But there’s a reason I was too busy: I had just begun my first week of work at a full-time job since leaving graduate school. Yes, even in spite of all the employment challenges I’ve mentioned in the past, I still managed to find work in this economy.

And it’s not just any job; it’s a chance to work on something I’m quite interested in. Though my life-long dream of being a contestant on Jeopardy! still remains unfulfilled, I’ve managed to do something that you could say is functionally equivalent.

I feel safe disclosing it at this point, now that I’ve been on the job for a week, so I’ll go ahead and state it: I’m now a research engineer at Nuance Communications, working on the DeepQA project—the software powering the Watson supercomputer that defeated the two reigning Jeopardy! champs—as part of a joint research agreement between Nuance and IBM. (As an aside, to cover all the legal bases: everything I discuss below is my own personal opinion, and I’m not speaking as a representative of either Nuance or IBM.)

And this opportunity wouldn’t have been available without plenty of reasonable accommodation—which is exactly what I wanted to write about for Autistics Speaking Day.

As always, the things which have given me the greatest challenges, both in the application process and in my actual time at work so far, have little to do with the actual technical aspects of the job. Sure, there’s sifting through research-oriented code whose organization tends to be quite messy, and there’s having to learn my way around new application frameworks that I’ve never dealt with before now—but I’ve played around with enough open-source projects that I’ve gotten fairly used to this learning curve.

No, my biggest challenges have involved communication… a rather hilarious irony for someone working for a company whose entire line of products involves natural language processing.

The greatest challenge, by far, has involved that ever-frustrating bugbear of mine, the telephone. In fact, I was quite worried that things would go downhill quickly when I got the first response to my job application, a voice-mail message asking me to call back with no other contact information. But I did call back—from a quiet room, using headphones and a VoIP system to ensure that I could hear things clearly—and I’m glad I did.

Through that call, I obtained an e-mail address through which I could continue my discussion with the recruiter. And from there, the process went fairly smoothly. Initial communication took place via e-mail, which gives me a much better chance to get my words together coherently and lessens the chance that I might mishear something drastically wrongly. Interviews which would normally be held by phone were instead held via Skype, allowing me to hear the questions much more clearly, and in at least some cases, to see the interviewer as well. And before I knew it—much to my surprise, given how several previous job applications had fared!—I received an official offer of employment.

In the intervening time, I found that many things which could have been challenges for me were surprisingly non-issues. I was given plenty of leeway regarding relocation, and allowed to begin my employment via telecommuting, with a combination of e-mail, instant messaging, Skype, and screen-sharing software taking the place of face-to-face meetings. (Given that the development team already straddles the US-Canada border as it is, reaching out virtually to a remote worker in Georgia was not at all difficult to accommodate.) Thus, I have enough time to take a trip up to Boston to get familiar with the environment and find a suitable apartment before I actually have to move in January, rather than being rushed into a new living arrangement too quickly for me to deal with.

As for transportation… it’s a hassle while I’m working remotely, to be sure, but it will totally be a non-issue once I’ve moved. I’ll obviously get a better idea once I actually go up to visit in a week, but from my research online, I can already tell that Boston will be a much more suitable place for a non-driver like me than small-town Georgia. Neighborhoods tend to be much more walkable (even in some suburban areas!), almost everything I need is accessible either on foot or by transit 7 days a week, and I can even get my groceries delivered, thus eliminating the need for many trips to the store.

The only thing I’ve actually found to be remotely challenging so far involves a weekly group conference between Nuance and IBM. Because of various factors beyond our control, these meetings can only be held by phone. And yet, even this isn’t a total challenge; I discovered that I can call through Google Voice on my computer, run the output through a graphic equalizer, and hear things much more clearly—still not as good as Skype, but nonetheless better. (Seriously, why did I not think to try this before?) I probably ought to look into getting an amplified phone with really fine-grained tone control or something. And those things I still manage to miss are clarified fairly well in the meeting minutes that are sent out each week, so even that’s not necessarily an issue.

