Autistic Thoughts

[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]

Below are the 2 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Autistic Thoughts" journal:

April 2nd, 2008

05:20 pm

A Story of REAL Awareness
( Once Upon a Time.... )

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Mago de Oz- "Hasta que el cuerpo aguante"
Tags: disability, disability rights, do-gooderism, media, organizations

(Leave a comment)

October 1st, 2007

05:08 pm

[Link]

In the end, who is it who silences our voice?
If anyone's been following this journal, they may have noticed that slowly but surely I'm accumulating a set of communities and interests to associate myself and this journal with. One by one, I'm looking at communities who share the interests that this journal is centered around, seeing what their membership and message is about, and deciding if they or any of their listed interests are something I want to partake in.

I've found a lot of good communities. I've also found a lot of unrelated communities, and a few bad ones. Today, for the first time so far, I found something that truly angered me.

One of those communities was entitled "We Have Autism", which is designed to be a place for, not autistics themselves, but people whose family members are autistic. Apparently there are definitions of the word "have" which neither I nor my dictionary are aware of.

This alone would have barely risen above the level of frustration and annoyance, except that one of the most recent posts was a poem with the repeated line "The autistics still had no voice". It started off deceptively well, decrying Bettelheim and snake oil treatments and the attitude that it's courageous not to kill disabled children... and then it went on to accuse "eccentric but normal" people of falsely defining themselves as autistic, "plagiarizing their cause", and turning the autistics away as curebies. And the only response was an agreement, in boldface.

As if no one could be truly autistic and disagree with the idea of cure. As if being autistic (or otherwise disabled) is so horrific that no one could conceivably be happy as they are and not want their entire existence changed. As if blatantly autistic activists like Amanda Baggs are just geeks co-opting someone else's cause to justify themselves. As if these non-autistic family members who "have autism" are more capable of acting as the voices of autistics than people who truly do have autism, no matter how mild or severe.

"We Have Autism".
"Autism Speaks".
"Voice of the Retarded".

Who is it who's really silencing the voices of the developmentally and cognitively disabled?

Current Mood: disgusted
Current Music: The Dresden Dolls- "Girl Anachronism"
Tags: ablism, autism, cognitive disability, community, disability rights, do-gooderism, language, self-advocacy

(Leave a comment)