Why do people hate curebies so much?

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I don't dislike being me and my quirks come with perks. I am willing to make some trade off for those perks. For example I used to have a memory (before it was knocked for six by antidepressants) that was so good I never needed to revise for exams. I have never revised for any exam in my life and still could get A grades. Excuse me for not wanting to give that up just to be more normal.

As for the downsides:

My meltdowns (if they are ASD related) are noisy but are not usually dangerous and I don't hit my head every time I have one (and even if I do hit my head I have not caused bruising or bleeding as far as I am aware). I tend to find that if I can keep my environment and lifestyle as I need it to be (quiet, free of irritants and things that make me feel ill such as nasty chemicals in foods, crowded places, materials I find uncomfortable to wear etc) my meltdowns are few and far between.

They are most likely to happen when I am being pressured to be someone or something else and have to change my preferred environment for one everyone else thinks I should be living in but which really does not suit me (such as drinking alcohol to be socially trendy, living in noisy crowded city centers, socialising when I am tired, being forced to make chit chat when I can't think of anything to say, having to eat crap like processed foods and takeaways which upset my digestive tract just to be social...etc).

At the moment I live alone in a nice quiet area which is why I am reluctant to move even though the people here are not always all that friendly. I have a one bedroom bungalow with a front and back garden which I rent in a small village a bus ride away from the coast. When I put in for a transfer the only people who applied were in run down council flats on grubby noisy estates with high crime rates. I did not fancy any of them. It is for this reason I won't move nearer to civilisation regardless of how lonely I get sometimes. My environment is as I need it to be in other ways. The only down side to my life is that I yearn for a companion so as to share some intimacy, romance and interesting chit chat. Oh and I'd like to get back to work so I am not dependent on the state...it's a bit too unstable for my liking. I am looking into my options to see what I might be able to do in order to look for something that will work out for me.

If on the other hand I am forced to live in an environment that I am not suited to then things are different. In such instances I cope poorly. Perhaps society should stop trying to make everyone alike?

Besides, it's not like my lifestyle or quirks hurt anyone and as for working, if society would let me find something that fits me instead of trying to make me fit what it thinks I should fit then I might even be able to hold down a job.

Society disables me more than my quirks do...ASD or not.

I appreciate that some have more severe symptoms or greater difficulties but if they are happy with their autism then I say let them be so. I agree with a previous poster that if you introduce a cure, anyone not wanting to take it will be villanised. This would be a bad thing...

Some people with ASD's have contributed much to the world we live in and we have no idea whether they would have had some of the skills that enabled them to do that if we had messed with their autism by trying to introduce a cure to them.

On the other hand there are others out there who's autism stops them from living independently. They may appreciate a cure so they can have a more normal life.

I guess it depends on severe the person's autism is and how exactly it affects them. We need more research on the nature of autism itself.

Is there any thread on what autism has contributed to the world and to society rather than all the negative threads whereby it is always seen as a bad thing. It would be nice to balance the perspective of things out a bit.

Autism must have a plus side too....perhaps we just need to try and find it?

Apart from which I like a lot of people on the spectrum and I enjoy conversing with them. I like people with unusual and interesting hobbies as well and I can learn some interesting stuff from them (I don't get that luxury when chatting with many people and I'd be sad to lose it if everyone got cured ). It's a bit selfish but I am not sure I'd want them to be different to what they are. Who then will I enjoy having conversational exchange with on such an interesting forum board as this one?

Go to the social networking sites full of small talk...Oh my god no!

I have a facebook page, I hardly ever use it and don't really bother networking anyway. That is probably why I only have 2 friends on there

Those are both examples of the police being deadly, not autism being deadly.

Then police officers should be taught not to tazer people for wandering onto the road, and not to hogtie people until they can't breathe. The problem in those cases is NOT autism.

I think a "cure" for people who want one, is fine, but I would be very upset if I thought I had to have one. I love my life exactly as it is; with all of my special interests and friends made therefrom, and special skills and talents to go along with all that. My wife fell in love with me as I am; not as what I might be if I didn't have autism. The more I think about it, the more I think it would be the beginning of the end for me, if I were "cured" of autism.

I guess the reason people might be a little upset by someone urging a cure, is the same reason Gay people might be offended if anyone insinuated that they're defective or something, and that they should be "cured". In other words, who's place is it to decide for anyone else, what is "normal"?

