Clarissa's Blog

This is what I wrote on this blog recently:

Take Tenured Radical, for example. I disagreed with most of what she wrote but at least her posts were always interesting, controversial, engaging, and fun. After she moved to the Chronicle, everything she writes has become bland, sanitized, and utterly boring. So I stopped following. (Read this post on students with autism, for example. There is just no substance to it. I have no idea what the blogger was even trying to say.)

And here is how Tenured Radical retold my post in her own words:

I know, I know.  No one should ever write about autism unless they are actually they are actually on the spectrum themselves — this was a point that was made in several of the comments.  Those without ASD should all be mute and await instruction. I remember a similar admonition from feminist collective meetings in the 1970s and 1980s, where no one was supposed to speak except out of their own experience because to do so as oppressive, colonizing, and just plain wrong.

Can anybody spot ten differences between these two texts? Actually, let’s try to spot any similarities instead. If anybody manages to find any, please let me know. Those who are familiar with my blog could also venture a guess as to whether I am likely to use the expression “those without ASD.” I just looked up ASD, and it means “autism-spectrum disorders.” How much chance is there that I, of all people, would refer to autism as a “disorder”?

It is very sad when people assign some really outrageous opinions to you and then proceed to berate you for the thoughts you never even remotely entertained. It is even sadder when people can’t accept honest criticism of their bland and boring writing and try to hide behind some strange criticism of autistics who supposedly prowl around the blogosphere trying to shut everyone up.