Projecting Accommodation: The Autism-Speaks-Cineplex Partnership

Cineplex Theatre. Taken from http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/02/09/cineplex-screenings-autism_n_6643974.html

How many of you heard that twelve Cineplex locations in Canada started offering "Autism-friendly screenings?" (For reasons up ahead, please read before you click this link.) They are screenings for specific movies (starting with the SpongeBob Movie: SpongeBob Out of Water, Cinderella, Home and The Avengers: Age of Ultron) at a child price for every entrant at 10:30 AM once every four to six weeks. What tailors its program toward the Autism spectrum is that it lowers its theatre volumes, uses two-dimensional display projection and dedicates a part of the theatre for Autistic viewers to use as a "calm zone."

Yet what glares me down is that Cineplex partnered with Autism Speaks Canada to bring the program.

Autism Speaks is publicly known as the largest Autism organization and well-known by Autism advocates (including me) to misrepresent us. Their founder states that we are missing from the world because we have Autism. The organization uses a puzzle piece as their logo  to signify that those with Autism have missing parts.The organization made a video in 2009 called I am Autism, stating that we "know no color barrier, no religion, no morality, no currency."  Furthermore the organization excludes those with Autism. Its only-ever Autistic board member, John Elder Robison, resigned in 2012 after its founder continued to call Autism a "problem." We're not a problem; we're a group of people with the ability to concentrate on our passions and are reported to have more empathy than average. Does that lack in morality? Why else would Robison turn away and slam the door?

Is a partnership between Cineplex and an organization which advocates against our qualities to accommodate us something to worry about?

Several times in high school, I was accommodated. Sometimes in tenth-grade history, my History instructor excused me from films. I still remember handing a note to the school librarian to choose the information I needed at my fingertips on the library Windows XPs to write an assignment about Hitler while the rest of the class watched a documentary on him. Even if we ignored my sensitivity to graphic material, the background music in the videos my twelfth-grade Chemistry teacher played made me emotionally sensitive. She let me study in the Science Office, no need for a note as the Science teachers were accustomed to me overtaking the table away from teachers' desks.

There were times when I wasn't accommodated. My high school played music in the halls in the mornings before class, while getting to class and during lunch. Even though several teachers asked that the volume could be turned down, it still remained loud. Getting inside the school, bracing the National Anthem (The true north strong and free) and running errands for three different extracurriculars whose teacher supervisors were in three different parts of the school were sometimes the toughest part of the day.

It is a human right that we, Autistic people, are accommodated. (I'll explain using the term Autistic in another post.) When I accidentally glanced at the comment section on articles about Cineplex's new program, I noticed several Autistic Canadians were pleased. First the teachers and now the theatre. Why, accomodation may just be the next open door . . .

. . .

. . . My tenth-grade History teacher accommodated me with reluctance. She knew I had Aspergers Syndrome and regularly told me I would need to overcome my sensitivities to succeed in university. A mark in the nineties did not reflect the dignity I received below the fifties. A Cineplex-Autism-Speaks partnership may accommodate some of us and enable some of us to enjoy theatre screenings. But I will not tolerate if you took me to Cineplex to watch Frozen, turned down the volume and skipped the parts I can't handle if I might leave the theatre to find a poster of the blue, one-hundred-and-first puzzle piece to the jigsaw I'll never morph into. Furthermore I can imagine a donation box with "We're looking for the CURE!" at the ticket counter. But I have the right to carry my dignity whether or not I'm in a tenth grade History class, whether or not I'm in a twelfth-grade Chemistry class, whether or not I'm a university student, whether or not I walk through Cineplex, or whether or not I have Autism or Aspergers Syndrome. It is not enough to accommodate without respect and I therefore do not approve of Cineplex's program.

I cannot count how many people I know visit Cineplex at least once a month. Some people I know also live outside Cineplexes. Is Autism Speaks's view of people with Autism, people like me, the view I want them to know? Is their view the view I want you to know? Is their view the view I want the world to believe? Would I not rather that you, that everyone looks at the ability to focus on one's passion and the compassion in a person with Autism, a person like me, a person who has lived the past few years explaining hearing sensitivities and why I can't stand graphic material in the hope that I'm understood?

