Nades wrote:
Primitive doesn't mean wrong. It's clear that autism exists and what you described can be applied to any form of disorder or mental illness.
Primitive nearly always
does mean wrong. Almost everything is more complicated than the "introduction to" will suggest. Think about the thing you know the most about, and then think about how many things the average person would not know about it that you do.
Yes, there's nothing special about autism - all disorders and mental illnesses are also social constructs.
It isn't actually that clear that "autism exists". The definition of autism gets updated fairly frequently, much more frequently than e.g. the definition of calcium. What we currently call autism is not a "real" thing, it's a shorthand way of grouping people together but it isn't the only way, a perfect way, or the best possible way.
To give a really clear example, being
blind is a social construct. That doesn't mean that blind people can see, but how much vision constitutes blindness? Does it always make sense to group the different etiologies of blindness together? What about temporary versus permanent blindness? What about a fully-sighted person in total darkness? There are no right or wrong answers to these questions - ultimately we come to answers somewhat arbitrarily.
Quote:
Any sort of mental illness or disorder has some form of defects compared to the general public. Autism in particular has noticeable poor development with social interaction. I think describing it as a diversity instead allows for too much leeway with how autism is defined and for it to even be glamorised (which seems to be happening more and more).
Once it's a diversity, people can start denying the basic fundamentals of what autism entails and the challenges people with autism face. This thread got ripped off from the other because it was strongly implied the poor social development that comes with autism was actually a good thing, which for autistics, isn't a helpful stance at all to take and obviously it kicked off an argument.
For me, defects it certainly is.
It's undeniably a form of diversity. To the extent that autism exists, it is a variation, it isn't the same as other things, that's the point.
There's no reason that acknowledging that means that the challenges that autistic people face are being "denied". However, I do think it reflects well on someone's intellectual curiosity to be able to consider what "poor social development" really means, and what those "challenges" really are. The majority of autistics seem to find it helpful to use this sort of approach at least some of the time, and it seems to hold true in real life. There's a reason autistic people tend to socialise with each other, after all.
If you yourself want to take a black-and-white approach to understanding your own autism then great, good for you. Does seem a bit strange to accuse people who suggest a more nuanced, measured approach of not knowing what autism is. Autism is more complicated than any one person's experience.