Aspies For Freedom

I am a newcomer here. I was intrigued by Mr. Newports letter and the response it got...

I have to say that I agree with Jerry Newport. I think the answers do lie in the middle of the road. I very FIRMLY believe that each individual or family has the right to feel the way they want and to follow the path that is right for them.  I truly can see why many people with Asperger's would be offended at the thought of a cure. I can truly see why some people who are more severely affected by autism desperately want a cure. What baffles me is why does this issue have to be a battle? Why can't everyone just respect the feelings of others and agree to disagree.

I'm not quite where I stand on whether or not Asperger's is the autism or not. My son has been diagnosed with both at one time or another. So, I tend to lean towards thinking Asperger's is part of the same spectrum. Though I love him dearly and think that he is a wonderful person just as he is, he has a difficult life. Whether or not he will ever live independently is questionable. I will make the best choices I can for him to help him on his way to independence.  And, if there should ever be such a thing as a cure, I would respect whatever he chose to do. But, I sure hope he will never attack others for not making the same choices that he does.

Billie

Hi Amy & Stella,

Thanks for your reply. First, Amy, I do see your point. I think it is wonderful to for people to be proud of who they are! That is my fondest wish for my son- that he grow up to be happy, healthy, independent and  have a great sense of self awareness and self-esteem.

Stella, I did take some time to look at the JRC website. I will have to go back and investigate it some more. But, from what I did see, wouldn't the availability of a cure be preferable to that type of treatment? And, yes, even something as appalling as that is a CHOICE- albeit a caregiver or parents choice mostly. But, if those same caregivers had a better choice, maybe these things wouldn't go on.

I don't know. Maybe I am overly optimistic.

All I know is that for YEARS, I have been advocating for my son in the schools. I have been on my stump to get everyone to stop and see things from his perspective. And now, I am told that I am way too soft. That because of the stance I have taken, my son may not ever be independent because I have not pushed him hard enough.

Still, something in my gut tells me that I am doing the right thing. So, I don't question the decisions other parents make. Sure, I would report a case of child abuse. But, sadly, it looks like this JRC place has gov't approval. Again, perhaps a cure would make this place unnecessary. Just a thought.

Billie

If anyone desires to have an intelligent discussion of my recent reply to the NYT article, you have a shot right here. FYI, that was never posted to this list and why it is here, is beyond my understanding of internet ethics.

       Let me correct one notion about my "homophobic" book on sexuality. There was little mention of altenative sexual lifestyles because it was suppressed by my publisher. Both Mary and I have experimented with those areas but we could only "get away" with mentioning our belief that people have a right to make those choices for themselves.

      We would have much rather invited gays and lesbians to contribute a chapter but that was not allowed. I would print a second edition of the book to that effect but it will have to be with a different publisher which is not a simple task.


      That is the truth.


     BTW, I always stick up for the right of my peers to make sexual lifestyle choices at EVERY conference I speak at. That NEVER goes over well with the NTs who dominate those events and it is one reason why I lose a lot of speaking dates that go to peers who avoid making controversial statements. I am by far, the most outspoken public author/speaker in the USA and proud of it. I speak out against curebies, ABA Nazis, JRC, you name it. I know the targets that never get mentioned by my author-peers. They know where their bread is buttered, book and conference-wise, a lot better than I ever intend to.

        I don't think the recent Montreal conference that heard me sing the praises of Michelle Dawson were too thrilled either. And there was the time that I spoke at an ABA conference and found Matthew Israel sitting right in front of me but hey, I just told him to keep up the good work, didn't I? No, I didn't.

        So much for being a "puppet."  

       Thanks for your attention. I am sorry if my reply to the NYT article offended any of you.  I believe that if we sort it out together, we can clear up a lot of misunderstandings and find that we agree on far more than we disagree.

                             Jerry Newport

Various and sundry comments on feedback thus far......

         I dispute the attack on my integrity for not insisting that I get my way on every aspect of my second book, the sexuality book. It was hard enough to get it published at all. No author always gets his way.

    It is very hard for us to accept that not everything is black and white. My book turned out to be more grey than I wished but many people have actually said it did their adult some good. Sexuality is not a popular subject with our anal parent community, which unfortunately buys most of ASDbooks.

        If you really hate the book that bad, just write a better one. And let me know because I will be happy to read it if it contains what I wasn't able to put in mine!

      As for JRC, it is still out there. Truly evil. JRC had an exhibit at the 2002 ASA Conference. I was the one who complained enough to actually get a peer on the board, Steve Shore, to make sure JRC is not in the exhibit hall ever again. But we need to be proactive on this. The ASA National Conference is in Rhode Island in 2006 and that is not far from JRC.

      The JRC madness began in California in the early seventies. Matthew Israel had his license revoked and he moved back east. That was after Lovaas left the UCLA Neuropsyshiatric Institute and moved across the street to the Psychology Department. But don't get me started on Ivar the Terrible. I know personally, people whose kids were shocked by him.

         Oh, Crystal, I believe you misunderstood something I said at the last support group meeting when you mentioned AFF. When I said, "They have my vote", I meant AFF, not the curebie parents they are fighting. I would have appreciated it if you had made sure you understood what I said before condemning me as a puppet of parents. Tell that to anyone who I have pissed off since 1993: Lenny Schafer, Bernie Rimland, Lovaas,
James Mulick, Rick Rollens... I got a hit list that's a who's-who of the NT power structure

      Nice to be here.

Stella, prove your assertion. I know a ton more ASD people than you and I don't see any significant difference in the pct. that are not straight than in the general population. That is true of aspergians as well as kanner auties.

