Drage blant sauer

  Too often I feel the Cassandra. What I perceive as truth and lived experience fall on deaf ears. Professional deaf ears. It's not a new senario. The sterile walls of the doctor's office, filled with diplomas or an overview of the human body, either in musclewrapped or bare bones. Perhaps a skeleton in the corner. An office chair for the doctor, a chair for the patient. Some hierarchies never truly change. One doctor's office I was at, had a couch. I clutch my little list of points I wish to bring to her attention. Things I perhaps struggle with, perhaps feel overwhelm me, perhaps are silly little things. I trace a pebble soothingly. My mask stays in place. “I'm having some trouble with melancholy.” I say at last. One of several conditions on my list, the most common, I think. One comorbidity seldom arrives unchaperoned, and the melancholy has been a consistent for years. My own dreary dark dog, to borrow a phrase. Such a thing that is a constant day in and da...

  Autistic people as burdens has a long history. Described by the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger in 1944, his child charges were considered ‘unberable burden[s]’ (Slagstad 2019) to their respective families. Today, autistic individuals are bemoaned by the establishment for being unable to ‘pay taxes’ or ‘write poetry’ (Kile 2025), wretched souls incapable of attaining the benefits of capitalism. They are drains on society and as such must either be thinned or weeded out. Eugenic terms openly being tossed about. ASC must be eradicated wholly from the population, for the sake of the precious children and their overburdened care givers.   The term eugenics means good birth and is openly being discussed regarding autistic individuals, disguised in progressive language as being burdens on society and family. A disease present in the best of families. A tragedy.  An all too common refrain for those who know the tune. In her 2016 book, War on Autism , Anne McGuire ...