Aspie eliticism and "Cure NT's"

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You might want to look up the definition of "species." Alot of very smart and successful aspies have reproduced despite their social problems. I'm speaking from personal experience when I say I have seen alot of pathetic people, both NT as aspie. Neither have been capable at dealing with life.

It is unfair for the Aspie to always have to be the one to change while the NT never has to. The NTs should meet us halfway.


I agree with CockneyRebel that no cure should be forced; that's just inhumane, as autism is not a disease. Comorbids I dunno tho.

Wouldn't a prerequisite for such mimicry be properly functioning mirror neurons?

Interesting. I'm still very new to this world, but my first thought when I saw "cure NTs" was that it was reactionary humor to the idea that autistics need to be cured of their differences with the majority of the population. The idea that some people take this concept seriously is odd. As my grandmother used to say: "It's our differences that make the world go round." Autism was nowhere on her radar when she said it, but how right she was.

I can see where those with the crazy high IQ's might feel superior in intelligence but nothing in this world is judged by a single characteristic.

We all have our place in the evolutionary scale of things. Natural selection has preserved the traits for a reason - they are deemed of value to our species. I'm not arrogant enough to question nature - it has a way of making mankind pay for its hubris.

Exactly. Second-guessing evolution doesn't make sense. If someone (or a group of people) exists, then evolution "meant" for them to be here (by definition). And saying, "well, but because of medical technology..." -- well, that's a result of our big brains (and social instincts to collaborate and assist), which evolved to be that way, so again, it doesn't mean anything is "going against" evolution.

And, I too wonder when the shift from insightful satire to a literal belief in superiority happened.

I think I coined the term "autistic supremacist" in the year 1999, but I coined it to describe what was then a seemingly rare phenomenon that I mostly didn't take very seriously. That whole viewpoint seems a lot more common now.

There is definitely a strong tendency to form "Teams" and look at the world/individual issues through a lens that is tinted with black and white, as opposed to the appropriate shades of gray. That obviously leads to coldness to opposing viewpoints which don't fit within the confines of those worldviews. It seems pretty logical to believe that people within any of these groups will be just as prone to jackassery and elitism as people in any other. This should hold no different for people within the silly (IMO) cure vs acceptance debate. However, I wouldn't just leave that there and attribute all the coldness, ignorance, hostility and the"Us vs Them" mentalities that are out there towards simple tribalism, because there are after all, often factors which cause a person to join a given team and cement a given viewpoint, however flawed their reasoning is for doing so.

"Aspies" may tend to believe that NTs should be "Cured" because in their experience interacting with them, they tend to be ignorant about autism, crude, and have a tendency to believe in their own superiority to the Aspie, who they tend to view as somehow defective (Certainly, groups like Autism Speaks don't help in disabusing people of that notion by maintaining the silly viewpoint that Aspergers, or Autism of any form is necessarily bad). On the other side of the coin, well meaning neurotypicals may have a bad taste left in their mouth by Autistic people who feel the need for whatever reason to assert themselves or act hostile/elitist to non-autistics. Alternatively, one can't rule out the notion that the person is simply uneducated in matters of Autism, but still altogether too willing to offer their opinion, which leads them to start yelling about how we all "need" a cure. And of course, they may just believe in their innate superiority because they are one of those individuals who thinks being different from the norm makes somebody inferior, much as how white males regarded women and blacks as such, which allowed for Jim Crow, Sexism, Slavery and a whole smorgasboard of fun stuff.Regardless of the causes of hostility, I wish they would cease or more realistically at least, start to drastically reduce in scope.


Moving on to my own personal viewpoint, I'm not of the mind that Autistics should never be cured and that they should just deal (Which leads me to a bit of amusing hypocrisy: Some autistics who are very anti-cure want acceptance and for people to respect that they are happy as autistics, but completely ignore those autistics who can't find self-acceptance or happiness.), nor am I going to be rounding up people to be cured with a grin on my face if they do find one; I think it depends on various factors, such as the mindset of the parents involved, their knowledge, the happiness or lackthereof of the autistic individual as an autistic, etc; factors which transcend an "Us vs Them", black vs white choice, which the current autism cure debate entails when framed as it commonly is (EG: "Cure vs Acceptance". See a third option presented there?) presupposes . If somebody's happy as an autistic individual, or if the parents of an unborn autistic child fully understand the risks involved and don't think that the child should be cured, who the hell is anybody else to apply their own standards of good and bad, validity and invalidity as a person, to decide that another person should be, as if their opinions are the only ones pure as the driven snow? Likewise, if somebody's miserable as an autistic and a cure would drastically improve their quality of life, who's an aspie/other sort of autistic to say that that cure would somehow, in some magical way, be "Immoral", just because they don't feel as if it is the right option for them?