It honestly surprises me how smoothly my experiences have gone so far—largely because so many past experiences with seeking employment haven’t gone so smoothly. And, in large part, this was because of my new employer’s willingness to make a few simple accommodations.

No, it’s not that I can’t do them. I’ve proven without a doubt that I can, having lived in my own apartment for several years. It’s just that they’re significantly more stressful and overwhelming than they are for your average neurotypical person.

Take getting groceries, for instance. For most people, the steps are basically: Drive to the grocery store. Take as long as you need to get groceries. Get them. Cart them back out to the car. Drive home, and get them back out.

For me, it’s more like: Take sufficient downtime to make sure that I can process things when I actually get to the grocery store. Wait for bus. Keep waiting, because it’s invariably running late. Catch bus when it arrives. Hurry to get groceries before the next bus arrives, as there’s only one per hour, and the routes in either direction are staggered. Also hurry because the fluorescent lights and noises are overloading. Buy the groceries, making sure not to buy more than you can carry in one trip. Keep waiting at the bus stop, because it’s invariably running late in that direction as well. Ride the bus back, then cross the street back to the apartment with a bunch of heavy bags in tow.

Is it any surprise I need even more downtime after all that?

Similar issues hold for things like cleaning sinks, between the smell of the cleaning solution and tactile issues (I’ve found that I can’t clean at all without wearing gloves, and even then, stuff often ends up getting under the gloves). Or cooking—I need so much downtime to prepare, and need such a clear head to actually do the cooking, that after a busy day, I’d rather just microwave, eat something raw, or go out to eat. And let’s not even get started on laundry—washing and drying isn’t much of an issue, but I usually just leave my clothes wrinkly because ironing is so stressful, especially with my coordination problems.

In short: because it takes me so long to handle these daily living activities, and because they’re so stressful as to require more downtime, I end up getting less actual work done as a result. And my life would be greatly eased by services or accommodations to make these activities less stressful.

But that’s exactly the problem: that I can do these things. Assuming I even could get services to help out with such issues (which is already in question, since I’m over 21, “high-functioning”, and have an above-average IQ—but that’s something for another blog post entirely), the request might still be denied, since I’m obviously able to do the things I’m asking for help for. Completely ignoring, of course, how much more difficult they are for me than for an average non-autistic person—clearly I can do them, so I don’t need even the slightest bit of help, right?

(Oh, yeah, and in further irony, accessing a lot of these support services in the first place requires making a phone call. Yeah, immediate barrier right there for some people with disabilities, myself included!)

This is closely related to what several bloggers observed on Blogging Against Disablism Day, including Jennifer Fitz and Anne at The Trick Is To Keep Reading. The whole support system is designed with the assumption that because you can do something, you’re consistently able to do it, and it’s no harder for you than for anyone else who can do it. And if you reveal that you need support for something, but it’s later discovered that you can do it—no matter what difficulty is involved!—you’ll end up being called a faker.

(I actually have a bit of personal experience with this phenomenon myself. I can’t hear on the phone very well, but can communicate face-to-face without much issue because the sound is clearer and because I can fall back on reading lips. Suffice it to say: people get very confused when someone who called them via TTY relay can carry on a face-to-face conversation perfectly fine.)

And so, despite the fact that such services would make my life significantly easier and less stressful? I’m left to basically handle these things on my own. Yes, I can get help from friends and family—but that hardly solves the issue when they may not always be around to help. This, too, is an issue I’ve encountered many times; on several occasions, I’ve made plans with a friend to run errands together, which ended up not coming to fruition due to illness or schedule conflicts. (And of course, by the time I’ve found this out, there are often no more buses I can catch to run those errands.)

The following list is based entirely on my own experiences with several recent self-advocacy opportunities that opened themselves up to me. Despite the fact that many of these events may sound like something out of an absurdist comedy, all of the below occurrences are things that actually happened to me in trying to participate in one conference or another.

