When I'm active in communities centered around personality typing, I find myself wanting to really be whatever type I think fits best at the moment, so I can play the social role of an example of that type and, as such, critique anything that's said about the type and talk about it "from the inside." It gets to the point where I actually kind of take pride in the negative aspects of the type because, if I see them in myself, they're confirmation that I am who I say I am. But if I can't seem to exemplify my supposed type, seeing evidence that I might be another one, I get cranky and restless and uneasy. My social role is gone.
From what I've read, people with ASCs and other neuro-psychological or disability labels go through the same kind of thing sometimes. They're expected to live up to their label, and in order to confirm the label for themselves and for others, they might display and even take pride or comfort in the "negative" aspects.
In fact, in order to get help with the things they need, they may have to play up negatives they don't even have, because disability services are only available oftentimes to those who fit a global disability stereotype. In that sense, it's a lot worse than what I've put myself through with personality typecasting: at least with personality, it's only a game and I can stop playing at any time (were it not for addiction/habit and not wanting to part with the internet friendships I made through it). People with disabilities and neuroquirks, though, have to play their game as a trade-off for survival and well-being.
It can also be a matter of survival for those who make a career out of speaking "from the inside" about their condition. In that case, people have pre-conceived notions that they want parroted back, and if those notions are not parroted back, there are probably going to be a lot of people saying, "Well, then, you must not be what you say you are." At least if the label is neuropsychological. Physical disability such as paralysis or amputation of a major limb should be pretty obvious, and blindness too...but even then, there will probably be radical opponents who will try to accuse the person of faking it.
Being aware of the neurotypical tendency to be good at false empathy but not necessarily as good at real empathy, I won't have the hubris to claim that I can imagine the pain and frustration people go through as a result of typecasting themselves according to social stereotypes of "disability." I don't WANT to imagine it, to be honest. But I know from my own experience that even in the sphere of an unnecessary social "game," if you attach a significant portion of your identity to that game (and attaching one's identity to social games is not unheard of among, e.g., Halo or Warcraft players), typecasting oneself can be a source of lots of negative self-fulfilling prophesies and anxiety over losing a valued social role. If little things like that can get to me, I wouldn't blame neuroquirky and disabled people from getting frustrated, upset, or even crazy about the pressure to typecast themselves and the prevalence of others typecasting themselves.
Showing posts with label disability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disability. Show all posts
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Mor(e)on IQ
Not long after my last post about intellect and "orders of being," I decided to browse the psych section of a book store while I was out, and what did I find? A highly relevant book called "IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea" by Stephen Murdoch.
Juicy.
The forerunners of IQ tests were created by a staunch social Darwinist and father of Eugenics, Francis Galton. Another eugenicist, Henry Goddard, brought the more refined intelligence tests of Binet to the US, and he helped promote mass hysteria about "feeble-minded" people (the euphemism of the day for the mentally retarded), especially the "morons" (mildly retarded), passing for normal, breeding, and filling our jails because their weak minds make them more likely to become criminals. He thought that retarded people should be institutionalized and, though treated nicely, prevented from breeding. Intelligence measurements were also used to restrict immigration so as to keep "feeble minded" people out of our country...and gene pool.
And I haven't even gotten to the chapter about the Nazis yet.
On a more positive note, as long as there have been IQ tests, there have been skeptics of IQ tests.
If you think I'm on an emotionally reactive rebellious tirade, you're right. This is a painful issue for which I've always sought some kind of resolution...usually, reassurance that I was plenty smart and had nothing to worry about. (And there has never been a way to completely reassure me, as there are always people who have done better on IQ tests, in school, and so on.) When I learned at 20 or so, via finding some of my mother's old papers lying around, what my IQ score had been at the age of almost 9, I was devastated. I was not "gifted" after all, as I'd previously assumed and hoped - my score was 120, above average but below the 130 cutoff for giftedness I'd learned about in psychology. (Granted, I actually remember getting nervous on the timed jigsaw puzzle section, and my verbal subscore was just above 130, but I don't have enough of the Normie trait of positive self-delusion to run with the higher subscore or blame my lower one entirely on performance anxiety. I've been a pessimist since childhood.) I was one of the Damned, not one of the Elect. Calvinism is my metaphor of choice because, emotionally, that's what it's always felt like. To be smart was "good" and to be dumb was "bad," in a very absolute and final sense, and either I was born "good" or I was born "bad."
