Aspies For Freedom

Let me guess, the implications for birth control are that some people might
a. want to have a kid later or
b. if the kid could be Asperger, consider never having one

Of course my opinion is only mine and I am a guy.  I wonder if intelligence is inversely proportional to wanting a kid for guys.  Too many considerations about how to pay for it all, and a crystal clear understanding of opportunity costs in economics (make one choice and lose the ability to make another).  

Now, I don't doubt that you could get a great deal out of molding some little kid (maybe not even your own offspring, but an adoptee) into a balanced adult, live out his or her dreams and all that.  I am sure that is perhaps what more of the women are thinking, and to heck with the risk of the autistic spectrum.  I'm sure my mom did not really think my brother and I were disabled, just needed a little help to learn to learn in the best possible way, as gifted children.  

But the real risk exists that the children will have more trials and tribulations, certainly.  The society is generally hostile, although not as bloodthirsty for auties and aspies as it is for others like gays or people from certain countries.   Children being the most hostile of all because tolerance is difficult to teach.

Certain dreams may be put on hold, maybe forever.  Certainly every person in the spectrum that has even so much as considered suicide.... to say nothing of the ones who do.... that is not what parents want to happen.

A different kind of blood thirst, I think.  Not so much homicide, but encouraging parents to abort or never conceive potentially aspie or autie children, which I am not familiar with, and the subtle pressure to do yourself in, which I am more familiar with.

I'm glad many NTs, most of those who can't handle us, try to move us along with minimal damage to our feelings, but I wonder if the truth wouldn't help us either try to learn new skills consciously or at least get the hell out of the way of occupations that do not fit us.  As for the minority of NTs who would actually like to see a world without us (think Lord Farquahdt), most of them do not have the courage to shoot us themselves, they simply wish it enough until a few of us do out of rejection and despair.

Is that the reason why BC is such an issue?  What the Catholics might think of as a kind of genocide, by not conceiving us at all?  With BC and visits to certain doctors?  

The four levels of Aspie and Autie genocide
1.  Prevent conception (Catholic thinking, which when I think long enough, makes sense, if accidents are meant to happen, but I disagree because of world population**)
2.  After conception, prevent a live birth
3.  Encourage suicide either by rejection, opinion, or otherwise
4.  Murder of people on the spectrum

** What is the problem with world population?
1.  We have exploited a concentrated source of energy (petroleum) to create greater crop yields than is humanly possible (with human labor)
2.  Given the ability to increase population, guess what, the world has done so
3.  What happens when the oil runs out, a supervolcano or nuclear winter ruins agricultural output, a climatic shift (The Day After Tomorrow??), or running out of fresh water, and we can't feed six or seven billion people any more?
4.  Answer: slow death by starvation, quicker death by disease (when the immune system is weakened by hunger),or most rapidly of all, war, including nuclear or WMD

Now, how many horsemen were there in the Apocalypse?  War, famine, pestilence, death.
Is that how, and why, Revelations plays out?

It is estimated it takes nine calories of petrochemical energy to make one food calorie.  Fine, as long as the world is still swimming in oil.  

In the old days, before the Industrial Revolution, we used to get as much as 30 or 40 calories of agricultural output from every calorie of human energy expended, but more people farmed, there were famines and locusts and droughts and things we couldn't control then as we have for a while now.

The social implications of having to return to the old way of survival could be huge.   Lose all forms of mechanized transport, far fewer people in industry or certainly the professions, return to the uncertainty of pre-twentieth-century agriculture, and the Four Horsemen again

I know a guy who did a pre-emptive surgical strike to rule out fatherhood once and for all.

Short of that, correct me if I am wrong, the best odds would be with an injectable hormonal suppressant (Devo Provera, Norplant) (99%?) especially when backed up with a contraceptive sponge (99.90% to 99.99%???).  

There are many ways to stop the fertilization process: the condom, the female barrier contraceptive, the female hormonal contraceptive, hell, throw in an IUD and what do you have, a one in a million shot of getting pregnant?

I'm not sure when they'll have a decent reversible male contraceptive method.  For me, surviving testicular cancer is a big help, I've lost half my capacity to life-saving surgery.

Great mention, Alison, about the consumption of world resources: Americans are gravely disproportionate as for resource consumption, one American equals fifty Asians.

We are feeding billions of people with petroleum and petrochemicals, a hell of a lot of water, and a favorable climate.  For the moment.

Take any one away, topsoil depletion, drought, groundwater depletion, a supervolcano spewing sulfur dioxide to deflect sunlight for years, a climate downturn, global warming induced climate change, global warming induced change in the thermohaline cycle and ocean currents, nuclear winter, asteroid strike.... take any one or more very favorable conditions and....

we have famine (maybe drought)

hungry people get sick easier, plague is not a problem in the USA now, but plague kills a few vulnerable people every year (kids, elderly, sick, hungry, maybe pregnant or frequently pregnant, which makes the body vulnerable)

hungry and thirsty people fight over food and water, even with nukes

and lotsa people die

All Four Horsemen, population growth and reversals in agriculture.

Science Digest mentioned latex plugs for Fallopian tubes.

Heck, one in one hundred million chance of pregnancy?

Incidentally, we Protestants see no added problem with birth control

Adultery, fornication is no less a sin, but less likely to make a baby

Married couples, knock yourselves out, without knocking yourselves up

Jader, I think the Catholics think any method to lessen the chances of pregnancy is a sin.

