why do some people consider low functioning inferior ?

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This is very disturbing. These people may be classified as low functioning, but this is not at all what I mean when I am using the term low functioning. I have already explained this in the past, though I do not recall if on this thread.(and no, I am not saying they should be denied benefits because they can write and process data here). I am thinking of the almost twenty-two year olds depicted in Best Kept Secret. They are at a much much much bizarrely much lower level of functioning. Even in the trailer you can see one being praised and given the high five for knowing there are four quarters in a dollar..You and I seem to be at different levels of understanding. Perhaps I am low functioning in the way I interpret data:-)...but to me my own assessment makes sense.

You need to accept that all people are not of the same value in various contexts in terms of their capacity to function, though they are equally precious as human beings, and yes, if given an opportunity and encouragement it is amazing what people can do.

Actually, it's more like I don't believe I'm in a position to judge at all.

I have no waying of knowing for certain what those young people would want because I do not know them. I can't speak for them, so I won't.

I will say that in my experience, I have seen people at many different levels of ability wanting to be part of discussions about them, and wanting to express their feelings and thoughts about things (and not necessarily through words) and to have their thoughts and feelings understood, respected and valued....so if I had to guess, I would guess that they would want to be part of this discussion.

Did you see the documentary?????????????? And no one is saying their thoughts and feeling are not respected. If you think they would want to be included here, then why don't you contact them. they are not at present of the intellectual capacity to participate here imho. They would not understand this conversation. If they tried to participate in this particular conversation they would not be able to. they would fail..They need to be given simple projects they can succeed at.

]f you want to set up a simple online venue, maybe even in conjunction with this forum, where they could successfully interact with others here and learn to interact better, then I suggest you do that, and I am thinking Alex would probably support you in this.

What is your point, anyway? I am trying to answer the op's question, not to engage in magical thinking or play la la.

What's disturbing about it?



What is your definition of low functioning? And what are you basing your opinions of them on?



What is the significance of the four quarters to a dollar thing?

I have not seen the documentary (I have seen the trailer but I have no idea where I could watch the whole documentary) but your description of these youth seems very different from some of the descriptions found on the POV website (http://www.pbs.org/pov/bestkeptsecret/film_description.php):





People have different abilities, different levels of functioning, yes -- I accept this as a fact.

What you're saying about value confuses me. Value is assigned and determined by individuals -- it is subjective, not fact. The value of a person, does not, in my view, change with context.

That's shifting the goalposts. It's actually a really common tactic used to silence autistic people who try to speak for themselves. That they are capable of speaking for themselves (whether through augmented communication devices or other means than voice) is used to say they don't really count and aren't autistic enough to count.

Why don't you just give up? Why not actually listen to what these people have to say in this thread or elsewhere on this forum instead of irrationally insisting that they don't really count because someone you saw on a documentary received praise for being able to verbalize that there are four quarters to a dollar. That documentary is not an instruction manual on identifying and diagnosing so-called "low-functioning" autism. It's not. It's a documentary about problems these particular autistic people will face because the system that was in place for them will fail them.

You seem desperate to cling to this idea that there is a subpopulation of autistic people who can never ever ever speak for themselves so that you can speak over them while speaking about them (which makes you like many other posters on this forum). You are doing precisely what I said you would do:

I said she would do this and that is exactly what she did. I can't even begin to guess at her motives, but her actions are as transparent as a sheet of glass.

*speechless*

This from someone who posted some time back:



https://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5576371.html#5576371

Simple answer, littlebee: Stop trying to speak for them. You do not know them. All you know is from a 90 minute documentary, and you've drawn some pretty spurious and unlikely conclusions from that documentary. What you are saying here is disrespectful and dismissive of people whom you cannot possibly know well enough to draw such conclusions. There are many reasons that they might not choose to be here if they have internet access (and some people like them are already here - except you don't deem them autistic enough to count for that because by your own circular definition they are able to interact here), but I doubt any of them falls into the category of "they are cognitively incapable of understanding it." That is not a sweeping generalization you can make about them, not and expect it to be remotely accurate as a generalization.

