Aspies For Freedom

Amy,
I like it a lot.

We could make it clear thought, that we cannot think of autism to be an illness that can be cured. We believe this is about diversity of people, and a cure is not possible, which is different from getting help. Rather, there is a change that cure is racism in the name if science.

It is a good statement, I like ot a lot.

Thanks for your important work, Amy!

If we want to get it read by goverments, we could also make two versions:
a) a human readable text
b) a lawyer readable code

What about that?

That's my exact point!!! Autism has nothing to do with retardation. Most of the brightest and most able people are highly autistic. So why are you guys trying to insist it's the same thing. I'm not trying to undermine unity, I'm just trying to promote clarity.

I'm fully aware of how most, even within the medical profession, are misusing this word, but why must we do the same?

Gareth, to say you are autistic is essentially meaningless, every one has autism as a component of their innate personality. How much it manifests is a question of how dominant (or not) it is. Autism is not caused by brain damage. A lot of the problems now considered "autistic" clearly are caused by such, due to oxygen deprivation or physical trauma (or maybe even mercury poisoning etc?). They have nothing to do with the classic understanding of autism.

This distinction isn't difficult to grasp so what is the big problem?

This is the guy apparently, but these books are all used copies (and beyond my pocket).

060875: ROSANOFF, AARON J[OSHUA] (1878-1943) - Free Association Test (Kent-Rosanoff)
041043: ROSANOFF, A[ARON] J[OSHUA] (1878-1943), ET AL - Higher Scale of Mental Measurement and Its Application to Cases of Insanity. Psychological Monographs No. 109
065531: ROSANOFF, AARON J[OSHUA] (1878-1943) - Manual of Psychiatry
040784: ROSANOFF, AARON J. (1878-1943) - Manual of Psychiatry and Mental Hygiene

And here's an amazingly apt and timely remark from Kevin Chandler (which makes it twice now he's e-mailed something astonishly relevant on the same day I needed it {well, actually, the night before, relatively speaking}; spooky!!!)

Your comments about the great scientists is spot on.Most seem to be
high As
-   strong self belief,feelings of difference,imagination,creative
mind,visual,stubborn but introspective,and I could go on.
The problem is the disconnect with others such as shyness ,personal
sensitivity,aloofness,being things rather than people focussed.

(I'll forgive him the "stubborn"; I'm sure he meant "when sure of the facts, unwilling to be swayed by invalid argument, even from a superior")

Take a look at this then:

Chronology of Psychology: Addenda
... The clinic was planned by Aaron J. Rosanoff while he was ... 24 Mar 1964 Bernard Rimland's book Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural ...
http://www.cwu.edu/~warren/addenda.html - 101k - 13 Nov 2004 - Cached - Similar pages

Haven't spotted Rosanoff here yet , but this looks interesting?

14 Sep 1919 William H. Angoff was born. Angoff was a leading expert on psychometric theory and practice. His book chapter "Scales, Norms, and Equivalent Scores" (1971) became a definitive treatment of test scaling and equating. Angoff was one of the first psychologists hired by the Educational Testing Service, where he worked for 43 years.

It's a question of where one starts; it was hard enough to get people to consider discrimination issues when it was visible and obvious, but people like myself have no obvious difference so how will we get recognition for the fact that we are being discriminated against? OK we can argue about whether body language is "visible" or not, as what people do is misjudge us according to an unconscious response.

Irrespective, first we have to acheive recognition, and how is this possible without a group identity? The simple answer is that it isn't!

In a perfect world, yes we should argue for everyone's freedom from discrimination eventually, but to start with we have to argue our own case for the simple and evident reason no one else is going to do it for us, so can we put this PC nonsense on the back-burner for now, please?

And where in all this do I see any mention of discrimination due to the misreading of body language? Nowhere!

anbuend, please go ahead and fight your fight as you see fit; I see no one here opposing you in this. For the very reasons you have articulated, I and my kind have to fight our own fight just as you do; we can do this together or separately, but I see no justification nor rationale for any of us to oppose each other.

