Are we invisible?

R

Rahere

Active member
Chapter One of the Equality Act 2010 covers discrimination on grounds of Disability, amongst many others, specified as having
(a) a physical or mental impairment, and
(b) the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on {their} ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities
Long-term is defined in Schedule 1 as being of 12 months duration or longer, both actual, potential, and possibly recurrent, or life-long if that is less.

Why is it then that, as my mentor said when diagnosing me aged 60, "the miracle is you don't have a criminal record a mile long"*, Chapter 9 of the Casey Report (focused on discrimination, covers homophobia, sexism and misogyny, and racism) does not cover any of the other domains protected by the Act?

In the mid-80s, I was brought into the then Greenwich Association of the Disabled (now "of Disabled People"), to handle the roll-out of the Dial-a-Ride system to London Transport. GAD was at that time a veritable GAD-Fly to Parliament, under the redoubtable Mrs Rose, well-known for chaining wheelchairs to buses outside Parliament. It achieved its objectives.

If, as headlined, we are into self-advocacy, what are we going to do about it? We saw the magnificent case of Andrew Sabisky, one of the "weirdos and misfits" recruited by Dominic Cummings in the wake of the event below. How many of us have ended up self-educating, because the Education system has no provision for the extremes of the Spectrum? My experience in the early 70s was "Fine. I studied this myself five years ago, and it's moved on since." Sabisky's problem is he'd dived into eugenics (a subject on this forum), and got thoroughly abused by the Press even though it was a decade before, as a result. That happened because he had no guidance - I had some seriously authoritative, ranging from one of Gandhi's team, to a member of our late Majesty's kitchen cabinet, and the Father of the Chapel at the FT (whose spouse was Guide Commissioner for the South East). We're producing thousands of high-functioning individuals each year, yet there seems to be no provision for them. Am I wrong? I can find little other than Spectrum in the literature, which is fine for the low-functioning, but doesn't really address high-functionality.

* in fact, I have a virtuous record with the Security Services a mile long, and during the testing, all and sundry in the Royal Society of Medicine saw MI5 get egg all over their faces trying to bully the team away from a sensitive approach we were handling, pointed straight at the country's top technical specialist, with the Head of the US Secret Service detail in the room! Experts in Thou Shalt Not, they were completely at sea when faced with the Shit Happens! Thankfully I am not, as I'm retired from the European CFSP State Department Crisis Management team, it's economics expert. The miracle here was that they didn't wave their little black things in the face of a Cabinet Minister, as a good few were informed of events.
 
Simple answer is that work around discrimination (and equality, diversity and inclusion training) almost always misses out disabled people.

A more complex answer is that effective lobbying and campaigning in a hostile environment possibly require a set of skills and a type of mindset that Autistic people often don't excel at. I've done my time in campaigning and seen how the effective work gets done but the way it gets done makes my skin scrawl - all the deception, manipulation, posturing and politicking.

Having said that, Wales seems to be listening to neurodivergent people. The Welsh Gov has set up a task force, and the neurodivergent people on the task force advocated for it to be a neurodivergent task force not a neurodevelopmental on - and so the task force has been renamed.

So - no real answers. But I hear you. Keep calling out things like Chapter 9's invisibility of disablity. Best lesson I learned was that I don't alwyas have to offer a solution. Sometimes I can just point out that something is a problem and ask if they have a way forward.

(in this case, you can flag the issue with Baronness Casey by emailing and putting her name in the subject line and sending it to contactholmember@parliament.uk )
 
Perhaps it needs a larger media attention (e.g. a TV programme or news article) for us to see progress in our everyday lives.

We've seen numerous 'scandals' go almost completely unnoticed by the general public, only to gain widespread attention once the media get hold of it, often several years later.

In neuro diverse circles we've been trying to advocate because of our poor quality of life, caused by the ignorance, dismissal and abelism of the majority of people, whether they know they do it or not.

This should be a scandal, but the media doesn't really know about it yet.
 