How Not To Invite Self-Advocates To Your Disability Conference

• Require physical attendance at the conference. Do not provide any way for a self-advocate to contribute via the internet, despite the fact that many autistic people find conferences to be sensory overload, and despite the fact that many people with disabilities may not be able to afford or access transportation.

• Mention the date of the conference in only two e-mails— one sent a month before the conference, when attendees still aren’t sure whether they’ll even be attending, and one sent just two days before it. It’s not as if people with neurological disabilities have bad memories.

• When asked about funding for transportation, give a vague non-answer and let that be all for several weeks. When asked for further details, wait a bit longer, then give a still-inconclusive answer which does not clarify whether reimbursement will occur before or after the conference. People with disabilities can all afford a round-trip bus ride across the state and/or an overnight hotel stay, right?

• When a potential attendee asks for directions via bus, suggest using a bus system that does not even cover that suburb.

• Hold all communication with the team via conference telephone calls, with no provision for live captioning and no alternative meetings via text chat. When asked about this, stumble and suggest calling via relay.

  • Continue to suggest that self-advocates contact you via phone for further information even when they have already explained multiple times that they cannot hear well over the phone.

  • When a self-advocate does call in via relay, talk so fast that the relay operators can’t keep up, never identify who’s saying what, and never give the ‘go ahead’ for the relay-using self-advocate to speak his part. Continue talking even when the relay operator says to hold on because another operator has to take his place.

  • Ignore the self-advocate’s other suggestions entirely, such as holding the meeting via Skype (which has better sound quality, avoiding the muffling from regular phone lines) or relaying the important points live via instant messaging.

  • Do all of these things despite the fact that the relay-using caller has explained all of these issues involved with relay via e-mail prior to the call.

  • After the first one goes so badly, and a self-advocate has told you as much, continue to hold meetings via conference call with no alternatives.

• As another alternative, provide a screencasting feature that allows viewers to see the slideshow and its notes. Make sure it only supports Windows, with dodgy support for Linux and none for Mac OS. Don’t actually test it to see whether it even works in Windows as claimed.

• Promise to send summaries/minutes of the conferences within several days of the call, to make up for the failure of accessibility during the call. Never actually send these minutes.

• Assume that all self-advocates who have been recommended by a particular organization are formally affiliated with that organization in a leadership role, and repeatedly ask them unanswerable questions about that role.

  • Assume that every national or international disability organization with members in your state has a branch within your state.

• Assume that a developmentally disabled person has any sort of remotely comprehensive idea about the extent of disability-related organizations in their state as a whole, and especially about organizational resources such as funding and meeting spaces.

  • Assume that a self-advocate who has lived his entire life downstate has any clue about organizations and resources that are nearly all upstate, especially when inter-city transportation is so lacking.

• Ask an autistic person vague questions like “What has worked in your state?” and “What are the challenges in your state?” with no further context whatsoever.

  • When a self-advocate e-mails to ask for clarification of these questions, be equally vague in your reply.

• And, after a self-advocate has gone through this entire rigmarole, proudly state in an e-mail to all attendees that “if allies are to be part of the movement, they need to be held accountable. Information must be accessible.” (Actual quote, folks. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.)

However, this doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing occasional musings elsewhere. Check out my Twitter feed and my Tumblr posts tagged “autism” for my thoughts that haven’t been substantial enough to expand into full-length blog posts.

Something I’ve noticed, as I keep an eye on Twitter searches and Google Reader, is that what counts for autism awareness is… rather shallow, honestly. One particular ‘awareness’ campaign I’ve seen referenced a lot lately involves putting blue lightbulbs in one’s outside lights, and wearing blue clothing. If I may ask… how does this even indicate that autism exists to someone who doesn’t know about it, much less indicate what autism actually is?

And that’s another thing. Many of these awareness-raising efforts that I’m finding describe more about the campaign itself than about, well, what they’re raising awareness for. At least one site I’ve seen people linking to describes the awareness campaign in great detail on the front page, but hides the actual description of autism several links deep, below the fold.

