The importance of open discussion

I am a science editor over at The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. My role is primarily to vet things that have a sciencey bent to them to make sure they're OK. I also have another role, that of a non-neurotypical parent of an autistic child, and I help to vet other submissions from that perspective.

TPGA has been running a series this last week of dialogues. The genesis of the series was a post by a parent whose child has special needs but not autism. This parent wrote a post that some in the autism community took issue with, and ultimately, the upshot was this series of posts, an exchange between this parent--who has no previous connection whatsoever to the autism community--and two autistic adults.

As the parent's turn to post approached, this parent tweeted in a way that I interpreted meant trepidation about how meaningful or useful his participation might be. As an editor at TPGA, I felt that I needed to give him a boost, to let him know that even though the people who take the time to comment may say things he finds painful, there are legions of silent readers he also reaches, that all open discussion should ultimately lead to an unraveling of conflict into greater understanding. As in all such cases of contention, there is a small group of people who comment and who are very vocal, and a much, much larger group of people who are the silent audience.

We then had the Twitter exchange you see posted here. My intent, my thinking, even my clearly written words in this exchange have been twisted and misinterpreted into something that my years of posting on this blog and elsewhere certainly belie. I invite anyone to click on any of the tags to the right, including autism, parenting, and TH, to really learn what my investment has been, what my attitude has been and continues to be about autism and autistic people, and who I am.

Below, I provide what my thought process was as I tweeted with this parent about posting his very first post in this dialogue, in a world that was new to him, to people who were new to him. My responses to him were not remotely informed by any of my experiences with the autistic people involved in either the dialogue or the comment but instead are based in my experiences with a completely different and far more virulent world: the antivaxers. I am not comparing autistic adults to antivaxers at all; instead, I was trying to draw on my experiences of coping with people who strongly disagreed with me and transfer my coping mechanisms to some of the personal pain he might be experiencing, as he had expressed. That was the experiential context in which I responded to this parent, and I list below what my entire thought process was throughout this exchange. For the record, I have not deleted one tweet from my Twitter feed and have no intention of doing so:

1. The parent in question tweeted something that made it seem as though he weren't sure about how worthwhile this discussion might be, that instead, it might just be something that would blow up all over him.
2. I tweeted to him to say the following: open discussion is worthwhile, even though no two people in such a discussion may ever fully understand one another. I further noted something to the effect that there are many, many people not commenting and he needs to remember the audience, not only the small vocal group actually posting comments. That applies to anything in the blogosphere and is something I often remind myself of in moments of internet contention.
3. He indicated further trepidation, based on how people had responded so far.
4. I tweeted some coping mechanisms I've learned in the course of many years of acrimonious discussions in the virtual world (never before related to contention with autistic adults), which include never forgetting what your real life is all about and never forget that in the end, that it's your closest relationships that matter the most, and that no matter what anyone says about you as a parent, only you can really know the reality of it. I have had people tell me I'm a horrible abusive parent because I had one of my children at home or because I vaccinate my children. From these experiences, I know that I have to remind myself that only I can truly know the reality, as these people do not live my life. I also noted something else I've learned from my vaccine activism: Sometimes, if it's just making your head explode, you've got to take a step away and let others haggle for awhile.
5. One of the autistic adults who was participating in the dialogue on TPGA stepped in at a later point to ask where anyone had attacked anyone's parenting.
6. I responded that no one had actually said that, but instead that someone--neither the parent in question nor I--had said "I don't know, it feels like anything a parent says is wrong," and that was an intangible that couldn't be cut-and-pasted as proof. Emotions always have to be taken at face value, as they consist of so much more than tangibles or words or evidence.

That's it. I began that exchange thinking, "Oh, as an editor at TPGA, I should encourage him to go for it, to get into it even though it may be painful, and here are some ways to deal with the pain that may ensue." Why? Because I believed until today that engaging in open dialogue, especially about potentially contentious issues, is the best way to eventually unravel the problem and reach a better understanding.

The end. That's really all I have to say. It's exactly what my thought processes were. I wasn't even thinking of autism or autistic people per se but of how to deal with what feels so personal in an impersonal place like the blogosphere.

Anyone is welcome to comment here on what I've said above, but I'll say right now that I will not be engaging in parsing tweet by tweet anything in that exchange, and I will not bother to counter someone else's interpretations of what I was thinking and feeling and intending when I entered into that exchange. As someone very wise said to me recently, that's the place to draw the line, and that's where I draw it.

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Edited to add: I have long been a proponent of open discussion. I have long had a belief in the ultimately beneficial outcomes of it. I am now much less sure about it, although that feeling may wane.

ETA, again: Please read this blog post, which contains a concise summary of the things people say and do that make autistic people feel unheard, ignored, and dismissed. It's just about the best precis I've seen, and I will *not* forget it. I'd suggest that anyone keep them in mind.