Are leftists the biggest hypocrites towards autistic issues?
Sweetleaf
Veteran
Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 34,833
Location: Somewhere in Colorado
Most Autistics are mainly leftists because we are a minority group seeking acceptance from society. Leftists are accepting of minority group interests because we want the rich right wingers to pay for tax to support minority interests, equality, education and health. Right wingers are selfish, ignorant and they do not accept people who are different because the right wingers do not want to pay more tax.
But is it that Aspies want acceptance, or that they are (with a rigid moral sense and a black-and-white view of fairness) wanting a world that seems to be guided by social justice? I think it's the latter.
(Trigger warning: politics/morals/civil rights stuff that can upset some people or cause other people to get way too enthusiastic.)
For example, I'm antiabortion, not so I can get acceptance from right-wing Trumpers (gross!) but because I think that a human zygote is a person same as an embryo, a fetus, a baby, a senior citizen, a dried-up broomstick of a man with big glasses typing to his AS buddies on WP. So while I am painfully aware of the problems that Being Pregnant causes for people who aren't ready, for the trauma fo birthing a terminally ill child, I also know that if I am going to believe fetuses/zygotes/embryos/pick a stage are human, I have to commit.
Interesting points, Rainbow_Belle. I think they're rather oversimplified but you know what, it's about time somebody simplified politics a little. Hope you're having a great evening and if you want to chat in PMs about autism as a minority group, I would love to hear from you because I literally have NO IDEA how that works and always want to keep an open mind. Thanks.
_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 134 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 72 of 200
You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)
I think the reason why many leftists are at a loss at how to "liberate" autistics is NOT merely because we are so different, but because we're not organized enough to function as part of the Left.
"The Left" consists largely of an alliance of various marginalized groups, each of which need to be organized in their own right in order to have a respected place in the alliance. Autistic people are not yet organized enough, partly because being autistic makes it hard to organize. That's our main problem, IMO.
You even get it with "autism advocates." "Only neurodiverse people can use the term hyperfixation!!" "You have to say autistic, not 'an' autistic!!" "Person first language!!" Pardon my French, but who the f*** cares?? You can beat your drum and talk about language and what words you can use, how we refer to autistic people. You can attend seminars hosted by autistics and virtue signal about ***how much you learned*** and stuff, then you turn around and mock us and ostracize us because since we don't have "autistic" tattooed across our forehead, you're just mocking us for being "weird". I'd suggest less talk about the label itself, and more talk about how to be open and fair towards people who may come off as weird or rude initially, and how to truly appreciate behavioral diversity even in those who are not "explicitly" autistic. We still have a tendency to label all behavioral differences as potentially pathological. That kind of instinctual aversion allistics (and even many autistics) have to those who are different from them, I think, constitutes most of the issues HFAs face. Not intentional discrimination based on a label or identity. So the kind of strategies leftist activists use don't do a whole lot imo.
I think racism and homophobia are based on instinctual aversions too. The "identity" and labels arise after the fact.
_________________
- Autistic in NYC - Resources and new ideas for the autistic adult community in the New York City metro area.
- Autistic peer-led groups (via text-based chat, currently) led or facilitated by members of the Autistic Peer Leadership Group.
- My Twitter / "X" (new as of 2021)
I think there's overlap. We do face some stigma due to the label (even "positive stigma", like expecting us all to be rain man level math geniuses), while PoC and LGBT people may face some discrimination for their behavior (like how I mentioned the new emphasis the left places on cultural relativity.)
I guess I'm mainly going on observations I've made in American society. With most PoC or LGBT people, they may speak slightly different, use different mannerisms, have a different style of dress, celebrate different holidays or have different first languages. They may look different physically, or have slightly different interests. But the jokes they make, their nonverbal communication abilities, social intuition, general abilities to sit in loud places or take tests in a classroom, conversational skills and abilities to take and interpret situational cues are pretty much the same-- or very similar given my perspective as someone who's awful/has been awful at all of that.
So I still think PoC and LGBT people (while I'm not at all trying to say they have it easy or have had it easy in this society) are mainly discriminated against due to differences that, at least in terms of friendship and professional interactions, are superficial. The label itself is the thing that people make fun of them for, hence why they get called racial and sexual slurs. Again, not trying to say that it's easy for them, but that the means of their oppression is fundamentally different.
We are discriminated against for how we behave. Yes, I've had people around me use autistic as an insult, and had people call me a "ret*d" in school (although these people were not aware of my ASD) but the only people I've had suggest that I'm inferior due to my Autism are mental health professionals themselves...not outside society. Outside society does not like that I'm weird.
Oh, and I'm not saying that all leftists who think this way and obsess about autism labels and terminology are hypocrites exactly. They're just used to one model of privilege and oppression, which is one heavily focused on labels.
I think race, sexuality, and ASD as a discrete entity itself are all in a sense social constructs. The difference is that sexuality and race are social constructs that the public attaches great meaning to and identifies in other people for the sake of discriminating against them. I think for the most part, most of us face hardship on a regular basis without people KNOWING about our label. So obsession with the label does little with regards to how we're treated day to day.
_________________
AQ: 36 (last I checked :p)
Last edited by Whale_Tuune on 08 Oct 2019, 8:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Why would anybody follow a certain ideology or candidate blindly because they happen to be part of a minority group? The right isn't oppressing people any more than the left either. But all it goes back to is "we are the ones who are fighting for the oppressed and the right of us doesn't care about people or anybody else besides themselves". It's vapid and deceitful.
