Offensive blog entry about the term Autie (Ransom Notes)

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Agreed.

I agree too.

I think it's weird that he talks about people with AS using the term "autie", but he doesn't seem to know that autistics refer to themselves as "auties" or even that the term "aspie" exists and is used by those with AS. This leads me to believe that he does not know much about what he is criticizing, and therefore should have done more research before stating such a strongly worded opinion.

Actually, he knows.

"autie" is only ONE word out of billions...now really...why do people need to make a fuss over it?

If people use the word "autie" to describe themself then I see no problem with it what so ever.
Some people need to remember that a word is JUST a word...nothing more.
I would understand someone taking offense if the word "autie" was used in a negative way. Example; when making fun of some people, some use the term "ret*d" or say "you are acting ret*d". If the word "autie" was used in that context, sure, people would have a reason to be offended.

Though, since it is a word simply to describe a group of people, that has NO negative meaning to it...then honestly, is there really a problem?
So what? It sounds a bit "cutsie"...isn't it a better word than one that would make us sound like a group of necrophiliacs for example?
I personally, would rather be seen as "cute" than a tormenting psychopath

Sorry if anyone takes offense to this...but honestly...IT IS JUST A WORD!

I am as guilty of improper word use as any. For one, after ten months here, I am just getting numbers like 5 LFA to 63 AS/HFA, in 10,000. Which is 1 in 2000 and 12.6 in 2000.

This shows LFA to be under 7%, and that is Autism Speaks issue. Not much of a market share.

Even there I am still confused, does this Dx take an IQ of under 90? Does it take the Axis II mental retardation thingy?

If this is so, 1 in 2000, 500 per million, is 150,000 in the US.

This is what Autism Speaks raised $21,000,000 last year over. That is $140 per person, but as they only donated $10,000,000 to research, $75 per person went for Office Expenses.

They seen to have no interest in my Guru, Danielismyname, who despite his recent promotion to AS, needs support, and it is all now dependant on one person, his Mother.

So he should be in the other group, all other ASDs, which in the US number 1,890,000 and are totally ignored by Autism Speaks.

Since he is here, I would say Wrong Planet serves the other 93% of the market.

While LFA is hard to miss, there are a lot of older people here that were never counted, and a lot of women who have been Dxed something else. Together we may be 98% of the market sector.

I also think some LFA post here.

This vast majority has some things in common, I always thought I was weird, and the only one.
The greatest thing in my 61 years was to find you are all weird.

Things I never noticed before, I now discover most people are not like that, just us. This is good to know.

Finding other people with obsessions as deep as my own is great.

About the only real help any of us get is from Wrong Planet, discussions on coping with problems in life, broad and rich, and anytime, The Haven, for when it is just not working and I need someone to talk to now that understands.

It is good as far as it goes, but more is needed. Developmental delays seem prolonged, for unklike my generation, who were taught to swim by being pushed off the dock and abandoned, there are laws against that now.

The hard cold truth about work, education, that other sex, in a world full of liers, thieves, con men, and women, is still out there.

As the thief said to Conan, "It is called civilization, it is very old, and wicked!"

In a lot of ways we are like children, we need to be told things. We have our good points too.

Autism Speaks donates money basically for Genetic research. So far, the DNA of the fruit fly has not been figured out, most of the work has been for genetically modified crops, which can be patented, have built in pest control, but I have been told I am a pest.

People have been chopping up human brains for a hundred years or so, to date little has been learned. DNA does not offer much, even if conditions can be shown to have a genetic connection, so what, nothing can be done about it. Exterminating the people with undesirable traits has caused problems in the past.

Truely useful research, making humans that did not smell bad, were perhaps smarter, polite, would be the best, but nothing of the kind has even been proposed. Diet has more of a proven connection to a better life, and we have a much larger epidemic of obeasity than of Autism.

