2024 was emotionally rough for me, a continuation of the changes of the last few years. I’m spending much of my time reading, trying to get a handle on what is me and what was my mask now that I’ve finally accepted I’m Autistic. I had finally accepted earlier, but received an official assessment of my Neurotype in July 2024.
I did something last year that I don’t remember ever doing before: I deleted some of my published articles. Normally I want to maintain my changing thoughts as part of my history, but after an emotional spring last year (reliving in my own mind what happened the previous year), I decided in early June to delete articles that discussed my former workplace.
September 26, 2023: End of an Era: My resignation from CRKN
October 3, 2023: Still spinning? My time at Canadiana.org prior to the CRKN merger
October 4, 2023: Still spinning? The merger of Canadiana.org with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network
October 6, 2023: Still spinning? My time at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network
March 6, 2024: Observations about (a review of)^2 Autism Employment
My intention was to share my observations in order to improve the organization, as the Canadiana project had become what I now know is a special interest. My focus was on the digital archive part, but also the public access to that archive. I saw the huge public value of this service, and more than anything else I wanted to see the Canadiana project succeed and flourish. I had noticed from other people who left (or were also pushed out) that CRKN didn’t do exit interviews, and I believe there is considerable organizational value to such information.
I received some feedback about the articles I posted in September and October that surprised me. I was being told that the postings would end my career. I didn’t understand how what I wrote related to me as an individual, or could be taken as a critique of some other individual. I think in terms of policies, cultures, and other systems – not in terms of individuals. Systems can always be improved, and I don't understand how some people personally identify with specific revisions of systems.
As I continued my reading, I came to recognize that what I was intending is not how others might see it. If CRKN's management were interested in my systems (computer, network, software, policy, social, etc) experience and observations, it would have been solicited (or even accepted when shared) while I was an employee. As someone specifically pushed out of that workplace for not fitting into that corporate culture, I should have been able to accept that any feedback I could have offered was destined for /dev/null .
As I learn about Autism, I’m really learning about Allism. I’ve been told my entire life about how “human nature” is somehow universal. Believing that notion caused me to mistake the rest of humanity as having similar motivations and desires as I do. The reality is that I’m Autistic with a specific Autistic profile, and we Autistics are a minority. What was true of me and why I think and do things could not be transposed onto others.
I never had what I believe are thought of as accommodations. Until I reached the Autistic Burnout phase, by ability to mask meant I didn’t even need any support relating to noise or lighting.
What I always needed was understanding: understanding that “human nature” is not universal, and that my brain is wired such that my thinking and motivations for doing things will be different.
I’m Autistic. It is not something separate that I have, but a core part of who I am. If there was a pill that would eradicate Autism in me, I wouldn’t want it as some of the things I am most proud of myself for are related to being Autistic. That doesn’t mean I don’t struggle, and that struggle is huge while I’m dealing with burnout. It is the lack of understanding and bigotry against anyone who is different that dis-ables me, not something relating to my specific form of Autism.
I’m speaking and thinking in a different dialect of English.
I ask questions to get clarity as I have noticed humans can be playing “broken telephone” even with only two people when assumptions are being made and people are trying to “read between the lines”. When I am asking questions I am not trying to challenge your authority: I am really just trying to ensure accurate communication.
I don’t see social hierarchies the way an Allistic or otherwise non-neurodivergent person might. I am an outsider to those social norms.
I believe all living things are deserving of respect. To me respect is like treating all humans with dignity. If you believe “respect” is about treating you as an authority figure because of some social hierarchy like an organisation chart, and that your treating me and others with basic decency is dependent on us treating you as an authority, then we aren’t going to get along well.
Please don’t require that I do immoral things as part of my job. I had an employer who wanted me to take broken parts from when I fixed computers, put them in a brand new computer, and ship it back to the manufacturer as “dead on arrival” (Note: that employer and manufacturer no longer exist, so I'm not sharing something about current entities). If you feel the desire to reprimand or fire me because I don’t put your profit above all other considerations, then that is on you and not on me. Chances are I will only tolerate those types of requests for a short period of time, and will resign on my own.
