with a generic design that makes them look like footsoldiers. The latter would be more applicable because of their evolution.

Not many people seem to talk about annoying kids in tokusatsu, probably because most of them get forgotten over time. Sylas toes the line between being the common annoying (and dickish) kid in distress to being the rare kid that is actually useful. Him locking the linen cupboard with his father, Nevi, and everyone else inside confirms the former, while his superior knowledge of mechanics confirms the latter.

This episode has no cold opening. The writers must have forgotten again.

Summary and verdict (the tl;dr ending)

If this episode was about changing the Earth’s future outright so that humans don’t become the Dregs, then my thoughts would be very different. As it is now, I’m conflicted as to whether I should give a higher rating for the attempts to make this a good story, or a lower rating for this episode being too SJW that it forgets to be good.

A summary of the third episode comparison - Krasko got no (proper) backstory while Bella and Kane get no ideal resolution other than they’re going to die fighting off Dregs as a bomb is about to explode.

Ed Hime, who wrote this episode, also wrote It Takes You Away in Series 11. What happened here? That episode was way better than this one.

Rating: 5/10

Climate change - the big SJW red flag (and a side note on police brutality at protests)

It’s no secret that climate change is a problem and has been for decades. It seems that climate change is worsening the effects of disasters around the world. British charity Christian Aid published a report detailing 15 disasters in 2019 that caused at least a billion dollars of damage. Not detailed though is the Australian bushfires, which if I’m correct, are still burning right now. The first of those bushfires started in June which snowballed into the worldwide tragedy we have now. Dust storms, hail storms and even the Wuhan coronavirus (SARS 2.0) aren’t helping things at all, as heatwaves have been getting hotter and hotter every year.

The main reason why I’m calling climate change an SJW red flag is because in recent years, environmental activists such as Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion group started highlighting this issue more and more through protests, speeches and whatnot in the hope that governments can take immediate action (because evidently, international agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the actions that are being taken in accordance to them are too slow and not enough).

Greta and XR have received criticism for their words and actions. In the case of Greta Thunberg, she was criticised for being over-emotional, taking a gap year from school to focus on her activism (let’s face it, if the option were available, I think a lot of kids would take it even if it meant that they wouldn’t be with their cohort anymore), apparently being manipulated by her parents for political points or the fact that people are defending her because she has Asperger syndrome, OCD and selective mutism, on top of being ignorant about climate change (which is pretty much the general argument of her naysayers).

Extinction Rebellion protests have been criticised for their civil disruption; the ironic thing about it is that they have protested on public transport when it is actually something that helps their overarching cause. Who can remember when those protesters got dragged off the Tube train? And what about them gluing themselves onto roads? Compared to the former, it’s a step in the right direction for their message, but don’t say I didn’t warn you if someone gets called a terrorist just because they drove their vehicle into a pack of vegans.

youtube

I want to take a moment to go on a tangent here. Over the last year, there have been a lot of political protests around the world, so XR and all the other climate protesters should think about their place because if their country has really bad political problems (no, Trump and Brexit don’t count), they would probably have bigger things to worry about.

I’ve never really heard anyone compare XR or the climate protests to the protests going on about Hong Kong, particularly in regards to police brutality. I don’t really mind anyone else taking leaves from their books, but the one thing I which I find absolutely offensive and insulting is that protesters outside of Hong Kong are complaining about police brutality, like come the fuck on. I’ve been following Hong Kong news since before Occupy Central in 2014 and I’ve been following it through last year as the worsening police brutality reached depths you vegans aren’t even worried about yet. However, to play devil’s advocate, the protesters are just as worthy of criticism compared to the police and frankly, in Australia, both the protesters and police are getting off easy compared to in Hong Kong.

