This video is just disgraceful to the autistic community.

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I think I'm not explaining clearly enough: I never said that the statement or the video was made in defense of parental violence against disabled children. I said that whatever their intentions, it participates in the normalization of such violence. I don't think most people hear that and think it's shocking. I think most people hear that and think that it confirms what they're already likely to believe, whatever that may be, as long as it's generally ableist.

Anyway, thank you for letting me know you understood what I was saying. That's what I was getting frustrated with.

Last edited by Verdandi on 22 Dec 2011, 6:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

I want to be clear that I wasn't making statements about anyone's intentions when that video was made, except for the explicitly stated intentions that were quoted earlier in the thread. I also wasn't saying anyone should give up the right to feel and express emotion.

I am aware parents f**k up all the time. I live in a household with two sets of parents, a single mother, and a soon to be single mother. There are two children who very probably have ADHD and are an extreme handful to keep track of (and cause me nearly daily sensory overload even when I'm not around them). Both of those mothers only recently reached adulthood, and I lived with both of them and another for three or so years when they were teenagers, and all three of them are diagnosed with ADHD. One of them actually is also diagnosed with bipolar. Also, another teenaged girl lives here, and she too has ADHD. I have had to act at times as aunt (which I am) and occasionally stand-in parent (which happens more rarely). It's not the same as having autistic children, but it can be quite a challenge. One of my nieces likes to lie to everyone about everyone else, although I have no idea why. I am not sure she knows why, but she causes drama for essentially no reason. My bipolar niece tends to just literally flip out on people over practically nothing. She's very controlling and can be abusive herself. It's a big mess sometimes.

Anyway, thank you for saying you heard what I was saying. I couldn't tell if I was being heard, and that was lending itself to my frustration with the discussion.

I also don't know why most of this thread is about the feelings of the parents with little mention of the feelings of the children, or even the specific child listening to her mother talk about driving them both off a bridge.

You said "Generally speaking? Mental illness does not cause violent behavior."

Now you say you never said they never commit violence so perhaps I took it literal.

Probably. I didn't mean never. Like, "Generally speaking, airplanes are safe transportation." But airplanes crash. But very few crash relative to the number of flights. It wouldn't be the first time I ever made an accidentally misleading generalization, however.

I saw that video a few years ago and it made me so angry that I never watched it again. And I don't plan to either.

It's a known fact that some autistic children have an understanding of language, even though they don't have the ability to speak.

I don't see it as a good thing that the children were in the same room when sensitive issues were discussed, because of this possibility, however there were no overt signs that they were paying attention to what was being said, that I could see.

I can't speak for anyone else, but at least when the mother talked about driving off the bridge, the child was across the room looking out the window.

In my opinion, regardless if she could understand any language spoken, she was not paying attention to what was being said, instead paying attention to whatever it was about the window that she was interested in.

The documentary was about the struggles women had raising their autistic children, realistically there would have been little impact of that reality, the aim of any documentary, if the children were not included.

The assumption made in the video is one that the children, are not communicating with those around them, and are not paying attention to people, so if one understands and agrees with that assumption, it's understood there is no potential of harm to the children.

It didn't look like there was to me, but none of us can really get in the child's head to know; the parents do live with the children 24/7, so they and the professionals that assess the chldren and provide therapy, would objectively probably understand this better, than anyone other than the child could, from a small slice of the child's world, seen in the video.

So to specifically answer your question it didn't appear that the children were either paying attention to what was being said or that their feelings were hurt by anything that was said, from what I could see in the video.

If others saw it this way, I'm not sure why they would express concern, for a concern that didn't appear to exist in this specific video.

On the other hand, one could see the video from the perspective of the parents acting like the children are not there, in a callous way, but in the actual experience of some of the parents, from their perspective, the view can also be that the autistic children are not motivated to interact with them

A lack of interaction with others is part of the diagnosis for some of these children, so it's not too surprising from that standpoint that the parents might hold that perspective, and not be concerned that the children are going to focus on anything that was said in the interview.

Autism Speaks is a charitable organization raising money for the disabling aspects associated with autism, so as with any other organization that fundraises, heart strings do equal purse strings, that's part of marketing 101.