Please be specific about priorities. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. If you get upset at me for not “guessing” which thing should be the top-top-top priority, or you constantly contradict or block priorities previously set, that is on you and not on me. Your lack of ability to set and communicate priorities, especially any changed priorities, is a management and organisational problem and not a problem with any individual employee.
If you say one thing, and do another, I will learn not to trust you. Please don’t engage in “social lying” on my behalf as I strongly value truth.
Recognize that Autism is also not universal, including whether an individual considers Autism part of their identity or not, and what level of support they may need at any given moment. While I am an Autistic person with Canadian citizenship, there will be other people who are Canadians with Autism.
I am a late diagnosed Autistic Adult, and not a parent. While I can’t understand the experience of being a parent, I do have memories of my own childhood and interacting with adults that have only made sense in recent years as I've learned about Autism (and Allism).
When I heard about the book in July 2023 I added it to a goodreads list. I had what turns out to be a misconception that the book would be a debate between an “Autism Mom” (Allistic parent who thought of Autism as a disease that took their child, and who wanted sympathy for themselves and their hardships) and an “Autistic Mom of Autistic Children'' (who can remember how it felt to be treated as diseased by others).
As an Autistic Adult I was going to read feeling like I was rooting for one of the "sides".
Spoiler: I was wrong!
I will keep this strong book recommendation as brief as I can, given there are many ways this book intersects with other learning I have been doing in the past few years.
I had opportunities to learn, but being White has the privilege of racism being academic as real racism (as opposed to individual prejudices) will privilege rather than target individuals included in “Whiteness”. I am now aware so-called “Reverse Racism” isn’t a real thing.
While I have been in a so-called "mixed marriage" since 1997 (different races, different genders, etc), that lived experience does not in any way ensure someone understands what Racism is.
I had quite a bit of unlearning to do.
When I started to learn about Autism and other neurotypes I immediately recognized it as fitting within an intersectionality lens.
I do not accept the “medical model” around Autism any more than I accept the “medical model” around Race (IE: the pseudoscientific beliefs around scientific racism, eugenics, etc), gender or sexual orientation. (Note: Conversion Therapy for gender or sexual orientation was only outlawed under Canadian law in 2022, but similar techniques are still the most common alleged "treatment" for Autism)
Depending on the audience, I see value in discussing two different models of understanding Autism.
The Social model of disability. I don’t see my Autism as what disables me, but how my differences aren’t accommodated in a society that incorrectly presumes there is only one “correct” way of being a human. This is what reduces my ability (dis ability) to participate.
Neurodiversity Paradigm, which sees neurotypes as being as a natural form of human diversity. Problems are generated by supremacist societies who "other"/exclude individuals and groups with different demographic traits.
The Authors
I believe intersectionality and specific lived experience meant that while these two mothers seemed to disagree at first, that neither actually represented the “Autism Mom” which I have observed online.
While one of the authors is a White Allistic mother, she is a mother in a mixed race family and knows what it feels like to be extra worried about police and other “authority” interactions with brown and black children. She taught elementary school for six years, and was already well-versed in developmentally appropriate practices. The other author is Anishinaabe, and has lived with cultural teachings that are quite different from Eurocentric colonial teachings.
Both authors approach this topic with an intersectionality lens.
Why the disagreement?
The book brings to the foreground something that everyone, regardless of their neurotype or if they are parents, should become aware. The problem isn’t that one of these mothers was Autistic and the other was Allistic, and that this would suggest they had different goals.
The problem is that everyone in society, but especially parents, are inundated by special interest groups (political and economic) who have ideological biases towards the Medical model of Autism. They will frighten parents into believing that there is something wrong with their children (and sometimes themselves) that needs to be fixed. As with the Medical model of Race, otherwise known as scientific racism and eugenics, there are even those looking for measures to prevent additional births of Autistic people.
