Aspies For Freedom

What a load of bunk.  Hardly anybody in the media ever talks about what it must be like to be called a disease, worthless, to be looked down on for nothing you have any control over.  All of the mothers in the video are thinking only of themselves.  They ask for no sympathy for their children, the only people they want to change are the ones who call them bad mothers.  They say nothing of the murderers.  Nothing about abusers.  Nothing about bullies.  "Have some compassion for our selfish asses, we gave birth to monsters."  

They know nothing about compassion, and obviously neither do you.

maybe becuase the autistic children are constabally being bullied by every other kid in the area, and sometimes abused by their parents that desire an nt child.  that was how i was when i was younger, and i was kinda irrabtle for a bit.  but now, i can easily form attachements to my friends, and some attachements to people on the net i never met, so to say that autistics cannot form emotional attachements is false.  i have had comments from nt's saying i form emotnal attachements very quickly.  all i needed was a postive envorment where people were supportive of me instead of putting me down.  my parents were always there for me and accepted me who i am and didn't want me to become nt.  and they know i love them.

as an autistic, i feel that autistics need a postive support group that accepts them who they are instead of trying to change them.  my friends all think of me as unqinge and fun and hope i never change.  parents need to understand that too, and then you will see that many autsistcs start making those emotional attachements very easliy.  i just wished i had some good friends earlier.

and no, i don't form bonds with people that have an adgenda to get rid of me...that's just sick.  i shouldn't have to say sorry to the guy who wants me gone.

in short, you are calling us defectives that need autism removed.  autism is part of who we are, like blackness is part of what black people are.

we can also go and say that nt is a disease that afflicts people.  ntism has a high cost of socitey, didn't you know?  autism is not something that afflicts us and prevents us from being the best we can be.

we didn't say we are autism, but autism is part of the core.  you remove that, and we aren't us anymore.  contdaity to many lies, we are not trapped in some monstorus cages pleading to get out.

so you're calling us monsters again...i see.

when you get to normal, we get mediocrity.  my belife has been everyone is diffrent, and not every diffrence from the precived normal is a defect.  and you say that autism is often severly disabliing.  i think the majority of autistics would not consider themselves severley disabled.  there are also plenty of non autistic people that are disabled.  i guess they are all autistic.

so it's automactially a harder life for us to do anything at all...excuse me.  i can do things alot quicker and alot better than many nt's, and again, you are poprting that we are dumb.

is that talking only?  so all of a sudden if we don't talk we don't communicate?  the struglle alot of times is people to understand us, and sometimes don't want to understand us unless we communicate like they do.

lets say you were in japan.  americans would have a struggle to comminutate to the oridnary people there.  and all children do struggle to communcate, it's just longer for autistic people, and simular to the culture secario.

here's my thoughts.  would i force you to become autistic (if that were possible)?  no.  autism is normal for us, we don't know how to be nt, and we here at aff say that autism is normal for us, and not something that afflicts us.  so i think it would be hypocrital for you to say that we should become nt.  after all, we are all equal human beings here.

we are not trying to say that autistics present diffrent challenges, but you are saying that life is harder and worse for us becuase we are autistic.  all we want is respect.

well said.  i also like to add that nt's like this one tend to also have emontal outbursts and shouldn't try to ocarize us becuase we're autistic.  they pretend that their lives are all pretty butterflies and they have no problems, ever.  i guess they forgot about american teenagers and their problems.  while parents of nt kids had to impose curfews and stuff due to late night socalizing, i only went out one night a week, and was home by 9 pm most nights, and only stayed out past midnight once without adult supervison, and that was prom night and the dance ended at 12, and i was home at 12:45 am.  so see, parenting an autistic and a nt are very diffrent, but it's not harder or worse, as greentroll is trying to imply.

so these mothers and advocates that want to call us worthless and kill us off should be called heroes becuase they haevn't done it yet?  i don't think so.  i say they are hateful at best, muderous at worst.  and the way they sound in the video, they weren't being selfless sounding, they sounded like whiny brats that couldn't appreate their kids.

and the problem is that we only see the downside in the video, saying that autism is all bad, and this is how every parent feels about their child, which is false.

well, ntism imposes terrible burdens to everyone around them as well.  does that mean we should wipe it all out?  and autism is a burden only if you let it be that way.  ntism has many obstiables that otherwise healthy (autistic) people would find easy.

well, yeah, and who says that you as a non autistic should take away an autistics rights not to be "cured"?  this is the nt inferioity complex into play, nt's know whats best for autistics, not autistics.  we are not denying anyone's rights to be cured, but we are saying we should not be forced to become someone we don't want to be.

too bad it was extremly biased and assumes the extremes as the norms, portays all parents as curebies and that every autistic goes through the same route.  the way they talk about autism, it's like it's the end of the world, and it's false.

If people accepted them for who they were, instead of constantly abusing them, do you really think that they would want it?  There are many things we are capable of, saying so does not imply that normal socialization is not one of them.  But to say that sustained socializing represents the highest possible good is no less rediculous than saying we have no impairments whatsoever.  

Nobody is saying autistics have no impairments, not even the supremacists.  But these deficits do not outweigh the benefits of a logical, visual mind, and where superior intellect DOES exist, it can be an enormous boon.  I wouldn't trade my incomplete knowledge of German, or even my seriously defective math and physics for all the friends in the universe.  

To you, socialization contains an immense beauty that I am incapable of appreciating.  But do you not realize that my world also has beauty?  Do you deny that German and Irish and Spanish enrich my understanding?  Do you deny the glory of calculus?  Am I under a terrible burden because I LIKE taking derivatives?  Because integration is fun for me?  For me, the logic that underlies this world and the systems therein holds a beauty that you are incapable of appreciating.  This is my love, and it brings me more joy than you could ever get from it.  

