The Guilt and Shame of Autism. The Needless, Regretted Guilt and Shame.

Yes.  Another post about autism.  Wasn't this meant to be a blog about gender? - a plan that went wrong from the very first post.

Last night I was online, starting with multiple entertaining viewings of S#!T Ignorant People Say To Autistics which everyone should watch and never, ever say any of those things. That turned to hopping between autism videos on Youtube.  There are so many good, educational videos - and some terrible ones too.  Really terrible.  Morally horrific.  But we won't get onto the less than savoury aspects of Autism Speaks, or onto bleach cures, anti-vaxxers, other autism cure and prevention videos or any of the other rubbish that makes most autistic people so angry and only increases their pride and willingness to make good videos.  No.  We won't get onto those horrific things.

I happened on one of the good ones.  Not perhaps a well made video but with excellent content.  It contained a list I hadn't encountered before, of traits that may be seen in females with Asperger's Syndrome.  And that video linked to the blog containing the list, yet another autism blog that I haven't seen before.  So much to read and study.  So little time and energy.

I found myself going through this list in some detail, not just a quick "Yes, yes, yes ... yes, no, yes ... ooh, nearly a perfect score there." - which was educational.  Possibly is was a bad move because I didn't find the list until gone midnight and it took rather a while.  By the time I finished, my drugs had long since kicked in and when I closed my eyes I could see and feel figures passing over my head and stopping to press my forehead in a most colourful manner.  Either I was completely shattered or the angels were being very active!  I really must learn to escape the internet earlier at night even when it is absorbing to the point of saturation.  I must learn to say "The page will still exist tomorrow, Clare, go to sleep."

As I read the list and discussed each point with myself out loud, I was amazed.

Not by the amount of things I tick "Yes, definitely" to.  I've got used to ticking "yes" on these checklists, and questions and tests.  Clare is autistic.  OK.  Moving on.  That's old news even if she hasn't worked out what that means for her life, her person, her past or her future.

But I was amazed by the way total honesty with myself last night led to the amount of things I tick "Yes, definitely, and I've always felt massively guilty or shameful for it and tried my best to stop this, get rid of it, not have it as part of my life."

So much shame.  So much guilt.  So much self eradication.  And some of that shame and guilt are over things that I look at and wonder how I could have ever felt that way.  The rest of it I know to be unfairly felt and applied, but can understand where it came from because those things are so often frowned upon in polite society.

You know when I said that accepting my gender makes a much bigger practical difference to my life than accepting my autism ever would or could?

I think I was wrong.

At this moment all the changes that have come through transitioning to live as "female" seem almost insignificant compared to the vast range of things that learning to be autistic includes.

Yes, gender is a big deal and dealing with it transformed so much.  Dealing with gender pretty much cured decades of depression and a large black shadow that hung over my life even on the best of days.  It meant I could smile more and better and learn what it meant to cry tears of joy.

While each facet of autism is small, they are beginning to add up to something bigger than gender, whether that's in the way I treat myself, the way I interact with the world, or the way the world treats me.

Gender tackled gender.  Learning to embrace my autistic self tackles everything.  Nothing in my mind, in my life history, in the way I think and behave is safe from the magnifying lens of the autism microscope.

Maybe if anything was safe then I wouldn't be autistic!  After all, that list includes such things as "Analyzes existence, the meaning of life, and everything continually." Yep. I don't just analyse.  I over-analyse.  Everything. Even the things that have no deep reason behind them. And get told about it frequently and told to stop it and just accept what is and get on with things.

So not only is dealing with this harder for me than gender transition, it's bigger too and, if I am faithful to this process, it will transform every part of my life.

Shame must fall away.  Guilt must fall away.  Into true self acceptance.

This is just who I am.  How I'm wired.  And how, at least in the broad strokes, countless thousands of other people are wired.

I have killed myself for too long.

Now is the time for resurrection.  For self knowledge.  For accepting without making value judgements about the so-called "good" and "bad" aspects of who I am.

Now is the time to learn to be autistic.  To learn to be me.  To learn to live.

Now is the time to love myself.  To be proud of who I am.  To be proud of what I am.

Now is the time to allow others to love me - and lovingly critique me - without rejecting that love.

And now is the time to learn better to love others.  To be proud of who they are.  To be proud of what they are.








