Should we be the ones spreading awareness?

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Do you think there are so many misconceptions due to people who aren't living life with autism spreading their version of awareness? Do you think people with low and high functioning autism should spread awareness instead? People all seem to have different ideas of what classifies someone as autistic or say stuff like "You don't look like you have aspergers or autism" but it goes to show you that people are not enlightened. I think it would help us out tremendously if people who have experience in life with their low and high functioning autism came out and spoke instead of having others speaking on our behalf because they make it seem as though we are such bad creatures at times. Yeah I know there are people with autism that can be mean but it seems to me that most cases focused on are putting people in a negative light when there are so many very nice people too.

How can people that don't understand how our minds work speak for us? It's like the name of this website, wrong planet.

Do you think if we took the time to speak for ourselves that maybe we can gain new understandings about each other, normal and abnormal and maybe perhaps we won't be thought of as abnormal in a bad way?

Yes, I think it's very important that people with autism be heard. People need to hear the opinions of those on the spectrum, not just the opinion of big name organizations like Autism Speaks that paint such negative picture. Positive autism awareness is very important to me. (okay, it's one of my current special interests, so it pretty much has most of my attention at all times) Even if I find out that I don't have AS both of my sons have autism, so I will still be advocating for them.
Has anyone ever thought about starting a group for positive support, and awareness for autistics? I have, but I get aught up in all the details, then I get kinda stuck as far as what to do next.

I think we HAVE to take control of our own destinies and speak for ourselves.

A few weeks ago I set up a formal survey on accomodation for submission at national level. I did this because the self styled National Asperger Association presumed to make submissions on our behalf without consult a single one of us to find out how we felt, what we needed and what we wanted.

The most terrifying thing about the results was the vast gulf of difference between what the NT (and anyone who participated had to be open minded and genuinely sympathetic to do so) said about us and what we said about ourselves.

These were NT who were really trying to understand us and yet they were consistently wrong even about what we liked and what we could, and could not tolerate.

Without me (who usually isn't even aware of what is going on) deciding to insist we had a voice, the only things taken into account informulating national strategy would misreprsent what we needed and what we could tolerate to the point of creating a serious potential for unnecessary damage, distress and suffering.

Similar problems are being created all over the world, every day, because others speak for us, and we let them.

M

True, true... how does an NT figure they can explain what's going on in our heads? lol If I trusted anyone to explain me, I'd trust you guys first.

Before landing here a few months ago I would have said that autistic people do not speak, cannot take care of themselves, and sit and rock, the most active might spin something. I had never heard of Aspurgers.

So one day I discover I belong here, but thought AS not Autisum. How could it be, I am smart and well read?

Lots of people don't have any friends, lots of people prefer computers to people, just because I order the same thing every time I eat out alone, well that's what I like.

I write, hold patents, build models from scratch, and if a machine can be fixed I can fix it. I read them like books.

I do not really relate to a lot that is said by people Dxed with Aspergers, all the ones who make sense are HFA, so what is that, some kind of mod on this forum?

My first post, "At first I thought it was a joke!"

Hans Asperger, you made that up.

So krex is working on a magazine, the other side of this.

You calling me names! Listen up you little pscyobabbling twerp, knew your kind at the Uni, Psych Major means nut case! Now how many times do I have to slap you upside the head before you quit telling people that I am not smart, I am deranged?

This is going to hurt.

I am publishing the magazine.

I wanted. "The Hannibal Lector Guide to Living". He is the poster boy of the profession.

As far as I can tell they wanted access to drugs, so they could self medicate. Knowing how strange they were they formed a business about thirty years ago, where they could play pill priest. I am going to bring up every care of client abuse I can find, they do seem to produce murders, sexual abusers, and just plain nut jobs that get locked up.

I am going to Larry Flint them.

Getting our point of view out is important, stuffing a sock in their mouths is just as important.

It is not slander and libel when the convictions back it up. Vlad the Impailer is my hero.

Taking the field means clearing it, then we will be heard, and Dr. Lector's team will be looking to hide.

Truth is, they have no basis from which to explain it. This is blind men describing an elephant.

Even here, we have something in common, but it is not the same for all.

We can work a subject to death. All points of view will be covered, we will talk about a sink full of dirty dishes for ten times longer than it would take to wash them. Life's problems, we are better suited to deal with. Paper plates I tell you! One cup, glass, bowl, fork, keep it simple.

We have a lot in common about making a living. The girls must be desperate, for most of the older males are married. As for aspie girls, they do seem to wind up mothers. We have normal human problems.

There is not aspie pill, or treatment, so how did this non-medical profession get started? We were discovered in 1994? AS will not get you SSI, so what is it?

I think it is a way that socially dependant little twerps describe people who are much smarter than them.

Whatever they are doing it is not medicine, not science, it is some social conformaty religion.

So please submit to the magazine.

>>>I think it is a way that socially dependant little twerps describe people who are much smarter than them.

Like a lot of other religions and their clergy, people become "pill priests" because they failed at life. I've seen too many of them, and I heard how my husbands cousin is going into it now because he couldn't make it through engineering.

>>>>Whatever they are doing it is not medicine, not science, it is some social conformaty religion.

