How Serious Is Autism To You?

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IDK it makes me me.

I feel true hope comes from compassion. Why are autistic people surround by controversy and numerous conflicting opinions, yet nobody on the news or on the internet says anything about schizophrenics? Because there is a medical recognition of it and people leave it at that. What this forum and my opposition have been doing is forming some sort of identity that will only draw unwanted attention. Their wellbeing, if it is from a lack of compassion (and supposedly not their disease, and recognizing it as a disease is also freeing, it lets the person know it is not their fault for how things sometimes turned out), is due to the wrong kind of autism awareness. My stance is to recognize and make autism merely a condition, as in it is something that someone can have like schizophrenia, not something a person "is". Some negativity acts as a good wake up call to the very people who are inadvertently making things worse by making certain groups of neurotypicals resent us even more. Why is autism used all over the internet now as a slang term for an idiot but schizophrenia isn't? It has to do with the methods neurodiversity have been using.

Its is said. Plus we can be above the normal intelligence.

I think back to situations when I was younger,band my unawareness makes me cringe. I wonder if I'll see !it's if the same in twenty years. (Probably some...)

Your hold a personal viewpoint, which you are perfectly entitled to do, but bear in mind that others are equally entitled to hold completely different viewpoints. By all means discuss your beliefs but don't keep lecturing everyone else as if they were idiots and only you know the answers. I've got a mind of my own and I'm perfectly capable of reaching my own conclusions about things. I do not appreciate other people telling me what I should do or think.

I'm 55, on the Spectrum, and I'm still going strong,though not as strong as 69-year old B19.

To say that an autistic person will be demented and in a mental hospital by age 50 goes beyond absurd. Why would you even post that?

Sounds rather delusional to me.

Alright, I'll bite because I have nothing better to do right now.

I've had a hard day, so forgive me for not having the energy to multi-quote. I'll put your earlier points in bold.

Autism is not the only issue, schizophrenia, ADD, bipolar, paralysis, inherited physical disorders! They all must go!


I assume you are talking long-term, then? Not curing existing people?

If you're discussing curing existing people, you perhaps might as well be suggesting extermination.

Perhaps it is best to stop new people being born with these conditions. Honestly, I can't say because I don't know what positives might be brought to the world as a result of this level of neurodiversity.

It's your use of 'They all must go!' that is the issue, here. That doesn't sound like you're sharing an opinion. It sounds like you're saying 'people like us shouldn't exist'.

Again, with...

We must not include disability in this dream for the future!

Who is 'we'? You sound like a dictator.


[b]We only need tip the scales further in our direction. Let our voices be heard! Someone is backing one side too much, we must back ours!

It just doesn't stop. Again, you sound like a preacher, so wrapped up in your illusion about how others should feel that you've lost sight of other valid viewpoints.

It's as though you have a miserable life as a result of autism and you're genuinely distressed that other people do not always experience the same.

...but of someone who doesn't know what they are missing. Socialization is not some stupid thing neurotypicals do, it is like a vulcan mind meld that allows the release of pleasure chemicals and also allows people to engage with eachother and gain pleasure therefrom.

Here's the thing: other people gain pleasure from different things, and there's nothing wrong with that.

If you don't know what you're missing, where's the issue?

My husband is NT and doesn't know how wonderful it feels to listen to music. To him, it's enjoyable and good, but it's not like the magic I experience when I listen to a song. Years ago, I could not understand why my husband didn't fall in love with music like I do, why it wasn't such a huge part of his life, how he couldn't hear the amazing tone in a voice that I could. Now, I realise that he doesn't experience music in the same way.

Is that a problem? No. If he hasn't experienced my way, and he still likes and enjoys music, why does it matter?

If someone with autism is happy going and standing in a train station and watching the trains rush past (stereotype alert, sorry!), and that makes them as happy as an NT feels in his favourite bar, why is there an issue in your eyes?

Autistics are surrounded by conflicting opinions because the science is anything but settled and the experts have conflicting opinions.