Surely I can’t be the only one who sees this as a problem?

Honestly, I think we need to move beyond mere awareness. With all the public service announcements and such that I’ve seen, I’d venture to say lots of people are aware that there’s some sort of condition known as autism, that it exists, and that a lot of people have it. But as someone who actually is on the autistic spectrum, I’ve also noticed that this awareness generally doesn’t make people any more clued in about autism.

What we need is understanding of autism—which automatically encompasses awareness as well; if you understand something, after all, you’re surely aware of it.

People don’t get that autism comes in many forms—that, as some people have said, “if you’ve seen one autistic person, you’ve seen one autistic person.” That despite PSAs shining a spotlight on extreme cases, not all cases are of equal severity. That even among cases of equal severity, it may present quite differently from person to person.

People don’t get that autistic kids grow up to be equally autistic adults, because so much of the materials used for awareness exclusively show children, even when they do mention in a side note that autism is a life-long condition.

People don’t get that autism isn’t just about socialization and communication– that it also has sensory aspects, too. That the reason an autistic kid doesn’t listen may be because he or she can’t decipher speech due to garbled sensory input. That the reason an autistic kid doesn’t want to hug or maintain eye contact may be because he or she finds it literally painful.

People don’t get that events, and sometimes even social structures themselves, can be confusing at best and inaccessible at worst to an autistic person—and that it’s not necessarily the autistic person’s fault. People often don’t even imagine that autistic people might want to participate in events and in society, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary—much less consider what might make these things so inaccessible or how to remedy them. Nor do they imagine that autistic people might find ways around these accessibility barriers and be active participants.

And often, people don’t get that other people sometimes just like to be left alone… both autistic and neurotypical. (I could probably go on a whole other rant about introversion and how it’s treated by society as a whole…)

If people understood autism to the same extent that they were aware of it, we might even begin to see more acceptance. That even in the worst times, even when they’re acting out, even when communication is a serious challenge, autistic people are still human—and still deserve to be a part of society, treated with respect, as much as everyone else.

I’ve noticed something related quite often in many discussions of autism that I’ve followed both online and offline: an othering of autistics, an ‘us versus them’ where the ‘us’ is non-autistic and the ‘them’ is autistic. This sort of discussion is almost always uncomfortable for me, because generally—even as a ‘high-functioning’ autistic—I feel far more kinship with the ‘them’ in this equation than with the ‘us.’

And it’s amazing how many prominent figures in the dialogue about autism make these same mistakes, over and over and over again.

Today has been declared Autism Acceptance Day by Paula Durbin-Westby, as a counterpart to the World Autism Awareness Day that is occurring tomorrow. And that is why I’m posting this today: to stress that society as a whole really need to go beyond awareness into understanding and even acceptance of autism.

There is one project I’ve been helping out with that is a wonderful antidote to this lack of understanding and acceptance: The Gateway Project. What they’re trying to do is to help make things more accessible for autistic people—and they’re doing it with active help from people on the spectrum. All of their studies are designed with four values in mind: they are inclusive of autistic people in the planning stages, are written to be respectful of autistics, are designed to be accessible to autistics from the start, and are intended to produce results that are actually relevant to autistic people in day-to-day life. You’re welcome to participate even if you’re not autistic; these studies are partly designed to observe how experiences differ between people on and off the spectrum, so that it becomes apparent what could use improvement in order to produce these relevant results.

The thing is, to me, this seemed rather counterintuitive. The whole thing was supposed to be a simulation of the communication challenges faced by autistics— but they didn’t very well mimic the issues that I had. In fact, textual communication via online social networks is easiest for me— when I first logged onto the internet in 1996 (wow, I feel old), it was so freeing that I could communicate with people halfway around the world without having to deal with any of that pesky deciphering of spoken language! A much better simulation, in my opinion, would’ve been to only socialize online, and not use speech for the entire day instead.

