Street and typical houses in Chefchaouen, the blue city of Morocco. Fbrandao.1963
The blue moms
The inspiration for this article was a friend’s online experience with “blue mothers”, a nickname we gave to the neurotypical mothers of autistic children who claim to “love the (autistic) child and hate autism”. My friend, a brilliant autistic adult and autism activist from Brazil, is in permanent belligerent interaction with blue moms. Several of us, other autistic adults in the movement, have had similar encounters with them.
From a political standpoint, they are disputing power with us. The whole point of a neurodiversity movement by and for neurodiverse individuals threatens them. Our motto, “nothing about us without us” infuriates them.
Here in the the US, some of the most well-funded and aggressive autism organizations represent blue moms: Autism Speaks and National Council on Severe Autism. Both flirt with “cures”, and even prevention. Autism is a multifactorial and polygenic congenital condition. It has neither a single cause nor a cure. It doesn’t have a cure for several reasons and one shouldn’t be our goal given that autism is not a disease but rather a neurologically different condition of humans. “Prevention”, or avoiding the birth of autistic children, is eugenics, a scary application of genetics to fascist agendas. It’s a method of selectively increasing certain characteristics while eliminating others from the human population, a cornerstone of the Nazi agenda.
The American “blue parents’” organizations are efficiently networked and well funded. They represent the interest of neurotypical parents of autistic children which would be fine if they stated so. Instead, they gaslight everyone about how they represent the interests of autistic people:
“Autism Speaks was founded in February 2005 by Bob and Suzanne Wright, grandparents of a child with autism. Recognizing the need for a powerful voice Bernie Marcus donated $25 million to help financially launch the organization.
Building upon the legacy of three leading autism organizations, Autism Coalition for Research and Education (ACRE), the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR) and Cure Autism Now (CAN), who merged with the organization, Autism Speaks has made extraordinary advancements in the autism community.”
In the last digital thread containing blue mom provocations, I paid attention to the language they used while interacting with my friend: “you are obviously angry and disturbed, you need psychiatric treatment”, said one. “What you wrote is too heavy and pessimistic, you shouldn’t express yourself this way”, said another. Implied there were their claim over the legitimacy of who speaks for autistic people (and their agenda is to alienate autistic people from their self-determination), my friend’s disability as exclusionary for his legitimacy, and the demand for power over whatever is said about autism. It’s also an illustration of what it means for them to “love the autistic person and hate autism”: it’s a lie.
This is the language of invalidation.
We know it all too well: just as these blue moms are using it in public debate, our blue moms used it on us and against us. Some of us are not here to tell the story because invalidation is associated with a much higher suicide risk. Autistic adults are much more likely to die of suicide than their equivalent among neurotypicals.
The language of invalidation
Invalidation and gaslighting are forms of psychological manipulation and abuse. Sometimes the terms are used interchangeably although invalidation is more often associated with the quenching of emotional expression. Gaslighting, on the other hand, involves a complex system of cognitive, emotional and social control through deceptive behavior. It is an attempt from the perpetrator to convince the victim that their thoughts, perceptions, or beliefs are mistaken.
In this article, I am using invalidation and gaslighting interchangeably since the ultimate goal of parental gaslighting is to invalidate not only the child’s emotions, but the child’s perception of reality. Sweet (2019) argues that “gaslighting is primarily a sociological rather than a psychological phenomenon. Gaslighting should be understood as rooted in social inequalities, including gender, and executed in power-laden intimate relationships”. It’s a creepy realization that the first power-laden intimate relationship that a person experiences is with their mother.
In social movements, the “false ally gaslighting” has been identified in gender activism and other identity politics movements. McKinnon (2017) calls this “epistemic (or testimonial) injustice”, an instance in which a false ally minimizes or disqualifies (invalidates) the lived-experience activists’ testimonial as exaggerated or just a false perception.
In the relationship of the blue moms with us, invalidation plays several roles:
1) Opposing what they perceive as a dangerously objective, rational and inflexible appraisal of reality (making us more “mellow” and flexible);
2) Fixing us;
3) Controlling us;
4) Speaking on our behalf and contrary to our interests.
George Simon (1996), who wrote the best-selling non-academic book “In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People”, has provided a useful list of gaslighting language techniques:
Lying (by commission)
Lying by omission
Denial
Rationalization
Minimization
Diversion
Evasion
Covert intimidation
Guilt trip
Shaming
Vilifying the victim
Playing the victim role
Playing the servant role
Seduction
Projecting the blame (blaming others)
Feigning innocence
Feigning confusion
Brandishing anger
Bandwagon effect
I’m sure the reader has met a couple of manipulators who may have displayed some of these techniques in the attempt to scam, control, as a tactic to monopolize a narrative, or simply because they can’t help it: after years of being what they are, it’s in their nature to act this way.