You’re worried about getting pepper sprayed, beaten up or discriminated because you’re disabled, LGBT, black, Muslim, whatever? Try getting randomly searched or arrested while going about your day (especially if you’re a high school/uni student), finding out the police are colluding with gangs, getting beaten or molested after being subdued, being arrested just for helping someone as a medic or most importantly, being fired to oblivion with live bullets, water cannons that dye your skin blue, pepper spray, bean bag rounds, rubber bullets or more importantly, carcinogenic Chinese tear gas. Until the climate protests get to the point where you need a centralised website to detail your protests, press conferences and police brutality to the world, keep crying in your echo chambers about ACAB or whatever while being ignorant to the fact that like there are starving people in war-torn countries, there are people in Hong Kong who are living under a bigger climate of fear than you are. Fuck you vegans. You make me sick.

Before I return to the main topic, let me leave you with a choice quote from a Spectator Australia article from November 2019 aptly named “Hong Kong is fighting for its very soul, Extinction Rebellion are throwing tantrums”:

It is beyond a joke to suggest that the publicity stunts of Extinction Rebellion are comparable to the protests in Hong Kong. Doing so is an insult to people who are truly fighting for their future. At best it reflects a lack of self-awareness by the climate activists, at worst it is an attempt by Extinction Rebellion to piggyback on the global sympathy that genuine protestors have stirred in Hong Kong and divert it towards themselves.

My opinion on Greta Thunberg? The tone of her voice has already committed the logical fallacy of appealing to emotion. She looks like one of those kids who do or say extraordinary stuff so they can get their 15 minutes of fame in the form of adults fawning over them, but she continues to do it and somehow, people don’t get bored of it. I respect her for having the courage to give the speeches (there were a lot more than what I originally thought, tbh), but it shouldn’t have to take an anxious and emotional girl with Aspergers for governments to do something about climate change if they think it’s so important. As a friend of mine said, however, “It'll take the end of the world to get them to stop taking money from oil and coal.”

youtube

Watch the above video from the 10 minute mark onwards, because I have similar feelings about this whole thing.

I remember watching the film 2012 in the first year after it was released and I started getting worried that the stuff that happened in the movie would actually happen on 21 December 2012. In May 2011, I remember going on a quick weekend holiday in the country and reading about Harold Camping’s prediction of the end times in the newspaper. It said that the rapture would take place a week after, on May 21, and that the end of the world would take place on 21 October. Talk about “fool me once, fool me twice”, huh?

I’m not a fan of the climate protests, XR or otherwise, but I’m not a climate change denier either. I care enough about the environment to do my bit when I get the opportunity and that is pretty much it. I have a lot of things on my mind already and having another thing to worry about is the last thing I need.

Damn, writing this review after my two week break really took more effort than I thought it would. Stay tuned for the middle of the week as I review the fourth episode, Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror.

#doctor who #doctor who series 12 #thirteenth doctor #doctor who series 12 review #thirteenth doctor review

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the-reading-circle · 5 years

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon

I received this book in 2003 as a Christmas present but was a bit confused at the time as I’d seen it in the children’s section of our local book shop. It turns out it was aimed at both adults and children and was actually the first book ever to have been published simultaneously in both an adult and a children’s imprint.

The story is written by Christopher, a 15 year boy who we assume to be autistic. He is encouraged by his teacher Siobhan to write a book he would like to read. "This will not be a funny book," says Christopher. "I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them." (p. 10) What follows is an honest, naïve, tragic, funny, quirky mix of narrative about his everyday life, combined with his investigation into the death of a dog. He discovers that his mother is not dead and that his father has lied to him and cannot be trusted.

Christopher comments on and observes the situations in his life but is unable to interpret what he sees. The structural irony is a powerful tool in the author’s commentary on adults and the shortcomings in their behaviour. Christopher needs the adults in his life to provide structure yet his parents have both betrayed him whilst feeling they were doing their best for him in a difficult situation. Christopher’s father represented safety and structure until it became apparent that he had told an unforgiveable lie. The reader is keenly aware that Christopher’s parents are far from ideal, but as an adult reader the challenges of having a child with special needs are also plain to see. In one of her letters his mum writes “I was not a very good mother Christopher: Maybe if things had been differant, maybe if you’d been differant, I might have been better at it” (p.133) The most stable adult in his life seems is Siobhan who helps him to understand and deal with the challenges of life.