Even though I was never taught about eugenics in school that I can remember - at least not in the formative years - somehow I caught onto the insidious idea that one's intelligence was somehow a measure of one's quality of being, one's overall worth. Issues of quality of being, and the fear that I may have been born without it, are a major source of self-harm for me.
A major reason why I've been so drawn to the world of disability advocacy and acceptance of difference is because it exposes me to anti-hierarchical perspectives. These provide more than just narcissistic fuel for an ego that at least wants to be good and just and fair in spirit if it can't be smart or great or special. They provide something that could help me heal some childhood wounds and build basic self-esteem regardless of how I "measure up."
My current experimental viewpoint is to view what's normally seen as "intellect" as a matter of specific skills and interests that, like any other skills and interests, are just neutral tratits and not some magical measure of human worth and worthiness. People who "aren't very bright" just don't have a lot of academic-type skills or interests. And there's no more point in envying people who have academic skills or interests that are beyond mine in a related area than there is of envying soccer fanatics. They're not "better people" than I am, they're just different.
That's probably the hardest part: letting go of the fear of being a "lesser person" than those who skipped grades or could win Jeopardy or who have studied and aced more academic subjects than I have. As a pessimist, it's easy to obliterate the notion of classes of being below my own and consider myself a human equal to the slow, but not so easy to obliterate the notion of classes of being above my own and consider myself a human equal to the swift. But if all humans are equally deserving of basic dignity, that means all humans. I don't think it's possible, at least not the way I tend to think of things, to value the smart solely for their smartness without devaluing the dumb solely for their dumbness. The people are to be recognized as people, their skills and interests are to be recognized as skills and interests, and their accomplishments are to be recognized as accomplishments. Nobody is more or less of a person than anybody else. Nobody is undeserving of basic rights, or a chance to pursue, develop, and use their own skills and interests.
Status fear is primal, but neurotic status fear leading to shame and angst is probably taking it too far, delving into self-fulfilling-prophesy territory.
Juicy.
The forerunners of IQ tests were created by a staunch social Darwinist and father of Eugenics, Francis Galton. Another eugenicist, Henry Goddard, brought the more refined intelligence tests of Binet to the US, and he helped promote mass hysteria about "feeble-minded" people (the euphemism of the day for the mentally retarded), especially the "morons" (mildly retarded), passing for normal, breeding, and filling our jails because their weak minds make them more likely to become criminals. He thought that retarded people should be institutionalized and, though treated nicely, prevented from breeding. Intelligence measurements were also used to restrict immigration so as to keep "feeble minded" people out of our country...and gene pool.
And I haven't even gotten to the chapter about the Nazis yet.
On a more positive note, as long as there have been IQ tests, there have been skeptics of IQ tests.
If you think I'm on an emotionally reactive rebellious tirade, you're right. This is a painful issue for which I've always sought some kind of resolution...usually, reassurance that I was plenty smart and had nothing to worry about. (And there has never been a way to completely reassure me, as there are always people who have done better on IQ tests, in school, and so on.) When I learned at 20 or so, via finding some of my mother's old papers lying around, what my IQ score had been at the age of almost 9, I was devastated. I was not "gifted" after all, as I'd previously assumed and hoped - my score was 120, above average but below the 130 cutoff for giftedness I'd learned about in psychology. (Granted, I actually remember getting nervous on the timed jigsaw puzzle section, and my verbal subscore was just above 130, but I don't have enough of the Normie trait of positive self-delusion to run with the higher subscore or blame my lower one entirely on performance anxiety. I've been a pessimist since childhood.) I was one of the Damned, not one of the Elect. Calvinism is my metaphor of choice because, emotionally, that's what it's always felt like. To be smart was "good" and to be dumb was "bad," in a very absolute and final sense, and either I was born "good" or I was born "bad."
Even though I was never taught about eugenics in school that I can remember - at least not in the formative years - somehow I caught onto the insidious idea that one's intelligence was somehow a measure of one's quality of being, one's overall worth. Issues of quality of being, and the fear that I may have been born without it, are a major source of self-harm for me.
