Power, Disability, and The Realities of Consent

Image of Mu, a Hispanic presenting biracial child at age four with short wavy hair wearing a maroon T-shirt, his head
resting on the blue metal rung of the slide he is climbing at one of his favorite playgrounds. Tennis courts can be seen in the background. Image posted with permission of the subject: ©Kerima Cevik 

Over the past decade, I frequently posted the same few photographs of my son on my blogs and social media, and people would occasionally ask why I didn't post more. There are photographs of my son that he likes, and images he does not like. Sometimes I like images he does not. However, I do not have his consent to post the ones he does not like, even if I think my preferences matter. I now ask my children, both the adult and the disabled teen, for permission before I post any photos of them on any public forum. It isn't something I gave enough thought to before the arrival of this age of deep fakes/extreme photo editing/child predators/online stalking/revenge porn/etc, but it is something I am really concerned about now. I spend serious time agonizing over these questions:

Does my nonspeaking autistic son really know what it means that his images are on the Internet forever? Have I been able to successfully explain the Internet enough for him to understand the implications of what that means to him?

This is really important. Where do my parental rights to share my children's photos end and their rights to individual privacy begin? I decided to write about this on the heels of witnessing a parent doing something we parents do a great deal automatically with little regard to the consequences. We proudly display photographs of our kids during the rite of passage events in their lives. And if our kids are autistic, we insist that come hell or high water, they are going to get their rite of passage event photos too, and we are going to splash them all over social media. But should we do this without their consent? And what about their worst moments? Should we record and broadcast those moments for all the world to see?

As my Autistic son is dependent on my care and support, this means I have the power in our relationship. I need to grasp that when I ask a question, he may be afraid I won't like his honest answer. I have to make certain that when I ask my disabled teen son a question, I ensure he is not answering to make me feel better or because he is afraid of giving an answer I won't like.

What are the repercussions if an Autistic teen does not support what their parents are saying or doing? They may lose quality-of-care, affection, support,  even a safe home. They may be institutionalized for being noncompliant. It doesn't take verbal speech for anyone in a position of complete dependence to grasp this. We can't assume that we have their approval or consent unless we have spent years building a trust relationship with them. They must know its okay to say or gesture "no" to you without retaliation.

Autism consultant Carol Greenberg pointed out that even with precautions, what we parents believe is consent may be compromised by a lifetime of compliance training, trauma, and other factors that might keep our autistic loved one from giving an honest response to our requests.

I have seen recent instances of parents putting their reluctant autistic teens through rites of passage events, then broadcasting them in the hope they will become viral. What disturbed me about these events was the storytelling language usage by the parents that left the autistic teen a voiceless prop in their own event, the way the parents allowed coverage of each event without regard to their autistic teens feelings on what content and how much content should be disclosed (one autistic teen's mother bragged about calling boys in her daughter's high school class trying to get one of them to take her to the prom), and the infantilization of the autistic person involved.

And what about autistic people of color who have become public figures after catastrophic harm? While it is important that we know what has happened to them and what is being done to rectify the harm or seek justice, how far can anyone reporting these traumas and their aftereffects go in discussing private health information on public forums without that disabled person's consent?

I've written about Arnaldo Rios-Soto. He was the subject of a podcast, and there was a moment in that podcast episode that some reviewers didn't grasp the need for but for me could be called the pivotal moment of the entire podcast.

It happened during then WNYC reporter Audrey Quinn's interview of disability justice advocate Lydia X.Z. Brown, Esq, on the podcast "Aftereffect." Brown was asked to comment on their view of other's information about Arnaldo's behavior.

Brown responded. "I don't know Arnaldo personally, and I think it's inappropriate to be talking about Arnaldo specifically at his worst moments in such a public forum. Because I wouldn't want someone doing that to me. Don't be a predatory reporter."

When professor Quinn pressed on about third-hand information regarding Arnaldo's behavioral history, Brown answered: "Is that something that Arnaldo has given you permission to talk about publicly? Because that's a really important question."