- FA

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Not a Parking Dispute

It's not Tuesday, my usual Blogging Day. But three have been lost from three shots: Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha. I disagree that their deaths occurred over a parking dispute. I'm shocked that the police are not inclined to treat it as a hate crime. How much evidence do we have that it was so? Craig Hicks was known to post on Facebook anti-religious statements. He had not started bothering them until Yusor Abu-Salha move in. He turned himself in. How many would do such an act for only a parking space, have an almost-divorced wife state the reason, and turn themselves in? It's the first time I've heard of it. I believe that the crime was a hate crime. I believe Islamophobia is why it is not being treated as so. The police in Chapel Hill. The anti-Muslim protesters in Europe last month. Those that use the human gift of communication to insult those for their race or religion. Why are so many afraid of those that are different from them, those that struggle each day under their stereotypes when fact points against such ideas? To those that knew them and loved them, I know they were so close to your heart. Simply because a man acted on an idea, a stereotype, and turned his idea to hatred, they're not here. What remains are the memories they created and their impact on the world. What remains is fear for the rest of us. What also remains is hope for the rest of us. We must stop using the first thing we hear to judge others, rushing to greet stereotypes and then holding onto them like protons to electrons (Positive charges to negative charges, for those without a Science background). We must stop putting every person on the same shelf for what they are called. We must look at the person and not the words they're called. Look at the three and you won't see Muslim as in person that states a woman must stay at home and be a man's slave. You see Muslim as in dental students. A couple that loved each other. A dentist that made kids smile. Giving dental care to refugees in Syria. Charity. Humanity. Enjoying non-Muslim friends. Being kind to others regardless of their religion. Examples of Islam. There is so much we lost at the three shots.

Beneath the word Muslim: A Response to Islamophobia

What do you think when you hear the word "Muslim?"

When I was young, I learned by my mom that to be a Muslim was to be compassionate and therefore I think of kindness.

I have met those that say "I'm Muslim" yet spare only a few grams of compassion, employing nothing above the word Muslim itself to back their claim. (Can you guess how they treated me?) I have also met those that say that they are Muslim and spill kilograms of compassion in their wake. (Can you guess how they treated me?)

Islam isn't a religion of hatred, of do-or-die principles or of gender inequality. There are those that believe it to be so, though, from those that ran a modernized patriarchy (They congratulated you on your education before reminding your family to be husband-submissive.) to those abusing life partners and joining terrorist groups, all employing the word Islam. In my last sentence, though, I was not complete. I now speak about a parallel scale of grey, Islamophobia.

I cannot address the wave of those that preach Islamophobia better than Rabah Kherbane in his article A Muslim's Response to the 25,000 Anti-Islamic Protesters in Germany in the Huffington Post in mid-January: "Did you know that your twisted misrepresentation of my religion helps the terrorists? Did you know that you and the terrorists agree on what seems to form an integral part of your identity: that Islam is violent? Did you know that you even use the same methodology to proclaim this; taking a verse out of context and evading any intellectual discourse?"

I think about the niqab (veil) ban recently lifted in citizenship ceremonies here in Canada. Ideas of accommodation and compromise were suggested. I will be honest. There are those in this country whose male elders have threatened into putting a veil over their face. Their lives differ, though, from those that choose to wear a hiab or abaaya or niqab. Some of my friends told me how excited they were when they first started wearing a hijab. Three of my close friends wear abaayas. One just started her own humanitarian organization, another makes me smile with mentions of my watermelon 'obsession' and I could share a laugh with another one any time as we sat together in two classes last year. The aunt that encouraged me to look into engineering matches her hijabs with her clothes. It should therefore not be about the clothing but about the person.

I think about how the Canadian Prime Minster suggested that radicalization begin in the mosque. I twice entered a mosque where the imam lectured about putting Muslims first. One of those times, the imam stated that democracy would not win and another time talked about a Muslim insulting a non-Muslim. But I also visited a mosque where the imam lectured over the speakers that gender inequality didn't belong in Islam and exclaimed a few weeks later, "The goal of Islam is not to put down other religions!" I don't think it's mosques themselves that cause radicalization but rather a variety of intermixing factors. The Calgary imam Syed Soharwardy stated, “We know there are elements who are recruiting, who are brainwashing people. There are people who are recruiting these young Muslim boys. For sure, they are recruiting in our communities: in mosques, in universities, through lectures, through community events.” An in-depth look into multiple structures is required to understand the roots of radicalization rather than a claim of no evidence.

