Comments on: An Antidote to X-ing

By: Mom

Mom — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:22:57 +0000

I just wanted to wish everyone who comes here a very Merry Christmas….We put out some suet for the birds and have been watching them feast this morning now that the snow has let up and also we have been watching baby squirrels somersaulting together in the snow….May wonderful things come your way in the New Year….

By: andreashettle

andreashettle — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:57:59 +0000

Off topic here: CNN recently had an article about how some public schools make excessive use of seclusion as a form of punishment particularly for children with disabilities, including Autistic students: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/17/seclusion.rooms/index.html

By: A Plea for Autistics.org, Plus More Madeleine L’Engle « Off Our Pedestals

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:50:07 +0000

[…] via Ballastexistenz, this lovely post: That Joy In Existence Without Which The Universe Would Fall Apart and Collapse, […]

By: The Integral

The Integral — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:32:36 +0000

You know, someone can make a connection to just about anything, from something seemingly unrelated, if they try hard enough and read into something mixed in with their own thoughts for long enough. That is good sometimes and bad other times. And yet other times it has no effect on anything.

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:39:05 +0000

Thanks. And thanks for noticing. It seems like frequently I blog about something general, and it gets made far more specific (in other people’ minds) to autism/etc, than I intended.

By: sanabituranima

sanabituranima — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:51:22 +0000

“Especially if your existence is one of those frequently deemed worthless, inferior, defective, and overly expensive.”

The thing I love about your blog is that it goes way beyond autism, way beyond disability. That statement reminds me of something I read earlier today:
“It is alarming that Britain as a country with a good record of accepting asylum seekers is becoming increasingly hard-line, fuelled by relentless attacks on asylum seekers by sections of the media.

Not only are asylum seekers dismissed as abusers of the asylum system and as welfare scroungers, they are now also regularly viewed as would-be terrorists.”

By: Lindsay

Lindsay — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:58:25 +0000

Beautiful.

Thank you.

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:00:54 +0000

For reference, while I remembered the name of that campaign about halfway through writing the post, I wasn't thinking about it when I conceived the post (which is about a lot broader than just autistic people). But... yeah, they seem to be about combating the invisibility of autistic adults on a lot of different levels. Which is good, because sometimes we're invisible out of negligence, but other times we're invisible because people don't want to see us (we interfere with their pet widgets, especially the ones that depend on there being a new "epidemic" of autistic people, and that insist that even as their insistence harms so many adults who are rendered invisible for the sake of an idea).

By: Stefan

Stefan — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:52:06 +0000

Hooray!!

By: Vicky

Vicky — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:47:03 +0000

The National Autistic Society has been running an awareness campaign called ‘I Exist’. It is being run by autistic adults. For a while I wondered why they chose that particular name, as I thought that there were better things to call the project – things that made it immediately obvious what the project was about.

Now I see that the current name does make it immediately obvious what the project is about…

http://www.think-differently.org.uk/campaign/Be%20counted.aspx