A major reason why I've been so drawn to the world of disability advocacy and acceptance of difference is because it exposes me to anti-hierarchical perspectives. These provide more than just narcissistic fuel for an ego that at least wants to be good and just and fair in spirit if it can't be smart or great or special. They provide something that could help me heal some childhood wounds and build basic self-esteem regardless of how I "measure up."
My current experimental viewpoint is to view what's normally seen as "intellect" as a matter of specific skills and interests that, like any other skills and interests, are just neutral tratits and not some magical measure of human worth and worthiness. People who "aren't very bright" just don't have a lot of academic-type skills or interests. And there's no more point in envying people who have academic skills or interests that are beyond mine in a related area than there is of envying soccer fanatics. They're not "better people" than I am, they're just different.
That's probably the hardest part: letting go of the fear of being a "lesser person" than those who skipped grades or could win Jeopardy or who have studied and aced more academic subjects than I have. As a pessimist, it's easy to obliterate the notion of classes of being below my own and consider myself a human equal to the slow, but not so easy to obliterate the notion of classes of being above my own and consider myself a human equal to the swift. But if all humans are equally deserving of basic dignity, that means all humans. I don't think it's possible, at least not the way I tend to think of things, to value the smart solely for their smartness without devaluing the dumb solely for their dumbness. The people are to be recognized as people, their skills and interests are to be recognized as skills and interests, and their accomplishments are to be recognized as accomplishments. Nobody is more or less of a person than anybody else. Nobody is undeserving of basic rights, or a chance to pursue, develop, and use their own skills and interests.
Status fear is primal, but neurotic status fear leading to shame and angst is probably taking it too far, delving into self-fulfilling-prophesy territory.
The Illustrious and Mythical Order of Being
I've been reading a lot about disability rights abuses lately, especially in the following locations:
http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=222
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=443
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=97
It does seem ridiculous to violate human rights under any circumstances. But it also begs some deep thought about beingness and the basis by which we assign rights. What does it mean to be human? Who gets to decide who and what deserves rights? If I think it's wrong to violate the human rights of people who are unable to communicate or use bathrooms even as adults, then am I not a hypocrite for not being Vegan and fiercely anti-abortion? For if it's hard to tell whether humans are sentient or not and to what degree based on their outward behaviors, couldn't all the animals I like to eat be just as sentient as some humans? And even though embryos can't communicate or breathe or eat independently yet, there's a better chance than not that they will be able to if they are allowed to survive to birth if they can, right?
Every attempt to find some intellectual or physical quality - besides the small portion of the human genome that differs from that of chimpanzees, and the closed breeding circle that defines a distinct species - that "makes us human" has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Complex communication (language), self-awareness, awareness of death and dying, high intelligence, and tool usage have all been found in other animals. So what have people done? They've simply narrowed the meaning of these in order to try to make them human-exclusive again. "Okay, other animals may have complex communication, but it's not language because it doesn't have all the features of human language." (Okay the, are plants not living because they don't have all the features of animal life? Some Buddhist philosophers have traditionally thought so, but modern biology says otherwise.) Or "They use tools, but they're not nearly as inventive as human tools are." Or "They may be able to recognize and seemingly mourn their own dead, but they probably can't anticipate death and dying quite the way we do."
And it isn't just animals whom we've sought ways to exclude and define as a "them," it's also other humans. Humans who were female, from other tribes/ethnicities/nationalities (especially tribes/ethnicities/nationalities unrelated to yours or with which yours waged war), from lower social classes, disabled, or "different" in any way that the society deemed repulsive have all, at some time and place (and sometimes even now), been considered to be a kind of non-human. That is, a "them" who are unworthy of full human rights.
So there's no obvious, undisputable place to draw these kinds of us vs. them lines.
Right now, I practically don't believe in "orders of being" anymore. I don't believe in evolution as a march of progress; it's just a matter of living things stumbling into new niches in an ever-changing biosphere. I don't believe that intelligence is either (a) accurately measurable via any single thing like test scores or academic ability or articulateness in communication or (b) an indication of a higher consciousness or order of being, although I used to strongly believe both of those things and always fear that I was not smart enough and thus not a high enough being. Emotionally, I'm still not over that belief: I still automatically envy people I perceive as "geniuses" or otherwise "smarter than I am" (e.g., people who skipped grades in school) and fear being "stupid" or inadequate before I have a chance to come to my senses.
