And some quantity of the above has to be credited to my wetware; there are things I can do and can see that it would be difficult to impossible for more common wetware configurations.

So yes, I am proud. As should you be. But not in the sense people are saying above.

What any particular person will do when I say something privately or publicly (some take offense to one or the other of those but not both, others will use one or the other but not both against a person, etc).
How to, in particular, not say something that will either confuse or offend you.
Precisely what was said, since I am not on the AFF boards, because of #2.

I opted for saying it as well as I knew how, in public, where at least things would be visible to more than one person if I got something wrong. (That is what I tend to opt for in situations like this, because it means that there’s no “he said/she said” stuff later.)

But whether or not I got the exact words correct, I’d heard that you and others there had said that the lack of mention by autistics.org and the particular article by Joel Smith probably meant something negative about our attitude towards you, and it really didn’t, and that was the main point of what I was saying. I’ve edited the above post so that people know I didn’t mean “colossal snub” (although I left the words in because I didn’t want to just edit it out and then have your comment not make sense). I’ve also edited and re-edited this comment for clarity. I hope that’s clear enough, and non-confusing and/or non-offensive enough, and gets the point across, the main point I was making, which was that there was nothing negative about you in particular implied by either our action or inaction.

It’s come to my attention that the people who initially put it together think that there’s been some kind of collossal snub on the part of autistics.org”

Well my husband and I put the idea together, we never thought, or said, that there was a ‘collossal snub’, in fact it seems that something is being presumed about us, rather than us presuming something about other people.
Wouldn’t it be easier to ask us what we thought and whether it was a snub or ‘chinese whispers’? Email?
Oh well, these things happen.

Hope you all have a great Autistic Pride Day.

“Pride” can turn into the formerly-bullied becoming the bullies. One of the more destructive forms of social hierarchy-chasing, and one that autistic people, despite myth, are not immune to.

Demeaning others is always an awful thing.

It’s possible to have some parts of autistic culture and community that are exclusive, without demeaning others. In some cases, I think this is necessary – we need to have organizations, for instance, run by ourselves (other disability communities have done the same thing – google “Deaf President Now”). Limiting certain leadership positions or direction setting in the organization to autistics only isn’t the same at all as implying that someone is worth less because they are NT or labeled as mentally retarded.

Perhaps ‘pride’ is the wrong word to use? For us its a good excuse to have time aside to talk about difference, diversity, equality (at Alex’s level) do fun stuff and eat too much takeaway pizza. Its also a good reason to mail people I know on the internet to tell them about neurodiversity etc, which often opens up conversations and challenges preconcieved stereotypes (mine as well) that wouldnt otherwise have happened.Plus, however hard I try to keep it from him, Alex inevitably hears bad and hateful stuff about autism, so I see this as part of keeping it in balance.

I think we all have to work very hard on not being exclusive while being proud and celebrating who we are, didnt Ballastexistenz write an entry not long ago about how being bullied did not mean that person could not bully? so people who have been excluded or shunned are equally capable of excluding. Maybe even more so, because they have hurt and anger to deal with too.

I really hate the term “outsider art,” by the way. What are we supposed to be outside of?