Now is the time to build myself up.  To stop falling back on forty years of abusive self criticism based on needless shame.

Now is the time for forgive myself for all the abuse I have poured upon myself.

Now.  Now is the time.

About My Breasts, Fucking Passing, And The Wisdom of Autism

Warning in advance:  This post contains completely honest, no-holds-barred, discussion of my breasts.  If that is going to offend you, stop reading.  Right now.

Not long after I had started wearing skirts publicly someone at church asked me an important question:  "Have you thought of chicken fillets? That's what I use."  The person who asked was cis-gender and was wanting to say that using them is OK, because plenty of women use them.  No.  I hadn't thought of that.  In the amazing rush of coming out to myself and going full time two months later, somehow I'd missed thinking of buying someone to give me the appearance of an obvious bust, the appearance of breasts that could have been there for years.

So.  I bought breast inserts.  I bought bras of the right size to hold the inserts in place and wore them with pride.  All of a sudden, the public Clare went from being flat chested to having C cup fake boobs that plenty of people told her looked good.

They really helped with confidence.  Because you know that when the idiots are staring at the shape of your fantastic chest they're not looking so much at your manly looking face so won't throw abuse at you as much.  Unless they look up and think they've just accidentally fancied a bloke and start worrying about their own sexuality.  At least that was the mental theory that boosted my confidence - whether it had any basis in truth is an entirely different matter.

But the time has come to change.

For the last couple of days I have ditched those inserts.  I've been walking with my chest being the shape it currently is naturally.  Yes.  This really is an entire blog post about my breasts.  There will be no photos included!

So.  Why?  Why have I taken the step of putting aside those confidence building, good looking, breast forms?  Am I mad?  Do I want to start getting more abuse again?  Why, Clare?  Why?  Isn't your life hard enough?

Three reasons.

One:  For the good of my own health.

I've now been taking oestrogen every day for seven months.  The dose is still low - in fact it's still lower than what the normal start dose would be in the USA.  And roughly two months ago I started to receive implants of goserelin, which is an anti-androgen.  Basically, it blocks the production of testosterone (and of oestrogen too but that doesn't affect me).

The hormone treatment is having an effect.  I am going through the soreness that any pubescent girl goes through when their breasts grow.  And the inserts affect this.  Yep, it all gets painful at times.  Not that I'm complaining, just laughing at the pain because it means the hormones are doing their job.

The inserts I have are designed to fit over breasts that aren't growing - either because someone wants to add to what they naturally have, or because someone has had a mastectomy and wants to appear to still have their previous appearance.

That's no good for me because my breasts are growing.  That process has begun, though just as in any other female puberty it will take years to complete.  (Too much information?!  If that's the case, why didn't you stop reading when warned at the start?!)  The inserts, because of what they're designed for have a concave back.  And that's no good.  To press growing breasts into them is to try to force them into a shape that they shouldn't have.  And now they're growing there is less room in that bra so the pressure is greater resulting in increased risk of growing misshapen breasts.

So for my own health - and my own comfort too because any woman can tell you that extra constant pressure on growing breasts isn't exactly a blissful physical experience - I have decided to ditch the inserts, regardless of how that changes my appearance or increases the perceived risks.  ("Perceived" is probably the right word, rather than "actual".)

Two:  Passing.  Passing.  Passing.

Readers of this blog will know that I recently have had to come to terms with being autistic, after so many years of denial.  This process has taught me so much and affected me in ways that I'll be working through for a long time.

I always knew that I had a tendency to rock, to stim, to do some of those typically stereotypical autistic things.  And I felt terrible about them and did everything I could to not do any of them.  Don't rock Clare.  Don't stim.  Stay still.  Stay very, very still in case the autism detecting T-Rex in your head sees you and devours you.  (Yes, autistic people CAN invent metaphor and play with words!  Even while often being over-literal about anyone else's metaphors!)

What I have noticed as I have begun to let go and let myself rock and pace and move and play with stim toys and so on - and I know that I have only begun, not finished - is that holding myself still was bloody knackering.  Letting go has been challenging but it's also being a source of freedom and I have a lot more energy through not fighting myself every moment of every day, consciously or subconsciously.