Although we assume Christopher is on the Autistic Spectrum and his outlook on life is often very naïve he still shows patterns of teenage development. He is searching for identity, rebelling, pushing boundaries although he has to justify this to himself by finding loopholes in promises and his own behavioural patterns. Christopher wants to investigate the death of the dog but has made a promise to his dad: ‘And then I did some reasoning. I reasoned that father had only made me do a promise about five things’ (p. 72). Christopher checks he isn’t breaking any specific promises and then continues his investigation. He is largely restricted by his own boundaries but is beginning to feel the pressure of parental control. He repeatedly dreams of a world where almost everyone dies of a virus and “I can go anywhere in the world and I know that no-one is going to talk to me or touch me or ask me a question (p. 242). In his dream he can do as he likes without being reprimanded. Appleyard (1991) refers to Erikson’s theories of development when he writes, “So they have to work out a set of balances between their newfound sense of possibility and the restrictions with which adult society often appears to be threatening them.”(p. 98). All teenagers have to work out this balance but for Christopher it is even more complicated. He uses his love of maths to explain life:

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.” (p. 15)

This story is “constructed around a young hero or heroine, journeys, tests of character, and harm finally defeated.”(Appleyard, 1991 p. 4) “While the plot may appear small from the outside, it is much larger for Christopher: it is a quest not just in search of the murderer, or even of personal discovery, but also a quest for truth – an opportunity for Christopher to break many of the shackles that bind him and dispel some of the lies that he has been told to keep him from harm.” (Selwyn, 2005). This is truly a coming-of-age novel where Christopher begins to find his own identity. Christopher sums it up in at the end of the book: “And I know that I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? And I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.” (p. 268)

The book has won many awards and is often regarded as a handbook for dealing with people with autism but it has also been criticised for the portrait it paints. Olear (2012), included a list of comments in his review: ““Stereotyped, inaccurate, horribly offensive... this isn’t how it is.” “Haddon does not understand Asperger.” “Stereotypical view of an autistic child.” “I find it hard to believe that Mark Haddon is an autism expert, because Christopher Boone isn’t like any other child with Asperger’s that I’ve ever met.” “A major disservice to the Autistic Community.” “An excellent portrayal of autism...NOT!”” Bartmess (2015) goes even further in her review: “Christopher is abandoned, deceived, abused, gaslit, and insulted, often by authority figures. Most other characters overlook or actively attempt to justify this. Equally disturbing is that on many occasions Christopher has no apparent emotional or physical reaction to abuse or insults. This particularly bothers me because it suggests that abuse and insults don’t harm autistic people, although they do, sometimes very greatly.”

Interestingly, Haddon maintains that he did not set out to write a book about autism and know very little about it!

This book is enjoyed by many children but there has been concern about its suitability because of the level of swearing. In fact, some schools and libraries banned it! Arguably, children hear these words frequently in everyday life and realise that Christopher is merely reporting what he hears around him. This book is suitable for 10+ as this is the age of discovering identity. A child this age is also able to understand the challenges Christopher has. The question of age suitability is put well by Ashapoorv, (2015), ‘Despite the fact that the book flows in a very mundane manner, it is accessible to both children and adults. It helps a child understand the tough part of relationships and love, while it teaches adults that every child is special and one of a kind.’

Bibliography

Appleyard, J.A. (1991). Becoming a Reader. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press

Ashapoorv (2015, August 6). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon - review. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/aug/06/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-nighttime-mark-haddon-review

Bartmess, E. (2015, April 4). Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from http://disabilityinkidlit.com/2015/04/04/review-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time-by-mark-haddon/

Haddon, M. (2003). The curious incident of the dog in the night-time. London, UK: Jonathan Cape.

