What do you think of the Autism Rights Movement?

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The Autism Rights Movement champions the following ideas:

1. Autism is not a disorder, but a neural variation, like homosexuality.

2. Autistics should be taught coping skills rather than taught to imitate neurotypicals.

3. Autism is genetic, not caused by environmental factors.

4. Autism should not be cured or eliminated.

I agree with 3 and 4 but not with 1 and 2. I object to scientists trying to find the cause of autism so they can prevent kids from getting it, or being born with it. It would be almost like trying to alter human genetics to eliminate blacks or gays. But autism is still a disorder, and the only way for an autistic to be successful in jobs and in life is to imitate NTs, because regardless of how much awareness is raised, there will still be subconscious discrimination against anyone who acts autistic.

What do you think of this?

Well if you examine the techniques of speach and language therapists in interventions for children with ASD's you will find their not really about teaching imitation there about enabling an autistic/asperger child to connect the dots so that everyday communication taken for granted makes sense to a mind that thinks logically. They understand that a person with an ASD is not born with the "common sense" (for want of a better word) rule book that everyone else has. So the interventions are about teaching an understanding of inter personal communication in a non-patronising way that allows a logical conclusion to be drawn.

Beyond that the only proven techniques with any definitive positive outcome are behavioural interventions. These have fallen out of favour for being too inhumane for the most part.

You find the spokes people for this movement make rather cliche phrases that sound good in the mass media but from a critical thinking perspective I find it demonstrates an unhelpful naieve outlook on how interventions are implemented at this moment in time.

So the whole "make an autie like an NT= making a seal clap its hands in the zoo" scenario is rather far fetched cliche of this argument for me.

In principle I favour an autism rights movement but I think it shouldn't follow the same route as the disability rights movement or a mental health rights movement. If you have the time pick up Tom Shakespears book "Disability rights and wrongs" for a perspective of what can be learned from the "physical and sensory disabilities" field.

I think were still another decade away from any real serious movement coming about both in Europe and probably even a greater amount of time in the States were disability seems to be viewed with such disdain I don't think the americain culture is even ready to concieve of what a condition like autism is actually about. To cure autism? Do these parents even understand science? The autism speaks parents do not strike me as rational in any sense of the word. I'm just glad there not a UK based organisation

What do you think about world domination?

'Autism is not a disorder.'

Whoever came up with that chunk o'horse manure either doesn't HAVE Autism, or is too young to understand what they've got.

That is so ridiculous, in fact, that I could never support any Autism Rights platform that endorses that idea. It harms Autistics far more than it could ever help them to pretend that a 'neurodiversity' is anything but a handicap. Not a horrifying mutant disfiguration, but a handicap nonetheless.

As for coping skills, I don't know how much you can impart to someone in an educational setting about how to live and function in an alien world. Seems these techniques are always developed by someone who does not have the limitations themselves and has not observed Autistics of all ages over an extended period in order to determine what actually works and what doesn't. IME, life itself is the best teacher. Once you get out in the world and start interacting without a net, you develop your own coping mechanisms and find what works for you.

An NT trying to teach an Autistic how to develop coping skills is just an absurdly stupid concept. If the biggest part of our difficulty in the first place is the fact that we don't think like you and don't fully grasp why you do things the way you do, exactly how do you propose to develop a teaching technique that makes sense to us?

I don't need separate rights as an Autistic, but I do need to have my disability recognized as a handicap and to be treated fairly, like any one else with an unalterable limitation. I'm just sick of having my challenges treated as though they aren't real.

And why is it difficult for you, Willard? What, exactly, makes life difficult?

Suppose we lived in a society composed largely of autistics and Aspies. Suppose no one was expected to make eye contact. Everyone tolerated stimming, and people didn't play music so loud you want to run away. If dressing fashionably were considered second to dressing comfortably, and most of the people you met didn't engage in small-talk. In this imaginary world, people on the spectrum would have easier lives. Not perfect, but about on par with what NTs experience now.

But then on the flip side of that, in such a world, NTs would have a huge need for social contact that the people around them wouldn't be able to meet. They'd annoy people and seem stupid for trying to talk about nothing in particular. They'd be incomprehensible. When their friends and family ignored them, because that's what we need, they would feel horribly lonely. They'd get a reputation for being high-maintenance, needing constant attention. They'd be prone to depression, and decreased productivity. The lack of a special interest would make them seem stupid, as if it were a deficiency. The lack of stims would make them seem odd, and the people who thrive at parties and in crowds would have to seek out places that most people would consider a necessary evil at best. They would be ostracized, making them more depressed and less productive. They would be seen as disabled. Broken. The goal might be a cure, or a prenatal test to abort NTs.

I don't think anyone denies that it's hard to live in this world and be on the spectrum, and the further you deviate from normal, the harder it is to live in a society that believes in rigidly conforming. And yes, it's supremely stupid to think that NTs can be the experts, but who said it should be the NTs who teach us?

