Aspies For Freedom

Lucario, a few months ago, when my Aspie son was a very difficult time with his schoolwork, I asked him if he wanted to consider medication, that it might help him focus and not be so afraid of his homework.  It has been brought up by the school a few times, but I've always rejected it.  Still, on that day it seemed to me that my son needed to know that he did have that choice.  He thought about it and said that no, abolsutely not, for he would worry that he would lose his creative thinking at the same time.  Even at 10 he can recognize that the same attribute, how his brain works, is at once a curse and a blessing.  His goal is to use this attribute to became an inventor, and he is already getting a lot of respect from his peers for his unique ideas.  So, regardless of how difficult things can be for him on one hand, he would never want the gift that is part and parcel of it taken away.

He is willing to alter his diet (removing outside chemicals and such) or other things that seem natural to him, if they might him focus for things like homework, for he doesn't see anyting natural as a threat to who he is and how his mind works.  He also actively uses other resources available to him, like a group counseling session he recently started to attend, to work on coping and stress reduction skills.

At 10 he's a pretty smart and insightful little guy, I would say.

Now, he is only mild Aspergers, and not fully Autistic.  However, the problem with the term "cure" remains that it implies taking someone who is very different from me (I'm an NT), and making them fit an NT mold.  What can't be measured is what might be lost in the process.  Instead of curing everything involved in the condition, discussion can, instead, be focused on changing the aspects that place lock and key on the gifts, that hold the person back.  Helping a non-verbal autistic learn to communicate in a stress free way, for example, so has many benefits for everyone.

I've found it interesting that as soon as people started aborting Down's babies, the incidence of autism started to rise.  It was as if humans were messing up the natural balance of things, so some level of compensation was needed.  Now, I realize that I am lucky, with only a mildly affected child I live much more with the gifts of the spectrum, than the burdens, and I do understand why some parents or affected individuals would want to "cure" a condition they can only see burdens in, but the question still needs to be asked:  at what cost?

I was pants at maths, too!

But then, I'm not a 'stereo-typical' Aspie, as I'm on the Arts/creative side of things...

Interestingly, though, I think this 'mathematical facility' (for want of a better phrase) is expressed in me through my habit/obsession of seeing patterns in everything??

My strongest emotional relationship, though, is with colour.

B

Batman, on a standard IQ test, where all the different categories composing IQ are merged, my son does not test as gifted.  That is because the areas where he is highly gifted end up offset by those in which he is impaired.  It was one of the things that helped the psychologist decide that a spectrum diagnosis was appropriate:  apparently NT's rarely have an IQ component graph with huge surges and deficits.  Point being, I would think that for most Aspies a singular IQ number is meaningless.  It needs to be tested by component.

As autism is so complex, I too doubt that they could develop a really accurate test in the near future.

However, when I see that there are people willing to select out the boy fetuses so that they get a girl and hence a lesser chance of getting an autistic child -- even though there still is a fairly good chance that the girl would be autistic anyway (the couples pursuing this have a history of autism in their progeny or other relatives).

If people are willing to go through extensive procedures, just in the hopes of not having an autistic child, then any prenatal test for autism wouldn't have to be that accurate for people to act on. This type of development would be extremely alarming, even if the number of autistics being aborted started at a low percentage.

Regarding LFA people and cure - one doesn't need to be only 'mildly affected' in order to oppose cure. People who are indeed quite disabled oppose getting a cure. It is also a myth that only LFA people want cure, and only HFA people don't want it, as Sue Rubin mistakenly supposed.

The issue is not about how 'severely affected' - it is about if you feel that autism is a core part of you. Some people attribute autism to their personality, some attribute it to something deeper, beyond personality.

Some think of autism as something that could be plucked off the exterior, while leaving the person intact. Others think of it as mixed in together and entangled with everything else about us, such as a candle with different colors of wax mixing and solidifying within and throughout it. I view it more as the latter.

Also, opposing cure doesn't mean necessarily opposing a therapy. It also doesn't mean thinking that everything about being autistic is some wonderful paradise or fantasyland where nothing is bad. I do not like to bang my head, though I have done it plenty of times in my life. But stopping banging my head wouldn't make me any less autistic, and I do it far less often than when I was younger.

In such a cruel world, I certainly understand the desire to stop being autistic. Services and accomodations are often hard to obtain, and people very often treat us badly.

I believe, however, that with proper education and better access to the supports we need, that being autistic won't be such a terrible experience for us or our families (not that it's always a terrible experience as it is now, but certainly for many of us it has been). Someday, I should think, it won't be much more painful for us than it is for someone who needs a wheelchair or eyeglasses.

I agree. Although I happen to be pretty good with abstract math, I agree that it is a damaging stereotype. Especially when it is used as a "reason why autistics shouldn't be cured". That implies that those who aren't good at mathematics, or academics in general, not only should be cured, but should want to be cured. It implies that people who aren't good at math/academics are inferior to those who are.

Perhaps, instead of talking about how some/many are good at math, we should look at not only the diversity of talents autistic individuals have, but look at the richness of experience across the spectrum, regardless of academic ability.

Yes, lets.

Told ya, Hitler's pet scientists and engineers.

Oh well, rumour has it that all of Hitler's "top people" in weapon/aircraft design..and even architecture had AS traits or something.

Albert Speer apparently had a touch.

See if I care.

I like your last paragraph, EZ!

I have been following this with a great deal of interest.

If it becomes possible (perhaps with nano-bots?) to conduct microscopic brain surgery to turn an autistic mind into a neurotypical one, it will also be able to turn a GBLT mind into a straight one; a tomboy into a little miss; a sissy into a jock; a non-conformist into a conformist; an independent thinker into a submissive slave.

Is this the kind of society anyone actually wants?

I have known people with brain injuries whose personalities were changed completely - they effectively became new people who just looked like the old one. Of course, if the 'cure' happened to a tiny child, it would be impossible to know what their personalities would have been without surgery/injury.

One was knocked off his motorcycle, another knocked down by a car when he was a pedestrian, the third hit a ploughed field at 120mph when the brake on his stunt parachute failed to open.

All became totally different people when they 'recovered' as far as they were going to. Exactly where in their brain the injuries were worst, I do not know. They all suffered extreme trauma to the whole brain.

Which would be the case if the brain of an autistic person were to be subjected to the extensive surgery needed to remove all the connections that are apparently 'pruned' by nature in those who become 'NT'.

I should add that the parachutist in particular was a much nicer person after his accident (in my opinion) looking back. He had more time for people and had better patience and humour.

The others were, well, just different.

Thank you, Jeff. That was inspiring.

GnosisRoads - I have already given real-life examples of the complete personality change that accompanies whole-brain trauma, and that is what one would have to inflict upon an autistic brain in order to turn it into one that the current society deems acceptable.

And you would seem to have already decided that human beings have relative values. Many of us are emphatically against that notion, and regard all human life as having equal value.

I wonder what exactly is taught in Ethics classes in schools these days? Are there no absolutes any more?

"If we can genetically engineer away the above disorders and poverty I do not see why that is a bad thing."

How ridiculous could you be?  Poverty will always exist.  The human race has never established a utopia.  If genetic "disorders" were eliminated there would still be inequality, poverty, exploitation.  If wouldn't be about race, it could be about penis size for all we know.