What I've realised is that for all this years I have been trying to pass as neurotypical.  And it's been such hard work even when denying my as yet unofficial diagnosis.  Passing.  Passing.  Passing.

And that realisation has come as something of a revelation and it's affected the way I can treat my gender presentation too.  Because I've been trying to pass there too - pass as reasonably cis-normative so I don't get abused, to look like what other people might think a woman should look like, so that I can claim the same privileges that any cisgender woman is automatically given.

With the autism I decided that, as much as I can manage it, I shouldn't try to pass anymore.  I should just be myself.  And that should be easy because I haven't got a lot to lose in my life and I know that the important parts of what I do have - my family, my church, my friends - are not going to be lost if I learn to be openly autistic, openly the person I am behind the masks.

With the autism I just haven't got the energy to pass.  I haven't got the energy to put on that act all day anymore.  To do so would be more crippling than it was when I didn't even realise how much I was doing it.  And I haven't got the desire to pass either.  I keep reading the writings of people who are proudly autistic and they have been influencing me so much.

So with the autism I came up with a catchphrase.  I penned it and proclaim it.  I used it in the last post on this blog.  I am massively thankful for the people who brought me to the point of proclaiming it.  And bear in mind that I never used to swear and would never have let such a phrase cross my lips in the past.  But ...

"FUCK PASSING"

Easier said than done. 

"Fuck Passing"

Because not passing is not conforming.  It's a risk.

"Fuck Passing"

 It's a letting go of security, of respect, of automatic privilege.

"Fuck Passing"

Yes, that's easier said than done.

"F.U.C.K P.A.S.S.I.N.G"

Because I'm still on the path of discovering what I am and what not passing might mean.

Yeah.

Fuck Passing.

I'm done with it.

I choose the harder life of standing out.

I choose the easier life of being free.

And that's fed back into my gender.  It's easy for me to say because I generally pass pretty well anyway.  I look reasonably like what people think a "woman" looks like.  But for gender too.  Fuck Passing.  I'm not going to get into all the discussions that could be made but these days my use of make up is minimal - far less than a lot of women wear every day.  And I realised.  In order to stay true to my little obscene slogan, the breast inserts had to go.

3.  Women.  What are they anyway?

To be brief:  Breasts do not make a woman.

That's obvious of course.  But if it's so obvious, why should I wear fake breasts?  Doesn't that imply somewhere along the line a view that breasts DO make THIS woman?  Aren't I just falling into some completely bullshit view of what a proper woman should be?

Yes.  At least to some degree - beyond all my concerns of security and self-confidence - that's what I've been doing.

So those breast inserts have to go in order to not stand against the misogynist world that would define a woman by her cup size.

That might be a bit radical.  And I know full well that in some ways that leads to questions about hormones and eventual surgery.  But there are other issues involved there and it's far more complicated than any discussion of sticking bits of silicon in your bra in order to appear "normal" or "acceptable".

So.  There you are.  My chest is worn as it comes.  And I walk with pride because this is who I am and this is what I am and this is the healthy, risky way to be.

And thus I had to buy new bras.  Those C cup bras will have to be put away, at least for the moment.  Who knows what the future will bring and what the medical treatments will do?  And thus I join the moans of all other women:  "Why are bras so expensive?" and "Why doesn't anywhere cheap sell them in my size?"  Honestly, I tried Primark.  Would anything fit?  Not a chance in hell!

It's a new day for my boobs.  What you see now is far less than what you would have seen a week ago.  But what you see is mine.  All mine.  And they are what they are and will be what they will be.

Fuck Passing.  Because the only person I want to pass as is me.

The Problems and Politics of Passing for a Proud, Autistic, Transgender Woman

What follows is part of what I wrote to someone today on facebook.  They were asking about some transgender issues, mainly about hormone treatments and surgery.  They weren't asking about "passing" though we'd mentioned it earlier in the conversation.  But I got sidetracked.  And when I get sidetracked into something that I'm passionate about then there's almost no stopping me, especially online (see the other sixty posts on this blog for evidence of that).  So here goes, some thoughts on passing, as written almost stream of consciousness in a facebook message but edited and tidied a little here.  And inevitably added to greatly in places.  There's also a section missed out because it mentions a friend whose life is nicely anonymous to a trusted friend in America but who doesn't need even a tiny part of their story plastered here for the world to see.

