Re: Digest Number 1480

[Guest guest]

>

> Subject: Autistic kid kicked out of theater for laughing

>

> I just saw this article courtesy " Lord Alfred Henry " in the LiveJournal

> " Asperger " community and wanted to share... Perhaps some of us should

> write the paper, family, etc. in support of the kid?

If he was disturbing the other patrons who paid money to see the movie,

to the extent that they did not get the enjoyment they came for, he

should have been kicked out. I'd write the theater to support them

instead. Having a disability is no excuse for being a nuisance in such

a situation.

Doug

[Guest guest]

Doug wrote:

>If he was disturbing the other patrons who paid money to see the movie,

>to the extent that they did not get the enjoyment they came for, he

>should have been kicked out. I'd write the theater to support them

>instead. Having a disability is no excuse for being a nuisance in such

>a situation.

So far, AFAIK, we have no reason to believe he was disturbing other

patrons. And even if he was doing something (e.g., laughing out loud)

that disturbed some other patrons, how many disturbed patrons would

be required to justify expulsion. Is it okay for me to demand the

outster of everyone who annoys me at a movie? How about at a

restaurant? On a city bus? How about in the waiting room of a plasma

center?

Jane

[Guest guest]

> So far, AFAIK, we have no reason to believe he was disturbing other

> patrons. And even if he was doing something (e.g., laughing out loud)

> that disturbed some other patrons, how many disturbed patrons would

> be required to justify expulsion. Is it okay for me to demand the

> outster of everyone who annoys me at a movie? How about at a

> restaurant? On a city bus? How about in the waiting room of a plasma

> center?

In this case, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the

one. If you go to a movie theater, you have a reasonable expectation

of being able to enjoy the movie and hear the dialogue, etc., without

the other patrons making undue amounts of noise and preventing you from

having this enjoyment. I doubt if there was a sign outside saying

" autistic kid will be laughing his head off throughout the show " .

Autistic or not, I would not be happy if I

attended some show (or concert, etc.) and some kid were distracting

me with constant noise. Restaurants and busses have other criteria,

since you're not e.g. trying to hear dialogue projected from speakers,

but yes, someone who's being unduly disturbing or threatening to

others should be excluded.

Doug

[Guest guest]

> So far, AFAIK, we have no reason to believe he was disturbing other

> patrons. And even if he was doing something (e.g., laughing out loud)

> that disturbed some other patrons, how many disturbed patrons would

> be required to justify expulsion. Is it okay for me to demand the

> outster of everyone who annoys me at a movie? How about at a

> restaurant? On a city bus? How about in the waiting room of a plasma

> center?

In this case, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the

one. If you go to a movie theater, you have a reasonable expectation

of being able to enjoy the movie and hear the dialogue, etc., without

the other patrons making undue amounts of noise and preventing you from

having this enjoyment. I doubt if there was a sign outside saying

" autistic kid will be laughing his head off throughout the show " .

Autistic or not, I would not be happy if I

attended some show (or concert, etc.) and some kid were distracting

me with constant noise. Restaurants and busses have other criteria,

since you're not e.g. trying to hear dialogue projected from speakers,

but yes, someone who's being unduly disturbing or threatening to

others should be excluded.

Doug

[Guest guest]

Doug wrote:

>but yes, someone who's being unduly disturbing or threatening to

>others should be excluded.

As I said before, we have no evidence (so far) that the boy in

question *was* " unduly disturbing " to anyone.

The larger issue is: Who gets to decide what/who is " unduly

disturbing or threatening " ? The courts have upheld excluding an

autistic child from a public playground *not* because of any (proved)

behavior on his part but simply because they suspect his " difference "

may be " unduly disturbing or threatening. " was asked to leave

the blood center waiting room because he was rocking. If the sight of

someone using a wheelchair turns my stomach (and I *hate* feeling

nauseated, so I certainly would be " unduly disturbed " ), can I ask the

restaurant to throw that person out? Or does my preference rule only

if the person using the wheelchair is drooling? Or communicating with

a keyboard, the sound of which grates on my nerves? What if I " feel

threatened " by anyone who looks like " an Arab " to me?

In other words: where are the rights of people who have no choice but

to be perceived as " unduly disturbing or threatening " to the many

people who have narrow parameters of what is acceptable?

Jane

[Guest guest]

ONeal wrote:

> In this case, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or

> the one.

It appears to me that Roddenberry seemed to miss that " the many "

consists of individuals that are all " the one " themselves, and also that

" the needs " on either end do not carry equal weight. Even if we assume

that the kid was laughing unduly loud (and as Jane mentioned, that has

not been established):

" The need " for normal people to go to a theater and not hear loud

laughter can be fixed by getting up and moving farther from the

wheelchair parking spot where the loudly laughing kid was seated. And

even if they chose not to, the " need " for them to dictate how loudly

people can laugh is fairly minor.

By contrast, " the need " to be able to participate in society, like going

to a movie, is great. The detriment of a loud laugher's effect on

others is minimal and correctible by those individuals, but being told

that you have to leave the theater that you, like everyone else, paid

his money to get into, is not so easily correctible, nor is it so minor.

> I doubt if there was a

> sign outside saying " autistic kid will be laughing his head off

> throughout the show " .

