Alex Plank--What the @#$% is this crap?

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whirlingmind
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07 Sep 2012, 12:26 pm

Mercurial wrote:

Seriously. On the Shameful website:

Quote:

"1 in 54 boys have a diagnosis here in the United States. Children who receive the diagnosis are given intensive education at an early age in order to gain skills required to succeed. In France, Autism is viewed as a psychosis and no help is given. In fact, if a child does get a diagnosis, he risks being thrown out of school."

"1 in 54 boys..."

"if a child does get a diagnosis, he ...."

Why the f**k would you even entertain such a sexist and biased portrayal autism? You of anyone here should know what we women and girls with autism deal with, how we are overlooked for treatment and for diagnoses and early intervention, how we get excluded from media reports and stats released to the public, that even research is so biased as to exclude any female participants from studies on a regular basis--something that greatly undermines the scientific accuracy and reliability of such studies.

You should know how language about autism is loaded with the false presumption that the default autistic is male and how such gendered language erases female, trans and queer autistics from the public consciousness (and I can vouch for that, because I have had that "You're autistic? Oh I just didn't think...cos you're a woman..." conversation more times that I can recount).

You should know that we female, trans and queer autistics have to fight just to be seen, by the public, by autism charities, by researchers (and apparently by you--hello!).

You should know that autistic themselves don't always fall into the either/or categories of the conventional gender binary and so saying X number of boys are autistic means jack sh** because it is forcing gender distinctions onto a group of people who, by definition of being autistic, often do not fit such neurotypical conventions.

And finally, and more importantly, you should know that singling out male autistics and ignoring female and non-gender conforming autistics reinforces that very harmful "boys are more valuable" bias that directly contributes to the social obstacles that female, trans and queer autistics face when seeking a proper dx and finding the support and understanding that is more readily available to their "more valued" cis male counterparts.

This kind of blatant sexism and bias is unacceptable, offensive and yes, shameful--especially from someone who thought he needed to go and make a film to criticize other people for their biases about autism.

We absolutely need to stop referencing gender whenever we talk about autism. Autism is not a gender-based condition, yet far too much of the language used to talk about autism suggests that it is. We should be more enlightened than this. There is just no excuse for falling to the trappings of conventional (neurotypical) sexism and gender bias and for not using gender-neutral data and language when talking about autistics. If you dare go around speaking on behalf of autistics, you MUST speak for ALL autistics, not just boys and men while treating the rest of us like we're invisible or not worth the effort to include in the discussion.

Good on you for pointing this out. It's this subtle kind of playing to the stereotypes and false beliefs that contributes to the appalling problems faced by women trying to get diagnosed.

Speaking as a female with AS with two daughters awaiting assessment for AS, I would like to see the playing field levelled.

I will always maintain, that there is probably no ratio difference between males and females on the spectrum - it's just that the professionals need to wake up and smell the coffee and address the needs of women.

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XFilesGeek
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07 Sep 2012, 12:34 pm

aSKperger wrote:

:lol:

Made my day.
Listen to Tequila ladies, Don't opress the majorities just because you are lazy to write down all 2978 of them :roll:

There's only two:

Boys and girls.

How difficult is it to represent statistics for both, and why do people cry and whine when it's pointed out that the data on females SHOULD be represented?

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Dirtdigger
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07 Sep 2012, 12:39 pm

Delphiki wrote:

Dirtdigger wrote:

But if a person does the math a lot more boys have autism than girls.

Autism in girls:
1 in 34

Autism in boys
1 in 54

Do you know math?

What a stupid question. Does 34 and 54 adds up to 88? And is the 1 in each group included? So, lets not get smart and try to understand what's going on here.

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LostInSpace
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07 Sep 2012, 1:43 pm

Dirtdigger wrote:

Delphiki wrote:

Dirtdigger wrote:

But if a person does the math a lot more boys have autism than girls.

Autism in girls:
1 in 34

Autism in boys
1 in 54

Do you know math?

What a stupid question. Does 34 and 54 adds up to 88? And is the 1 in each group included? So, lets not get smart and try to understand what's going on here.

Yeah... that's not how averages work. This is how you compute an average of two numbers:

(Number1 + Number2) / 2

If 1/54 boys had AS and 1/34 girls had it, then the average of all children would be between 1 in 54 and 1 in 34, hardly 1 in 88. By my calculation (assuming equal numbers of boys and girls), 11/459 children would have it, or slightly more than 1 in 42. Also, it would be much more common in girls if that were the case (1/34 is more common than 1/54).

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Last edited by LostInSpace on 07 Sep 2012, 1:55 pm, edited 4 times in total.

unduki
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07 Sep 2012, 1:50 pm

Maybe she did overreact but the sexist comments that follow are beyond disgusting.

