Making good arguments to prove a Genocide of Autistic People

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We are neither nation nor ethnicity. We are a recognizable demographic group, though, like the mentally ill who were targeted by the Nazis in the state hospitals (they had gas chambers there, too). I know not all of us like to think of us as disabled, but that's the category we fall under.



I was thinking of Simon Baron Cohen, to be honest. He always manages to find the worst possible interpretation of his findings - if we're different, it must be a character defect. Which of course loses us sympathy with the public.



Thanks. I like this one.

I think our biggest problem is that the media makes a lot of money with crisis headlines. So they really go for the exaggerated inaccurate fearmongering, make their money, and leave us in the hole.

One advantage we have now that did not exist in the 1930s is that researchers determined that bigotry correlates with authoritarian parenting, and so we have less authoritarian parenting now as a result. The first generation that was raised non-authoritarian-ly got involved in all sorts of human rights issues as young adults in the 1960s - the shift really made a difference. People from authoritarian backgrounds cannot be reached - they can have serious mental blocks. Whereas people from more open-minded backgrounds can be educated - they can be made to see that groups like Autism Speaks are fearmongering at our expense for their own profit, and that researchers who make bold statements that make good sound bites may be oversimplifying at best, jumping to conclusions at worst.

We need to make ourselves visible to the general public, something we are probably inherently bad at, unfortunately. I wonder if Autistic pride days, where we appear together in public (without necessarily saying anything - after all, we are silenced), might make a difference. A public hour of silence once a year might make it possible for jurists to recognize what is being done to us. As it is now, they are unlikely to get what is happening unless they know someone personally who is affected.

One area to go after is "mercy killings". A lot of people genuinely think that it's ok to kill a crippled kid, not realizing that most crips want to live and thrive to the best of their ability.

I would stay away from saying famous people were autistic, unless there's wide consensus by more conservative researchers. It is fair to say that talented relatives may share many of the genes that autistic people have. This is certainly true for people with bipolar, who aren't as productive themselves but often have highly productive relatives. Even the Nazis knew that much.