I believe once we recognize the common problem, that we can all work together to make the lives of Autistic children better. This will allow them to grow up without the trauma some Autistic adults constantly live with.
Eternal September
“Eternal September” is a slang term I’ve been aware of since the early 1990’s. In the early days of the Internet (and Usenet, that I participated in using UUCP) it was filled with technical people and students, where new batches of students would join in September and would need to learn how to (appropriately) interact online. In the early to mid 1990’s (depending on location), the Internet became available to the general public and thus there were “newbies” joining all the time and the need to bring these new people up to speed on how to use the tools and interact was needed.
This is going to be a fact of the Autism community for the foreseeable future. New parents of newly diagnosed children, newly diagnosed adults, and fairly often both in a short timeframe (parents learning they are autistic because of their children) will always be finding the Autism community. They will most often be coming with harmful misinformation they have been offered by the medical profession and the horribly wrong and harmful information from The Autism Industrial Complex.
We need to remember they aren’t the enemy, even if they will use words that will be very hurtful to Autistic people. As hard as it will sometimes be, especially for us Autistic members of the community, we need to help them unlearn misinformation in as welcoming a way as we can.
I continue to see similarities between affirming Autism advocacy and support, and similar supports in gender affirming, sexual orientation affirming, and even Anti-Racism work. In fact, it all feels as if the problems come from the same place: vested interests in creating a hierarchy of humanity that puts specific (often extremely arbitrary) demographic traits above others.
I wish to be open about a mistake I have made in my career, in case it helps someone else avoid something similar.For most of my career I was brought into organizations (as an employee or contractor) by someone who knew me, what I could do for them, and how I worked. An exception was when I was part of an acquisition. The new management team didn’t know who I was, only what was written in my job description. I have had many job titles and descriptions, and none of them have been very meaningful. I work by trying to figure out what the project needs to get done, and then apply any skills I have towards whatever is the highest priority goal. While I had the title of “Lead Systems Engineer” at the pre-merger organization, I was also actively involved in managing an OAIS preservation system (lead developer, support, data and metadata manager, etc), and lead developer of the metadata management system (we called it the “metadata bus”) forCanadiana.org's Access system. After the merger I was told that I should continue the work that I was already doing, but I should not have taken that literally. I should have ceased any software development, data management, metadata management, or anything else not explicitly understood by the new management team as part of my job. While the previous employer encouraged me to help anywhere in the organization I could, the new employer focused much more on social hierarchies, organization charts, and jurisdiction described in job descriptions. At the time of the merger I had been given a choice: Do I want to accept the reduced scope of this *new* job, or resign and look for a better matching job. Instead of making an informed choice, I incorrectly believed nothing had changed. This only generated confusion and conflict between my style of working and the hierarchical corporate culture of the new organization. I eventually resigned, but only after I had been pushed into Autistic Burnout. I have learned from this mistake, and I hope other people can as well.
In later posts I will likely discuss what I have learned to help reduce Autistic meltdowns (autonomic storms) and hopefully avoid future Autistic Burnouts (crossing fingers, toes, etc, etc).
I’m a white cis-gender heterosexual male born in 1968, formally assessed Autistic in 2024.
I have been part of the high-tech sector since my teens. In 2000 I was told there was quite a bit of Autism in the sector, and I should look into it. I saw the ways Autistic people were alleged “defective”, so assumed that had nothing to do with me.
My mother’s death in 2018 caused me to see a psychotherapist, and after seeing me for several months I was asked if I had considered I was Autistic. I had doubts, partly because of the concept of an Autistic mask. I was bad at acting.
