as small as a world and as large as alone, alliecat-person: guapet: goldenheartedrose: ...

12:21am May 20, 2015

guapet:

goldenheartedrose:

differentblogtitle:

aratherstrangeday:

ingen-u-e:

differentblogtitle:

autistic people who are “pro-selective cure” are people who know that the idea of selective cure is never going to be realistic. that any “cure” that could be made that isn’t eugenics (which is also, frankly, entirely unrealistic) would be administered to “low-functioning” autistic people all the time without their consent. which at the end of the day, they don’t care, because they don’t actually care about the autonomy of “low-functioning” people, because they see them as less than and “miserable disabled people”. they also, somehow, fail to realize that they cannot be “pro-acceptance” and “pro-selective cure” because the existence of a cure will directly undermine the concept of acceptance. autistic people who choose not to take “the cure” will be subjected to all kinds of “choosing to be disabled, so don’t deserve respect/accommodations/etc.” BS.
so never mind the fact that this magical sort of cure will never exist, but even in a hypothetical world it’s a complete disaster.

I doubt you’d be spewing the same bs if you shat yourself all day.
You don’t speak for them. I’m trying to get them a voice.

Something I’d like to point out that I had forgotten until the ‘shat yourself all day’ part. People use this to say ‘look at these people who can’t even hold it in because of their autism’. And well, yes, their autism is probably a factor in why they don’t go to the toilet in time. But ‘all day’? Pick just a random point in the day, any time, now if you like, and try and go to the toilet. Unless you’ve drank a lot recently, or had a curry, you probably can’t physically get anything out. But these people can. So, how does autism change this?
Answer: It doesn’t. GI problems are common in autistic individuals, but autism is a mental disorder, and doesn’t affect basic body functions. Sure, higher functions like remembering to go to the toilet are affected, but the actual needing the toilet bit doesn’t change. The GI problems are a comorbid disorder, probably (though not definitely) caused by a set of genes that commonly occur alongside autistic ones, but not all the time. We know they don’t occur in every autistic individual, because then every autistic person would always need the toilet. So, curing the autism wouldn’t actually cure the GI problems, it would just make them easier to deal with.
I’m not arguing for or against anything with this, just pointing out that comorbid disorders wouldn’t be cured along with autism, and indeed there may be multiple causes of autism in the first place, such that a single cure wouldn’t work.

Just reblogging because yeah, it’s really important to remember that co-morbid disorder are not autism.

^^^

“i’m trying to get them a voice” they say as they speak over autistics whose struggles they know nothing of

I’ll dissent a little bit and say that I do think that problems with controlling bowel movements can be autism-related. The mind and the body are connected, after all.
But the people currently searching for a cure for autism aren’t going to come up with anything useful in this particular department, because mostly they’re either quacks or mainstream scientists who aren’t focusing on the right things because they’re so convinced that autism is a social disorder. Which is an entirely backwards way to look at it. I certainly wouldn’t expect these researchers to produce anything useful until they change their paradigm. By a lot.
So, yes, in addition to just being an asshole comment, ingen-u-e’s comment ignores the fact that most autism research just isn’t focusing on those kinds of quality of life issues.

I completely dissent on the whole bullshit thing where people say “Anything bad about autism isn’t really autism, it’s just some additional condition.”

I wear Depends because of autism.

Yes, I can use a toilet. (No, I can’t wipe myself in the back, and that’s also autism-related. I have a bidet for that.)

But no, I can’t always get to the toilet.

That’s a combination of two issues:

1. Autistic inertia.

.2. Sensory issues that make it hard to tell when i need to use the bathroom.

Oh and I don’t want to be cured so don’t use me as an example namelessly as one of those people who “shits themselves”. Shitting oneself – any kind of autistic trait, no matter how unpleasant – does not make a person decide they automatically want a cure, or that they automatically don’t want a cure. Saying that shitting myself means I want a cure is telling me that I have no ability to think, no agency of my own, that my “symptoms” dictate what I think..

And don’t assume that the people you’re talking to don’t have (or never had in the past, or never will have in the future) the issues you’re describing.

I have known several people employed in high tech industries who shit themselves on a regular basis and wore Depends because of it. It was their secret and nobody knew.

And please everyone stop doing the thing where you scramble to make any bad thing about autism into “not really autism”. That doesn’t help any more than the people who use bad things about autism to claim they know the wants and desires of everyone who has those bad things. (If they even see them as bad and not just a part of life like any other.)