Would you want your kids to be autistic at all?

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Oh and like all autistic people who claim to be logical and rational, it's really just acting upon biases, misinformation, propaganda, other irrational stuff with a thin veneer of rationalization on top of it. It's "logic" to you because you accept certain things as givens that you probably lack the knowledge to even be aware of (given that you've barely even known you had a condition long, let alone looked into disability). Nothing necessarily wrong with not being all logical, but I really hate watching autistic people convince themselves that their irrationality is logic and everyone else's is just emotionality and therefore not even worth paying attention to. I've been watching people do this for years now and somehow their "logic" always conforms to certain common biases, yet they think their thinking is better than others. (Your level of abstraction may be better than mine but I don't think that has to mean you're right.)

No... My logic assume realism whereas you think in abstracts and dreams. The REALISM is that the system IS the way it IS. GIVEN THE CURRENT SYSTEM, I hold my opinons. Of course if we could snap our fingers and make everything ideal, then my logic would change. Sorry, but I have to assume what IS not what COULD BE when making a decision as important as brining a child into this world.

I think in what I have actually witnessed. Theres nothing abstract about it. I keep telling you that and you keep ignoring it. Every single thing I describe has already happened, does still already happen, etc. It's getting downright insulting to provide this much detail of what I have seen in the real world and then get told it's "abstracts and dreams". My family is not an abstraction, my neighborhood is not an abstraction, my friends are not an abstraction, the people I know and have met and have known through other people are not abstractions. You don't have to like it but every single piece of what I say is based in real life experience. I am not even capable of making up things like this, I can barely hold onto that level of abstraction to save my life, every word is a translation of genuine sensed reality, and I literally do not have the capacity to be otherwise. But I know none of that will ever be good enough for you because people like us (you know, the real live people I base everything I say on, or maybe I dreamed them?) clearly aren't good enough for you in general.

You wanted a solution and I gave you one where every inch was from real live people and now it's not good enough because it's not happening instantly in the parts of the world that you're aware of. I guess it's because it's my survival (and people I know) at stake and not yours that I'm the one out in the real world helping to reinforce these community values, which are not at all out if place in my local area to begin with. The local DD agency is looking at using this stuff too given they're forced to cut costs that they already dont have enough of. They don't find it abstract or dreams either. It mostly sounds to me as if you're dismissing what you've never experienced as if it can't possibly already exist. Why, I am not sure.

The system doesn't exist. Only the people in it exist. You are one of those people.

Oh and I went to a lot of trouble to write that out in so much detail because I thought you actually cared about solving the problems you were bringing up but now it seems like it's all just... I don't know, like it's just an argument to you instead of an attempt to find a solution. Someone describes a solution based 100% in real life experience and you slap it down because it's not instantly implemented everywhere and insist it's not based in reality to boot even after the person spends hours and virtually all their energy describing exactly where in reality they got each piece. What do you WANT when you describe the money problem, anyway?

You can't eradicate abortion. You can, however, lower the abortion rates by having good sex-ed classes (not just abstinence-only) and easy access to birth control.

Hi Anbuend. I appreciate the great effort you made with your lengthy in-depth essay on this thread. I especially enjoyed your talking about we autistics helping each other in order to do things. I had previously made a post about a school in Ohio designed for autistics (but NTs can attend too) where the students are paired/grouped together in ways that each student will learn from the others. In other words, they all help each other. It is an incredibly successful venture. The school is called Oakstone Academy. Again, thank you for your post---I respect that.

This stuff becomes reproductive control in the same way that it does in China, where it's more economically advantageous (or even necessary) to abort female fetuses. It's not eugenics mandated by law, by rather by how economic forces are structured.



If I had dime for every time I heard someone on the spectrum say they were right because they were being logical, and others were wrong due to being emotional, I'd be pretty rich by now. I think it's "aspie" mistake #1.

When I first saw these ideas many years ago, I had exactly the same reaction you are having -- that it's all a bunch of fluffy-headed-rainbow crap that will never happen in a million years. And that anyone who thinks that it might is delusional.

Over the years, though (and I am embarrassed to admit how long it's taken), I've come to better see what those ideas really are, and it isn't just fantasizing about a perfect world. (Though there are still parts about it I'm not clear on.)

I can't think of how to bridge the gap in words, though. I think part of the problem is trying to look at it from the big picture, down, rather than from the small picture, up.