I never had regular job interviews, and was brought into organizations because someone knew my skills and way of working. An exception occurred when I was part of a merger in 2018 of an organization I had been at for 7 years. The new employer was a strict hierarchy with a strict chain of command, which saw job titles as exclusive jurisdiction. While I was focused on trying to get high-priority work done, working the way I had at the previous employer, all some people saw was me violating a social hierarchy.
In summer 2022 I contracted Lyme Disease. Fatigue meant I didn’t have the energy to mask, and thus I finally accepted I had been masking. Accusations of being rude and condescending to an allistic coworker were made. I would respond explaining Autism, and with logic and data, but that only made things worse.
By spring 2023 I was accused of workplace harassment and placed on sick leave. That threw me into a full-on burnout, unable to manage regular life tasks. I lost all personal doubt I had about Autism. When sick-leave ran out at the end of the summer I resigned, not seeing any room for me in that organization.
As I write this in summer 2024, I’m much better, but still recovering. I believe learning I’m Autistic, and learning about spoon theory, will help me avoid similar situations in the future. Learning about Autism includes learning about Allism.
I have been abruptly sent on a journey of exploration and acceptance of myself. I will finally be going through a process to get an official "diagnosis" about Autism. So many people around me suspect, and so much of what I read/hear/watch resonates with me.
I am an open (source, government, access, etc) type person, and this blog is all about sharing and exploring thoughts (well -- my thoughts -- after all, it is all about me, me, me -- ya, right. Please share your thoughts in comments, as long as they aren't Austism Rejection).
At the moment I am at Movati waiting for a class. The classes are amazing, but the environment regularly reminds me of how I didn't fit into specific aspects of high-school and earlier.
I am not individually competitive, and I hate team sports as I always felt like I am causing the team to lose. I'm awkward, both in my sometimes overly expressive movements as well as my communication. I don't like watching sports as it is the fun that matters to me, so I don't care who wins or loses. I don’t see the point of picking favorite teams, brands, whatever. I enjoy watching my godchildren play -- but it is the play and their having fun that I enjoy, and I can't remotely get excited about who scored/won/etc.
I strive to be my best self, but my concept of best most often doesn't match the concept of best or the expectations of other people around me.
I find the change rooms at these types of venues very problematic. I am aware of my cis-heterosexual privilege. So many people are walking around naked/etc, and these environments are designed based on the oddball notion of a heterosexual gender binary.
I have had to train myself to accept the classes. For Zumba classes I even felt the need to ask permission of the instructor to be learning the moves from her. Other instructors will demonstrate a pose or the use of a ball/foam roller/etc on their own bodies or touching someone that they ask to be a "model". All of this is declared fine, but I have to get used to that.
For Zumba I didn't want to try to learn dance moves from fellow students. Even in the co-ed section of Movati (they have a “women’s” only section), classes are female dominated. Not 50%+1, but more like 90+% women. It feels creepy to me to be looking at a female student as closely and as long as I would need to in order to learn the moves from them.
Some of the discomfort is the physical environment, such as the offensive cis-hetero-normative design of change rooms, bathrooms, etc.
Other aspects are social norms. My brain has a hard time figuring out the magical line someone else has drawn between being your happy friendly self in a multi-gendered environment, and what someone might consider to be sexual harassment.
When I was younger I was able to help girls/women in my age range. I was a good listener, and could offer logic in response to questions. I was perfectly willing and able to tell them how beautiful they were on the inside and on the outside. In some cases I learned at a young age how many females are victims of various forms of rape. That reality of women's lives is far more common than I believe most of the general public is willing to admit.
I have a (married, family, etc) male friend that made the "mistake" of trying to do the same type of comforting interaction as an adult. A female co-worker was feeling very depressed, including feeling they were ugly. My friend mentioned that she was attractive and should feel more confident in herself. No problem in the moment, but later this became a whole workplace sexual harassment accusation. The lack of trust grew between him and his workplace, and eventually he had to leave what had become a toxic workplace for a growing number of reasons.