Yeah, religion in general is about social conformity. But, different religions have different social norms. Some expect you to go to a building and listen to a boring lecture about how you are not worthy every week, others, like our evil "pill priest" religion, expect you to socialize with others.
Thats not to say that religion in itself is a bad thing, just that some religions are fundamentally incompatable with who I am, such as this stupid shrink religion.

No, simply because we suck at describing things while speaking to another person.. Well, I do anyway.. I always do.
It would be pointless to try something like this if I mess up, making it so no one takes me seriously or whatever they want to think.

It isn't that we need to spread awareness. That would just throw us in the same crowd as the gay pride marchers, or other obscure freak shows who want everyone to bow down before their differences instead of realizing their differences will not affect their ability to work or perform our duties in society.

That is the key point we should be focusing on: we are just people, and our ability to hold a job, communicate what is absolutely necessary to continue surviving, and work to better ourselves like any other person is what makes us normal. The fact our brains are developed differently may be a hindrance, but given we are gifted with better analytical skills, it is a fair trade, if not a beneficial mutation which could, in the years to come, carve out a new, superior path for human evolution.

Of course, intellect is not a strong platform to start a new world order. You don't see the guys from MENSA or the chess club forming training camps, rigging IEDs, or having pride marches while spouting very effective propaganda.

Not to mention they don't wear the proper khakis to goose-step.

How about a full-page ad in USA Today listing the AS symptoms from DMS-IV-TR and the more common coping skills adults can form?

1 out of 150, a real minority. Still 2,000,000 in the US, and most of us were never notified.

So we went ahead and had jobs, homes, families, and I tell we are far from the strangest people I have met.

What makes us noticable is that we do produce. The concept of a mad doctor or professor was modeled on an aspie. We produce new things that frighten people who are against change.

After the forced socialization of school, mating rituals, and parent support groups, most people have no friends, only leave the house when they have to, and chose an isolated life. We get there early, reject the forced, and being outnumbered, are stuck with that "Everyone knows, everyone does, which we do not.

The mold does not fit, and the mold was made to turn out factory workers. Life was very different when most people lived by farming. We are the rejects of the industrial age, those who do not fit as soldiers, workers.

In a little over a hundred years we went from seasonal work, in nature, to the conformity of living in slums and responding to the company whistle. It was surely modeled on the church bell. It is also found in The Time Machine, by Wells. People were bred for meat machines, which are now no longer needed.

Two hundred years ago an aspie would have been chosen for an apprentice. The narrow interest, the focus and learning, would have been first choice. Being social would have been last. My work is more important than what the people around are thinking. As far as I can gather they were the less than 1% skilled labor of the last thousands of years.

You can send a beefy plowboy to school, and he will play football. As education expanded our universities went from places of learning, to a pre-tailgate party before the big game. Now you can get a Degree in Oprah and Soaps, it is called Media and Communication.

We are still the people who get the patents, make the science discoveries, create computers in garages. And once we do groups try to take it away.

This is about control, we produce, they steal. Who does it help to label us?

Slinging labels works both ways, our weapon is questions. What do the pill priests do or produce that is useful for anyone other than themselves? Do their services in fact cause harm?

We are not disabled, they will not give money for AS, so any label harms our ability to make a living.

I also notice this happen along with the rise of the christian right, the highly intelligent did not buy their conformity. So how do you discredit Professors, Scientists, leading thinkers?

We are not in bad company, and this is what McCarthy did with Red Scares. A group of independant thinkers is being attacked by a mob.

Change will come, their assets and power will fade, and they are fighting everything that might change anything.

Our brains are much larger than our numbers. We lead them into the industrial era, the computer era, and now the Internet is the greatest threat.

I have heard they would like to shut it down, some potential terrorist might use it to email his mother, Homeland Security, and Jesus!

They label people they plan on rounding up during a national emergency. We are a threat to the dumb.

It only takes one cow to lead a herd. They were the King's the Church's, and the industrialist's goons, we are capable of leading the herd in another direction. They will destroy the planet to stay in power.

So take your pick, death through conformity, or write for the Magazine.

I think some of you are missing the point.

We can't actually trust other people to define us in terms of awareness.

Firstly, because anyone willing to do so is likely to have an agenda of their own, which will distort everything they say and that is unlikely to be to our advantage.
Secondly, because even if a person had no agenda, HOW ON EARTH could they be expected to guess right? Because that is all they are doing, guessing.

We have to organise and define ourselves...amongst ourselves, then let those who can speak for those who cannot...and if nobody can speak, let's do what everybody else does and hire a PR company to represent our interests in accord with our agenda and instructions.

M

For anyone who is interested in a more "whole" perspective of people on the spectrum,I am starting a magazine.We are making a web-site for submissions and subscription and I will be starting a new thread about this tomorow.

If you would like to submit an article about your "interests,art,writing" you can email me at....

Scalesandfeathers@Gmail.com..........or PM me here.


The whole reason I am starting this magazine is that the last "autism awareness month" was nothing but negative misinformation about people on the spectrum.When Jenny Macarthy was asked by Larry King if she knew of any adults with AS....she said no and changed the subject.I think we need to change it back.....We are here.We need to self-define because they are doing a piss-poor job of defining us.