"Autism Speaks Needs To Do A Lot More Listening"

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http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la ... story.html

Steve Silberman has gotten more of the nuerodiversity/Autism acceptance message into the mainstream media in the last few weeks then ASAN and other advocacy groups combined. Unlike Autism Speaks who only listen to fear and money Silberman listened to Autistics.

Great article! I'm posting it to my FB page.

Autism Speaks reaction

Pretty pathetic if you ask me. They did not refute one thing Silberman said, all they did is combine every PR statement from the last few years.

I like this older article too:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillin ... ak-for-me/

Just the name "autism speaks" is itself intrinsically manipulative. It would more accurately be "Suzanne Wright Speaks - and it's all about her, as it is with most malignant narcissists".

It seems to me that she loves to be the centre of attention and that autism is primarily meaningful to her as a vehicle for her narcissistic needs. You often find these extremely malignant kind of narcissists posing as great benefactors and they craft their false images with enormous care to suck people in. Her espoused mission of "rescuing families from the curse of autism" is a lie on every level, she lies about the families, about autism, and about her real purpose. You can't be much more of a liar and manipulator than that. She could be the poster child for malignant personality disorder.

I came across this piece today that exactly expresses my own view on what motivated Suzanne Wright. It applies to (some) grandparents as well as parents, and this exaggerated sense of entitlement is a cardinal aspect of intrinsically narcissistic personalities like Wright.


"And yet a third factor is the belief of many autism parents that they are entitled to a ‘normal’ child, and that it’s a huge affront, a violation of their ‘rights’, almost a crime in fact, for them to have one that isn’t. This is not an inference by the way, many of them outright say so, in very forthright terms that go way beyond ‘grieving’ into ‘grievance’. Their concern seems to be not for the child’s welfare, but for themselves. It’s as if they have this expectation of what their kid should be, how their child should reflect well on them, boost their social standing – so if their kid looks unlikely to ever be a cheerleader or football star, be ‘popular’, go to a prestigious (or any) university, bring home trophies, etc, etc, in short, if they have a kid they can’t show off, this is a ‘sin’ in their eyes. How this ‘I have a right to a normal child’ belief evolved, I’m really not sure, but those who hold this view consider themselves not only entitled to such a child, but entitled to do anything at all that will change their ‘deficient’ or ‘abnormal’ child into the one they believe they should have had from the beginning. They swing into action, blasting the child with every weapon at their command, and blasting too anyone who might have a different view of autism. They seem to hate autism because it disrupted the life they believe they are entitled to."

Source: StrangerInGodzone blogspot

Everyone should read his book. It's excellent and is now on the New York Times best seller list. He also writes about wrong planet in the book

http://www.amazon.com/NeuroTribes-Legac ... op?ie=UTF8

I'm really looking forward to reading it.

A long excerpt can be accessed and read for free here, on the publisher's website. Gosh it's good..

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books ... ver-sacks/