I mean, if we had a world where there were very few women (I suppose we'd be growing babies in test-tubes), being female would be seen as horrible. And maybe someone would suggest teaching women how to live with their own bodies, and yeah, a man can't teach a woman certain things, but that's why you would round up all the women you could find and have them teach each other.

In fact, that's what happens now, within every group. We teach each other. Just because an NT can't teach you coping skills doesn't mean you can't be taught.

And I do "understand what [I've] got," although admittedly I am young. But you would think I would not be naive after five schools, several months so bad I barely remember them except that they felt like years, too many meltdowns to count and a little bit of bullying when I was little.

I know how bad it can be, but I also know that everything is an interaction between the individual and the environment. If I had been NT, I probably would never have been bullied (even so, it wasn't all that bad). If the other kids had been kind and understanding people, I would never have been bullied. Why are you proposing that being who I am is the problem? And if I were NT, I wouldn't have so many meltdowns. If the people around me knew to leave me alone, I wouldn't have so many meltdowns. If society were run by autistic people who know that a small number of meltdowns will just happen, I wouldn't have to be ashamed and hold them in so long that my functioning is impaired.

If I didn't have sensory processing issues, I wouldn't have issues with loud music and fashionable clothes. If other people cared less about fashion and listened to softer music at parties, I wouldn't have a problem. If there were fashionable clothes made specifically for people like me, I would look acceptable. (Alas, I get the double-whammy of being overweight and very sensitive. Black cotton knit 2XL T-shirts with elbow-length sleeves and advertisements on the front FTW; that describes most of what I wear, except the occasional cotton knit 2XL T-shirt with elbow-length sleeves that happens to be brown or beige, or be solid instead of having an ad.)

The only thing, the absolutely only thing about my Asperger's that is purely bad and could not be fixed by fixing my environment would be the awful feelings I get that drive me to touch everything in a highly-specific way. This doesn't impair my functioning enough to bother seeking a cure, and if a cure for this had any side-effects at all, or weren't dirt-cheap, I wouldn't bother to take it even if it existed. You are free, however, to not feel proud of squirming in your skin and devoting a great deal of brainpower to scratching itches you don't even have.

But that's not the whole picture, okay? Besides, why would I want to give up my special interests?

Autism Rights is a simpleminded backlash to Autism Cure, also simpleminded, but it does bring in the money.

1. Autism can be a total disaster, sitting rocking in a diaper, never making contact, and prone to violent outbursts. Like Homosexuality? While there are milder cases, most are not the same, which is why the criteria is so broad. Now if homosexuals were broadly attracted to hundreds of special interest sex drives, like clothing tags, pokemon, anime, books, music, they might compare, but all reports show they only go for same sex bodies. Autism/Homosexuality can only be compared from a homosexual view, seeing same sex bodies covers it for them. So when this comes up, I think the agenda is sexual.

2. Autistics coping skills, coping with what? Neurotypicals are rather common, the most likely thing to run into, and how could anyone cope without dealing with anyone else? Learning people skills does work, it can be learned, and the autistic will reach the same view as the neurotypical, humans are dumb, humor them.

3. Autism has a whole list of causes, fevers, illness, injury, toxins, can all result in autism, plus being born that way. There is no data that leads to believe that anyone through fevers, illness, injury, toxins, has suddenly become homosexual. We can not even be sure of genetics and birth, for siblings will have no symptoms, and even the worst of families, the children do not turn autistic from a whole list of horrible treatments.

4. Autism can not be cured or eliminated, as Broader Autism Phenotype covers more than 10% of the population, and those are just the ones that show some symptoms. From a species point of view, it is a useful group, we need nerds. Nerds also need to be able to talk to people, change their clothes, leave the house, and learn some social skills. While a cure is not possible, several years of boot camp would help.

While autism ranges from totally disabling to mildly annoying, fitting one at a time into the neurotypical world is not the way to do it, Batch processing, until we get a baseline, find the natural groupings, there is no way to sort them. Autistic compared to Neurotypical is a useless line, HFA LFA is also useless, autism is used for a catchall, humans who are not mentally ill, but are different, There are lots of kinds of different.

We need a Pokemon Barracks, sorting by obsession, and then developing a game plan for each.

It is rare, 1%, and they have a broad range. At all functional levels, people relate best to people like themselves. Gathering enough to form peer groups, they can then experiment upon themselves.

It is just an autistic version of what the NT world uses for thier children, Daycare, School, Summer Camp, Lessons, Sports. The autistic do not fit their model, but would fit an autistic model of the same.

Until we have a model of autistic culture, we can not compare it to NT culture. What we are doing now is taking an ordinary American, dropping them in an inland China 13th Century rice farming village, and expecting them to figure out the language and culture, and fit in, today. Adults have to study the language and culture to visit France.

What we are doing is denying the autistic the strength of their own culture and then demanding they assimilate another, which when questioned, says it does not know why, it just does things.

We could develop an Anthropology of Neurotypical, if we had a place to stand on our own natual culture. One thing I have learned from Wrong Planet, everyone here shares something, there is an autistic culture.

