Now that I’ve reverted to addressing Aja Barber by her name
on my blog I hope she’ll do the same and let her 150,000 followers know my name
is Pearl Red Moon. I hope she didn’t delete the comment I made on her Patreon
so they can make up their own minds whether it deserved the half hour tirade I
got served up on Instagram video. If my comment was deleted and they want to know what
bought on such outrage, I’ll publish it here.
This was my comment….
Sometimes I wonder why we need to have "work
clothes" and "home clothes". This expectation works well for
capitalism because we feel compelled to spend more money maintaining 2 separate
wardrobe styles. Do all cultures operate like that? Plus I think more costs are
put on women to maintain a professional wardrobe compared to what males spend. Men
seem to have cleverly worked out that they can limit their professional work clothing
choices within a small range of conventionally styled suits, shirts, trousers,
coats, that don't change annually with each "season". This allows
them to present at work garbed in acceptable choices rotating the same clothes
for years for significantly less expenditure than what most women are enticed
to spend.
(In that video she makes a little self deprecating observation referring to people making fun of her name. Boy, do I get that, same here! I legally changed my name in 1987 when I lived in Sydney. Over decades I’ve had people insinuate it might be a cultural appropriation from American Indian or Asian cultures. For a really long time I was completely baffled why they would think that. Perhaps the reality that I’m old, fat, white and greyhaired doesn’t quite match what they were assuming?)
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That done, I move on with a heavy heart to react to another
thing Ms Barber accused me of.
She said I use my neuro-diversity (Aspergers) as a free pass
to get out being held accountable for saying offensive things to people or for
holding offensive views.
I feel sick and shaky just writing that. It’s not only a slur
on me personally but to all neurodivergent people. I could only bear watching
the video once but somehow the way I use that free pass also got described as “manipulative”
.
This is a bit of background to my story.
I was born with non typical neurons in my brain. Being autistic
didn’t happen because I got a brain injury, nor is it something medical I can
take a pill to cure, nor is it aberrant behaviours I can be trained out of. Bit
like being born with blue eyes or melanin bleached skin.
I had so many problem
behaviours as a child my parents took me to psychiatrist who said I was “hyperactive”
– that was the early 1960s word that later morphed into ADHD. I was strongly
aware from starting school that I needed to watch and model the behaviours of
other girls or I lived in a world of perpetual trouble. My first school report
says I need to learn how to get on nicely with the other kids. I was born the
eldest in my family but fortunately I had a neuro typical sister 2 years younger
whom I could model. As a teenager I worked out how to negotiate the world
minimising trouble.
Things got considerably trickier after leaving school
because I don’t like being around people, I’m super sensitive to sound and I
struggle to interpret verbal and physical communications. Keeping jobs didn’t
work well at all. I’m so super pedantic about rules and regulations, seldom
make friends and never joined the workplace cliques. In many jobs I was bullied
to the point of having breakdowns and doing self destructive behaviour like
taking overdoses.
Making art had always been a thing I loved to do so in my
early 40s I enrolled to do a Visual Art degree at an Australian University.
This became incredibly challenging because of the huge throngs of people, over
full auditoriums, canteens where the noise level was probably 90 decibels. I
was obsessing over not being able to get a car parking space, all sorts of things
like that were leading to me having crazy shite emotional melt downs. I went to
a campus psychologist to work out what was wrong with me and how could I fix
it. He told me I was probably still suffering from PTSD from the 1987 rape and
the equally traumatic events of the criminal trial that resulted from that over
most of 1992, plus I was probably also on the autistic spectrum.
I didn’t get the official test until about 6 years ago. A psychologist
and a clinical psychologist saw me regularly over a few months and that was
their diagnosis.
So what does Aja mean when she says I use my neuro diversity
not be accountable? Firstly I want to clarify that I don’t have an intellectual
disability. It doesn’t necessarily follow for all on the spectrum – think Einstein
and Greta Thunberg. Though I sometimes have fun with people who know in
advance, but when they meet me for the first time they speak loud, slow and use
simple words.
By saying that Aja implies I don’t have integrity. She
thinks I just like to say stuff (stupid and wrong stuff by her estimation) to
intentionally hurt and harm people. She says that is what I’ve done to her and
her friends. Maliciously and spitefully sought to harm them and then run back
to my padded cell and say I’m too nuts to be held responsible.
That is completely untrue and makes me feel nauseous. I don’t
want to hurt/harm her or her friends. As a textile artist, as a clothing pattern
publisher, I wanted to take a stand over an assertion I didn’t agree with. I
had no idea that quoting stuff they had written on public platforms was an
insult and a personal attack. I honestly thought I was debating.
Well, I’m obviously more daft than I ever realised and
creeping back into the padded cell is looking quite the sanctuary at the moment.