Yes. The leftist self proclaimed “progressives” are indeed hypocrites. They are only interested in groups that they can easily pander to, and capitalize on, because they are easily identifiable: women and/or racial minorities.
ASD/autistic people are too vague and varied in gender and ethnicity, and so are difficult to identify, and hard to use for identity politics. Not to mention they include a majority of Whites too, so it makes things hard for the left to capitalize on.
Even within racial minorities, some minorities are more useful for the left than others. Blacks are the most useful because of their history and continued racial oppression in America. But Asians are less useful to leftists because they tend to be more financially successful and mix in with Whites, despite also experiencing racial discrimination.
If your identity cannot be easily used to polarize the society, profit off of, and affirm the leftists’ agenda, then you are pretty much useless to leftist “progressives.”
Remember that Identity Politics is the reason SJWs get up in the morning.
ASD/autistic people are too vague and varied in gender and ethnicity, and so are difficult to identify, and hard to use for identity politics. Not to mention they include a majority of Whites too, so it makes things hard for the left to capitalize on.
Everything you've said as a reason why the left would not be interested in autistic people could just as easily be said about gays, many of whom are just as invisible as autistic people. So why is the left so much more interested in gays than autistic people? Because the LGBT community is much more organized. That -- and not any of the other factors you've mentioned -- is the main key here.
The left in its current form consists largely of an alliance of marginalized groups. In order for this alliance to function well, each group within the alliance needs to be organized in its own right. The autistic community, insofar as we can be said to have an autistic community, is not yet organized enough to pull its own weight within the alliance.
And because blacks have a long, rich history of political organizing, rooted in the black churches and other community institutions.
See also Ollywog's post here, earlier in this thread.
_________________
- Autistic in NYC - Resources and new ideas for the autistic adult community in the New York City metro area.
- Autistic peer-led groups (via text-based chat, currently) led or facilitated by members of the Autistic Peer Leadership Group.
- My Twitter / "X" (new as of 2021)
The left aren't perfect but they are a much better choice than the right. Civil/minority rights championed by the left have always included disability (unless of course you subscribe to the Aspie supremacist view that Aspergers isn't a disability).
The right on the other hand advocate eugenics where you can terminate less than perfect babies if they can't look after themselves.
The right are trying to infiltrate places of higher learning to indocrinate the current generation with their time honoured favourite philosophy of eugenics
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/peop ... 51696.html
As a person on the spectrum go to a Trump rally and see how long it is before you get thrown out for having a stim or made fun off by the morons who get attracted to right wing rallies. Trump himself might make fun of you
That's pretty disturbing, cyberdad--about the right & eugenics. I for one would like to know more. Usually the American right at least is opposed to abortion, but now on the matter of infanticide they're for selecting the best specimens?
Doesn't surprise me. There were "better baby contests" in the 1920s in the USA usually at county fairs. Weird!
_________________
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 134 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 72 of 200
You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)
Doesn't surprise me. There were "better baby contests" in the 1920s in the USA usually at county fairs. Weird!
The right have a double standard toward abortion. They don't want good "aryan" babies getting aborted when they can be adopted out.
But they look at minority groups like hispanics and blacks like cockroaches
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -drownings
And of course we already know what mothers do when they find out they have a downs syndrome baby
In countries where prenatal testing is widespread the rate of abortion of downs babies is around 90%. It's not all that different the mother in this story smothering her baby...same thing really...
And Peter Singer's views have always been popular with the right. The Eugenics movement was a philosophy that espoused Darwinian principles of survival of the fittest genes in society. The man who created the IQ test Claude Binet was a French psychologist who popularized scientific justification for the elimination of low intelligence from societies gene pool = a philosophy that also became a conerstone of the early Nazi movement in Germany.
Doesn't surprise me. There were "better baby contests" in the 1920s in the USA usually at county fairs. Weird!
The right have a double standard toward abortion. They don't want good "aryan" babies getting aborted when they can be adopted out.
But they look at minority groups like hispanics and blacks like cockroaches
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -drownings
And of course we already know what mothers do when they find out they have a downs syndrome baby
In countries where prenatal testing is widespread the rate of abortion of downs babies is around 90%. It's not all that different the mother in this story smothering her baby...same thing really...
And Peter Singer's views have always been popular with the right. The Eugenics movement was a philosophy that espoused Darwinian principles of survival of the fittest genes in society. The man who created the IQ test Claude Binet was a French psychologist who popularized scientific justification for the elimination of low intelligence from societies gene pool = a philosophy that also became a conerstone of the early Nazi movement in Germany.
No, I believe you are painting a broad stereotype. I am on the "right" and I nor anyone like-minded I know hates blacks or hispanics. That is propaganda.
The left actively supports legal abortion too. If anything they are even more pro-eugenics by that.
Similar Topics | |
---|---|
Biggest Russia-West prisoner exchange since Cold War |
02 Aug 2024, 6:03 am |
Issues accepting myself |
06 Sep 2024, 4:46 pm |
Anyone have issues after Gallbladder Removal? |
29 Oct 2024, 11:25 pm |
Wife Blames Issues on Spinal Tap from 2008 |
13 Sep 2024, 12:41 pm |