_______________________

Passing in some ways is a toughie for transgender people. We know we shouldn't have to pass. And we know that we should just be able to be who we are. But we also know that it makes life easier - I used to get abuse pretty much every time I left the house, from idiots and now it's a very rare thing. So we get caught up in the politics and pros and cons and the fact that some people will NEVER "pass" no matter what they do. We talk of how not being invisible, not passing, speeds up the change in society. And recognise that you've got to be brave to be the one standing out. I've gone through all this with trans issues and many people have written eloquently of the issues and of their good and bad experiences of passing, not passing, and of not wanting to pass in the first place.

And then this year I've been forced, in bigger ways than expected, to consider autism. And then recently I've been starting to read wider into other disability areas, something that is probably going to take quite a lot of time and reading and talking with people to truly get to grips with in any deep sense. And what I find when I read is that there is EXACTLY the same language.  So many groups of people speak of passing - the need to pass as "normal", the different reasons why people would like to pass, the need to not pass if we want society to change at any pace, the dangers to oneself of passing, the dangers of not passing, the politics, the thought that it is not the place of people to conform to society merely because they are different, but the place of society to learn to accept those people.

It's exactly the same language.  However, I am beginning to work out that there is a big difference though between transgender passing and autistic passing.  A whopping, massive difference that means there are two forms of passing that mean very different things.

Passing in trans land is to fit in to society's picture of what you should look like if you're claiming to be who you are.  Society says that there is a certain picture of what a woman looks like, sounds like, walks like and so on, or what a man is like and if someone appears in public who doesn't fit either of those two boxes then there will be a reaction.  To seek to pass is, in some way, to seek to fit into one of the two societal boxes.  Which is understandable, given that it makes life easier.  Passing says, yes, I am a woman or man and am proud of this but for whatever reason I'm going to seek to fit in with what you say that woman or man should be.  I'm pretty lucky.  I don't have to do a lot to pass reasonably well.  At this stage it's almost not an issue for me - though I'll keep up the hair removal that's already paid for and still spend four minutes a day applying makeup.  At this stage I almost fit into one of the boxes naturally.  But other transgender people will not be able to "pass" whatever they do.  And many transgender people don't fit in one of those boxes anyway - because those boxes aren't the only options for a human being to inhabit.

Passing in autism land is to fit into the picture of someone who isn't you, passing as neuro-typical in order to gain the privileges and simple life of an NT person. There can be lots of reasons for this.  A negative reason is shame.  Many autistic people are told that the outward signs of their autism are bad and they come to believe it and end up spending their lives trying to cover up who they are in order to avoid rejection, from others and from themselves.  A positive one - though one that needs to change in the future as society changes - is that sometimes an autistic person has to pass in order to fulfill a dream or to be able to follow a particular career. Not passing as neurotypical means almost automatic exclusion.

I think that's a big, big difference even though the language used about it is the same. Passing in trans land is hard physical work at times - not that I'm a hard worker.  Unless you are non-binary - which brings up a whole load of new passing issues - you don't pass by saying that your brain and soul are anything other than you know them to be.  You just change the physical. Whereas passing in autism land or in most mental health lands is a mental and emotional thing. And that's stupendously harder. Passing in trans land says "I am a woman (or whatever else) and proud". Passing in autism land says "I am autistic but for some reason I don't want to let you know, or know that I can't let you know because then you won't let me do what I want to do so I am forced into a pretence in order to have anything like the life I want."  Passing in (the binary bits of) trans land is thus all about externals, fitting how you present externally into society's picture of who you already are internally.  Passing in autism land is quite the opposite.  It's all about externals, true, but it's about fitting how you present externally into society's picture of who you are NOT internally.  Which is massively exhausting.  I'm only now realising that as I watch others who have to pass and as I let go of all the defences I'd built up against allowing myself to be me.