So instead of that event, I decided to join a counter-event proposed by autistic blogger Corina Becker: Autistics Speaking Day, in which autistics and allies were to flood social networks rather than abstaining from them.

Thus, I’ve been tweeting all day on my Twitter feed (which I’ll still continue to post autism-related stuff, incidentally). And I decided I’d post something here as well.

I decided, given that this is all about autism awareness, why not provide some counterexamples to prevalent stereotypes and myths about autism? I already did a bit of this last April on DailyKos, but since then, I’ve thought of five more myths that needed debunking.

So here we go…

MYTH: Autistics are all intellectually impaired.

FACT: Autism and intellectual disability are not directly connected. There are some autistics with above-average IQs— and, for that matter, there are others with below-average IQs. And that really doesn’t mean a lot anyway, because IQ tests can produce drastically misleading results for people on the autism spectrum… but that’s probably worth another rant entirely.

MYTH: Autistics are all savants.

FACT: Nope, this one’s not true either. Sure, there are some autistics with savant skills. But there are plenty more of us without any such skills at all.

MYTH: Autistics are monolithic, in general.

FACT: As several people have put it, “if you’ve seen one autistic person, you’ve seen one autistic person.” We’re as varied as neurotypicals.

MYTH: Autistics don’t have imaginations.

FACT: Autistic people may not play imaginatively in the same way, but we definitely have imaginations. Remember sitting in a box as a kid and pretending you were on TV? Yeah, I did that. I also distinctly remember racing Matchbox cars around the bathtub. And let’s not even get into the dinosaur fights (yep, like pretty much every other kid, I had a bunch of dinosaur figures).

And I’m hardly the only one. Corina Becker, mentioned above, is also a writer and cartoonist. Dora Raymaker, another online friend of mine, is an artist and writer. And even with more mundane things like computer programming, some degree of creativity is still a necessity. And these are just the people I know; let’s not even get into more famous autistics like Gary Numan!

MYTH: Autistics have no sense of humor.

FACT: We may not have a normal sense of humor, but yeah, most of us have a sense of humor. In my experience, autistic humor tends to lean toward the absurd; Monty Python is a perennial favorite amongst many autistics, for instance. Humor that mocks absurdities of everyday life is also much loved amongst autistics. What many of us don’t care so much for is humor that belittles others for things that are beyond their control— something that’s all too common in modern comedy, sadly.

So those are the five myths I felt like debunking today. If you found that interesting, be sure to check out my prior mythbusting post on DailyKos. (And for those of you who don’t lean to the political left, I’ll emphasize that that particular post is quite neutral politically— as are most of the other KosAbility posts too, for that matter.)

As you might also be aware if you happened to look at Google’s home page today, it’s also the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, author of numerous well-known folktales. Among many other stories, he wrote “Thumbelina,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes”… and, of course, “The Ugly Duckling.”

“The Ugly Duckling” is a story that Andersen himself has admitted was based on his own experiences growing up. And it’s always resonated with me as well, as an autistic living in a neurotypical world. Despite all efforts to be accepted, I’ve never quite felt like a duck neurotypical; I only truly felt free, free to be myself, when I learned of the autism spectrum, when I learned that I behaved and perceived things differently because I was different.

Think about it. How many times do we see autistic people described as broken neurotypicals, rather than as individuals with their own distinct thought patterns and processing styles? How many times do we see people trying to make their autistic children behave like them, rather than letting them exhibit entirely harmless behaviors that just happen to be trademarks of autism?

And isn’t it all a bit like expecting a swan to look and act like a duck, when it is, in fact, a shining example of a swan?

Though it may seem a bit strange to think of a fairy tale as a shining example of autism awareness, it does seem as if people could learn a lot about it from “The Ugly Duckling.” And it amazes me how many people haven’t even considered that analogy.

You all should know by now my feelings about what counts for autism awareness these days; if not, see my posts from 2008 and 2009 to get caught up.