But we Protestants think of the Pope as some pious guy, maybe a good example, good doer of works, but nobody we need to mediate between us and Jesus, because when Jesus died the middleman got cut out between we and God.

Yes, Batman.  Sex is intended for married couples to keep to themselves.  Sort of like the Philadelphia Experiment when (according to legend) sailors and the U.S.S. Eldridge were scrambled together, fused into the hull of the ship.  Sex is designed to scramble egg white and egg yolk, so fairly soon, identity becomes we, not me.  

That is why divorce (and lying about love for sex) is harmful and wrong.  You can't unscramble eggs.

Good point, Allison.  It was one of those mini-articles in the grey or gold pages, Tubal Plugs Bar Pregnancy, I had subscribed to Science Digest around the age of 12.  Just one part of the massive reading material Mom and Dad paid for

Several children's book series for children (3 come to mind, possibly more don't)
Science Digest
U.S News and World Report

and then the Texas Instruments TI994A and then the IBM PCjr

Mom must have known we sons were gifted... the massive investments of resources....

The gifts (especially computers, but I am far more well rounded than my younger brother, he has 12 to 20 hours of postsecondary education and I have over 200: 1 to 2 semesters vs. a Master's, but OK, he makes more, more experience) came from Asperger, by the way

which is not to say that there aren't drawbacks as well.

I would go a step further, if so many NTs didn't make an issue of our Asperger, most of our problems would go away (loneliness, depression, poor self esteem)

Maybe without their interference and social sanctions, Asperger might just be a difference with certain advantages other people in society can recognize.  Kind of like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.

The turn-of-the-century (1900) French sociologist Emile Durkheim described anomie as a sense of detachment from integration with the core majority of society, described mental illness, maybe depression, and certainly suicide as results

Wish Durkheim had lived long enough to see Dr. Asperger's work in Austria

Ding!! Hey, this Asperger thing seems to create anomie in individuals....

and when combined with the rest of his theory

They cannot conform to the smaller social norms because of a deficit in nonverbal communication and cultural situational awareness.... so the society attacks the threat generated by this individual by causing a majority to sanction the deviant....

I read Rules of Sociological Method in grad school, but it wasn't until I was almost out of grad school I heard of Asperger.

Way to go, SarahJoke.

I'm not one of the pro-natalist camp.  I think we have too many people already.  Leaving abortion aside, birth control can be very effective (hormonal implants).  They rule out human error.  

I'm waiting for a male contraceptive.  They might have it by the time I get married.  By the time I get married they might have a next generation Viagra too.  Hehe

Certainly, if I had one kid and wanted no more, I'd call my urologist.  It is easier to sterilize a man than it is to sterilize a woman (doctor's office, local anesthesia, versus surgical room, general anasthesia).  But even then, you must stay on the previous method until the supply of sperm already in the epididymus runs out.  

I think birth control is a great idea for marrieds.  I don't really care who else does it, except that birth control can save society helping to pay for kids if the parents can't.  What I really care about is my sex life or lack thereof.

Ziyaret, wouldn't you want a contraceptive sponge for backup (Today sponge) or don't they make them any more?

The failure rates of condoms do not exceed 10%, I think.

(Chuckling)  You do have a point, up to a point.... to get a scalp massage by any female hair stylist or completely honorable massage by a female massagist.  She is my mother's age.  

I guess it is a little like getting injured on purpose to go to the hospital and get attention from female nurses.  Or the kind yet still honorable treatment I had from female educators (especially Thomas Stone High School, two pre-married female instructors, an algebra instructor who requested I be assigned to her II class as I had been in her I class; a Spanish instructor who insisted I was "a scholar and a gentleman".   Or emotional yet fully honorable support to lose weight, especially from the receptionist and assistants but even from the physician, at the female doctor's weight loss practice.  

At least I have a male dentist and male eye doctor.  

I guess I am afraid if I was with a sex worker it could get sexual.

Aha, are we getting somewhere, GuessWho?

What's wrong with sex without marriage anyway?

Guess I am too damned protective of my heart, like the majority of women.  Like them, I do noy want to have some lady carry off my heart either.   (Some expert book writers would castigate me for feminine tendencies or even wonder if I was male to begin with).

Go as far as society and religion will allow.  No sin in a haircut with shampoo, an honorable massage.  Women and the men who think like they do add something to humanity, including my own.

What, if she is glowing, radiant?  Some article about husband and wife teaching the hour long orgasm.  Makeup is designed to give the same look without sex.  

Maybe also a little cleaner, maybe.

What do I know anyway?

The Catholic church obviously believes in making more souls for Heaven.  Some people say take over the world.  I think it is sad to make people we won't be able to feed in 40 years when we don't have ten calories of fossil fuel energy for each calorie of food.

CJ, before they invented the internal combustion engine, the world had not much more than two billion people.  Now we have almost seven billion people.

The tractor, the harvester, the crop duster, petrol for the vehicles, fertilizers, pesticides, it is all courtesy of oil which is getting more and more expensive to extract.  Before we actually run out of oil, it will reach a point when it will take more energy to get it out than it would be worth.

They used to use a lot of crop land to feed horses, back when horse power was a real horse.  Now we can feed people instead of horses.

If we are not ready with some comparable energy source, we could lose 75% of the human race, starvation, or illness in hungry people, or hungry people killing each other over food.  Sounds like famine, pestilence, war, and death.