I think of those people who pass for neurotypical in their day to day lives because they have to.  At this point they have no real choice.  It's either pass as "normal" or do something very different with their lives.  Of course that's wrong, in many ways it is abhorrent, but just at the moment it's how things are. Hence the calls from many autistic people for autism acceptance rather than autism awareness. I hear the cry and see a local group say "It's autism awareness month, hey let's all wear blue." Except, I say, and my friends say, and those I've been reading online who are autistic and proud, "Hey let's don't because the organisation telling us to wear blue is one that we really, really want to stay clear of if we want to be proud as autistic people rather than thinking of ourselves as deformed."  There are lots of posts online about autism acceptance, such as this one by Amy Sequenzia, whose writing I quite adore.  The organisation mentioned about is called Autism Speaks and almost the first advice people have given me when I've asked is "avoid Autism Speaks."  There's loads of reasons for that - and if you look online you can find a ton of good autistic people who will tell you the many shortcomings of that organisation.  I am fortunate to have people around me who give me good advice and probably that single phrase "avoid Autism Speaks" set up the foundation of the ethos for so much I believe about autism and about wider issues.  Here's Amythest Schader again about that avoidance - I watched this with child earlier today, alongside a lot more of her videos.

So it's only really when dealing with the ASD things, letting the defences down and seeing what happens that I've been able to see just how hard I've been working, every day, to be what I'm not and appear as what I'm not. And it's only when that's happened that I've been able to turn around and say "Fuck Passing!" and believe it. This feels SO good. Physically it feels wonderful to let go and start to learn to be myself - to learn to be autistic as a wonderful blog post put it. Emotionally and mentally, it is a new freedom. Calling myself Clare brought great freedom - without which I wouldn't have been able to take this step. But this brings even more freedom. (By the way, I don't ever swear!  But Fuck Passing!)  Amythest Schader in one of her youtube videos puts forth the idea of "guerilla stimming."  Basically, to stim everywhere whenever you need to and not hide it.  Because society will not change while autistic people are invisible.  Just as the pace of change for transgender people has increased almost directly proportionally to the visibility of trans people in the last few years - and the conservative counter-reaction and shouting has increased too in its death throes - so the pace of change for autistic people and for people from a wide variety of excluded groups will increase with visibility.  To stim publicly and with pride and just to present yourself  as completely normal in your stimming is to change society.  If you don't know what stimming is, here's one of those Amythest youtube videos on the subject.

There was a point in all this that I could have taken the neurotypical blue pill and continued to deny what I'd always half known. I've taken it for years. But thanks to my friend, deep thanks to her, I've been able to find the strength, courage, and curiosity to take the red pill. Staying in Wonderland with all its challenges. Rejecting the false living. And what I'm finding is that this particular rabbit hole is far deeper than expected.

And this rabbit hole doesn't allow me to pass as normal. Because everything adds to everything and words like authenticity have to win. Yep. As you say, be yourself. Be proud. Be free. And so on.

Hmm. Sidetracked a little there and the whole Autism Speaks section was rather a sidetrack within a sidetrack. Kind of foresee that once I get myself a little more sorted I'll have no option but to be some kind of activist in a bigger way than tweeting and retweeting about it all. Actually this whole ramble about passing is a sidetrack and wasn't meant to happen.

Unrelated Thoughts on My (Lack of) God and My Autism

I've just written a couple of comments on facebook and find I don't want to lose them.  One was about God and faith.  The other about autism, particularly my recent discovery that it's OK to stim, even that it's a very good thing.  They are personal.  They're just about my life - and really that's not wildly interesting so feel very free to stop reading now.  And they're just ephemeral facebook comments, not classic literature to inspire the centuries!  But I want to save them.  Because one revealed something to me.  And the other can stand if ever needed as a reminder of joy, a reminder of why the path I'm on is a valuable one.

Firstly, God.  How very orthodox, to place God first.

Following on from the gorgeous song from the last blog post an old friend commented, through his experience and love.  When I lived closer to him years ago he would have been the only person anywhere who could possibly have convinced me to rejoin the Jesus Army and give myself to those people and that vision.  Finally cutting links with that church meant I lost contact with him and that saddened me.  But by the wonders of social media - and in this case through a wild coincidence - he's back in my life in some way.

As part of the discussion he quoted the Bible:

"For I know in whom I have believed,

and am persuaded that

 He is able to keep that which 

I have committed unto him

against that day"

A perfectly good verse to quote.  I can understand it and understand having a lived truth in which that verse can be grasped, believed, experienced.  I can understand it because I applied those words to myself for many years - before my faith fell to pieces.  I had a response to this from my life - although admittedly it may mean more in the context of the conversation.  A response of honesty, but certainly not a response to argue against my friend's experiences of the Divine.  A response that reveals to me some of the faith in my faithlessness.

