By David Futrelle
Breitbart editor-at-large John Nolte got a lot of side-eye yesterday when he suggested in a tweet that 16-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg deserved a spanking.
It turns out that Nolte wasn’t the only person — or even the only middle-aged man — whose first thought upon seeing Thunberg address the world on the existential issue of our ongoing climate catastrophe was, hmm, I think that teenage girl needs a good paddling!
Here are a few of the others.
Some felt it was her parents who deserved this sort of punishment.
“When you run out of arguments, there’s always hitting” doesn’t really seem like the greatest way to deal with children, or adults.
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@Karalora
I’m pretty sure they do. The real issue now is if any of them can be deprogrammed and persuaded to accept science and reason. Any ex-fundamentalists here? How did you reconnect to reality?
@TacticalProgressive
I’m also on the spectrum. I agree that the anti vaxxers are awful in their ableism, and it’s contagious (pun not intended). I know people who aren’t anti vaxxers and haven’t bought into the anti vaccine BS but did buy into their lies about autism, and it infuriates me. Plus the lies spread by malevolent organizations like Autism Speaks.
I’m not even sure where that idea came from. Anyone who actually knows about autism wouldn’t think that, seeing as some of history’s greatest scientific and mathematical thinkers appear to have been autistic, with the likes of Albert Einstein, Paul Erdős, Bill Gates, and more.
It rather seems that autistic people do have thoughts of their own. More so than the ignorant neurotypicals who are attacking Thunberg*.
*I am not implying that all neurotypicals are ignorant, and I have no ill will towards neurotypicals. I am merely speaking about the ones attacking Greta Thunberg on Twitter.
@Naglfar
Part of me suspects that a possibility of where such an idea came from is that they are often force fed or otherwise operate under highly narrow and stereotyped assumptions about special needs individuals instead of understanding the realities and possibly think that all special needs people who are neurodivergent are always, and without exception; some kind of always blissfully unaware, child-like individuals who have no real cognitive functions nor posses the ability to reason, posses awareness or otherwise can only grasp and express basic instinct and needs.
And while a number of people on the low funtioning end of neurodivergent special needs can and do fall under such lines at times, it isn’t by any means universal, and there are moments and cases where even low functioning individuals are able to express complex notions, ideas and lines of philosophy; if perhaps struggling to convey such things for one reason or another.
To the point though; people operating under such stereotyped and broad presumptions do not possess critical nuance. And it seems that in doing so they throw neurodivergent individuals, regardless of where on the spectrum they land: under the bus.
@TacticalProgressive
The irony…
But also it appears to me that with this statement OP is adding an extra layer of ick to the antivax and the ableism: they’re not only claiming that vaccines cause autism; or even that Big Pharma knows this and is suppressing the information; but that “the Elite” are *deliberately* trying to give everybody’s kids autism by vaccinating them, because apparently autistic people are more easily manipulated or something (I’m guessing OP is anti-autist, but not an Autism-Warrior parent, because the latter usually insist their children cannot be reasoned or communicated with).
Anyone else think the punning on Au/gold might be a new dogwhistle to replace triple parentheses?
@Moon Custafer
The idea of autistic people as manipulatable is very false. I can’t speak for others, but I tend to be very stubborn in my ideas and am hard to manipulate. Which is probably true of Thunberg as well, judging from how committed she is in her activism.
I haven’t seen it elsewhere, but it could be. The alt right has been using “autistic” as an insult for some time now (and it actually annoys me more than their use of real slurs like k**e that also apply to me).
Research has shown that Ashkenazi Jews have higher rates of autism than other groups. There may be some connection between their anti-autism and antisemitism.
Even the term “low-functioning” can be problematic because it ends up being applied to people who are simply nonverbal. Look no further than the history of the word “dumb” to see how readily verbal deficiencies are equated with cognitive deficiencies. It’s hard to know if there really even is a meaningful notion of “low-functioning.”
I don’t think this is about not accepting science and reason, either. Anybody can be irrational, and too often science and reason as institutions have been abused for nefarious ends. It’s what they’re irrational about that’s the problem.
