Comments on: Who thinks what about being autistic

By: bioethicists with autistic sons can also hate autism – the subject supposed to know

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 17:54:57 +0000

[…] that he admits psychiatric labels are basically pejorative. Mel Baggs compiled a list of quotes with “low-functioning” autistic people saying they’re fine, in 2006. […]

By: Reality Doesn’t Work That Way 3, Part III: Can autism be cured? « The Defiant Skeptic

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:03:14 +0000

[…] articulated by Amanda Baggs and many of her commenters and the writers she has quoted in “Who thinks what about being autistic?“ I highly recommend this, as it is an informative and interesting […]

By: Rights of Autistic People, with explanations « AthenIvanIdx’s Weblog

Rights of Autistic People, with explanations « AthenIvanIdx’s Weblog — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:50:49 +0000

[…] Syndrome. Personally I see very little difference if any between autism and aspergers. This post, and others like it by Amanda, might clarify my thoughts better than I can at the moment. But I […]

By: Elana Connor

Elana Connor — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 03:11:55 +0000

THANKS

By: Creative Destruction » Link Farm & Open Thread #29

Creative Destruction » Link Farm & Open Thread #29 — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 14:23:32 +0000

[…] BallastExiztance: Being autistic is not a disease and requires no cure An impressive collection of quotes from a wide variety of autistic people. […]

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 16:51:04 +0000

Ettina: I’ve heard the term “mid-functioning” at times before.

I’ve even had people (casually) try to refer to me that way by basically averaging out my typing skills with everything else, or something. Still seems weird.

By: Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:28:09 +0000

I don’t believe in the way the rest of the world divides us up into functioning levels, that is too simplistic and assumes there’s only one dimension to being autistic,

The assumption is prevalent, so far as I can tell, that there’s only one dimension to being human.

By: Ettina

Ettina — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:27:51 +0000

I think “functioning level” as I use it sometimes relates to speech, but sometimes more to things like how well the person does at things like going to the bathroom when they need to, eating and drinking when they need to, and things like that. Those can be far more unpleasant, if you lack the needed support, than not being able to speak.
Another thing I wonder – people talk about high functioning and low functioing – I’ve never heard anyone talk about medium functioning. It’s treated like a clear dividing line.
And another thing – autism is treated like a line from least autistic to most autistic. I knew a 14 year old (he’s now be 15 or 16) who very occasionally said “eat” or his name, nothing else (so occasionally, I never heard him do so, but I was told he did by someone who knew him better than I did). He signed a few words, mostly with prompting. His major way of communicating was to grunt and point. He was also quite social, often showing people things he was interested in (such as campers) and made a lot of effort to communicate.
I also knew an 8 year old who could speak in full sentences, a lot of it echoed, sometimes used to communicate (like saying “no” while refusing to do something) who seemed quite aloof. If he saw something that interested him (such as shiny ribbon), he’d play with it and ignore us. He often came up to people and sat on their laps or hugged them, but without looking at them or trying to communicate.
The older boy I’d say is more disabled in speech, but socially less autistic than the younger boy. If I had to put them on a line from most to least autistic, whoever scored most autistic would depend on how important speech measures were compared to social measures.
PS: I liked both boys equally, and don’t think either needs curing – although I hope both, especially the older one, eventually find more success in communicating, so they can tell people what they are thinking.

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:58:12 +0000

lordalfredhenry: That is part of my problem with speech, which is pretty multifaceted. It’s incredibly uncomfortable, it makes my throat and ears hurt for ages afterwards if I make noise, that’s why I even suppress my vocal tics where I can. There’s other parts too, many other parts, but that’s one part.

Kirayoshi: Yes, not all autistics don’t want a cure. I know many who do, all over the “spectrum”. But there’s, yes, a large number of us who don’t want a cure, and I suspect if society were structured differently, wanting a cure would be a very odd thing indeed for an autistic person. I’m aiming for that future society. :-)

By: Kirayoshi

Kirayoshi — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:53:50 +0000

My first encounters with fellow autistics was when I started posting at alt.support.autism where I met you, Joel, Kalen and at least a couple of hundred other autistics in all the years I was a regular poster there. We all were different people with different opinions but I had certainly the impression that we all stood for one thing, being autistic is the way we are, it’s not a disease and therefore it can’t be cured. Excepting people’s autism, without mentioning that it’s the greatest thing there is, is a way to show respect. In my humble opinion, saying that autistics should be cured is the same as saying autistics aren’t worth living.

After years of being a regular at that newsgroup, many people stayed away and eventually I left too and moved on. But when I visited other online places, I met autistic people who had different opinions, people who divided autistics between “elite-autistics” on the one side, who in their opinion are of high value for society because of their computer or other skills and on the other hand “retarted-autistics” who should be cured.

At first I was shocked reading these kind of opinions, I knew they existed but I had not heard these opinions of autistics themselves. Later I read more things that made me unhappy, for instance autistic people who claimed that their opinions should be considered more valuable because they were diagnosed before “Asperger Syndrome” became well known and doubted that a lot of autistics are truly autistic and use the label just to seek excuses.

Well, the first shock is over, now I’m merely heavily disappointed. I wrote five years ago my life story and published that on my website. Everything on that site is about “me” because I didn’t want to make the mistake to talk in other people’s place. But later I made one exception when I wrote a page that was called “We don’t want to be cured!” and I wrote that page out of respect for all autistics because I was convinced that we all thought the same about that one thing, a cure. Last week I changed the page to “I don’t want to be cured!”, merely changing all we’s in I’s because I understood I cannot speak for all, which made me sad.

Nevertheless, I know a lot of autistics and also non-autistics accepting autistics the way they are, opposing a cure and I hope you will never get too disappointed because I appriciate all the work you do.