So yes. Once again, I’ll be blogging quite a bit more than usual. I’ll be monitoring my Google News alerts and Twitter searches, as well as the occasional offline news source, for anything that looks blog-worthy. I’ll be writing about autism advocacy and what fellow blogger SadderButWiserGirl calls “autism badvocacy”. And of course, I’ll be sharing some personal anecdotes to give readers a look at autism from the inside out.

I’d have blogged more today, except I’ve been pretty much out of it between grading for my graduate assistantship and a really irritating headache that keeps coming back. (Seriously, why does Autism Awareness Month also have to coincide with pollen season? )

Greetings. I’m Cody, I’m autistic, I have a girlfriend, and I love her.

Yeah. I hear you saying it right now. There are autistics who actually want friendships? Autistics can actually feel love for others? Autistics can be in romantic relationships?

And to answer those questions: Yes, yes, and oh so definitely yes.

On one hand, it amazes me that these tropes continue to persist in the face of all manner of evidence to the contrary. And yet, on the other hand, it really shouldn’t amaze me.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen some sort of human-interest story or fundraising film about autism in which a parent rambles about how their once talkative kid will no longer say “I love you”— or how their child doesn’t even seem to show affection at all. And I don’t know how many times I’ve seen, in these same sorts of films, all manner of evidence from the kids in question that they’re quite concerned about their parents— with the parents never even noticing these overtures.

And I’m definitely not the only one. Amanda Baggs, a fellow autistic blogger, noticed this as well:

An interesting aspect of this in action was the “Autism Every Day” video in fact. I showed the video to the people at the MIT Media Lab recently, but instead of watching it straight through, we stopped it and focused on the social behavior of the children in the video, and the parents in the video. The interesting part to me was that the social behavior of the children was not only often invisible to their parents, but often invisible to the people who worked at the Media Lab as well. I had to point out to them things like one child speaking to her mother and inquiring about her mother’s emotional state, another child’s affection, another child looking up at his mother’s face to gauge her feelings.

And that, I think, really cuts to the crux of these tropes. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if there are indeed some autistics out there who really don’t want friends, who really aren’t interested at all in relationships, most of what I’ve found, at least based on my experiences in the online autistic community (and note the word community there!) is quite the opposite.

It’s just that we don’t necessarily show these feelings in a way that neurotypicals can quickly comprehend.

My girlfriend and I have actually noticed a related pattern even in our IM conversations— not to mention our occasional face-to-face encounters.

(A brief interlude, because I’m sure the previous statement will, in itself, likely seem a bit odd to most readers. See, we live several hours apart, neither of us drive, and intercity transportation in our state is horrible, so there are spans of several months in which we don’t see each other in person. And with my auditory processing issues, phone calls aren’t exactly convenient either— though we do carry on Skype-to-Skype conversations every once in a while, which aren’t a problem because of the enhanced audio quality. But a majority of our interactions are through SMS and instant messaging, just because it’s the most convenient option.)

What I’ve noticed is that we rarely use the words “I love you” in our conversations. Sure, it was a shock for both of us the first time those words came out in a late-night movie theater trip. But now that they’ve been said, why do we need to keep saying them? It’s like that poem by E. E. Cummings: “since feeling is first / who pays any attention / to the syntax of things / will never wholly kiss you.” Why bother with “the syntax of things”— saying the words “I,” “love,” and “you” in that order— so often, when there’s such a variety of other ways to actually show it? And indeed, our IM conversations are peppered with frequent emotes of the very sorts of things we’d do in person: hugs, cuddles, hair ruffles and the like.

Oh, yes, that’s another myth that I hear far too often, incidentally: autistics can’t be touchy-feely. Sure, I don’t like unexpected touching— but really, does anyone? Mutually agreed-upon cuddling and hugs, however, are perfectly fine… and indeed, they’re usually extremely comforting. (And that’s not all too surprising, either, given the ideas which led to Temple Grandin’s hug machine.)