And yet for all your lack of understanding, I still accept you as you are.  Your perspective is valid, but so is mine.  That is our premise.  

You are also assuming that the choice would be made by the autistic, but how many autistics have chosen to be in ABA, chelation, on dangerous drugs or unproven diets?  My first experience with mind-altering substances was not as an upperclassman like most kids, it was when I was three years old and the doctors said "Put him on this, he'll stop acting so wierd."  At one point, I was taking seven different pills, all at the same time, and the combination never failed to make me gag.  Those things were huge and I hated them, but I was just a kid then--I had absolutely no choice in the matter.  As a much older kid, it took an entire two years to get off the drugs.  

As has already been said by DM Andy, if the pill existed there would be no choice.  It would be administered no matter what we wanted.

It is baffling because you refuse to see it from our perspective.  We think it is worth it to be this way, and we are far better qualified than you to judge.  More to the point, there are mothers of autistics--Neurotypical mothers of autistics--who have posted that it was worth it to have a kid with autism.  Why should they be ignored?  Why is their perspective less important than mothers guilty of parental misconduct?  

Your perseveration on the idea of a cure belies a lack of understanding about the differences involved in autism.  There are no hormones you can inject.  There is no loose wire that you can just reach in and plug back into its socket.  Our brains are simply very different from yours, and there is nothing that will change that.  It is a rediculous thing to hope.  Why should we be chasing off after some will o' the wisp, when we have the opportunity to stop discrimination, to end the abuse, and improve the lives of all human beings?  Why should we lay aside our good qualities because of the bad?  Why should we give up on our own lives because of other people's lack of vision?

When we use our logic and memory skills, we are not overcoming our autism we are embracing it.  Because, quite frankly, most of us have better things to do than cry over what we do not and cannot have.  It's pointless.  

We ARE saying "not for anybody else."  We are saying it about abuse and torture.  We are saying it about job discrimination.  

We are on here demanding justice, when you want us to go chasing after some make-believe pie-in-the-sky "cure."  If you think justice should take a back seat, you need to re-think your value system.  

This is simply rediculous.  If you truly believe that, then you have systematically ignored everything we've said.  

You are not qualified to speak about how autistics feel.  That is a simple, objective fact.  We know what we like, we know what we don't like.  It's not so bad, trust me.

You are not going to have the truth if you never come into contact with it.  That is why it matters.

This is an enormous non-sequitur.  We are not pretending anything.  Everything we say is true to us.  Who are you, who have none of our experiences, none of our perspective, none of the facts WE have, to say our conclusions are wrong?  

You are completely in the dark on this.  You are attempting to decribe a room that you have never seen.  

Once again, nobody is denying autistics have any difficulty, no one is denying parents of autistics don't have a lot to put up with, no one is denying any of your perseverations.  You have concluded that these issues outweigh any and all other factors, including our own and our parents' desires!  Calling you un-empathetic is not a threat, it is a conclusion that follows directly from the fact that you think these burdens justify our ellimination, the fact that you ignore what an essential part of our being this is, and the fact that you have not responded to any of the parents who have posted directly to you!  

Your posts are getting more and more desperate, as is plain to see.  Your selective attention is harder and harder for outsiders to ignore as time goes on.  

Autism includes abilities as well as deficits.  We have said that many times, and you ignore it.  

How noble of you.  Did it even occur to you that snake-oil cures are ALREADY being forced on autistics, that if there was a cure, it would be administered immediately, and without regard to a person's choice?  You can say you oppose force all you want, that does not change the fact that it will be used.  That is why we demand acceptance.  No one will respect our choices if they see us as defective.  To stop them seeing us as defective, we must stop them seeing us as pitiful wretches.

You finally respond to a single one of my posts, and it is to twist and distort what I say.  We are using language RIGHT HERE AND NOW to tell you the objective truth of our experiences and you are ignoring it.  

You are trying to take urban legends, stereotypes, and myths, and raise them above what actual, real-life autistics experience.

they could be just tired from other stresses, not paturcaly related to their son, and to assume that all autistics are hard to dress is biased and one sided.  they could think that it is a privlege to take care of their autistic son and love doing these things for him, as it could be a joy for them to take care of him, instead of a burden just becuase he's not out of the house and following nt patterns of growth.

when you say dominate, do you mean their love for him or their pain and anguish for having to deal with him?  it could be the first, as the thoughts of the children dominate the parents lives, autistic or not.

and you are assuming that life is worse for them just becuase of a small snippett you see.  this kind of view is very dangerous and assumes that only a normal life is good for a person.  there are many versions of normal, my version is diffrent than yours.  i feel that i'm normal in my sense, but i am diffrent than most, but not a burden.

if all autistics were removed from earth before birth, would the lives of nt's be better or worse?  i would problay say worse.

why should i empaize with someone who wants to kill me?  what if someone said they wanted to kill you?  would you empathize with that person?  and btw, you are saying that those mothers are the norm for autistic mothers, when they are the extremely deranged, and want to kill us.

so everyone should try to acheive one person's version of normal to be a good person.  this is very twisted language and devalues human life on so many levels.  everyone is diffrent, with strenghts and weakness that makes all of us valued to socitey.  and autism is normal for me, that's all i know, being nt is not normal for me and would be a debailting life.  we are not nt's trapped in autism, we are autistic, and trying to vilanize autism as just evil that makes people awful is despictable.

i'm saying that our opnion shouldn't be dismmised becuase we are autistic.  so many times, we are silenced becuase we are so called inferior by curebie groups and that we can't speak for ourselves.

would you like it if someone said that your personaity was a harmful disease that was a burden?