i was watching elena carrolls new video this morning about her autism where she talks about "whimsical innocence" and i dont want to really directly comment on the video itself but rather that specific terminology. i was actually just thinking about the concept of "innocence" last night and the issues i have with it, especially in regards to children as this sort of definable finite Thing that can be "lost/stolen/destroyed" (particularly due to western christianity & "purity culture", often used in tandem with the concept of sexual purity/lack of sexual awareness). she wasnt using it that way necessarily but i do think for a lot of people that connotation is always lurking in the background, either when they use it or hear it used. i find this concept of definable finite Innocence to ultimately be a tool of control and, while seen as something admirable about them, it is used against children by making them into 'glorious Innocent objects to be secured and shielded' over 'growing people who will inevitably and naturally be "exposed to darkness"'. innocence is at the end of the day a vague social construct that cannot be laid out with any real exactness but still we have a tendency to define it so strongly with Children and with Childishness. elena carroll says that she chooses to use the term "whimsical innocence" in regards to autism as a more positive alternative to naïveté, but due to what i described thus far, innocence itself is still often a denigrating term when applied to adults. it is used to infantilize precisely because it is so culturally tied to childhood and as something that is essentially "lost" in order to give way to adulthood; so an adult who is identified as Innocent is often equated and treated much like a child. the same controlling, objectifying process applied to children then also is often applied to autistic adults, who are portrayed as sub-Adult/essentially childlike through their Innocence.
one of the things i do struggle with in my understanding of myself as autistic is this idea of Innocence/Naïveté. i certainly have a level of it i suppose in how i lean towards wanting to trust people/give benefit of the doubt where most other people wouldnt and well. it has, in instances, come around to bite me in the ass and make my "innocent" hopes in kindness/human "good" feel betrayed... and yet, it feels deeply incorrect to identify myself as concretely Innocent or Naïve. maybe because i generally overcorrect by just not interacting with or trusting most other people at length. i find a lot of difficulty in the moment of direct real-time social situations where i tend to take people at their word/assume theyre saying what they mean like i do. but my extreme pattern recognition tends to figure things out After The Fact and i can and will lose my trust with people (if I have, in a rare instance, decided to open up to them). its like i Am but i also Am Not.
more direct to strictly Innocence, it is even more entrenched in this weird Am/Am Not limbo. if youre reading this, youre likely familiar with my blog which clearly is diverged from the puritanical idea of Innocence. but then again, other people could probably describe my Innocence as "stolen" in the definable finite sense, while others might say i retain some level of that Innocence in my (otherwise) "virginity". i fear a lot of people would see me as tantalizingly Innocent despite how much i feel that i am not Innocent at all. i worry a lot about how if i even decided to eventually date how i will even deal with all this: how i will likely inevitably come across people who will want to treat me as inherently naïve or easily controlled or like an object of desire in which to "take" that Innocence from or even as an automatic "child" to reject. then, at the same time, i do still recognize a level of that more "whimsical innocence" that elena carroll describes within myself, an autistic desire and willingness to look at the world and people with kinder eyes and sensitivity to beauty and pain. that is perhaps the main force that keeps me in touch with ideas of wonder and possibility and a brighter future that i otherwise might reasonably outright reject. there is undeniably an aspect to it that puts me back in touch with "childish" things and notions. it is something about myself that i appreciate.
so then Am i or Am Not? while i dont think so black and white—rather often dealing in "two sides of the same coin"/yin-yang type dualistic thinking—i understand that other people dont tend to deal with their instinctual thoughts with so much critique. i do instead understand something like Innocence to be much broader than the scopes of childhood or of "purity" (sexual or otherwise) and as something that is mutable throughout one's life which can still be nourished well into adulthood. it inherently is informed by and intertwined with its opposite, it cannot exist separately either conceptually or within any single person. what i Am, then, is constantly subject to a material reality and society that is drowning in all its binaries, which forces me to constantly reckon with how i may or may not be perceived. in a lot of ways, i think my Am/Am Not limbo shines through and ends up confusing people more than anything else, turning me more into someone "hard to read". but people do still tend to see me as either one over the other. this is essentially where i would say people tend to either under- or over-estimate me, either seeing me as meek/shy/sweet or as cunning/imperiously bitchy. either way, it seems to all just come back around to no one really seeing me at all and mostly projecting onto me. but, then, isn't that the whole plight of human connection?
