Jessadriel Darkmountain has been my SCA name, general use-name and registered pen-name since 1975. I have lived for the past 20 years in western Washington State, and am moderately well-known as a musician, poet, teacher and writer.

I am not Amanda Baggs.

The fact that anyone would think that I am Amanda Baggs came as quite a surprise. After all, Amanda Baggs is also moderately well-known; at least as many people have seen her pictures and videos, and have met her in person, as have seen my performances or met me in person.

That adds up to a whole lot of people who know what we look like, and we bear no resemblance at all to one another. Amanda is 26, has very short dark hair, uses a wheelchair and communicates through a communication device. I am 50, have long blonde hair, lead an athletic life, and sing and play music onstage. We live on opposite sides of the continent. One would think it would be pretty hard to get us confused.

However, apparently there are certain determinedly-confused people claiming that she and I are one and the same. These people have persisted in this folly despite being told they are in error. Therefore, let me set the record straight.

I am not Amanda Baggs.

I met Amanda on Livejournal four or five years ago because we were members of some of the same communities. I've never met her in person and don't know anything about her personal life except what little she's written on her blogs. I've been aware that she was being stalked by some crazy people against whom she was taking legal action, and thus was concerned about maintaining her privacy, but she never said anything about the details, and I never asked.

The first I found out about it was when she sent me a heads-up about this post on 'Hating Autism'. I answered that post to tell the crazy people I was not Amanda, and figured that would be an end of my involvement in their delusions, but no. Two days ago, while Googling my name to see what came up on top, I ran across this post on 'Autism Speaks'.

The whole thing is preposterous. Yes, I am the sole author of the essay 'Elves and Autistics and Nazis, Oh My!'. It didn't start out as an essay; it started out as a mere rant on my own Livejournal, slammed out because I was pissed off at a couple of people. Amanda read it, asked if she could post it on Autistics.org, and I said yes, because why not?

The reason 'why not' is because Amanda's stalkers have got some kind of bizarre paranoid-delusional system going, wherein they think that any coincidental similarity has some kind of deep conspiratorial significance. Apparently they believe that Amanda is 'copying them' by claiming to have certain fairly common autistic traits and abilities that they also have, and for having had some traumatic experiences that are, unfortunately, also far too common among autistics. Apparently they are convinced that my having some of the same traits and have survived some of the same experiences means I must be the nefarious Amanda, mocking them in some incomprehensibly-twisted fashion.

So now they are calling me a Nazi, because they don't believe my father's cousins in Hjorring, Denmark really took escaping Jews in their fishing boat from the shore to a larger vessel offshore during WWII. Whatever. It wasn't that uncommon a thing; the German occupation of Denmark went so poorly because practically the entire Danish population was part of the Resistance. My grandparents settled in Nebraska, where just about everybody had relatives in Scandinavia or Germany during WWII. There are probably hundreds of thousands of second-generation Danish-Americans much like myself - I wonder if all of them are considered to be Nazis too, in these peoples' paranoid schema.

What I have written on Livejournal about my experiences at the hands of the medical establishment is true, and there are a number of people who read that journal who can verify the truth of it. However, I see no reason why they should do so, or why I should do so for deranged trolls making preposterous claims about me, then demanding that I refute them. My past, and the pain I have endured, is not Purina Vulture Chow, and these impertinent lunatics have no right to any information at all about me - certainly not to my medical history, or descriptions of harm that was done to me, or accounts of my feelings about it. Really, where the hell do they get off even asking such things of a total stranger?

However, I will state this: I have no adult psychiatric history, and anyone trying to find records of me as a minor would be unsuccessful. I have never received Disability, Welfare, SSI or any other government aid. I have no 'diagnoses' of any sort, do not take prescription drugs, and am in quite good health and physical shape (though still rehabilitating the knee I broke while ice-skating last year.) I have worked for the past five years for a company I love, and am now a department manager. My daughter is a straight-A senior in High School. There is nothing anyone can point to in my life, to claim that I am not functional, stable and honest.

I don't call myself autistic any more. Note that although I was never formally diagnosed, I was not self-diagnosed either. Six years ago, I looked after the children of a friend who is a registered nurse, one of whose sons is diagnosed AS and another diagnosed autistic. She was the one who told me she thought I fit the diagnostic criteria - I was very annoyed with her for saying this, but after reading them, I had to agree that I did fit them pretty closely. From all I have learned since, I seem to have a lot of traits in common with many people on the spectrum, and calling myself Aspie seemed reasonable enough for several years.

