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I have zero patience whatsoever for the "disabled-child-as-tragedy" narrative (of which the "disabled-child-as-inspiration" is just a sub-genre). But listening to your wonderful episode today, I made a connection I'd never made b4. @EricMGarcia @Remember_Sarah @RottenInDenmark
The genesis of modern anti-vax movement seems like it was a largely a psychological reaction to the blame placed on mothers & parents generally for the existence of autistic children. Both bullshit ideas - "disabled-child-as-tragedy" & "it's the parent's fault" were necessary.
Parents of autistic children were far more susceptible to the Wakefield con than they would have been, had they not been casting about for any reason why this "tragedy" was not "their fault". I'd never thought about it in that way before.
There are two veins of bullshit going on there.
1. the idea that the very existence of a disabled child is a tragedy.
2. the idea that someone needs to be blamed for that tragedy.
Both are continually communicated to parents of children with disabilities even today.
1. the idea that the very existence of a disabled child is a tragedy.
2. the idea that someone needs to be blamed for that tragedy.
Both are continually communicated to parents of children with disabilities even today.
Societally, we still definitely do place blame for the existence of disabled children on their parents. This was obviously explicit as fuck in the case of autism, with the medical establishment literally blaming "refrigerator mothers". But it's more widespread than that.
My daughter has Down Syndrome and in the 8 years since her birth, I've been asked point blank at least a dozen times, in full view of her running around and laughing and playing with other kids, how come we didn't choose to test and terminate before she was born.
And because of that and other callousness over the years, I do at times - when things are tougher - walk around carrying additional mental load, silently telling those people (and imagined equally horrible people massing behind them) to fuck off and leave me and my daughter alone
This isn't meant as woe-is-me in any way, I have lots of resources and privilege and my daughter is very obviously the fucking best, she's smart and funny and beautiful and loving and a million other superlatives I could bore you with here but won't...
But building on idea of disability-as-social-construct here, the idea of "disabled-child-as-tragedy" is also a social construct, passed to parents in a million ways large and small. It's something that parents often have to actively resist, in my experience.
Again, I've been luckier than most, as I come from a family of special education teachers and was raised around people with disabilities, so I have a lot more tools at my disposal. http://www.cdspg.org/31-for-21-baltimore/2016/10/29/joyous-recognition-a-lesson-from-my-father
But there are tons of families without those advantages, and in the (absolutely essential and good) move from widespread institutionalization of kids with disabilities to community-based and in-home support, by never ever even close to fully funding those models as intended...
...we have been implicitly communicating to parents of kids with disabilities, especially those without the resources to easily navigate bureaucracies and to pay for additional services, that any difficulties or complexities are mostly on them.
We do this with all children generally in tons of ways, of course. 16 weeks of unpaid maternity leave? Our fetishization of individualism is toxic as fuck in millions of ways. It's just exacerbated in the case of families of people with disabilities.
Anyway, this is not intended to in any way center the experiences of parents over the experiences of people with disabilities, that is a toxic dynamic that I know the autism community is especially afflicted by.
But in the spirit of defaulting to empathy that you guys take with your subjects generally, the realization that the "tragedy" and "blame" narratives make the parents of children with disabilities especially susceptible to conmen like Wakefield was not something I'd considered b4
I don't really know what's umm actionable about this, other than perhaps framing conversations with "soft" anti-vaxers in these terms and trying to redirect that energy into, as @EricMGarcia said, actually funding special education and services.
But it was definitely something of a revelation to me, at least. This is my first actual twitter thread so @kpetersen1228, you have to like each one of these so I know that someone, anyone, has actually read it. 