          Prove me wrong. You can't. Just because you want a trend to exist doesn't make it so.

         As for your misguided accusations about my "collusion" etc, I have to just assume that you are too ignorant to know better. When I see a book on the market with your name attached, maybe I will take your unwise comments more seriously.

                              Think about it,

                                   Jerry

I could but I won't. It is enough that I am alone among the current group of peer author/speakers who consistently speaks up for the right of our peerage to make their own choice on sexual lifestyle and be accepted by their family and community. Nobody else does that with the exception of Dawn Prince-Hughes who I assume would do so if/when she starts speaking at conferences.

       I see no need to publicly take my firs publisher to task for limiting what I wrote. They have a right to decide what to print and what not to print. I have learned much from working with them and for that, I just don't insist on always getting my way.

       Rather than complain about what they did not allow, I have used my longterm relationship with that publisher to help a peer-lesbian, write an article on social skills that will appear in a future issue of "Autism-Asperger's Digest." Her name is Zosia Zaks, a member of the advisory board of GRASP and a lesbian.

         I still have seen no proof from Stella or anyone else that our peerage is more inclined to have alternative sexual lifestyles. I actually would not be surprised if it is true but let's see some evidence.

         I will let Stella have the last word on this. The horse is dead as far as I am concerned. The publisher of my next book is a different publisher. It has already shown a willingness to include stuff that is certainly out of the ordinary, including sexual experience, in the joint biography of me and my wife. I will concentrate on the new publishing relationship rather than waste time griping about what I didn't get from the first publisher.

                                   Jerry Newport

Gareth,  For one thing, we never wrote the chapters. They need to be written by people with more actual gay/lesbian experience than we have. I had a brief fling with gayness. My wife had more bisexual history but there are certainly better qualified writers. FYI, a lot of professionals wanted to write such a book but to his credit, my publisher asked an aspie couple to write since he wanted it from the population and not another book about the population.

           The public domain is an option but honestly, sexuality is not my favorite subject. I have my present book to finish which is a joint autobiography by me, Mary and "People Magazine" writer, Johnny Dodd, with Simon and Schuster. After that, I have a couple of other books in mind and sexuality is not even on my back burner.

        However, I am going to suggest to my first publisher, now that I have managed to get a Lesbian writer an article in one of his publications, that a second editon of the sexuality book would be in order, including about 15% (40-45 pages) from writers with alternative lifestyles. That can be done without the effort it takes for a new book and it would reach more people.

                               Jerry

Depending on just how uncouth they are - do you really want them there?  :shock:

I have had a lot of similar experiences, either because I speak too quietly, too loudly, or because I have a loud-ish high-pitched sing-song (it kind of alternates, I tend to be quiet when I am overloaded or distracted, loud when I rehearsed something over and over and don't check the volume before I speak, the singson is more when I am excited or forget to breathe).

I don't get really self-conscious about it but I do try to pay more attention to it and I have definitely realised that a lot of nasty or rude reactions I get off people seem to be in response to a loud or "wrongly intonated" question or request.

I just wish I could monitor this better  :-(

The tape recorder thing is a good idea, I did try this in my teens, after noticing how horrible my voice sounded and how right some people had been about how wobbly etc. it sounded. (We had to do some tapes for French and English class and I was horrified when I listened to them)

If this was done regularly I could well imagine it working - but like so many things after a while I just forgot about it  :roll:

I don't know about hypnosis, I think the tape thing might be better practice.

I know that - as I explained, I was horrified because the kinds of things people had been saying to me about my voice sounding "wobbly", "high-pitched" etc. were true, not because I had not heard my voice before.

Although I had always had quite a hard time speaking and reading out loud a lot of the time, I got the shock of hearing my voice on tape for the first time - and consequently trying not to speak for a while - over and done with a LONG time before that, when I was about 6.

But being 6 years old, I had not been teased or told off for the way my voice sounds, and was also not aware of things like pitch and intonation yet. I just found it horrible and weird.

:lol:

LOL I know I shouldn't laugh but that was beautifully worded  

I don't know about the photos, but I have definitely read before that the reason why this happens with the sound of one's own voice is because it genuinely sounds differently, because you hear not only the sound you produce but the sounds you make *while* producing vocal output. So your voice sounds differently from "inside your head" than it does "from outside".

I don't think it affects intonation and volume as much as it does pitch, NTs still seem to be able to hear those, the voice just has a different sound than what they expect.

Exactly. I mean surely if we could tell that we were sounding odd, we might at least be better able to change it.

After all many of us seem to have auditory sensitivities so if we could hear them properly perhaps our own voices would bother us? I certainly know that I have difficulty listening to some voices over a long time.

Yep, got it in one.

It is down to "self-monitoring" which is ultimately down to multitasking and attention-switching.  

Although of course there are some who are tone deaf as well, and even when they try very hard to hear changes in intonation in other people's voices (even when not trying to understand what is said etc.), or in their own voices on tape, they simply can't tell the difference, at least not very easily.

Ah but eating them is much more fun  

:lol:

It is often said that singing and speaking don't function the same (don't some autistics learn to speak by singing?). I wish that was the case for me though - sadly, my singing is even worse (as far as pitch and timing is concerned) than my speech. Didn't stop me from singing permanently as a toddler mind you. Poor parents  :shock:

I am kind of glad, with hindsight, that my high school signing teacher took away my enthusiasm for singing - otherwise I might have ended up like one of those utterly talentless but seriously deluded (about their singing talent) people who appear on those horrible talent shows :-(