If an organization does not appeal to people's emotions they are not likely to donate. Beyond marketing, cognitive science shows the majority of decisions humans make are based on emotion rather than logic, regardless if they are consciously aware of it.

The best example to use for that here, I can think of, is the commercial about the abused dogs and cats, I can't watch it, I have to turn the channel, however my wife watches it, engages in the sad emotion, and wants to give to the charity.

I don't want to see the reality of animal abuse in my living room, but I concede and understand that without the emotional appeal, the fact is the abused dogs and cats are not going to get the same level of support, if heart strings are not pulled to get to the purse strings.

It sounds cold and calculating, but it's really not, it's just understanding human nature and doing what it takes to motivate people to help a worthy cause.

I can't watch the I am autism video, and it was a struggle to attempt to watch this video, to provide a comment, on the other hand my wife would watch it, cry, and want to donate, if she hadn't heard about autism already.

It doesn't matter I'm not the target audience, if they can capture the emotional intent of one spouse whom is part of their target audience, they can be successful in fundraising.

The guy that founded autism speaks was the president of NBC, and developed MSNBC and CNBC, he's an expert on media, and has access to the best in the business.

One can bet that if any child had a look of concern or attention on their face in that video, over what was being said about them, we wouldn't be seeing it on the video, people in the target audience would pick up on it, get upset, and likely not donate to the mission.

The organization understands who their target audience is, who is likely to support the mission, and who is likely to fund the mission. They are not likely going to do anything evidenced in marketing research to upset those folks.

Every advertisment they use is orientated, and professionally done, towards that singular goal, through marketing expertise. Maybe that sounds cold and calculating too, but it is the recipe for success for an organization that raises funding for any mission related to charitable causes.

Adult autistics are not a major part of this targeted audience likely to support and finance the mission, so resources that might be targeted at that audience through the portrayal of autism instead of the targeted audience, would objectively speaking, likely reduce the amount of funding for the mission.

That portrayal of Adult Autism can reasonably be presented on their website by actual autistic people, still directed at the target audience likely to visit the organizations website and fund the mission.

There is actual science behind everything autism speaks does, as a charitable organization, including their marketing campaign.

They have offended some in the autistic community through some of the negative heart string marketing, and apologized for it, but one can bet they have offended few to no inidividuals in their target audience, that fund the organization's mission, except through their pro-vaccine stance, which is a science vs. ideology, rather than a direct marketing issue.

The fact is there are many of their target audience that visits this site, who do not post, part of the average 1500 folks that view the site at any given time. As has been seen in this thread the video has highly offended some, and not offended others at all.

The documentary is acceptable to those individuals and likely would be acceptable to at least 50 percent of the individuals that don't post here, the other 1500, some of which who will take the time to look at the video to see what all the fuss is about.

That's a win-win scenario for autism speaks success in their mission. More of the target audience is reached who may potentially become new supporters of the organization, if their heart strings are pulled by the video, because of the effort to present the video here.

And for those that aren't part of the target audience, who would not likely of supported the organization in the first place, it is of little consequence to the success of the mission of the organization.

Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, for the most part, the hatred of autism speaks motivates people to provide free advertisement for the organization, unwittingly. Autism Speaks doesn't have to put forth any effort at all, except for their current practice of keeping the video in an archive somewhere, that can be found with a google search.

The more controversial the thread is, the more likely someone will be motivated to click on the video, out of that 1500 that is viewing some part of the site, and make their own judgment, based on the content of the video.

The only potential real harm I can see that I have already commented on is for those autistic children that might be exposed to it without proper context and understanding provided by a parent, and possibly take it to apply to them on a personal basis.

It has bothered some adult autistics pretty bad, so it could bother children more, I think, particularly if they took it to heart and didn't ask someone about it.

It doesn't appear that anyone else sees that detailed concern, so I might be imagining a scenario there, that has little potential to actually happen in reality.

Yes the child was looking out the window. Does that automatically mean the child was not listening or paying attention to what was said? This kind of assumption has been made about me my entire life. Many times as a child other people said things in my presence that they thought I didn't understand, or didn't hear because I was busy doing something else. But I heard those words very clearly, I understood just fine and sometimes the things I heard were very upsetting. Those statements reverberated in my mind even years later. But no one had any idea because I did not have any outward reaction to what was said.



