Aspies For Freedom

I've been told by several people I would make a good teacher, but I'm not so sure about that myself.

Sometimes, learning difficulties/disabilities are a bit more inflexible than you'd like them to be...

Sometimes, it is not a case of "anything can be overcome..."

Perhaps the individuals you speak of were academically inclined in other subjects, and sought the challenge of conquering the one area they couldn't excel at... that's my best guess, anyway.

Um, this is the guy who thinks Autism is God's way of creating a race of prophets.

You honestly don't see how that's not only bullshit, but a dangerous, exclusionary, and demeaning philosophy?

It is demeaning because it denies autistic people the right to be normal, denies them their free will, and forces them into a stereotype against their will.  

It is a form of Othering, reinforcing the stigma that Autistic people are different and cannot be a part of mainstream society.  It is different from the "Indigo Child" theory in name alone.  It reinforces the idea that we're special icke angels rather than real people.  

It denigrates our problems - after all, a child with Aspergers can get accomodations in a mainstream classroom in any reasonable society (note the word REASONABLE) but how can you expect the education system to take you seriously if you rock up and say "my child's the earthly manifestation of the divine"?

It can also lead to abuse and neglect, through denying autistic people help they need.  An autistic child is bashing his head in pain and frustration, but receives no help because he's just communing with angels and it's God's will that he be this way. He's not really suffering, he's not really in pain, because he's not really a human being - he's just a piece of flesh that God's using as a mouthpiece.

And let's be brutally honest here - I am autistic.  Officially.  And if you think I'm some sort of spiritual messenger you need your head examined.

I'm not going to go trawling through a million old posts to find it, Lucie.  I know what I read and if you don't believe me it's no skin off my nose.  But you might like to know what a person is actually saying before you stand up for them.

My religion explicitly forbids interferring in another's free will.  If someone starts ramming this "autism is a sacred vocation" crap down an autistic person's throat, and trying to "encourage" them to take on a path that's not theirs, because it's what the encourager thinks is "God's will", I call that interferrence in free will.

Quoted for truth.

Thank you, Zakkie.  I find it increasingly difficult to have a sensible debate, because what I say is going to be immediately suspect by virtue of the fact that I'm big bad mean Ethel, regardless of the content of what I'm saying.

And to impose your spiritual beliefs on another is an interference in free will.   Your right to believe whatever you want stops where you stop and I start.

I'm really sorry to the originator of this thread - we've not so much wandered off topic as hijacked it, beaten it over the head and thrown it in the bushes.

There's also those who cannot do and cannot teach what they cannot do, as well.  Me, for instance.

Zakkie--and others here--deserve to have their name correctly spelled, eg, as it appears on screen.  Unless the "K" key on your keyboard is broken, you have no excuse to be spelling his name differently.

You seem to spell half of the members' names on AFF in your own "special" way, and I think this is done--spitefully--on purpose.

Please correct this.

Put 'your' claws away Ethel.

Don't take your misery out on others.

Wow. I am confused. Do you mean Batman's or Ethel's comments?

In what way am I similar to Lucie1?

I can be highly reactive, but I think the similarities stop there.

I do not wish to be seen as similar to Lucie1 in any other way.

Still not a reason to put me back on your ignore list.

Your smileys tell a story.

ah, yes, Vernon Smith. Didn't he win a Nobel Prize in 2002?