Charles

I don't hate the curebies, but neither do I agree with them. If my AS were magically cured now, it would be too late and I'd lose the advantages of being what I am. The problem with AS being harmful is NT society's attitudes and changes in society that meant many of us did not get the implicit life skills training in youth that we would have had in a previous age where discipline and duty were considered important.

Interesting.

I can't imagine a cure. I read a lot about "a cure to autism" but those presented as cured were merely mastering neurotypical behaviour.

Extinction of autism through terminated pregnancies is another thing.

Because they don't want to hear me talk about my special interests. It kind of makes me want to talk about The Kinks all the time. I don't though, because I know it will bother them.

Because they think curebies will force them to be cured. Personally I'm a curebie (for myself only), I don't expect others to be cured unless they are perfectly willing.

Some Aspies like to think they're superior to NTs somehow. This is a dangerous view to hold. Some Aspies are happy being themselves and we should let them be,.

On the other hand, Aspies who happen to get along better with NTs (but not well enough to function in society) and who want to be like them might benefit from such a cure. I certainly would. All my friends are unusually sympathetic and liberal-minded NTs.

I suggest that were a cure to be found, people should have the option of choosing for themselves whether they want to undergo the operation.

I am for a special kind of cure. I want doctors to be able to clone you, and then cure the old "you" so that in a way you aren't a whole different person when you are cured because your aspie clone still exists. And if the old "you" wants to be cured we can just clone the old "you" and repeat the process over and over again so in a way you are still who you once were, just in a different body, while at the same time being cured of the dreaded Asperger's syndrome.

When was the last time medical science actually "cured" anything? Maybe it's because it has four letters, but the word itself seems to be considered dirty these days. It's so much hipper to say "in remission".

There seems to be a basic assumption that a "cure" would mean instantly becoming somebody entirely different, losing special interests and becoming desperately needy, emotionally. Personally, I think a cure would have to involve integrating our basic personality into a more socially oriented, less compulsive version of ourselves. I enjoy my brain, but I admit that I would like to be able to use it better than I do. I wouldn't want to be compelled to change for the sake of a cure, but then, I also don't enjoy being compelled to behave a certain way by my own stubborn brain, either.

Here's my thinking: Autism is a spectrum and where a particular person falls on the spectrum seems to boil down to how well they are able to integrate basic autistic traits into a flexible mental framework that allows for interaction with others and tolerance for environmental factors that can't be controlled. I think most of us work towards that goal, but speaking for myself, I seem to hit a wall at a certain point which I can't get past. That always used to confuse and anger me, because I really want to be on the other side of that wall--to be able to choose whether to connect or not. I want to want to pick up the phone and just call to chat, instead of feeling exhausted just thinking about it, but knowing that if I value the friendship I need to make the effort.

I feel like there's a break in the cables connecting the different parts of my brain. I feel like somewhere in there is an undeveloped, starving social creature that my analytical brain can't seem to interface with. For me, I think a cure would involve finding a way to lay the cables between parts of my brain, and I don't believe that would mean losing the personality traits that make me myself.

I for one think a cure could be very useful for the species in general. Most species strive to improve and flourish over the others.

However I know that if ever they did find a cure it would be for the future born and not those currently diseased.

I may wish that I could be cured; and that I may have grown up more normal. But I think that is me wishing to be young again and to be more skilled at dealing with NTs.

Either way, it will be a ideological argument for some time. I do not see a cure coming any time soon. At least if it does it will not affect me or my son.

BS. Asperger himself said that success in science or art depends on autism and he's absolutely right. Without Autism Spectrum, Society would still be living in f*****g caves, to paraphrase Temple Grandin. People with severe autism do suffer but only high functioning autistic/asperger's are qualified to make those major breakthroughs in art and science that make life worth living for everyone else.

Generally speaking, NT's are f*****g drones; without us they'd have no technology, art or music to speak of. If curbies think that's a great idea then I understand why they're hated.

This is a very stereotypical and prejudiced view of NTs. Plenty of NTs do well in science and technology. In fact the majority of people in those fields are NTs - autistics are overrepresented, but still a minority. If progress in those fields depended solely on autistics, we would not be as far as we are now.

Scientific and technological endeavors benefit from having people with many different neurotypes studying the same subject, because they tend to notice different things. Diversity is what progress depends on - not the presence of a specific type of person.

You are wrong. The innovators in art and science, the greatest of the great who think outside the box and abandon convention in ways that change the world we live in, are always on the Autism Spectrum.