I think this is a dangerous assumption to make regarding any child, and especially regarding an autistic child.



People are talking about the feelings of the parents because that is what the video is intended to get people focused on.

I don't think it's that easy to say whether an autistic is paying attention to what's going on just on the basis of what they appear to be paying attention to. I know as a child I could be totally involved in my own world and hear everything around me. I mean, I don't autistic children are like neurotypical children in the sense of showing clear signs of attention. Not that they never do, but that they don't always.

I suppose that the talk of an irrational violent act might lead to the normalization of violence by someone that is troubled, but it appears to me that it is not unlike the common argument that playing violent video games leads to the normalization of violence, it depends on the individual and how they interpret the information they are exposed to in life.

Ultimately it is the individuals responsibility, I think, in life, to operate within the law, regardless of what information they are exposed to.

There is no censorship of significance that anyone cannot bypass with a little effort on the internet. And, an unlimited variety of nefarious interests one could consume themselves and normalize if they choose to. It appears that's the price of freedom of information.

My understanding of ableism is that it is discrimination of the disabled; I'm not seeing how someone watching this video that may support individuals with a neurological disorder, would in general, have a propensity to discriminate against the disabled.

I think it's pretty safe to say that most people that have watched this video, have done it in support of families of children with autism, whether or not one is receptive of the video.

I'm not even sure that many who discriminate against the disabled would make this video any of their concern at all.

Maybe I'm not understanding your statement properly or you are using the term differently as commonly defined.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ableism

I can relate to that too, one of my key traits was eavesdropping on others without appearing to pay attention to them. That's practically how I learned to communicate better, I observed everything and identified patterns to emulate. Firstly it was rote, but then I developed deeper understanding of interactions later on in life. So yeah, never a good idea to say things like she did in front of an Autistic child, even an LFA as there's a good chance they're listening, but not conveying any feedback.

I'm talking about sociological concepts about how ideas are framed and presented culturally, and what it does to people's perceptions. Everyone keeps looking at these things as individual acts and individual people, and thinking that when I talk about normalization I mean encouraging people to commit violence directly, and it's not that simple. The normalization convinces people that the violence is reasonable and excusable and justifiable, which creates a safer environment for those who would do such things to be more inclined to do them, and when they do them, the public and the media is more inclined to forgive them.

It doesn't turn people into ravening monsters, it encourages people to turn a blind eye to the ravening monsters who already exist, and encourages people who might not go the way of ravening monsterhood to perhaps give it more thought.



As I said above, it's not that simple. We're not a society of individuals, we're a collective society. All societies are. This doesn't mean we don't exist as individuals, it means we are often influenced as collectives as well as individuals. This is why institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. exist. Because the prejudices exist on a collective level that is, yes, enacted by individuals. But they are enacted by individuals in an almost symbiotic way with other individuals supporting it, ignoring it, giving a free pass for it, enacting their own prejudices, and so on. This is what I was trying to point out with news articles earlier: Violence against disabled people is normalized. When someone commits violence against a disabled person, the charges are frequently less severe, the bail is generally lower, and the sentences are frequently lighter for exactly the same crimes. What this means is that it is actually safer to enact violence against a disabled person than it is to enact violence against an abled person (all else being equal) because often the media, the courts, and public opinion may very well support you, or at least lack sympathy for the disabled victim.

No one is an island.



I have no idea why you brought up censorship, as I do not recall anyone mentioning censorship. I'm not even sure what censorship has to do with what I was saying.



Not "discrimination against the disabled." There is no such thing as "the disabled." You have disabled people (which is more UK/Australia, etc) and people with disabilities (the US), but "the disabled" is just a faceless mass of entities that exist as a kind of token to do whatever one does with tokens. People, however, are relevant, and not simply tokens to be dismissed or bargained.

