my 2 star review of the ASAN of their FB page

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you have noble goals and have achieved a lot , but i will say here something controversial , the disability model is a vary bad concept of autism, it is as bad as the medical model and is as disrespectful , we need to show the world that we are as successful as alistics , i know that alot of people who is considered autistic are actually have a disability but as an normally functioning autistic who has achived a lot i can say that the whole "spectrum" thing is bad for the high end of the "spectrum" , we should show the world how successful we are by doing things not lecture about how "being disabled is equal to able person"‎
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Tomer Tchernov
Sorry for my english

I'm very pro-neurodiversity and full spectrum anti-cure, but I think autism is both a gift and a disability. There's sensory issues, inability to read faces, difficulty carrying on conversations. In order to meet the clinical definition, you have to have clinically significant impairments. Those who don't have clinically significant impairments but meet the other criteria are on the broad autism phenotype.

There is no point at which the light will suddenly turn on for people, to which they exclaim "Oh, they're not broken, they're actually valuable human beings." That doesn't happen, and won't ever happen with most people -- And I feel sorry for people that continually invest so heavily into trying to prove that to their family, to their community, that they're not mentally ret*d, because, I know the outcome, it's just not going to happen. They're always going to do some mental gymnastics to believe whatever they hell they want to believe, I mean really, have we not achieved enough yet? Prove ourselves even more that we have already? Crazy -- It should have already happened a long time ago.

I don't think it's a disability at all. When you go over the characteristics, the deficits, they're only described that way in terms of interacting with NTs, while on the other hand there's no communication breakdown when it's just interacting with AS people. Then, there's the fact that NTs also have deficits when it comes to interaction with AS people. But that's all beside the point, the deficits themselves just don't fit in with the definition of disability, where it "stops you from doing something." Not being able to read faces that well, for example, ok, so, you can't read a face that well, but it's not the lack of face reading, or eyeball watching that stops you, it's people that stop you, it's external.

I think of those things, as more, traits rather than deficits or disabilities. Like being left handed, or being clumsy. If a person is clumsy, that doesn't necessarily make them disabled, it just means that they're clumsy.

So we should devalue and lie about people who cannot be conventionally successful and cannot achieve a lot in order to emphasize the ability of the "normally functioniong?"

Semi-tangential point of controversy: if you were completely normally functioning you would lie outside the diagnostic criteria for autism and more properly fit in the broader autisitic phenotype.


Do we devalue the people who are less functional by adopting an ideology of value based on functional abilities?

Why is it bad for those of us with milder forms of autism that the medical and scientific consensus is that we are part of a spectrum? Should we pretend that reality is less complicated than it is and reject science for political purposes?

That doesn't make sense to me.

I tried to be normal and it sort of worked for almost 5 decades. Then it did not. I'm sure from 2005-2013 or even today I was what the small subset of Aspies-Autistics would label spineless and weak, and embarrassment to hard working sacrificing autistics like themselves. There is a difference between compromising and compromising yourself.

I can see this could easily happen to me, through luck, hard work and a lot of support, I have been fortunate enough to work for several decades, but I can easily see this falling apart and I fear that if I lost this job, I might never find employment again.

But I think I have intrinsic worth as a human being, regardless of my ability to work, or the extent of my ability to pass relatively unnoticed in the "normal" world. The abilities I have don't define my value any more than the things I can't do.

you have missed the point my friend, my anger with the ASAN is mostly with how they have ruined our boycott against A$ by saying that we should not post just success stories but also to show the extreeme lower end (like amy sequiza,probably miss spelled her name) and instead of improving universities, fund gifted autistics programs and help disabled autistics to improve and be able to work , they just shouting about how being disabled is part of human nature and other none-sense like that , and just for you to know, both me and my brother are diagnosed PDD nos (now he has mild asd and i have a moderated SCD, social communication disorder) and both of us are functioning normally for our age but we are vary different from NTs in our way of thinking and our unique behaviors . belive it or not, i am not the eugenics lover, racist primitive sociopath you think of me, i just pissed of about the disability model of autism

I don't think all those negative things about you!

But I think it might be too simple to say: "disability model: bad, social model: good."

Not all disability is a social construct.

thanks and you are right, and i didnt meant you specifically, i meant the autistic comminity in general, alot of them hates me

What's wrong with advocating for all ends of the spectrum, including people like Amy Sequenzia.

I don't subscribe to the disability model of autism either, or any other particular model of autism either.
I don't consider myself to be disabled, or I don't think I was disabled even when I was asocial, non-verbal child.
I don't identify with disability in general.