Long article in yesterday's Times on autism. The usual suspects were cited, but it's nice that it was a lengthy article. Shall I do a close reading of the title? Which copy editor decided to call it "Lifting the Veils of Autism"? Because as we peel away the layers (like an onion? Like the wrappings on a mummy? A beautiful woman?) we're going to find what fundamentally shocking thing, what Other?

There was an interesting short story I read online last night that was written very much from the perspective of autistic person as Other: uniquely specialized, a valid reality unto herself. And it's not a bad short story at all, but I disliked the author's imagining of the girl's voice as machine, the uncomprehending therapist/sadist forcing the girl to make eye contact. She'd clearly been reading her Oliver Sacks: one character needed rescuing, and he was an anthropologist; another character was nicknamed Mars, and the girl in the isolation chamber was very much in the Temple Grandin mode, glad to be free of her "meat body." I could go into a lot of detail about how that doesn't square with the particular autistic person I birthed.

A topos: the autist as cyborg.