Callista wrote:
What do you feel is the most important issue facing autistic people, as a whole--as a community? That means the whole autistic community, by the way; autistics, diagnosed and undiagnosed; people who are close to the spectrum but not quite on it; family members and spouses and friends.
That's it, the community itself is heterogeneous. Different people with different problems. What may be good for a subgroup may not be helpful for the other.
One important aspect of having a better future is understanding these differences within the community and accept it both outside and inside of it.
Callista wrote:
What should we be trying to change about the world and about ourselves as a community? What's important; what are we overlooking, and what are we spending too much effort on? What's good about being part of an online (and possibly offline) autistic community, and what should change?
Again, heterogeneity. Lots of misunderstanding could be attributed to it. Asperger's pride, why some people with autistic disorder feel left out, why different groups with different strengths at life skills often don't understand the other group's difficulties. I'm not even sure if there are groups, there might be only individuals.
Dynamics between the 'autistic world' and 'normal world' is like politics. It surely will have the most impact on the community in the future. However, autistic people shouldn't forget that they are the minority, and as a result, communication with the majority would be practiced on the basis of NT standards, a foreign language, you might say. Communications and politics are not the strongest points of autistic people, so there's a risk here.
19 Feb 2012, 3:46 pm