Autism as insult and as a replacement for the not politically correct ret*d is because until recently the vast majority of press emphisized the "intellectually disabled" autistics. "Mental Retardation" is a understood condition but "ret*d" became widely used as an insult anyway.

Aspergers/Autism a trendy special snowflake syndrome insult came about because the press often emphasis only the most successful and arrogent ND movement supporters and because there are so many "new" conditions around people are cynical they are real. Autism as one of the most publicized "new" conditions gets an outsized amount of cynicism about its legitimacy.

Nuance is not profitable for the media and nuance does not easily fit into a 2 minute TV news report so with autism and every other issue what usually gets reported is the extremes and the stereotypes.

KK, perhaps you and I secretly escaped out of the hospital using our AS strength and imagination! Don't worry, it's our secret, we won't let on to the membership here

I forgot to add before that the absurd claim - "autistic people will all develop dementia at age 50" - is not only ridiculous, it is a very clear example of "gaslighting", a technique which anti-neurodiversity proponents frequently employ.

...

IMO, the two most charitable explanations to explain why these occasional anti-neurodiversity proselytisers come here, a neurodiverse site, to tell us all what hopeless wrecks we are (they remind me of those proselytising fundamentalists who go evolution seminars only to try to derail and disrupt them) are:

1) These are AS people so conditioned in self-hatred that they seek release from the pain and shame of feeling worthless by projecting both onto others, hoping to make converts ("misery loves company"); for some maybe, this may be a way of getting a fix of power: (this shows in the attempts to condescend to and insult the "fools" who disagree, and the scaremongering);

2) This self hatred and its projection are fairly typical aspects of Internalised Oppression (google it, there's lots of information online].

I very much agree B19, hence my original posts... I realise many are in pain due in many ways to how they are treated and often this is because people outside of the spectrum have a preconceived false image of those that are on the spectrum, i was just trying to emphasis that with time, giving people the right information could in time greatly reduce the negative aspects of how people interact with those on the spectrum in return making what is a living hell for many a little easier to deal with as it seems from many of the posts i have read, much of their misery is down to how they are treated from the outside world.....

As for the Dimentia, well again science says otherwise, i read a scientific study a few weeks ago about dementia on the spectrum and science has found that those on the spectrum are LESS likely to gain dementia... Sorry to burst the ideology bubble but seems science thinks otherwise!

"Happy lives in retirement?" Are you serious? I agree with you that scientific research into autism should be pursued, but I don't think it's going to make any difference to anyone's retirement ... try survival.

That makes sense to me Uncle, because there is some evidence that exercising the brain by thinking in challenging and novel ways protects the brain from dementia. Many AS people are good at thinking outside the square. For me, I love cryptic crosswords, and puzzles are also thought to be protective. So far so good..

Yes, ill see if i can find the link, however i read a ton of things so don't have everything saved. From memory, it was explaining about how those on the spectrum tend to have a larger brain mass ( upto 20% more) than your average jo blogs, It showed a graph indicating a certain peak in most people that when a certain age hits that graph starts to dip. However those that were studied on the spectrum showed the graph actually was still rising at a steady pace with age and not showing the drop that was studied using NT subjects

I think, it initially was a concern of OP. The root may have been, that theories about people on the spectrum being more vulnerable to Alzheimers than NT´s have been up.
I got scared too (an uncle and his sister died from it), - but if there´s something to it, it is probably in the range of 1/10.000% more than average - like that of the increased risk for those with Alzheimer in the close family.

At 60+ I find my creativity in various phases of my life still pumping out ideas.
My wife described our home as more peaceful lately.

Memory isn't as good. I know I posted on this thread but couldn't find it or remember what I wrote in an earlier post.
In another hand - I took a citizen quiz recently for the States and passed easily.

Something I want to say to so many people who just don't get it:

I am feeling sad and depressed because of the symptoms of autism making my life suck, not because other people aren't making my workplace or home the way I want so I need more accommodation.