They make cerebral palsy sound like some unforgivable sin, like you can't get into heaven.... Sheesh, just because the Brain can not send its message to the Muscles so well?
That's all it is. Brain's OK. Heart's OK. Speaking might be tough but we humans in our brillance have created devices for that. [Aside: in a disability-related singles group I am a member of, some with CP will not use speech synthesis. It's nice to rely on oneself but it makes it harder for me to interact with them. If I had a machine to handle nonverbal communication I'd take out a mortgage for it.]
[I am a man who uses one machine to breathe properly while sleeping, and therefore sleep normally, that is, with uninterrupted air flow, OSA]
What those people said... it is kind of what they'd say if the woman was very heavy...
Perhaps we with AS better understand (greater percentage-wise) what parts of a human being matter and what parts don't.
I'd be most attracted to her intelligence, and of course, heart and personality (we can imagine intelligent villians, can't we)? Not long ago I very carefully considered one woman whom I know to have bipolar disorder. I was willing to conveniently overlook her size and perhaps the bipolar, provided there was a hungry mind, but I found none.
In any case, in practice, her income does matter too, especially if he cannot work for a while or if he dies. Or he will worry about his mortality and if he isn't secure, how can she be? I know guys who earn all or almost all the money in a family with or without kids. Nice to see know one mortal man earning what, maybe $110,000 a year? (Three kids, college isn't a century away you know).
It is excessive responsibility to know that one is the only one for a specific necessity, such as income. Aircraft with two engines are better than aircraft with one. If one is damaged, fly on the other, like Iceman did in Top Gun.
It is not enough simply to have a job, because people don't live by "bread" alone. Did not Freud suggest both work and love as basic to human nature?
It is not to say that we can legislate one like we do the other, we can't. If we tried to legislate equal opportunity for love we would become a nightmare society. We have to let a significant percentage of loves be founded on prejudice for the sake of the loves that are made correctly. In the short run this means we are the excluded based on prejudice until we can achieve right relationships for the right reasons.
But many people think they can make decisions for the employment of others. Read Interpersonal Chemistry on Wikipedia with respect to workplace applications: namely, a sense of trust in hiring decisions. I would suggest that there is a very fine line, if any, between trust and prejudice.
Prejudice not only denies opportunity but creates opportunity for evil. You can define the number of embezzlers as an index for the error rate in human interpersonal evaluations of character.
I definitely think I am borderline, I have feelings and I can share them with a woman, perhaps one either NT or AS. Even the borderline is damaging enough, though, if it erodes the so-called interpersonal chemistry (imperfect assessment of value) in significant relationships.
Certainly I can say that it had me going around in circles for several years for the purpose of employment.
About cureism: I think the point is moot, we cannot change human neurology without killing the person. Whatever advantages we bring to humanity (detail orientedness, relative immunity to prejudice, memory, perhaps relative resistance to psychological biases such as 'it can't happen to me') are not without cost (peer abuse, including sexual; delays in employment and significant relationships; even feeling like a different species if indeed neurological compatibility guides our choices of relationships). Humanity can only change one person at a time. We may be fortunate to find some islands of tolerance, such as where I am working, but perhaps not along other dimensions of personhood.
In practice I think a hefty percentage of us would rather reduce the cost even if it means eliminating our diversity, identity, and our gifts.
Surely, life with AS is not fun.
The biggest rebuttal to cureism may be, God made it that way. And when we get There, we can take it up with Him, although we Christians believe that we'll all be in terror, even us saved will have a hefty respect for God, even without the fear of eternity.
A little something to think about when some NTs have their attitudes about AS/HFA, when the occasional movie about the forty-something virgin comes out, when you see the occasional bumper sticker "Men are like parking spaces, the good ones are taken and the rest are handicapped", yes I did complain about that sticker.
And the abuse directed at children who are different? Don't get God angry, you wouldn't like Him when He's angry.
Initmacy is about sharing, about sharing your life and experiences.
I have a friend with cerebral palsy who would like to have a boyfriend, get married. People just do not expect her to get married or even have a boyfriend like they think she has no right to unless he had some similar disability. At college, there was this couple. The woman had a motorized wheelchair and short legs. She had a boyfriend who was "normal". He used to ride around on the back of her chair. They were always together. They ended up getting married. Alot people just thought he was crazy ...
It is like anyone who is different or disabled, normals seem to think that we should have no desires for our lives expect maybe to receive a pension or some token job. Having any other life goals or wanting to have marriage and children is just like obscene to them.