Ableism has two sides: It is discrimination against disabled people in favor of abled people. It is enacted by just about everyone, abled or disabled at one time or another. Whether one is arguing that it's okay to decide for a disabled person whether that person should live or die on the basis of assumptions about their quality of life, or one is arguing that accommodations are inconvenient and expensive and disabled people who need them are simply full of entitlement issues and litigation happy, these arguments are ableist. They normalize the idea that disabled people are deviant (in the literal dictionary sense) and thus not truly a part of society, and don't belong in society, and that disabled people should lack the authority to decide the vectors our own lives take, that abled people have the authority to take that agency away from us. And when individuals say these things, they are not simply individuals. They are people who are part of a society that has enacted policies over the years ranging from warehousing of severely disabled people to eugenics (involuntary sterilization of disabled people, taking children away from disabled parents - my stepfather was taken away from his mother because she was deaf), to basically hiding disabled people away from sight.

Have you read Pet Sematary? One of the most vivid images I had in that book was how Zelda - the woman (or girl, I forget her age) with meningitis who loved The Wizard of Oz, who was locked away in the attic where abled people would not have to be affronted by her visage. She was portrayed as terrifying and monstrous, and this is someone who was dying from spinal meningitis, someone who is as worthy of compassion as any abled person, but who is not written as such. And while you can argue that Stephen King is a horror writer and thus he plays on horror over reality, I am already aware of that. But what he wrote is a reflection of reality, of disabled people who were locked away, and even if they could come out, society didn't have room for them. Wheelchair ramps? No way. Obviously, this wasn't 100% the case, but if you look at ableist arguments about accommodations, you may come away wondering just what it is that they want disabled people who need those accommodations to do? And what they want them to do is stay out of the public eye, stay out of society. Stay in the attic where they can read their own personal Wizard of Oz, but not bother "normal" people, who have better things to do with their time than put braille on signs and ramps into buildings and make wider bathroom stalls and make more convenient, larger parking spots for disabled people. To name a few obvious accommodations.

Boiling it down to discrimination against disabled people elides the full meaning of what it is, the active and passive hostility behind it. The "common sense" beliefs of people who pick up the cultural messages pertaining to disability and think that it only makes sense that there are special circumstances involved when a caregiver murders their disabled charge, because taking care of disabled people is so hard and there are so few services, who wouldn't crack under the pressure? Except that these services themselves are also limited by public and political generosity, or perhaps the lack thereof. Many of the same people who say "it's a shame those abled parents were driven to murder their disabled children" would never support actually increasing those services (and will never even care to find out whether or not those parents really had access to those services, as many actually did).



I am using the term as it is often used. You did not understand my statement. Ableism is a system of oppression - discrimination, prejudice, lack of sympathy, lack of empathy, lack of compassion, disdain, disbelieve, outright hatred. It is supported at times by everyone, which includes both you and I. There is, fundamentally, no "outside" the system. We're all part of it.

This is also one of my special interests, and one I cared very deeply about even before I knew I was myself a disabled person.

All the children portrayed in the video were portrayed as children with autism disorder with serious developmental disabilities. I can't get into the child's head, so all I can do is provide my opinion on the available portrayal that the child had a serious developmental disability and was standing at a window across the room looking at it rather than looking at her mother who was speaking in the opposite direction.

It's not outside the realm of possibility that the child was paying attention to the mother and her conversation instead of the window, fully understanding what was said, and contemplating the ramifications of what was said, but in my opinion that's not likely, considering the available evidence.

My understanding of research at this point in time is that some children with autism disorder assessed as having serious developmental disabilities may possess a greater ability to understand the world around them than was understood when that video was made in 2006.

The parents could only assess their children's abilities with observation of their children, assessment by doctors, along with what was known about autism at that point in time.

Those involved in the video made the judgement call that they felt was appropriate for the children involved in the video. They very well could have been mistaken in fully understanding the children's abilities, but I think they were probably in a better position to understand that than any of us are, from observing the video, at least from the perspective of what was known about autism and those children in 2006.

Interesting.

Hypothetically speaking, IF I were to give an assignment, an ask anyone on this thread to argue from another person's point of view, could you do IT ? Could you see, someone elses perspective well enough to defend IT given the information presented to you on this thread by your peers ?