I am unpersuaded. There are many times I want to walk away totally, to not believe in anything 'beyond'. Part of that is my pure but possibly imperfect logic. I have argued out the dogma too many times. And much is a result of all the unhealthiness of my faith for too many years, why I embraced it, and how I allowed it to curse me even while grasping onto it so much as my hope and meaning.

But yes, I don't know how to not believe. I may not exactly be orthodox in faith. Much of the time I can't conceive of the reality of a being who is god. But I cannot believe that there is no other, cannot believe that all there is is the universe and gravity pulling us forever into earth. Whatever happens, I fail to stop looking beyond - both to the beyond without and the beyond within. I can't let go. No matter how much I've tried, and no matter how much holding on has deeply hurt. And Spirit can't let go of me.

So here I am, joined the church that should have been my last and which I was meant to have left behind. Getting lost in worship when I can't hold onto that belief. I cannot walk away. It's impossible. Much of the time I am faithless or have a faith that most Christians wouldn't recognise as Christian. But I remain. Because, through everything, I am held by that which is infinite, that which is fully life, that which is the Real, is Being, is Truth, is Eternal. That which is the ground of love and the ground of fire.

Hmm. That last bit might sound suspiciously like faith to some people. You might even apply a label to those words, and say that they are God.

Secondly, autism.  Thoughts unrelated to the above.

Just saying.  Rocking, pacing, moving, stimming feel so damn wonderful.  So much better than forever forcing myself to be outwardly still, to sit without moving.  Some of it is restful.  Some of it releases.  Some of it is grounding.  And some of it feels like joyed strength flowing into me.  All of which comes as something of a surprise.

I have always rocked but almost never let it happen because I felt too guilty and shamed by it.  "It's wrong.  It's bad.  Sit still.  Be quiet.  Be respectable." Thank God these things can change.  Learning to lose that guilt, and guilt over some of the ways my brain is wired, is starting to bear fruit.  At last.

I know there's still quite a way to go in learning to be able to allow my body to move as it wants to.  Learning to be myself:  It's so difficult.  At times it's felt impossible.  I've been so near the edge through all this.  So scared at times.  Close to needing a psych ward.  But it's essential.  And after the hell comes the self acceptance and the renewed smiles.

That's all.  Two thoughts.  Unrelated.

The Universe Laughs At Me Through A Song

The universe is laughing at me.

I didn't want to mass play a song today, post it on social media in two places and know I have to learn to play it.  That there is NO choice.  I didn't want to spend hours on the same 4 minute simple song.  Yet I find that something in this hits all the right places, just like all the minor 6th chords and tri-tones that got thrown into my playing this morning.  I got so lost in that piano this morning.  I really must get round to getting it tuned for the first time since getting married - which was nearly twenty years ago!

I most definitely didn't want to mass play a song about God that I don't even mentally agree with.

And it's totally certain that I didn't want that song to be a song from the Jesus Army.

But the universe doesn't give a shit what I want.  It does things to me anyway.  Most of us find the universe seems to have a carefree attitude towards our desires.  And most of the time the actions of the universe turn out to be good in the end.  Life is more fun that way, when there are unexpected bonuses from time to time.

So.  Here's the song.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zfv1LZlU9U

Over the years the Jesus Army has come up with some truly atrocious songs.  I could give examples from the years in which I was involved with them.

And then there are ones like this one.  When the Jesus Army does something well, which to be fair is quite often, it really does it well.  It's a simple song.  A simple accompaniment.  In many ways if I applied logic and analysis it would seem like nothing special.

But the song, for whatever reasons, brings me both tears and peace.  And vibrato through bones and muscles and so much more.  There is something in this that bursts into and beyond every energy centre (if energy centres exist) something that I can feel on every level.  This is something that so much pulls at the physical chest, the inner core, that I can let it become the entire universe for a few moments.

When music is the universe, when all else ceases to exist, that is the best.  There is nothing better in my life.  Ever.  When I sing and play and all else vanishes and all that remains is vibration and spirit then that is bliss.  Bliss.  Does everyone sink into music so much that the universe disappears?

Of course, you might hate it!  That's OK.