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http://aspitude.blogspot.com/
https://stillfinditsohard.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/militant-autistic-manifesto/
http://www.louschuler.com/blog/militant-autism/
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/health/how-about-not-curing-us-some-autistics-are-pleading.html
http://edeity.blogspot.com.au/
http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/
https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/
http://www.neurodiversity.com/main.html
http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2006/05/never-again.html
http://aspierhetor.com/
http://theautismwars.blogspot.com/
http://theinvisiblestrings.com/
https://juststimming.wordpress.com/
https://unstrangemind.wordpress.com/
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=5033594
https://stillfinditsohard.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/militant-autistic-manifesto/
http://www.louschuler.com/blog/militant-autism/
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/health/how-about-not-curing-us-some-autistics-are-pleading.html
http://edeity.blogspot.com.au/
http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/
https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/
http://www.neurodiversity.com/main.html
http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2006/05/never-again.html
http://aspierhetor.com/
http://theautismwars.blogspot.com/
http://theinvisiblestrings.com/
https://juststimming.wordpress.com/
https://unstrangemind.wordpress.com/
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=5033594
One of the worst, most deceitful gambits that the curebie movement has come up with to date is the whole “theory of mind” or “lack of empathy” gambit. Seriously, if you are going to try to blur the line between autistic and psychopath, you need to work a lot harder these days than you did in the 1980s, people. But having said all of that, it is worth talking about a few things before I get to my main point.
On the Cracked.com website, a more comedic-themed explanation of how people see one another is offered. In this article, titled What Is The Monkeysphere?, David Wong goes into why there is so much seemingly random cruelty in our world. I will not waste time repeating every little point ofWong‘s article, but since some individuals correlate the size of a person’s brain to their intelligence, it is worth noting that the Monkeysphere is basically a metaphor for how many other individuals from our own species we are capable of conceptualising as people. This is an important point that one needs to understand before one can understand what I am getting at here.
I truly believe that not only can you tell a lot about a person by how many people they conceptualise as Human beings, you can also tell a lot about a person by the kinds of people they conceptualise as Human beings. In previous times of war, we have been entertained with propaganda that depicts our enemy as little more than stereotypes. This was especially the case with World War II, in which members of the German and Japanese armies were represented by little caricatures whilst people on our side were given detailed and often moving biographies.
I read the article concerning the Monkeysphere a long time ago. In fact, I may have even read it on the same day that it was published on that site, which happens to be September 30 of 2007, nearly five years ago as of this writing. Since then, I have actually done a lot of exercises of a mental sort in trying to expand my mind to include the belief that the people I interact with in a bit-part kind of way really do have lives and feelings outside of my interactions with them. But here is the thing. Even for a gentleman that multiple psychological professionals believe has the equivalent of a Lamborghini sitting in his head, it is impossible to include every individual person in his Monkeysphere. And the less in common you have with me, the less likely I am to include you in that Monkeysphere.
In order to illustrate this, let us look at a fictional character who is so like me that he is always instantly going to be admitted to my Monkeysphere, irrespective of all else. Magneto. Regardless of whether he is portrayed by Sir Ian McKellen or Michael Fassbender, Magneto comes across as a very intelligent, very thoughtful Mutant with a very large Monkeysphere. Even when other Mutants directly threaten him, they are in his Monkeysphere. Note how in X-Men, he addresses them as“my brothers”. He does not merely say it as rhetoric. As his actions in X2 and X-Men: First Classdemonstrate, he means it. But as those actions demonstrate, if you mess with him or the people who are in his Monkeysphere, look the fukk out.
Like Magneto, it takes a hell of a lot to make me think that a person who is autistic, mentally ill, or in any way different to the expected norm is not in my Monkeysphere. That is, that they are just fukking fukkers to be fukked with as opposed to actual people who have loves, lives, and feelings that killing them would irreversibly take away. My mother does not exhibit any signs of chronic mental illness or autistic spectrum disorder. Nor does my sister or the father of her children. I do believe that all three of them exhibit a noticeably lower intellectual capacity compared to me (and I am not just saying this out of vanity), but they are still very much people to me.
My male parental entity (note the difference in choice of words) is not a person to me. He is not even a creature to me. He is literally a nothing. He is a cancer in my life that, to quote Daniel O’Herlihy‘s awesomely-delivered words in RoboCop, must be cut out before we breathe life into this city again.
I think that this last statement pretty much sums up the difference between myself, those who are like me, and the rest of the people on the autistic spectrum, especially those who have been fortunate enough to escape the abuse and mistreatment that is a defining characteristic of our kind. We know what war against those who would harm all of the autistic regardless of age, race, sex, or type entails because we have already lived a fragment of that.