But even beyond that, this particular relationship wouldn’t be what it is without one additional factor: mutual acceptance. That’s the whole reason that so many potential friendships have failed me. It’s not, as so many neurotypical observers would think, because I didn’t want the person as a friend, and definitely not because I didn’t want a friend at all.

Simply put: my girlfriend likes me for who I am. And I like her for who she is. It’s those quirky traits that both of us have that attracted us to one another in the first place, and it’s those traits that continue to attract us to each other.

And that’s why so many potential friendships fail for me. So many people just want me to be someone who I’m not… and although I’m perfectly happy to put up a façade for social situations that require it, and I’m perfectly happy to work on those little ‘hidden curriculum‘ items that never really occurred to me in the first place, I’m not willing to go so far as to change my entire state of being to some random individual’s whim. If I have to constantly feel like I’m working at something in order to be around someone, if I have to keep my guard up at all times and can’t just be myself, that defeats the implied trust that exists in a friendship. Indeed, my closest friendships ever have all been with people who accepted me for who I was, and who didn’t want me to become something that I’m not.

So, neurotypical observers, before you’re too quick to label an autistic acquaintance or relative as being uninterested in friendship, lacking in signs of affection, or unromantic, take a closer look. There may very well be more than meets the eye.

April is coming.

It’s only just nearing the end of February. I know that. I also know that there are many things I need to get done in my life before April Fools Day comes around again.

But still, April is looming. I can almost feel myself bracing for it.

April Fools Day. The day it always starts.

Justifying The Existence Of My Boyfriend Month.

Justifying The Existence Of Our Relationship Month.

Justifying The Fact That No, I Am NOT Going To Try To Change Him Month.

Hi, I’m codeman38′s girlfriend.

The one the “My autistic child is never going to have a girlfriend!” moans during Autism Awareness Month claim doesn’t exist.

(Then again, every year a number of people usually manage to claim adult autistics don’t exist, so codeman38 and I are likely somewhat even on that. Not that either of us is keeping score.)

Thanks to the growing side awareness about something people are calling ‘Cassandra Affective Disorder’, sooner or later I’m going to get labeled as something I’m not.

So let me put this plainly:

I’m sick and tired of being told I’m broken in some way for loving him, and sick and tired of having to explain that most of what gets said during Autism Awareness Month doesn’t apply to him or most other autistics.

And I’m especially sick and tired of the way all people in relationships with autistic people, whatever their point on the diagnostic spectrum, are being tarred with this Cassandra Affective Disorder thing.

1) He did not deceive me into thinking he was ‘normal’.

One of the first bits of personal information we exchanged the day we met was that I have Attention Deficit Disorder and he has that plus an Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis. I didn’t know what that meant right then, nor for the several years we were friends before dating, but at any time – even that night – I could have gone to my dorm room, searched on Google, and found every bit of misinformation and information about that diagnostic label that the Internet had to offer.

And yes, we were friends for years before we became a couple. I got to know him. Sure there were some details, like perceptual quirks, that he had to eventually tell me about because an observer couldn’t know, but at no point was he trying to mask anything past what he normally had to do to get through a day in college.

Every time I read one of the ‘but I didn’t know what he was!’ descriptions of ‘My Hell Relationship With An Autistic Person’, I can’t help but think that what I’m reading sounds a lot like a typical case of a couple who didn’t know each other, really know each other, before they got together. Barriers never got dropped. Suddenly, being together is a safe place instead of a social situation. Coping mechanisms get dropped, and behaviors the non-autistic didn’t know about show up.

And there’s probably a fair dose of the usual ‘but he wants the toilet paper roll turned the WRONG way!’ disputes mixed into it — except that society right now does default into ‘the autistic is always wrong’.

2) Using a relationship to force someone to change? Is wrong.

And that is pretty much what a lot of the symptoms of CAD seem to be to me: one partner trying to change the other. It’s just that since those things happen to be innate traits, present from the time of earliest memories if not present from birth, that pushing doesn’t actually do much of anything except cause a lot of negative emotional fallout on both sides.