We are like the Native American children who were taken from their people and sent to missionary school, or the Australians, robbed of their culture, language, and made to fit into another image. It did not work then, it is not working now. Many who grew up with their tribe, their language, did do well in the white world, learned other langiuages and cultures, for they had a base that fit their minds.

Autism Rights, Autism Speaks, Psychology, are nowhere near what we need.

I agree with every single one of those points. I wish this would get more publicity than Autism Speaks.

Sounds like it hasn't been thought through properly. Forgotten that it is a spectrum, and that a lot of people are seriously debilitated by it. Its not all high-function happiness. Idealism isn't going to sort it out either. Yes, it would be wonderful if the world was a quiet, calm, not-to-sensory foamfilled learning experience but it IS NOT and is never going to be. The world will always be loud, brash, obnoxious and disturbing, as it always has been, and it isn't going to change. Some people will become more aware, maybe more understanding (in a slow but steady way, like the acceptance of homosexuality has improved slowly over the years) but there isn't going to be a huge cultural shift by whole populations acting against every human instinct just for us. Eye-contact is natural, making social contact is natural, and these are in-built to NTs. Also, some of the problems we have can't be stopped by education or understanding. No amount of consideration will change the fact that the noise heavy metal things makes when they are dropped is very very loud. Police sirens HAVE to be strident or they won't work, and thats not going to be fixed by consideration.

As for the coping skills thing: Some coping skills ARE imitation. How do you think NTs learn behaviours? It can sometimes be very easy to learn a quick "cheat" of copying an NT behaviour, and very hard and stressful to use a complex "coping strategy." Often as not, Autistic people are quite capable of learning the real genuine behaviour, once it is pointed out to them how and why such a behaviour occurs. Just because it didn't occur naturally, doesn't mean it cant be put in afterwards.

Autism might well be, probably is genetic. Until science has got a few more generations to work on and study, this won't be conclusive, and it would be foolish and dangerous to preclude the possibility of it being caused by something else. Stating that something "definitely IS" and demanding that other points of view be made heresy could bury important information.

Also, its not at all "like homosexuality" because homosexuality isn't pervasive in every aspect of your life. Sexual preference doesn't affect your interaction with the world in such an epic sense as autism. Homosexuals aren't reduced to never entering their own dining room because the layout of the bookcases makes them panic. It doesn't cut you off from communicating with other people completely, It doesn't impair your ability to socialise. It doesn't prevent you talking to people. The only difference between a hetero person and a homosexual person is that a homosexual person is attracted to people of the same sex, and pretty much ALL of the problems that spring from that are based on other peoples homophobia. I don't care HOW understanding people are of my condition, I still won't be able to touch unvarnished wood without having a sensory episode.

I couldn't care less.
But world domination sounds pretty good though

Also, OF COURSE IT'S A FRIGGING DISORDER. You know as in, "autism spectrum disorder", have you never seen a severely autistic person before? I'm not on about those with a sprinkle of it like you or I, but you know the full blown severe autism, if they aren't disordered I don't know who is. It seems a lot of these "autism is the s**t " kind of things just conveniently leave out the more severe ones.

I like this, I'd rather not argue variation/disorder crap.

WORLD DOMINATION HECK YEAH

I think that movement is full of crap on most points. The only way autistic people can function is be like neurotypical people. It's really that simple. The autistic mind is the most divisive thing ever created. It is a disease that makes the people who have it unable to function in the world. The only way to function is overcome it. I am all for editing the genes to prevent people from being born from autism. But I'm totally opposed to any prenatal test being used for abortion (because while abortion involves the act of killing the baby in utero, the editing of the genes doesn't and involves in improving the quality of life for that person). It's not hating people with cancer to do what we can to prevent people from getting that disease. And it's also not hating autistic people to do the same. It's really that simple. Autism is a disease, period. The autistic "rights" movement also opposes ABA [Applied Behavioral Analysis], which is the only way to make autistic people actually competent and able to function in the world. It's cause of ABA that I can talk and type this message. This idea of an autistic culture is a joke. Any nation that's run based on the autistic brain is bound to fall. An autistic culture is inferior, period. I tell autism and the autism "rights" movement to f**k off. The only way to be successful is to overcome autism, period.

If the difficulties autistics face is caused by autism or if these difficulties are caused by bieng a minority group( (nuerodiversity movement) should not be a factor in more acceptence of autism and autistics having a say in policy and research about us. Another words the neurodiversity movement and the literally bieng pro "Autistic Rights" are two seperate things.

We have a situation where the neurodiversity movement is starting to get positive play in the media while a fierce backlash against it is developing amoung a substantial segment of autistics themselves especially in the younger generations. Even though I am definitly a lot more in the ND camp the ND movement has got to do what it says it is for, listening to autistics. While the two views of autism can never coalesce , since a cure is not happining in the immediate future at some point people with both point of views need to work together for Autism rights. otherwise we go backwords to much narrower definitions, everything bieng done to us for our own good and societys good without our consent.