The Long Silence, Part 4: Needing Affirmation from my parents

I've always said that I probably would have had a much easier time handling the bullying I experienced in middle school as well as the other setbacks I experienced throughout my life had my parents affirmed me instead of telling me I needed to change.

I started to get affirmation at Camp Negev, the only place I had ever felt comfortable when I was a teenager. I remember that throughout the years I was there the kids in my age group told me that I was "refreshing" and that I was "strong". One of my fondest memories was in the summer of 1996 (age 15), when my friend and mentor, Jonas, and his girlfriend (now his wife), Netya were putting my bunk to bed. We were all talking, and somehow I started talking about the one day, just a few months prior, when I had reached an epiphany and summoned the strength to stand up to the kids who were bullying me. I remember saying things like, "I finally realized that it wasn't my fault." Everybody in the room listened, really listened. When I had tried to tell my parents about it when we were in yet another fight about the clothing issue, they didn't want to hear it. But everybody in the bunk at camp that night was impressed.

Netya was one of those who was impressed, so impressed that she Tributed me a couple days later. "Tributing" was a camp tradition where one person writes a Tribute to another person-- often in the form of a poem-- and reads it in front of the entire camp. Nobody knows who that person is until the very end of the Tribute. Then the person who receives the Tribute has to Tribute someone else. In the Tribute Netya commented on my independence-- my creativity, my weird sense of humor, and even dressing tomboyish-- in a positive way. I thought to myself, "Jonas and Netya appreciate me for who I am. So do the other kids in the group. Why not my own parents?" Well, imagine how hard it was for me to go home at the end of every summer. And by the way, I still have the Tribute. Fond memories, that.

And of course the following school year was a lot of the same old, same old. I wasn't being bullied (I was now in high school, and most of the kids who had been in my middle school were zoned for another high school), but my parents-- Mom especially (how many times can I say that?)-- were still hovering over me and trying to tweak me in terms of my gender identity and expression. They didn't seem to see the growth I'd experienced by being able to stand up to the bullies-- how could they? They had never let me tell the story. They had just kept cutting me off. Another problem was that they didn't seem to believe me when I told them that people at camp appreciated the fact that I was different, and admired me for not succumbing to peer pressure in terms of gender expression. They seemed to think that people were just telling me what I wanted to hear in order to avoid conflict.

And whenever I had an opinion about anything if my parents disagreed with it, they didn't treat it like a difference of opinion. They treated it like the opinion of someone who just didn't understand how the world works. This was especially true with gender roles, and Mom's statements on this issue were always punctuated with, "You will change your mind when you get older." In other words, what you're feeling isn't real, but rather just a phase that you should have outgrown long ago. When you'll older, you're realize that you need to conform or else there's something wrong with you." Well, that's what it felt like I was hearing.

It was horrible not to get this affirmation from my parents. It is cliché for an adult to say, "As a teenager I thought I knew everything and that my parents were wrong. Well, I realize now that they're right." But I knew that there were certain things I would never change my mind on-- ever. So what did it mean? Was I destined to change my mind and "grow up", falling into the trap that many people do when they conflate conformity-- particularly gender conformity-- with maturity? And what about the fact that I rarely felt like I could tell my parents anything? Well, my parents insisted they were "always there for me" and yet I couldn't tell them much, so did that mean I was the problem?

In the spring of 1998, Dad finally said something me that I had desperately needed to hear. It started with yet another day where I was in a battle with my parents over clothes. I blew up and screamed, "You won't let me be a tomboy! You just want me to fit into this narrow-minded mold you have set for me!" Later, Mom lectured me that "tomboy" was an inappropriate word to describe myself at age 17, that tomboys were "little girls who act like boys." I said something to the effect of, "I'm proud of who I am, and you just keep telling me I'm wrong!" The next day, Dad and I had a long talk about the whole tomboy issue. Loosely quoting Inherit the Wind (and confusing "gene" with "chromosome"), I said, "Yes, I have a second X gene. It's a gene. It's a determining gene, but it's not the only gene!" Dad listened, and said that I had made a valid point. He said, "You're right. We have been too restrictive on you." At the end of the conversation, I asked, "Mom says I'll change my mind about these things. Will I?" Dad said, "No, because it goes against everything you believe in." I don't think he knew how badly I needed to hear that.

It got better, but I had to wait another eleven years for that to happen. And that will be discussed in the next and final blog post.

People with Asperger's Syndrome Have True Freedom

People with Asperger's Syndrome have true freedom.


True freedom doesn't come in the form of superficial, legislated rights, like the right to vote, the right to assembly, the right to drink...


No, true freedom comes in the form of abstract rights that have never really been spelled out. These rights include challenging gender expectations in EVERY form, having aesthetic tastes and a sense of humor that don't fit the mold, and overall questioning and challenging social conventions that everybody else takes for granted.


Aspies challenge social conventions and expectations practically from the day they can speak-- at least, I did. I resisted a lot of attempts by my parents and Society to try to conform me to them. I eventually picked up the ones that made sense to me and rejected the ones that didn't. I am freer to reject social expectations than most people because I am not affected by peer pressure and don't care what most people think. I would rather have a few friends who like me for who I am and who understand me than dozens of "friends" who "accept" me once I conform to their standards. These challenges we make to Society-- especially when growing up in Public School Society-- come with great risk. We get rejected, harassed, ostracized and generally burned-- badly. But despite all that, we keep doing what we want because we are free in the truest sense of the word.

The Politics of Fitting In

I was close to tears last year when I read a section of a book for parents of kids with Asperger's syndrome. This section advised parents to make sure their kids "blend in," reminding them that kids with AS are not affected by peer pressure. It went so far as to tell parents that a sixth grader won't stop watching Winnie the Pooh just because of his age, nor will he realize that kids don't bring umbrellas to school on a rainy day.


Before you start typing a response that begins with, "Well there is another side to this," I just want you to reread the above paragraph, replacing all instances of "Asperger's syndrome" and "AS" with "Down syndrome." Speechless, aren't you? I am sure you can imagine the uproar that would ensue if there were books that advised parents of kids with Down syndrome to "fit in" socially or academically. And why should kids with intellectual disabilities be exempt from this expectation? Because their IQs are below a certain level? Okay, if that's the case, then perhaps there should be an MQ-- maturity quotient test-- for kids with AS to take to excuse them. Oh, but wait. Kids with Down syndrome also have physical features that alert people of their disability, and kids with AS don't. Fine. Give kids with AS a T-shirt to wear that alerts others that they think differently and have different tastes.


No matter how you cut it, this pressure to make anybody-- whether or not they have a disability or anomaly-- is immoral. From my personal experience-- and from what other Aspies have told me-- all they ever wanted in life was to be accepted for who they were. By advising them to conform to what amounts to herd mentality, the authors of this book (and many others that give similar advice, especially to girls, by the way) are basically throwing up their hands and saying, "Okay, nobody is going to accept you for who you are, so you need to change who you are." Although my parents did not intend it, that was the message I got from them, loud and clear, when I was growing up with undiagnosed AS and pressured to "fit in." This further shattered my self-esteem, which was already severely damaged from bullying at school. I felt that I was being told to answer to the bullies. Besides, if a kid is told how important it is to fit in in silly ways-- like what movies to watch, what clothes to wear, and not to carry umbrellas-- why should this same person say no to cigarettes and drugs?


What we as a society need to do is raise consciousness and educate the world about Asperger's syndrome. If we don't, our schools will be run by bullies and so will the rest of society. Change starts with you, and it starts now.