Since I know how damaging the concept of intelligence as an easy measure of one's "order of being" can be via my direct experience with adopting that concept and beating myself down with it even though almost nobody other than myself has ever called me "stupid," I think it's something that ought to go. "Lack of intelligence" should never be used as an excuse for treating people like throw-away toys. And I don't even like the idea of making fun of people who aren't very interested or talented in so called "intellectual" realms, because there's really no reason to think of them any differently than you'd think of anyone else who just doesn't share your interests or just isn't on your wavelength. Even when aspies do it to the NTs who have discriminated against them, it's still not cool, because it continues to promote this idolization of the "intellect," which I think is in large part socially constructed anyway. (What is considered "intellectual" and why? Is the brain not also in charge of various practical skills and motor skills as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic?)
I don't think we need the amount of competition and hurt and egotism that's perpetuated by the notion of higher and lower orders of being, particularly within the human race. I'm tired of matters of consciousness, sentience, intelligence, and order of being not only being used to promote atrocities, but also inadvertently making even those of us who are as normal as the wall is to the floor feel bad about ourselves and anxious about not being valuable enough due to the quality of our "intellect." I'm not ready to be a Vegan, an anti-abortionist (though I think abortion should be minimized, done as early as possible, and not done eugenically), or a political organizer, at least not yet, but I want to challenge "order of being" assumptions as applied within the population of born members of the human race where and when I see them, especially in myself. I think there's a lot of room for improvement within my own life as I come to believe in a more heartfelt way that human beings are human beings no matter what they do. Yes, even criminals. Defense measures should be taken against them as needed, and if they try to kill you then it's not unethical to kill them in self-defense, but beyond that, well...they're not much different from the rest of us, and systematic indignities on the order of the Stanford Prison Experiment are not necessary to maintain our safety and community integrity.
http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=222
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=443
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=97
It does seem ridiculous to violate human rights under any circumstances. But it also begs some deep thought about beingness and the basis by which we assign rights. What does it mean to be human? Who gets to decide who and what deserves rights? If I think it's wrong to violate the human rights of people who are unable to communicate or use bathrooms even as adults, then am I not a hypocrite for not being Vegan and fiercely anti-abortion? For if it's hard to tell whether humans are sentient or not and to what degree based on their outward behaviors, couldn't all the animals I like to eat be just as sentient as some humans? And even though embryos can't communicate or breathe or eat independently yet, there's a better chance than not that they will be able to if they are allowed to survive to birth if they can, right?
Every attempt to find some intellectual or physical quality - besides the small portion of the human genome that differs from that of chimpanzees, and the closed breeding circle that defines a distinct species - that "makes us human" has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Complex communication (language), self-awareness, awareness of death and dying, high intelligence, and tool usage have all been found in other animals. So what have people done? They've simply narrowed the meaning of these in order to try to make them human-exclusive again. "Okay, other animals may have complex communication, but it's not language because it doesn't have all the features of human language." (Okay the, are plants not living because they don't have all the features of animal life? Some Buddhist philosophers have traditionally thought so, but modern biology says otherwise.) Or "They use tools, but they're not nearly as inventive as human tools are." Or "They may be able to recognize and seemingly mourn their own dead, but they probably can't anticipate death and dying quite the way we do."
And it isn't just animals whom we've sought ways to exclude and define as a "them," it's also other humans. Humans who were female, from other tribes/ethnicities/nationalities (especially tribes/ethnicities/nationalities unrelated to yours or with which yours waged war), from lower social classes, disabled, or "different" in any way that the society deemed repulsive have all, at some time and place (and sometimes even now), been considered to be a kind of non-human. That is, a "them" who are unworthy of full human rights.
So there's no obvious, undisputable place to draw these kinds of us vs. them lines.