Beautiful and inspirational comment. Except why do you think they would want to be part of this discussion? They are already having their own interactions which are relevant to them. I am thinking these people represent a part of yourself to you, as they do to Verdandi. To me they do not represent a part of myself. I am not working something out though them. To me they are simply themselves. This does not mean that it is inappropriate for me to evaluate their capacity (though of course my evaluation could be wrong.) That is just a part of life. People do it all the time. You seem to think I would want to keep them or discourage them from participating here. That is a moot point, actually, as they are not here, and it is my evaluation they would not want to be here---maybe on wrong planet (though unlikely) if you set up a special kind of venue, which I have suggested you do, but not on this thread. The reason I said la la is it seems to be you are engaging in wish (aspiration) but without action, not to imply that speech cannot be a form of action.

One thing I am starting to get out of this conversation with you and some others here, and this is interesting, is the idea that possibly some autistic people because of their past experience may be afraid to make judgements. Maybe they have been punished in the past for thinking or even speaking their minds, or maybe they did make a judgement and it was wrong, and so they were afraid to trust their own judgement making process again.

Her question was not about her own feelings, it was about other peoples perceptions and other people's feelings. There is a difference.



You are changing the meaning and context of the word judgement just to suit your own argument. Not cool. (And also makes your comment totally irrelevent to my point.)



I know that nobody can know what happens inside another person's mind, what they are thinking or feeling or wanting. Even professionals get it wrong, and I think I can reasonably conclude that you are not a professional and have absolutely no expert knowledge about evaluating people's cognitive abilities.



I don't think that, that would be my guess -- there is a difference, however small. And I already told you why. I have no other words to explain.



I don't even know what this means.



Yes, but it's important to remember the difference between knowing something and assuming something -- to know your own limitations when it comes to understanding other people. You don't seem very good at doing that.



Edited to remove unnecessary sarcastic ranting on my part:

That's it. I'm done. There is no point in talking to you. If someone disagrees with you, first you freak out and then you start psycho-analyzing them -- appearing to use your psychoanalysis to try and prove that the person's comments are invalid, and ultimately turning this into a conversation where everybody just judges and analyzes each other and argues over your personal ideas about things like feelings and social structure; I want no part in that.

The point is not to be right but to learn something new, and I have.

I am sorry you found trying to dialog with me so frustrating. I suspected it would come to this which is why I did not respond to your messages, but then you persisted (which I found admirable), and I sincerely tried to communicate.

This material on this thread would be fascinating to use as a learning tool for anyone willing to deeply delve into it.

The main point people are not getting is I am writing about turning the other cheek emotionally, but not about allowing injustice to occur. In the same way it is possible to honor another person as a precious human being and still not want to associate with them because of incompatibility for various reasons. Everything we do is based on making various correlations of data..You have been making all kinds of judgements about me, and this seems perfectly okay to you. For instance you said you can reasonably conclude I have absolutely no expert knowledge about evaluating people's cognitive abilities. No you can't:-) Of course this is my opinion and not yours:-)

Everybody is always evaluating other people in terms of context This is a natural law. There is no way to stop doing that. But if a person is doing it because of not okay feelings in himself, in order to jack himself up and feel superior and/or in order to gain an unfair advantage by slanting material (lying), or because he is competitive or just for an escape, then that is something else.

I like your message, though I do not agree with most of the points.. Your response was very interesting to me.

This is one of the best threads I have participated on in the whole time I have been here, speaking in terms of what I personally have learned about myself and others and about communication and just autism in general. A lot of insights have come to me. I will say it has been difficult and sometimes quite unpleasant for me, but it was worth it.

Well, there is pretty convincing evidence that you do not have this knowledge:

* You have concluded that autistic people who would be categorized as "low functioning" have no place on this forum and couldn't participate if they wanted to

* When it was pointed out that such people do in fact participate here, you shifted the definitions you were using so they only applied to the autistic people in the documentary you like using, and said that the people who are here are a different kind who do not count.

* You are drawing sweeping conclusions and vast generalizations about how such people think and interact from a 90 minute documentary that is not focused on how such people think and interact. While this is a popular NT pastime when it comes to generalizing about autistic people you seem to want the rest of us to believe that it actually constitutes some kind of valid information gathering on your part to come to such a conclusion.

* You either do not understand or do not want to acknowledge that a 90-minute documentary cannot cover any topic in depth, and certainly cannot lead you to any kind of valid understanding of other people's inner lives. At best, it could provide a starting point, or at least a point of understanding. In the case of this documentary, the understanding the filmmakers are seeking is "autistic people are effectively abandoned at 18 years of age." That is, that once an autistic person reaches adulthood, a number of supports and services that exist for autistic children and teenagers effectively disappear. This is a serious problem because a lot of service providers and organizations do not seem to officially acknowledge that autistic children grow up into autistic adults, and focus entirely on children. This is one of the many (valid!) criticisms of Autism Speaks, for example.