And, I still think the idea that expenses for services/etc. for disabled people being unthinkably expensive, when it's a fraction of other things, really is nothing but a matter of ideology. There is no tangible catastrophe involved in doing that, other than offending some people's sensibilities (that such things are distasteful and dystopian).

Logic is as good as the facts you feed it. If your facts are flawed, your logic will also be flawed.

I brought up reproductive control because I do not agree with telling other people whether or not they should have children. The consequences of deciding who should get to have children and who should not has historically been involuntary sterilization of women of color and disabled women. This was a big part of the eugenics movement in the 20s and 30s, and the sterilizations continued into the 70s for sure, and certainly later - look up "Ashley X." "Mississippi Appendectomy" is part of the vernacular for a reason. Just to be clear, I do not believe anyone in this thread is advocating eugenics. I was trying to explain the logical conclusion of arguing that disabled people should not have children - a loss of bodily autonomy.

I would not assign anyone else thoughts, motives or emotions on the basis of what they post on this forum, and I would definitely welcome the same favor. My participation in this thread has been emotional because I am emotional about the economy as well as reproductive justice, but this does not mean that what I have said is inaccurate, illogical, or somehow clouded by that emotion. I am not sure why my (or anyone else's) emotions are even a topic of conversation here. It sounds like a "gotcha!" In that you've caught me having an emotion therefore my logic is invalid ... which is not a logical stance at all. My emotions are irrelevant to my arguments, which are - as far as I can research - factual.

It is perfectly logical to say that you do not want to have children because they might be autistic and you do not want to deal with the costs. I doubt anyone would tell you that you should feel obligated to have more autistic children - and if they do, they're wrong. I think it's where it seems like this expectation is extended to others is where many of us object. We all have reasons - I would even say logical reasons - for our particular stances on this, and I do not believe there is one correct choice for everyone to make.

I would also add that I read all of Anbuend's posts, and I do not understand your reactions. They seem quite concrete and implementable to me - especially given that many have already been implemented in various ways in some communities. The primary barriers, as with my suggested economic solutions, are people. I have seen firsthand how community can grow and how the people in a community help each other. I have seen this - I have been helped in this way - develop in a concrete manner. To me an abstract is discussing the 60 billion annual cost of autism without an analysis of what causes the costs to be that high (and a number that high is equally abstract to me). What services are funded? For whom? What benefit do those services provide? Are they proven? Do they exist primarily to assimilate autistic children into NT society or do they actually support autistic children as autistic? Do any of these services support autistic adults? What is the price for these services as funded as opposed to an actual, realistic price for these services? Anbuend addressed many of these points at least twice now, talking about the kinds of services provided and how the costs are needlessly inflated. To me, these details are necessary.

Last edited by Verdandi on 25 Feb 2011, 9:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

But the problem with doing this sort of math is that today's population of AS adults are largely those that present the most serious variants of AS. Milder forms are often undiagnosed in adults for whatever reason so the divorce and employment stats will change over the next 20 years as a broader spectrum of AS people mature into adulthood. So I don't believe that the reality is as bad as today's stats imply.

And then factor in the additional help that this next generation will have benefited from.

But I still didnt and dont want kids.

I think the problem that you and I are having is that we see different views of "the world". Your world is "the world" and therefor you seem to think that because you have anecdotal evidence that it is fact. I understand that anecdote is one sort of evidence but that real fact comes from a myrad of better sources. I have been through the research that exists. I have poured through pubmed, all the various research sites and I tend to hang my hat on what those folks say and what I see going on in the "bigger" world versus the small community efforts and various peoples anecdotes. I think that your ideas are awesome and I honestly do appreciate that you go through the effort of explaining them but I don't think that our experiences align. I run multi-million dollar programs across the globe right now as a senior program manager at the largest chipset manufacturer in the world. I have a good grasp on how long it takes to take an idea and implement that into an actual end result that affects something as large as a state or a country. Now take that effort and add into it all the coruption and screwed up paradigms that you observe with this topic and these ideas become even harder to make happen at any bigger level.

I guess I am NOT as optimistic as you guys are that this world is going to change and that services to the disabled (Autistic) people are going to get better instead of worse or even last for a long while. I don't see most families having the sort of integrity that you experienced growing up where they take care of each other. I don't see people caring for one another in the ways you descibe on any large scale. Sure some do, but most? I don't see insurance companies making huge reforms and services getting cheaper/better. Perhaps they will and ( I hope) I will be wrong about all these things...

We will not know for many years...

The only thing you need to do to justify having an autistic child is make sure it's in place in your community and you have some cash on hand in case he needs to pay for services.