"I'm an expert, I have a cousin/child that has it."

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Before I got cancer, I knew of plenty of people who had (or had had) cancer. I knew absolutely nothing about the experience of having cancer until it happened to me. And I was somewhat rattled at times by people who offered me their unwanted advice, people who had never experienced cancer themselves. The best advice came from "members of the club" - eg "you will find out who your real friends are". So true...! And "you will never the be same person after recovery". Also true. I was a better person afterwards.

I find the self-appointed experts that you cite in your opening post extremely ignorant and obnoxiously so.

From a Wikipedia page which details various forms of fallacious argument, this form perhaps best fits your example of "I know someone who has....(therefore I am an expert on it):

Appeal to non-authorities
Fallacious arguments from authority often are the result of citing a non-authority as an authority.[4] First, when the inference refers to an inexpert authority, it is an appeal to inappropriate authority, which occurs when an inference relies upon a person or a group without relevant expertise or knowledge of the subject matter under discussion.

What is an aspergian? How does one know if they are one?

I think most of the people who post regularly on this forum are rather high functioning in terms of autism. Of course they might have comorbids like depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, anxiety, tourettes, that can be just as disabling or more so in some cases.

I think the people who want cures are probably lower functioning in the sense that they have a lower quality of life Or perhaps they are parents of autistic kids who have aggressive violent behavior. Or perhaps they can't communicate verbally. Eh I don't know. Everyone's got their own view.

To the OP, why don't you want a cure? Do you think curing your autism would make your life worse or better?

Knowing an aspie whether you mum,dad,brother, sister, nan, grandad or even a friend does not make one an expert. To say one is an expert due to second hand experience that being related to an AS person does not make you an expert and is arrogance to say so.

"Street Smarts" is valued more then "intellectual ability" in the USA. The self made millionaire who did not go to college or cruised through it ala the late Steve Jobs and Bill Gates is admired while the "pointy head" college professor is not. Alan Turing is an somewhat of an exception he helped win WWII and had a British accent.

[sarcasm]

I am an expert on Autism. My father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate was a clinical psychologist.

[/sarcasm]

(Quick! Cite the movie reference!)

Your opening post concluded with "how do we change this". I think that without co-ordinated activism, activism that is planned, well referenced, co-ordinated by able leaders, it won't change. Nothing changes in the social justice arena in my experience until there is a critical mass of informed advocates who work together.

On a more positive note, I've seen tremendous change in other areas where previously marginalised groups who have been misrepresented and smeared (homosexual law reform in NZ is an example) stop giving away their power by using it in an isolated complaint way and start banding together and using power in a focused, purposeful, goal-directed way to achieve specific and articulated goals.

Basically, to achieve this change, you need "seed" activists with good leadership and analytical qualities who have:

the ability to identify the appropriate mechanisms and avenues for addressing these issues.
the ability to seek out and join with potential allies.
the ability to support existing alliances for change.
with allies, the ability to prepare convincing data and rationales for change.
with allies, the ability to lobby legislators and other policy makers.
the ability to maintain open dialogue with communities and media.

I have an ABA thread going concurrently with this one, hoping some activists will turn up in it, though it is not a very confident hope so far - people oppose ABA in principle and practice though beyond expressing those opinions here, the energy seems to go nowhere in terms of focused activism, which is a lost opportunity to my own personal way of thinking...

Not door to door - we never did anything like that and it would be dangerous in some areas. We started here (in other kinds of reform) by issuing press releases and educating the media, direct lobbying of politicians until we found one that was powerful enough and interested enough to co-ordinate with his peer members of parliament, we held education seminars, all sorts of things, but never one to one door knocking. We weren't girl guides selling biscuits! That would have been a waste of resources, ineffective as a major change strategy and you are competing with religious hawkers. People don't want to be bothered by intrusions into their own space in their own time, it just antagonises most of them.

We achieved two statute changes despite very intense, hostile and ignorant opposition:

1)The Adult Adoption Information Act enacted 1985 (opened adoption records which had been closed since1955 and gave adults rights of access to their information held by state and other agencies).

2)Homosexual Law Reform enacted 1986
Completely decriminalised homosexuality as an offence and removed all previous statutory discriminations. This enabled protection from workplace etc discriminations as that category was brought under the umbrella of 1993 Human Rights legislation as well. You cannot be discriminated against in those ways on the basis of your sexual orientation by employers, workmates, institutions, etc. Equal rights finally did become fully equal.

The first took ten years of work;
The second was much faster as the first battle had made people realise that you could effect change despite huge opposition and ignorance and that there were effective processes to do this.