Irrespective of the mistakes I have made in my perception when I first began to read their work,Radical Neurodivergence Speaking has written a lot that typifies how I feel about certain response to what I have to say. I do not believe that a passive beg for acceptance is going to yield the kind of result that would enable our children or grandchildren to live without fear. Now, my previous writing about how Autism Speaks wants to even take possession of a primary colour in order to turn it against us makes me feel very convinced that whilst violence in itself is not going to be the answer, it may have to factor in the final mixture that does become the answer. This goes back to a point that Steve Kangas made when addressing the subject of the conservative rhetoric that “noone has a right to my property”. I will quote part of Kangas‘ text in order to make clear what I am getting at:
But these social agreements — otherwise known as the “social contract” — are only as good as the force that backs them up. Not all the agreement in the world will prevent someone from seizing your property if they decide to dishonor it. Therefore, the basis of all property is force or the threat of force, and it is the topic we must first examine.
This is what I am invoking when I tell people that we need to start making it clear to the ilk of Autism Speaks that we are no longer in a mood to tolerate them telling people it is okay to murder us or children with our neurotype. We can solicit agreements with Autism Speaks that they will stop lying about us in front of our faces, just for instance, to our heart’s content. But unless either we or an entity acting on our behalf is going to punish them for breaking the agreement, there is nothing to stop them from doing so.
This is why groups form that improve explosive devices and throw them at soldiers, for example. Because when one cannot go to a more forceful entity such as the U.S. government, or indeed any government, for help, people tend to help themselves. And that is where all the trouble tends to start. Yes, I have blamed a lot of the wars between nations or people who want to lay claim to a scrap of land on overpopulation, and that is a big factor in it, but so too is the simple fact that with no world government to forcefully sort out grievances, the only options for nations that have a problem with each other is to fight each other until a point is reached where one (or both) cannot win. Thus it is in the international scheme of things, and until we get a government that is properly informed of all of the facts, not just the deliberately half-arsed samplings that Autism Speaks wants them to hear, all of our pleas for acceptance and integration are only going to fall on deaf ears.
But what if the scenario I described in The Peculiar Visitor came true tomorrow? A scenario in which a very dangerous and ill-looking individual promises “Mister President” that he will kill one normie for every day that Autism Speaks is not declared legally a hate group. For every day that Affirmative Action is not expanded to include the autistic. For every day that abusing an autistic child goes unprosecuted and on and on until he says “by the way, these totals are cumulative, so I will get to someone you or your puppet masters will miss eventually, Mister President”. Oh, and of course, if the normies retaliate by trying to kill or call for the killing of the autistic, he will add them to the daily tally, too?
Granted, it is unpredictable what kind of consequences such an action will have, but the thing is, you already have at least one person around who feels that such a situation is preferable to what is currently going on. Kick a child in the ribs every day for weeks on end without telling him what he has done that could possibly warrant such behaviour, and he will turn mean. Try to ban torture as a“behaviour modification” technique, and normies will moan and bitch endlessly that it is just a few priveleged “high functioning, waaah!” people voicing objections, and our pleas will continue going unheard. Show a person who has been severely harmed by these apparently oh-so-okay techniques in the past promising that he will kill people until the law remembers it has said in the past that hurting people for not fitting an expected norm is not okay, on the other hand, and people will at least take notice. And that saying about how being forgotten is worse than being dead is doubly true when trying to get people to understand that just because your brain is not exactly like whatever model your doctor desires does not mean he can strap you down and pour a container of bleach into your solid waste passage. I still cannot believe I am writing that and it is not an exaggeration for comedic effect.
This also goes back to what I was saying earlier about how we need to stop milling about with all our own ideas on what to do clashing with one another and start working in union. And this leadership council should have at least a couple of military strategist types on it, because I fear that without a certain amount of that approach, all of this politeness and niceness is not going to get us anywhere.
But as I alluded to earlier, I am also keenly aware that simply having the bigger fist in the battle is not going to have positive results, either. In another previous writing, I asked a very serious question. Suppose that Autism Speaks simply stopped existing tomorrow. Imagine any daydream you care to imagine to explain this. The Mages of Kali-Yuga teleported to our world, told them to stop bullying us, and turned them to ice before getting out the sledgehammers. Or they died of terminal ignorance (would it not be nice if ignorance could kill you as easily as it did in medieval times?). Take your pick, but it all comes back to the situation I described in my earlier essay. There will be a power vacuum, and the consequences of not being there to supervise how the vacuum is filled might be worse than having Autism Speaks in existence. Yes, I know how hard that is to imagine, but Americans thought that nothing could possibly be worse than Russians in Afghanistan, too. Look how that turned out.