On the other hand occupational and social training do work. Not so much for LFA, as for the rest. They are just the people who get nothing. We have to self educate, which can be hard, as we are blind to it in the first place. Wrong Planet is the place to learn for us. I am a better person for being here.

Of course that is the blind leading the blind, but it is what we have.

There are some good online tests here, several levels of profiling, and that could be expanded to include social weakness, and what to do about it, and occupational help. What you could be good at, and what you have to do to prepare for it.

I am a Copebie! Long before I heard of ASDs, I had threatened to open a school, Remedial Human 101. It is not just us, this whole planet needs a boot camp of the brain.

Public opinion is fickle, Courts are slow, and in business, which is what we are, the place to fight is in the marketplace. Provide a better product, better service, in our case for 98% of the spectrum, and watch the opposition wither.

The LFA sector they want to research, we out number 19 to 1. They are going to need long term care, and we need jobs. No one could give such understanding care as we could.

I also have my doubts about LFA, I think it is childhood, not lifetime, and if you can avoid totally messing the person up, like Danielismyname, their condition will get upgraded over time.

We have the dominate market position and there is no room for compitition.

We need to self define, come up with new terms to denote the various functional levels. A fifteen year old, and a forty year old, do not have the same condition. We all have levels where we can function, and a next step to learn. We are such a small group, perhaps 5,000,000 worldwide, that personalized service is possible. Through the wonders of computers, everything about 5,000,000 people is a small data base.

The Media Term is Narrowcasting, a custom product for each customer. I developed one such program for teaching math to millions, it can be adapted to this situation.

We are not going to change much, the world is not going to change much, and a better life is going to take us doing it.

Autism Speaks does nothing for anyone. Except thenselves. There are still 150,000 in need of long term care, and Oregonbecky has been posting the problems of families with children who will outlive them, and their long term needs.

I think that is the place to strike, they are one of our twenty, and we should take care of our own.

A lot of the younger members are not in school, they need education that works, social and job training.

Smelena is doing the research on a book, "Raising Aspies for Fun and Profit." So far she has turned two unhappy children into happy monkeys, and is talking about bathing them. Parenting support is strong here.

"We have met the enemy, and they is us"

Pogo

No. Autistic disorder is sometimes associated with mental retardation (an overall IQ of under 75), but it's not needed to be diagnosed with it. Researchers placed those with autistic disorder into categories to see the outcome of the two groups, it's foregone that people with autism and mental retardation aren't going to function well in society. The thing is, they found that people with autism who have a "normal" IQ don't function that much better.

It's autistic disorder, Asperger's or PDD-NOS ("atypical autism resides here").

Oh well said, Alex! I've always said that figure includes all aspects of the Spectrum - including Aspergers. And the figures are misleading because the majority of that 1 in 150 is NOT LFA!

I'm totally new to this particular debate so please forgive me if I have the wrong end of the stick.


My immediate thoughts as I read this father's letter (as posted by Alex)?

1. Here is a dad who is in a lot of pain.

Look, at heart, I don't feel he's really talking about the words - he's trying to say how devastated he is that his child has autism, how hard it is to parent him, how worried he is for the child's future.

The argument about semantics (like most arguments about semantics) is secondary to this. It's the dad's way of saying 'I am really hurting about this. Please help me.'

2. Is this dad an Aspie himself?


See the bigger picture here, friends...!

These issues are very complex. For instance, even though I am classed as "white," I become highly offended when the "N" word is used (even by Blacks). Do I not have a right to be offended because the person using the term is a Black person?

Offense is an emotional reaction, not an intellectual conclusion. If someone is offended by the terms "autie" or "aspie," the best thing to do, IMO, is to explain to the person the context - not to question the person's right to be offended.

It's around 1/500 for autism proper; 1/100 for AS.

Do note however, that the 1/100 [or so] with AS, for the majority of them, they cannot be considering "high-functioning" by objective standards; most don't work, most live at home and most have few or no friends.