As long as nobody's knocking down a person's door, carting them off in a straitjacket and forcing them to take the vaccine, pill or whatever, I don't buy the notion that a cure would somehow be a bad thing as opposed to a much needed medical and scientific advancement for a group of people within the autistic population. At the same time though, we have to be willing to again, look at the issue not in terms of dogma arising from one or the other side of the same dichotomy; from the standpoint of supporting "Neurodiversity" 100% (as if all diversity, neurological or otherwise, is somehow necessarily good. You don't open up a vial of anthrax and start throwing it around because having fresh air to inhale is boring and dammit, you want "diversity" in the air supply.), or from the standpoint that all cases of autism lead to misery and suffering but as rational agents.

Sorry for the long post. I'm pretty opinionated and tend to need some space in order to express my viewpoints.

Last edited by Jordan87 on 10 Apr 2011, 10:19 am, edited 3 times in total.

The point is, as far as I can see, that we're marginalised and discriminated against by stuff that NT's don't even notice they're doing. Nor do we, for the most part, which adds insult to injury.

The automatic machinery with which most NTs come preloaded just doesn't work for us, doesn't include us and certainly doesn't help us.

Oh and, the first time I ever saw anything about "cure NTs" it was completely satirical and nobody meant it seriously. There used to be this group called CAN (Cure Autism Now). So some autistic people made up buttons that said something like:

"CANT: Cure All NeuroTypicals -- But Don't Cure Me!"

But nobody who wore that actually was an autistic supremacist, they were just making a joke about which way society's expectations run.

In response to a couple of the replies~ I used the word species because I couldn't think of more appropriate word; I know that's not the best choice. I also know Aspies are capable of reproducing but it does NOT mean we should because the problems we have functioning could be passed on to future offspring. This cure NT thing could be in reponse to how some NTs want to cure AS. NTs want to cure us because we unintentionally cause problems for em; we sometimes appear to come off as rude, unfriendly, selfish, unsympathetic, insensitive, & insulting & the NTs who are close to use like our family & friends sometimes help us deal with the problems we have in life. I feel horrible quilt about the problems my AS has caused for my family & others & the way things are rite now is; the world would be better off if I never existed

Anyone can pass on a deformity or disadvantage though. I could have turned out short, or really ugly, and it could have affected me in worse ways for all I know. Thank god I'm just a tall, handsome Aspie with an obsession for improving my social skills

The way we use an acronym (NT) to refer to the "other" depersonalizes them to some extent. We depersonalize that which is different from us and difficult to understand. I'll go along with it, but to me, NT is used in much the same way as the word "ret*d." It depersonalizes us and it's an unfair label because we're smart. People who are "NT" can still have ADHD or depression or social anxiety and they can still be interesting people with intense interests.

I believe in equality. I believe both NTs and AS should be cured! Heck, I believe in curing the entire human race. And should we ever find another race similar to us in behavior, development and values... I'll include them in that statement as well!

I'm sure you heard this argument plenty of times, but people on the spectrum have been responsible for many great advancements in culture and science. To say that they shouldn't reproduce is not only brazen, but insulting to many. There are people on this site, such as me, who are doing quite well in school and life. Sure I have social problems, but I know how to use my aspie IQ to learn these things. Sure I have been bullied, and my own mother doesn't understand me, but I have enough self-esteem to realize that it's her problem, not mine. There are also plenty of aspies on this site who did reproduce and have both aspie and NT children. I highly suggest you start practicing your social skills now, by not insulting any more people. Quite frankly, it's a bit easy to see why you might come off as unfriendly and selfish. You just tried to project your own negativity to everyone else.

It looks as if you have some other issues that are causing you to say that. I would say, you need to stop blaming all your problems on AS and start focusing on improving your self esteem. Then again, I'm not your therapist, so I'm not going to overstep into your realm any more than I just did.

If autistic people all decided it was a terrible thing to reproduce, a whole lot of my extended family (as well as my immediate family, including me) wouldn't exist. I guess I'm glad the diagnosis didn't exist when my great-grandfather was growing up, because he grew up during the Eugenics movement in the USA and could have been sterilized or institutionalized. Same with several of his children. My extended family on both sides has a lot of things that would have been diagnosed as cognitive or physical conditions in other circumstances, and I'm rather glad we all exist. I'd rather be alive with a lots of health and cognitive conditions (as I am), than not alive because someone decided to spare me my entire existence rather than chance I have these things. I don't really like the "we could contribute to society" argument that much because it sort of makes it sound like if we weren't doing these various things then we wouldn't need to exist. (I think everyone contributes to society even if not everyone understands this.)

As far as "NT" being dehumanizing, honestly it didn't start that way. It started just as a more precise term than "normal" that some autistic people came up with. It was used without any dehumanizing intent for a long time. Then some people started using it a new and disturbing way. But just because some people do that doesn't mean everyone does. Simply having a name for a group of people doesn't make them less human to the people using the name.

If I am negative & have low self-esteem; it's related to having others misunderstanding me my entire life due to my AS. Being beat-up everyday at school because I had strange ways, Regularly being accused of being hateful by my family, going true most all my life feeling alone because I could not connect with or get close to anyone. I know some Aspies are great successes but I think it would be extremely cruel to potentially pass on the Aspie social problems to a future generation who will not understand or accept em