Just as Autism Speaks cannot represent Autism, just as the majority of models do not represent a healthy population, those that use a gun in the name of Islam do not represent Islam. It is an insult to my religion. Furthermore I now anticipate the day I hear the wave of Islamophobia in my face. What will happen to my friends in hijabs and Islamic last names?

Don't forget that there will be those that say they put in a token but only dropped a heavy piece of plastic. There will be those that say they put in a token but jaywalked into the bus bay, not a step near the passenger entrance. But there are those that say they put in a token and run at the sight of their bus, the bronze-and-silver of the token glinting in the station light.


- FA

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2015 Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Don't Give Up

It's 2015's Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

To those that have eating disorders, don't give up. Don't give up in seeking help, even amongst the fear or ideas of shame you might feel in seeking help. There are resources that do not discriminate. Don't give up in finding them. Don't give up in treatment.

You live in a world where modelling agents in Sweden were reported trying to recruit eating disorder patients outside eating disorder clinics, even those in wheelchairs. No care in the world for the four-letter word life. No care for dignity, no compassion for hope or fear. It is the fashion and advertising society which needs changing, not you. Don't give up.

You live in a world where I passed the same mannequin dimensions last week searching to replace a pair of dress pants. It's the same flat belly and small waist. Moreover, mannequin dimensions have been criticised of being unrepresentative of human dimensions. Only in plus-size sections did I find somewhat more reasonable proportions. I think I even passed a Victoria's Secret poster in which I could see a model's ribcage. Don't give up on challenging the idea that it needs to be this way.

You live in a world where one man for every twenty women has anorexia and one man for every ten women has bulimia. On my way to the women's stores and clothing sections I passed the replicated male mannequins. Muscular arms, flat chest. Why the lack of diversity? To those that are males and have eating disorders, you are not a misrepresentation of your gender regardless of your disorder or your body. Don't give up on growing the statistic of males that have overcome eating disorders.

To those that are neither male nor female, don't give up on overcoming an eating disorder either. You are also worth it.

You live in a world where most of us have overheard or personally engaged in conversation glorifying a thin figure or weight loss. Praise to the person that has lost weight or is thin. How many times have we looked a person who is not thin and complimented the person's body? It should not be only you fighting.

To readers, regardless of whether you have an eating disorder or not, humanity is our tool to overcome the trend of fear and shame and promote treatment and prevention. On a day-to-day level we can compliment a person regardless of their waist size, avoiding conversations promoting the ideal, or listen supportively to a person that has or may have an eating disorder. We can avoid discriminating an employee or job candidate based on his or her body size. There is even more we can do. I urge you, don't give up to promote change

I have one more thing to say. I will not give up in catalyzing a society where your worth is not based on the appearance expectations shaped for your gender, but, as Martin Luther King said, "by the content of their character."




Taken from http://www.nedic.ca/blog

- FA



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Let's Talk Mental Health: Stigma

Bell's Let's Talk. Taken from http://letstalk.bell.ca/static/downloads/toolkit/en/bltd-logo.jpg

I have only one reason to break my post-on-Tuesdays routine this week. It is Bell's Let's Talk Mental Health day.

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), one in five Canadians will develop a mental health disorder in their lives while four thousand commit suicide each year.

At the same time there is a stigma to not being able to manage one's mental health. According to the CMHA, only one in five children that need help for their mental health actually receive it while according to the Canadian Medical Association, two thirds of those having a mental health disorder do not seek help and forty percent of parents whose children had a mental health disorder would not want to admit it to others. I once read a study that about half of those asked if they would be friends with a person with a mental health disorder said no. The Mental Health Commission of Canada revealed that 46% of participants in a survey stated they believed mental health disorders to be "an excuse for poor behaviour."

It isn't fair. Mental health disorders can be caused by not only external conditions but also by genetics, personality and biological conditions. Mental health is therefore just as important as physical health. It deserves the same attention and same rights as physical health.

So today I want to tell those that are having mental health disorders, don't be afraid to seek help. Having a mental health disorder is not a sign that you failed. It isn't an excuse for any sign of weakness. To everyone, it's okay to have moments where you feel you can't manage everything. It's what makes us the human race.