It was only in 2012 that I became aware of so-called "Workplace Harassment" policies. This is when Ontario added the grounds "gender identity" and "gender expression" to the human rights code.
The closer I looked at the policies of my workplace, the more I knew I would eventually be slapped and possibly even terminated for violating that policy. And this was a full 7 years before the concept of Autism became real to me, as well as the possibility it could apply to me.
Let's clear up something that should be obvious: women are treated horribly in the workplace under the "Canadian", "United States" and similar governments/cultures. I don't mean some Mad Men misogynist past, but ongoing today. Androcentrism, Capitalism and Colonialism are core to what Canada is, and I would suggest that misogyny is a core part of Canadian identity, values, and culture.
However, workplace policies rarely (if ever) take an intersectional approach. In order to harm-reduce in one area caused by Colonial Canadian culture, policies generally involve harm-increases in other areas.
There is a whole concept of TERF, which is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Rather than taking an intersectional approach, we have activists focused on the needs of their specific demographic trait to the exclusion of the other. This issue is not one-sided, as some trans activists simply don’t care about the ongoing reality of misogyny and rape culture. These trans activists speak as if those issues are somehow in the past because -- well -- likely some man on the TV said so.
These workplace policies are WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), which means there are subjective definitions of nearly all aspects of the policy: using the phrase "known or ought reasonably to be known" is extremely culturally specific. Who subjectively decides what is reasonable?
As a likely autistic person, these "workplace harassment" policies essentially put a massive target on me. They are all effectively about rejecting people like me, and many other forms of diverse people, as valid persons in the workplace. In my case they are seeking to ensure my autistic mask remains thick to retain what some call "collegial" or "professional" work environments.. If my mask ever slips and my true Autistic self is exposed in the workplace and a non-Autistic person gets "offended", then I will be disciplined.
There are ways to orient policies and workplace cultures that don't generate offense, but those are rarely (if ever) how these Western European worldview imposing workplaces are set up.
A social media friend brought up the topic of their work and how they weren't just lucky, but put a lot of work and schooling into their career.
This made me think about my own situation.
I feel privileged in my career -- beyond lucky.
I have one attribute which in some ways is a disadvantage, which is that I'm not likely neurotypical. I was lucky in that people (such as amazing teachers) directed me towards a profession where that personal feature was a benefit, even if there are regularly translation problems when communicating with more neurotypical coworkers.
I also entered into this profession in the early 1990's at a time when neurodivergences were not seen as a problem, while today things have become a bit more complex and neurodivergences gets people into conflicting situations with some interpretations of other diversity.
I am quite aware of my white cis-hetero-male privilege, where I don't have to be as exceptional as non-cis-hetero-male or non-white counterparts in order to get recognized.
I obviously did some of my own work, but I am fully aware that I never had to do as much work as other people who don't have the same demographic traits as I do in order to gain as much advantage as I have.
I was growing up at a time when my parents/grandparents were of a generation where there was a stronger work ethic, which I picked up from them. I was never told I was entitled to things simply by existing, but that I had to work for them (although I was never told about my privileges, but that is separate from this advantage).
I want to expand on my growing understanding of white privilege.
This is an idea that took me decades to come to better terms with, and I have been thinking about why.
When my wife and I first met, she was taking her Masters of Education at UofT (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), and one of the classes she was taking was on social issues and feminism. The discussion of affirmative action came up, and as a typical white person I thought of myself only as an individual, and thus was opposed to affirmative action. As I've written elsewhere, thinking of yourself only as an individual pulls you out of time and makes you oblivious to your connection to the past or future.
Over time I started to change my opinion from being a strong opponent of affirmative action, to being neutral, to now supporting in specific circumstances.
Part of the problem was that the majority of what I saw discussing privilege was focused on nuclear family economics. It discussed how if you had wealthy parents you were likely to inherit many advantages throughout your life, far beyond the western concept of inheritance (wealth being something you inherit from your parents, as opposed to understanding it as something you borrow from the future).