This was a clear reference to Arnaldo's right to give or deny consent. Gaining Arnaldo's consent was something Quinn agonized about doing. I wondered why an attempt wasn't made with the support of a Speech pathologist, using the methods of communication already familiar to Arnaldo, for example,  by presenting him with a very brief, illustrative YouTube video in Spanish. What many journalists reviewing the podcast didn't understand was how groundbreaking an interview that emphasized the need to gain the consent of a disabled involuntary public figure to share private information about their behavioral health during moments of complex post-traumatic stress was.

So let's think about why I'm saying this. Disability justice advocate Brown demanded Arnaldo's behavioral health history not be debated or discussed with strangers in a public forum without his consent. They reminded Quinn that people who have survived trauma will react to trauma (that is what post-traumatic stress disorder literally means) and that such reactions should not be fuel for victim-blaming or mislabeling survivors. They also reminded Quinn that disabled people are people, and like all people, disabled people can be violent, abusive, terrible or compliant, kind, and passive.

Chanel Miller's identity was protected during the trial of her attacker. She made a decision to disclose her identity and gain control of the narrative about her experience as the victim of a violent crime. Arnaldo, I realized, was never given that privilege, something that regardless of his degree of disability and CPTSD, he should have had the right to do.

Sometimes people end up memes or subjects of viral social media content and lose agency over a moment in their lives forever. For our offspring, who are forced to live in social structures built to deny them any agency in their own lives, it is up to us to do whatever we must to ensure we truly have their consent to present them in public forums.

In lieu of general comments, I hope to hear recommendations on how parents can facilitate their offspring's right to give consent even when that person is a nonspeaking autistic youth or adult, and how to support ID/DD children so they gain the confidence to give or deny consent. This also needs to be a discussion on how to help parents reduce fear so they learn to respect a denial of consent from their disabled children.

Peace.

Autism Month Essays: Against The Presumption of Incompetence

Mu in a green hoodie in his favorite spot, debating whether or
not to visit the wild ducks in the pond. Posted as always with
the permission of the subject. © Kerima Cevik

When parenting both our children, my husband and I tried to make certain they knew exactly who they were and hoped they eventually understood that the labels they carried were things they could take ownership of and apply to help them navigate their lives more effectively. 

Our daughter has a clear idea of the entire scope of her multiracial and multicultural identity. Our multiracial, multicultural, nonspeaking autistic son is 15. I have tried my best to ensure he knows his heritage despite communication challenges. I have found other ways of showing him who he is; of indicating to him it is okay to be who he is and that we are proud that he is our son as he is. We want him to know we will be doing our best to support his efforts to live an autonomous life, and such a life must begin with an acceptance of his entire identity.

My son likes to watch Disney World travel infomercials on YouTube. One day he came into the office I share with him to show me a video. The video was a Disney Parks episode where parents were describing what the Disney experience was like with their daughter, who carried an ID/DD (Intellectual Disability/Developmental Disability) label. At the point where she described her daughter as having a developmental disability, my son stopped the video and put my hand on the child's image and then placed my hand on his head. I shook my head yes in response. I said "Yes, son. You are like her. She has a diagnosis of Down Syndrome. You are Autistic."  He hugged me and left the room. I stared after him, an emotional mess, stunned with surprise, shock, sadness, and relief, unknowingly shedding silent tears of pride. 

Knowing ourselves and understanding where we are similar and different from others is a life-altering affirmation of one's competence. My son arrived at this understanding and communicated his suspicions to me without uttering a word.Grasping the scope of one's disability is a giant step in self-advocacy.

 To some degree, everyone needs certain labels. They form the framework of how we begin to define ourselves. But many labels are not positive or even accurate ones, and sometimes they are forced upon us. In fact it may not be the label itself but how we ascribe meaning to it in everyday usage that may devastate. Some labels carry the baggage of bigotry. 

Many parents who impose the goal of becoming indistinguishable from their typical peers on their autistic children feel the idea of acknowledging that their child may carry an ID/DD label is an abhorrent barrier to normalizing them. Additionally, some schools abuse the power to label a child ID/DD on IEP documents because they want to segregate the child from typical peers when said child might do better with supports in an inclusive classroom. The results of either of these circumstances are some devastating potential outcomes to the autistic student that parents and professionals don't spend enough time considering when making arbitrary decisions for or against the use of the ID/DD label. 

