autistic pride-what it means for me

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autistic pride means that i am proud of who i am. i am also proud of the autistics in my family and my community. i will never let my family and community down by giving in to any Social-Darwinist organizations like autism speaks and their minions. i will fight these organizations because i am fighting for constitutional the rights of autistic American citizens. i believe that autism is inherited and i can see that there has been autistic people for many generations in my family. i do not think that autism is a disease or epidemic of any kind. anyone who uses epidemic and fear propaganda is a Nazi, and Nazis must be brought to justice and made to take back their hurtful claims. we as a community must support the people who are nonverbal or have other disabilities. i think however, that it is better to help these people understand themselves and educate their parents not to be afraid of their children. lastly, the anti vaccine people are a disgrace jenny McCarthy's kid isn't even autistic. you can see from the video that he does not stim and he enjoys interacting with people. Also he has epilepsy, which has nothing to do with autism.

Undiagnosing people via video is really a low thing to do to people no matter how much you hate them. I don't have one set of ethics that applies to "my side" and one set of ethics that applies to everyone else. Therefore I don't undiagnose people by Internet or by video or TV or whatever. The way you make it sound, it's fine to undiagnose people if they don't stim within the confines of a video and show an interest in people. That's ridiculous. And cruel. I'm no fan of Jenny McCarthy and I think she has done a lot to destroy public health, but I'm not going to take it out on her kid. And having epilepsy doesn't make a person nonautistic. Of course I've heard she has said he may not be autistic after all, which is fine, but you or I have no place making that judgement on him no matter how much we don't like his mother.

Honestly it's people with opinions like yours that make me feel like distancing myself from the cookie-cutter "autistic pride" stuff online, even though I know the foundations of it have nothing to do with opinions like yours. You make people think that everyone who says they're proud of being autistic is like you, and that creates problems for everyone else. I don't say I'm proud of being autistic anymore (even though I understand it to mean "don't ashamed") because too many autistic people take it literally and use the wrong definition of 'pride' and then think I mean something I don't mean. I certainly don't agree with a lot of the people on this forum who actually believe that people who are okay with being autistic are all like what you've written, but it's really hard on forums like this where people really don't know the history of the whole thing. They don't know how many people actually had (and still have) really well-thought-out opinions on these matters, before people began... I don't even know how to describe what a lot of autistic people do lately. It's like they hear these opinions and they repeat them but many of them don't have more than a shallow understanding of the opinions, so it turns into almost self-caricature. So they just say "Down with Autism Speaks" but they don't know any of the genuine criticisms of the place (and there are many, many genuine, well-thought-out criticisms), so when people ask them why they have that opinion, they say almost a strawman version of the criticisms, and that's really easy for others to see through. So then others don't realize there are non-strawman criticisms of the place.

So at this point I have a really mixed opinion of lots of the online autistic community, because it's like it's weirdly enough become exactly what people used to call it back when it wasn't anything like this at all. People used to say "You don't care about people who can't do __________", and yet many of us did care (or actually were people who can't do ______), and many of us had worked really hard for services and other things for such people. But these days as often as not you run into lots of people who are into "autistic pride" who really don't care about people who can't do whatever it is, some of whom have really negative opinions of us, or have really simplistic answers to the problems we face. And so it's so easy for people to dismiss everyone as being like that, and it makes me really angry what it's turned into. It's like all the straw men have come to life and populated the visible parts of this community so thoroughly that people can be excused for thinking that everyone's the "straw" version. I don't know how it happened but I can't stand it. It's just so plastic, and so wrong, and so opposite of what many of us have worked so hard for for so many years.

I find it ironic that autism does not insulate the autistic against exclusionary "us v.s. them" thinking - the same thinking that lies at the core of such things as bigotry, racism and genocide. Our social acumen is wanting, but our capacity for judgment is quite intact.

I am not proud of my autism any more or less than I am proud of my big toe. It is only part of what I am. I find my feelings of self worth in what I do, not the configuration of my flesh.

ok lol... im sorry if i hurt your opinion whatever it is if u could simplify for me i have trouble reading long posts that have contradictions. anyway i do know the arguments against autism speaks i just didn't want to elaborate too much on what i wanted to be a short to the point article. my argument is not "cookie cutter" i have done a lot of research into things like human rights abuses in asylums run by autism speaks. the article has a lot of grammar/spelling issues so it is mine not copy pasted. all i wanted to get across was that i have a very deep HATE for autism speaks that is so angry that i have to tone it down even for these posts. I hate autism speaks like i hate all the people in my childhood who bullied me until i got PTSD. and btw having PTSD sucks thats why i hate people who bully or hurt other people i identify with so much.

That's exactly what I meant about people taking "pride" literally and not understanding what most people who use it, mean.