Typically people that hit kids stop when the kids are big enough to hit back.
That tells you about all you need to know.
@Victorious Parasol
What is it with the lima beans? My mother also was a lima bean enforcer (until one day my sister burped them all the way across the table into my brother’s food and she realised, oh wait, she’s not eating them because something is wrong and hmm maybe this forcing-to-eat shit is a bad idea). No one I know likes lima beans. Why do they pick that hill to die on? Couldn’t they have picked like broccoli or peas or something more nutritious than lima beans? (I mean yes, ideally nothing and we wouldn’t have any food issues, but if something must be picked, why the lima beans?)
@Knitting Cat Lady
I’m so sorry to hear about your father’s experience. My father had just the opposite experience: his meals (and his brothers’) were rationed based on the caloric needs of his oldest brother, who had a metabolism way, way under norm. He can remember stealing handfuls of flour and eating them plain, because no one would notice flour missing–sugar would get noticed, as would fruits or vegetables, but no one expected plain flour to go missing so he would eat that because he was starving.
He tells that story as a “haha, what hijinks I got up to” story, but to me it’s just sad that parents can’t adapt to the unique needs of more than one child. Now he has issues with wasting food even when he is stuffed to the brim, and will go around eating other people’s leftovers if they plan to throw them out, because he can’t stand to see the waste. I mean not wasting food is a good principle to have, but we are talking excessive here. To a very detrimental point.
I don’t know who Justin Murphy is but I don’t think I’d piss on him if he were on fire.
https://twitter.com/jmrphy/status/1176703990056267777
@ Big Titty Demon:
Maybe it’s the Filboid Studge-ness of lima beans? They taste awful so they *must* be good for you?
Ugh, no. Peas are revolting. Forcing someone to eat them against their will ought to be classified as a form of torture and banned under the Geneva Convention. 😛
Same should likely be done regarding broccoli and lima beans.
@Surplus
Don’t forget to also ban cauliflower force feeding. It’s one of the few foods that makes me nauseous just to smell it.
I never found peas particularly disagreeable, though British-style mushy peas look very unappetizing.
That said, I’ve never eaten as much veg as I really ought.
These posts are so fast now, it’s hard for me to keep up. But that’s okay!
Thunberg is going to be in Montreal on Friday for the climate march! It would be cool to see her even if from far away and especially to see everyone else. I was at the climate strike in March and there was a great turnout – it was inspiring to see.
I may still have to stay at work, though, to help train the new admin assistant. 🙁 I’ll gauge what’s the thing to do that will be most fair to people. Not everybody can organize in the same way.
(The Left: let’s organize!
Me: but I’m not organized!)
😛
@Knitting Cat Lady
Another very touch-averse autistic person here. Being forced to hug relatives as a child was awful.
I had a very nice experience at my father’s funeral with my cousin’s son, who was about 6. Apparently, on the way over he had told his mother that he was going to hug everyone at the funeral, and she explained to him that his cousin (me) really does not like being hugged. So he said that he would shake my hand instead. And he did.
@Naglfar
Not long after I was diagnosed, I joined a support group for autistic people. It was very telling that every one of us went into a frothing rage at the mention of Autism Speaks.
Some person (I forget who) put it beautifully: “Autism Speaks is not a charity for autistic people. It is charity for non-autistic people who have been cursed with the horror of having an autistic person in their lives.”
As a child, I was always very confused by media that presented sick children being cared for and comforted, because I had never experienced anything like that.
My mother was a firm believer that if we experienced illness as in any way pleasant, we would constantly lie and claim to be sick. So she made sure that our illnesses were as miserable as possible.
Not that this stopped her from assuming that any illness, or just feeling unwell, that we claimed was a lie anyway. But once you had finally, finally, convinced her that you were generally ill, the rules were very strict:
You could lay in bed awake, or asleep.
You could get up only to go to use the toilet or empty your vomit bucket.
Nothing else. At all. No reading, no music, no watching TV, no playing with anything. Doing ANYTHING to distract from your misery meant that you weren’t really sick and you were a lying liar.
