Message I got on a dating site

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The word that offended me...

was..

damage

Damaged goods.

You have to remember that the term was not applied to you. The person was speaking about their "profoundly" autistic child who has absolutely no communication with the world. This must be a heartbreaking thing for the parents, and that's why they speak of 'damage'. They have a severely disabled child who is locked away from them completely. This is obviously going to seem like a 'damaging' thing, from their perspective. So try not to take it as a personal attack on your own perception of your own autism.

Yeah I think you said, what I should have said. Or rather, you said what I was trying to get at, better than I did.

If I were you, I wouldn't be offended. This guy clearly doesn't get autism is due to genetics. Guess what.....50% of my family is autistic. It might assume 50% of my family is extra sensitive to vaccines, but that doesn't seem very believeable to me.

He doesn't understand much about it, but he isn't being an a**hole or anything.

I have no great love of being told some silly story as fact by someone years after it has been shown to just be a silly tale.

I would be interested to know if the person who said that to hale_bopp knew about her AS, if the person did then it makes it worse in my mind.

LOL

Well it is possible that this is true. There are some [very rare] cases where a child has a very bad reaction to a vaccination. They get a massive fever and swelling of the brain, it bakes their beans so to speak. They may or may not have been going to be diagnosed as being on the spectrum anyway but it does a lot of long term damage.

The more likely scenario though is that these poor people have hooked up with some DAN quack. :/

Excuse me what is DAN ?

"Defeat Autism Now" a group of Dr., founded by the Autism Research Institute, that has been tainted by some very dubious, and at times downright dangerous practices and science by what appears to be many in their ranks. There isn't really much in the way of quality control of who joins. It appears DAN has even admitted one Dr. to it's ranks after that Dr. killed a child via intentional administration of a very dangerous (and totally wacked out) chelation "push".

Out of interest why is that doctor still allowed to work as a doctor, or have I missed the moment when he was struck off.

You'll find autistic people here at WP who see themselves and the rest of us as damaged. It is offensive, because it's a dismissal of your integrity as a person. No one has the right to assume that of you.

I was making this argument on a liberal political blog as to why I had serious questions about Caroline Kennedy taking Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. Her cousin, Robert F Kennedy Jr., is a very vocal advocate for the vaccine link hysteria, backed with the celebrity clout of Jenny Mccarthy (of course) and Jim Carrey. Article here. Also, Caroline's deceased brother, John F Kennedy Jr., spoke out in support of the vaccine link shortly before his death. Given how tightly knit the Kennedy family is, and how they help each other out in their political causes, it's reasonable to assume that if she does become a Senator than who's to say her cousin wouldn't ask for her help to pressure Washington to side with the vaccine crazies over against unbiased research? And would this not profoundly shape public opinion of us autistics as persons and as participating citizens in our democracy?

I got sniffed at by other blog commenters. NTs don't understand how damaging (no pun intended) this is for us autistics. It's just another irrational excuse to dismiss us and not listen to us. I've already dealt with people on non-AS forums who told me bluntly that because I was autistic my opinion didn't count or wasn't trustworthy, that only research counted. OK, I could live with that if they meant legitimate research, because I believe legitimate research will ultimately support our cause of self-advocacy. But if the public only believes erroneous, biased and unscientific research, then we're doubly screwed. They were already biased against us because we are different, but now they have some crackpot their to justify their bigotry.

And in case anyone doubts it still: the vaccine link theory is BS. Read teh articel Warsie posted or for a more thorough dissection of RJK Jr's claims, go to this counterargument of RFK Jr's Rolling Stone/Salon article