When applied to a part of a person that is often the target of prejudice (including but not limited to disabled people, people of color, people of nonstandard sexual orientation, etc.) "pride" doesn't mean the same thing it means when you're proud of doing something. It means "not ashamed", or else "seeing in at least partly a positive light despite overwhelming social pressure to see it as uniformly negative", or else some combination of the two. It has nothing at all to do with the same pride as "I am proud of myself for telling the truth", nor the same pride that can mean something like "full of oneself". And approaching it as if it does mean either of the two latter definitions, contributes towards people in general misunderstanding what someone means when they say "I'm proud of being _________".

Think for instance about the scenario where I most commonly use pride, which is when someone calls me some variant of "ree-tard". My response is usually, "Yeah, and I'm proud of it." The reason for that is it takes away the notion that having a developmental disability of some kind (the term ree-tard is applied to a wide variety of disabled people, not all of whom have an intellectual disability, but usually people who have some kind of developmental disability) is something to be ashamed of. It takes away the shame, the insult, and the sting of being called a derogatory term. And it makes no sense at all in a context where people are trying to find a more positive relationship to their disability (which ranges from incredibly positive to just finding some positive aspects of it here and there), to turn around and say to them that what they're doing is being proud (as in, proud of oneself) of having an attribute that has nothing to do with their actual accomplishments.

I do understand that many people (especially autistic people, who are often literal about things like this) do actually believe that when people say "I'm proud of being autistic", they mean it in the same way as "I'm proud of telling the truth", and that this makes no sense. And it wouldn't make sense, if that's what they were doing, except they're completely not doing that. So once people do understand what's meant, it'd be useful for them to not go on at length about how it makes no sense for people to be doing something that they're not actually doing in the first place. Responding this way to "autistic pride", "gay pride", whatever, is like telling someone playing cards who just won the "kitty", that it doesn't make sense because they didn't win an actual cat -- understandable if a person's being literal, but after the other meaning is explained, it should stop being a problem. (Except that the misinterpretation of pride is much worse, because it makes people who do use terms like "autistic (not-ashamed/finding positives where everyone tells them to see only negatives)-pride" sound as if they are doing something very wrong in a way -- being (accomplishment)-proud of something they didn't actually accomplish.)

All this said, a lot of the current usages of autistic pride are so shallow that I avoid the term not because there's anything wrong with the idea in principe, but because a lot of the current crop of people using the term are using it in a very shallow sense that often even rests on ableism towards even other kinds of autistic people, which is just mind-boggling and offensive.

well i don't get the argument. u could be proud of your skin color or sexual orientation. it is possible to be proud of taking a small step forward when most people take a large step back. what i really meant was that i want to keep the traits that i was born with and i don't want anyone to make me feel ashamed of who i am just so they can sell me stuff. i need to say that there are a lot of bigots out there and somebody has to fight them or they will take over. denying that there are bigots will not make the bigots go away. i can be proud of who i am because my traits while some are negative like not being so social have had an overall positive effect because i am smart in subjects like math and history and i will probably make a fair amount of money when i go to get a job.

o and here is a link to the human rights abuses i was talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9-xXfgQiTU

ok true but im not a psychopathic killer and when i get called that by people who create false stereotypes about autism i get mad because they create a label that keeps me from being happy and succeeding. i mean these labels are the cause of a lot of sh*t so i take them very seriously. i want to fight these people who want to hold me back from my goals.

I think a lot of posters in this thread have made valid points, but please don't throw out the very valid points the original poster is making just because some points are objectionable, and because you don't like the language they are framed in. I agree, the word 'pride' is problematic, but phrases such as "Gay Pride" have been around for years, so that isn't something the OP just came up with. And if you don't like his term, why don't you suggest one you think might be less easily misunderstood?

There are bigots in the world. Among other groups, they will target us if given half a chance. The fact that we have AS in no way justifies our being targeted. If an individual with AS commits a crime, the bigots are happy enough to point out the fact they have AS. So we do need to be vigilant in opposing that type of misidentification. We do need to resist being made to feel ashamed because our minds aren't exactly like some "ideal" defined by someone else.

As for the information in that video, a quick check suggests it is at least accurate enough to be truly horrifying. I don't consider punishment by electric shock suitable for animals or people, under any circumstances. If there is no other choice, it may be justifiable to stop someone who is actively violent with a taser, but that is only when subduing someone actively violent. Punishment is a completely different matter.

I assume the video is JRC, and yeah, no connection at all. Autism Speaks has been criticized in other ways (not just on the matter of seeking a cure).

Sorry for being long but I'm not capable of doing otherwise. I understand the problems it causes. I can't avoid it. It's part of my communication issues.

The other thing I don't understand --

Why is it that things like Autism Speaks polarize along the lines of "autistic pride" vs "not autistic pride"?

Note: I can't easily explain my issues with Autism Speaks, so I'm going to allude to them, but I'm not going to explain them very well. I don't expect anyone to change their views based on what I say here. My language issues at the moment won't allow for a way of explaining it either briefly or easily.

