Coming from the ironic original title of a film project, based on the artist’s own experience as a child. From the article/interview:
Christy Chan was around 8, the child of Chinese immigrants and living in a rural part of Virginia, when her family began receiving mysterious letters. As the sole English speaker in her household, Chan routinely translated everywhing that came her family’s way-pamphlets in the mail, notes from teachers and dentists. Then some new letters began arriving. They were formal, typed, with crosses on them. At the bottom they were signed, “The Wizard.”
They were from the Ku Klux Klan-the letterhead explicitly said so. The K.K.K. wanted Chan’s family to leave. But Chan was just a child, only vaguely understanding the words “white supremacy” even as she read them to her parents. So she wrote back to the Wizard, decorating her messages with glitter, trying to persuade him that she and her family were nice people.
quick note: autistic ace/aro people aren’t problematic or perpetuating stereotypes because they are real people living their lives and not fictional characters written by somebody drawing upon stereotypes. They are also not in the wrong for wanting to see themselves represented in media.
also: our ace/aro identities aren’t rooted in our autism and therefore there is nothing wrong with wanting both our identities seen at the same time.
I want my autism and aromanticism acknowledged, supported and celebrated at the same time; this should be a given. But I am aro to large degree because I am autistic, and I need this relationship acknowledged more than it is.
I find it difficult–impossible, actually–to run this blog and talk about my aromanticism without referencing my autism. My aromanticism is caught up in my dislike of touch, in finding rules about what is and isn’t romantic to be absurd and nonsensical, my inability to perform or experience emotions and behaviours that are deemed romantic by allistic society, my difficulty in emotional connections with other people. Autism and aromanticism are linked enough for me that I’ve been feeling the need for the aro-spec equivalent of autigender, because I am aro, and I am autistic, and often they can and should be discussed separately, but just as often they are so entwined it makes better sense to state that my aro-spec identity is autism-flavoured aromanticism.
I am hyper-conscious of the fact that I am risking alienating allistic aros when I bring autism into aro spaces like this one, and having a specific autistic-aro identity, one that slots underneath the aro umbrella as another way of being aro, would make me feel more comfortable as an autistic aro in aro spaces. It’d let me be autiaro (or maybe autiromantic?) in the same way other aro-specs are demi or quoi or greyro or arovague; it’d give me space to talk about the specific feels and experiences I do have.
(Side note: conventional terms like “arovague” and “nebularomantic” don’t centre the autism aspect of aromanticism flavoured by neurodivergency enough for me. I’m glad both words exist, but they’re not quite for me.)
Are all autistic aros going to feel that way? No, and that’s awesome. Just like, despite the fact that I am genderless, I feel no need for the newly-coined word “arogender” because I don’t feel my lack of gender and my aromanticism to be linked this way, but that doesn’t negate the feelings of those who want or need it (and should be able to discuss this relationship as an aro-spec experience in aro-spec spaces). We all have a wonderful diversity of identities that fit together in a variety of shared, unique and individualistic ways, and a healthy community supports and celebrates this.
Blanket statements about what we are not, even in response to stereotypes that harm us, do nothing to foster the diverse community we’re trying to build.
We need a better social construct for responding to stereotypes or assumptions that harm us that isn’t a blanket denial of said stereotype ever being relevant. The problem is that the stereotype is treated as universal by outsiders who use this–a stereotype comprised of qualities they consider harmful for other reasons, often relating to another experience of marginalisation–to dismiss, diminish and deny aros as human individuals and as a community.
We need a way of saying something like this:
Treating all aro-specs, or people/characters coded as aro-spec, as fitting any given stereotype is erasing and damaging, because it denies aro-specs agency and validity in being, like any other community, a wide, wonderful, diverse collection of people. On this basis alone, we object to its use. We acknowledge, however, that the stereotype may and can apply to individual aro-specs. We will also acknowledge that there is nothing inherently harmful in being an aro-spec person who fits said stereotype, because they harm us most often by taking qualities associated with other experiences of marginalisation and applying them to aro-specs, or people/characters coded as aro-spec, as an indication of our assumed inhumanity. We will not diminish or erase otherwise-marginalised people–especially otherwise-marginalised aro-specs–who are also hurt by this stereotype in our fight against the pain of stereotypes used by others to hurt us.
Because our current conversations in rejecting damaging stereotypes with blanket “we aren’t this” statements, speaking as someone who fits several negatively-regarded stereotypes about being aro and autistic and aro, do nothing but make a world where I still don’t get to exist.
Eleven people were killed on Saturday when a gunman entered Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and opened fire on the congregants. The victims ranged in age from 54 to 97; eight were men, three were women. Two of them were brothers, and two were a married couple.
Chuck Diamond was a rabbi at Tree of Life until about a year ago, and he remains a member of the community, living just around the corner from the synagogue. He knew many of the victims.
“These are wonderful people, good souls, who were just coming to synagogue as the usually did,” he told NPR on Sunday. “Synagogue was just getting started and mostly elderly people who come there are there at the beginning, and you could count on them every week for coming. … It’s such a crime that their lives were taken from us.”
The names of the victims were released on Sunday morning by the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner. Here are some of their stories, as we learn them.