However, having seen the stigma and, worse, the learned helplessness that goes with that label, I don't want it. I don't believe in the validity of psychiatric 'diagnoses', and consider psychiatry in general to be no more scientifically valid than astrology. It's true that I have certain anomalies in my sensory-cognitive processing that cause me problems sometimes, but I have developed strategies to cope with them (what Amanda calls "autistic strategies") so that they don't trouble me too much. I am not ill, I am not disabled, I am not in need of any 'accommodations' (besides incandescent lights instead of fluorescents in my workspace, which I have) nor of a doctor's care, and therefore I have no need for any diagnosis.

In my observation, the "autistic community" is no community at all, but a collection of warring factions all trying to discredit and destroy each other. I am disgusted by those making a fat profit off the fear and desperation of parents. I am even more disgusted by those who let themselves be manipulated by quacks into allowing their children to be abused. I am most disgusted of all by those who attack the adult survivors of such abuse in order to protect their own profits or their denial of their guilt.

On the other hand, I'm fed up with those who embrace their victimhood and use it as an excuse for wallowing in dysfunctionality and wangst. I see the obsessive emphasis on Diagnoses as being both extremely unhealthy for the individual, and destructive to the cause of acceptance, equal rights and useful aid for autistics and other non-standard people. I also think it possible, times being what they are, that a "formal diagnosis" could someday turn out to be a very dangerous thing to have on one's record, and one would do well to consider this before seeking diagnoses for oneself or one's children.

So no, I am here formally stating that none of the disorder-diagnoses in the Malleus Maleficarum Diagnostic and Statistical Manual apply to me, either in my own opinion or the opinion of any doctor. If I have difficulties in some areas of my life, so too does every other person on this planet, and they are nobody else's business. By the same token, if I have certain unique talents and abilities, so too does every other person, and it doesn't make me a special magic snowflake.

I'm not sure why Amanda's stalkers are saying that Elves and Autistics and Nazis, Oh My! was fictional, because I certainly never said any such thing. It was not fictional; it was all true, and there are plenty of people who know that. However, it also was never meant as any kind of a Statement To The World, or to the so-called autistic community - sheesh, it was just a rant on Livejournal, of which there are probably at least ten thousand written every day. If crazy people I don't know and have no reason to care about don't believe what I say, what's that to me?

Oh yeah, the Elf thing. That was what started this whole stupid little wank-fest to begin with: Amanda's stalkers are apparently laboring under the delusion that Amanda is the only person on the whole Internet who calls herself an Elf. I don't really see what Amanda's calling herself an Elf has to do with anything, because as far as I can make out, this person Droopy's beef against her is for allegedly "copying her life", but apparently Droopy hasn't ever called herself an Elf, so... WTF? It's a mistake to try to find sense in skewed logic; the whole problem is that there isn't any sense in it to be found.

Anyway, yes, I am an Elf, and people can take that in whatever sense they please, because I was fed up with arguing about it four years ago when I first wrote the rant, and I'm not going to start up again. I would say there's some pretty solid evidence to indicate that the quality of my life, relationships and functioning is a great deal higher than those who say that calling oneself an Elf makes one a nutcase.

I would also say that those whose lives are so empty that they have to go around dragging total strangers into their idiotic online drama-wars are not in a position to disparage anyone else. If Amanda identifies as an Elf, whatever sense she may mean it in, it's not causing anyone any harm, and if that's the most serious charge her stalkers have against her, I call it clear evidence of their craziness and penny-ante malice.

I note where the one who calls herself 'Droopy' says "I guess Donna Williams, Michelle Dawson and others managed to do what they do without forcibly involving me and putting personal information about me that I said in small chat areas and that I didn't put all over the internet and media and I didn't give your client permission to imitate and thusly invade my privacy and put out my stuff out there with her name on it, now did I?"

Ah yes, but it's okay to dig up posts I made four years ago to communities on Livejournal and publicly post them as Amanda's words. It's okay to call me a Nazi for saying that my father's aunt's sons helped the Danish Jews in WWII. It's okay to call me a liar and fake for talking about real and very painful things that happened to me, and to sneeringly demand that I 'prove' these things to a passle of trolls out to cause harm. If these maniacs ever had any claim to the moral high ground or to any sort of credibility - which I doubt - they've obviously lost it now.

So this is why Elves and Autistics and Nazis, Oh My! is no longer viewable: because I'm bowing out of this petty and absurd little soap-opera now. Amanda truly has my sympathy for having to continue dealing with the morons, but now that I've seen just how delusional they are, I have every confidence that her legal action against them will be successful.

My response to flames sent to me by anybody will be to delete them and block the sender. If anyone feels the burning need to confirm my existence, my 2008 performance venue itinerary is up online, and if people can't attend the performances themselves, it's certainly within their capabilities to find someone who can. In other words, anyone who has any more to say to me about this can say it to my face in person, or STFU.

I am not Amanda Baggs.

I hope I've made that clear, at least to the not-batshit-crazy readers of this rant-replacement essay.

Sincerely yours,

~Jessadriel Darkmountain~