“Zoom Fatigue”: A Taste of The Autistic Experience

April 24, 2020January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Photo © Sybren Stüvel | Flickr / Creative Commons [image: Frustrated white person at a computer keyboard. Their hands are on their head covering their hair, and they are wearing glasses.] Maxfield Sparrow UnstrangeMind.com Like many folks, I had not heard of Zoom before the pandemic. My friends in IT tell me they were using it for work meetings before much of the United States went into self-quarantine, shelter in place, lockdown, or whatever you want to call the “social distancing” we were urged to observe to help slow the spread of the virus. One bonus for me of the way things have shifted during the pandemic is that I’ve been able to join small groups of people from whom I’m genuinely geographically isolated. For the holy season, I celebrated in community with a Lodge in Sacramento. My friend, Smash Ford, invited me to attend a meeting of the Non-Binary Union…

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Disability

Your Lax Social Distancing Is Stressing Out Autistic People

March 27, 2020January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Carol Greenburg twitter.com/autisticenough Image © Shannon Des Roches Rosa [image: Photo of six people, seen from behind looking at downtown San Francisco from atop Twin Peaks.] Now that every rule of social engagement we’ve painstakingly tried to learn has been turned upside down by social distancing, it’s not just our routines that are disrupted: It’s our whole concept of the importance of Rules. I’ve heard many parents say their autistic kids are “rule-followers” and bitten my tongue wanting to ask if they thought it’s because we’re naturally rigid, or because we’ve been undergoing compliance training for as long as we can remember. Regardless of the origin, many of us cling desperately to whichever skills that get us approval rather than admonishment. Not always a bad thing, many rules certainly do make sense in appropriate context. All we-were-made-for-this jokes aside, social distancing is a stark example of a good rule in…

Disability

Autistic in the Pandemic: A Call to Action

March 19, 2020January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Photo © Katie | Flickr / Creative Commons [image:Black-and-white photo of a person wearing a hoodie and pants, seen from behind near deciduous trees, reaching up and out to the sky.] Maxfield Sparrow unstrangemind.com In the recent WWI movie, 1917, there’s a scene where the reluctant hero encounters a woman hiding behind enemy lines, trying to shush a starving baby. The baby isn’t hers so her body is not equipped to feed it. Lance Corporal Schofield had stopped to fill his empty canteen with milk—the only fluid he could find that was safe to drink—earlier that day. Although we know almost nothing about his life at that point in the film, his words and actions with the baby suggest that Schofield is a father, himself. He gives the milk to the woman and seems grateful to be able to do so. There is a lesson here. None of us are…