7:24pm February 27, 2012

➸ sometimes davids autism really bugs me

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ghostspoons:

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he doesnt care about people

like

911 - doesnt give a shit, he didnt know them, why should he care?

famine in africa - same as above

homeless people on the streets - same as above

also he`s racist, he is equal opportunity racist tho, he hates everyone, including those of…

he`s my husband, its kinda hard not to hang out with him….

also, i should clarify, hes not racist per-say, as in, individually he`s not racist, he just makes sweeping generalizations about different races, including his own.

Having looked into it just to assure myself, there is a correlation between autism and ‘not caring’ or more to the point, being logical. The people who have died/starved/live on the streets have no bearing on davids life, therefore he doesnt care about them. Im sure if he knew one of these people personally he`d be bothered.

I posed the racist argument to David, he said he cant be racist as he has 2 black best friends, then he followed it by saying thier racist against themselves 0_o I`m not sure where he was going with that, but he has a point I guess.

Also, I`m not trolling, and Im not being ‘Ableist’ against my beloved husband. I was simply stating some facts about him that bug me.

Also also, he is a douche, but that is for entirely different reasons lol

He seems to be suffering from a very serious condition called Entitled White Male Disorder, overlapping with Using Autism as Excuse to be Curmudgeon Disorder.

Autistic people do not have less empathy. That is a myth perpetuated by biased studies that think there are only certain ways to show empathy, and also ignore large demographics of autistic people.

If your sweet children have inherited their father’s disability, I hope you don’t think they are lacking in empathy… and honestly, IIIIIII reaaaaally don’t like your husband and I would worry about his influence on them, based on your brief descriptions of him. I know that isn’t my place to say, but I wouldn’t want my kids to think they can not give a shit about people and yell out the n word just because Daddy does it, nor do I want my kids to think that autism = lack of empathy. It’s that type of thinking that makes way for a lot of discrimination, since we’re allegedly assholes anyway so who cares what happens to us.

so the plethora of research and studies that indicate autism/aspergers is characterized by a lack of empaathy for other people? thats just crap is it?

honestly it really annoys me when people just decide that all of the research staring them in the face is wrong because it hasnt been thier experience.

your right, it isnt your place to comment on my husband or his parenting.

How exactly is he being an ‘entitled white male’?

Curmudgeon I wont argue with, but the reason we love each other so much is our hate of everyone else. Regardless of race, sexuality, gender, intelligence, disability.

I realise I probably havent explained myself or my situation very well, and Ive probably made David sound much worse than he is. However, it was just a flippant remark about my husband that seems to have been sucked up into some weird argument where you`ve decided your right and everyone else is just idiots.

Yeah, it’s just crap. But don’t let anyone’s experiences and reasoning mess up theories you have accepted as fact! :-P

Your husband is blatantly racist and you’re asking how he’s an entitled white male.

Looks like it’s you who decided you’re right and everyone else is idiots.

so your answer to the tirade of well research and trusted studies, is one guys critique of one study? well that settles it, I must be wrong! How have I gone all this time believing the doctors and consellors and ENTIRE MEDICAL PROFESSION?

Racist appears to have been a poor word choice on my behalf, but it is now pointless trying to retract the statement as I realise that will just make this nasty situation worse.

What tirade? Really, I’ve only seen a few studies saying this, and they are not well-researched for reasons already stated. People simply repeat things as fact until they’re not questioned. That isn’t anything new. If I believed the medical profession on everything, I would still consider myself a schizophrenic which I was most likely diagnosed as being under the DSM-I. The DSM-V will be released next year, and the DSM has had plenty of revisions between editions. It will be revised again, and again, and again, and part of those revisions should be due to actual disabled people saying, “Hey, this isn’t what it’s like for us.”

Nah, racist was an accurate word choice.

Talk about seriously over-selling the “science” behind the idea that autistic people lack empathy.

This idea is by no means universally accepted among scientists. In fact, there have been studies using other measures of empathy which show that autistic people often rate just as high (if not higher) than non-autistic people. These studies are more credible because they use pre-existant measures of empathy, not measures created by someone who defines empathy as something which autistic people lack.

If anyone’s interested in an actual critique of a lot of autism “science” (most of which has extremely low standards for proof compared to actual science), try the autism page of Morton Ann Gernsbacher. She’s the former president of the Association for Psychological Science, and she’s pointed out serious holes in many theories, including the empathy stuff. Simon Baron-Cohen’s research is laughable from a scientific standpoint, he would not be able to get away with it in other fields. This isn’t from “one autistic person’s experience”, this is from actual holes in his “science” that are big enough to drive a truck through and which many other autism researchers have noticed. He’s very good at popularizing his research to most people, which makes people think he’s somehow at the forefront of autism science when he’s just not. Famous is not the same as forefront. At all. The real interesting stuff is looking into genuine cognitive/perceptual/movement issues, not nebulous fuzzy social concepts like “empathy” and “systemizing”.

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