First up is a linky-list called Blog Gems: Air Your Archives that runs every two weeks over at The King and Eye.
The current airing-of-the-archives asks: "Point us all in the direction of your first public post"!
Join in the Blog Gems airing of the first public posts (as I did! fun game!) or visit mine directly, all the way back to July 2008.
The other glance back is just a week, to my Dec. 14 post wondering why one doesn't hear the phrase "Some of my best friends have autism!"
I just picked up a fascinating new insight from a comment to a post called "She's had classes in autism, people. Don't offer any suggestions." over at A life less ordinary. The original incident that's being discussed is a little convoluted -- you can go read about it there if you like. More interesting to me was the first comment on the post. The comment suggests that in the case of autism, the formulation of the "Some of my best friends" line goes more like "I've worked with people with autism" (or, as in the original incident, "I've had classes in autism.") The claim is a little different, but the use is similar: it can be used as cover for whatever unfortunate or offensive stance about autism one might stake out.
I didn't mention it in the earlier post, but I'm still sort of chewing over the thought of whether/how the claim of such an association can be used for good (as opposed to being used as cover for an opinion you know will mark you as insensitive/bigoted/whatever). It occurs to me that I stake out my bona fides as the parent of a child with autism all the time. But then again, I don't think I've ever used it to say, "I've got nothing to learn from you," or "Don't get me wrong, I'm not prejudiced against people with disabilities / autism."
Still cogitating!
3 comments:
I saw Emily's post, but by the time I saw it the original post's comments had been closed and I couldn't really follow the whole thread of what Shannon said and how she responded, etc. Definitely sounds like she did not take kindly to Shannon's input because "she's taken classes"...who says that to someone like Shannon?
Lynn: Liz Ditz has some screenshots up at I Speak of Dreams if you're really curious. I feel ambivalent about the subsequent interactions with the original poster. She had no idea what she was bringing on herself with the tone of her refusal to engage the "been-there-done-that" experts in the comments! but the original post was really quite kind. So in that way she seriously doesn't compare to the egregiously bigoted examples in my "Some of my best friends" post. On the other hand, her interactions were what sparked Sarah's comment on Emily's post that spoke to my bloggy thoughts... so I decided to write about it.
what an interesting morsel to cogitate on
you made me think of how a lot of people do that very thing - and not just with autism
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