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Definitely a cut above the usual dreck that appears even in highly reputed publications such as the NY Times. http://nymag.com/news/features/47225The first person to articulate the autism-rights position, Jim Sinclair, has produced only a few page-long essays. In his seminal invective, "Don't Mourn for Us," from 1993, he wrote, "It is not possible to separate the autism from the person. Therefore, when parents say, 'I wish my child did not have autism,' what they're really saying is, 'I wish the autistic child I have did not exist and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.' Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces."
The term neurodiversity was put forward by Judy Singer, an Australian whose mother and daughter have Asperger's and who is on the spectrum herself, and was first published by the American writer Harvey Blume. "I was interested in the liberatory, activist aspects of it—to do for neurologically different people what feminism and gay rights had done for their constituencies," Singer said. Singer, Blume, and Sinclair, voices in the wilderness in the nineties, are now part of a thriving culture: There are Websites and T-shirts, and slang like NT, or "neurotypical" (a playful slur for the non-autistic), Aspies, and auties. The neurodiverse present regularly at autism conferences. Some of the first wave of activists are parents of autistic children, but more recently, autistic adults have been advocating on their own behalf. The Internet has made the climate even more hospitable to an autism-rights position, allowing activists to locate one another and communicate at their own pace. The Web, Singer said, "is a prosthetic device for people who can't socialize without it."...
I was interested by how much everyone talked to me about the cure. There are thousands of Web pages devoted to advocating for a cure, arguing against a cure, discussing when and how a cure should be administered. The fact that all of this is mired in the hypothetical does not dissuade either side. Alex Plank, who founded the Wrong Planet Website, which has over 19,000 members, says, "Since no cure exists, I don’t have to be opposed or for it. The thing now is to deal with the autistic people who are already on this planet. The organizations with the best connections were founded by parents of people with autism, who aren't going to have the same priorities as autistic people, especially if those parents' idea of success is to make their kid the same as themselves." Seidel concurs. "I am not opposed to seeking a treatment that might be useful to people in the future who want it, but I am concerned about how to make life positive for the people on the autistic spectrum who are here now, a group that happens to include my own child."...
Cattle-handling-equipment designer Temple Grandin, author of the autism classic Thinking in Pictures, has long been the public voice of autism. Neurodiversity has dawned since she began grappling with autistic pride, and though she has enabled it, she is too late to be its beneficiary. Grandin argues that both the autistic person and society have to make accommodations. "I won't do all the neurotypicals want, but you have to go halfway," she says. "We had manners pounded into us. We had fancy dinners at my grandmother's, and I was expected to sit at Granny's table for twenty minutes and I couldn’t monopolize the conversation. You can't degeekify the geeks, but you can be a polite geek. Autism is a continuum from genius to extremely handicapped. If you got rid of all the autism genetics, you'd get rid of scientists, musicians, mathematicians. Some guy with high-functioning Asperger's developed the first stone spear; it wasn't developed by the social ones yakking around the campfire. The problem is, you talk to parents with a low-functioning kid, who've got a teenager who still goes to the bathroom in his pants and who's biting himself all the time. This guy destroys the house, and he's not typing, no matter what keyboards you make available. His life is miserable. It would be nice if you could prevent the most severe forms of nonverbal autism."The first stone spear! Go Temple!! :yourock: Oh yes, there are around 400 (at this writing) comments. If you like GD-Poo, you'll love these comments! Some "DUzies": Many of the adults associated with neurodiversity are not even autistic. They are either blatant frauds or basically normal people who diagnosed themselves with Asperger's as adults. Some just use Asperger's as an excuse for their shortcomings while the less intelligent ones jumped on the bandwagon of being anti-cure. They don't realize that they have become activists against themselves since they could also sue the vaccine manufacturers and possibly reverse their own brain damage.
I don't have a problem with helping these people with minimal brain damage function in society. I'd much rather see them cured so they could enjoy their lives without a disability. To celebrate mercury induced brain damage is not a mentally competent decision. Just as we encourage drunks in the gutter to get sober, we should help those with Asperger's to gain full function. Neurodiversity is using these mentally incompetent people to promote their agenda.Drunks in the gutter?! :grr: :banghead: That reminds me, I do need to stop off and pick up a bottle on my way home... Solomon does a disservice to those disabled by autism by giving such over-weighted, biased attention to the neurodiverse -- a group who would functionally disappear the disabled from the autism spectrum. The writer does admit that he was "moved" by what amounts to ND hate speech against families with autism who seek to treat or cure their children. People with disabling autism are harmed this kind of sycophantic and token-critical writing.Hate speech?! :grr: :banghead: One of these fine days I hope to find myself on a panel with this mook. Then he'll learn what hate speech really is! |
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