You are not elucidating factual information. You are not enlightening anyone. You are reiterating typical and unfortunate prejudices and biases about autistic people and trying to assert them as true because you watched a 90 minute documentary. That is the only source you have come close to citing in this entire discussion. When examples of other individuals deemed low-functioning defy those expectations and speak for themselves have been pointed out to you it appears you've either brushed over them or dismissed them as being the wrong kind of autistic.

And the argument that I or anyone else hasn't seen that documentary is irrelevant when you are posting what are clearly false conclusions about autistic people. It may come as a surprise to you, but many of us have been studying autism and reading about autistic people and reading material written by autistic people for some time now, and much of the information I have come across simply does not support your conclusions. In addition, you are using it to claim you can intuit what such people think and what they can think and their capacity for interaction and communication, and there is really no way you can do this.

Also, this:



is some kind of puerile nonsense. It doesn't make sense, it's just a way to divert what I am saying (and what animalcrackers was saying) into something that it is not. I do not know what kind of Freudian barely-passes-for-nonfiction hack psychoanalysis you're trying to pass this off as. I think we're all better off not knowing.

As far as "not allowing injustice to occur" you have tried to silence people objecting to torture, objecting to endorsement of torture, you have tried to assert that anyone who speaks out against torture online must - in order for their objection to count - quit their job and travel the country speaking out against torture. You have argued that autistic people have no right to ask for accommodations, and that we must "push through the pain" as a test of character or some such thing. You try to have discussions about autistic people while explicitly trying to exclude those same autistic people from the discussion. You outright said that so-called "low functioning autistic people" are inferior, no matter how you tried to re-mince those words to mean something else later.

You do not advocate against injustice, you preach it and try to smother any disagreement with your impossible-to-read replies filled with bold text inside quote boxes. Either you are completely confused as to what injustice means or you are actively, deliberately trying to mislead people about what you really mean when you say "I am writing about turning the other cheek emotionally, but not allowing injustice to occur." You insist that actually saying anything against it causes harm and suffering. You accused me of "slander" when I quoted your exact words.

Hello Everyone and it's me Jenisautistic I just wanted to say that I'm amazed at this turn out of this thread.When I first posted it I never expected this many comments and I want to thank every person Who commented so far. It means a lot to me that you would take the time out of your life to answer this question and even defend me and be caring understanding and compassionate towards me not to say that I'm trying to antagonize you Littlebee it's just that it's heartwarming that these people care about me even though I've never met them in real life. this is why I'm beginning to love this community I have people who understand at least some of what I'm going through even if it's only to a lesser extent and who would comfort and want to discuss it with me. up until I would say maybe 2 days ago I've been reading every single one of these comments but now that was such a huge response and so little time with such lengthy and detailed comments that I have to take time to read it so I don't misinterpret anything also talking about this kind of topic made me upset so I had to think a little break. I will probably respond soon but what I want to say is that I want to continue to encourage people to post on this form.

I was not going to reply to this post but I am feeling encouraged by the OP's kind words.
I only meant by my comment that low functioning autistics can have types of intelligence that often cannot be fully seen or understood by the outside world. intelligence is usually measured against the way ordinary people think and behave.
Littlebee, they may seem to you to have an inferior way of being simply because you don't know what is going on inside their minds.
If you could switch brains with an LFA person for a day, you will likely be the one that becomes enlightened.
Maybe you would also become enlightened if you invited that lice infested homeless man to your party and got to know him. You can offer him a bath first.
It used to be believed that severely autistic individuals were locked inside a dark and empty shell. I like to think we've come a long way since then.
Different minds have different ways of thinking and relating to and understanding the world.

How did I miss the "lice infested homeless person" anology?

It's like the closer you look the worse the rhetoric gets.

Plus the accusation that you are somehow engaged in a "ploy." littlebee does this thing where she accuses people of insincerity and bad motives when they disagree with her. I remember she accused myself and another poster I had never interacted with before of being in "cahoots" to shoot her arguments down a few months ago.

Also,

There are still people who believe this. Autistic people some of whom post on this forum who believe this.



Thank you.