Matos, A. (2004, October 4). Structure and Development in Mark Haddon’s [The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://angelmatos.net/2013/10/04/the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time/

Mcleod, S. (2008, September 17). Erikson's Psychosocial Stages of Development. Retrieved January 27, 2019, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html

Mullan, J. (2004, May 1). Expletives not deleted. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/may/01/featuresreviews.guardianreview28

Olear, G. (2012, January 18). When Popular Novels Perpetuate Negative Stereotypes: Mark Haddon, Asperger's and Irresponsible Fiction. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-olear/curious-incident-dog-night-time_b_1099692.html?guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8

Selwyn, M. (2005). Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Retrieved March 2, 2019, from https://www.bibliofreak.net/2015/02/review-curious-incident-of-dog-in-night.html

#estherwattsliterature #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #mark haddon #books

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global-news-station · 4 years

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Of the many people who made history in 2019, some surprised themselves and the world by emerging from obscurity to make their mark, though one remains anonymous for the time being — “The Whistleblower” behind the impeachment probe into US President Donald Trump.

Following are brief profiles of eight history-makers in politics, climate and humanitarian activism, music and astronomy who were unknown quantities in 2018.

Trump impeachment ‘Whistleblower’

Although huge efforts have been made to expose him, the person whose complaint threatens to bring down the president of the United States is still known only as “The Whistleblower”.

Reliably reported to be a mid-level, male CIA analyst in his early 30s who specialises in Eastern European issues and previously worked in the White House, he filed an anonymous complaint in August charging that Donald Trump pressured Ukraine counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to help find dirt on his Democratic rivals — a violation of US laws against seeking foreign help in US elections.

It was a finely written, nine-page memo describing specific Trump actions, and while it was based on secondary sources — his colleagues in the intelligence and diplomatic communities — first-hand witnesses have corroborated what he said, and more, in the months since it surfaced.

By sending his complaint to the inspector general for the US intelligence community, The Whistleblower set in motion a series of reviews and then news articles that quickly snowballed into the House impeachment probe that may see Trump put on trial in the Senate in the new year.

Many whistleblowers stay anonymous, and some collect million-dollar rewards for exposing fraud.

But this one will not gain a reward and likely will not remain unknown. Conservatives have already circulated a name and photograph online.

Republicans in Congress have tried to expose him, alleging he is a Democrat out to get Trump.

But the impeachment process he sparked now fuels itself, meaning that, outed or not, his impact will long be felt in Washington politics.

Greta Thunberg, 16, climate activist

What started as humble protest has turned Greta Thunberg into the world’s green conscience and the voice of a generation’s frustration with inaction on climate change.

It all started in August 2018 when Thunberg decided to skip school and sit outside Sweden’s parliament, holding a sign reading “school strike for the climate”.

Within months her struggle gained worldwide attention and the shy 16-year-old — with her piercing eyes and trademark braids — found herself addressing world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos and at the European Parliament.

Young people from around the world began staging their own school strikes, and the “Fridays for Future” movement was born.

Following her ethos of avoiding air travel, she crossed the Atlantic on a zero-emission sailboat to attend a UN climate summit in New York in September.

The Stockholm-born teenager’s eyes brimmed with tears and her voice cracked with emotion as she delivered a fiery speech to world leaders.

“How dare you?” she thundered.

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”

Thunberg, the daughter of an opera singer mother and an actor-turned-producer father, has also faced severe criticism and been subjected to a swarm of online conspiracy theories.

Some have mocked her youth, called her a puppet of doomsayers or tried to discredit her because of her Asperger’s syndrome, a diagnosis she has never hidden.

But no one can deny that the passionate climate activist’s struggle has helped put climate change back at the top of the agenda.

A survey published by the European Commission in April found that six in 10 Europeans thought “climate change is one of the most serious problems facing the world,” an increase of 17 percentage points compared with 2017.

