And even at my “level”, I’ve been hit with that crapola about “learning the consequences of my actions” stuff too. Part of that is I didn’t get diagnosed on the autistic spectrum until I was almost 40, about three years ago… but, I’ve always seen a notable lack of interest as to why I might have had problems doing whatever, much less help in solving the problems.

I don’t think the Aspie label is really useless, but I do agree it’s not half as well-defined as many people (especially some Aspies) think! It’s more like a broad horizontal stripe across the middle of the “autistic spectrum”. Given how poorly mapped the spectrum is, that’s at least some sort of reference point, but it’s still just lines on a map — and as always, “the map is not the terrain”.

I do kinda wish I had someone to help me along in daily stuff, but (cost aside) I’d feel bad about “tying up” a decent aide, when some folks need that help to survive! (And I wish I had local friends like resonanteye!)

I know a teenage girl with Rett Syndrome who seems to have that issue. If she’s standing, she’s walking. The only way she can stand and not walk is if I hold her in place. If I want her to stay in one spot, I have to prompt her to sit down.

I have wondered idly for some time how people would classify me if they saw videos of me doing stuff on YouTube. There’d probably be a wide range, as well as a fair amount of “she can do X, so clearly she’s faking her inability to do Y” which I have got a lot in my life, and is something I am quite familiar (unfortunately) is not unique an experience to me.

I personally refer to you (too frequently I suppose), though mainly I just think that your ideas and how you express them, often it’s exactly the thing I think ought to be representative of an autistic rights movement. That, and I have trouble remembering what names refer to what people, and most bloggers I’ve read don’t have videos of themselves on YouTube.

I also don’t relate much to the socially awkward part of the “aspie stereotype”. I have much more notably stims, and movement, difficult to initiate and the like, but can do socialization. I’m too tired now. Should sleep.

That the people offering this kind of real everyday support understand that you may not be able to communicate with them in person or deal with them at that time, that tyou didn’t need an insititution, but that you needed to eat and at the time couldn’t manage it -well, in this group, we all know how that can be. The fact that you were given so many opinions and so little actual on-the-spot support really, really sucks.

I don’t care if you ever “learn” a single “lesson”. I care enough about all autistics to want you to eat when you have to. Simple as that. And why you’re having trouble or how you resolve the difficulties isn’t my business, necessarily, but it is my concern. I can learn a lot from you, and have been in the same position many times. Therefore helping you is helping myself- I wish there was more actual help we could give to each other, as a group, on a very practical basis.

I’d make you anything you could eat. I am lucky enough to be safe, if not excellent, at cooking. Now if anyone wants to do some laundry, I can give you directions to my house. ;)

I wish I had specific questions to ask people with more knowledge, but the questions I have are more along the lines “is the structure in my head somewhat correct”, and I don’t think I can ask those in less than a few dozen pages. Perhaps when I get my new keyboard I’ll give it a try.

I have found the same thing in my own de-aspification process, if I can call it that. At a certain point I started reading the experiences and perceptions of people, like AB and Droopy, who could be labelled LF and trying to understand about their lives… and, I like to think, even relating with you guys as equals (although we have had very different experiences and you know a lot of stuff I had no idea about and I am often scrambling like crazy to fathom what in the world you are describing). My whole concept of the meaning of autism has been turned upside-down or inside-out. And I very very much appreciate this.

AB, I think you were saying in chat that wanting to understand about other people’s lives is “a useful curiosity”, and I am happy to have “caught” that particular curiosity. And there’s one very personal thing that I have mentioned here before: I won’t be afraid of combining my and my husband’s autistic genes. I still fear having a baby (because of my own ineptness), but I don’t fear that baby being autistic.

In terms of stereotypes I certainly look more like the super aspie geek type with my sitting on boards and post graduate level studies and I have a fondness for positive imagery because I don’t want to be separated from my achievements. However I would like people to see them not in the light of a performing dog. As I keep trying to point out, these kind of arguments are not exclusive to our “movement” if I dare even call it that considering the contradictions in it. This you see in the disability “movement” in general. My mum made the transition from a “lightly impaired” person to someone who needed total 24hr care due to the aggressiveness of her condition, but she still represented the same “message”. There are within the disability movement those whose invisibility prompts them to avoid the “stigma” of association rather than challenging it. At some point in my own journey within the movement my mum challenged me to decide which side of the divide I was on.

For that reason I cannot define my “disability” totally in terms of Autism because although that is a major part of my cognitive and perceptual makeup, I have other “impairments” too and it makes more sense to be part of a wider movement which does not define one by the impairment, but by the fact that whatever “impairment” one is judged to have (I take issue with the word impairment but use it here to identify what others designate as such) one is treated as less than equal because of it. It is that lack of equality that should drive the solidarity.

There is a lot of false reasoning being used by the aspification camp to justify looking down on the disability movement. The claim that Aspies for Freedom or whatever are part of a civil rights movement is a false one, for anyone who has been part of the disability movement will realise that the disability movement grew from the civil rights movement and learnt from it. It is to deny that any “disability” or “impairment” is also a part of the natural order of things, as unavoidable as being “aspie” is. These Aspies are making a moral judgement that it is somehow “dirty” or “taboo” to identify oneself in such a fashion. Well what would one say if disabled peoples organisations did not want to associate themselves with black people or immigrant minorities because that was beneath them ?

That isn’t to say that prejudices and imbalances don’t exist within disabled peoples organisations, they do and I am against that as well.

I want to be seen positively, however I want my positive traits to be seen as an honest part of me, not as some sort of spin off from being Aspie, White, Anglo Saxon, Protestant or whatever. I am human, I have failures as well, things I can never do. Both my achievements and my failures are set within a context of the society I have grown up in, which has been conditioned by attitudes towards disability, class and gender. I see Aspification as part of the same oppressive machinery that divides and rules.

Labels have there uses and there time spans, I think it is time for the usefulness of the Asperger label to be disregarded, I think in time it may be that Autism will go the same way as well.

I suppose I will do the Haile Selassie thing and say that until the label on a man’s cognition is no more significant than the label on his trousers there’s going to be war.

Now there is a fine statement of contradictions, because I say “man” as did Selassie and of course designer jeans are of significance so I am just playing around with words again in the hope that people see the subtext in that whatever you say someone will take a different meaning from it. The problem is when one label sets you in opposition to another persons label because you have swallowed all of societies hand me down crap that goes with it.

Aspification is a social learning process, learning to take ones designated place in society, learning to be not one thing, but another, but still not at the top of societies ordering from perfection down to unworthy of living. Those who take the Aspification path are not a liberation movement they are a reflection of societies normalising values.