Aspies For Freedom

Can't be done.  This is a disability rights issue, not just an autism rights issue, and the only approach that has a chance of being successful is to convince society that it shouldn't be measuring the value of human beings solely in monetary terms.

See Ballastexistenz for more on that.

There's no way to win this argument without challenging the fascist premise that the only people of any value to society are obedient indistinguishable workers who cost exactly the same amount to educate and who contribute an objectively measurable amount of labor.

Historically, women were treated as inferior (and still are, to some extent) for much the same reason -- society's perception that women were less capable, less productive, less intelligent, etc.  Feminists have been mostly successful in challenging that, even though mothers' household work still is not measured in terms of monetary worth.

On the question of how to educate the psychologist you mentioned: I suggest giving him some autism rights links.  These are good ones to start with, as they provide a variety of viewpoints:

http://www.autism-hub.co.uk
http://www.neurodiversity.com

Why not?
A number of low fluency PDDs I've read about are great artists, and I've read that numerous others can write really well.

Why not some sort of campaign to promote those who already do and provide the opportunities to those who might be interested?

Similarly, there must be other creative and technical contributions that LF-PDDs can and do make.

The same people who like to call anybody neurologically different from them "parasites" also seem to be the sort to call illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, blacks, and assorted other groups parasites.
Only in the first case, from what I have observed with any real success, and that primarily because illegal immigrants are faceless and functionless to us.

Publicize Autistic artwork and we're well on the way to countering it, it seems to me.

Weblogs pretty much inherently are seen as among the lowest sources of information.  It's the 99% give the other 1% sort of thing.

If we concede it as a disability though, then haven't we by extenstion lost the argument against "curing" it?

Although motherhood is an indispensible service.

Innovation and creativity are likewise, but few people see it.

I think the best way to educate him is to prove that his daughter is capable of complex thought.  

I'm still trying to puzzle out how to do that.  

She doesn't speak or write complexly, and on the rare occasion that she reads an adult book, he claims that she does not really grasp it.  It seems like I need to find a way to prove that she understands adult books or can produce independent conclusions on her own.

I used to have dificulty expressing complex thoughts and would express myself in much the same ways (though my grammar was better and I've always been comparatively high functioning), such as tantrums and repitition.

If I show him those sites, he'd wonder at the presumption of a teenager who only sees his family for a few days a year telling him that he doesn't know his own daughter as well as he thinks he does.

I'm including any PDD neurotypes not generally classified on the Autism Spectrum that may be low functioning.

PDD-NOS is Pervasive Developmental "Disorder" Not Otherwise Specified, generally used for anything probably related to Autism but not classifiable.

Yes, the Ballastexistenz blog is written by a woman who is classified in that category and who has excellent insights, which is why I recommended it.

I don't think our society cares much about the economic contributions of savants.  To the curebies, they're just freaks to be exploited by selling their artwork to raise more funds for eugenics research.  (More on that can be found here for those who are interested in reading blogs.)

Any trait (or set of traits) can be a disability if there's a mismatch with the social environment.  In the classic story The Country of the Blind, H.G. Wells describes a man with sight who travels to a country where everyone is blind.  The inhabitants declare his eyesight to be a disability because it distracts him from practical pursuits, and they propose that a blind surgeon ought to remove his eyes to cure him.

The ability to understand adult books and engage in complex conversations is, to some extent, a function of a person's experiences in society.  If a "disabled" person is kept sheltered from any meaningful interaction with the world, it is quite likely that she will not understand adult books or be able to discuss concepts in the same detail as others, not because of a lack of intelligence, but just because she lacks the background to understand the context of the words.

It's the same issue that sometimes arises in the context of intelligence testing of racial minority groups.  Some questions can't be answered accurately without culture-specific knowledge.  For example, I remember taking an intelligence test as a child and being asked to put together puzzle pieces that formed an animal shape.  I'm sure that whoever designed the test intended it to be a cow, but the pieces also fit together if you took one of the pieces from the body and put it into the neck to make a black-and-white giraffe.  I looked at that for a moment and then decided "It's probably supposed to be a cow because there are more cows than giraffes."  But if a child lived in an inner-city ghetto and had never seen a cow in real life, he wouldn't have any way of knowing whether the puzzle was meant to be a cow rather than a giraffe.  And if you gave a test like that to an African child who lived in an area where there were plenty of giraffes and no cows, he would naturally assume that it was a giraffe and wouldn't even see the possibility that it was a cow.

It depends on which disability model is used [medical or social].

Quintucket,do remember a LFA artist who paints with charcoal and had his work in a gallery? i'm trying to get his name to look up his art again,as I looked at it a long while back and forgot his name.

One of my sisters has a similar issue.  I tought her some time ago to tie her shoes, and I had no idea that she couldn't until this sunday.  What I didn't realize was that for that time that I tought her to tie her shoes, I was the only person who even thought of encouraging her to do it herself!  Everybody else, the PA's, her friends, even my mom, would always do it for her.  So now, even though she can tie her own shoes (she's done it before, she can damn well do it again), she doesn't, she's forgotten how, because people think she's too slow and they don't give her a chance to even start!  

And then somebody says to me that Kath (not her real name) can't tie her own shoes, and I'm wondering "What could they possibly be talking about?"  So I go down and say "Kath, show me how you tie your shoes," and she giggles Oh, I so cute and does nothing until I put her hands on the laces, so she stumbles through knowing that that would make most people do it all for her.  I thank god for her sake that I am not normal.  

She smart.  She's a brilliant girl.  But because she's slightly mentally handicapped, people assume she can't do a thing on her own.  It really makes me mad that people treat her that way.

Ahh.

I can see the issue with selling the art to raise money for "cures" but what'd be wrong with just treating it as art?

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I usually do semantics here and call it a "handicap" handicaps, as I understand are used in gambling and are situational, not inherent. Precisely because we'd have no issues in a society that didn't causually cause problems with crowds, neon lights, loud noise, and illogic it seems better to me to use handicap rather than disability, which implies something inherent in us.

And that's a story by Wells?
My parents played a tape version read in first person on some car ride where I had been trying to sleep, I'd thought it was some unknown.

I really liked it (even if it was on the radio) but didn't think I could find it again.  Thanks.

I read adult books in sixth grade and even without getting the sexual undertones (at the time I'm talking more reserved authors like LeGuin), I still enjoyed them.

Interesting point though.  It's been bugging me that her parents don't explain things to her.  Like when she asked to go to the library at ten at night and here father told her that it was now her bedtime rather than that the library is closed.

Nobody takes those studies seriously.  Some people say it indicates bad parenting, but pratically nobody assigns any validity to such claims of innate inferiority.

On the other hand minority neurotypes are a'OK to call innately inferior or discriminate against if you can get them classified as a disability.