my cause

I've never been to an autism parents' group.You might wonder why I haven't availed myself of the advice and support of other folks in my situation. But I've never even been tempted. I tell myself that I avoid these meetings because they might not help since every autistic child is so different. That the meetings are probably bogged down by endless conversations about vaccines and diets, mercury cleansing and treatment controversies. While I would feel uncomfortable in any setting where those themes dominated, there is another important reason that I avoid these groups. I do not want autism to become my cause.

Let me admit something that might make me lose friends. I hate it when people promote a cause because it happens to affect them personally. For example, there's the person who sends internet petitions about library funding because their niece is a librarian. Or the person raising money for a walk-a-thon to fund kidney transplants because granddad just had one. While I am completely sympathetic to public institutions like libraries and the profound impact a family member's illness can have on a person, the whole thing smacks of selfishness to me. It's like saying, "This should be your problem because it is my problem. I didn't even know it was a problem until it affected me. But now it is the most important problem and I want you to think that, too."

I think I'm impatient with these promotions of causes because of the topics I research. I study two things: early American prisons and nineteenth-century Indian wars. These are not pretty topics. Yesterday, I was reading about Minnesota in the 1860s. A government official withheld food aid from native peoples confined to a reservation and then remarked that they could eat grass if they were hungry. In response, the Indians started a war in which hundreds of settlers, including women and children, were murdered. When you study stuff like that, life with an autistic child hardly counts as tragedy. I can't get on a soapbox about autism because every day I read about other human beings, other people in this country's history, who had their cultures destroyed, their freedoms curtailed, and sometimes their lives taken. I don't feel self-righteous about studying this stuff. I just think that these stories of injustice demand more of our empathy and activism than what I experience daily, no matter how heartbreaking it can be.

But maybe I have always wanted to take up causes for forgotten people - like criminals and Indians - as a way to tell myself that I am not as vulnerable as they are. Somehow, by studying them, I can insist that I am fine and have the time and energy to be concerned about someone else. So maybe I don't go to autism parents' groups because that would mean admitting my own vulnerability. Going to a support group might mean that I need someone else to take up my cause, rather than me being able to take up theirs.