Should the neurodiversity movement switch to extremists ways

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I say no. The prospects for a rational dialogue on the subject of neurodiversity and getting all factions to share the spectrum is looking like it's getting getter than ever.

The autism extremists don't get it. Under the current system, loss of personal freedom,growing social standards and discrimination against all who cannot conform are an inevitability. Autism rights cannot happen unless the entire current system is sprung up into the air.

Personally, I think a lot of the autism extremists are just like the radical feminists and the anti-semites and the radical christians. They feel opressed and they blame their feelings of opression on the "fact" that the world is supposedly ruled by a certain sort of people (neurotypicals, men, jews, evolutionists ect.) but the truth is that the upper class would be opressive no matter who was running it. The upper class must be removed altogether. All of us proletarians are being opressed.

No it would make every ASD person look like a prick.

The odd thing about this is that I used to think this way, that we should rise up and start a revolution. Not just for autistic rights but for the rights of all that, in America at least, appear to be getting trampled on.

However, after a while I began to see sense.

Personally, violent overthrow of the government is not the fix-all. Sure, it would solve the immediate problem at hand, but then it would dissolve into complete and total anarchy, which apparently Aspies with their preference of order over chaos would not find enjoyable.

The reason things like the Constitution, Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court and any number of American governmental devices exist is to ensure that the government is not all powerful, and that the people are not oppressed to the point where they feel revolution is required. So far it has worked. Not completely, but we still have the right to own guns, rights of the accused, right to free speech and freedom of the press, etc., which in my personal opinion would be the first signs of government overstepping it's bounds. We have all the rights that an NT would have, it's just that sometimes those rights are not respected on the school or workplace level. But if you were to go up to the national level then the government would still treat you equally. We are not that oppressed when you compare our possible situations to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany, or of the apartheid in South Africa.

Now with all this hype about national security, the government still seems to be moving in the direction of a police state. However, it has not reached that point yet.

I would still say that violent overthrow would be acceptable, but ONLY ALL OF OUR RIGHTS WERE IGNORED/REVOKED AND WE HAVE EXHAUSTED ALL POSSIBLE DISCOURSES TO RECTIFY THE SITUATION. In other words, ONLY AS A FINAL RESORT. I mean, that was how America got it's start against Britain, but they only did so because the British government did not recognize their rights as British because they were colonies. In this case, there would have to be outright genocide against autistics before such a move would be justified.

We still have non-violent methods available to us, let us make use of them.

Yes! Definatly! The only reason minorities such as blacks and Asians have equal rights (and even special rights and privlages) is becuase of the intense rioting during the cival rights movement. I always knew that nerodiversity was going to go no where unless we give them something to notice. If Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers were quiet, we would probably still have segeration to this day. Why does Peta use such extreme techniques to get people's attention? Because that's the only way that works for issues people don't usualy give a damb about such as animal rights or autistic people. Unless we take action and give people something to notice and show them we are a forced to be reckoned with, we are always going to be treated like second class citizens.

I think we are taking ourselves altogether too seriously.

Many people are denied access to services they need, and not just autistics. The reasons are myriad, typically involving questions of distribution arising from a limited supply unable to meet demand.

But, because this is an economic and political question, the chances of getting us all united under a single banner are near-as-damnit impossible. (Take a peek in PPR sometime!)

My response to the poll isn't on there. I mean, I don't want to just sit around and do nothing or try to act neuro-typical (assuming I have Asperger's, because I know I'm not neuro-typical in the least! Most NT's usually make fun of me or coo and say, "Wow, look how smart she is! Let's send her to Overcommercialised School which she totally doesn't care about"), but I don't want to stoop to PETA's level. (In fact, if I were to arson something---PETA's done arsony before---I'd probably trip and get caught in the fire.)

The tone of a few of the replies is terribly unhelpful; it's much better to give arguments than deny a proposal outright. That said, I can see several reasons against extremism.

To begin with, as mentioned before, research could lead to a "cure" for ASD. In the current climate of relative racial tolerance, there is thankfully no "cure" for being Irish or Afghani, i.e. genocide or mass sterilization, as it would not sit well with most people. The ASD population, however, would risk being wiped out if people were convinced that high-functioning autists were somehow ill.

Furthermore, there is already a strong equality & diversity movement in the Western world. Word about ASD, using non-violent means, could presumably be spread easily with the aid of this movement.

That said, if, in the future, genetic counselling against ASD is made available, I would advocate taking some sort of public action against it, be it in the form of protests or targeted criticism of doctors who provide the service.

Also, in regards to the Black Panthers being violent, a cursory look at Wikipedia suggests the violence was, in fact, self-defense against the police and FBI.

No, I don't think tht it's necessary for the neurodiversity movement to switch to extremist ways. Violence is an ineffective way of fostering social change. Rather, we should work to fight against negative stereotypes of autistic and other non-neurotypical people in society, and actively teach diversity and openness as principles. I do believe there is culturally sanctioned oppression directed towards people whose brains aren't seen as "normal." Even though it is oppression, that doesn't mean that it can't be dealt with through nonviolent education methods.