We have two choices in this world. We can discriminate or we can understand. We can see mental health disorders as excuses or reasons. We can make jokes about obsessive-compulsive-disorder or depression or we can accept them. We can discourage those having mental health disorders from speaking up or we can promote an environment for them to do so. We can reconsider employees with mental health disorders or we can support them as they regain their health. Today, we carry the power to alter perspective and therefore change their consequences.

- FA

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Backtracking

Bulleting through the cold of the evening is the warmth of the train. Winter coats stand or sit in every direction. Cellular screens reflect Voldemort-blanche against the black-and-light of tunnel sifted through window against Wifi or cellphone reception. Earbuds play what is to us a static, to the seduced a helicopter decibel. The few peacoats, black dress shoes and Tommy Hilfiger jeans not on their phones steal glances at the blinking map above.“The next station is . . .” calls the automated female voice of the train. The passenger looks up.  Indeed the map blinks a green light at the name of her stop. Within one or two minutes she is standing in front of the red door that would be closest to the stairs at the destination station.

She glances at the ads above her head. The one above her shows a picture of smiling children, some with dark skin and some with light skin. One holds a ball. The ad comes from Bloorview Kids Rehab and shows a blue infinity symbol. It states that it is seeking kids aged 10-17 with Autism or Aspergers Syndrome for participation in treatment to study the effects of Oxytocin to reduce Autism symptoms.

Coupled with a silent sigh is a raised curiosity.

Oxytocin . . . why does she know the word?

Oxytocin . . .



Grade 12 Biology Textbook (Taken from
http://digital.nelson.com/work/biology-12/)

As the train nears her destination and the cool female voice announces “Arriving at,” she remembers. An almost-seventeen-year-old sat in a thirty-seat room with small lab benches between tables. She recalls the words below her eyes: Chapter 10: The Endocrine System as her friend read upon light-harvesting complexes and ATP synthases in Chapter 5: Photosynthesis and her Biology teacher announced the Chapter Five quiz for the upcoming Friday. Her friend might’ve asked her for help on the Calvin Cycle (which has little to do with Mr. Klein) as her notes on triiodothyroxine (Can you guess why the body needs its iodine?), epinephrine (for those decibel apocalypse escapes) and oxytocin (which stimulates a new mother’s milk) glared at the ceiling and awaited her return to the next paragraph.

The train’s speakers chime and steel doors slide open. The ad walks her frontal lobe as she steps off and heads up the stairs. That is, until the passenger runs to catch her bus.
I first saw the ad in December. A second time occurred either this month or in the last. I suspect a third time this Friday a few seats away from me. About a year after I studied Oxytocin (and was eventually tested on it, yet not before finishing the final chapter), I discovered that Oxytocin is known as the “cuddle hormone,” and along with its role in breastfeeding, is claimed to improved affection and trust. Some sources state that those with Autism produce less Oxytocin and research studies suggest administering oxytocin through nasal sprays to improve trust and social interaction and decrease repetitive behaviours.

Why should we, those on the spectrum be drug targets, though?

Many on the spectrum are non-verbal. Many don’t find another’s cornea important. Some dislike hugs. Some are wary to trust. Some take a while to make friends.

Many on the spectrum have repetitive behaviours. Some flap their arms. I stutter sometimes, especially if I’m excited or nervous. Some focus with the attention of a White House security guard on what they’re doing.

There is nothing wrong with this. It is a myth that those on the spectrum cannot show affection. As I mentioned in About, studies have shown that those on the spectrum have more empathy than your average person. Maybe those that are non-verbal will never say “I love you” to someone yet their actions can show it. Maybe a person doesn’t want to hug yet hugs were never the only method of being kind. What makes it right to put down a person who does not look at you in your eye but is genuine? As for repetitive behaviours, sometimes they make a person with Autism whom they are. Furthermore, the ability to focus on specific topics doubles as a strength to those on the spectrum for they can excel in their passions. What gives the right to put down a person with such ability?

Just as there are no symptoms of MBA ambition to relieve in Bachelor of Commerce graduates, just as there are no symptoms of wanting dinner to relieve in a person who hasn’t eaten in a few hours and sees a Tim Hortons, there are no symptoms of Autism or Aspergers Syndrome to relieve in those on the spectrum.