TheSunAlsoRises

Cultural norms vary depending on a myriad factors, and within sub cultural groups within the larger group, that do go down to the level of the lone wolf.

I agree that this could be one of those myriad of factors that influence the normalization of violence, particularly among lone wolves, but at most in the case of that comment in the autism speaks video, an insignificant one I think.

The video is also a potential avenue for support that could also impact the normalization of seeking help when one has irrational thoughts as well, which not a normalized behavior for many; probably an insignificant factor there as well.

There is some potential that a life taken or a life saved could be influenced in some way by this information, but I say insignificant because there is no concrete way to measure the effect, that I know of, other than someone's self report that they killed someone because of the video or didn't kill someone because they sought help for an irrational thought because of the video.

Hard to say what it is that leads to the final decision for someone inclined toward a criminal act unless one reports it. It could be watching this video, or it could be because the light went out on the porch and that was the last thing someone could cope with before they committed the criminal act.

Violent video games, pornography, Violence in movies, anywhere culture presents a behavior as a goal for attainment, are just a few of the other myriad factors that have the potential to influence the cultural norm and societial behaviors.

My comment about censorship is just in relationship to the fact that these influences are not censored and freely available to anyone with access to the information, in part, along with myriads of other factors, this available information makes the culture what it is.

Thanks for the further information about ableism, I didn't intend to leave out people from the definition of ableism I found from the source I provided. I understand your offense at the word disabled to refer to disabled people, but it's the first time I've heard anyone object to it; it is still commonly used that way. There are thousands of examples where the government still uses it that way, with a google search.

It's an adjective that is normally understood as pertaining to people, I think that most people understand it as such. Just as when one uses the adjective caucasians to describe white people, or heterosexuals to describe people. A person's race is definitley not a person on it's own, but there is not much else it could refer to, except for a person.

Discrimination is not just a societial/cultural phenomenon, it is part of primate behavior that will be part of human primate behavior as long as humans are primates. The world is not a very nice place, it is society that puts rules into place to repress that primate behavior, and replace it with behaviors that help those that are less advantaged, instead of harming them.

Infanticide is nothing new, it is part of primate behavior that is discrimination and part of human behavior that is part of the cultural norm, of human beings, through legal abortions. Primates in the wild will destroy those individuals that put limited resources of healthy primates in jeopardy.

Abortion is used when resources are low in the same way by some human beings. It's a much kinder method of infanticide than the methods that were used before abortion became available, legal, and part of the cultural norm.

The only thing that clearly sets humans apart from other primates is langugage, culture, and clothes.

What I'm saying here is, per aid to disabled people, and repression of discrimination, society is the benevelent force, the horror stories of the past are based on the harsh reality of human primate nature. Take the rules of society away, and we can say goodbye to much of the benevolence for those who are disadvantaged.

Altruistic behavior would still exist for the cooperation of the strong, just as it is focused in modern society among the elite that are the most successful in securing subsistence for survival. And, as it is occurs in primates in the wild, and evidenced in prehistoric man.

Taking care of disadvantaged people is a sign of a healthy society. The pinnacle of civilization is currently in Nordic countries. It is looking like many countries have already reached their zenith in this respect, including the US.

One of my special interests is anthropology, nothing much has changed about humans except for culture, in the last 12 thousand years. And it's the only thing that is special about human beings. Take it away and for the most part we are just another naked ape in the forest.

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the video is it reflects a part of human nature that is normally repressed and/or sanitized through culture, that people don't want to imagine is even possible for human beings.

If it was not for society and people with similiar benevolent beliefs that go beyond altruism, the world would likely reflect much more of what people don't want to think about.

I wasn't offended at your use of "the disabled." I feel that the usage elides "people" from the definition. I realize it is widely used, but I disagree with that usage for the reasons I stated. I believe that the label itself reflects the attitude toward people with disabilities, that we can just be reduced to "the disabled." That's what we are, disabilities. I don't care for that.

As this dictionary entry says:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disabled

Although I would argue that being offensive is probably one of the least important elements, as compared to the semantic effect of labeling people as one of their traits, rather than as people.

As for the rest, I've already said everything I can in my previous post. I'll just be reiterating my points if I respond further.