I think being a minority is opposite to being disabled. The point about being recognized as a minority is to say that autism spectrum is a different people than neurotypicals. It is not a definition of being sick, disabled, disordered or anything alike. It's about diversity of people, its about human evolution, and its about diversity of minds. Autism simply does not compare to disabilites. On the other hand, I could image other 'mental illness' or 'mental disorders'' to be wrongly labeled so and also qualify for evolution theory based explenations. The point here is to maximise accomodation and support to benefit from the different dispositions people have, to give them a chance to contribute to society on their own terms, and let peopel exits the way they are in peace. Let them live the ways the want without such an urge to social leveling. If there are problems, we have to organise and come up with our won solutions to the challanges we face, and being recognised as a minory groupd can help that process.

How does the process work, if we want to approach the UN? Does it mean we have to at least get one UN member country on our site to be able to talk to the UN? How does the process work? Who knows about this?

Well end of the line for me, I think; I couldn't quite follow your post Stella, but I'll read it again, so hello! And if the ASman thinks you make sense, then  I suspect I will to (but with reservations of course; us Aspies are such independant types!).

Well, talking about science: I think the 'right' theroy of autism is that of monotropism theory. But this theory implies everyone who is capable of paying attention would be 'autistic' to some degree. So I don't know how this could help the process. What i think may be a biological significant distinction could be non-verbal learning disoerder. Yet someone told me it would not be esclkusivles exist for autism spectrum Does anyone know about this?

Other biological clear cut distincations may be partial or total lack of face-recognition, and tolerance of pain due to opium-derivates in the blood of some people.

We can use 'two ancestor hypothesis' to make our claim.

And yes - this may sound strange for Aspies - but NTs define everything by social criteria - even ilness. The very existence of autisms spectrum/asperger is not defined by biology, but because of social behaviour. And our couase is about human rights, with is a social issue again. Thus it should be all right get minortiy group status, because socially, that's what we are! Let's go for it!!

You cannot blame parents who don't see an alternative, don't know better and just want to help their childs. But you can run an NGO and offer alternatives ways if you have them. But someone will have to take action in the first place. And if its about money, you can also make the parents pay donation to your non-profit organisation dedicated to change the world. Lots of people do it. Did you know there is an Institute for Autistic Action? They give some hints on what could be done.. at http://institute.autistics.org/

Worth noting too that the DSM is only one definition of AS, and bears little relation to Wings description (and even less to what Asperger himself described) so when arguing such issues, it would be well to clarify which brand of AS we are using?

Some will say I don't qualify as my "disorders" are subclinical? Yet it's clear I and my kind don't think as NT's do, and that I have the core issues Asperger described, so what am I? If Wing can broaden her definition (and resolutely downmarket, as far as intelligence and morbidities are concerned, so why isn't it called Wing's syndrome?) beyond what Asperger observed, then what's wrong with opening the definition out in the other direction, to include us NeuroAtypical, but generally competent and self reliant types?

We all suffer from discrimination and prejudice, the distaste the movers and shakers have for anyone different, and in some ways this is more true for us "invisible" Aspies. To be different is bad enough in their eyes, but to be different and smarter/more capable is also a threat!

  This theory appears on Aspie sites too (and many have a touching faith in the value of diagnoses, but many of us have spent a lifetime seeing through the majority of experts, and would prefer to make our own diagnosis; who's better qualified, the NT who's covered the subject on his college course, or the person who's walked the walk, who has been forced by experience to acknowledge his/her difference and consequently, having first heard of AS, then studied the subject at multiple levels and opinions, and observed by direct comparison what applies to him or her?).

Happily, classical "autism", understood as an aspect of human temperament, can be tested directly and objectively; such a test is at least as relevant as any grab bag definition the DSM can come up with.