Aspies For Freedom

http://www.autistics.org/library/autpride2005.html



As I read that  I think it is ironic that AFF is criticized along with spectrum haven as being too inclusive of diagnosis!!

Some see it exclusionary due to the name having aspies in it , but that is incorrect generalization.


However as APD has been embraced by the community as a whole., I certaintly think APD is here to stay.

Joel Smith should go rain on someone's else's parade!

Mr Smith has become all disillusioned because he has found out that autistics are not always good people. Well, I think that was a pretty stupid assumption that make in the first place. Having said that though, I do find that people who lie like a rug are always NTs.

Mr Smith wrote "We don't need to prove we have autistic superpowers to be of worth." This might be true, but there is solid scientific evidence that autism is associated with savant skills, intellectual persistence and superior systemising cognitive abilities. The greatest frustration of many aspies is the lack of recognition of their adequate or superior abilities that they get from educational institutions and in the workplace. It can make the difference between having a job or being unemployed, or the difference between enjoying personal growth or feeling stifled and marginalised. Getting recognition for the abilities that we do possess is a very important and essential goal. As long as we allow the NT world to judge the humanity and intellectual potential of a person by their social abilities, all autistics of all abilities are going to be unfairly disadvantaged.

Mr Smith suggests that someone is all hung up over the issue of differences in intelligence, but who exactly? I can think of a few NTs who probably don't have the smarts or the literacy to be able to write an essay like the one written by Mr Smith that I am commenting on. I don't think they are overly concerned about their relative lack of "intelligence". If the rest of the world took the issue of intelligence as seriously as Mr Smith does, the words "nerd", "geek" and "know-it-all" would be unconditional compliments.

Autistic Pride Day is an idea that was long overdue.

I agree in part - NT are people like us, and we have to interact with NTs wether we like it or not. We can celebrate our own strengths, but we can work alongside NTs too.

My best friend is NT for instance.

I can't see any connection between APD and being anti-NT either.

But I'd like to say that we will achieve nothing if we are too sqeamish or scared to expose the many atrocities that have been perpetrated on our kind by NT society. NTs wont be pleased to hear this stuff, it isn't polite conversation, but these stories have to be told. There is an autistic stolen generation. Aspie pregancies have had been terminated because of medical opinion that "subnormal" children should not be followed by any more potentially "subnormal" siblings. Aspies are prescribed unecessary and seriously damaging psychiatric drugs. Aspies are used as guinea pigs in drug trials without giving proper consent. There are many unethical NTs who do evil things to our kind. They deserve no tolerance or understanding.

So are all NTs evil then? Do they ALL want to cure asperger's?

Also there is another irony, is that in order to communicate to the NT population at large. We need to employ NT ways of doing things effectively.

Such as while APD  day is every day. the date june 18 is to help NTs to understand

Well, I still don't see any validity in Joel's opinion, because I don't believe I have seen anyone at AFF making the kinds of arguments that Mr Smith has taken issue with, (not recently anyway). It's that *** straw man again!

Here's a challenge, can anyone find a quote from AFF (who I believe came up with the idea of APD, so AFF must logically be the target of Mr Smith's piece) in which anyone states clearly and unequivocably that the value of autistic people relies on average or superior levels of intelligence or any other spooky savant skills or special interests? Can anyone find a quote from AFF in which someone says bad things about the worth of disabled people? If no one can come up with the goods, then I think it's time for the whingers and PC hand-wringers to shut up.

Lets get one thing straight, the fact that I do not believe I am disabled by any common-sense, everyday language definition of the term (the only kind of definition that matters in the real world), implies nothing at all about my attitude or opinion of people who I believe are disabled or who claim to be disabled. There is just no logical connection between the two things. No valid assumptions can be drawn.

Mr Smith has evaded accountability for his expressed opinions by failing to cite exactly who or what he is objecting to. Maybe this was a deliberate evasion, who knows? He has made strong accusations about whoever-they-are, but he has not cited any quotes or evidence of the things that he has objected to. That is why Mr Smith's piece was a dishonest piece of work.

http://www.danda.org.uk/pages/The%20Soci...lained.htm

DANDA is run on the Social Model of Disability.

Lucas, I'm pushed for time, so I've not read all the preceding posts, but it looks like the discussion got quite heated. I'll just reply to your reply to me specifically.

Lucas, with the best intentions, I've got to say your position looks to me like the kind of highly theoretical, ideological, out-of-touch-with-common-sense stuff that I would expect to hear form some Marxist dinosaur or religious fanatic.

Am I correct in interpreting your post as requesting me to deliberately suppress all mention of any superior abilities that autistics have? Are you asking me to deny stuff that has already been dicovered by scientists, such as the superior performance of autistics in the camera part of the false belief test, or the autistic superiority in folk physics that Baron-Cohen's team found? Now how am I, a humble aspie, going to be able to do such a cover-up? These scientific papers have already been published years ago! Anyone is able to study the lives of Newton and Einstein and Warhol in great depth and detail. No doubt if someone who has a good knowledge of AS/autism does this they will conclude that there are many reasons to believe these very intelligent and original men were autistic. Therefore you have an association between autism and original genius. Well, I hate to tell you Lucas, but these studies have already been done and have already been widely publicised.

