Time to stand up against anti-cure

Post Reply New Topic

These online groups represent a very small micro minority. Most people with autism I know don't talk here or self-advocate much. I have to get them inspired and others with DD to self-advocate. But I won't do that by trying to make them pissed off at everything and be insulted at everything. Happiness is the best cure in a cranky unfair world.

its true that happiness is a brilliant remedy for many things.

and tomboywriter, i feel much the same way, to me the problem comes when you combine a cure with an aspie child and ie. a set of parents who are obsessed by normality.
the first 3 months after my DX my parents thought that there was a "magic pill" now if this is the perception they have, what do you think they would have done had they found out when i was younger?
i lived mostof my life without even realising i had a problem, i was just different and lived an exciting life because of it, had my parents forced me to medicate(hypothetical here, they didnt even know till i was 20) i think i would have felt trapped, have even greater problems with self esteem and in no way would i have tried working abroad for 4 years at the age of 20.
i dont think anyone is saying people shouldnt have a cure, i just think people are fraid of how society will integrate the cure and what it will do to peoples tolerance of diversity.

it could go wrong very quickly, with a lot of people caught in a place where they have no say over their lives anymore.

Special interest can be good and can be bad. Fear can be good and can be bad. Happiness and quality of life is the pursuit for the honest and ethical outcome. Cure then comes in many forms from acceptance, treatment for hardships and the inclusion of diversity into a world that claims itself to be normal but is in fact quite abnormal. This standard of normal is so diverse and so obscure that to have insecurity about fitting in when the world aspires to constantly change to be different from one another is in attempt an oxymoron. Now I am not a moron but I suppose normal can be depending on the point of view. In idea to function as what everyone is expected to do to be a contributing member of society acceptance then is also required or else a fualt exists elsewhere. To adapt in spite of difference to become contributing members of society is curing both the circumstance and when resisted the normal needs cure as it is then defective toward what is and no choice can be made to suddenly manifest as if a clone to normal expectations so rigidly.

Ci---Fortunately for me, special interests have been good so far. They were and are like my best friend. But I understand what you are saying. I try to use special interests in ways to promote my happiness and success.

By the way Ci, you seem to give considerable time researching advocacy. You are right at home here. I just noticed you didn't join WrongPlanet until November 2010. As I never spent much time in the advocacy threads, I assumed you had been a member here longer. Anyway---belated welcome.

I have been around on and off since the origination of W.P, the time of Aspergian Island and the formulation of Aspies For Freedom. I gave up on the online stuff and did my own thing locally as folks didn't want to listen and I saw nothing I could do at the time. I've been around since Cure Autism Now and the formulation of Autism Speaks as well.

If I where cured I probably would not have extra sensativity to music which would suck because music is one of the only things that still makes me feel something other then pain. I would not be able to sense what the weather is doing from inside of a building with no windows ect. So if they wanna make this manditory there is no way I would consent.

I don't see how a cure can be developed outside of some extremely advanced brain surgery. I think i'd take the little blue pill since the effect of my AS and it's co-morbids is extremely negative and very saddening and i have no productive life to speak of.

What kind of pain?

Open your mind but not literally and don't trip over it opening it up.

Happiness is something that can be achieved better if choice is enabled and when needed supports are in place. Do you have supports like a community inclusion and social day program?

I've rediscovered a special interest that makes me very happy. For the most part, my special interests that I've had since the age of 19 have been very beneficial to my mental and emotional health, except for maybe the one that involved the UK 70s Punk Movement in 2007 and 2008, due to a bad experience on the Internet. The special interest that I have now is the best one that I've ever had. I've had it once before between 1994 and the very early months of 1997.

There are also people on WP that you won't be able to convert. Many of us know what we want and a lot of us don't wish to be cured. A lot of us have accepted ourselves over the years and in some cases, decades. Myself included.

I don't want you to convert. As I said I support your human right not to receive a cure and I'd suspect most of you that do not want cures are very high functioning. I'd like to think of cure as enabling choices, not being left out and improving quality of life. I do not think of cure as forcing someone to do something they do not want to, changing there unique personality, removing free will and brain surgery. However when people claiming to be anti-cure also support cures for others if they choose they are not really anti-cure but pro-human rights. Anti-cure in implied meaning wishes to prevent research for treatments (cures) and by doing so forcing someone not to benefit from cure based research. True anti-cure will protest cure based fundraisers calling it pity and try to prevent cure research from taking place thus removing or impairing choice. These are human rights evaders.

When I spoke about special interest I was speaking about people that profit from autism like pharma companies and so on.

Not in the Uk! You must be kidding! . I have my monthy meet up with local aspies where we play board games and have the occasional speaker.

I'd never attend such things due to a lack of interest. Even if it was what you call a N.T event. There are a few general reasons for this and one specific reason in context. Firstly I've never been a social person unless it's a very specific interest to accomplish my non-social related goals, I like predictability and hate all the hustle and bustle and autism discussion to me has to be more abstract and from a distance because of how complicated folks have made things socially and politically.

For social well being I'd suggest day programs could be established that are not government funded but member funded as day activity programs. Whereas the higher functioning people ran it as volunteers and a group work component for fundraising could be established to further support it in it's overhead with possibility of regular work for wages. It seems as if what you call aspies are not prone to social isolation and have jobs as engineers and so on many times or other mainstream participations and this may not be needed most of the time.

I think we have not been communicating with one another properly. I believe that the anti-cure stance is merely another way of saying "The right to body autonomy".

This is something that I do support, although I admit, it is arguable where the line should be. Should people have the right to harm themselves? What defines harming oneself? Should people have the right to kill themselves? In what situation is this necessary? And yes, I know this seems unrelated, but it's part of this even bigger issue of body autonomy.

I don't believe that people should be forced or coerced into making big decisions about their health/development/wellbeing and that could be a reality if this hypothetical cure came to be. Of course, this is all speculation.

I think it should be obvious that I support autism research and providing treatment for those on the spectrum (particularly for those that are more impaired by their autism than others). However, what does "cure" mean? Does it mean "to help autistic people function properly" then, yes, I fully condone that. However, if it means "to make them indistinguishable from their peers", then I condemn that. That is NOT what therapy is for. Therapy is to teach people the skills that are necessary for survival. It is not there to make people socially acceptable - just socially functional (which are two completely different things).

I see a lot of this nonsense about how "I want a cure so that I can fit in" or "I want my daughter to be cured so that she will get married". I think those are somewhat silly reasons to want a cure.

What exactly is wrong with my idiosyncrasies (besides being annoying to some)? And as disabling as my condition is, it is directly related to such idiosyncrasies and and various other traits that I have. Yes, autism is first and foremost a disability. However, I firmly reject the notion that my disability makes me inferior or that, by not having it, I would cease to have major problems (biggest lie in history).

I also think that it's more important to focus on caring for autistic people and creating ways in which more autistics can live functionally/contently/comfortably. Services are often limited for disabled people which many of them desperately need.

I hope this doesn't come across as rambling ( as I tend to to )

No your post is fine and rambling is great for understanding thought processes. I understand your point of view. Just know that anti-cure means in implied meaning to oppose cure and related research. I don't think there is a cure for diversity because diversity is a cure for boring. Autism as a label may be manifest of genetics least in part but autism as a label is about deficits which prevent choice whether that be normalcy or chosen personality. I don't believe myself that autism as a label represents the entire genetics and neurology of what is different about people with autism but in assumption the deficits alone which create life limitations within a spectrum of effect and degree of relevant symtomotological impairment(s).