When I was in high school and college, the Warnings You Are In A Bad Relationship brochures and talks usually included the idea that someone who tries to change you from who you are is not someone you need to be around, much less date.

I was being warned to avoid people with the same sorts of relationship behaviors that supposedly go with dating an autistic according to the CAD people.

Forcing change of innate characteristics based on the desire of another party is considered at best mild relationship abuse unless, and so far as I can tell solely unless, the victim has an autistic spectrum diagnosis.

And at least some claiming CAD exists claim pretty much everyone dating or married to an autistic person — any autistic person, no matter what diagnosis, no matter how ‘high-functioning’ — has this supposed disorder.

I’m, however unintentionally, being labeled an emotional abuser of my boyfriend because and only because he was given an Asperger’s Disorder diagnosis late in high school.

3) Stop with the two uses of the word ‘encouraging’.

This is an old old rant codeman38 has heard from me before. We’re both word geeks. Hopefully he won’t mind my finally repeating it in public here.

There are two main forms of the word ‘encouraging’ in use today in America.

One is the everyday positive ‘he was an encouragement to me’ usage. People may question the motives involved, but the general outcome for the target of the encouragement is held to be better than if it hadn’t happened.

Those bells everyone keeps ringing during Olympic skiing events? Those are supposed to be this kind of encouraging.

And then, there’s the other meaning of the word, usually heard in the sentence “Don’t encourage him.”

It’s never been said to me, but I can feel it sometimes. When he stims and I don’t do a ‘dude, stop that’ maneuver. When he’s focusing so hard on something that he can’t actually focus usefully and it’s time for the funny youtube clip that is somehow not socially right because it’s distracting him from focusing on how much he can’t focus (I’m still trying to understand that logical loop).

And, most especially, the one or two times he’s rocked and I’ve joined in.

There, I finally admitted it. And it’s surprising how socially wrong even admitting that actually is, given that just a quick trip to someplace with a porch swing would make it suddenly traditional ‘oh that’s so sweet’ dating behavior.

And that brings me to

4) There are many ways to say I Love You.

I shouldn’t have to say this. That book a while back about people having different Love Languages should have said it all for me, but the ‘I’ll never hear my child say ‘I Love You” claims during April every year mean I apparently have to.

Codeman38 has an auditory processing disorder as part of what gave him the Asperger’s Diagnosis. He’s got other perceptual quirks, to be sure, but that’s the big one.

That means that, regardless of whatever effects autism may have on his own emotional displays, sometimes words can’t work as a sign of affection with him. If I tell him “I love you” over a cell phone connection, even a good one, there are many many days I might as well be saying “My hovercraft is full of eels” because he’s not going to understand me.

This means that apart from Skype and the times we do manage to be in the same room at the same time, we’ve got text messages, e-mail, and instant messenger as communication tools.

So, even without emotional display preferences coming into it, neither of us hears ‘I love you’ all that much.

But here’s the thing: love doesn’t take saying the words often. They are not some magic incantation that makes an emotion really exist. Getting someone to say “I love you” does not make them love you. Never hearing someone say “I love you” isn’t absolute proof that they don’t.

We pass each other web links all the time, things we know the other would be incredibly interested in even if they aren’t our personal cup of tea.

We keep an eye out while shopping, and if there’s something like a $3 DVD at BigLots we know the other has been searching ages for, we make sure it hasn’t already been found, get it, and add it to the pile of things we’ll exchange the next time we do manage to be in the same place.

We offer humor when needed, and sympathy when needed.

And I’m tired of it being like all that doesn’t matter just because it can be a week between times we each type three words, and has been known to be months between times we hear them.

——

And if you think all this affects me, just remember: all it takes is ending one human relationship, just one, for me not to have to deal with these assumptions and judgments of society ever again.

Codeman38 doesn’t have that option. Other autistics don’t have that option.

Anyone they ever date or marry will have to deal with this pile of problems and issues unless things change, and the very people who lament autistics not being able to date successfully are often the very people driving these stresses every single April.