The problem with the economic focus is that many white people also grow up poor, and thus aren't able to see that they ever received any privilege.
This last year my wife and I have both been reading books on anti-racism. A Eureka moment came for both of us when she was reading the book Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World by Layla F. Saad. I haven't had a chance to fully read it yet, but Rina read a passage that talked about how BIPOC who succeed have to be exceptional, while those of the dominant race do not. A white person will be seen to "fit in with the team" and "be a team player", be treated as an individual rather than a representative of their race, and many other things. This won't only impact your job and money, but many other social aspects of your life which are part of success.
While money may be what people wish to talk about, it is about far more than that. Even if you did not receive an inheritance, it does not mean you didn't receive advantages that other people with the identical financial circumstances did not receive.
With this context, watch the short film made for the African American Policy Forum. While they also mention the concept of monetary inheritance, notice that this is not the only difference mentioned. The demonstration of the different starting lines I've seen elsewhere doesn't convey the multiple different factors as well as this video does.
The primary reason I currently support some forms of affirmative action is that I recognize, especially on Turtle Island, that there has been an (imposed) government policy of affirmative action for whites for several hundred years. With this promotion of white/European worldviews and values came the patriarchy and other problems where affirmative action is being used.
I have yet to see any advocate for non-white affirmative action suggest anything as aggressive as the white affirmative action: no removal of the right to vote, no residential schools, no stealing of land (both according to European law and laws of nations indigenous to Turtle Island), no misappropriation/theft of "trust" funds, no kidnapping and forcing people into forced labour/slavery, no genocide, etc.
I believe it is possible that correcting this white affirmative action will take less than the hundreds of years of unjust enrichment that white affirmative action has granted. This will depend on how long white supremacy is allowed to continue within the largest foreign-created governments (USA and Canada) that continue their existing policies of white supremacy and white affirmative action.
I remain skeptical of "equality of outcome" measurements, as that presumes that providing equal outcomes within the current (white) system of values will bring us away from systemic racism. I strongly believe in equality of opportunity, recognizing that not all peoples are driven by the same goals and thus with true equality of opportunity we will see less white-centered outcomes or criteria for success.
I want to highlight one of my major failings, in the hope that it can help others avoid it -- possibly much earlier in their life.
In an earlier article I discuss how I analyze public policy using my experience as a systems administrator and software author.
In the 1990's I was a big promoter of consumer activism, believing that if we only made better choices as individual consumers we could change the world. This lasted for about a decade until I came to the conclusion that while devoted activists can avoid specific problems, that there were systems in place (taxation, government subsidies, cost externalizations, social forces, media, laws and other policies) that made it difficult if not impossible for most people to make similar choices. I never got a drivers license or owned a car, but that alone has had no impact on anything else other than me and some members of my immediate circle.
I moved to focusing on systems for the policies I was involved in. My being neurodivergent probably helped, partly as I don't see or feel the same social pressures to conform as other people might. I currently strongly believe that only systemic change can impact over the longer term, as changing individual peoples minds without changing the system will allow the system to cause a social "reset" as people simplify their lives by conforming to the system.
Even with this systems focus in my work and political life, I did not see the systems aspects of racism.
The article where I discuss how I analyze policy includes a picture of Justin Trudeau, my wife and I. My wife's parents were born in the province of West Bengal in India, and I likely see brown skinned people as often (if not more) as I see white people in my personal life.
Even with this very personal family and community aspect of my life, I did not see the systems aspects of racism.
I had all the opportunities for me to understand handed to me, and yet it took me until this last year to start learning.
My hope is that by publishing my own failure that it might help other people to be aware of the possibility, and to seek to avoid it themselves.
I'm willing to discuss more if anyone wishes to reply to this blog, or open dialog on social media. Or post their own thoughts on their own blog, and let me know.
