Navigating conflict in Autistic spaces
I’m going to suggest reading the following article, but expand it beyond activist groups to discussing other social groups that have a specific idea or demographic trait that brings the group together.
I am still thinking about and trying to learn my own lessons from the Adult Autistic social group I was involved in.
Reading the above article felt familiar. I have been involved in activist groups of one type or another since the early 1990’s, so I have seen some patterns of success and failure.
There are some specific dynamics with Autistic people I became more aware of, and that I had hoped would be our focus as a community group.
Autistic people have been traumatized by being told they are “wrong” by mainstream society their entire lives. I have read many articles in the last few years that talk about how hard it is to separate trauma from Autism in assessment and support, and how there is growing speculation about how some externally observable Autistic traits are actually trauma responses (Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn).
Every Autistic person is different, and this leads to the reality that Autistic people will trigger each other. There is no way to avoid this, and it requires nuance and planning to avoid one trigger acting like pushing the first domino in a chain reaction of triggers.
This leaves every group of Autistic people a choice: do you have a group that is inclusive of the largest variety of Autistic individuals, or do you have a group that minimizes the amount of triggering for a specific subset (an existing group of friends)?
There was a core group of volunteer organizers, and they created a "Respectful Participation Guidelines” document. This was an appropriate and necessary step, as the group needed to always remember that these were Autistic people that came to share with people who would hopefully understand the trauma of constantly being “called out” in neuronormative society.
The problem became different interpretations of what those guidelines meant, and if policing people for triggering someone (and thus triggering more people who are sensitive to the rejection involved in policing other people’s communication) was respectful. The group wanted to remain inclusive and not ask anyone to not come to the group for the sake of not triggering others, but then ignored the guidelines in order to try to change the behaviour of individuals (which itself triggered others).
As much as some left-leaning people are idealistic and wish it were possible to have everything all at once, the reality is that any grouping of people need to determine priorities and be willing to let go of some of their idealism. If you don’t discuss priorities ahead of time, and have a way to keep that focus, the group will eventually fade away, splinter, or explode.
Please read the full article by Nora, but as further incentive here is a point-form of some of the ideas.
Organize around a specific goal
Have difficult conversations in real life
Don’t pretend that your activist group is your social circle
Bring in older activists to help navigate conflict
Avoid purity tests and be broad based
Foster a culture of debate
Understand the stakes of what you’re organizing for
It’s OK to call it a day
You don’t own one another. You aren’t cops.
Discussions of culture of othering, beliefs not part of your “identity”, community vs silos, etc….
Talking about outrage culture, etc.
This was excellent and informative!