Venezuela’s Juan Guaido

For a long time he didn’t distinguish himself as an outspoken critic of President Nicolas Maduro, but when he proclaimed himself president in January, Juan Guaido suddenly emerged as the socialist leader’s main opponent.

A key challenge now is to continue to inspire a wilting opposition.

When he burst on the scene in January, the 36-year-old lawmaker initially energised a weakened opposition whose key leaders were imprisoned, exiled or in hiding.

On January 23, a few days after taking the helm as speaker of parliament, the only state institution controlled by the opposition, Guaido proclaimed himself acting president, declaring Maduro’s re-election illegitimate.

He was swiftly recognised by the United States and about 50 other countries. His popularity rating among Venezuelans soared to 63 percent. By October, however, it had dropped more than 20 points.

A trained industrial engineer, Guaido said he has “tried everything” to push Maduro out of office, as the country endures a deep economic crisis that has driven 3.6 million people to flee since 2016.

With great fanfare on February 23, Guaido tried to break a border blockade to bring stockpiled international food and medical aid into the country, calling on the military to abandon Maduro. The gambit failed.

On April 30, a military uprising won support of only a handful of officers and was quickly subdued by the government.

Guaido, married with a two-year-old daughter, describes himself as a survivor of the “Vargas tragedy” — a December 1999 landslide in the northern coastal state where he lived with his mother and five siblings, which killed thousands.

The Venezuelan prosecutor’s office, considered a branch of government by the opposition, has filed a number of lawsuits against him, for which he could face up to 30 years in prison.

But Washington has repeatedly warned Caracas that jailing Guaido would be Maduro’s “last mistake”.

On January 5, his term as parliament speaker officially ends. Agreements between political groupings could allow him to remain in the post, despite a drop in his ability to inspire mass protests, most Venezuelans having abandoned the street to focus on the daily business of survival.

Revolutionary ‘icon’ Ala Saleh of Sudan

Ala Saleh, dressed in traditional white Sudanese garb and standing atop a car, became the symbol of Sudan’s uprising as she led chants against the now-ousted autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April.

Saleh, 22, was propelled to internet fame after a photograph of her with one hand raised in the air singing and cheering along with crowds of protesters went viral, earning her the moniker of “Kandaka”, or Nubian queen.

An engineering student, Saleh grew up in a middle-class Sudanese family in Khartoum and was relatively unknown until her photograph went viral during the anti-Bashir protests.

But since earlier this year, she has become a voice for women’s rights in the northeast African country, where centuries of patriarchal traditions and decades of strict laws under the former regime have severely restricted the role of women in Sudanese society.

“The existing discrimination and inequality women face, coupled with conflict and violence over decades, has resulted in women being subjected to a wide range of human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence on an epic scale,” Saleh said at an open debate at the UN Security Council last month.

She told the UNSC that even wearing trousers or meeting male friends took courage as it was criminalised under the former regime.

During Bashir’s 30-year rule, authorities enforced a strict public order law that activists said primarily targeted women, through harsh interpretations of Islamic sharia law.

On November 26, the country’s new transitional cabinet led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok scrapped the law, although the ruling sovereign council has yet to ratify the move.

Saleh has faced criticism for attracting global attention even as many female activists faced brutal punishments during Bashir’s rule.

But many defend her rise to fame.

“She was a normal person like all others who took to the streets against the former regime,” said activist Khalid Tabidi.

Migrants activist Carola Rackete

German Carola Rackete was the captain of a migrant rescue ship in the Mediterranean who became a left-wing hero in Italy for challenging then far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini’s “closed ports” policy.

The dreadlocked Rackete, 31, was skipper of the Sea-Watch 3, one of several ships used by international charities to aid migrants attempting the perilous sea journey from North Africa to Europe on rickety boats.

On June 12, Rackete’s ship picked up 53 migrants adrift aboard an inflatable raft off the coast of Libya.

