BirdInFlight wrote:
I stand corrected; I didn't see that sentence -- so that person did say the autistic person will be suffering "the most."
Now that I come to revisit my thoughts on this a while later from initially posting, however........why would it be so unreasonable to speculate that perhaps the autistic child or person might actually be suffering "the most"?
For all we know, maybe that is true. Nobody can know. For all as bad as it must feel to be a parent struggling with a severely affected child, maybe it's still not as bad as what the kid is going through.
And why does that instantly have to be consigned to the scrapheap of "oh poor little autistic" self-pitying territory? Why can't it be legitimate to acknowledge that maybe it is worst of all for the person with autism?
That doesn't have to be the same thing as saying he or she is helpless, has no future, and all the other negative things someone on this thread condemned the idea as inherently having.
It doesn't have to be any of those things except saying that why not? Why not entertain that maybe IT IS "the most" suffering for that person? And that they do have a tougher row to hoe than the person without autism?
That's not buying into Autism Speaks BS, it's just a stand alone acknowledgement that if this is a suffering competition how in hell does a person with normal functioning get a free pass at saying theirs is "the most" and not the person with the condition?
Why is it okay for, say, a parent or sibling to be "woe is me I'm probably suffering the most" but not okay for anyone to allow that the same might be truer for the person actually LIVING the autism inside their skin?
Because over time, this attitude consigns us to the status of "other." It denies us basic participation in community - that acknowledgement that we are all - ALL - more alike than we are different.
I have to say, this is a weird turn of postings. Nobody made any "instant" anythings. These discussions happened over days. That is not instant.
Also, YAWN, we have had this conversation literally dozens of times. Do you really think that this is the first time for any of us older autistic people? Over and over again, we have worked out the deeper meaning of how we use English to express our comfort, or discomfort, with the presence of a person with disabilities in our lives. We've analyzed this stuff very thoroughly. Did you really think that I just made that whole post up off the top of my head? I've answered your question, almost exactly the same question, at least three times just this year.
I call this kind of thinking The Suffering Olympics. As if some people win by suffering the most. And you know, its a pretty common game of the young. Its a game that I played often and well. There's nothing particularly wrong with playing it. But I do think that it is our responsibility, as the elder generation of sorts, to guide people towards a more productive way of being in life. In the Suffering Olympics, everyone is a loser. It doesn't pay to play.
17 Sep 2016, 10:30 am
