To challenge a culture

Most of the time, I am too late in my readings and responses to be an "active part" of the autism blogging community. Neither does it help that my blog is most often read by people who search Google for keywords like "asperger no life" and "asperger never marry". Fact.

But today I came over an interesting blog entry, made by abfh, which mentions a comment Amanda made where she explain the use of the word meltdown in the autistic community. To prove a point, she quotes part of her comment;

I would never attempt to join a culture and then say within a few years of joining it, that the culture's longstanding words are inappropriate and just now being defined, just because the wider community doesn't know them yet.

I can agree to what Amanda is saying, but at the same time, I think it can be dangerous for any culture or group of people to never be challenged on their use of words, their paradigms, and such. If we never challenge what is already set in stone, there can be no evolution and no future for the culture. And to provide an image for this as I believe many people know, who's to say there is no black swan?

Amanda makes many very good arguments as to why it should be called a 'meltdown'. The argument that stands out to me is one she used in another comment, where she says that the use of these words ('meltdown', 'shutdown') came about because one did not want to use the clinical words used by professionals.

That, to me, says a lot. A culture will always have its own words. Some people call this slang. That the autistic community, not just online, use their own words for the feelings and situations, means that there is indeed a community, and a vibrant one at that. The argument over these words and the connotations they bring about is also a healthy sign. What, perhaps, is not as healthy, is when people say others are not as involved in the culture as others, and thus cannot voice their opinion.

It's not about the validity of the online autistic community, as abhf says, because we know the autistic online (and offline) community to be very valid. Not only just by what it can achieve when it comes to lobbying and "getting things done", but because it is a community, a culture, that cares greatly about itself and its members.

As a newcomer here, myself, I would like to think that I am just as welcome as a person who has known about her autism for 10 years, or, her entire life. Abhf made a parallel to the gay/LGBT community, which has faced criticism due to conformism, and thus I find his parallel to be a good one. Especially is the case here is that one has to conform into the culture adopted by many, rejected by a few.

The choice to use the Rainbow Infinity Symbol as a symbol of "pro-autism", and not the puzzle piece, has been an active choice in the autistic community. As the symbol represent, among other things, the spectrum of autism through the different colors (the differences in our symptoms), it can also represents the difference in our opinion about our culture. As I have previously mentioned, all cultures change. All paradigms are challenged. The Rainbow Infinity Symbol shows this never-ending cycle.