Because my university is downtown, some of my friends, classmates, TAs and professors take the subway. What will they think about Autism when they see this ad? Will they think of us as those with symptoms to remove as the overhead poster suggests, or will they see through it and appreciate the idea of neurodiversity?

Furthermore, what can you expect a person on the spectrum to think at the sight of the ad? I was able to look at it and see it for what it was but some don’t. Some want to be more than the word Disorder yet see on the poster that as long as they remain whom they are, they are not even worth a letter.

Yonge-University-Spadina Handlebars (Taken from
http://www.blogto.com/city/2011/05/a_ride_on_the_new_ttc_rocket_subway_train/)

Tomorrow is Wednesday morning, or to me another few minutes down Toronto’s Yonge-University-Spadina line. If you too are watching blinking subway maps and you see this ad, think. Think what this implies to those that interact with others on the spectrum. Think what it implies to those on the spectrum. Think before you judge. If you’re in your car and you can think while driving (though I absolutely do not promote distracted driving and will not be held responsible for any overthinking at the wheel), consider what happens when you put ordinary characteristics to the word relieve. If you’re biking (How one can bike with ice leering at the edge of the pavement, I still fathom) or walking or boarding a flight, think the same thing too. (I don’t promote distracted biking either.) If we all thought, we could all question. If we questioned, we could impact the answer.


- FA


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Wishes

It was almost December 6th last month when I took out my cell phone and checked the time. I was too late. I had missed the on-campus vigil for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. I didn't put the almost-reliable alarm on my cellphone (on vibrate, of course) nor had I remembered to write in a day's schedule to attend it. After thinking "I'm going to attend it" since posters had been tacked to campus noticeboards in November, I had missed it. As I retreated to the recesses of my Calculus textbook that afternoon I remembered the vigil my high school Equity Club put on in the eleventh grade. Sixteen students portrayed one of the fourteen murdered women at L'Ecole Polytechnique in 1989, the male bystander Eric Chavarie or Helen Betty Osborne. They stood beyond a thousand-seat auditorium and proclaimed a monologue each about lost ambitions and prolonged investigations to almost eight hundred. I remembered the artwork we crafted in my school's foyer the year after with over six hundred papers dangling from the ceiling, each stamped with red or black feathers on one side, the other sides embossed with Daughter, Auntie, Mother, Friend or Dreamer . . .

For all that our neurons (nerve cells) piece together at 3:01 AM in the morning, I'm quite glad that most dreams don't come true. If they did and I could control my dreams, though, here is what I would dream. I would dream of a society where you are valued for what makes you the person you are, whether it be your gender, your culture or your span of abilities and weaknesses.

I scan my twitter feed and pictures of smiling women flash against my screen. Angel Carlick,19, disappeared from Whitehorse in May 2007. She was found dead in November 2007.

Nineteen years of age when the heart pumped its last beat, when the lungs inhaled the last breath. A month ago I turned eighteen. My age lives a paradox of fear and ambition. What ambitions vaporized after the last heartbeat in Angel Carlick? What hopes were exhaled in the last breath in one-thousand-one-hundred-and-eighty-one women, added to the fourteen women killed in the Montreal Massacre, added to the many more women and non-women being killed daily for their qualities?

I scroll down my twitter feed to almost three weeks before I started Arriving at. Awetsome. The faces of fourteen women frozen in picture flash across the screen. Smiles on their faces stretch from beyond the zenith of the atmosphere. Different programs of study follow their pictures. Nursing. Mechanical Engineering. Metallurgic Engineering. Chemical Engineering. Materials Engineering. Civil Engineering. They're the same programs my friends and I are doing. Once in a while I will ask a friend why she or he chose engineering. Amongst ideas of job security and high marks are passions for and to manipulate the Sciences. I noticed that one of the fourteen women wanted to use her degree to help the environment. That's my same ambition. How many complex minds have we lost from the surface of the earth at the edge of violence?

Yet because I have the mind to aspire, here is what I strive for. I strive to build a society crafted by compassion, grown in respect for gender, cultivated by culture and strengthened in the span of human abilities and weaknesses.

- FA

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