I'm for it... as long as what we provide is what they actually use.
For instance, I'm willing to write a bit about being Aspie, not being diagnosed til adulthood, communicating for a living and loving it, and being quite OK with myself and not needing a cure... but is that what will actually end up on the site? Or would it be twisted to read like some "amazing story of overcoming adversity" rather than "look, I'm Aspie and I'm quite normal". Would it they suggest "if she can achieve this with Aspergers imagine how much more amazing she'd be if she was cured!"
what Nicholas said was that he was talking about it with his lawyer and that he decided he would copywrite the submissions and have some sort of agreement where he would be able to sue Autism Speaks if they edited or changed the submissions in anyway. They would only be allowed to post them on their site.
Clever. This guy's savvy. 
If you only give them permission to republish but not edit your work then you can sue them anyway. Copyright exists from the moment you put a work in fixed form.
As to the rest - I will not believe autism speaks are in any way sincere until they do the following:
1 - Offer a full public apology for their past actions
2 - Cease use of all degrading language (such as the AIDS comparision)
3 - Cease any and all support for chelation and ABA
For the record, I do not believe that autism speaks will ever change at their core, and missed off point 4:
4 - Cease all research aimed at the elimination of autism
Or they do it, and have a new tool:
"Look, we aren't that bad, just ignore all the genocidal bits and read these nice stories we published as a token gesture while we continue to do all the genetic research and spread bad imagery around with the other half of our PR"
Until they can AT LEAST give a full and frank apology I will judge this as a simple PR trick and ask people to not fall for it.
I'm not so concerned about them blatantly editing without permission as they know that the backlash would be huge. What concerns me is giving them the PR ammo to be able to say "hey, we aren't so bad" without changing anything other then a pile of HTML documents.
they're just saying "give us your stories and we'll publish them". You/We can do that on (y)our own, so what does anyone gain by giving the stories to Autism Speaks?
I agree just whacking some crap on their website, without changing the 'terrible hideous life sentence' type attitude will do little. Where I think it might help is that parents with a newly diagnosed little one are probably more likely to end up at Autism Speaks than here - because AS is a large, well known, well publicised group. So if they can go there and read us saying how cool we are, that might counteract some of the "worse than cancer" crap they put around. If the parents and public who shell out for their donations start to read that stuff, they might start to question where their money goes and THAT will force change.
Then again, will it be hidden in a tiny grey link on a grey background at the bottom of the archives somewhere were nobody will ever see it?
But the flip side of this is that if we don't do it, Autism Speaks could make themselves out to look like the victims, and say "we made the offer. They're so disabled and disorganized they couldn't do it"
True, but better for Autism Speaks to say "See, they're so disabled they couldn't do it" than for them to be able to say "See, we have the full support of autistics as well as their NT family members!"
If they say "they're all too disabled to do it" in public we can at the very least point to this thread
ahem...
i guess i missed the meat of this one, so ill make this breif. and ill try to be as nice as possible.
i dont trust autism speaks. they have been saying some really nasty stuff about us for a long time. we have asked them a thousand times to change their ways. they have ignored our pleas. they want to wipe our kind off the face of the earth, and they say this out loud. they do not speak for us but against us. i will never cooperate with an orginization that promises to eliminate people like me from existance.
We do not have to be concerned with giving them PR ammo. The media all but canonizes them. Their PR is excellent among most Americans, while we are a silenced minority.
"The Media" does nothing. It's not a living creature with a mind and agenda of its own. "The media" is just a bunch of people earning a living. I'm one of them.
Yet again, here's the link to How To Work With The Media, in the hope people might read it and maybe even act on it: http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthre...?tid=11630
boycott comedy central for supporting autspeaks!
dont make deals with the devil
Idea: if this falls in a screaming heap, how about putting together an Edited Highlights of this thread (striking, heartfelt comments like "they want to wipe our kind off the face of the Earth") and presenting it to AS with our blessings for them to read and digest.
And then ignore. :/
thats a great idea. lets make it looke like we support what they do.
seriously, now, i think they are busy doing that already. no need to bother.