For curebie hating, NT-bashing, holier than thou aspies

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If you're happy with what you're doing, go for it!

I choose not to take the cure, because I'm comfortable with my AS.

Different strokes, for different folks.

Go for whatever you want to do. Nobody's stopping you, least of all a bunch of people on the Internet that you've never met, probably never will meet, and have no control over the particular industry that you get your 'treatment' from.

But please don't tell other people that we're higher-functioning or lower-functioning than you just because of the choices we make. That is like saying that a person's choices are ruled by their brain type and nothing else. It denies both your freedom of choice and the rest of our freedom of choice. I've known a lot of autistic people who want and don't want cures and the perceived functioning level" varies so much that it clearly has nothing to do with that, although many people who want one will assert that they are "lower functioning" than those who don't, even when it's demonstrably inaccurate.

Also, whenever it becomes considered normal to want to die rather than have a condition, then people with that condition start to experience lower standards of living conditions. I have been denied necessary dental treatment in the past on the grounds that someone like me doesn't need it because we're considered either sort of walking-dead or better-off-dead. I have friends who have been denied medical treatment on similar grounds. I know that you do not intend to contribute to this, which is why I am mentioning it as an unintended consequence you might not be aware of. (But that has been studied to death by people like Dick Sobsey.)

Please consider that the hurt a person feels to their feelings when encountering disagreement with their viewpoint, while undoubtedly real, is much less damaging than the material damage done to our lives when others assume that we would rather be dead than be like we are, or that they would rather be dead than be like us. Also please consider that some of us did think it was better to be dead than be like us, before we encountered some of the views we have now encountered, and that therefore even on an emotional level our messages are not ones that always cause hurt, or that who this emotional hurt will be caused to is predictable.

That said, I do support research. I already know that there are known non-genetic causes of autism, so I don't think all causes are genetic or that something being genetic makes it better than being from something else. (Too long in the disability rights movement with people who value their spinal cord injuries and the like, to believe that something being genetic is the only way to look at it as something other than awful.) I think research should be into things that actually make autistic people's lives better though, and that's undoubtedly where we disagree.

And I don't like elitism or any of the other stuff described. I also don't like "anti-cure" being lumped in with a whole lot of negative traits, the creation of a new stereotype to denigrate a diverse group of people with a diverse range of views, some of which make sense and some really don't.

And I think there are plenty of ways to improve a life without having to remove autism from it.

Zendell, the only treatment you need is CBT. Please take the word of a 40 year old autistic that's been thru' the mill. That "never get laid, get friends" etc. attitude is the problem, not autism. Getting girlfriends, friends etc. are skills that need practice to develop. [NT's need to practice too, they just learn better]. Even if you cured your autism, you'd still have these negative thought processes. Cognative Behavoural Therepy and a good shag is the answer, not chelation, HBOT and all that snake oil...

Zendell, if those curebie parents spend as much energy, time and money on working together for a more accepting culture and more options for their kids, as they do, bonding over the cure culture, like it's some revivial, I wouldn't be so down on them.

It's been my experience while my daughter was growing up, that most of the parents who of autistic kids who bothered to be active about autism, flocked around the cure presentations, nothing about looking out their what their kids will need when they grow up.,

That tells me that it's not their kids they love. They love some image of a cured kid and are saving all their love and future resources for that phantom kid.

So if you show me parents who are balanced, realistic, love and fully accept their kids, just as they are but still want cures, they will have my respect and I'll accept them, too.