How dare a woman get out of line!! !

Women have every right to overreact to a society that has largely ignored them forever and continues to do so - unless some man needs his ass wiped, right?

Referencing feminazis is not going to help the situation but I suspect helping others isn't the objective of many here.

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aSKperger
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07 Sep 2012, 1:51 pm

XFilesGeek - like someone pointed out, it is more powerful to pick just these numbers for propagandistic reasons. Or Alex didn't remember how many girls are there, or whatever. I am sure as hell if he pointed out girls only, no single man would complain. Do you know why...? :wink:

and kid = he? In my opinion, Alex used it because it is more natural than "it".If you ask me about my friend, i hear "male friend". Women hear "female friend". It is natural. I have male eyes and ears, they have female. I understand it perfectly.
It is just funny how some women have to emphasize that they have vaginas all the time. Why do they think anyone wants to hear that? Why such obsession with few organs?

unduki
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07 Sep 2012, 1:52 pm

And the statistics are impossible. Many, many, many girls/women have never been identified as having autism. WE HAVE BEEN OVERLOOKED. WE ARE STILL BEING OVERLOOKED. You can't belittle someone with your fancy math if you don't have the correct numbers to begin with.

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LostInSpace
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07 Sep 2012, 1:52 pm

aSKperger wrote:

It is just funny how some women have to emphasize that they have vaginas all the time.

What?

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BorgPrince
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07 Sep 2012, 1:54 pm

unduki wrote:

Well, let's be honest here, there are about 50 trillion things of greater importance in the universe than crying over pronouns in the English language. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think it really matters. So yes, it was a ridiculous overreaction.

LostInSpace
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07 Sep 2012, 1:58 pm

BorgPrince wrote:

Welcome to the Internet, where 99.98% of things being discussed don't matter in the grand scheme of things. I notice you still chose to post a response however.

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Dirtdigger
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07 Sep 2012, 2:03 pm

LostInSpace wrote:

Dirtdigger wrote:

Delphiki wrote:

Dirtdigger wrote:

But if a person does the math a lot more boys have autism than girls.

Autism in girls:
1 in 34

Autism in boys
1 in 54

Do you know math?

What a stupid question. Does 34 and 54 adds up to 88? And is the 1 in each group included? So, lets not get smart and try to understand what's going on here.

I didn't catch that in the article. So you are right. Someone else made a booboo too besides me who simply didn't catch the discrepency. So I divided 2 into 88 since there is one from the girl group and one from the boy group and come up with 44 if there were equal numbers of boys and girls.

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BorgPrince
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07 Sep 2012, 2:06 pm

LostInSpace wrote:

BorgPrince wrote:

Welcome to the Internet, where 99.98% of things being discussed don't matter in the grand scheme of things. I notice you still chose to post a response however.

If I had anything better to do, trust me, I wouldn't have bothered.

unduki
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07 Sep 2012, 2:07 pm

BorgPrince wrote:

unduki wrote:

In a man's scheme of things women are not important, but really? You wouldn't mind if we started referencing everyone as she? Perhaps the reason women "overreact" to the improper use of such pronouns is because women die because of the distinction. Women live in slave-like conditions because of the distinction. 50 trillion you say? You have an extremely low opinion of women, don't you?

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LostInSpace
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07 Sep 2012, 2:20 pm

Dirtdigger wrote:

Well, not strictly 1 in 44, because fractions are weird (for example the average of 1/2 and 1/4 is not 1/3). But close. If you work it out it comes out to slightly more than 1 in 42.

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ADoyle90815
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07 Sep 2012, 2:23 pm

I think the issue is that it takes females longer to get diagnosed, even if they have the same symptoms as their male peers. I'm one of those females who didn't get diagnosed with Asperger's until adulthood, but I will say that Asperger's wasn't known about until the mid 90's, and it took people longer to realize that girls can be on the autism spectrum.

This female even recently participated in a university research study about people with developmental disabilities including autism spectrum disorders, and how people with a disability are treated in the workplace.

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07 Sep 2012, 2:33 pm

I don't really care what the intent was, tbh. It is misleading and should be fixed. If it isn't fixed, we can assume the intent was indeed to imply that only males have AS.

As for the people who claim it doesn't matter: if it matters so little to you, stay out of it. Obviously it matters to other people, and unless you actually want to argue that it's too much to ask that someone writing an article make the tiny effort it takes to be inclusive, you have nothing to complain about. Just because you personally don't care about something doesn't mean those who do are overreacting (especially when that something doesn't even relate to you at all).

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