Right now, I practically don't believe in "orders of being" anymore. I don't believe in evolution as a march of progress; it's just a matter of living things stumbling into new niches in an ever-changing biosphere. I don't believe that intelligence is either (a) accurately measurable via any single thing like test scores or academic ability or articulateness in communication or (b) an indication of a higher consciousness or order of being, although I used to strongly believe both of those things and always fear that I was not smart enough and thus not a high enough being. Emotionally, I'm still not over that belief: I still automatically envy people I perceive as "geniuses" or otherwise "smarter than I am" (e.g., people who skipped grades in school) and fear being "stupid" or inadequate before I have a chance to come to my senses.
Since I know how damaging the concept of intelligence as an easy measure of one's "order of being" can be via my direct experience with adopting that concept and beating myself down with it even though almost nobody other than myself has ever called me "stupid," I think it's something that ought to go. "Lack of intelligence" should never be used as an excuse for treating people like throw-away toys. And I don't even like the idea of making fun of people who aren't very interested or talented in so called "intellectual" realms, because there's really no reason to think of them any differently than you'd think of anyone else who just doesn't share your interests or just isn't on your wavelength. Even when aspies do it to the NTs who have discriminated against them, it's still not cool, because it continues to promote this idolization of the "intellect," which I think is in large part socially constructed anyway. (What is considered "intellectual" and why? Is the brain not also in charge of various practical skills and motor skills as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic?)
I don't think we need the amount of competition and hurt and egotism that's perpetuated by the notion of higher and lower orders of being, particularly within the human race. I'm tired of matters of consciousness, sentience, intelligence, and order of being not only being used to promote atrocities, but also inadvertently making even those of us who are as normal as the wall is to the floor feel bad about ourselves and anxious about not being valuable enough due to the quality of our "intellect." I'm not ready to be a Vegan, an anti-abortionist (though I think abortion should be minimized, done as early as possible, and not done eugenically), or a political organizer, at least not yet, but I want to challenge "order of being" assumptions as applied within the population of born members of the human race where and when I see them, especially in myself. I think there's a lot of room for improvement within my own life as I come to believe in a more heartfelt way that human beings are human beings no matter what they do. Yes, even criminals. Defense measures should be taken against them as needed, and if they try to kill you then it's not unethical to kill them in self-defense, but beyond that, well...they're not much different from the rest of us, and systematic indignities on the order of the Stanford Prison Experiment are not necessary to maintain our safety and community integrity.
Monday, August 20, 2007
musings: diagnosis, normality, and cure
After an internet friend saw some of my bf's answers to questions and thought he sounded normal for someone of his sort of temperament/personality, I've been wondering if my bf is even on the spectrum.
He doesn't seem to have much in the way of sensory integration issues anymore - or at least, I don't run into them in my interactions with him - but he still avoids things he found unpleasant as a child, like hair-washing, fingernail-clipping, and eating foods with textures he dislikes (e.g. any vegetables besides green beans, fresh or cooked spinach, romaine lettuce, and raw carrots), as much as he can.
He also doesn't seem to have much in the way of rules and rituals besides Jewish observances, though he reports having taken a shower and gone to bed at the exact same time everyday as a child, and having been afraid to put a car in reverse when he was learning to drive because the rule was that cars drive forwards.
He's definitely got some unusual cognitive quirks, especially his "binary mind" where social and emotional inputs and outputs are on an all-or-nothing scale, and from what he describes of his childhood he could have been diagnosed as AS or PDD/NOS back then if those categories existed yet. But as an adult, he functions as a normal eccentric, and failed to get diagnosed as on the spectrum when he went to a psychopharmacologist during a low point. (He got diagnosed as depressed.)
But I would expect a psychopharm to underdiagnose anything s/he can't prescribe SSRI's or other popular meds for, and overdiagnose anything s/he can prescribe them for. Because that's what their job is all about - determining if people need drugs.
On the other hand, a specialist might be inclined to overdiagnose, or oversuspect, autism-spectrum conditions or whatever s/he specializes in, because that's the nature of THAT job.
So what's the point of diagnosis at all? Legally securing services? Benefitting from the ADA?
It seems like these are not much help to a lot of people out there, anyway, because official help for anything is expensive and the people responsible for giving help want to make money just like anyone else. Hence the lousy state of health insurance and the thing I recently read about the Army not covering people discharged for hereditary health problems. (I'd link it, but I'm having trouble finding it now.)
