Aspies For Freedom

I opened up my local paper today and saw an article about autism in my community. I said, "Great, 'bout time somebody cared". And then I read on and realized it wasn't about the child with autism at all, but about his mother. She apparently started a support group for "families affected by autism". It was yet another boo-hoo, what-did-I-do-wrong support group for mothers who hate not having perfect kids. What about us? What about my aspie friends and I not being able to land jobs? What about aspie children being denied teacher aides they are entitled to because the school has "more disabled children"?  I realize it is not easy having an autistic child, but I am sick of the only media attention focusing on the families and not us! Why are they afraid to let us share our story? Why do they feel the need to only showcase those with severe autism who 9 times out of 10 can't even speak at all let alone for themselves? Sell more papers, I guess.

Introverts aren't entertaining, so the media disregards us. By making an article about extroverts vs. the very introverted they make entertainment via drama.

With us as the enemy .

Another reason I think could be the newspaper caters to it's readers. Purely business, but that doesn't mean it's any less hard to take it personally.

Dynamics sell news, Aspies are in general not dynamic. (Which is what paradox is saying, I think) It could also be as blatent as people not caring to know what being an Aspie is like, rather hearing the words of professionals who've studied Autistics.

If I was a teenager and made to attend a social group for teens with Asperger's  -- I would run away.  

Do we need support groups were we sit around and talk about our problems?-- we can do that on the internet anyway.  I would rather have some SUPPORT to find jobs etc-----  some real help.  

Some people want a genetic test for autism just so that they can prove that they have autism or their kids have it.  If people only knew how many adults there were out there with autism, they would shut up about their kids so much.  Of course, the parents HATE adults with autism that they know (not knowing they have autism) -- they don't want their kids to grow up to be losers like us.  That is why they push therapies and treatments.

My child psychology prof (who, incidentally, also points out in the same lecture that Aspies are often successful professionally despite disabilities) called autism a "tragedy" in one of her lectures.

It's as though autistic children are dead, and the family is left to grieve.

OK, yeah, I can see grief: They're not going to have the child they thought they were going to have. Plans changed. They feel insecure and uncertain now that they know the child has autism. But... the child is still around! Not dead! Just disabled, and just a child who needs love and parenting like any other.

Where do they think they get the right to pretend we're dead just because some of us aren't good at connecting with other people?

End slightly hysterical rant.

...Well, OK, almost all of us aren't good at connecting. But you get the point.

An interesting article I saw that is slightly (only slightly relevant) to answering some of the questions raised here... opinion piece. I liked it a great deal. The writer is touching on the views of the parent of the autistic.

http://www.autistics.org/library/dontmourn.html

Asperger is kind of like a retrovirus in that to kill the virus, you must kill the cell.  Asperger persists for life.  The logical but satirical solution would be to kill us, but of course, that's not an option.  

Well, Sherman Klump could try some kind of gene resequencing blue beverage, but I don't live in the movies, do you?

I didn't think gangs of hate mongers roamed the streets beating up and killing Aspies like they killed Matthew Shepard (gay).  

But then I remembered that many parents would abort their fetuses if there was a genetic possibility of autism spectrum.

So there is a kind of Holocaust, just one that isn't obvious to you and me.

Prenatal testing.  It IS an option and society WILL embrace it unless we change a lot of minds.

Well, the way I see it is: it's wrong to me that the state funded medical system will pay for people to abort children who might have autism/Down's syndrome or whatever but not subsidise diagnostic tests for people to find out they have autism.

If one had to choose between the two, I would always say provide subsidies for doctor's visits and psychological tests to determine if we have autism (I don't mean compulsorily but that if lack of money is all that is stopping a person from getting the tests that could lead to an offical diagnosis)

I agree with the above.

Might I also add another possible reason why there is so much excessive focus on families. Because there are those who believe (entirely misinformed) that profoundly autistic people are some kind of mindless shells. So why focus on how they feel?

We definitely don't need to be babied any more than we need to be ignored. I'd like to start a community center just for autistics, complete with activities that expand and settle the mind,  job placement services, education services to help us in school and to get into college, and lastly, psychiatric treatment for parents who think they're the one with the crippling disorder.

We definitely don't need to be babied, in fact it's one of my major pet peeves, people talking down to me as if I'm stupid. We need better job support, especially if we're sick of working in retail and want jobs that actually make it possible to live without any government assistance such as SSI in the US.