To autistic folks too, and autistic folks’ boundaries are invisible to nonautistic people. This is an illustration of the reality of autistic culture.

In a “medical model” approach, it simply wouldn’t occur to anyone to consider autism a cultural entity. If ‘they’ can’t see ‘our’ boundaries, it must be mental illness of some sort. (Robert Pirsig’s “Lila” referred to a Sicilian man who was committed to a psychiatric hospital for mentioning “witching” which is a valid cultural concept for Sicilians) This point lends itself to some kind of visual demonstration, with red/blue glasses of the type used in simple 3D, or polarized or shutter-type glasses. Something interactive could evoke the emotional experience of “getting it wrong”, too...

Boundaries occur along different axes - sensory/tactile, sequence, literal/figurative. They seem like hardware boundaries rather than (higher-level?) software boundaries of the socialization realm.

Last revised: June 17, 2007
(c)2007 Dave Spicer
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