Turned down because of dyslexia!

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The simple fact is that autism is a disability, a condition, call it what you will. Autism is a broad spectrum and some people on that spectrum have very challenging behaviour that can injury themselves and put a huge strain on their families over the course of their entire lifespan. What is wrong with a privately run business choosing to exclude sperm that has the possibilty of creating such children? Set up a private children that offers sperm from autistic, dyslexic and Downs Syndrome donors and see how many clients who actually want that sperm you will get.

I was going to say, "no they aren't, they are run on business principles," but you said something quite similar later on in your comment. So which is it? Are they run on eugenics principles or business principles? Or both?

Both, eugenics is obviously a viable business model because a lot of prospective parents/clients would like to have a "perfect" child. In contrast selling "inferior" sperm is not a viable business propositon because there aren't enough potential buyers.

i don't exactly have dyslexia, but i inherited a visual spatial learning disability from my mom.

I don't know what you mean by "perfect," but I think the prospective parents just want a child who is as healthy and able as possible.

Eugenics is a premeditated effort to change an entire population of people; sperm banks operate on the basis of individual clients. I think sperm banks are in no way eugenicist organizations. As an example, if someone was willing to pay money for sperm from someone with Down Syndrome, at least some sperm banks would probably be willing to seek that.

Eugenics is defined as...

The section about "especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits" is essentially what the OP's posts about rejecting autistic and dyslexic sperm donors is about. Perhaps it's not usually done for any deep philosophical reasons but on a purely commercial basis people are far more likely to pay to be inpregnated with, what they believe to be are, sperm from a "healthy" donor than from one with "defects."

By perfect I mean that the majority of prospective parents would like their child to be; healthy, intellient, good looking and successful. They are far more likely to achieve those desires if the sperm is selected on what amounts to eugenic prinicples than if they just took pot luck. I don't know about the likelihood of facilitating impregnation with sperm donated by someone with Downs Syndrome. I rather suspect that the majority of sperm banks would politely decline a client who wished for such a service, rather than accomodate them, and some might not be so polite in their refusal.

It creates a different way of seeing the world. The reason dyslexics have such a hard time reading is because they see everything in three dimensions, rotating images in their minds and constructing excellent mental replicas of things. It is this three dimensional rotation which causes them to jumble up the letters of words. This unique thought process can make people very creative, and incredible with directions. My mom and my sister are both dyslexic, and they have amazing navigational skills. My sister was helping my grandma navigate to places she'd only been to once by the time she was five. My mom and my sister are both amazing artists too; my mom teaches a painting class at a studio in town, and my sister can perfectly recreate images, even people which are extremely difficult, just by looking at a picture. I don't think either of them would be able to do this if they weren't dyslexic.

Now try convincing of that the woman who wants to have a child and raise them on her own, taking half their genes from an anonymous sperm donor she won't have any kind of emotional connection with. The only sensible approach is to ruthlessly filter by raw gene quality, more so than in any meat market. Anything less than perfect is out of the question and a waste of space and other precious resources in the sperm bank.

Even if some people with dyslexia are incredible with direction, I highly doubt it is because of dyslexia, or at least I'm pretty sure there are many kinds of dyslexia that do not make people better at this. I have (a rather mild case of) dyslexia and I used to be horrible with directions when I was a child. I'm in some situations quite average now. I'm good at remembering ways I've only seen on maps but never actually gone myself. I'm terrible at remembering ways I've only walked or driven while having to concentrate on something else (traffic, talking to a person etc.) but that's probably because of my autism and not my dyslexia. I also have a dyslectic sister and a dyslectic brother. My sister is still has horribly bad navigational skills and my brother might be quite average at it. None of my non- dyslectic family-members have difficulties with directions and my (non-dyslectic) mother is very good at it.
I also couldn't tell left from right until I was 10 and both my dyslectic siblings took even a bit longer to learn this.

I might agree with there being a link between creativity and dyslexia though. I don't have any amazing talent like those of your sister and mother but I always liked drawing and I sometimes write fantasy stories. My dyslectic sister plans to make writing novels her profession (kinda difficult to make a living of it and likely just wishful thinking) and wanted to study arts at university some years ago but changed her plans. My dyslectic brother started making 3D-models with Blender when he was 12 and started writing a book (that mightn't ever be finished).
Me and my dyslectic family members are not the only people in the family that ever did any arts but it would not surprise me if there indeed was a correlation.

I am dyslexic (albeit it's not very severe dyslexia) and as long as no one asks me to read aloud no one would realize it. My spelling used to be awful and I couldn't differentiate between 'b' and 'd' and between 'p' and 'q'. It had a pretty bad impact on my grades at school for the first 5 years and then suddenly got a lot better (I also tried hard to improve; it didn't just get better on its own). I don't think my dyslexia matters much now and I don't think it'd matter much if I weren't autistic and would live my life like your average NT.
I don't know why there would be a correlation between social skills and being able to compensate for dyslexia though. I don't have good social skills. I have dyslexia. It's not a problem any more.

I never stated there was an exact correlation. All I stated is that I've known people with dyslexia who have excellent social skills, and that I sense that this could be compensatory.

I feel that this rejection is about two issues: fear and the quest for the best. People are afraid of knowingly taking a risk of having a child with known challenges, but the unknown ones don't really factor into their choices. On the surface, a parent with a known inheritable condition is an unnecessary risk if they can just pull another parent out of the bank.

Biodiversity is a great concept, but on an individual level, people want the traits they want in their children. Not all people, but enough to make sperm donor selection the process that it is.

I think I get what you are saying; how does one reconcile one's flawed existence and knowledge that parents would not select you to bring into the world based on genetics with the "everyone is equal" meme? It's a moot point because no one is going to start killing disabled people; but for me the question matters because it makes me wonder at my value as a person and my ability to succeed in society.
Jamesy, people with autism have the right to have children. And thank God because I still think we may have an interesting perspective to offer.

No, doesn't sound crazy to me.

The parents don't really know what they're rejecting or accepting. They don't see the whole person with his or her strengths and weaknesses, abilities and disabilities. Before you meet the whole person, the disabilities stand out the most.

Each person is unique. If you could replace one potential person with another, you would never truly know what you've lost or gained. They just guess, based on the few facts they have. They might've even preferred the kid with the disability, but they can never know.

I believe in equality of opportunity, because we really don't know what a person's potential is until we allow for that. The more we level the playing field for people with disabilities, the less disabled they'll be in society.

As for a person's unique perspective, that's one more thing we can't know until the person develops it. Diversity of perspective is very valuable because it can change a society.

All of this doesn't even consider compassion for fellow human beings, but you didn't ask about that.

This is like a form of eugenics.