Wow, finally right at the same time this is going on, someone posts a blog entry that addresses a lot of my concerns with both major sides of this argument (I know some people here get this, too, but a lot don't seem to).
Basically, if you've ever argued that autism or AS isn't a disability because (basically, fill in the blank here) then please read this. The post was originally aimed at people saying what you're saying.
And if you've ever argued that autism or AS is a disability specifically because of certain attributes autistic people have or certain things we can't do, please read it too. While the post doesn't directly address what you're saying as thoroughly as it addresses what the other group of people are saying, it does address it, namely the idea that disability is defined as difficulty with certain things residing entirely within a person.
At any rate, here's the blog article, and hopefully it'll make sense, because I can't articulate what this guy is saying nearly as well as he can right now (blame the fact that last night I spent a lot of time on Second Life, which is already more like realtime socializing than this board is, discussing disability rights with a bunch of people, autistic and non-autistic, who mostly already knew what it was as opposed to what it wasn't, which not only wore me out to the point of near-freezing at times, but put me in a mode where I didn't have to explain certain things and since I was really overloaded, anything I didn't have to explain was jettisoned from my "stuff I have to explain" mode or something, which led to real frustration whenever I had to try and explain it). So here's what he wrote, targeted at other autistic people of all sorts:
Welcome to the disability community.
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"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams
02 Jan 2008, 11:54 am