AS isn't exactly a common mental illness, it's a severe developmental disorder.

On a message board the other day I used the term aspie to describe myself, and the lady I was responding to said "sounds kind of poisonous to me".
Does it? I guess she's referring to an asp - a poisonous snake. Hadn't thought of it that way.
Aspie is, for me, a much nicer term than the whole Asperger Syndrome thing, not least because no-one knows how to pronounce it, or whether we're supposed to make it Asperger's or Asperger. And Syndrome makes it sound extremely scary, I think.
So...my vote for friendliest term for me = aspie.

This is somewhat OT but:

This sentence seems to sound as if mental illness is a trifle compared to AS. It is not. It can be, and frequently is, every bit as disabling as AS, or more so. Many people with major depression struggle to just make it from one day to another, to perform ordinary daily activities such as dressing up, cooking, washing oneself, going out etc. (been there myself); if the depression is severe, one may not be able to get out of bed, sometimes for months. Many people with mild chronic schizophrenia cannot hold down a job, live at home with their parents and many have difficulty making mundane decisions, because this condition tends to make thinking/logic warped even when there are few or no manifest symptoms such as hallucinations. I'm not even talking about the more severe chronic forms of schizophrenia, or about all the people who are suffering an apathetic reaction and/or personality deterioration after a schizophrenic breakdown (who typically also live at home, work at modest jobs or have no job at all, and may just spend their time watching TV all day because they are no longer interested in much of anything). Not talking about the havoc one will wreak during a psychotic manic episode, either.

Just felt I had to reply because presenting AS as *the* disabling condition, and major mental illness as much less serious, means not representing facts accurately enough.

a thought in response to daniel and ixochiyo_yohuallan's comments, I'd say that AS IS a common neurological type. It's as disabling as NTs want to make it.

After writing that comment, I was accused of being anti-cure which is not a label I would use to describe myself. I made no mention of being against a cure. No cure exists for Autism and it's pretty hard for me to be 'against' something that doesn't exist.

Do I have any problem with research into Autism that may result in the scientists finding a way to cure autism? Not if the research is ethically conducted. Would I have a problem with the cure if they did find it? I can't say since no one has found a cure. And what would they 'cure' anyway?

Last edited by alex on 29 Dec 2007, 9:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

Naturally, I didn't define the mental illness (I was speaking of milder anxiety disorders with its associated depression); many anxiety disorders can fluctuate in severity throughout life, and they can be treated with medication and CBT. There's no therapy for autism, nor is there medication. Anxiety disorders, mood disorders, psychotic disorders and whatnot are easily the "equal" of AS/AD; they can be treated to a greater extent than AS/AD however.

(Personally, the whole slew of anxiety disorders/depression I have pale compared to my AS/AD; which caused them all to appear to begin with.)

The prevalence of autism proper differs from page to page; 1/2000 down to 1/500.

Exactly.

Speaking of help: I doubt it that anybody in the anti-cure movement is opposed to helping people with autism (as in, assisting them in improving their living or communication skills, adjustment, etc.). Nobody is trying to say, let's simply sit back and leave autistic children to develop all by themselves without any aid from outside.

But there is help and "help". I still have to meet a control freak who wouldn't claim that what they were doing to their victims is "for their own good". And, when it comes to autism, it looks like a large number of parents fall precisely into this category - they are more concerned not with what would make their children happier, but with what they want from their children (for that matter there are many people who are the same way towards their non-autistic children as well, it's just that with autistic ones, the whole thing is a lot more visible because the gap between what the child is really like and the parents' expectations is too large). In other words, they would like to mold their children into the non-autistic mode of behavior because it would please them, personally, regardless of how it would really make the child feel. But, of course, there probably isn't a single person who would admit to this, even to him- or herself, so it is most convenient to do this in the name of "help".

Last edited by ixochiyo_yohuallan on 29 Dec 2007, 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.