I've lurked around KF for a long time and never really had any reason to post. My interest is a touch more abstract than most here and it's just never been relevent for discussion. So first let me give you a tiny bit of background as to why a newly created account is posting for the first time (I know that draws some attention at the moment).
I'm actually part of an odd group that have discussed Chris for some time, but in a totally different frame of reference. I have ASD (let's not use outdated terms like 'high functioning' or 'Asbergers') and I'm lucky enough to live in a country which has excellent mental health support (Iceland). A few of my friends are also on the spectrum in various flavours, and we encountered Chris through the Knudsen content, and subsequentally followed Geno's work. It was almost like 'book club' where this small group of Icelanders with ASD would discuss what we were witnessing. Some of it, especially in the early days, we could relate to. However, it became hard to relate once the trolling became more influential, as none of us have had to endure that type of external pressure, and it's impossible for us to guess how it may have influenced us (although we did speculate a lot). We tried to 'what if', but we're notoriously bad at that stuff. So think of me as part of a completely seperate group of small time Chris followers that never really cared about anything beyond observing and discussing. All of us have visitted the farms on occasion, largely because it can be a good place for fact checking, and you do a good job of breaking down some of the events in a way that even Geno's excellent work doesn't quite elaborate far enough on. We care about context, and this place has always been a good source of that.
So why is this random Icelandic person suddenly in a side thread about Chris? Because I lived in England in my younger years and spent 2 years in a Young Offenders Institution, so I have encountered ASD and the law, as well as what it is like to have ASD in a criminal institution. It should be said that I was arrested, charged and sentenced for a fight that got out of hand when I was 17, and this was in the late 90's, so much has changed in how ASD is understood. But one thing about ASD that causes a real problem in the criminal system is lack of epathy. Asbergers (when it was a thing) was originally a study regarding psychopathic traits in autism, and there are a frightening number of ASD traits that could be mistaken for ASPD if taken out of context. Lack of empathy is the prime example (also, autistic fascinations are misidentified as 'selfishness' etc.). ASPD lacks empathy because they don't care, ASD lacks empathy because they don't understand. It's a subtle difference, but the probation service (when providing their input into my sentencing) actually stated that I showed no empathy for my victim and that was used as justification for a tougher sentence. They could not distinguish between the 'callous' lack of empathy you see in people with ASPD and the 'confused' lack of empathy you see in ASD (in fact, they didn't discuss mental health in any way, they just said 'shows no empathy' and that was that. I hadn't been clinically diagnosed back then, so it should be noted that they just assumed I callously lacked empathy, rather than looking into it any further), because the criminal system wants people to feel empathy for the victim and still struggles to understand that it's possible to lack empathy without being mallicious. I don't know what it's like in the States, it's pretty good in Iceland, but in the UK I'm told people are still refused parole for 'not expressing empathy' even with a clinical ASD diagnosis, so clearly there are still some pretty major problems with how the criminal justice system in developed countries understands ASD.
In terms of being inside. It was both easy and hard. It was easy because routine is constant and you have very few external factors to worry about (no bills to pay, laundry to do, meals to cook etc.) Being locked in a room for hours on end with only books (remember, this was the 90's, things have changed) wasn't that hard, I read a lot of fascinating stuff, and I'd never really been that fond of people, so being alone wasn't difficult. The biggest problem was other inmates, because social interaction and ASD? you're suddenly in a microcosm of society with a completely different set of rules, when you struggled enough with understanding the rules of mainstream society. That made bullying pretty rife, and got me into trouble a few times from simply not understanding the social dynamic of what was going on (I thought someone was being kind giving me some tobacco on my first day inside, and couldn't understand why he came back a week later asking for double the amount in return for the 'loan'). So dealing with the framework of prison was easy enough, but dealing with the social aspect of prison was frankly a nightmare I'd never want to relive. And I'm far from the extreme type of character that Chris is. Sure I overshare, talk about my interests because I can't undertand why people wouldn't be equally interested and all the usual ASD stuff, but otherwise I fly largely under the radar. For a character like Chris, I can't even imagine how difficult being incarcerated would be, and I expect he would end up spending time in what we used to call 'being fraggled off', which is being put in isolation for your own safety. Add to this the fact that sex offenders are subject to some pretty brutal unwritten rules in the prison system, and were Chris ever incarcerated then I expact he'd spend his days in segregation, reading fanmail and writing replies. I don't know if inmates have access to email in modern prisons? we just had good old pen and paper.
The one thing I do know is that ASD cannot be used as a defence either here in Iceland or in the UK in terms of 'not knowing right from wrong'. It can now be used as mitigation (although I'm not sure how that works in the States) but it's not a de facto 'I have ASD, I wasn't responsible for my actions' type thing, and nor should it be. But we have a feeling that Chris has issues far beyond ASD. Whilst we still see aspects of our own condition in some of his behaviours, there is a lot to Chris that is so far removed from what we understand that I can't even guess what is going on. Lying and story telling are common in ASD, obsessions with topics or subjects or items are common (and 'age appropriate' isn't really a thing, you can be a 50 year old with ASD and develop a fascination with Transformers, no problem) being more open to suggestion because of a lack of social awareness? sure, but lucid delusions? we haven't encountered that, and I'm not aware of it being associated with ASD. Part of the reason we're now coming to the farms more frequently is because we're actually hoping Chris has a psychological evaluation, and we're interested to see how the criminal justice system approaches Chris' situation. We're also interested to see how authorities address what happens next. i.e., are there government funded institutions for people with mental health issues that restrict their ability to live normal lives? I know the healthcare system in the US is very different, so we don't know if such places exist or you're just thrown out into society and expected to fend for yourself.
It should be noted that we deplore what Chris has done, and are not in any way trying to defend his actions. But for us, watching the way someone like Chris is treated by the US adminstrative system is interesting. We're also interested to see just how much an already fucked up media decides to throw 'Autism' under the bus in attributing it to 'casuing' events, a little like how the media love to blame video games and hip hop. The way the general public perceive ASD is something we're interested in, and we can't help but think we're going to see some very inaccurate reporting in this case, which is a tragedy in itself. We don't want to see other individuals with ASD stigmatised because one high profile case leads to a lot of factually incorrect information making it into the public consciousness.
So I thought I would provide this little background in a side thread at a time where no immediate drama is happening, so that if we decide to contribute further, our motives may be more openly understood. We took a group decision on that being the right approach! (imagine 4, 30-45 year old Icelanders with ASD holding a group meeting on whether we needed to introduce ourselves on Kiwifarms. It was a touch weird, but we did have biscuits).
As a final point, I do refer to Chris as 'He'. This is a cultural thing. Over here, we celebrate women and believe there is something unique and special about womanhood (and obviously motherhood). We do not believe that a biological man can simply say 'I understand what it is to be a woman' because that reduces the essence of 'what is a woman' to an arbitrary decision. No man can say they 'feel like a woman' because we have no way to possibly understand what feeling like a woman actually is. We do support trans, both Nationally and as the people posting this, but we support these people in their decision to be someone different, to express their own identity. We don't care if someone wants to identify as a horse, it's entirely down to the individual. But until someone has been through the entire process of physically changing their gender, I think it denegrates women to allow anyone with a penis to say 'I'm a woman' and as such, be able to express opinions on womanhood that should be preserved for women. Women did not fight a long and bitter struggle for emancipation to have men with penises speak for them. I will call Christine 'she' once she is medically gender reassigned, and not simply because they have made an arbitrary decision that they are now a woman.
