Factions/Groups/Differences of Opinion in Autism Politics?

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lordfakename
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19 Jun 2015, 3:18 pm

It appears that Autism politics has a range of factions in it that I am having trouble getting my head around. Could anybody give me a (neutral as possible) overview of the current state of autism politics? Like a primer?

Please do not turn this into a massive argument thread, that is not my intention.



androbot01
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19 Jun 2015, 6:58 pm

Good grief...that's a tall order.

I suggest reading the forums to get an idea of where people are coming from.



Magneto
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22 Jun 2015, 2:28 pm

Well, there are, I think, three main categorisations possible - pro-cure (who want to do away with autism, cosnidering it to be a disability), pro-diversity (who want autism to be recognised as a difference, with suitable accomodation made to minimise the problems that arise from the world being set up mainly for neurotypicals), and the small (but growing?) position of pro-separatism (who believe that the problems require organising society very differently, to the point where fitting both Autists and neurotypicals into a society in which both groups are comfortable would be very difficult). Of course, there's overlap between the groups - some who consider high-functioning autism to be a gift, but want to get rid of low-functioning autism, and others who want to separate in order to demonstrate that autism is not a disability.

Of course, also, there's variation within these groups.

But I don't think there are *that* many different factions, more that there are differing levels of each of the three in a particular viewpoint, like those wanting to use therapy to alter some aspects of autism but do not wish to eradicate it entirely (though that might not be possible, depending upon the cause of autism).



B19
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06 Jun 2016, 8:11 pm

One difference of opinion shows up here in two factions when a disabled person is killed by the police. One faction tends to say "they brought it on themselves by their own actions" and the other faction tends to say "this was a disabled person whose disability was not taken into account as part of the situation".

More on the latter here:

http://www.rudermanfoundation.org/wp-co ... final1.pdf



ASPartOfMe
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07 Jun 2016, 1:12 am

The two main mega groups are.
Those that want most money to be spent trying to find causes and a cure. People in this group view autism mainly as a series of impairments and think autistics need to try to be as normal as possible.

The other group thinks of autism as a combination of impairments and differences with difficulties of Autistics coming from a combination of Autistic impairments as disadvantages of bieng a small minority. While there are considerable variation in how much is impairments and how much is differences this group wants proirities shifted to helping autiscs now and wants society to make allowences and accomodations.

A small minority are the Aspie supremacists or the Aspergers is the next step in evolution people. They believe that the difficulties of aspies is pretty much all societys fault. They believe that Aspies should toughen up, should not compromise with, expect, or take any help from the "inferior" non autistic world.


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