"Low Functioning Autistics". Are they disabled?

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The situation you describe does not change the Fact that I have had a Sword of Damocles ready to cut me off at the knees with me my entire life that has caused momentary muteness, ongoing lack of capability to recognize important nonverbal cues, being unable to recognize my own emotions until frustration causes a string of vulgarity fit for a pro, which I am. These "different" traits have caused social embarrassment, ineptitude picking up women, losing jobs, problems with friends and family. Somehow calling this a difference, instead of a disorder, does not seem like it will alter the reality of my spectrum condition.

disability doesn't suggest that a person is less then human or even incapable of making decisions. a man with no legs is no doubt disabled, but this shouldn't lead people to suggest that he is incapable of making decisions.

i didn't actually describe a situation. your traits and situation are not identical to all what is possible.

note, i use the word 'if' quite a bit and nowhere did i actually say 'velodog'.

also this considers the idea of situations that may have been possible had the world evolved in a different way. situations, social structure, etiquette and norms could be far different but people would fundamentally be the same.

the problems that you list are all things that are caused by how others respond to you.
if you were in a situation that others responded to you far differently, then maybe some of the traits that are causing you problems in your current situation wouldnt be so problematic.

when i use the word difference, i am not placing it in the same category as i would if i were talking about a disorder. one difference that a person can have is a disorder, but disorders are not the only thing that would qualify as differences.

I agree with a fair amount of your first post Shayne, as far as providing disability as a legal definition to allow for benefits, for those who may need them. I used the term disorder because it is in PDD and because I will not qualify as disabled since I am fairly high functioning and can maintain work with where I am now. The example you used in describing a situation as changing things seems to rest on providing some type of optimum conditions. The real world does not always provide optimum conditions. And that is where I see simply changing a word as not changing reality. You were polite in making your counterpoint to mine, so I will let you have the last word. We will probably not end up agreeing here.

danielismyname seemed to take the definition of autism too strictly from the diagnostic manual.

my point really was that in some reality, it could be possible for one autistic person to exist in optimal conditions, in which case they wouldn't meet the written requirements of what it is seen to be autistic, but that doesn't change who they are inside.

i wasn't looking to change a word really, only responding to Merle's post

~ "sinsboldly wrote:
~ I thought being on the spectrum at all was a disability!?!
~ other wise, why make it 'something different' at all? "


it just seemed to suggest that differences are only worth identifying if they are disabilities.

we can have differences that don't hinder us in any way. we have different hair/skin colors or do things in different ways that don't make us or anyone else wrong in the ways that they do things. it is a matter of how others treat these differences that determine the severity of the difference. by 'we' i just mean people, not talking about autistics specificly. so it is possible to identify differences in people without suggesting that its something wrong with them.

i dunno, maybe i took her words too literally.

Last edited by Shayne on 03 May 2008, 8:35 am, edited 6 times in total.

yes they are,absolutely . anyone with low functioning autism should be considered disabled. and should get financial benefit ,and whatever benefits they qualify for.

I would imagine that everyone one the spectrum is, im on benefits from being in the mental health system and having problems there and I know its considered a disability.

I am glad I have escaped the 'mental health system'. When I was 17 my parents put me into a mental institution. After a year or so, I gained their trust enough to go out on a day pass, where I immediately excused myself to the rest room, clambered out of the tiny window and ran to the city bus stop, put half of my 'walking around money' into the fare box and rode to the end of the line. I walked, using the highway indicators on the city streets to the nearest highway entrance and hitchhiked over 500 miles that first night.
I never looked back.

When my current psychologist asked me if I had trust issues, I laughed. He was unprepared for my laugh and my story. I still think he thinks I am just exaggerating for effect.
His years of working with institutionalized folks hasn't given him much breadth of experience with Free Range Aspies.

Merle

Hear! Hear!

you're awesome!

Gosh I admire you for that.
If I get a diagnosis from the Asperger assessment then maybe I can be free and I can get off all these drugs...although then I'll be up all night again

What a fascinating story. I hope you're writing or consider putting this into words. We need a fresh perspective!

equinn

thank you, Equinn. I certainly hope to be able to contain all this in a book of memoirs or two. I was trying to explain to my psychologist what I wanted out of our association. The only way I could convey it was :

Say I am Italian, from sunny Italy . .. warm in the Tuscan sun, and I found myself in Iceland, there were only Icelanders around me, speaking Icelandic, doing Icelandic things, being Icelandic with out even thinking about it.
I try to be as Icelandic as possible, as to be kind and gentle with these nice and not so nice Icelandic folks, but I am not getting diagnosed so I can be MORE ICELANDIC. I want to get diagnosed so I can learn more about me being ITALIAN.

he just looked at me. He didn't say anything. And then there was my bus that went by and I missed it, so I was called away to have to walk since I missed my bus. I hope he didn't think I was being vague or obscure.

How would anyone ELSE be able to convey this thought to an NT??
anyone? Please?

Merle

oh, honey, wait until I tell you were I ended UP on August 8th 1969! Bethel, New York! they said there was going to be a big gathering for an Arts and Music Fair up near Woodstock, NY but they had to relocate the venue. . . . . I was there about a week before the Festival started and was there for about a month, afterwards !

I read an article about something like this, actually.

It was about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, whose families had passed as Catholic for generations, but who were really Jewish in origin.

Many of them, once finding this out, have started learning more about Judaism, some staying whatever religion they were but incorporating some Jewish cultural things into their lives, and others converting back to Judaism and practicing it as their religion. Many of them said they were more comfortable and felt like it kept them in touch with their ancestors and heritage.

So they were not learning about Judaism in order to keep passing as Gentiles, but they were instead learning about it to learn about their family's culture that had been lost over the years since this all happened.