So anyway. My issues with Autism Speaks are many and varied. But one of the big things, is about the general dynamics involved with a lot of the really old-school disability charities. I have problems with Autism Speaks for the same reason that I have problems with (parts of) the MDA.

Within the mainstream of the disability rights movement, people are allowed varied opinions about whether being disabled is okay with them or not. They're allowed to love it, hate it, both, neither, whatever. There's room made for people to like it or be okay with it (because that room doesn't exist just about anywhere else), but most people who feel that way don't expect everyone else to feel just like they do. So when they criticize the MDA for lots of different valid reasons, they don't split based on whether or not they are okay with being disabled. Critics of the MDA (or just of the telethon) include people who love being disabled, hate being disabled, and every single point in between or outside of that line.

So why is it that within the autistic community, it seems like it's most often split into "I am proud of being autistic and I dislike Autism Speaks", and "I am not part of this whole 'autistic pride' thing and I am okay with Autism Speaks"? That doesn't seem right to me. It seems like lots of people are getting their opinions on several different matters, from which 'camp' they're in. It's not just Autism Speaks, either, it's like there's two laundry lists of opinions, and most people choose all from one side or all from the other, with very few people mixing and matching.

And that makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

It seems like part of it is sort of... "That opinion? Really? That's the opinion that other kind of people has. I'm not going to have that opinion." As in, "Disliking Autism Speaks? That's what those autistic pride people do, I'm not going to be like that." And "Liking Autism Speaks? That's what those curebies do, I'm not going to be like that." And I'm not sure all of it's happening consciously, but it's happening, because there's no logical reason at all for the opinions to split down the middle so well and so frequently like that. Autistic people are not immune to groupthink. It's happening all around us here.

I don't mean that everyone is like that. Not by a longshot. But it's disturbing to see how many things line up so perfectly like that, when there's no actual good reason for them to.

Personally... the way I've always done things, is I have a basic set of values. None of those values are like "autism is good" or something like that, either, I mean much more basic values than that, ones I can't put into words. I apply those values to a wide variety of situations. I allow the situation to dictate the majority of what happens. By which I mean, I don't have an ideology in my head that tells me to always think one way or always think the other way on an issue. It's impossible for such a thing to be complex enough to account for all the real-world situations. So I allow the real world to supply the complexity. That means sometimes I appear to have two or three different views on an issue, but really I don't keep views inside me like that. It's hard to describe. The views are mostly dictated by the situation, combined with a small number of values.

Anyway, how this applies to the way I handle things with other autistic people, is that I may have something I'm trying to get done. And when I am trying to get that done, I will work with whoever else feels that this thing needs to get done, with very few exceptions. It doesn't matter how much they do or don't agree with me on any other issue, all that matters at that moment is getting that one issue taken care of.

And yet, around me, I see a whole lot of people who insist on clumping according to these "camps" and stuff. (I've also been forced into these camps (in many people's eyes, not mine) by the actions of others, but that's a really long and emotionally exhausting story I just told a bit of in the other 'pride' thread. But the basic result of people doing that is that there are people who utterly refuse to see me as anything but having a particular position in a particular camp, because they have a view of me that fundamentally is not me, it's just some image of me they create in their own heads. I really resent this as it makes it hard to get work done.)

And I don't think that's the best way to get things done. I think it's far more efficient for people to work together on things they agree on, regardless of what 'camp' anyone comes from (and to resist as much as possible, coming to a conclusion about an issue based mostly on which 'camp' you're in or what others in your or the other 'camp' say... it's really hard to resist that when a lot of people won't admit it's happening, though).

I've also seen recently a lot more hate happening in these communities. I think it's because the level of hate has grown in the world in general. I know someone who used to also be considered a "leader" in part of the autistic community, and he had been away for a really long time. He came back recently, and he asked "What happened? Why is everyone so hateful, so rigid, so polarized?" So it's really, really important, more important than many people realize, to resist hate whenever possible. When you hate, a part of you becomes hatred, and allows hatred to have a little more sway in the world. I'm not talking about hate discussed on this thread, I'm talking more about the hate that has cropped up between various factions, that just doesn't need to be there. The level of bullying has escalated as well (and often the bullies pretend to be the bullied, but they give themselves away in the sheer level of vitriol that pours out of them on the slightest occasion). I think that this too reflects a change in the world in general, not just the autistic community.

Anyway, I think I've said all I need to on these topics for now. I just wish that this factionalizing wasn't happening, because it doesn't help anyone. It really doesn't help for viewpoints about various issues to be determined by mostly what faction a person is in, but that's what's clearly happening. I don't know a good way to stop it, beyond being really vigilant about where our opinions really come from, versus what we're rationalizing to ourselves after the fact. It's really easy to forget how much "everyone on my side says this and everyone on the other side says the opposite" can affect one's own opinions.