I can identify all of the items above in blue moms’ blog posts. All of them: not one missing. Unfortunately, I identify all of them in my mother’s interaction with me during all my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. Since one of the goals of effective gaslighting language is to impair memory consolidation, I became (sorta) acceptable as a middle aged woman. Why? Because one of the most insistent of her techniques was to deny reality: “it didn’t happen”, “it didn’t happen that way”, “you are exaggerating, let’s pretend that…”. The results are thousands of memories of episodes that I clearly identify, in most cases I know where it happened, who was there and what role my mother played. However, the worst instances of sexual violence in physicians’ offices, in her presence, with her consent, stopped making sense all together. Orphan memories, disturbing for their content but impossible to make sense of.
An “invalidation program” is not made only of sentences. The language of invalidation is connected to a specific power-laden relationship, to a specific culture and involves intonation, voice pitch modulation and non-verbal communication. Sighs, eyebrow movement, and body language are part of it.
My mother was highly motivated by her frustration and anger over all the things that I was not. Of those, the chief issue was my behavior. Her two main invalidation strategies were to minimize and disqualify the content of my attitude or behavior and, second, to make it hard for me to consolidate violent experiences into memories. Both were extremely successful and it took me over half a century for the memories that were just disturbingly sitting there to acquire meaning.
These are expressions from my childhood that elicit strong negative emotions in me:
“Ahh…. (long vowels) It’s not like that… You are exaggerating” - my version of facts was denied and, with these expressions, she laid the ground for her to offer her interpretation, that I was coerced into accepting. That didn’t work well at all in most cases.
“Stop getting all worked up about (whatever)” - she needed to deescalate the magnitude of my interpretation of facts, episodes or people’s characters. She always rejected the use of rational attributes, she became highly accomplished at producing neologisms and euphemisms, and, after a while, it was hard to find myself in the labyrinth of her twisted facts.
“It can’t be like that” - the purest form of denial, as in “I reject your version of reality and I will give you an alternative”. She trained my siblings to use that strategy. They do it, dutifully, until this day. Only one of them realized what they were doing, apologized and stopped. I don’t think they know that they were programmed to act this way.
“Let’s pretend that…” - that’s one step after denial. This is the phrase with which she introduced the alternative version of reality that I should accept.
Diminutives - she overused diminutives everywhere. For an autistic child, I read her pretty quickly and I knew she couldn’t be totally trusted. When I learned how to speak, some of my first words were “fixed forms” of her diminutives by cutting off the diminutive particle.
Shaming and vilifying:
“You are fat and ugly. Nobody can love someone like that except their mother. It’s an instinct: female mammals instinctively love their offspring”
“You are too hard and inflexible”
“You don’t try to be nice as you should”
There are darker memories associated with different words. The word “delicate” causes me uncontrollable anger. She frequently used this word to coax me into submitting to physical contact with other adults. Before age seven, at least two male physicians had me naked over the examination table; one inserted his finger inside my anus, explaining to my mother that that was the proper procedure with children; the other kept fingering my vagina. I remember everything: what he looked like, the pain he inflicted, the shame I felt. My mother was sitting on a mustard color couch with a reassuring smile to the physician. I actually know his name and other information about him. The word “delicate” has always triggered an impulse to protect my genitals. It does so to this day. I don’t really know what else is hidden in the dark corners of my memories.
One was a female psychologist, a lesbian, who would touch and squeeze my breasts. During the months that my mother forced me to attend her sessions, I stopped growing up and had several other abnormal symptoms. The only doctor that cared about me among the dozens she took me to (for no reason) asked me what was happening. He deliberately alienated her from the conversation because he wanted to hear me. I think he suspected something. I told him that I didn’t want to go to that psychologist. Even then, my mother tried to take me there again. I refused to move.
My mother is highly educated and smart. She can’t compete with me, though. From a very early age, I resisted her attempts at forcing me to adopt a false version of reality. I would push back and demonstrate her argument was illogical and irrational. That’s when her anger broke out: she screamed, threatened and then played the victim, sighing with her elevated eyebrows. To this day, I don’t trust people who elevate their eyebrows.
Shaming was easy: she didn’t let me wear normal clothes. Instead, she would make them for me from the most horrendous fabric she could find. She used to say she had to save money and that there were no commercial jeans and shirts for a lazy fat girl like me. I saw my pictures from this time. I wasn’t fat. Since she complained that I was too thin at some time, I suppose she had a list of imaginary conditions to be treated with drugs, fingers and diets.
The fabrics were prickly and the colors were ridiculous.
I obsessed with dying from a very early age. When I was six, she forced me to go to swimming classes wearing a neon-yellow swimsuit. I was horribly embarrassed. One day I decided I was going to die. I held my breath underwater but the breathing reflex kicked in. I was very upset. I believe that is when I construed death as my only way out of humiliation and suffering.