Ultimately, I get the impression that "reforming normal" would lead to what a lot of the autism and disability advocates want: to be treated as equals, and accommodated where they need to be without being made to grovel or experience shame. Basically, to not be seen as these Others who are threatening and should be eliminated or assimilated. The "normal" category seems to be, in large part, the category of people that society accepts as they are, sees as fully human. Why must we write off disabled people?
You know what? There are a lot of human traits, likely inherited, that are debilitating and dangerous and should be eliminated to make the human race healthier. Like the tendency to be excessively paranoid about outsiders or "different" people and bully them into compliance, assimilation, or shame. It might have once served a useful evolutionary function, but in today's society, it just causes a lot of war and destruction. So maybe everyone who has ever bullied someone or denied services to a disabled person unless said person proved to be dependent or compliant should be sterilized and institutionalized so they and their genetically defective descendants can no longer harm our society, or be sent to ABA classes where they'll be rewarded with their favorite junk food every time they treat a disabled or nerdy person nicely and have said food withheld from them otherwise. Cure bigotry now! Prevent war and abuse!
He doesn't seem to have much in the way of sensory integration issues anymore - or at least, I don't run into them in my interactions with him - but he still avoids things he found unpleasant as a child, like hair-washing, fingernail-clipping, and eating foods with textures he dislikes (e.g. any vegetables besides green beans, fresh or cooked spinach, romaine lettuce, and raw carrots), as much as he can.
He also doesn't seem to have much in the way of rules and rituals besides Jewish observances, though he reports having taken a shower and gone to bed at the exact same time everyday as a child, and having been afraid to put a car in reverse when he was learning to drive because the rule was that cars drive forwards.
He's definitely got some unusual cognitive quirks, especially his "binary mind" where social and emotional inputs and outputs are on an all-or-nothing scale, and from what he describes of his childhood he could have been diagnosed as AS or PDD/NOS back then if those categories existed yet. But as an adult, he functions as a normal eccentric, and failed to get diagnosed as on the spectrum when he went to a psychopharmacologist during a low point. (He got diagnosed as depressed.)
But I would expect a psychopharm to underdiagnose anything s/he can't prescribe SSRI's or other popular meds for, and overdiagnose anything s/he can prescribe them for. Because that's what their job is all about - determining if people need drugs.
On the other hand, a specialist might be inclined to overdiagnose, or oversuspect, autism-spectrum conditions or whatever s/he specializes in, because that's the nature of THAT job.
So what's the point of diagnosis at all? Legally securing services? Benefitting from the ADA?
It seems like these are not much help to a lot of people out there, anyway, because official help for anything is expensive and the people responsible for giving help want to make money just like anyone else. Hence the lousy state of health insurance and the thing I recently read about the Army not covering people discharged for hereditary health problems. (I'd link it, but I'm having trouble finding it now.)
Ultimately, I get the impression that "reforming normal" would lead to what a lot of the autism and disability advocates want: to be treated as equals, and accommodated where they need to be without being made to grovel or experience shame. Basically, to not be seen as these Others who are threatening and should be eliminated or assimilated. The "normal" category seems to be, in large part, the category of people that society accepts as they are, sees as fully human. Why must we write off disabled people?
You know what? There are a lot of human traits, likely inherited, that are debilitating and dangerous and should be eliminated to make the human race healthier. Like the tendency to be excessively paranoid about outsiders or "different" people and bully them into compliance, assimilation, or shame. It might have once served a useful evolutionary function, but in today's society, it just causes a lot of war and destruction. So maybe everyone who has ever bullied someone or denied services to a disabled person unless said person proved to be dependent or compliant should be sterilized and institutionalized so they and their genetically defective descendants can no longer harm our society, or be sent to ABA classes where they'll be rewarded with their favorite junk food every time they treat a disabled or nerdy person nicely and have said food withheld from them otherwise. Cure bigotry now! Prevent war and abuse!
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Treatment vs. Cure
Just read this while perusing AFF:
http://autismrealitynb.wordpress.com/?s=aspies
From what I've read of neurodiversity, they aren't against treating autism. They're all in favor of services, educations (that don't just force the kid to perform NT-ish tricks, but rather to do something meaningful), and tools to help autistics do better in the world.