Rose Mallinger, 97, of Squirrel Hill, was the oldest of the victims.
Diamond told NPR that Rose “was in her 90s, but she was one of the younger ones among us, I have to tell you, in terms of her spirit. Rose was wonderful.”
Daniel Stein, 71, lived in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He is the former president of the New Light Congregation, a Conservative synagogue that held services at Tree of Life.
He was remembered for his kindness.
“He was always willing to help anybody,” his nephew Steven Halle told TribLIVE, formerly the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “He was somebody that everybody liked, very dry sense of humor and recently had a grandson who loved him.”
Melvin Wax, 88, also of Squirrel Hill, was a remembered as a pillar of the New Light Congregation.
“He was such a kind, kind person,” his friend and fellow congregant Myron Snider told The Associated Press. “When my daughters were younger, they would go to him, and he would help them with their federal income tax every year. Never charged them.”
“He and I used to, at the end of services, try to tell a joke or two to each other. Most of the time they were clean jokes. Most of the time. I won’t say all the time. But most of the time.”
Snider said Wax was a bit hard of hearing, and unfailingly attended Friday, Saturday, and Sunday services, filling in at nearly every role if someone didn’t show up.
“Just a sweet, sweet guy,” he said.
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, of Edgewood Borough, was a family doctor.
He practiced in a “small, cozy office in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood,” TribLIVE reporter Ben Schmitt wrote in a personal remembrance. Rabinowitz was his father’s doctor, and his own.
Schmitt recalled how his father became ill on a trip to India, and called back to Rabinowitz in Pittsburgh for advice. The doctor called his father every day for the rest of his trip to check in on his health.
“I felt like I was in such competent, caring hands,” Schmitt’s father said. “Such a kind and gentle man.”
Rabinowitz also was the personal physician to former Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Lawrence Claus, who released a statement on Sunday remembering him.
“Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz … was truly a trusted confidant and healer who could always be counted upon to provide sage advice whenever he was consulted on medical matters, usually providing that advice with a touch of genuine humor,” said Claus, according to CBS affiliate KDKA. “He had a truly uplifting demeanor, and as a practicing physician he was among the very best.”
Cecil Rosenthal, 59, and David Rosenthal, 54, were brothers who shared an apartment in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
Raye Coffey, a close friend and former neighbor of the Rosenthals’ parents, toldTribLIVE that the Rosenthals spent a lot of time in her house when they were younger. She said the brothers faced mental challenges and were fixtures at Tree of Life, where Cecil was a greeter.
“Cecil was always a big brother. He was very warm and very loving. Whenever he would see us, he would always say, ‘Hi, Coffeys!’ ”
“David was quieter,” she said. “But both were … to die like this is horrendous.”
ACHIEVA, an organization that works with people with disabilities said that the brothers were well-respected members of its community. Chris Schopf, who runs the group’s residential programs, said the brothers never missed a Saturday at Tree of Life.
“If they were here they would tell you that is where they were supposed to be,” Schopf said in a statement. “Cecil’s laugh was infectious. David was so kind and had such a gentle spirit. Together, they looked out for one another. They were inseparable. Most of all, they were kind, good people with a strong faith and respect for everyone around.”
Bernice Simon, 84, and Sylvan Simon, 86, of Wilkinsburg were remembered by neighbors as sweet, kind, and generous.
They were married at the Tree of Life synagogue in December 1956, according to TribLIVE.
“A loving couple and they’ve been together forever,” longtime friend and neighbor Michael Stepaniak told the news site. “I hope they didn’t suffer much and I miss them terribly.”
Joyce Fienberg, 75, lived in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, and grew up in Toronto. She had two sons and was remembered as a proud grandmother.
“[She was] the most amazing and giving person,” her brother, Bob Libman, told the CBC.
Fienberg was a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center for more than 25 years.
In a statement on Sunday, the center called her “a cherished friend” and “an engaging, elegant, and warm person.”
Gaea Leinhardt, professor emerita at Pitt, called Fienberg her best friend and told The Washington Post that she had a way of putting teachers at ease when she visited their classrooms.
“She was very intellectual,” Leinhardt said. “But also people would just always open up to her in a very easy way. She was an ideal observer.”
Her husband, internationally celebrated statistician Stephen Fienberg, died in 2016.
Leinhardt told the Post that Fienberg had been especially involved at Tree of Life since her husband’s death. “I just can’t say how terribly sad I am that this person isn’t in the world anymore.”
Richard Gottfried, 65, of Ross Township, shared a dentistry practice with his wife.
The two met as dental students at the University of Pittsburgh, the Post reports, and they volunteered with Catholic Charities’ dental clinic. He was said to be an avid runner and had been going to services at Tree of Life more often recently.
Irving Younger, 69, ran a real estate business in Squirrel Hill for many years, and was also a youth football and baseball coach.
Tina Prizner, who lived next door to Younger in the Mt. Washington neighborhood, remembered him as “the most wonderful dad and grandpa” and as a devoted member of his congregation.
“He went every day. He was an usher at his synagogue, and he never missed a day,” she told TribLIVE. “He was a beautiful person, a beautiful soul.”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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