Yet More Autism Links
I remain fascinated by autistic activism, in particular the strain that says that autism is not a disorder, but simply another way of seeing the world. On the one hand, I tend to think that a way of seeing the world that is incapacitating can reasonably be thought of as a handicap. On the other hand, the passion and authority of these autistic writers is hard to deny.
When digging up an Amazon link for my previous post on the subject, I found these book reviews by D. M. Degraf, an autistic woman in California who is fiercely angry at neurotypicals who call autistics 'incapable of empathy' and then display the same lack themselves:
At one point, for example, his mother decides she wants to be cuddled. She shows no awareness that her son might not WANT to cuddle her. So she wraps herself around him like a boa constrictor, holding the terrified, screaming, panicked boy down until he goes limp from sheer exhaustion and falls asleep! She is then blissfully happy that she can cuddle her little rag-doll all she wants, and *she* enjoys it so much, she does it to the poor kid every day for hours.
Wikipedia's Autism Rights Movement article links to several scenes of autistic activists and parents of autistic children in bitter conflict over what's in the best interests of autistic children. They make for fascinating, uncomfortable reading.
comment by Siderea:
This is very analogous to the Deaf activists who take the same position.
Analogies limp by Sebbo:
The comparison's very reasonable, but I find the autistic case more gripping because it seems clear to me that lack of hearing is pure absence. There may well be desirable emotional or intellectual qualities that often accompany it, but the definition of deafness is simply inability to hear.
Embracing an inability as desirable goes against the fundamentals of my worldview.
I can certainly understand a deaf adult who doesn't want to be "cured" and sundered from the subculture in which she grew up,and the famous call for a deaf president of Galliudet strikes me as totally appropriate. But denying that it's a disability still strikes me as illogical. The situation of deaf parents hoping for a deaf child--well, I'm glad there's no need for me to pass judgement on that situation, 'cause my emotions on it are enormously conflicted.