This was not an idle rule. One time, when I had the flu, I was feeling stir-crazy and started fiddling with some Lego bricks as I lay in bed. She caught me at it, started screaming that I was a liar, and dragged me off to school, where I spent the next two days sick as a dog.
These rules applied whether it had anything to do with staying home from school or not. Sick in the middle of summer break? Same thing. Anything less than abject misery would just encourage us to view illness as a Fun Time to be pursued at all times, leading to the aforementioned lying.
This policy did, in fact, lead to me lying about whether I was sick. It lead to me hiding illnesses from my mother, because I was going to be sick and miserable wherever I was, but if I was at school or at home without my mother knowing I was sick, I would at least have things to occupy my mind and distract from how awful I felt.
Also, before I forget: nice Saki reference, Moon!
@allandrel
Pippi is indeed moral–but not above lying. She’s a child after all. Most of all, she’s quirky as hell and intrepid as hell. And to think that she burst on the scene in 1945. That means that all throughout the 1950s Pippi was doing her oddball thing.
And now she seems to have burst right out of the pages of the books and begun running around Washington terrorizing conservatives and oil barons!
This is an interesting perspective:
https://newrepublic.com/article/154879/misogyny-climate-deniers
@Allandrel
And the worst part is, because of the name even well-meaning neurotypicals think it’s a good thing and use it’s resources and donate.
@ Alan Robertshaw:
I saw similar article the other day with the headline “Why Climate Scepticism Has a Misogyny Problem,” and my response was that apart from the two things likely being intertwined, it’s a little unsettling to see “Why X Has a Y Problem” when X and Y are both bad things – it’s like hearing someone say “Y’know, that Nazi party? I think they’re attracting a lot of racists.”
@Alan Robertshaw
Climate Change denialism intersects with many different issues that are conservative flagships:
– On the one hand there is the misogyny and perceived attacks on the collective identity of western masculinity; because cleaning is supposed to be exclusively the job of women.
– On the other hand there was another article linking it to racism, because the narrative for a while has been that under-developped nations in the southern hemisphere would be the hardest hit. And so Bob and Susan think “why should I lower my standards of living for third world savages that are not civilized enough to tell the difference? And besides, I’ll be dead by the time global warming hits us”.
– Then there is the christian death cult, where they are literally trying their best to hurry the end of times to prepare the way for the second coming of christ. And so they think all the evil they engage in is not only necessary, but moral and just, considering they alone are the chosen people of god.
In essence, there is plenty to unpack in denialism.
@Alan Robertshaw
I can’t say I’m surprised that climate change deniers are misogynists. I’d guess many are also white supremacists and Nazis. It seems that if a person is a reactionary who opposes women’s rights, they’d also be likely to deny the science behind climate change. And it seems that if a person is bigoted in one way, they’re likely to have other bigotries as well.
@Surplus to Requirements
Yep, Greta seems to be her spiritual godchild, right down to her braids — except Pippi’s are red and stick up. Greta’s talking to World Leaders, so I’m sure she feels a need to be more buttoned down. But her glare at President Trump was a beautiful thing to see.
The Brazilian Greta Thunberg hate brigade (on the wake of Bolsonaro’s son spreading around shitty photoshops of her) is focused on interpreting her speech as being only about her own life, as opposed to her entire generation.
@Naglfar
Bigots are rarely, if ever; single issue bigots. Chances are, if they are a bigot against one group of people; they are also bigoted against another group of people, and even another group of people, and another, and another and another… the list can go on…
It goes a long way to explain a bit why people who are bigots against non-whites like Black people, Mexicans and Arabs are also bigots against Jews and non-Christians, bigots against LGBT people, sexist bigots against women and generally bigots against any demographic that is otherwise “not them”.
Those who hold one form of bigotry are often co-morbid with other forms of bigotry.
@Tactical
Yea makes sense.
You want to be as superior as possible.
If you are a white man and you only hate, say, women, you are superior to less people than if you also consider, say, PoC inferior. If you keep adding people with less power than you who are different from you, you feel (and in organized bigotry become) more powerful
It is a bit disturbing that middle aged men are fantasizing about spanking a minor.