The Italian authorities allowed some of the migrants to be taken in for health reasons but refused entry to 43 others, leading to a two-week stand-off at sea.

As conditions on board worsened, Rackete eventually sailed her ship to the island of Lampedusa despite an order from Italian officials not to dock there.

She was arrested on June 29, although a judge overturned that order on July 2, saying she had acted “out of necessity” because of the migrants’ condition.

Italy’s highest court is set to rule in January on whether Rackete’s arrest was warranted.

Salvini described the incident, in which Sea-Watch 3 allegedly hit a police speedboat, as an “act of war” and referred to Rackete as “the German criminal”.

During a visit to Italy in November to present her book “The World We Want”, Rackete was given a police escort after coming under attack from anti-migrant groups.

But she said the harassment “does not really affect me”.

“On the contrary, I am now more sensitive to the racism that some people suffer and to the discrimination and social justice that exist in the world,” Italian media quoted her as telling supporters at the book launch.

The fairytale rise of Lil Nas X

A little over a year ago, Montero Hill had dropped out of university, was living with his sister, had no job, car or even a driver’s licence.

Today — thanks to record-breaking single “Old Town Road” — he is the millionaire country-rap superstar known as Lil Nas X.

The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 19 consecutive weeks between April and August, breaking a record dating to the mid-1990s when Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men spent 16 weeks at number one. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee with Justin Bieber also topped the charts for 16 weeks with “Despacito” in 2017.

All versions of “Old Town Road” have been played more than 1.3 billion times on streaming site Spotify.

Lil Nas X, 20, composed the song based on a beat he purchased for $30 from a Dutch record producer.

The result merged thumping bass and rap with a twangy banjo sound more associated with country music.

Billboard barred the song from its rankings of country music songs, arguing that it did not have enough elements of that genre to merit inclusion.

A few days later, Lil Nas X released a remix of what was already a hit, starring country star Billy Ray Cyrus, father of pop star Miley Cyrus.

Even with the added legitimacy of Billy Cyrus, a two-time Grammy nominee in country categories, the remix was also left out of the country rankings.

Both versions went on to become number one in the main Billboard charts, catapulting the previously unknown artist into the celebrity stratosphere.

Lil Nas X has also seduced fans with his down-to-earth personality and humour. He has never hesitated to don traditional country clothing, including cowboy hat, jacket and boots.

After successfully achieving a rare marriage of rap and country tunes, the young artist shook the hip-hop world in early July by announcing that he is gay.

Although some female rappers had already come out, such as Young M.A, Lil Nas X became the first prominent male rapper to do so.

It was a significant development for an industry that, while less macho than in the past, tends to present a more traditional side of masculinity.

The woman who photographed a black hole

US computer scientist Katie Bouman became an overnight sensation in April for her role in developing a computer algorithm that allowed researchers to take the world’s first image of a black hole.

The 30-year-old, currently an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), was a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration when the team captured the image.

Bouman said she first began working on the EHT as a graduate student studying computer vision at MIT and found that black hole imaging shared striking similarities with work she had done on brain imaging based on limited data from an MRI scanner.

The EHT Collaboration had spent more than a decade building an Earth-sized computational telescope that combined signals received by various telescopes working in pairs around the world.

However, since there were a limited number of locations, the telescopes were able to capture only some light frequencies, leaving large gaps in information.

In 2016, Bouman developed an algorithm named CHIRP to sift through the true mountain of data and fill in the gaps, producing an image.

While the images were captured in 2017, the final result had to be independently validated by four EHT teams working around the world to avoid shared human bias.

On April 10, 2019, a final image was released — a moment that Bouman, then a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, described as “truly amazing and one of my life’s happiest memories”.

Testifying before Congress in May about her research, Bouman praised her team that included several early-career scientists — like herself — whose work had been vital to the project.

“Like black holes, many early-career scientists with significant contributions often go unseen,” she said.

But that’s not the case with her anymore.

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