What they're against is trying to eliminate all autistic traits in people altogether, especially using therapies that are not proven to be able to do so, and not even giving autistic people a chance in life.
Consider the case of treating blindness or deafness, both of which are essentially incurable. They are given educations in alternative communication methods like Braille, sign language, or lipreading; and they are given tools such as canes, service dogs, specialized computers, and text phones to help them get around the missing sense in daily life. Yes, there are hearing aids for deaf people, but they don't work perfectly.
You don't see throngs of parents trying to cure their children's blindness or deafness with a special diet (although some people do benefit from special diets) or with antidotes to poisons for which there's no proof that these poisons are the cause of blindness or deafness. You don't hear of blind children being taught in behaviorism classes to not close their eyes or move their eyes around when talking to another person, lest the other person think the blind person is being evasive. You do sometimes hear of deaf children being taught to always wear their hearing aids, lipread, and speak as best they can to mask their deafness...but a deaf person I know who was raised that way thinks it was a totally dumb idea (no pun intended). Blindness, especially, is hard to mask, and people who have it are allowed - even encouraged - to be open about it, sporting those red-and-white canes and service dogs and dark sunglasses, so that people can accommodate their disabilities.
Why not do the same with autism? Why not just let them show their disabilities and accommodate them with the proper tools? Why try to train them like dogs to make eye contact like a normal person? Why lob onto the most ridiculous theories for why they ended up autistic, and use the most ridiculous quack cures to try to undo their autism?
Perhaps because of the cognitive difficulties of autism, and how they're hyped up by the media. A blind or deaf person is presumed to be able to think and feel like the rest of us. They can generally also take care of themselves physically, missing senses aside - go to the bathroom and so on. But an autistic, especially a low-functioning autistic with many disabilities and sensory processing issues, is presumed oftentimes to not be a sentient being. And even high-functioning autistics can be labeled monsters.
I hope the neurodiversity movement will eventually become believable and visible enough that the general public will start to see and treat autistics as human beings, much as is done with blind people.
http://autismrealitynb.wordpress.com/?s=aspies
From what I've read of neurodiversity, they aren't against treating autism. They're all in favor of services, educations (that don't just force the kid to perform NT-ish tricks, but rather to do something meaningful), and tools to help autistics do better in the world.
What they're against is trying to eliminate all autistic traits in people altogether, especially using therapies that are not proven to be able to do so, and not even giving autistic people a chance in life.
Consider the case of treating blindness or deafness, both of which are essentially incurable. They are given educations in alternative communication methods like Braille, sign language, or lipreading; and they are given tools such as canes, service dogs, specialized computers, and text phones to help them get around the missing sense in daily life. Yes, there are hearing aids for deaf people, but they don't work perfectly.
You don't see throngs of parents trying to cure their children's blindness or deafness with a special diet (although some people do benefit from special diets) or with antidotes to poisons for which there's no proof that these poisons are the cause of blindness or deafness. You don't hear of blind children being taught in behaviorism classes to not close their eyes or move their eyes around when talking to another person, lest the other person think the blind person is being evasive. You do sometimes hear of deaf children being taught to always wear their hearing aids, lipread, and speak as best they can to mask their deafness...but a deaf person I know who was raised that way thinks it was a totally dumb idea (no pun intended). Blindness, especially, is hard to mask, and people who have it are allowed - even encouraged - to be open about it, sporting those red-and-white canes and service dogs and dark sunglasses, so that people can accommodate their disabilities.
Why not do the same with autism? Why not just let them show their disabilities and accommodate them with the proper tools? Why try to train them like dogs to make eye contact like a normal person? Why lob onto the most ridiculous theories for why they ended up autistic, and use the most ridiculous quack cures to try to undo their autism?
Perhaps because of the cognitive difficulties of autism, and how they're hyped up by the media. A blind or deaf person is presumed to be able to think and feel like the rest of us. They can generally also take care of themselves physically, missing senses aside - go to the bathroom and so on. But an autistic, especially a low-functioning autistic with many disabilities and sensory processing issues, is presumed oftentimes to not be a sentient being. And even high-functioning autistics can be labeled monsters.
I hope the neurodiversity movement will eventually become believable and visible enough that the general public will start to see and treat autistics as human beings, much as is done with blind people.
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