Why Aspies ARE disabled, and we should embrace that.

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Actually. I am an Aspie and I recognise that this could be part of the problem. I have used the meaning of the word disabled as in a gun that is disabled (cannot be fired) or a car that has been disabled (e.g spark plugs removed).

As for people being offended. If you've read my earlier posts, you will find that I have a preference for calling people on the ASD spectrum differently abled. Can you see how I could be offended by the notion of being disabled when I don't believe that I am? It goes both ways.

The_Q,

You're right about that! Sometimes I can't afford to buy candy in a machine! I have potentially HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars of credit, and may have hundreds of dollars cash, and STILL can't buy a candy bar because I don't have enough money!

WHY????? Because some machines take only up to $1, and some take only up to 25cent denominations, and the smallest I have is a $20 bill! BTW MOST ATMs here only dispense $20, and those that dispense lower ones generally only do $5 and/or $20.

With AS, it is almost like we have the larger currencies. We may have great abilities. They may even be better than NTs. Because many don't accept us, we have to spend more effort, etc... Just like all the days I went without a snack, or searched for someone to change a $20.

So you couldn't call me poor. Likewise, I don't think I am disabled. For ONCE I believe the differently abled label.

I've been fighting for my son's right to be accepted, tolerated as a unique thinker. It doesn't fly too well. And the more I try, the more he is isolated. Unfortunately mainstream education doesn't have time to accomodate that one who is unpredicatable, marches out of step, and so he needs a disablity label in order to be accomodated or changed so that he learns how to march in step, or fake it. Once he learns how to fake it, he will be considered improving, reaching his goals or objectives. I would never refer to him as disabled. No way. He thinks, walks, talks, processes at high levels--he has the right to maintain his way of thinking and I wouldn't want it any different. He knows I support him and this is powerful for him--he's only eight-years old.

Aside from homeschoooling or a school for aspies (not always the answer), he is where he is. It's called adapting, folks. We have to learn how to adapt, to fake it, to think something and keep our private thougths INSIDE as much as possible. The greatest thinkers and leaders have done this. He is learning how to do this while preserving his way. This is the ultimate goal It's playing the game and coming out with your dignity. The successful people have figured this out. It's the rest that are left in the dust, blubbering in self-indulgent pity, arguing over semantics, posting and perusing Wrong Planet--like me. I want better for my son.

equinn

Thank you. I don't want to speak for anyone else. However, I know, for myself, that the duality of differenty abled and differently enabled seems to work.

Right, so you know what your superpower is... you just don't know where to use it yet

If life was a movie, then this would be a setup for some big scene at the end.

Donna Williams referring to the Spectrum as a "Condition" rather than a "Disorder", in keeping with the theme of ASCs as a minority culture: "the largest disability of which is the inability of non-autistic culture to accommodate their differences in respectful, empowering, and constructive ways", particularly in providing "forms of education, communication, social activities/networks, occupation, and employment most appropriate to" [their] "form of information processing."

Separating the cure of ASCs from curing their symptoms: "a fair proportion of those with ASCs often have a higher level of sometimes disabling co-morbid treatable medical conditions such as gut and immune dysfunctions, mood, anxiety, and compulsive disorders... Whilst these impact and increase the degree of one's 'autism,' these deserve treatment as much as any medical condition when at a level that disables the individual and should not be confused with the ASC itself."

ASC is one possibility. However, I like the term "spectrum of autisms." I explain my view in my personal narrative (about halfway down the page).

I'm sorry, but this is ret*d. No offense to the truly ret*d by the way, but you really have no excuse. What you are saying is that we are not disabled because the rest of our community doesn't go out of its way to help us get around our disability. Society can mitigate the consequences of a disability if enough people decide to invest time and resources in doing so, but there is still a fundamental difference between someone who can walk and someone who cannot. It is not a socially created fact.

The social model of disability can be constructed in various ways. There are some people who reject the very notion of being differently abled and, instead, focus on being differently enabled.

I think it makes more sense to develop the social model of disability so that these two concepts are seen in dialectical tension with one another. A person is differently abled if her or his abilities are expressed differently from the typically abled. A person is differently enabled if her or his abilities are not receiving the same level of social support as is available to the typically enabled.

Ultimately I suppose I am just irritated that "normies" have always insisted on me becoming more like them - my younger brother even said to my face he was better than me because he doesn't have Aspergers. He was serious, too. He didn't think it would offend me.

Psycho_jimmy you know thats a pile of crap right?

No human is better than another, sure you may specialise in something, someone else may be better at speaking, in the end does it really matter?

Since when were people on a scale of best to worst anyway!?

The whole premise behind the social model of disability is that we should not try to become like neurotypicals, i.e., that society should embrace and accommodate everyone.

The disabled are not differently abled. They lack what others have. I mean sure, by really stretching I could dream up some bizarre situation in which it might be an advantage to have no legs, but by and large such a disability manifests as absence, not difference.





No, sorry. I am just as able to walk in a wilderness as I am in a city. Social context does not grant me the power of locomotion. This is in strong contrast to the experience of a disabled person who may not be able to get around with a wheelchair, someone to maintain the wheelchair, and gently sloping handicap access ramps, wide hallways, special elevators etc. In my case I am "able" whether society enables me or not.

The question is, What do others have? One of those "haves" is an intangible, social power. That is why I find it useful to develop a dialectic of being differently abled and being differently enabled (with the emphasis on the second). IMO, this approach is consistent with the social model of disability. By the way, the social model of disability is at the basis of the "anti-cure" autism rights movement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability




Social context has different expressions depending on the disability. For me, as a child, it meant that, because I could not be accommodated as an Asperger's autistic (even though I was diagnosed with schizophrenia), they put me on antipsychotic drugs and sent me to a psychiatric hospital to receive electroconvulsive therapy.

Well, all those NT's who don't have a good detailed long term memory are IMHO lacking an advantage - therefore, they're disabled

I suppose perspective on the matter is relative according to experience.