And as for presence in my Monkeysphere? Well, as I tried to say, my Monkeysphere tends to be a lot larger than others. When I shout abuse at a football player who is basically stooging for Autism Speaks, for example, I would in fact say exactly the same things to his face (I tend to prepare for such encounters, though). And if you are upset by the fact that I feel so violently towards curebies, but want them to be made to stop, too, then believe me, I understand that.
What I would like to ask you in return, however, is to try to at least partly include me in your Monkeysphere by understanding how it got to be this way for me.
Jack Thomas, a 10th grader at a school for autistic teenagers and an expert on the nation's roadways, tore himself away from his satellite map one recent recess period to critique a television program about the search for a cure for autism.
"We don't have a disease," said Jack, echoing the opinion of the other 15 boys at the experimental Aspie school here in the Catskills. "So we can't be 'cured.' This is just the way we are."
From behind his GameBoy, Justin Mulvaney, another 10th grader, objected to the program's description of people "suffering" from Asperger's syndrome, the form of autism he has.
"People don't suffer from Asperger's," Justin said. "They suffer because they're depressed from being left out and beat up all the time."
That, at least, was what happened to these students at mainstream schools before they found refuge here.
But unlike many programs for autistics, this school's program does not try to expunge the odd social behaviors that often make life so difficult for them. Its unconventional aim is to teach students that it is O.K. to "act autistic" and also how to get by in a world where it is not.
Trained in self-advocacy, students proudly recite the positive traits autism can confer, like the ability to develop uncanny expertise in an area of interest. This year's class includes specialists on supervolcanoes and medieval weaponry.
"Look at Jack," Justin pointed out. "He doesn't even need a map. He's like a living map."
The new program, whose name stands for Autistic Strength, Purpose and Independence in Education -- and whose acronym is a short form of Asperger's -- is rooted in a view of autism as an alternative form of brain wiring, with its own benefits and drawbacks, rather than a devastating disorder in need of curing.
It is a view supported by an increasingly vocal group of adult autistics, including some who cannot use speech to communicate and have been institutionalized because of their condition. But it is causing consternation among many parents whose greatest hope is to avoid that very future for their children. Many believe that intensive behavioral therapy offers the only rescue from the task of caring for unpredictable, sometimes aggressive children, whose condition can take a toll on the entire family.
The autistic activists say they want help, too, but would be far better off learning to use their autistic strengths to cope with their autistic impairments rather than pretending that either can be removed. Some autistic tics, like repetitive rocking and violent outbursts, they say, could be modulated more easily if an effort were made to understand their underlying message, rather than trying to train them away. Other traits, like difficulty with eye contact, with grasping humor or with breaking from routines, might not require such huge corrective efforts on their part if people were simply more tolerant.
Spurred by an elevated national focus on finding a cure for autism at a time when more Americans are receiving autism diagnoses than ever before -- about one in 200 -- a growing number of autistics are staging what they say amounts to an ad hoc human rights movement. They sell Autistic Liberation Front buttons and circulate petitions on Web sites like neurodiversity.com to "defend the dignity of autistic citizens." The Autistic Advocacy e-mail list, one of dozens that connect like-minded autistics, has attracted nearly 400 members since it started last year.
"We need acceptance about who we are and the way we are," said Joe Mele, 36, who staged a protest at Jones Beach, on Long Island, while 10,000 people marched to raise money for autism research recently. "That means you have to get out of the cure mind-set."
A neurological condition that can render standard forms of communication like tone of voice, facial expression and even spoken language unnatural and difficult to master, autism has traditionally been seen as a shell from which a normal child might one day emerge. But some advocates contend that autism is an integral part of their identities, much more like a skin than a shell, and not one they care to shed.
The effort to cure autism, they say, is not like curing cancer, but like the efforts of a previous age to cure left-handedness. Some worry that in addition to troublesome interventions, the ultimate cure will be a genetic test to prevent autistic children from being born.
That would be a loss, they say, not just for social tolerance but because autistics, with their obsessive attention to detail and eccentric perspective, can provide valuable insight and innovation. The neurologist Oliver Sacks, for instance, contends that Henry Cavendish, the 18th-century chemist who discovered hydrogen, was most likely autistic.
"What they're saying is their goal is to create a world that has no people like us in it," said Jim Sinclair, who did not speak until he was 12 and whose 1993 essay "Don't Mourn for Us" serves as a touchstone for a fledgling movement.
