Documentary about Asperger's Syndrome-for adults

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Documentary about Asperger's Syndrome
Documentary about Asperger's Syndrome shown in 2005

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAfWfsop1e0[/youtube]

The guy being interviewed in the video is on our forum too - DiamondDaveJ I think his name was.

Yeah, you are right, and his next "speaking engagement" is here http://www.aspire-irl.org/events.htm - for a parents organisation that blatently discriminates against us, and doesn't even treat us as human beings.

Let me give you an example from http://www.aspire-irl.org/help-partners.htm :

For many people, the realisation that their partner has Asperger Syndrome, often comes about when a child receives a diagnosis of being on the autistic continuum. For some, this time will be like that of a bereavement, and the grief felt for your child will be compounded with guilt and a lack of support from your partner.

Note that there is not one single page on their website that addresses adults with Asperger Syndrome in any way, let alone respectfully, as equal, independent and autonomous adults http://www.aspire-irl.org .

IMHO it is disgusting.

M

Thanks for posting.

The video seems accurate to me.

I can't watch the video because my husband is sleeping, but I'm confused about this quote.
I'm not sure what is disgusting about it? When our son got his dx, I started becoming more and more convinced of both of us being very aspie-like.
I did/do still grieve and feel guilty. He's an only child, and he won't have anyone to lean on like my husband has relied on his brothers for so much in his life. I worry about his future and his ability to care for himself.
Plus I did not get any emotional support from my husband through all of the drs and therapy appts, IEP meetings, phone calls, etc. etc etc. He was absolutely stunned and imobilized. I did and still do handle all of it by myself with no input or even comments from him. Something like 70% of marriages fail after a child gets dx'd with autism because of the grief, guilty, denial, inability to see it in the same way, hecticness, or whatever.
So basically this quote reflects my experiences exactly.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Will have to come back and watch the video tomorrow.

laplantain,

The video isn't related to what mechanima wrote.

No,

The quote relates to what is perhaps the single most effective seed with which prejudice and stigma against people with Asperger Syndrome is sown, not only in families and others, but in themselves where it eats away at their self esteem. Which is disgusting.

It doesn't get any worse than saying to someone "this is as bad as if you were dead".

It is also a prime example of the core values promoted by the organisation that the person interviewed in the documentary chooses to uphold, for whatever he gets out of it (I rather suspect a false sense of his own importance). They are also in the underlying message of the documentary.

The organisation do not even address us adults directly as automous equals, let alone actually consult us directly about our wishes and needs before defining us and claiming to represent us at Government level. As a result, such funding as is allocated to adults with AS is sought for strategies and the promotion of attitudes that actively exacerbate AS in adults by denying them privacy and autonomy, while presenting them with and conditioning them to, an image of themselves as helpless, incapable and inferior.

It's a subtle, long running, horror story, in a small country. As a direct result some young people with AS grow to be adults without ever realising that they automatically have the same rights and freedoms as any other adult. They grow up giving up on life, love, happiness, freedom even children...

They are cold bloodedly conditioned to regard themselves as useless, inferior rejects who should be grateful for any little they are given and must never consider their needs worthy of expression or their own attitudes worthy of hearing, while "needs and attitudes" are allocated to them by the organisation that claims to represent them.

The person interviewed in the documentary is just their "Uncle Tom", knowingly upholding all of that in return for the totally false assurance that he is "higher function than the other Aspies" and should consider himself their natural leader.

I knew he was bad, I didn't know he was bad enough to uphold that agenda AGAIN...not until yesterday.

...and it KILLS ME that anyone could support an agenda that they know only cripples the lives of other Aspies...

...and when I say it kills me, I mean it sends me running for a bottle so I can drink enough to be able to handle the pain of looking at the real consequences, to real people, of what is happening. In effect it is only "Aktion T4", without the termination.

I notice that, elsewhere, at the same conference, they have a parent talking about the "suicide risk"...the irony is that determinedly imposing an image of Aspies as helpless, incapable and inferior while absolutely refusing to address them as equal human beings is probably responsible for a large part of the "suicide risk" in adults.

Frankly, they just don't "give a damn"...as long as they get what THEY want.

M

agreed, thanks a lot for the vid

Couldn't be...not without even a single shot of the little blighter putting a knife in anybody's back, which seems to be his real "special interest" these days.

M