Today Mom brought me to a presentation by Sue Campbell, author of Relational Memories(?). She was talking about the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and so forth from a feminist perspective, about the way personal accounts are discredited by attacking memory. Which got me thinking about wider ways of viewing this.
It's my impression that many people, when reading a personal account that challenges their stereotypes, react one of two ways to each stereotype challenge.
One way is to go "Oh, wow! I never knew that!" and incorporate that into their view. An example is how many curebies reacted to Temple Grandin describing picture thinking.
A second way is to reject it and try to discredit the personal account. In terms of recovered (or any kind) of memories of abuse, often they suggest the person has a false memory. But there are myriad of ways to discredit personal accounts. One way is to claim that the account isn't from who it's supposed to be from - eg facilitator influence. Another way is to say that the person is an exception and therefore their personal account is irrelevant to other people's lives - eg "you're so high functioning, we're not trying to cure high functioning people, we're trying to cure low functioning people" or "you were misdiagnosed". Another way is to agree that the events happened and are representative of many people's lives, but that the person misinterpreted them - eg "you're delusional, talking in a high-pitched parentese voice doesn't really mean we're infantilizing you". Sometimes they connect this with the person's diagnosis, such as saying a psychiatric survivor is "too crazy" to know what they're talking about. Sometimes they simply ignore or misinterpret the communication - eg a person who is throwing tantrums to protest how they're being treated is viewed as "regressing" or "displaying maladaptive behavior" (whether it's "adaptive" is irrelevant, what's relevant is why they're doing it). Sometimes they use several at once, even contradicting themselves - "you're too high functioning to represent real autistics, but you're mindblind and don't understand what's really going on in social interaction and your facilitator is the one who's really typing that."
So what makes the difference? It's how invested they are in their model of reality.
For example, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is run by parents of people (mostly women, it seems) who recovered memories of childhood abuse. They don't want to be viewed as abusers, so they discredit the voices of their offspring.
A person may be invested in viewing low functioning autistics as "retarded" based on thinking that what they're doing is OK to do to "retarded" people, but if a seemingly "retarded" person turns out to be highly gifted they don't want to accept the obvious conclusion that other "retarded" people might also be smart.
A person may be making money off of therapy and not want to listen to people saying that therapy damaged them (or their child, look at CIBRA, which has been attacked by ABA therapists).
In terms of FC, two things that concern many people are a) the very fact such people can type so well, and b) what they say about their experience (especially sexual abuse accounts).
It's my impression that many people, when reading a personal account that challenges their stereotypes, react one of two ways to each stereotype challenge.
One way is to go "Oh, wow! I never knew that!" and incorporate that into their view. An example is how many curebies reacted to Temple Grandin describing picture thinking.
A second way is to reject it and try to discredit the personal account. In terms of recovered (or any kind) of memories of abuse, often they suggest the person has a false memory. But there are myriad of ways to discredit personal accounts. One way is to claim that the account isn't from who it's supposed to be from - eg facilitator influence. Another way is to say that the person is an exception and therefore their personal account is irrelevant to other people's lives - eg "you're so high functioning, we're not trying to cure high functioning people, we're trying to cure low functioning people" or "you were misdiagnosed". Another way is to agree that the events happened and are representative of many people's lives, but that the person misinterpreted them - eg "you're delusional, talking in a high-pitched parentese voice doesn't really mean we're infantilizing you". Sometimes they connect this with the person's diagnosis, such as saying a psychiatric survivor is "too crazy" to know what they're talking about. Sometimes they simply ignore or misinterpret the communication - eg a person who is throwing tantrums to protest how they're being treated is viewed as "regressing" or "displaying maladaptive behavior" (whether it's "adaptive" is irrelevant, what's relevant is why they're doing it). Sometimes they use several at once, even contradicting themselves - "you're too high functioning to represent real autistics, but you're mindblind and don't understand what's really going on in social interaction and your facilitator is the one who's really typing that."
So what makes the difference? It's how invested they are in their model of reality.
For example, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is run by parents of people (mostly women, it seems) who recovered memories of childhood abuse. They don't want to be viewed as abusers, so they discredit the voices of their offspring.
A person may be invested in viewing low functioning autistics as "retarded" based on thinking that what they're doing is OK to do to "retarded" people, but if a seemingly "retarded" person turns out to be highly gifted they don't want to accept the obvious conclusion that other "retarded" people might also be smart.
A person may be making money off of therapy and not want to listen to people saying that therapy damaged them (or their child, look at CIBRA, which has been attacked by ABA therapists).
In terms of FC, two things that concern many people are a) the very fact such people can type so well, and b) what they say about their experience (especially sexual abuse accounts).
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