At this year's "Autreat," an annual spring gathering of autistics, attendees compared themselves to gay rights activists, or the deaf who prefer sign language over surgery that might allow them to hear. Some discussed plans to be more openly autistic in public, rather than take the usual elaborate measures to fit in. Others vowed to create more autistic-friendly events and spaces.
Autreat participants, for instance, can wear color-coded badges that indicate whether they are willing to be approached for conversation. Common autistic mannerisms, like exceedingly literal conversation and hand-flapping, are to be expected. Common sources of autistic irritation, like casual hugs and fluorescent lighting, are not.
For many parents, however, the autistic self-advocacy movement often sounds like a threat to the brighter future they envision for their children. In recent months, the long-simmering argument has erupted into an online brawl over the most humane way to handle an often crippling condition.
On e-mail lists frequented by autistics, some parents are derided as "curebies" and portrayed as slaves to conformity, so anxious for their children to appear normal that they cannot respect their way of communicating. Parents argue that their antagonists are showing a typical autistic lack of empathy by suggesting that they should not try to help their children. It is only those whose diagnosis describes them as "high functioning" or having Asperger's syndrome, they say, who are opposed to a cure.
"If those who raise their opposition to the so-called oppression of the autistic would simply substitute their usage of 'autism or autistic' with 'Asperger's,' their arguments might make some sense," Lenny Schafer, publisher of the widely circulated Schafer Autism Report, wrote in a recent e-mail message. "But I intend to cure, fix, repair, change over etc. my son and others like him of his profound and typical disabling autism into something better. Let us regain our common sense."
But the autistic activists say it is not so easy to distinguish between high and low functioning, and their ranks include both.
In an effort to refute parental skeptics, the three owners of autistics.org, a major Web hub of autistic advocacy, issued a statement listing their various impairments. None of them are fully toilet-trained, one of them cannot speak, and they have all injured themselves on multiple occasions, they wrote: "We flap, finger-flick, rock, twist, rub, clap, bounce, squeal, hum, scream, hiss and tic."
The touchiest area of dispute is over Applied Behavior Analysis, or A.B.A., the therapy that many parents say is the only way their children were able to learn to make eye contact, talk and get through the day without throwing tantrums. Some autistic adults, including some who have had the therapy, say that at its best it trains children to repress their natural form of expression and at its worst borders on being abusive. If an autistic child who screams every time he is taken to the supermarket is trained not to, for example, he may still be experiencing pain from the fluorescent lights and crush of strangers.
"Behaviors are so often attempts to communicate," said Jane Meyerding, an autistic woman who has a clerical job at the University of Washington and is a frequent contributor to the Autistic Advocacy e-mail discussion list. "When you snuff out the behaviors you snuff out the attempts to communicate."
Perhaps the most public conflict between parents and adult autistics came in a lawsuit brought by several Canadian families who argued that the government should pay for their children's A.B.A. therapy because it is medically necessary. Michelle Dawson, an autistic woman in Montreal, submitted testimony questioning the ethics of the therapy, which the Canadian Supreme Court cited in its ruling against the families in November.
Ms. Dawson's position infuriates many parents who are fighting their own battles to get governments and insurance companies to pay for the expensive therapy.
"I'm afraid of this movement," said Kit Weintraub, the mother of two autistic children in Madison, Wis.
Ms. Weintraub's son, Nicholas, has benefited greatly from A.B.A., she said, and she is unapologetic about wanting to remove his remaining quirks, like his stilted manner of speaking and his wanting to be Mickey Mouse for Halloween when other 8-year-olds want to be Frodo from "The Lord of the Rings."
"I worry about when he gets into high school, somebody doesn't want to date him or be his friend," she said. "It's no fun being different."
The dispute extends even to the basic terminology of autism.
"I would appreciate it, if I end up in your article, if you describe me as 'an autistic' or 'an autistic person,' versus the 'person with,"' Ms. Dawson wrote in an e-mail message. "Just like you would feel odd if people said you were a 'person with femaleness."'
Ms. Weintraub insists on the opposite. "My children have autism, they are not 'autistics,"' she wrote in her own widely circulated essay, "A Mother's Perspective." "It is no more normal to be autistic than it is to have spina bifida."
Terry Walker, 37, who has Asperger's syndrome, said he was not opposed to the concept of a cure for autism but he suggested that there was a pragmatic reason to look for other options.
"I don't think it's going to be easy to find," Mr. Walker said. "That's why I opt for changing the world around me; I think that does more long-term good."
Correction: December 24, 2004, Friday A front-page article on Monday about autistic advocates who see their condition as an alternative form of brain wiring rather than a disorder in need of curing misstated the residence of Kit Weintraub, the mother of two autistic children, who has reservations about the movement. It is Monroe, Wis., not Madison.
like flies to shit.