From as early as four years old until I left home, I obsessed about two things: if she and my dad had pondered so seriously about aborting me, as she always claimed, why didn’t she? I wish she had. The second one became part of me: the wish to die. I failed at six and I would become better and better with time. The last suicide attempt was the closest I got to succeeding.
Maybe this is all part of the invalidation system. Since it was clear that no matter how violent the methods employed by my mother were, I wasn’t changing into what she wanted, death would be one thing the two of us could agree on. If I died, she could be the victim and martyr she craved to be. And I would be free.
“I hate you but I kinda sorta like you as I should”
Here are two examples of blue mom’s rants: When you love the child, but hate the autism and I hate autism. I hate it with every inch of my being. This is them seeking attention, sympathy and, above all, validation for their actual rejection of their child. Why? Because it’s impossible to love someone and hate their identity. Autism is not the flu or COVID. It’s not something we catch and can be cured of. Autism is our condition. It is who we are. When a blue mom claims that they love their child but hate their autism, they are just expressing (by denial) their guilt about not being able to love their child.
My mother hated my thinness, my fatness, my bad temper, my unwillingness to smile, my withdrawals, my unwillingness to kiss whatever adult she wanted me to, and what she considered a hard, judgmental and righteous attitude that I had. How could she see all that in a five-year-old? Because she is extremely self-aware, like other blue moms and all manipulators are. She considered my inability to lie or to “negotiate” facts a personal threat to her.
Blue mothers, whether their child is truly a neurodiverse person or just not the child they wanted, seek each other’s support and validation. Since they failed at fixing the kid, they want to be justified in their anger, they want o be seen as sacrificing saints and martyrs.
My mother and her friends had a tea party every Thursday. They would gather, eat pastries and complain about their children and husbands. She came home at least twice with stories about the worst of the group: “poor Maria Estella, you don’t know what her daughter did to her now”. The woman was a millionaire and her daughter clearly abused from early childhood. At this point, my mother feared me. I don’t know if she feared I would beat her up or the humiliation I imposed by winning every single argument with her. Maria Estella was a dangerous topic. I would become violent and say the most rational things because reason was my most damaging weapon against my mother. I knew reason made her feel humiliated.
Can they stop being abusers?
Who knows? Maybe. In our experience, if that happens, it’s too late for us. I’d rather have the mother of an autistic child read this article while dealing with the first signs of their child’s “different behavior” so that they can make conscious decisions. If they decide to follow the invalidation path, to confront us, the rightful and legitimate voices of autism, then they will never be able to play the “I didn’t know any better” card.
These women are doing something morally wrong, they know it is wrong but their rationalizing efforts are not just an invalidation strategy. They rationalize furiously to be able to live with themselves. The majority wouldn’t be able to handle the fact that in the affective relationship ambivalence spectrum, they dislike us more than they like us.
Two things follow from this realization: first, they need each other for validating that narrative. They will tell their stories to each other again and again to make sure everyone nods to their unconditional love for their child, to society’s neglect of their needs and to the fact that all they do is act on their children’s best interest. They are not: the chief driver of their actions is anger, frustration, insecurity, resentment and even hate.
The second thing is that they need us to forget what was done to us and to validate as much as possible their narrative about everything, but mostly about us. This, however, is almost a death sentence to us since their narrative about us is that we shouldn’t exist, that everything about us is incomplete, ugly and wrong but there is some “essence” that they love. We don’t know where this essence is but we must believe them.
These women are not total psychopaths with no moral compass and complete inability to feel remorse. If they were, they’d get rid of us after satisfying their sadism. Most of them have some moral compass.
I spent all my childhood and most of my adult life lamenting the fact that my mother didn’t abort me as she had planned. She couldn’t have known that the baby was “wrong”. Once I was born, we were tragically locked into a sick relationship.
I kept wondering how much happier she would be if all the time she invested in trying to fix me, inflicting pain, shame and self-doubt in me, was invested in her. When I was in college, I insistently encouraged her to go back to school. After all, I had heard my whole life that “if it weren’t for me”, she would have pursued her academic career. After much pestering, she did take one class and dropped the plan. My dad said “maybe she is happier making her stuffed animals”. He was right.
I was never the reason she didn’t pursue an academic career. I was a low maintenance child, didn’t need any special treatment, I was the best student in class for as long as I had a class, and her “investment” in me was in response to how disturbed she (not me) was with my existence. A behavior she felt threatened about, a person she disliked. I should have known.
Can they change? Given the sheer size of this population, surely we have many cases that did change. However, the rational path is not to change and to avoid the consequent self-blame, guilt and existential crisis that would ensue.