Don't work off scandal, media are an unwholesome bunch - look at how they turned on one of the Weirdos and Misfits, Andrew Sabisky, whose self-education was unmentored and so strayed into notoriety. Hurley Burley's screams of Geek! could as easily have been Witch! three hundred years ago, so hate-filled was she, and that comes down to the reason for declaring ND, the reality that NTs find us intolerable.
Section 6 Disability starts

A person (P) has a disability if—
(a)P has a physical or mental impairment, and
(b)the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on P's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

My impairment does not fall short of the second test, but the fear and social anxiety caused by how I've been treated does, and has done for five years now. Is that part of it? Has any precedent been made? During the period, it became clear the Misfits and Weirdos statement, which I at first had to qualify because it was only an alignment which could be coincidental, was indeed as I thought, when Dominic Cummings explained to the Covid Enquiry in October that the Cabinet Office had lost faith in the Civil Service (a factor in the current scandals, as senior Civil Servants are now continuously breaching the Civil Service Code by briefing Truth unto Power - for example, the Chief Clerk of the House of Commons releasing his written advice to the Speaker) and so went looking for Weirdos and Misfits - ie the Neurodiverse - to replace them. That wasn't just a figure of speech, the Cabinet had seen me land a very significant diplomatic deal affecting the future of us all, in six hours from the question being asked to it being answered. That paper was actually four months work, the diagnosis was hyperperception, and is now being refined into a genius trait. I've gone quiet because there are no others out there. Cummings confirmed the same.
 
Rahere said:
Don't work off scandal, media are an unwholesome bunch - look at how they turned on one of the Weirdos and Misfits, Andrew Sabisky, whose self-education was unmentored and so strayed into notoriety. Hurley Burley's screams of Geek! could as easily have been Witch! three hundred years ago, so hate-filled was she, and that comes down to the reason for declaring ND, the reality that NTs find us intolerable.
Section 6 Disability starts

A person (P) has a disability if—
(a)P has a physical or mental impairment, and
(b)the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on P's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

My impairment does not fall short of the second test, but the fear and social anxiety caused by how I've been treated does, and has done for five years now. Is that part of it? Has any precedent been made? During the period, it became clear the Misfits and Weirdos statement, which I at first had to qualify because it was only an alignment which could be coincidental, was indeed as I thought, when Dominic Cummings explained to the Covid Enquiry in October that the Cabinet Office had lost faith in the Civil Service (a factor in the current scandals, as senior Civil Servants are now continuously breaching the Civil Service Code by briefing Truth unto Power - for example, the Chief Clerk of the House of Commons releasing his written advice to the Speaker) and so went looking for Weirdos and Misfits - ie the Neurodiverse - to replace them. That wasn't just a figure of speech, the Cabinet had seen me land a very significant diplomatic deal affecting the future of us all, in six hours from the question being asked to it being answered. That paper was actually four months work, the diagnosis was hyperperception, and is now being refined into a genius trait. I've gone quiet because there are no others out there. Cummings confirmed the same.
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I understand the laziness and ignorance of the media. But I believe that's why we should still fight our corner.
Our perspectives on our thoughts, feelings and expression have been far more optimistic than the biased medicalised information in general circulation.
There's an alternative to the outdated picture of ND's as weirdos and misfits, which comes from our lived experience and those who can relate to it. When we're listened to, people find it easier to accept and accommodate our areas of weakness and play to our strengths.
We don't have to be categorised by a 'mental impairment' when we can be appreciated as part of a variety of different minds.
Our mistreatment will continue until this knowledge is available to the majority people, who haven't yet formed a strong opinion on neurodiversity.
 
Those attitudes didn't come from nowhere - I handled the preliminary myself, and it was such good work two industry professionals signed up on sight. I held some reservations until I heard the story from Cummings in person during his Covid Enquiry presentation in October. It matched, they'd seen a possibility of saving their bacon and got less than they'd hoped. But the finishing touch was how Andrew Sabisky was seen off - that should be a serious warning to us.
Now, in my opinion, NeuroDiversity's evolution in action. Our brains are far larger than those two thousand years ago, partially because we're far larger, physiologically. Our life expectancy's longer, and our tools to support that are better. And that means the proportion of NDs:NTs is going to increase, making us no longer mad professors, but bringing us inevitably back into the mainstream. I don't know to what extent jibes about ignorance are hitting home, we still see Simon Baron-Cohen ensconced, but the complaints about DSM-5 are certainly at least being acknowledged as a factor in DSM-6. I'm not that interested, though, because the psychiatric profession has discredited itself in my eyes. They had a warning from Temple Gradin, but kept right on brainsplaining.
It's actually one reason I don't want to go any further on here, though, because I'm not helping the truly Aspie or Autistic. I'm neither, I'm gifted, but there's no truly SA forum for me.