Why do you presume that the claims that he was doing so were true, just

because he was an autistic kid? Being in a wheelchair, as he was, makes

him much more visible to everyone, and it puts him under a microscope

anywhere he goes anyway. I would not be surprised if he was laughing

quieter than the more acceptable non-wheelchair kids, but that the

perception of his laughter was colored by the idea that many have that

he was defective and undesirable to have around anyway.

He may have even been blamed for the raucous behavior of someone else,

since " everyone knows " that non-normal people always tend to do these

things (just look at how the AS kid here in Tucson was blamed for

mutilating a dog... and how " everyone knew " he did it because he was

different, and they continued to " know " that even after it was proven in

court that he did not.

> Autistic or not, I would not be happy if I

> attended some show (or concert, etc.) and some kid were distracting

> me with constant noise. Restaurants and busses have other criteria,

> since you're not e.g. trying to hear dialogue projected from

> speakers, but yes, someone who's being unduly disturbing or

> threatening to others should be excluded.

It has never been established that the laughter prevented hearing of

dialog, or was otherwise unduly anything. If he was laughing at the

time that others were, which seemed to be the case in the words of the

article, then he can hardly be solely blamed for people not being able

to hear the dialog. If they were naturally funny points in a movie, it

seems unlikely that one kid can solely raise the total laughter volume

level to a point that would make the difference between being able to

hear dialog and not being able to hear it.

More likely, it would seem, is that he has an unusual form of laugh,

perhaps one reminiscent of the " Revenge of the Nerds " movies (I say this

because I have known folks with CP who laugh this way), and hearing

someone so obviously not normal just pissed the hell out of people.

Well, too bad. They should not be rewarded for their prejudices in

thinking that everyone should sound like they do when they laugh. Some

patrons may also have been annoyed that black people attended the movie,

and certainly we should not indulge their prejudice, even if the

offended people outnumbered the black people that offended them.

Some of the worst tyrannies have been perpetrated democratically (two

wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for dinner is a democracy,

after all). Like in the above real-world example, one problem with this

hypothetical is that the importance of the " needs " on both ends is

judged to be equal... so that the wolves' desire to not have to go hunt

for food (laziness) is no more or less important than the sheep's desire

to survive.

The needs of the many, except in rare cases, do not outweigh the needs

of the few. All rights are individual in nature; many (but by no means

all) tyrannies spring from the fallacy that majority-rule always equals

what is right.

[Guest guest]

I should *not* get started on this topic. This is a sore issue with me

and one of my worst pet peeves. I absolutely can't stand it when people

misperceive behaviors and appearences as threatening or disturbing just

because it is odd. I don't think easily spooked people should have that

much say. I could list many examples of this happening. It's not

something I forget when I see it.

-

Jane Meyerding wrote:

>

> The larger issue is: Who gets to decide what/who is " unduly

> disturbing or threatening " ? The courts have upheld excluding an

> autistic child from a public playground *not* because of any (proved)

> behavior on his part but simply because they suspect his " difference "

> may be " unduly disturbing or threatening. " was asked to leave

> the blood center waiting room because he was rocking. If the sight of

> someone using a wheelchair turns my stomach (and I *hate* feeling

> nauseated, so I certainly would be " unduly disturbed " ), can I ask the

> restaurant to throw that person out? Or does my preference rule only

> if the person using the wheelchair is drooling? Or communicating with

> a keyboard, the sound of which grates on my nerves? What if I " feel

> threatened " by anyone who looks like " an Arab " to me?

>

> In other words: where are the rights of people who have no choice but

> to be perceived as " unduly disturbing or threatening " to the many

> people who have narrow parameters of what is acceptable?

>

> Jane

>

[Guest guest]

Klein wrote:

> Why do you presume that the claims that he was doing so were true, just

> because he was an autistic kid? Being in a wheelchair, as he was, makes

> him much more visible to everyone, and it puts him under a microscope

> anywhere he goes anyway.

There's also that even if he was laughing loudly, if he had not been in

a wheelchair or autistic -- that is, if he had been a " normal " kid -- he

would have probably been sitting with all of the other normal kids and

nobody would have known it was him in the first place. When there's a

bunch of families with kids, or kids all in a row, figuring out which

*one* kid is being the loudest is impossible unless something else makes

them stand out.

I'm very easily irritated (particularly by kids), hearing-sensitive, and

have trouble knowing what is being said in motion pictures to the point

that I almost never go simply because it's hard to enjoy... Yet even

*I* can't manage to imagine a situation where one kid laughing -with-

all the other kids would be able to disrupt me much further than the

theater-full of them in the first place. If it was a matter of

proximity, well, the ones in wheelchairs are the folks limited in where

they can sit, so it would (relatively) be no big deal for me to find

somewhere else to go. If the theater was full, then if I had issues

with the way some people with disabilities sound (which I don't) then I

wouldn't sit near them.

[Guest guest]

wrote:

> " The need " for normal people to go to a theater and not hear loud

> laughter can be fixed by getting up and moving farther from the

> wheelchair parking spot where the loudly laughing kid was seated. And

> even if they chose not to, the " need " for them to dictate how loudly

> people can laugh is fairly minor.

Hmmm, I always thought that audience reaction was part of the theatre going

experience. At least it is for me. I enjoy listening to people reacting to

scenes and dialog myself. Many times it is just as entertaining to me as the

movie. The same as when I go to see plays.

If I desire absolute peace and quiet when watching a movie, I just wait and

rent it and watch it at home.

Take care,

Gail :-)