Yes, there is an association between valuable and unusual abilities and autism. You can't supress the truth. The cat is already out of the bag, Lucas, so I think you're going to have to deal with it!

I'm not the one who's out of touch with reality. You've been told the facts. They don't seem to be sinking in.

I have no idea what you are talking about when you refer to things or ideas that will benefit all autistics, except a general improvement of the public image of autism and autistic people and greater understanding and knowledge. The knowlege that there is a big range of characteristics and abilities in autists is becoming more widely known, but there are still too many incorrect assumptions made due to over-generalisations.

I don't need the kinds of things that disabled autistic people need, like diagnosticians, carers, support groups, wheelchairs, special educational or therapeutic interventions, technological communication devices etc. My kids at present fit in nicely into the govt education system, with solid advocacy and care from myself, and I would have done much better at school with the most minimal concessions in the mainstream educational system and some care, knowledge and advocacy from parents. So I'm at a loss to understand what's in it for me. The things that I do need, such as legal protection from discrimination on the basis of body language, personality characteristics, narrowness of skills or just for being autistic, are things that the autie community don't appear to have even thought of. Have you considered the fact that the autie community might have little to offer aspies like my family and I?

You wrote

The wider autistic demograph? I think AFF probably represent many, many more autistic people than whichever group you represent. You are conveniently overlooking the fact that there are probably huge numbers of undiagnosed or misdiagnosed adult aspies all over the world. That's no minor mistake. It's a fair guess that this "silent majority" have evaded diagnosis because they are the more able section of the autistic community.

Another quote

I've been one of the most vocal advocates of what I think is this model. Is this the idea that disability is relative to the expectations and requirements of society? If it is then I certainly understand and endorse that model. The trouble is that these all-encompassing protections that you refer to probably are conditional on a person having an official autism diagnosis, and that excludes me and people who I know. I am never going to seek a diagnosis because the way most people and the professionals categorise autism is that it is either a form of mental illness, a disability or more specifically an intellectual disability. I don't believe I belong in any of those categories, so I'm never going to subject myself to the official labelling process in it's present form. This is another matter that alienates people like me from the autism establishment, and I don't think auties are the least bit concerned about this.

I've had a quick look backover the thread, and this seems to be a central logical mistake in Lucas's arguments

What relevance does the existence of able autistics have to the question of whether autisitcs categorised as disabled need treatment? The existence or non-existence of able autistics is irrelevant to this question. The fact is that already people have that view of autistic people, so the presence of autistics who view themselves as able is not going to cause that situation to happen, as it has already happened!

Kev, you are concerned about bitterness towards NTs. There will always be bitterness and resentment as long as unfair and downright atrocious offenses against aspies by NTs remain unrecognised and unacknowledged. Being an NT there are many things that you wouldn't know about and wouldn't have experienced, and possibly wouldn't believe.

Kev,
I don't think I'd be stretching my point too much if I compared this movement with the gay rights movement. I know for a fact that in many parts of the world their march day commemorates the Stonewall RIOT. I don't claim to be an expert on the history of their movement, but I am pretty sure that this RIOT, in which a bunch of trannies and assorted homosexuals decided that they had had enough of being beaten up by the cops and they hit back, was a very important event in the early history of their movement. Obviously these people found this riot to be an empowering experience, in the long term. My point is, riots aren't peaceful, harmonious, respectful events. Riots are all about violence and direct confrontation. They are all about being pushed too far and deciding to fight back. Riots are a nasty business. I don't think effective civil rights movements start with handshakes, bouquets and good PR.

Gareth, I used to mix with gays at around that time in history when their rights movement was making the most progress, at the peak of it's visibility and importance, and I can say without any hesitation that there was a huge amount of bitchiness and bitterness towards heteros amongst the people who I knew, who were community leaders. Some of the words that I heard them use to describe heteros were "breeders" and "peasants". They might have mellowed out since then, but some of them are still very active in the community, and have achieved at lot in their time.

And Kev, didn't the movement that Martin Luther King took the credit for actually start when an ordinary black woman thought "@#$ the lotta ya!" and decided that she wasn't going to sit at the back of the bus any more?

Disobedience, rioting, it's all good fun. I'm sure it's much more of a self-esteem-builder than being a nice person going along with stuff that makes you seethe under the surface.

Did you ever see that feature movie about Stonewall and those times? It wasn't a doco, can't remember the title.

I personally completely disagree with using planned violence as a from of protest. As we all know today, that is terrorism, and terrorism is a very horrible thing.

When I wrote about rioting in my previous posts I was making the point that human rights movements seem to gain momentum or begin with acts of defiance, which I guess were not planned, when people become fed up with a bad situation. It appears that there needs to be a certain amount of anger in a certain number of people before things really happen. but then again I am not a historian of human rights movements.