I began thinking about how many autistic students were labeled ID/DD and how they came to terms with that label a great deal after my son came to me to question his own identity in gestural language. I was trying to catch up on my friends' status posts on Facebook when I read an entire thread that brought the entire question of the ID/DD label into sharp, painful focus. It was about a family being pressured by an IEP team to add an ID label to their child's disability designations. Several people who were academics, educators, activists and autistic advocates who carried the twice exceptional label were tagged to give their input on the advantages and disadvantages of accepting such a label. I was not one of those tagged.

My son carries the ID/DD label, not by choice but because that is his medical reality. If there is pressure on any family in a school setting to add this label, they need to understand that whatever they decide potentially changes the entire quality of their child's educational future, and this is not always a positive change. The aversion and abhorrence that people who should know better displayed when discussing accepting this label truly disturbed me.

 I'll try to explain why.

I came into this world with dark skin. I am no more able to hide or deny this identity than my son is able to hide or deny his ID label. Yes,  the ID label comes with a heavy burden to fight society's lifelong presumption of incompetence. There was a time when African American labels came with the presumption of incompetence as well as the false accusation that the amount of melanin in one's skin determined who was more intelligent. We dark-skinned people continue to fight these stereotypes. 

Being an African American woman carries lifelong challenges and injustices with it that made me more aware of ableism directed at my son. Despite the hardship, we now know that a clear grasp of a person's identity can give them self-respect that hiding it in shame cannot. The idea that because of these hardships, an identity is something that can be opted out of is wrong. What needed to be said in this thread that wasn't was does this child have a full professional diagnosis? Does that diagnosis include an ID label? If it does, then depriving them of the support they need by hiding this is like leaving a wheelchair user's chair at their departure airport. 

I thought it was our job to right the wrong of institutionalized presumptions of incompetence. That bit of ableism is the fundamental rock in the wall of segregation from every opportunity that keeps our loved ones from their rightful place in our society. History shows clearly that presuming anyone incompetent begins an othering of groups that slides into catastrophic abuses and oppression. There was an air of defeatism in this thread asking whether or not to allow the ID label on a child's educational record that brought me down. Our loved ones will always feel they are less than others if we simply accept the wrong-headed belief that giving a person an ID/DD label equals a lessening of their personhood.

I just don't know when we will get past the idea that if a person cannot speak or learn in the way the average person can, they are less than others in society. We tend to blame our student's disabilities for our societal failure to meet their educational needs when the truth is we have not changed the fundamentals of the way we educate our children since the industrial revolution. Why aren't we fighting to rethink and redesign learning to reach ID/DD students' needs and learning potentials? We simply passively accept things as they are. And each year, our offspring are given less support and less access to learning particularly when they are made to wear that label.

The largest issues I have about parental fear of the ID label and the presumption of incompetence is that if we do not fight the baggage forced on our loved ones with their neurological identity. How can we teach them allow them to carry this label with pride unless we can let our children know with sincerity that ID/DD labels are nothing to be ashamed of?

I wonder if this defeatist attitude contributes to depression and anxiety in our loved ones? I also worry  that denying knowledge about a critical aspect of a student's disability enables the potential devastation to the mental health of the student not aware of why they may have challenges in areas where their peers are succeeding, I wonder how much trying to opt out of ID/DD labels inadvertently slows progress creating educational methods that may maximize our students' potential because distaste for the ID/DD perpetuates our society's  presumption of incompetence. 

It is our responsibility to make our children matter by fully understanding what accepting the ID/DD label means. They can't accept themselves if we are afraid to say whoever they are, whatever their disability constellation entails, we accept them. Believe me, our offspring feel our shame and insincerity and internalize it.

We parents passionately demand better schools, better IEPs, and an end to the use of the r-word. I am thinking that we also need to take a hard look at our own attitudes and make an active effort to change them so our offspring can sense that shift organically and not internalize any subliminal ableism about the labels used to identify their neurology. 

Peace